Political Modernity 63Baer (1977: 228–42) distinguishes between the high ulama, the teachers at al-
Azhar, the holders of high offi ce, and supervisors of large foundations, and the
lower ulama, clerks, maktab (elementary school) teachers, muezzins and imams
at small mosques, and above all the students at the Azhar university. The lower
ulama were prominent in leadership and participation in popular movements.
They were, however, regarded by the rulers and the bourgeoisie as part of the
lower orders and not as intermediaries and representatives with access to the
ears of authority. These, and in particular the students, were prominent in many
of the popular movements and events of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries, including the risings against the French.
As for the high ulama, it is true that the populace, faced with fi scal oppres-
sion and famine, fi rst resorted to them, particularly to the Shaykh al-Azhar. The
responses of the ulama, however, with few exceptions, were seldom favourable.
They were sometimes coerced by potentially violent crowds into leading proces-
sions to the Citadel and airing their grievances. André Raymond draws a typical
scenario: the crowd proceeds to the Grand Mosque, occupies the minarets and
calls for resistance; their calls are accompanied by the beat of drums. They
close the markets and the shops. They assemble in the forecourts and at the gates
of the mosque and demand the presence of the shaykhs and their intervention
with the authorities regarding their grievances. They proceed in a procession with
the ulama at its head ‘more dead than alive’. If a favourable response is obtained
from the Citadel, then the ulama are entrusted as guarantors of its implementa-
tion (Raymond [1973] 1999: 432–3). The people suspect that the ulama are in
league with the authorities, and the authorities suspect them of stirring up the
people. Naturally, the ulama tried, whenever they could, to avoid this role. Their
response was always to try and calm down any potential agitations, and if they
failed, to avoid involvement. They naturally shared the attitudes of the authorities
and the bourgeoisie in fear and contempt of the lowly crowds. In addition, many
of the high ulama had close political and economic ties with the princes.
The question of political modernity
The forms of politics described so far can be distinguished as ‘pre-modern’. The
question then arises as to the nature of political modernity. Michael Walzer
(1966: 1) characterised it in the following terms:
A politics of confl ict and competition for power, of faction, intrigue and open war
is probably universal in human history. Not so a politics of party organisation
and methodical activity, opposition and reform, radical ideology and revolu-
tion.... The detached appraisal of a going system, the programmatic expres-
sion of discontent and aspiration, the organisation of zealous men for sustained
political activity: it is surely fair to say that these three together are aspects of the
modern, that is, the post-medieval political world.