Hasan al-Attar

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Hasan al-Attar ( Arabic عطار ، حسن بن محمد, DMG Ḥasan Ibn-Muḥammad al-ʿAṭṭar ; born 1766 in Cairo ; died 1835 ibid.) was an Egyptian Islamic scholar and from 1830 to 1835 Grand Imam (Shai al-Azhar) of the al-Azhar University in Cairo. As an intellectual he is an example of the structural crisis in Islamic society of the late 18th and early 19th centuries caused by closer contact with Western Europe, which led to the modernization of Egypt and the “Arab Renaissance” .

Life

Born in 1766 in Cairo to a North African family, he received his education at al-Azhar. During the Egyptian expedition of Napoleon Bonaparte he came into contact with the French researchers of the Institut d'Égypte . After the French withdrew, al-Attar first went to Istanbul in 1802, then to Alexandretta , Izmir and finally Damascus in 1806 . In 1815 he returned to Egypt, where he took a slave as his wife. In 1828 Muhammad Ali Pasha appointed him first editor of the official press organ of the Egyptian government, the newspaper al Waqaiʾ al-misriyya, and in 1830 as Grand Imam of al-Azhar. The reformer Rifa'a at-Tahtawi was one of his students there . Al-Attar organized the first group of scholars to be sent to Paris by Muhammad Ali. He died in Cairo in 1835. His successor in office, Al-Quwaysnî, sold his wife, who had retained her unfree status, and his underage son into slavery after al-Attar's death, and dispersed his library.

plant

About 50, mostly posthumously published writings by al-Attar are known. Most were printed in the Bulaq print shop, which was newly established in 1820 . In his essays, published in 1866 under the title al-Rasail , he dealt with law, grammar, logic, medicine and other sciences. In the field of medicine, he advocated the need for empirical research as opposed to the method of logical deduction that had been predominant in Islamic medicine since Ibn Sina . He presented the Islamic scholar ar-Rāzī as a model for his students . He sat down with the French physician Antoine Barthélémy Clot (Clot-Bey), whom Muhammad Ali had appointed to the medical academy of Abuzabel near Cairo, founded in 1825, for the introduction the anatomical section in Egypt. Clot reports with respect on al-Attar's services to Islamic medicine. His modern ideas failed because of the resistance of the Islamic religious scholars . At times he had to hold his lectures in his private rooms.

In a short text Maqāmāt al-ʿAṭṭar (Stations of al-Attar; Cairo 1859) he describes the effect that the arrival of the French scholars had on him: He was "dizzy" because of their "love for secular philosophy". The fluent knowledge of Arabic of some of the scholars at the Institut d'Egypte , "free of mere phrases and other mistakes", aroused in him a love of his own language and poetry and the pride of sharing his own cultural heritage with foreigners.

A comment by al-Attar on a text known as Al-Azhariya , published only in 1901, describes that it is important for the further development of a language to assess which grammatical tradition should be preserved and which should be abolished. He himself developed an Arabic vocabulary that made efficient communication possible within the administration newly designed by Muhammad Ali.

reception

Hasan al-Attar is regarded as the first Egyptian writer to develop his own style and is considered a pioneer of the renaissance of modern Arabic literature in Egypt. This redesigned the Arabic language in the following period so that modern journalism and the communication of modern mass education could become possible.

Against the background of the Orientalism discussion initiated by Edward Said, scholarly interest in al-Attar's work arose at the beginning of the 21st century. As recently as 1992, Khouri described al-Attar as “a character that is difficult to classify in this alternative world history, in which the history of an individual intersects with the great moments of the collective history of a region at precisely defined points.” He is more a contemporary witness than a contemporary witness of modernization been a real reformer. Tageldin (2011) sees him as a “colonized intellectual” who has been “culturally seduced by the hegemonic power”. In line with Jean Baudrillard's theory of refraction, she understands the French scholars' knowledge of Arabic, described by al-Attar with admiration, as a means of power to seduce and subjugate the inferior. Coller (2010), who sees al-Attar's exchange with French intellectuals as more shaped by the “dynamics of the post-revolutionary situation in France” than by the “colonialism of the late 19th century”, turns against this. The contact with Islamic intellectuals in “Arab France” also shaped Europe on the threshold of modernity. Gran (2005) also opposes the view that at the beginning of the 19th century innovations could only be brought into Egyptian society (or forced upon it) from outside, and that adaptations and developments can only take place as a reaction to the foreign and modern. He places al-Attar next to at-Tahtawi as examples for intellectuals who, inspired by contacts with Western scientists, have independently managed to balance secular logic and tradition and belief.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Arthur Goldschmidt, Jr .: Biographical Dictionary of Modern Egypt . Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2000, ISBN 1-55587-229-8 , pp. 26 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  2. ↑ a b c Nicole Khouri: Ḥassan al- ʿ Aṭṭar ou la figure d'un rhéteur à l'aube de la modernité. Entre le Caire et Istanbul 1770–1830 . In: Modernization et nouvelles formes de mobilization sociale. Volume II: Egypt – Turquie . CEDEJ, Cairo 1992 ( openedition.org [accessed November 25, 2017]).
  3. ^ Ahmad S. Dallal: The origins and early development of Islamic reform . In: Robert W. Hefner (Ed.): The New Cambridge History of Islam. Vol. 6: Muslims and modernity . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK 2010, ISBN 978-0-521-84443-7 , pp. 107-147 .
  4. ^ Markus Schmitz: Cultural criticism without a center. Edward W. Said and the counterpoints of critical decolonization . transcript, Bielefeld 2008, ISBN 978-3-89942-975-6 .
  5. ↑ a b c Peter Gran: Rediscovering Al-'Attar . In: Al-Ahram Weekly . 2005 ( archive.org [accessed November 26, 2017]).
  6. ↑ Christopher de Bellaige: The Islamic Enlightenment. The Struggle between Faith and Reason: 1798 to Modern Times . Liveright, New York 2017, ISBN 978-0-87140-373-5 , pp. 26-33 .
  7. ↑ Sharen Tageldin: Disarming Words. Empire and the Seductions of Translation in Egypt . University of California Press, Berkeley 2011, ISBN 978-0-520-26552-3 .
  8. ^ J. Brugman: An introduction to the history of modern Arabic literature in Egypt . Brill, Leiden 1984, ISBN 90-04-07172-5 , pp. 15–17 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  9. ↑ Nicole Khouri: Ḥassan al- ʿ Aṭṭar ou la figure d'un rhéteur à l'aube de la modernité. Entre le Caire et Istanbul 1770–1830 . In: Modernization et nouvelles formes de mobilization sociale. Volume II: Egypt – Turquie . CEDEJ, Cairo 1992: "[...] une figure difficilement classable en ce temps d'uchronie, dont l'histoire individual croise les grands moments de l'histoire collective d'une region en des points précis."
  10. ↑ Sharen Tageldin: Disarming Words. Empire and the Seductions of Translation in Egypt . University of California Press, Berkeley 2011, ISBN 978-0-520-26552-3 , pp. 79 .
  11. ^ Ian Coller: Arab France: Islam and the Making of Modern Europe, 1798-1831 . University of California Press, Berkeley 2010, ISBN 978-0-520-26065-8 , pp. 108 .
personal data
SURNAME Hasan al-Attar
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ḥasan Ibn-Muḥammad al-ʿAṭṭar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Muslim clergyman and grand imam of al-Azhar University
DATE OF BIRTH 1766
PLACE OF BIRTH Cairo
DATE OF DEATH 1835
Place of death Cairo