A young Egyptian, who is destined to become a great intellectual, encounters the modern university, first in Cairo and then in France. It is an experience that broadens his horizons without making him forget his origins
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The encounter with the modern university broadens the horizons of a young Egyptian, destined to become a great intellectual. After moving to the Sorbonne, the student succeeds in the fearsome Latin exam and obtains his licentiate. But in France he also meets his future wife, the “woman who became eyes to me.” And, despite his admiration for Europe, he preserves a profound gratitude for his Egyptian teachers, who taught him to never stop loving Oriental civilization.
Chapter 5: My Professor Wishes me ill
Life in the University for me, as for the other Egyptians, seemed like one continual celebration. It certainly was for me a feast spelling a whole manifold of satisfactions and delightful hopes. It emancipated me from the confined, confused atmosphere of the Azhar and of Hawsh ‘Atā and Darb al-Jamāmīz,[1] into an ample, uninhibited milieu which allowed me to fill my lungs with fresh air on my way to and from and likewise to fill my mind with open knowledge which did not bind me like the narrow strictures of the Azhar professors in their lecturing, nor ruin my intelligence with qanqalahs (citations), and arguments about this and that, and endless equivocation. Nor was there that time-wasting business of parsing words, when parsing had no relevance whatsoever to the study in hand.
The University environment also afforded me a type of learning which itself generated a new temper of mind, not perpetually engrossed in grammar, fiqh, logic and tawhīd, but ranging into a diversity of schools of thought in literature and history, all undreamed of on my part until then. I had not forgotten a day when I was arguing with my cousin, then a student at Dār al-‘Ulūm,[2] and he, the Dār al-‘Ulūmī, had said to me, the Azharite: “What do you know about knowledge, anyway? You’re just an ignoramus, versed in mere grammar and fiqh. You’ve never had a single lesson in the history of the Pharaohs. Have you ever heard the names of Ramses and Akhenaton?”
(...)
It had amazed me to hear those two names and to hear tell of that kind of history. It had convinced me that I was ordained by God to lead a lost and futile life. But now, here I was in a university class-room listening to Professor Ahmad Kamāl (God mercy him) talking about ancient Egyptian civilization, referring to Ramses and Akhenaton and other Pharaohs and endeavouring to expound his point of view as to the connection between ancient Egyptian and Semitic languages, including Arabic.
Here he was making his point by reference to words from ancient Egyptian which he related to Arabic, Hebrew and Syriac, as the evidence required. All this learning was truly amazing in my ears and even more so the realization that I could understand and absorb it without difficulty or effort. I went back home that night in a very zealous and exalted mood. No sooner had I accosted my cousin that I drew myself up in proud scorn of him and that Dār al-‘Ulūm about which he had been preening himself. “Do you learn Semitic languages at Dār al-‘Ulūm?” I queried. My cousin replied in the negative. Whereupon I proudly explained hieroglyphics to him and how the ancient Egyptians wrote, also alluding to Hebrew and Syriac. So I turned the tables on him: the defeated emerged victor and the victor was subdued.
So the first year of my life at the University went by, a feast of happiness unalloyed by any trouble or weariness. […] I had a mind only for what the University meant to me. All my thoughts and energies were pre-occupied with it.
In due course, new professors came who called forth my entire devotion and found pride of place in my heart. There was Professor Carlo Nallino,[3] the Italian orientalist, who lectured in Arabic on the history of literature and poetry in the Umayyad period, and Professor Santillana,[4] who also lectured in Arabic, with a pleasant Tunisian accent. […] There was also Professor Miluni,[5] likewise an Arabic speaker, whose subject was ancient eastern history. He raised topics among the students which had never before been discussed in Egypt. He was an expert in the history of Babylon and Assyria and dealt with Sumerian writing and the laws of Hammurabi. I followed these professors very readily, finding no undue difficulty or complexity in what they said. Then there was a German professor, Dr. Littmann,[6] who lectured on Semitic languages and their relation to Arabic and later set up the teaching of these languages. […] Had I not still been mingling with Azharites and students from Dār al-‘Ulūm and the School of Law during the day-time and partly, too, in the evenings,[7] my emancipation from my earlier life would have been almost complete.
But my mind had already entirely freed itself from that milieu and become fully attached to these professors, each of whom knew me and each of whom showed me friendly kindnesses. They used to invite me to visit them in their hotel and made themselves readily accessible in conversation. One unforgotten occasion was when Professor Santillana arranged to attend a class with me in Azhar. The doctor met me at the agreed rendezvous in front of the ‘Abbāsid riwāq[8] and we went together to a morning class given by the Grand Shaikh, Shaikh Salīm al-Bushrā[9] (God mercy Him). It was held in the ‘Abbāsid riwāq, the subject being exegesis. With the professor and myself seated among the pupils, the Shaikh started off with an explanation of a fine verse from Sūrat Al-An‘ām (Surah 6 v. 111): “Had we sent angels down to them and had the dead addressed them and had We brought everything together against them that had gone before, still they would not have believed unless God had willed they should. But most of them pay no heed.”
The Shaikh explained the passage excellently, embarking on a discussion of divine ordaining and of volition. He refuted the upholders of jabr or fate and rejected their position. I then started a debate with the Shaikh after the Azhar tradition but the Shaikh’s responses did not satisfy me. I was bent on keeping the discussion going, but the Shaikh reproved me, adding: “What God wills is what is and what God does not will, does not happen. God is greater than knowledge and faith. Are you a Muslim?” As I persisted on the point, the Shaikh cut me short, saying with an angry gibe: “Keep quiet. The dogs get you! Let’s go on with the reading.”[10] Ignoring me, he went on with what he was saying, the Italian professor, meanwhile, tapping me on the shoulder as I tried to interrupt. “Be quiet!” he whispered in that endearing Tunisian Arabic of his, “Be quiet! Or he’ll hit you.” But his dād, when he said: “He’ll hit you,” came out more like a zā’. I had to suppress a burst of laughter, whether at the thought of the Shaikh’s indignation, or the Italian professor’s touching kindness—I do not know.
When the class was over I took Professor Santillana to the Azhar administration and asked to introduce him to the Grand Shaikh. Permission was given and the interview went very cordially. The Shaikh received him warmly. But then he looked at me and said quietly: “Are you the one who was arguing in class?” When I said: “Yes!” he replied with a smile: “For heaven’s sake! For heaven’s sake! All power to your elbow! God give you as much trouble from your students as your professors have had from you!”
Chapter 6: My Professors
It was not only the part played by the foreign teachers which made life at University such delightful and continuous feast of good things. There were Egyptian professors, too, who added to its appeal and its fascination enormously. Imprinted on my memory are recollections of a group of such men, who exercised a profound and long-standing influence in my career. They gave me a new awareness of life, a new zest for it, and a new awareness of the old and the new together. They turned my outlook round towards the future, to days ahead. They strengthened and established my Arab, Egyptian personality, in the context of all the wide learning brought to me by the orientalists which could easily have engrossed me totally in European values. But these Egyptian teachers enabled me to cling to a strong element of authentic eastern culture, and to hold together congenially in a balanced harmony the learning of both east and west. These Egyptian professors differed sharply from one another. Some were turbaned and others already favoured the tarboush, while others again were in a state of transition between the two styles.
Chapter 11: In France
[…] There were times when the strain became so great that it reached the point where I could not sleep. I could only break my sleeplessness if I had someone with me. A knock might come at the door, the night two thirds passed, to plague my wakefulness, in the shape of one of my companions who, at my call to enter, would come in and, in high youthful frivolity, retail to me all his foolish antics, in no mind for sleep, until at length when his chatter died away and he departed, I would be left at the very end of my tether, worn out with grief and strain, sleepless, unrested and unfed.
The morning following, I would be good for nothing, done in, body and soul together. Despite all these tribulations and distresses, and all the trouble I had getting to the University and mastering what I heard in class, I was content with life and deeply confident. My sole desire was to keep going until I had accomplished what I had in view. I was assured that I would attain my goal and do well in French. Indeed, I was already doing so, speaking it without difficulty. I was determined to learn Latin and be ready for the exam. Who knows? Perhaps I would be the first Egyptian student ever to succeed in the licentiate in literature.
There were times when I was utterly in love with this bitter-sweet life of mingled severity and solace. At other times, I felt it was as oppressive as could be. Then, one day, in the spring, life suddenly relented altogether and smiled on me in a way that changed everything entirely.
I no longer felt lonely and desolate when night fell and I was by myself. How could feelings of desolation and isolation find a way to my soul then, or those thoughts that had so tormented and prostrated me and made my nights sleepless, when there was in my heart’s ear that sweet and gentle voice, reading some piece or other from the treasures of old French literature, in kindly, gracious tones?
God have mercy of Abū-l-‘Alā’.[11] He had filled my soul with an oppressive sense of life and a loathing for it, and with a despair of goodness. He had made me fear that life is all effort, all hardship, all arduous. And here was this voice, chasing from within me all the thoughts of darkness, pessimism and despair that Abū-l-‘Alā’ had ever planted there, as if, that spring day, it were the very sun rising, dispelling from the city the louring clouds that reared above it in thundery gloom and storm, making every one afraid, until, as morning came, the scene was bathed in light.
I heard that voice one day, reading to me from poetry of Racine. I felt as if I were made anew. From the hour I first heard that voice there was no way despair could take hold of me.
I did not know what love of life was until that eighteenth day of May that year. I did not know what it was to study, as I have studied since that day. That day I began to profit as never before from my attendance at the University and from my book-reading. […]
Chapter 15: The Woman Who Was Eyes to Me
[…] We—my girl and I—did not spend that summer in the customary fashion of two young lovers in the first halcyon days of shared affection, in carefree jocund living, given over to mutual delight and happyhearted travels of the imagination and a minimum of work. On the contrary, we realised that our time was too urgent to leave us leisure for love and caresses. My sojourn in France had a fixed term: I had duties to fulfill, tasks to complete, being responsible for all these to the University in Egypt, which sent students to Europe to acquire knowledge, not for fun and games.
[…] I had resolved at all costs to succeed in the licentiate first and then go on to the doctorate. Egyptians students had not thus far aimed at the licentiate, since it required such a heavy toll of effort, full proficiency in French first of all in order to offer the written exam in the subjects studies, exactly as French students did, handling the set topics in perfect French, without solecisms and errors of grammar, and there was a written Latin paper also. Latin was not studied in Egypt, neither in secondary nor in high school. Egyptians realised they would never be able to keep up with the French colleagues in a language they had never heard until they came to France. Moreover, French students had six years of Latin in secondary school and studied it in the University prior to offering the licentiate exam. Consequently, Egyptians heartily declined to study Latin and so were, of course, debarred from the licentiate, for which it was compulsory.
[…] I decided, if I succeeded, to cable the University, and if my destiny was to fail, I would try to conceal it as a private secret—if that were possible about the examination, with Egyptian friends all around, wishing me well with encouragements and watchful interest.
Success it was! Professor Sabrī al-Sorbonnī,[12] of all people, came in one evening, almost beside himself with delight. Exhausted and breathless with running at speed from the Sorbonne to my abode and hurrying up the steps to my place on the sixth floor, he announced to the door-keeper that I, his friend, had gained my licentiate. He did not even come in, but went off at once, without staying to get his breath.
For this same good friend had been in the exam and, according to his habit, had merely glanced at the Latin text, folded his paper and handed it in blank, with his customary laugh and Latin tag [which he used to quote in such circumstances]. It was marvellous to have him so overjoyed with my success at this difficult hurdle, making so much of it when he himself had failed.
The news was brought in to me, but I did not believe it until my fiancée took me to the Sorbonne and read my name among those who had passed. Only after she had reserved seats for the whole family in Molière House to celebrate the unexpected success of her fiancée did she bring me back home.
When I awoke next morning, I sent a cable to the University and two days later came its reply of congratulation and a prize of twenty guineas. That very day we two decided to get married before our summer journey to the south.
Chapter 17: The Day the Bomb Fell on My House
[…] While all this was going on, the War came to an end. Armistice was declared. French and expatriates alike rejoiced at the coming of peace. I resumed my studies but hardly had I done so than news from Egypt brought yet another pre-occupation[13] away from my task. This time, though, it was not an unnerving or sorrowful business. On the contrary, it was calculated to set my heart aglow with gladness and to evoke both confidence and admiration. It was the news that Egypt was seeking independence from the victorious occupying power. This was followed by the news that the occupying forces were being evasive and coercive in their attitude to Egypt’s demands and that a group of Egyptians had been expelled from their country and taken as hostages to Malta. The country, angered at this outrage to her sons, had risen against the enemy.
To me and my fellow Egyptian students these tidings were like water to a burning thirst. So it was not only Europeans who could make revolutions in anger for the honour of their fatherland, in their passion for national freedom. Egypt, in Africa, could rebel as well, just as the English, the French, the Americans had done, and other western nations too.
(Taha Hussein. A Passage to France. Translated by Kenneth Cragg. Leiden: Brill, 1976. Now in Taha Hussein. The Days. His Autobiography in Three Parts. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 1997)
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Oasis International Foundation
[1] The poor house where Taha Hussein used to live with other Azharite students (all the notes are by Martino Diez).
[2] Founded in 1871, Dār al-‘Ulūm was an institution aimed at providing a dual education, both traditional and Western. Nowadays it is part of Cairo University.
[3] Carlo Alfonso Nallino (1872–1938) was the most important Italian orientalist of the early twentieth century. The author of fundamental studies on Islamic astronomy, ancient Arabic literature, the Qur’an and the modern Egyptian dialect, he founded the Istituto per l’Oriente (Oriental Institute) and the journal Oriente Moderno. He was the supervisor of Taha Hussein at the Egyptian University.
[4] David Santillana (1855–1931) was born in Tunis from a Jewish family hailing from Livorno. He was at the forefront in both the study of classical Islamic Law and the compilation of the Tunisian civil and commercial code. He was the author of the much-acclaimed Istituzioni di diritto musulmano malichita (“Institutions of Maliki Islamic Law”).
[5] He is actually Gerardo Meloni (1882–1912), an Italian Semitist.
[6] Enno Littmann (1875–1958) was an internationally renowned Semitist and Ethiopicist. A member of the Academy of the Arabic Language in Cairo, he led a scientific expedition to Aksum in 1906.
[7] The lectures at the Egyptian University took place in the late afternoons and evenings.
[8] The riwāq is a portico. The name does not refer, as Cragg’s translation makes one to believe, to the ‘Abbasid dynasty (not lastly because al-Azhar was founded after the demise of the ‘Abbasids from Egypt), but to the last Khedive, ‘Abbās II Hilmī (r. 1892–1914). The riwāq bearing his name was inaugurated in 1897.
[9] His name is actually Salīm al-Bishrī. Born in the governorate of Buhayra, he was Shaykh al-Azhar from 1899 to 1903 and again from 1909 to 1917.
[10] In Egyptian dialect in the text.
[11] Abū l-‘Alā’ al-Ma‘arrī (973–1058) was a Syrian ascetic, poet and thinker. Blind from his childhood, he voluntarily secluded himself in his home. His meditations, mostly contained in the Luzūmiyyāt (“Unnecessary constraints”), are marked by a strong sense of pessimism. Taha Hussein was always attracted to the figure of al-Ma‘arrī, to whom he also devoted his PhD dissertation, the first ever discussed at the new Egyptian University.
[12] Al-Sorbonī means “the one who graduated from the Sorbonne.” But before succeeding, the professor failed his Latin exam several times.
[13] The author refers to an Egyptian student who had fell seriously ill so that he felt obliged to take care of him.
To cite this article
Printed version:
Text by Taha Hussein, “Spanning Two Cultures”, Oasis, year XIV, n. 28, December 2018, pp. 112-118.
Online version:
Text by Taha Hussein, “Spanning Two Cultures”, Oasis [online], published on 27th March 2019, URL: https://www.oasiscenter.eu/en/taha-hussein-a-life-between-two-cultures.