Political Modernity 69growth of educational institutions and the professions, all led to a large expan-
sion in the numbers and signifi cance of the modern educated middle classes,
as well as to the beginnings of a modern working class. These literate strata
constituted a market for print products: newspapers, magazines, novels and
plays – many translated from the French, with a special fascination for Jules
Verne and other science fi ction (see Berkes [1964] 1998: 278) – and books on
science and discovery. Government censorship and control precluded politi-
cal news and analyses, or discourses on European government, parliaments
or revolutions. But newspapers and magazines fi lled their pages with news of
scientifi c discoveries, biographies of prominent men, travel, practical tips on
health and domestic organisation, and so on (ibid.: 277). Many people read, and
the illiterate listened to others reading aloud. The effect of these interests on the
secularisation of culture was in the way they presented an alternative universe to
that of traditional limited horizons and ranges of interest. These were sources of
knowledge and models of living quite outside the world of religion, custom and
authority. They also had a profound political effect: Juan Cole (1993: 115–26)
pointed out (in relation to contemporary Egypt) that the accessibility of news of
government and politics, and of evaluations of events and actions in the press,
engenders in the modern citizen the frame of mind of a participant in events,
who has opinions and interests, and is thereby no longer passively subjected to
the decisions and policies of rulers and ulama, the traditional ahl al-hall wa-l-
aqd, ‘those who loosen and bind’. The café played an important part in politi-
cal dissemination, argument and intrigue in many Middle Eastern cities in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. At the turn of the twenty-fi rst century, some
traditional cafés in Turkish cities are called kıraathane (qiraat-khane), reading
rooms, indicating the function of reading newspapers and pamphlets, perhaps
aloud (they are now mostly gaming rooms). These constituted an important
element of the emerging ‘public sphere’ in those cities. Under the Abdulhamid
regime at the turn of the nineteenth–twentieth centuries police spies were ever
vigilant in monitoring the coffee houses.
Gabriel Baer (1968) contrasted the social and ideological composition of
the popular movements in Egypt, fi rst at the time of the Urabi revolt in 1882,
then in 1919 in the nationalist demonstration led by Saad Zaghloul against the
British occupation. The fi rst was led by junior ulama and Azhar students, with
slogans against the infi dels, Christians, whether Europeans or Egyptian Copts,
which expressed ‘traditional’ communalist sentiments. By 1919 the leaders
were teachers and students from the modern schools and universities, and the
slogans were for national unity (Muslims and Copts), independence and liberty.
Zaghloul’s famous slogan was al-din li-llah wa-l-watan li-l-jami, ‘religion is for
God and the homeland is for all its members’. That is not to say, of course, that
communalist sentiments were transcended: we know from the history of the
region that these sentiments were frequently and effectively evoked by interested