Rashīd Riḍā: Introduction to the First Annual Volume of Al-Manār (Egypt, 1909)*

2.06 Rashīd Riḍā: Introduction to the First Annual Volume of al-Manār (Egypt, 1909)*

Introduction

The Journal al-Manār (The Lighthouse) was founded in 1898 in Egypt by Rashīd Riḍā (1865–1935),1 a Muslim scholar and writer from Lebanon who had settled in Cairo one year before and had become a close affiliate of Muḥammad ʿAbduh (1849–1905), the most prominent reformist thinker in Egypt in his time.2 Riḍā, himself from a highly respected family of religious notables in Qalamūn (near Tripolis), had been trained at one of the earliest reformed Islamic schools in Lebanon, the National School (al-madrasa al-waṭaniyya, founded in 1879). Its founder, Ḥusayn al-Jisr (1845–1909)3 was by then known for his cautious attempts to harmonise Islamic teaching with the modern natural sciences. After the closure of his school by the government in 1882 he had founded a local newspaper in Tripoli, where he also discussed issues of educational and communal advancement. Riḍā was thus fully exposed in his home region to the early beginnings of reformist teaching and writing. His own activities in Egypt were to lead him far beyond the rather conservative positions of his teacher who had a communal and, at the same time, largely Ottoman orientation.

* I want to express my gratitude to Rainer Brunner for his critical reading of a draft of this article. 1 Among the large number of articles and monographs discussing the life and the activities of Rashīd Riḍā only the following can be mentioned here: Werner Ende, “Rashīd Riḍā,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition (Leiden: Brill, 1960–2008, Print; Brill Online, 2012, Online); Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939 (Cambridge et al.: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 222–244; Eliezer Tauber, “Rashīd Riḍā as Pan-Arabist before World War I,” Muslim World, 79 (1989), 102–112; Umar Ryad, Islamic Reformism and Christianity: A Critical Reading of the Works of Muhammad Rashid Rida and His Associates (1898–1935) (Leiden et al.: E. J. Brill, 2009), using material from Riḍā‘s personal papers pre- served by his family, and also updating bibliographical information. 2 See chapter 1.10 in this volume, with further bibliographical information. 3 See Johannes Ebert, Religion und Reform in der arabischen Provinz. Ḥusayn al-Ǧisr aṭ-Ṭarābulusī (1845–1909)–Ein islamischer Gelehrter zwischen Tradition und Reform, (Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 1991); for his later dispute with Riḍā, 83–84, 158–161.

The idea of a journal calling for a restitution of Muslim unity and strength by educational and religious reform, which Riḍā initiated soon after his move to Egypt, was modelled after the earliest journal in this field, al-ʿUrwa al-wuthqā (The Strongest Bond) published by Muḥammad ʿAbduh during the days of his exile in Paris (1884), in cooperation with Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī (1839–1897), the leading Pan-Islamic activist of this time.4 ʿAbduh himself was won over by Riḍā to contribute substantially to al-Manār until his demise in 1905. The new Arabic journal published important works by ʿAbduh, including his contribu- tions to Quranic exegesis which went into the Quranic Commentary presented in small portions in the journal. It thus developed into the leading international mouthpiece of Islamic reformism before and after the First World War. As it spoke to all Muslim communities affected by European imperial and cultural expansion it gained a wide range of interested readers in the Arabic-speaking regions and beyond, from as far as Central Asia, South and Southeast Asia. Al-Manār came to fill a special place in the expanding landscape of news- papers and journals published in Egypt at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. Its beginnings fell into a period when British rule had been consolidated in Egypt and when, at the same time, the first stirrings of nationalist opposition, often expressed with strong Islamic sen- timents, could be felt.5 In the early years Riḍā maintained close relations with the Ottoman opposition movement against the ruling sultan Abdülhamid II, even if the introduction of the journal stresses the Ottoman and Hamidian loyalties of its author. He had already become a foundation member of the Jamʿiyyat al-shūrā al-ʿuthmāniyya (Ottoman Consultative Society), which had been initiated in Cairo in 1897 by Syrian Muslim Arabs and Young Turks from Istanbul. It called for Islamic unity embodied in Ottoman unity under the

4 For al-Afghānī and his cooperation with Muḥammad ʿAbduh see e.g. Hourani, Arabic Thought, 102–134, Nikkie Keddie, Sayyid Jamāl ad-Dīn ʿal-Afghānī: A Political Biography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972); for a different, more ‘secular’ interpretation of their relationship and activities, Elie Keddourie, Afghani and ʿAbduh: An Essay on Religious Unbelief and Political Activism in modern Islam (London: 1966). 5 For al-Manār, the development of its content, and the context of the press in Egypt around 1900, see especially: Jaques Jomier, “al-Manār,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition; Charles C. Adams, Islam and Modernism in Egypt (Oxford et al.: Oxford University Press, 1933), 180– 204; Malcolm Kerr, Islamic Reform: The Political and Legal Theories of Muḥammad ʿAbduh and Rashīd Riḍā (Berkeley et al.: University of California Press, 1962); P. J. Vatikiotis, The History of Modern Egypt from Muhammad Ali to Mubarak (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1991), 179–215; Stéphane Dudoignon, Komatsu Hisao and Kosugi Yasushi, eds., “Al-Manār in a chang- ing Islamic world,” in Intellectuals in the Modern Islamic World: Transmission, Transformation, Communication, Part I. (London, New York: Routledge, 2006), 1–158.