268 · Hanita Brand
- Taysīr al-Nāshif, Mufakkirūn filasṭīniyyūn fī al-qarn al- ̔ishrīn [Palestinian
Thinkers in the Twentieth Century] (Union City, N.J.: American, 1981), 128. - Kanazi, introduction, 8–9.
- Muḥammad ̔Abd al-Ra ̓ūf Bahnassī, Al-Islām wa-naz ̔at al-fiṭra (Cairo:
Maktabat al- ̔Urūba, n.d.), 53. Quoted in Qanāzi ̔, “Qirā ̓a jadīda,” 128. - Qanāzi ̔, “Qirā ̓a jadīda,” 128 and 130, respectively.
- Ṭāhā Ḥussein (=Ḥusayn) (1889–1973) was one of Egypt’s greatest cultural
icons in the first half of the twentieth century. A writer, professor at the Egyptian
University in Cairo, intellectual, and controversial political and cultural leader,
he is mostly remembered today for three of the many books he published in
his lifetime. His first famous book, Fī al-shi ̔r al-jāhilī (On Pre-Islamic Poetry)
from 1926, was his most controversial. In it he raised some questions regarding
the period of early Arabic poetry, which is understood to be pre-Islamic. It cost
Ṭāhā Ḥussein his job at the university and brought about calls for his trial and
imprisonment. His most famous oeuvre is his autobiography, Al-Ayyām (The
Days), which was first published serially in Al-Hilāl and then in book form in - Considered to be one of the most beautiful literary works of modern Ara-
bic literature, it is written in a haunting lyrical style. In it Ḥussein describes in
sarcastic pathos his experiences growing up blind in a poor Upper Egypt village
without modern amenities and general education, and then his rise to academic
achievements, stardom, and fame. He proceeded to write a book on the future
of education in Egypt in 1938, and managed to be appointed Egypt’s minister
of education in 1950 in the ill-fated government of Muṣṭafā al-Naḥḥās, which
resigned after a period of riots in 1952, ushering the rise to power of the Free
Officers and President Jamāl ̔Abd al-Nāṣir. - Dr. Ṭāhā Ḥusayn, “Muqaddima,” in Mudhakkirāt dajāja, 7.
- Meir Abul ̔afiya, “Sofer palestini rodef shalom be-tokh ha-intifada,”
Moznaim 62, nos. 9–10 (December 1988/January 1989): 21, 26. - Ibid.
- Kanazi, introduction, 6.
- C. M. Bowra, The Greek Experience (New York: Meridian, New American
Library, 1985), 77. - Isḥāq Mūsā al-Ḥusaynī, “Ḥawl Mudhakkirāt dajāja li-Isḥāq Mūsā al-
Ḥusaynī,” Al-Karmil 4 (1983): 141. The letter appeared as a positive response to
George Kanazi’s article there. - Abul ̔afiya, “Sofer palestini,” 26.
- Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd ed., trans. Joel Weinsheimer
and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Continuum, 1989), 302. - Ibid., 303.
- Qanāzi ̔, “Qirā ̓a jadīda,” 120.
- al-Ḥusaynī, “Ḥawl Mudhakkirāt dajāja ,” Al-Thaqāfa, 20.
- Yāghī, Ḥayāt al-adab al-filasṭīnī, 422.
- Miqveh Yisrael, an agricultural school located near Jaffa, was operating
at the time under the French-Jewish organization Alliance Israélite Universelle.