Pub Date : 2021-07-23DOI: 10.1163/24519197-bja10018
J. V. Birkenholtz
In late nineteenth-century Nepal, the advent of print and mass reproduction marked a critical and as yet understudied junction in Nepal’s literary history and attendant manuscript and print cultures. This article employs Nepal’s popular Svasthānīvratakathā to illuminate key shifts and intersections between language of composition, technologies of writing, places of composition or reproduction, and the agents of transmission that are emblematic of local manuscript practices and paradigmatic of the emergent print culture in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Nepal. The practices and actors involved in Svasthānī transmission shifted the text away from the private, domestic sphere to the public, translocal realm on multiple levels. Attending to these shifts as evidenced in one living devotional tradition indexes significant developments and intersections that deepen our knowledge of the changing linguistic, technological, geocultural, and socioeconomic aspects of the literary landscape in Nepal and South Asia more broadly.
{"title":"Printing the Goddess: Intersections of Language, Place, Technology, and Agents of Transmission in Nepali Manuscript and Early Print Culture","authors":"J. V. Birkenholtz","doi":"10.1163/24519197-bja10018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24519197-bja10018","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000In late nineteenth-century Nepal, the advent of print and mass reproduction marked a critical and as yet understudied junction in Nepal’s literary history and attendant manuscript and print cultures. This article employs Nepal’s popular Svasthānīvratakathā to illuminate key shifts and intersections between language of composition, technologies of writing, places of composition or reproduction, and the agents of transmission that are emblematic of local manuscript practices and paradigmatic of the emergent print culture in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Nepal. The practices and actors involved in Svasthānī transmission shifted the text away from the private, domestic sphere to the public, translocal realm on multiple levels. Attending to these shifts as evidenced in one living devotional tradition indexes significant developments and intersections that deepen our knowledge of the changing linguistic, technological, geocultural, and socioeconomic aspects of the literary landscape in Nepal and South Asia more broadly.","PeriodicalId":36525,"journal":{"name":"Philological Encounters","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49299293","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-23DOI: 10.1163/24519197-bja10017
Michael Allan
Michael Allan and Gauri Viswanathan discuss connections among philology, literary history, and religion, drawing from writers such as Edward Said, B.R. Ambedkar, Zora Neale Hurston, Louis Massignon, and Kumud Pawde. The conversation was initially conducted via Zoom on September 2, 2020, and collaboratively edited for readability.
Michael Allan和Gauri Viswanathan从Edward Said、B.R.Ambedkar、Zora Neale Hurston、Louis Massignon和Kumud Pawde等作家那里讨论了语文学、文学史和宗教之间的联系。对话最初于2020年9月2日通过Zoom进行,并进行了协作编辑以提高可读性。
{"title":"Heterodox Philology: A Conversation with Gauri Viswanathan","authors":"Michael Allan","doi":"10.1163/24519197-bja10017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24519197-bja10017","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Michael Allan and Gauri Viswanathan discuss connections among philology, literary history, and religion, drawing from writers such as Edward Said, B.R. Ambedkar, Zora Neale Hurston, Louis Massignon, and Kumud Pawde. The conversation was initially conducted via Zoom on September 2, 2020, and collaboratively edited for readability.","PeriodicalId":36525,"journal":{"name":"Philological Encounters","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45711522","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-23DOI: 10.1163/24519197-bja10012
G. Head
Rethinking Arabic literary modernity, this article addresses what the act of reading means as Morocco moves from manuscript to print. In 1941, a leading figure of Morocco’s nahḍa, al-Tuhāmī al-Wazzānī, began to serialize his autobiography al-Zāwiya in one of the country’s earliest newspapers. Heralded as Morocco’s first novel, the moment marks the inauguration of a new reading public. Yet the text does not rely upon the reconfigured relationship with the reader accompanying the rise of print cultures in much of the Middle East and North Africa. Al-Zāwiya is a Sufi autobiography, a genre that invites its readers to assimilate the actions found within its pages. Al-Wazzānī draws upon this long tradition, using intertextual engagement to create a space of discourse that complicates the presumed secularity of Arabic literature during the nahḍa. Early Moroccan print culture thus provides an opportunity to reconsider the continuities of tradition embedded within modern literary practices.
这篇文章重新思考了阿拉伯文学的现代性,阐述了当摩洛哥从手稿走向印刷品时,阅读行为意味着什么。1941年,摩洛哥nah的一位领军人物ḍa、 al-Tuhāmi 772 al-Wazza 772 ni 772开始在该国最早的报纸之一上连载他的自传《al-Za 772 wiya》。这一时刻被誉为摩洛哥的第一部小说,标志着一个新的读者群体的成立。然而,随着中东和北非大部分地区印刷文化的兴起,文本并没有依赖于与读者重新配置的关系。《Al-Zāwiya》是一本苏菲自传,这是一种邀请读者吸收其页面中的行为的类型。Al-Wazzāni利用这一悠久的传统,利用互文参与创造了一个话语空间,使阿拉伯文学在nah时期假定的世俗性复杂化ḍa.因此,早期的摩洛哥印刷文化提供了一个重新考虑现代文学实践中传统的连续性的机会。
{"title":"Print Culture and Sufi Modernity: Al-Tuhāmī al-Wazzānī’s Embodied Reading of Morocco’s Nahḍa","authors":"G. Head","doi":"10.1163/24519197-bja10012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24519197-bja10012","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Rethinking Arabic literary modernity, this article addresses what the act of reading means as Morocco moves from manuscript to print. In 1941, a leading figure of Morocco’s nahḍa, al-Tuhāmī al-Wazzānī, began to serialize his autobiography al-Zāwiya in one of the country’s earliest newspapers. Heralded as Morocco’s first novel, the moment marks the inauguration of a new reading public. Yet the text does not rely upon the reconfigured relationship with the reader accompanying the rise of print cultures in much of the Middle East and North Africa. Al-Zāwiya is a Sufi autobiography, a genre that invites its readers to assimilate the actions found within its pages. Al-Wazzānī draws upon this long tradition, using intertextual engagement to create a space of discourse that complicates the presumed secularity of Arabic literature during the nahḍa. Early Moroccan print culture thus provides an opportunity to reconsider the continuities of tradition embedded within modern literary practices.","PeriodicalId":36525,"journal":{"name":"Philological Encounters","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47787276","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-23DOI: 10.1163/24519197-bja10014
Martin Gaenszle
With the rise of ethnic politics in Nepal, the Limbu (or: Yakthumba) have made increasing use of the Limbu script, also known as Srijanga or Kiranti. Whereas in the past this script was suppressed by the state and known only to a minority, since the return of democracy to Nepal in the 1990s a new literature using this script has come into being. Here, religious books play a prominent role. This essay deals with the emerging importance of the script as a marker of ethnicity since its first general propagation by Iman Singh Chemjong and Phalgunanda Lingden in the early twentieth century. It focuses on the early production of printed books, in particular books published by followers of the Satyahangma movement, which promotes reforms of Kiranti religion and society.
{"title":"The Limbu Script and the Production of Religious Books in Nepal","authors":"Martin Gaenszle","doi":"10.1163/24519197-bja10014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24519197-bja10014","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000With the rise of ethnic politics in Nepal, the Limbu (or: Yakthumba) have made increasing use of the Limbu script, also known as Srijanga or Kiranti. Whereas in the past this script was suppressed by the state and known only to a minority, since the return of democracy to Nepal in the 1990s a new literature using this script has come into being. Here, religious books play a prominent role. This essay deals with the emerging importance of the script as a marker of ethnicity since its first general propagation by Iman Singh Chemjong and Phalgunanda Lingden in the early twentieth century. It focuses on the early production of printed books, in particular books published by followers of the Satyahangma movement, which promotes reforms of Kiranti religion and society.","PeriodicalId":36525,"journal":{"name":"Philological Encounters","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46380625","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-23DOI: 10.1163/24519197-bja10016
B. Larios
This article discusses the first Indian compilation of the four Vedic Saṃhitās into a printed book in the year 1971 entitled “Bhagavān Vedaḥ.” This endeavor was the life’s mission of an udāsīn ascetic called Guru Gaṅgeśvarānand Mahārāj (1881–1992) who in the year 1968 founded the “Gaṅgeśvar Caturved Sansthān” in Bombay and appointed one of his main disciples, Svāmī Ānand Bhāskarānand, to oversee the publication of the book. His main motivation was to have a physical representation of the Vedas for Hindus to be able to have the darśana (auspicious sight) of the Vedas and worship them in book form. This contribution explores the institutions and individuals involved in the editorial work and its dissemination, and zooms into the processes that allowed for the transition from orality to print culture, and ultimately what it means when the Vedas are materialized into “the book of the Hindus.”
{"title":"Vision, Worship, and the Transmutation of the Vedas into Sacred Scripture. The Publication of Bhagavān Vedaḥ in 1970","authors":"B. Larios","doi":"10.1163/24519197-bja10016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24519197-bja10016","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article discusses the first Indian compilation of the four Vedic Saṃhitās into a printed book in the year 1971 entitled “Bhagavān Vedaḥ.” This endeavor was the life’s mission of an udāsīn ascetic called Guru Gaṅgeśvarānand Mahārāj (1881–1992) who in the year 1968 founded the “Gaṅgeśvar Caturved Sansthān” in Bombay and appointed one of his main disciples, Svāmī Ānand Bhāskarānand, to oversee the publication of the book. His main motivation was to have a physical representation of the Vedas for Hindus to be able to have the darśana (auspicious sight) of the Vedas and worship them in book form. This contribution explores the institutions and individuals involved in the editorial work and its dissemination, and zooms into the processes that allowed for the transition from orality to print culture, and ultimately what it means when the Vedas are materialized into “the book of the Hindus.”","PeriodicalId":36525,"journal":{"name":"Philological Encounters","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42949985","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-23DOI: 10.1163/24519197-bja10020
A. A. Chudal
This article presents three recitation versions of two tales from the famous Vetālapañcaviṃśati (VP; the “Twenty-Five Tales of an Animated Corpse”, a medieval Sanskrit anthology of riddle-tales) that made their way orally from South Asia to Europe. The original work is one of the rare Sanskrit texts to have been disseminated widely and over a long period of time. It is a work that has thrived in oral, manuscript and printed versions. The stories in question, recorded in Germany as retold by three Nepali prisoners of war during World War I, show how this pre-modern Indian textual tradition was received into modern vernaculars and recounted in modern settings. It documents the fluidity of texts as dependent on the reciter’s, scribe’s or publisher’s own outlook, as well as on differing times and circumstances. In addition to the text’s long history of transmission, colonialism and print capitalism were further factors that influenced the retelling of the VP.
{"title":"Modern Nepali Oral Transmissions of Vetālapañcaviṃśati Stories to Europe","authors":"A. A. Chudal","doi":"10.1163/24519197-bja10020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24519197-bja10020","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article presents three recitation versions of two tales from the famous Vetālapañcaviṃśati (VP; the “Twenty-Five Tales of an Animated Corpse”, a medieval Sanskrit anthology of riddle-tales) that made their way orally from South Asia to Europe. The original work is one of the rare Sanskrit texts to have been disseminated widely and over a long period of time. It is a work that has thrived in oral, manuscript and printed versions. The stories in question, recorded in Germany as retold by three Nepali prisoners of war during World War I, show how this pre-modern Indian textual tradition was received into modern vernaculars and recounted in modern settings. It documents the fluidity of texts as dependent on the reciter’s, scribe’s or publisher’s own outlook, as well as on differing times and circumstances. In addition to the text’s long history of transmission, colonialism and print capitalism were further factors that influenced the retelling of the VP.","PeriodicalId":36525,"journal":{"name":"Philological Encounters","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47815593","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-23DOI: 10.1163/24519197-bja10019
Cristina Pecchia, J. Buss, A. A. Chudal
The study of the history of print technology in South Asia is a multidisciplinary enterprise which involves attentive consideration of the cultural and linguistic diversity of the region, as well as of the historical time in which print technology was massively adopted, namely the colonial period. Here, we focus on the complex fabric of relationships between print and modes of recording and using texts in long present oral and manuscript cultures, also pointing out the limits of applying interpretative models based on the cultural history of Europe to the histories of print in South Asia. Furthermore, we present aspects of the formative stage of print cultures concerning Vedic, Limbu, Nepali, Newari, and Tamil textual traditions—which are studied in the essays of this special issue. This multi-layered perspective helps making sense of social and cultural dynamics concerning the uses of printed books, the (new) meanings associated with them, and the formation of hegemonic configurations within literary and religious traditions.
{"title":"Print Cultures in the Making in 19th- and 20th-Century South Asia: Beyond Disciplinary Boundaries","authors":"Cristina Pecchia, J. Buss, A. A. Chudal","doi":"10.1163/24519197-bja10019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24519197-bja10019","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The study of the history of print technology in South Asia is a multidisciplinary enterprise which involves attentive consideration of the cultural and linguistic diversity of the region, as well as of the historical time in which print technology was massively adopted, namely the colonial period. Here, we focus on the complex fabric of relationships between print and modes of recording and using texts in long present oral and manuscript cultures, also pointing out the limits of applying interpretative models based on the cultural history of Europe to the histories of print in South Asia. Furthermore, we present aspects of the formative stage of print cultures concerning Vedic, Limbu, Nepali, Newari, and Tamil textual traditions—which are studied in the essays of this special issue. This multi-layered perspective helps making sense of social and cultural dynamics concerning the uses of printed books, the (new) meanings associated with them, and the formation of hegemonic configurations within literary and religious traditions.","PeriodicalId":36525,"journal":{"name":"Philological Encounters","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48610679","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-23DOI: 10.1163/24519197-bja10015
R. Weiss
On a trip to South India in the early 1850s, the German missionary Karl Graul collected a library of Tamil books. His library contains some of the first books that Tamils edited and published for Tamil audiences. This article analyses the Shaiva and Vaishnava works in this collection, arguing that in this early period of Tamil publishing, Tamil Hindus turned to print in part to counter Christian evangelisation. They edited and published texts previously transmitted on manuscripts, in order to build a corpus of Shaiva and Vaishnava printed books that would challenge the Christian monopoly of Tamil print. The article focuses on the editing activities and institutional affiliations of Tamil Shaiva editors, most importantly the prominent scholar Vedagiri Mudaliyar.
{"title":"Early Hindu Sectarian Printed Books: An Analysis of a Tamil Library","authors":"R. Weiss","doi":"10.1163/24519197-bja10015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24519197-bja10015","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000On a trip to South India in the early 1850s, the German missionary Karl Graul collected a library of Tamil books. His library contains some of the first books that Tamils edited and published for Tamil audiences. This article analyses the Shaiva and Vaishnava works in this collection, arguing that in this early period of Tamil publishing, Tamil Hindus turned to print in part to counter Christian evangelisation. They edited and published texts previously transmitted on manuscripts, in order to build a corpus of Shaiva and Vaishnava printed books that would challenge the Christian monopoly of Tamil print. The article focuses on the editing activities and institutional affiliations of Tamil Shaiva editors, most importantly the prominent scholar Vedagiri Mudaliyar.","PeriodicalId":36525,"journal":{"name":"Philological Encounters","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45859031","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-23DOI: 10.1163/24519197-bja10013
Aslıhan Gürbüzel
What is the language of heaven? Is Arabic the only language allowed in the eternal world of the virtuous, or will Muslims continue to speak their native languages in the other world? While learned scholars debated the language of heaven since the early days of Islam, the question gained renewed vigor in seventeenth century Istanbul against the background of a puritan reform movement which criticized the usage of Persian and the Persianate canon as sacred text. In response, Mevlevī authors argued for the discursive authority of the Persianate mystical canon in Islamic tradition (sunna). Focusing on this debate, this article argues that early modern Ottoman authors recognized non-legal discourses as integral and constitutive parts of the Islamic tradition. By adopting the imagery of bilingual heaven, they conceptualized Islamic tradition as a diverse discursive tradition. Alongside diversity, another important feature of Persianate Islam was a positive propensity towards innovations.
{"title":"Bilingual Heaven: Was There a Distinct Persianate Islam in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire?","authors":"Aslıhan Gürbüzel","doi":"10.1163/24519197-bja10013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24519197-bja10013","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000What is the language of heaven? Is Arabic the only language allowed in the eternal world of the virtuous, or will Muslims continue to speak their native languages in the other world? While learned scholars debated the language of heaven since the early days of Islam, the question gained renewed vigor in seventeenth century Istanbul against the background of a puritan reform movement which criticized the usage of Persian and the Persianate canon as sacred text. In response, Mevlevī authors argued for the discursive authority of the Persianate mystical canon in Islamic tradition (sunna). Focusing on this debate, this article argues that early modern Ottoman authors recognized non-legal discourses as integral and constitutive parts of the Islamic tradition. By adopting the imagery of bilingual heaven, they conceptualized Islamic tradition as a diverse discursive tradition. Alongside diversity, another important feature of Persianate Islam was a positive propensity towards innovations.","PeriodicalId":36525,"journal":{"name":"Philological Encounters","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49031779","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-07DOI: 10.1163/24519197-bja10021
P. Hill
The Lebanese historian Asad Rustum (1897–1965) devoted much of his career to the study of Ottoman Syria in the early nineteenth century. For him, this history culminated in the dramatic events of 1840–41, when a Lebanese armed uprising against an Egyptian occupation, combined with European intervention, triggered far-reaching changes in the region’s politics. This article explores how Rustum’s accounts of the Egyptian occupation period and its end refract the complexities of that moment itself, through the dilemmas of a self-consciously professional historian working under the French Mandate and in early independent Lebanon. By comparing his histories of the Egyptian occupation with both his documentary collections and his own private archive held at AUB, this article reveals the complexities, achievements and limits of Rustum’s historical method. Above all, it argues, Rustum’s desire to narrate Lebano-Syrian modernisation was held in check—paradoxically perhaps—by his conviction of his own modernity.
{"title":"Asad Rustum and the Egyptian Occupation of Syria (1831–1841): Between Narratives of Modernity and Documentary Exactitude","authors":"P. Hill","doi":"10.1163/24519197-bja10021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24519197-bja10021","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The Lebanese historian Asad Rustum (1897–1965) devoted much of his career to the study of Ottoman Syria in the early nineteenth century. For him, this history culminated in the dramatic events of 1840–41, when a Lebanese armed uprising against an Egyptian occupation, combined with European intervention, triggered far-reaching changes in the region’s politics. This article explores how Rustum’s accounts of the Egyptian occupation period and its end refract the complexities of that moment itself, through the dilemmas of a self-consciously professional historian working under the French Mandate and in early independent Lebanon. By comparing his histories of the Egyptian occupation with both his documentary collections and his own private archive held at AUB, this article reveals the complexities, achievements and limits of Rustum’s historical method. Above all, it argues, Rustum’s desire to narrate Lebano-Syrian modernisation was held in check—paradoxically perhaps—by his conviction of his own modernity.","PeriodicalId":36525,"journal":{"name":"Philological Encounters","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47979289","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}