James Madison University JMU Scholarly Commons Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current Honors College 5-8-2020 Emancipation through a domestic education: How one magazine inspired a female literary renaissance in the nineteenth-century Middle East Lauren Palmieri Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/honors202029 Part of the Islamic World and Near East History Commons Recommended Citation Palmieri, Lauren, "Emancipation through a domestic education: How one magazine inspired a female literary renaissance in the nineteenth-century Middle East" (2020). Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current. 73. https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/honors202029/73 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Honors College at JMU Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current by an authorized administrator of JMU Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Emancipation Through a Domestic Education: How One Magazine Inspired a Female Literary Renaissance in the Nineteenth-Century Middle East _______________________ An Honors College Project Presented to the Faculty of the Undergraduate College of Arts and Letters James Madison University _______________________ by Lauren Samantha Palmieri May 2020 Accepted by the faculty of the Department of History, James Madison University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Honors College. FACULTY COMMITTEE: HONORS COLLEGE APPROVAL: Project Advisor: Dr. Timothy J. Fitzgerald, Ph.D., Bradley R. Newcomer, Ph.D., Associate Professor, History Dean, Honors College Reader: Dr. Shah Mahmoud Hanifi, Ph.D., Professor, History Reader: Dr. Pia Antolic-Piper, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Philosophy Table of Contents Acknowledgments ........................................................................................................................... 3 Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... 4 Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 5 Chapter 1: Egypt as a Writer’s Haven .......................................................................................... 23 The Alexandrian Literary Climate .......................................................................................................... 23 The Alexandrian Network of Political and Cultural Journals ................................................................. 32 Syrian Migrants in Nahda Egypt ............................................................................................................ 36 Al-Fatah: A Revolutionary or Reactionary Magazine? .......................................................................... 40 Chapter 2: A Radical Movement? ................................................................................................. 43 Social Issues Addressed in al-Fatah ....................................................................................................... 44 Female Network-Building in al-Fatah ................................................................................................... 56 Tensions and Appealing to the Patriarchy .............................................................................................. 63 Chapter 3: The Female Agents of al-Fatah .................................................................................. 72 Hind Nawfal ............................................................................................................................................ 72 Zaynab Fawwaz ...................................................................................................................................... 78 Mariam Khalid and Mariam Haddad ...................................................................................................... 85 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 92 Appendix ..................................................................................................................................... 102 Figure 1 ................................................................................................................................................. 102 Figure 2 ................................................................................................................................................. 103 Figure 3 ................................................................................................................................................. 104 Figure 4 ................................................................................................................................................. 105 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 106 Acknowledgments I have countless people to thank for the completion of this thesis. I would first and foremost like to express my deepest gratitude to my thesis advisor, Dr. T.J. Fitzgerald. This project would not have been possible without his invaluable guidance and insight. He has offered unwavering support throughout this thesis and my undergraduate career, and I am sincerely grateful for his patience, knowledge, and belief in my abilities. He has been a mentor and an inspiration for this project and beyond. I am also endlessly thankful for my two readers: Dr. Shah Mahmoud Hanifi and Dr. Pia Antolic-Piper, whose assistance with this project has proved beyond helpful. I’d like to thank Dr. Hanifi, specifically, for encouraging me in my travels and inspiring me to engage the large, complex themes of history in this thesis and elsewhere. I’d also like to thank Dr. Antolic-Piper for awakening my inner feminist and fostering my passion for women’s and gender histories. I am also indebted to the friends and family who have helped and supported me. While it is impossible to thank each one individually, please know that I am extremely grateful. I owe a special thank you to Kendra and Caili who offered constant emotional (and technical) support during the times when this project felt most overwhelming. I would like to extend a final thank you to my parents—Gayle and Ralph Palmieri—for their endless support in all of my academic endeavors. My interests in the type of history I wanted to pursue shifted as I began my undergraduate career and I am so thankful for their willingness and eagerness to learn about these parts of the world with me. 3 Abstract Both in its contemporary journalistic milieu and in recent secondary scholarship, al-Fatah (1892-1894) has been widely recognized as the first Arabic women’s periodical. This magazine has similarly been credited with ushering in the era of the Arabic female press during the late nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries. However, al-Fatah has received little attention as a magazine in and of itself. An analysis of al-Fatah helps to nuance the nahda cultural movement and its literature as more than male-dominated voices and authorship. This thesis explores how al- Fatah laid foundations for a female press by facilitating communication between editors and readers. The magazine helped build a female literary network, and empowered women to stake claims in the public sphere. Though the editors of al-Fatah wished to remain apolitical, and made assertions to this effect, I argue that this magazine was, in fact, extremely political and aimed to advocate for female education and the advancement of women more broadly. 4 Introduction Al-Fatah—which translates to “the young girl” in Arabic—was the first women’s magazine published in Egypt. Operating from 1892 to 1894, al-Fatah promoted itself as the first magazine in the “East” to be written by women and for women.1 Al-Fatah was launched in Alexandria, Egypt, though its founder—Hind Nawfal (1860-1920)—was a Syrian Christian migrant.2 Ultimately, al-Fatah ceased publication with Nawfal’s marriage in 1894. The periodical itself was marketed as a variety magazine and was experimental in nature. Though al- Fatah aimed to address topics relevant to women, the scope of these issues was extraordinarily broad, with authors undertaking no singular, unified stance. With “Arabic print media” as a “burgeoning industry,” journals such as al-Fatah were platforms in which “new concepts and terms were tried, tested, and contested.”3 Thus, al-Fatah was not striving to resolve any one issue for women under a patriarchal society but, rather, to provide a platform for debating gender-related issues and supporting female voices at large. Though well known in its day, there is little extant data about al-Fatah’s circulation and funding. Nevertheless, trends regarding its dissemination can be inferred based on information from similar, subsequent women’s magazines. Overall, “women's journals had circulation figures comparable to those of scientific and literary journals,” typically distributing between 1,000 and 1,500 copies per volume.4 In terms of readership, the women’s journal Al-'Afaf—published in the 1 Al-Fatah often employed the word “East” to refer to the contemporary Arab Levant. 2 This paper will use the terms “Syria” and “Syrians” to refer to the broader Levantine region and its peoples. Though Hind Nawfal and several other authors were either from or writing