INTRODUCTORY 9and the Lebanon. However, because most, if not all the works printed in Syria
were for a long time Christian texts, the Syrian Arabic press did not contribute
directly to the development of Arabic literature until well into the nineteenth
century. Egypt, the other country to play a decisive role in the Nahda move-
ment, had to wait nearly a century for its first Arabic press, introduced by the
Napoleonic expedition.
Historians generally regard the expedition as a turning point in the history
of Egypt. The mere fact that Napoleon's troops were able to conquer the Muslim
Mamluks, to say nothing of the ease with which the expedition was effected,
and to which al-Jabarti drew attention more than once, was enough to shock
the Muslims out of their complacency and groundless feeling of superiority.
From now on the Arab world was denied the dubious luxury of living in
isolation. This bloody and rude contact between the modern west and the
Arabs had far-reaching consequences. Not the least of these is the appearance
on the scene of Muhammad Ali, the founder of the dynasty that ruled Egypt
until the Egyptian Revolution in 1952. Muhammad Ali, the uneducated
Albanian soldier who came with the Ottoman forces to help drive out the
French, but remained behind and managed by opportunism and intrigue to
become the sole ruler of Egypt, had direct experience of the efficiency and
good organization of the French forces. He set out with single-minded deter-
mination to build up a large army modelled on the modem armies of the west.
To achieve that he had to import western technicians, western scientists
and western forms of education, and to send local Arabs to the west to learn
and apply the secret of its military supremacy. While the members of these
missions were pursuing their studies abroad Muhammad Ali experimented
with new schools at home. From 1816 onwards he set up a large number of
modem schools, both military and technological, in which European langu-
ages were taught, together with modern sciences, and where some of the
teachers were Italian and French and later English. In so doing he super-
imposed upon the country a whole educational system which was western in
character and which had very little in common with the traditional religious
Azhar system.^7
Yet despite their many serious drawbacks the educational innovations of
Muhammad Ali proved to be of crucial importance in the development of
modern Arabic culture. Without them many later developments would not
have been possible. It is in this period that the most dramatic break with the
past began to take place, a break which Muhammad Ali himself did not
intend and could not forsee. It was not easy to keep interest in western tech-
nology entirely separate from interest in some of the cultural values connect-
ed with that technology. At the same time the setting up of a new and