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clear link between “natural selection” and human racial hierarchies.^47
Given its role in the traumatic transplantation of al- Muqtaṭaf to egypt,
Darwinism and ideas associated with it took on a central place in the
thought and identity of the journal, its editors, and ultimately its many
readers.
Moreover, as Omnia el Shakry has shown, among the intellectual,
scientific fin de siècle Arabic journals, al- Muqtaṭaf was not alone in its
interest in race- thinking. Jurji Zaydan published articles about race in
his contemporaneous journal al- Hilāl,^48 and in 1912 he also wrote an
entire book on the subject of race, Ṭabaqāt al- umam aw as- salāʾil al-
bashariyya (Classes of the Nations, or races of Man).^49 Zaydan’s study
explores the origins of human races and analyzes the various qualities
(physical and spiritual) purportedly associated with each.^50 race, then,
was part of the intellectual, cultural, and philosophical worldview of
turn- of- the- century Arabic journals, both reflecting and informing their
broader readership’s interests in this means of conceiving of humanity
and human difference.
Questions of race were not merely of academic or theoretical interest
in fin de siècle egypt. Rather, as eve Troutt Powell has demonstrated,
racial thinking was pervasive in nineteenth- and early twentieth-
century egypt as egyptians conceived of their role in dominating the
Sudan (ruled by egypt from 1821 until 1885 and again, under the Brit-
ish, beginning in 1899).^51 even before the British conquest of egypt in
1882 and certainly during the British occupation as well, the discourse
concerning egypt’s role in the Sudan— its “civilizing mission”^52 — was
articulated in racial terms. “In late- nineteenth- century egypt,” Pow-
ell contends, “writers and nationalists were acutely aware of the dis-
course on race being conducted in western europe, and they used it
to frame their various perspectives about the Sudan and its people.”^53
(^47) On Social Darwinism, see Hofstadter’s classic, Social Darwinism in American Thought.
(^48) e.g., the 1900 al- Hilāl article “Aṣnāf al- bashar.”
(^49) Zaydān, Ṭabaqāt al- umam aw as- salāʾil al- bashariyya. the book draws on the work
of the Irish scholar Augustus Henry Keane. On Keane, see “Dr. A. H. Keane,” Nature 88
(February 8, 1912), 488. Keane’s work on race is important in this context given his
views on Jewish and arab racial qualities. “expansion and progress are the dominant
characteristics of the aryan, concentration and immutability of the Semitic intellect, a
special reservation having always to be made in favour of the Jews, most versatile per-
haps of all peoples.” Keane, The World’s Peoples, 328.
(^50) On Zaydan’s work on race and its use of Keane, see el Shakry, The Great Social
Laboratory, 58– 60.
(^51) troutt powell highlights the writings of, among others, Muhammad at- tunisi, Selim
Qapudan, Rifaʿa Rafiʿ at- Tahtawi, ʿAli Mubarak, Yaʿqub Sanuʿa, and ʿAbdallah Nadim.
(^52) powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism, 5.
(^53) Ibid., 17.