What 'Isa ibn Hisham Told Us. Muhammad al-Muwaylihi

ibn Hishām: Muḥammad al-Muwayliḥī is traveling to the Paris Exposition this coming Sunday. Once he has gathered his impressions of the entire scenario and its details, Miṣbāḥ al-sharq will be publishing his description of its marvels and curiosities.

      Muḥammad al-Muwayliḥī traveled first to London in order to write about the Khedive’s visit to England,⁴² but he then traveled to Paris. The first Parisian episode of Fatrah min al-Zaman was published in Miṣbāḥ al-sharq 116, August 17, 1900, with the following preface:

      This is the first episode of Ḥadīth ʿĪsā ibn Hishām concerning the visit to the Paris Exhibition. It has been sent to us by Muḥammad al-Muwayliḥī following his previous report on the visit of the Khedive of Egypt to Her Majesty the Queen of England.

      Among the things to note from this introduction is that the series of episodes, originally (and still) called Fatrah min al-Zaman, has now acquired another title, Ḥadīth ʿĪsā ibn Hishām, which had been used on a few occasions in announcements before, but seems to have become the preferred title—indeed the one under which the eventual book was to be published in 1907. This trend is further emphasized by the fact that Ibrāhīm al-Muwayliḥī’s narrative is assigned the subtitle Ḥadīth Mūsā ibn ʿIṣām, invoking the name of his own narrator and at the same time echoing in the clearest possible way the emerging title of his son’s work.

      Eight episodes describing (and, more often than not, harshly criticizing) the Exposition universelle in Paris were published between August and December 1900.⁴³ The last of them finishes with the usual statement, “To be continued,” followed by the letter “M.” Muḥammad al-Muwayliḥī had used this formula at the end of his articles ever since his father had begun publishing them. And yet the articles didn’t continue. Or, at least, nothing followed until February 1902 (in other words, long after his return to Cairo) when, without any further explanation, three further episodes of Fatrah min al-Zaman were added. The first simply opens with the following statement:

      ʿIsa ibn Hisham said: Our coverage of the visit we paid to the mother of all European capitals and our stay in the hub of civilization finished with a description of the Great Exhibition: the different people we met there, the strange happenings day and night, the variety of exotic items, the precious and creative objects of every conceivable kind of craft that were on display, the nightclubs and music halls scattered across the grounds, the splendid views it afforded visitors, and the undesirable subtext out of sight. The Pasha, our Friend, and I had emerged from it with a mixture of feelings: praise, criticism, and outright condemnation. We were still in the company of the sage Frenchman, his temples whitened by his willingness to share with us his culture and learning.⁴⁴

      These three articles, which form an uninterrupted continuum and only the first of which contains an example of their author’s virtuoso use of sajʿ, offer a detailed description of the French system of government—its presidency, election processes, senate, and chamber of deputies. The third of these episodes ends again with the usual “To be continued,” and yet nothing followed. And this time it was indeed the end of the Fatrah min al-Zaman series the author had initiated four years earlier.

      For whatever combination of reasons, al-Muwayliḥī was to take his time in converting his series of newspaper articles into book form. It seems clear that he had already been receiving encouragement to do so from the enthusiastic response of readers of the newspaper, not to mention many of his literary colleagues, including the renowned nationalist poet, Ḥāfiẓ Ibrāhīm (1871–1932). Indeed the latter’s own contribution to the neoclassical revival of the maqāmah narrative Layālī Saṭīḥ, first published in 1906, contains an extract from al-Muwayliḥī’s as yet unpublished book (and incidentally concentrates heavily on the situation in the Sudan, not surprising in view of the fact that the poet served as an Egyptian army officer there).⁴⁵

      The first edition of Ḥadīth ʿĪsā ibn Hishām was published in 1907, Fatrah min al-Zaman becoming its subtitle. In the introduction to this (and only this) edition, al-Muwayliḥī explains his method and rationale:

      After reviewing the articles carefully—a process that has demanded revisions and corrections, as well as alterations, substitutions, omissions and additions, I have now converted the story into book form. After all, the contents of newspapers are by definition ephemeral, mere thoughts of the day. They cannot claim a place in a book that will move with the times and be read over and over again.⁴⁶

      A comparison of the text of the 1907 edition of Ḥadīth ʿĪsā ibn Hishām with articles in the series Fatrah min al-Zaman does indeed corroborate the author’s description of the conversion process. The wording of individual phrases is changed, and clarifying detail is often added; the major emphasis is on expansion and clarification rather than contraction. For the second edition of 1912, the author adds a glossary at the end of the text. However, what is most striking about the first edition of the book is that it does not include any of the material in which the Sudan situation is the primary topic; secondly, the original sequence of episodes is altered, requiring a good deal of rewriting and reorganization. In the original articles the visit to the wedding hall comes much earlier in the sequence and is followed by visits to the series of assemblies (majālis), whereas in the book version the assemblies come first in the ordering of episodes. Furthermore, completely new material is included about the plague, derived from a factual article, “Al-Akhlāq fī l-Wabāʾ” (“Ethics During the Epidemic”) that was published in Miṣbāḥ al-sharq 221, September 13, 1902. The first edition (and the two subsequent ones, 1912 and 1923) all finish with the expressed desire to add “the second journey” (al-riḥlah al-thāniyah)—the episodes describing the visit to Paris—to the first (al-riḥlah al-ūlā) at some point in the future. Meanwhile the first three editions of Ḥadīth ʿĪsā ibn Hishām were and are only concerned with the Egyptian context. A further addition to the third edition (1923) was that of titles to the newly established “chapters” created either from the contents of the original articles or, more often, by consolidation of articles into larger units.⁴⁷

      At some point in the 1920s, Ḥadīth ʿĪsā ibn Hishām was adopted as a text for secondary school, and al-Muwayliḥī was invited to prepare a new fourth edition, which was published in 1927. I have not thus far found any specific evidence as to instructions that the author may have received regarding expectations for such a school text, but it is clear that the revision process he undertook before publication of this fourth edition radically altered the critical tone of the work—one that had already been somewhat muted by the process of converting the newspaper articles into a book. His now twenty-year-old wish to include the Paris episodes (al-riḥlah al-thāniyah) to the book was also finally fulfilled. Thus the second part of post–4th edition versions of Ḥadīth ʿĪsā ibn Hishām was added to the list of several previously published contributions by Arab visitors to the analysis of European civilization—in the case of Egypt a trend initiated in the nineteenth century by Rifāʿah Rāfiʿ al-Ṭahṭāwī (1801–71) with his Takhlīṣ al-Ibrīz fī Talkhīṣ Bārīz (The Purification of Gold Concerning the Summary of Paris), originally published in 1834. However, along with this addition to the text, some extremely significant omissions were made. Two complete “assemblies,” one devoted to the shaykhs of al-Azhar discussing the heretical sciences of philosophy and geography and the other to the princes of the royal family who were squabbling with each other over expensive racing stallions, were completely omitted, along with a number of uncomplimentary anecdotes about Muḥammad ʿAlī, founder of the dynasty to which the current Egyptian ruler—now called “king”—belonged. One can only surmise about the decision-making process involved in these omissions, and whether they were made on the author’s own initiative or as the result of a “recommendation” from some official channel, possibly because it was now almost thirty years after the time when the original articles had been composed. Indeed the none too subtle criticism in these episodes may have been reckoned inappropriate for the Egyptian teenage minds who would be studying Ḥadīth ʿĪsā ibn Hishām for the secondary-school examinations known as the thānawiyyah