Gershoni Reception Haykal's Bio

http://www.jstor.org/stable/1773166 .
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Duke University Press and Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,
preserve and extend access to Poetics Today.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 24 Jan 2015 14:26:20 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
The Reader-"Another Production"
The Receptionof Haykal'sBiographyof
Muhammadand the Shiftof Egyptian
Intellectualsto IslamicSubjectsin the 1930s
Israel Gershoni
Middle Easternand African History,TelAviv
We must recall that any text is the product of a read-

ing. Roger Chartier
To read is . . . to conjoin a new discourse to the dis-
course of the text. Paul Ricoeur
Abstract This paper is an attempt to rethink the much-discussed topic of

the so-called crisis of orientation among, or shift of, Egyptian intellectuals
who turned to Islamic subjects in the 1930s. Those intellectuals who, dur-
ing the 1920s, had adhered to the principles of Westernization and secular-
ization were said to have abandoned these principles to embrace Islam and
Arabism a decade later. The commonly ventured historical account of this
shift attempted to describe and explain it from the "top down," that is, from
the perspective of the intellectual producers, either on the basis of content
analysis of their texts or through the reconstruction of authorial intentions.
It was assumed that the impact of this shift on the culture and politics of
contemporary society could be extracted from the meanings invested by the
authors in their texts or from the context of the act of writing. This paper
approaches the subject from a different perspective, namely, from the "bot-
tom up." While not ignoring authorial intentions or the meanings with which
authors invested their texts, I emphasize the ways in which readers reinter-
preted intellectual literature on Islam as they consumed it and argue that
a proper understanding of the social and political impact of literary prod-
ucts cannot be attained without also understanding the reception of these
products. I concentrate especially on one of the major representative texts
My special thanks are due to Ursula Wokoeck for her thoughtful comments and
valuable suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper.
PoeticsToday15:2 (Summer 1994). Copyright ? 1994 by The Porter Institute for

Poetics and Semiotics. CCC 0333-5372/94/$2.50.

242 Poetics Today 15:2
of this shift, Muhammad Husayn Haykal's biography of the Prophet, and re-
construct the different interpretations of this work's major communities of
contemporary readers in the discursive context of their different "horizons of
expectations." Through recontextualizing the "crisis of orientation" debate in
the paradigm of reader-response criticism and reception theory, the paper is
intended to show that each community of readers produces an autonomous in-
terpretation, "another reading." Despite differences among the various read-
ing communities, some common features emerge from their interpretations of
Hayat Muhammad, which are, in many respects, different from both authorial
meanings and authorial intentions. These readers viewed Haykal's intellec-
tual reorientation as a fundamental shift from a Western orientation to an
Islamic one, yet they did not experience this as crisis, disorientation, or confu-
sion. They perceived Haykal's new orientation, expressed in Hayat Muhammad,
not as a shift to orthodox or traditional Islam, but as Haykal's attempt to
adapt Islam to modern conditions and to present the life of the Prophet as
a model for contemporary society. Finally, for its readers, Hayat Muhammad
represented an effort to construct a collective identity, an Islamic form of an
ideal "imagined community" which would be both progressive and authentic.
1. The Problem
The Islamic resurgence in 1930s Egypt and its impact on the country's
intellectual life have been variously interpreted in both recent and
earlier scholarship. Of particular interest was the large-scale produc-
tion of popular Islamic literature (Islamiyyat) by intellectuals who, only
a short time before (the 1920s), had ardently advocated radical West-
ernization along European lines. Devoted to an unconditional emula-
tion of a scientific culture based on progressive, secular, and liberal
values, these modernist intellectuals, in this early stage, had also pro-
posed the territorial nation-state model as the exclusive framework for
Egypt's modernization. Yet suddenly, according to the conventional in-
terpretation, they discarded their prior programmes to engage them-
selves intensively with themes relating to early Islamic society. Their
work centered on producing biographies of the Prophet, the Rashidun
Caliphs, and other prominent classical Islamic heroes.l
Although other luminaries were also in the forefront of this intellec-
tual shift, including Taha Husayn, Tawfiq al-Hakim, 'Abbas Mahmud
al-cAqqad, and Ahmad Hasan al-Zayyat, the central figure who pro-
moted this shift and forged its distinctive character was Muhammad
Husayn Haykal. His comprehensive biography (Haykal 1935) of the
Prophet, Hayat Muhammad (which originated as a series of articles pub-
lished between 1932 and 1934, with the book following in 1935), and
1. For general discussions of this shift, see Marcel Colombe (1951: 139-59);
Muhammed M. Husayn (1956: 144-61); Anwar G. Chejne (1960: 387-90); P. J.
Vatikiotis (1969: 323-27); Jacques Berque (1972: 502-18); Assad N. Busool
(1978); and M. M. Badawi (1985).

Gershoni * Egyptian Intellectuals 243
to a lesser extent its sequel, Fi Manzil al-Wahy (At the site of reve-
lation [Haykal 1937]), were justly perceived to be the central texts
of this intellectual shift, its most complete and authoritative embodi-
ment. Therefore, to no small degree has discussion of the historical
significance of this intellectual metamorphosis focused on Haykal's
motives for writing Hayat Muhammad,the tactics and strategies he em-
ployed in publishing it, and the book's intellectual and political impact
(Johansen 1967: 135-212; H. F. al-Najjar 1970; Wadi 1969: 129-
46; Wessels 1972: 1-48; Semah 1974: 75-105; cf. Grunebaum 1961:
196-98, 208-16, 226-31).
Two interpretations were notable both for their intrinsic impor-
tance and for their influence on the subsequent scholarly literature
that addressed this subject: the relatively early work of Nadav Safran
(1961) and the later, revisionist work of Charles D. Smith (1973,
1983). Safran (1961: 140-80) sought to explain the intellectual shift
in terms of a sudden and dramatic internal "crisis of orientation" that
occurred toward the mid-1930s. He interpreted the appearance of
Islamic literature centering on early Islam as a clear-cut indication
that these intellectuals had abandoned the modernist Western orienta-
tion, turned their backs on rationalism, liberalism, and humanism, and
dispensed with the principle of the separation of religion and state
which had characterized them in the "progressive phase" of the 1920s.
Safran found them guilty of a trahisondes clercs;"the whole endeavor,"
he declared, "was disastrous." For the intellectuals "had surrendered
their previous guide and bearing-rationalism and a Western cultural
orientation-without being able to produce viable Muslim-inspired
alternatives" (ibid.: 140).
In this interpretation, Haykal's writings, and Hayat Muhammad in
particular, were assigned the major role of bringing about, and then
heightening, the intellectual crisis. Safran saw Haykal's motivations
and intentions as having been dictated by an apologetic mood that was
itself inspired by the actions and writings of Taha Husayn, notably, in
'Ala Hamish al-Sira (T. Husayn 1933). Hayat Muhammadwas described
as the "logical extension" of the destructive tendency to pursue clas-
sical Islam through apologetic modes that entailed "great intellectual
confusion" (Safran 1961: 168-69, 173). Safran was unsparing in his
harsh criticism of what he considered "the fallacies in Haykal's argu-
ment," which were clearly revealed in this book. In Safran's view, "the
distortion of the thinking process that is entailed in apologetics" could
only have "damaged the integrity of reason" (ibid.: 171, 174) and had
"actually subordinated reason to the teaching of an uncritically ac-
cepted belief" (ibid.: 169). Haykal's confused retreat to the stand of
"traditionalists like Rida" (ibid.) was tantamount to a total rejection
of all the values of Western culture. And this, according to Safran,

not only further weakened the notion of reason (as the first guiding
principle of the "Liberal-Nationalist humanistic outlook"), "but also
weakened the second guiding principle by its denigration of Western
culture, and thus denied subsequent intellectual activity any common
center of gravity" (ibid.: 173-74).
Safran's discussion of Hayat Muhammadis fundamentally guided by
a textualist internal approach to the history of ideas. Neither Haykal's
motivations for and intentions in writing the book nor the messages
and meanings embodied in the text are situated within their specific
historical context. The reader is supposed to understand, in the most
general manner, that some sort of reciprocal relationship existed be-
tween Haykal's published writings from 1935 to 1937 and the general
"historical crisis of liberal nationalism" that is said to have occurred
between 1922 and 1952 (ibid.: 181-208).2 Safran pays even scantier
attention to the context of Hayat Muhammad'stransmission. Indeed,
he offers no discussion at all of the book's social dissemination and
filtering down, of its reception by reading publics, or of the meanings
and interpretations with which they imbued it-in short, the book's
actual cultural, social, and political impact. In pursuing the internal
dynamics of "ideas," Safran seems to have found no more significance
in the book than its role in extending the scope of the "crisis of ori-
entation" and later in contributing, together with Islamic works by
other intellectuals, to the rise of the "reactionary phase" in the 1940s
(ibid.: 209-28). During this later phase, asserted Safran, "the whole
ideological sphere was dominated by a romantic, vague, inconsistent
and aggressive Muslim orientation" (ibid.: 140).
The unstated presupposition of Safran's interpretation seems to be
that the meaning of a text is imposed from the top down, directly
and simply, on the reading public, the consumers of written culture.
They assimilate it passively, accepting it "as is" and ascribing to it the
same meaning that the author does (or Safran's interpretation of the
author). The text's social, political, and cultural influence, this naive
view assumes, resides in the text itself.
Charles D. Smith's revisionist interpretation also accorded Haykal
and Hayat Muhammada central role in fomenting the shift by intellec-
tuals to Islamic subjects. Smith, however, did not consider this trans-
formation a "crisis of orientation," certainly not a regression to a "re-
actionary phase." A systematic contextualist analysis, which took pains
to locate the text in the shifting sociopolitical context of the 1930s,
brought Smith to substantially different conclusions from Safran's with
regard to both the genesis of HayatMuhammadand its influence on the
Egyptian public (Smith 1973: 398-410; 1983: 89-130).
2. For a more detailed analysis of Safran's thesis, see Gershoni (1985: 344-49).

According to Smith, Hayat Muhammad,far from reflecting any sub-

stantive change in Haykal's attitude toward rationalism, science, and
Western cultural values, in fact demonstrates his continuity with, and
consistency in upholding, those values. In Smith's view, the transition
to writing about the Prophet's life should be seen as an attempt by
Haykal to go on espousing a "reformist message," but within the "reli-
gious guise" of an Islamic framework. Hayat Muhammad should be
read, therefore, in the light of the resurgence of Islamic orientations
and religious sentiments among the Egyptian public of the 1930s and
the intellectuals' corresponding need to readjust their modernist ethos
to these changing conditions (Smith 1983: 109-25). By its nature,
then, this shift was tactical and not strategic, external and instrumen-
tal (at the level of the adoption of new tools and terminology), not
internal and substantive (at the level of the adoption of new principles
and values to replace those old ones which had proved disappoint-
ing and had therefore been discarded [ibid.: 5-8, 79-87, 96-113,
118-19, 129-30, 181-87]). "The shift of the intellectuals [particu-
larly Haykal] . . . was a device designed to placate the religious and
political opposition of the time and, . . . rather than seeking Muslim-
inspired alternatives, the intellectuals were trying to achieve their pre-
vious goals by different means because of the resurgence of Islamic
sentiment which had occurred" (Smith 1973: 384).
In contrast to Safran, Smith saw Hayat Muhammad as a modern-
ist study, pointedly progressive and rationalist, that demonstrated
Haykal's scrupulous commitment to the Western method of scientific
historical research. Smith's contextualist approach and intentionalist
sensitivity, notably, his attempt to decode the meanings and messages
conveyed in Haykal's text by "recovering the authorial intentions"
from the specific sociopolitical context in which they emerged, sup-
port his interpretation (see Gershoni 1985: 338-57). Smith seemed to
establish what Quentin Skinner has described as "the closest possible
connection between a writer's intentions and the meaning of what he
writes" (Skinner 1988: 75-76; see also 68-78). This enabled Smith
to reconstruct quite convincingly what Haykal may have intended by
what he wrote in Hayat Muhammad.3In Haykal's reformist conception,
the life, personality, and deeds of Muhammad, as well as the primor-
dial and seminal Islamic society that was forged in the Prophetic Age,
had to serve as an ideal model, closely correlated with the constraints
of place and the Zeitgeist of the 1930s, for the creation in present-day
3. However, it should be added that Smith's contextual analysis is not exhaustive;

in my opinion, at least, significant contextual elements as well as certain authorial
intentions remained undiscussed (see Gershoni 1985: 357-64). See also Haykal's
own account of his intentions (Haykal 1932: 1; 1977: 272-73).

Egypt of a modern Islamic society, humanistic and progressive in its

essence. In this society, the power of the culamawould be neutralized
and the hegemony of the conservative, reactionary Islamic orthodoxy
would be nullified. A stable social order would arise to assure com-
munal cohesion and harmony devoid of class or ethnic tensions. In
this progressive order, the distinctly elitist standing of the intellectual
would be recognized, his autonomy as a creative individual would be
preserved, and his freedom of thought would be safeguarded (Smith
1983: 113-25; 1973: 400-405). Thus, according to Smith's interpreta-
tion, Haykal's ultimate goal in Hayat Muhammadwas to promulgate an
ideal society validated by the model of early Islam, but founded never-
theless on values and principles that he had previously propounded
in wholly Western, secular terms (Smith 1983: 124-25, 129-30; 1973:
405-7).
Smith also addressed the context of Hayat Muhammad'ssocial trans-
mission, although his treatment was rather truncated. To be sure, in
terms of reconstructing Haykal's intentions, Smith did consider the
segments of the reading public at whom Haykal aimed his reformist
messages. Through his Islamic writings he wanted to employ a reli-
gious form of discourse with the "masses," as Smith called them, or
the popular-urban groups. Haykal had come to believe it imperative to
develop a dialogue with these strata (a marked change from the past,
when he had ignored them) because of their increasing social weight
and their growing influence in the political arena, manifested particu-
larly in their shaping of public opinion in the 1930s. Haykal directed
his efforts toward the creation, in tactical terms, of an ideological com-
mon denominator (i.e., one based on Islam) with these mass groups.
His aim in doing so was to influence them and to recruit them for his
own and his party's (the Liberal Constitutionalists') political purposes
(Smith 1983: 101-13, 129-32, 181-89; 1973: 383-84, 399-410).
However, an analysis of Haykal's intention to produce messages
and artifacts targeted to and customized for mass consumption by
the popular public still says almost nothing about how those messages
and artifacts were effectively received by those target audiences. Smith
did not discuss the question of reception, and he did not define the
reading communities of Hayat Muhammad(beyond the vague notion
of unmapped anonymous masses, only occasionally identified, and
then only some of them, with Young Egypt or the Muslim Brothers
[Smith 1983: 1-2, 131-32; 1973: 405-10]). He neither considered
their modes of consumption nor addressed their specific responses to
the book (i.e., whether they accepted or rejected its messages, and,
if they accepted them, in what ways they did so, such as by assimi-
lating them in a manner that entailed their reinterpretation and re-
production). As a result, we have no way of knowing (from Smith's

account) whether Haykal's strategy to transmit his reformist message

was realized-whether, that is, it met readers' positive expectations
and garnered positive responses from them. True, in a very general
way and in an entirely marginal treatment, Smith suggested the pos-
sibility that at a later stage (the 1940s?) a discernible gap opened up
between Haykal's intentions, or the meanings he wished to convey in
his Islamic works, and the responses of the consumer-public. Haykal's
readers, Smith claimed (somewhat speculatively, as he did not treat
them systematically, but only cited the undeniable fact that the book
sold well), responded enthusiastically to his defense of Muhammad
and his praise of the Prophet's virtues. But they ignored Haykal's
"underlying message" (Smith 1973: 407). The result was that Haykal's
"real intentions seem to have been known only to his fellow intellectu-
als" (Smith 1983: 145). Smith went on to explain that Haykal's growing
awareness of his failure to get his message across as he had wished it to
have been transmitted and received by the reading public ultimately
threw him into a state of deep crisis. To Smith, "this was the true
crisis of the Egyptian intellectuals" (ibid.: 145, and 169-80, 183-89).
But, as noted above, the whole subject was incompletely developed by
Smith, and here, too, ultimately, his conclusions were drawn from the
perspective of the "producers" and not the "consumers."
One's final impression is that Smith naively supposed Haykal's moti-
vations for writing Hayat Muhammadand the meanings and messages
he wished to transmit in the book to have been (at least in the 1930s)
accepted at face value by its readers. By implication, Smith suggested
a simple, one-way identity, "from above to below," between Haykal's
intentions in producing the text (and the meanings with which he
imbued it) and its reception by his readers (and the meanings they
accorded it). Our understanding of the reception of Hayat Muhammad
and of its public influence, Smith seems to have assumed, depends on
a reconstruction of the author's intentions in writing it, an acquain-
tance with the content of the messages incorporated in it, and an
awareness of the target audience toward whom those messages were
directed. This assumption implies that the ultimate meaning of the
text, for the society and for the political sphere, is to be found in the
author's intentions in writing it and, more specifically, in the message
he intended to transmit through it.
2. The Autonomy of the Reader as a Producer

of "Another"Meaning
Neither Smith nor Safran, then, addressed the reception of intellec-
tual Islamic literature in the 1930s. Both made the implicit assumption
that readers have a passive role, if any, in the process of literary cre-
ation. A text automatically and of its own accord imprints itself on the

reader's mind. Thus the intellectual transformation that centered on

Hayat Muhammadcould be explained and understood in terms of the
respective writers' intentions and the meanings with which the texts
they produced were imbued. Nevertheless, it is manifestly clear that
the "historical result" of this intellectual episode-that is, the extent
to which these Islamic writings affected this period's culture, ideol-
ogy, and politics-did not depend solely on the writers' intentions,
the texts' intended messages, or the readerships targeted. Obviously,
there is no necessary correlation between Haykal's intended reader, to
whom the intended meaning was supposed to be conveyed, and the
actual reader of the book and the meaning created by his response.
In other words, there is no identity between an author's expectations
of reaching a defined reading public and the expectations that those
readers harbor when they read, interpret, and comprehend the text.
Hence, without a systematic clarification of the diverse ways in which
Hayat Muhammad(and the other texts that contributed to the intellec-
tual shift) was received at the different levels of culture and society,
and without a study of readers' specific responses to the book, we
cannot actually gauge its public impact or ascertain what, if any, in-
fluence it exercised. Without its readers, a text's concrete historical
significance is lost.
Drawing on theories and insights provided in recent years by lit-
erary criticism (particularly "reception theory" and "reader-response
theory"), on intellectual history "after the linguistic turn," and on the
sociology of culture, this paper argues that the analysis of cultural re-
ception and, more specifically, of readers' responses to written texts is
an integral and essential element in understanding any dynamic of
literary creation and the process of its social transmission. Without
the readers' active participation in the interpretation of a text, it can-
not fully realize its cultural and historical significance. The meaning
of a text is not exclusively constructed or monopolized by its author,
but rather is shared by its readers, who determine to an even greater
degree than the writer himself the text's actual public impact.
More specifically, the effect of reception theory has been to under-
mine the conception of the text as a verbal work of art bearing a single,
eternal structure and a single, determinate meaning. Instead, the text,
as perceived in reception theory, is a function of its readers and its
reception, with its meaning understood to be constituted through the
interaction between text and reader (Holub 1984: 148-50). In H. R.
Jauss's aesthetics of reception, for example, the text we read is consid-
ered to be inseparable from the history of its reception (Jauss 1982:
chaps. 1 and 5; see also Holub 1984: 53-82, 148-49). Wolfgang Iser
posits "interaction between text and reader" as the basis for under-
standing the entire process of a literary creation and the source from

which its meanings are derived (Iser 1980a: 107-34; 1980b; see also
Holub 1984: 82-106). For Iser, "the meaning of the text comes alive
in the reader's imagination" (Iser 1980b: 119), and "it is in the reader
that the text comes to life" (Iser 1980a: 19). This is because "the
text could only have a meaning when it was read" (ibid.: 20), or, in
a slightly different formulation, "texts take on their reality by being
read" (ibid.: 34). Hence, Iser's conclusion, which has become the vir-
tual motto of reader-response theory, is that "reading is the essential
precondition for all processes of literary interpretation" (ibid.: 20).
From this conclusion follows his methodological working assumption
that "the study of a literary work should concern not only the actual
text but also, and in equal measure, the actions involved in respond-
ing to that text" (ibid.: 20-21; see also Iser 1974; Holub 1984: 83-96,
148-50; Suleiman 1980: 21-24).
Stanley Fish takes a more radical reader-oriented approach. For
him, the text in and of itself contributes nothing to interpretation;
everything is dependent on what the reader brings to the text (Fish
1980: 1-17, 303-21, 338-55; see also Holub 1984: 101-5, 150-52).
In Fish's "disappearing text" model, "the reader is freed from the
tyranny of the text and given the central role in the production of
meaning" (Fish 1980: 7; see also Holub 1984: 150). In this conceptual
framework, the text's "interpretive communities," or "reading commu-
nities," are the ultimate source of its meanings. As such, they must be
at the center of textual interpretation and the study of literary history
(Fish 1980: 1-17; see also Holub 1984: 151-52; cf. Crosman 1980).
What these theories propose, then, is that "the act of reading," "the
presence of the reader," and the interpretive activities of "reading
communities" are all inseparable from the very notion of artistic texts
(Suleiman 1980: 3-7). The reader, who occupies center stage in the
creation of literary texts and their effects on culture and history, thus
becomes the focus of their interpretation and of our understanding
of it.
To argue that the analysis of reception is crucial to our very under-
standing of the dynamics of literary creation in culture and society
is to release the process of reception/reading from its passive, static
image (in the more traditional perception) and to view it as an active,
dynamic interpretive process. The reception of intellectual artifacts,
particularly written texts, is not a matter of passive assimilation, but an
interpretive activity that involves resistance and evasion as well as sub-
tractive, supplemental, and transformative revisions. "Meanings are
never simply inscribed on the minds and bodies of those to whom
they are directed or on whom they are 'imposed' but are always re-
inscribed in the act of reception" (Toews 1987: 884). Roger Chartier
has aptly described this as "another production" by cultural consumers

(Chartier 1982: 37-38). Referring in particular to the performance of

reading, he maintains that "the reader invents within the text things
other than what was the author's 'intention.' He detaches them from
their origin.... He combines the fragments and he creates the un-
known in the space that their capacity to permit an indefinite plurality
of meanings organizes" (ibid.: 38, quoting Certeau 1980: 285-86).4
Reading, in Iser's view, is a sense-making activity. It consists of the
complementary activities of judgment, selection, and organization, of
anticipation and retrospection, and of the formulation and modifica-
tion of expectations in the course of the reading process (Iser 1980a:
3-50; Suleiman 1980: 22-23; see also Fish 1980: 2). The reader can
receive and assimilate the textual message only "by composing it" (Iser
1980a: 21; 1980b: 107). Iser sees this "composition" by the reader as
a process of "realizing" and "experiencing" the text. What this means
is that the reader, in the act of reading, "incorporates the text into
his own treasure-house of experience" (Iser 1980a: 24; see also Sulei-
man 1980: 22-24). The text is recreated in the reader's mind by being
adapted to his own world of concepts and norms, to his own specific
individual and collective experience. For Iser, then, each particular
text is open to a very broad spectrum of interpretive variations, that
is, to diverse "realizations" by different readers. The text is subject to
variations among its contemporaneous readers' responses, although it
is also amenable to variant meanings accorded by different readers in
later periods (Iser 1980a: 27-38, 78-79; Suleiman 1980: 25-26).
H. R. Jauss has shed additional light on this point with his con-
cept of a "horizon of expectations." The reader's activity in generating
meaning, he believes, occurs within the parameters of his/her (or his/
her "reading community's") "horizon of expectations" or "horizon of
experience." These are not identical or congruent with the author's
"horizon of expectations" or with that of a different reading public
(Jauss 1982: 139-85; see also Suleiman 1980: 35-37; Holub 1984:
58-59, 149). The term "horizon of expectations" is defined as a set
of cultural, ethical, and literary expectations which every reader or
reading community brings to the text and which determines to a large
degree that reader's/community's specific interpretation (Suleiman
1980: 35-36; Holub 1984: 59). Essentially, the notion of a "horizon
of expectations" is historically dynamic in character, evolving within a
specific historical context and fluctuating with historical and cultural
circumstances. Hence, the "horizons of expectations" that exist when
4. For various methodological elaborations on this approach, see also Dominick

LaCapra (1982; 1985: 71-94, 135-42; 1989: 1-29, 182-209); Donald R. Kelley
(1987: 162-63); David Harlan (1989: 588-89, 597-98); for an excellent applica-
tion of this approach, see Robert Darnton (1984).

a given text is first published differ from those of later readers of the
same text (Jauss 1982: 139-48; Suleiman 1980: 35-37; Holub 1984:
58-69). To the notion of the active generation and creativity of the
reception process Jauss thus adds a historical dimension.
3. Varieties of Reception:Readers' Responses to
Hayat Muhammad, 1935-1939
Hayat Muhammadwas an impressive publishing success. The first edi-
tion of 10,000, which appeared in March 1935,5 had sold out by May.
A second, expanded edition (adding two lengthy chapters),6 also of
10,000 copies, was published in late 1935 and sold out before the end
of 1936 (Al-Hilal 1936: 594; Haykal 1963: 25, 585). Assuming that
every book sold was read by more than one person, Hayat Muham-
mad can be said to have reached many tens of thousands of readers.
Although we have few data for comparison, they are sufficient to show
that in the Egyptian context of print culture, this book had an unusu-
ally large market (H. F. al-Najjar 1970: 19-22; Fu'ad 1966: 177-79,
182-83; Muhammad 1982: 190-93), particularly for a scholarly his-
torical work. It goes without saying that this was the most popular,
best-selling, and most widely read text of all the intellectual Islamic lit-
erature of its time. Within the twenty-year period from 1936 to 1956,
another six reprint editions of 10,000 copies each were brought out,
and the book has remained in print to this day not only in Egypt, but
throughout the Arab world (Wessels 1972: 39-40, 1-48; H. F. al-
Najjar 1970: 20-21; Smith 1983: 118-19, 185; Safran 1961: 209).
Who were Hayat Muhammad'sreaders and what was the nature of
the book's "reading community"? Obviously, we have no way of iden-
tifying all the tens of thousands of readers who made up this commu-
nity or the broader "communities" and of examining their responses
to the book. Yet it is quite feasible to draw a sociocultural profile of
those readers who left written testimony and who may be assumed to
represent at least part of this community. All of these readers were
"contemporary readers," in Iser's sense (Iser 1980a: 78-79; see also
Suleiman 1980: 26). That is, unlike the book's "later readers," they
read it when it first appeared and responded exclusively to its first
(or second) edition. Their "horizons of expectations" had thus been
5. A rare copy from the first edition of the book can be found in the Souraski
Library of Tel Aviv University. In the following discussion, I shall also refer to
a reprint of the second edition (Haykal 1963). See also note 6. Antonie Wessels
(1972) provides an excellent critical study of Haykal's book. For analyses of the
major themes of Hayat Muhammad, see also H. F. al-Najjar (1970: 81-142) and
Smith (1983: 113-25).
6. All subsequent editions of the book were reprints of the second edition (Wessels
1972: 39-40; Smith 1983: 118; H. F. al-Najjar 1970: 20-21).

formed in the same historical context in which the book was published
as well as by the public discourse that the book's initial appearance
provoked. In sociocultural terms, a large segment of the readership
was from the effendiyya,members of the educated, urban middle class,
which had increasingly dominated Egyptian cultural and political life
during the interwar period (Deeb 1979: 10-12, 35-45, 68-70, 74-
75, 82, 150-52, 159-63, 261-63, 271-72, 315-25, 328-30, 344-50,
359-88, 417-22; see also Quraishi 1967: 35-37; Ramadan 1968: 66-
82, 130-87; Gershoni 1983: 228-33). In the 1930s, the effendiyya
included, besides the traditional urban groups (artisans, shopkeepers,
and small merchants), all of the social groups that composed the "new
professional class." The latter, whose members had sprung primarily
from the ranks of Egyptian school, high school, or university gradu-
ates, included journalists, teachers, university lecturers, lawyers, physi-
cians, engineers, religious clerks, government officials, technicians,
and administrators (Deeb 1979: 261-63, 271-72, 315-25, 330, 344-
50, 359-63, 371-88, 420-21; Egger 1986: ix-xvi, 169-207; see also
Erlich 1989: 46-133). During the 1930s, the effendiyya were the pre-
dominant consumers of literate culture. Indeed, to a considerable de-
gree it was this social stratum that determined the consumer markets
and shaped the modes of reception of the literate culture's products.
The effendiyya comprised the primary public to whom the messages
of intellectual Islamic literature were targeted (Gershoni and Jankow-
ski [forthcoming]: chap. 1). Although they did not represent the entire
urban population, they can be taken as representative of those who
actually read Haykal.
The majority of the effendiyya were of humble social origins, coming
from the urban lower classes or, more often, from the traditional rural
milieu. Besides their pursuit of Western education and their readiness
to embrace the print media, modern science, and technology as the
keys to rapid upward social mobility, the effendiyya were also char-
acterized by a desire to preserve the country's indigenous patterns
of identity, which-for them-would have been based on Islam and
Arabism. Thus, it was controlled, Western-style modernization, some-
what modified by Egypt's Eastern, Islamic-Arab character; a reshaped
Islamic-Arab heritage adapted to modern conditions; and a fusion of
the old with the new, of the traditional with the modern, that the effen-
diyya saw as the cultural foundation of modern Egyptian life (ibid.;
Quraishi 1967: 36-37; Deeb 1979: 10-12). In generational terms, a
distinction should be drawn between the "old effendis,"or those born
in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and the "new effendis,"or
those born in the first or second decade of the twentieth century.
Prominent among the former group were the heavily Westernized
intelligentsia who had emerged at the end of the nineteenth century

and in the first two decades of the twentieth. Most of its members were
new professionals who acquired their academic degrees in Europe. In
the course of pursuing this education, they adopted and cultivated
a liberal political culture with a modernist orientation, and many of
them became Wafdists and Liberal Constitutionalists after the war
(Deeb 1979: 6-12, 42-45, 68-70, 74, 82, 150-52, 159-63, 166, 261-
66, 272-73, 315-25, 330, 345-51, 358-60, 363). This high-effendi
intelligentsia was by nature a narrow elitist stratum. Its members de-
veloped a strong commitment to societal modernization by means of
sweeping Westernization and secularization.
The second group, which in the 1930s accounted for the overwhelm-
ing majority of the effendiyya, was a product of the vast expansion of
the Egyptian educational system between the two world wars and-
concomitantly-the dramatic growth of the literate population. As a
result, the social base of the effendiyya widened considerably to in-
clude much broader sectors of society (both urban and rural). These
new effendis were less Westernized; most of them had not been edu-
cated in Europe and thus were less inclined to be captivated by West-
ern culture. In the 1930s, the average age of the effendiyya was much
lower than before, with most of them in their twenties. Their grow-
ing disappointment with the inability of the Wafd and other estab-
lished parties to end the British occupation (plus the increasing con-
servatism and opportunism of these parties), as well as the lack of
employment opportunities for high school and university graduates
and the strong influence of new movements and ideologies (fascism,
Islamic revivalism, and Pan-Arabism), caused the young effendiyya
to become politically and socially radicalized. This found its expres-
sion in their populist social programs and their orientation toward an
authoritarian political culture (fluctuating between Islamic revivalism
and integralist nationalism), which were anti-liberal and anti-Western.
In striving to articulate a collective ethos of a young and militant gen-
eration, the new effendiyya systematically assailed the constitutional
parliamentary regime and challenged the liberal political culture of
the established parties. They expressed their social protests and their
cultural predicament by joining or establishing extra-parliamentary
movements and organizations. The Young Men's Muslim Association
(YMMA), the Muslim Brotherhood, the Young Egypt Society, and
various student groups organized for political action were particularly
representative of these new radical forces (Jankowski 1975: 1-25, 72-
78, 120-21; Mitchell 1969: 1-19, 328-31; Erlich 1989: 95-133; Issawi
1954: 264-71; Ramadan 1981: 137-211, 261-362).
The following discussion distinguishes among four major types of
readership groups, most of whom belonged to the effendiyya. These
groups represent four basic interpretations of Hayat Muhammad de-

rived from four different "horizons of expectations." Fundamentally,

the source of this distinction lies in the diverging ideological incli-
nations and the different cultural and political commitments of the
readership groups. In some instances, especially with regard to the
'ulama, educational-professional affiliation also comes into play. An-
other reason for choosing this particular way of dividing HayatMuham-
mad's readership is that it seems faithful to the manner in which these
groups of readers perceived themselves in their society and culture,
which was also how they were seen and situated in the intellectual life
of the 1930s by the broad literate public. The first category is that
of the intellectuals and the editors/writers of the important cultural
journals of the period; the second, of the Islamic Salafite movement
and the radical nationalist forces; the third, of the traditionalist or
reformist Islamic orthodoxy; and the fourth category is that of the
modernist secular opposition.
and the CulturalJournalEditors/Writers
1. TheResponseof the Intellectuals
The response of the intellectuals to Hayat Muhammadwas generally
favorable and laudatory. The book was praised for Haykal's attempt
to reshape the traditional genre of the sira by using modern meth-
ods of scientific historical research. Particular mention was made of
Haykal's success in producing a work that would suit the taste of the
average, modern educated reader. An early positive response came
from Tawfiq al-Hakim. In an article entitled "Defense of Islam," he
welcomed Haykal's shift (as did Taha Husayn and others) to writing
on Islamic subjects (al-Hakim 1935: 578-80). Hakim, who was himself
just beginning to write his wide-ranging play Muhammad (al-Hakim
1936), saw Haykal's biography as a successful modern version, adapted
to the spirit of the time, of the classical sirat Ibn Hisham and other
traditional canonical biographies of the Prophet. "Haykal's book is in-
disputably the first adequate [modern] biography of the Prophet. It
reflects the evolution of Islamic thought in this modern age" (al-Hakim
1935: 579). There was no doubt, Hakim asserted, that if Muhammad
cAbduh, the father of Islamic modernism, "were alive today, he would
receive this book ... with joy, as the new pen that has arisen to write
in the service of truth and Islam" (ibid.).
Indeed, the main achievement of Hayat Muhammadwas said to be
its modernist, rationalist depiction of the Prophet and, at the same
time, its faithfulness to the historical truth. The book thus fulfilled
the expectations of the modern reader. "In place of extravagant songs
praising the Prophet and his greatness, people today want only the
naked, pure truth, which in its impartiality is more beautiful and
more noble. It exerts a lasting influence on the heart. Haykal has ac-
complished this in his book in a most praiseworthy manner" (ibid.).

Haykal's unswervingly rationalistic and objective portrait also allowed

him "to omit from the life of the Prophet all those miracles which add
nothing to the truth" (ibid.). Hakim praised Haykal for having pro-
duced a realistic, humanistic account of the Prophet's life and historic
achievements, stressing Haykal's break with the traditional miracu-
lous, supernatural framework. It is precisely "in this new approach to
Islam and Muhammad . . . [that] the Prophet's personality appears
in its full, sublimely human greatness" (ibid.). Far from diminishing
the Prophet's greatness or the eternal truth of his message, Haykal's
book achieved the "exaltation of prophecy," defending prophecy and
presenting it as a model for emulation-and thus as a source of pride
for present-day Muslims (ibid.: 579-80).
Hakim published his article in al-Risala, and its appearing in this
journal was not by chance. Under the editorship of Ahmad Hasan al-
Zayyat, al-Risala became a major promoter of HayatMuhammad,giving
the book considerable publicity and boosting its sales. Founded in
early 1933, al-Risala was both a salient product of the intellectual reori-
entation to Islam and Arabism in the 1930s and the chief journalistic
organ for those who espoused this reorientation (Muhammad 1982:
46-181; Fu'ad 1966: 177-232; Gershoni 1987: 7-8). Al-Risala was
committed to "linking the traditional to the modern," to "reviving and
renewing the Islamic heritage" (see al-Zayyat 1933 and 1938), and to
"outlining the manifestations of the genius of the Arab nation," 7 while
adapting these to the context of the modern culture. Al-Risala almost
inevitably treated Hayat Muhammadas the realization of its own ideals.
While Hakim's liberal "horizon of expectations" led him to stress the
modernistic and humanistic aspects of Haykal's book, other writers
in al-Risala approached the text with an Islamic-revivalist "horizon
of expectations" which underscored its contribution to the revival of
the Prophetic heritage and the consolidation of Egypt's Arab cultural
identity.
One al-Risala critic was impressed by Haykal's unique ability to
reconstruct the Prophetic milieu and set before the reader a "per-
fect living portrait" of the Islamic golden age (Al-Risala 1935a: 637).
Haykal, it was said, is marvelous at "describing situations ... and ani-
mating events as they really were," thus enabling the reader to identify
fully with the life and deeds of the Prophet (ibid.: 637-38). Although
this critic found a few errors in the work, such as incorrect dates and
flawed descriptions of certain episodes in the Prophet's life, on the
whole he was full of praise for Haykal's distinct achievement, conclud-
7. This "officialstatement,"which was part of al-Risala'sprogram to unify the cul-

ture of all Arab-speaking peoples, was published on the back page of each issue
during the 1930s (see also Muhammad 1982: 165).

ing that the book was nothing less than "a new conquest in the field
of modern writing" (ibid.: 639). Another critic writing in al-Risala,
Muhammad 'Ali al-Najjar (1935), expressed a similar view. His cri-
tique seems to have been primarily intended to point out printing
errors and inaccurately cited names and places and to correct in-
exact quotations. But al-Najjar, too, found Hayat Muhammad"sublime
and extraordinarily meritorious" (ibid.: 999). The comprehensive, de-
tailed, and rich description of the Prophet's life moved al-Najjar to
express his "admiration for the book and . . . [to] salute ... its great
author" (ibid.: 1000).
For Ahmad Hasan al-Zayyat, Haykal's book was a true reflection of
the heightened interest among Egypt's reading public in the life of
the Prophet and "in the exemplary character of the founding fathers"
(al-Zayyat 1936: 161). Zayyat, like Hakim, commended Haykal for his
use of the scientific method and the critical tools of historical analysis
in writing the Prophet's biography. But even more important to him
was the fact that Hayat Muhammad(like the Islamic writings of Taha
Husayn and Hakim) marked a profound change in the attitude of the
intellectual elite toward Egypt's cultural heritage. Until recently, Zay-
yat complained, Egypt's Arabic literature had grazed in foreign fields,
under the illusion that it could draw "from distant foreign wellsprings"
and "discard its own sources." Now, however, "thanks to this laud-
able orientation [the intellectual shift to Islam] the thread to the past
has been relinked, and the hope has been bound up with its future"
(ibid.: 162). Haykal's book represented clear evidence of the return of
Arabic literature in Egypt to its authentic Arab-Islamic sources after
having acknowledged its futile attempt to imitate alien Western litera-
tures (ibid.).
This theme in the interpretation of Hayat Muhammadwas extended
and developed in the somewhat late response to the book by Muham-
mad Ahmad al-Ghamrawi (1939). Among the leading contributors to
al-Risala, Ghamrawi viewed Hayat Muhammad as a milestone in the
intellectual evolution of the Egyptian modernist movement from its
earliest appearance in the pages of al-Jaridaand al-Sufur at the begin-
ning of the century, through its identification with the al-Siyasa school
(led by Haykal in the 1920s), and all the way up to the present. Until
the appearance of Hayat Muhammad,Ghamrawi observed, this West-
ernizing movement had drawn all of its literary ideals and models, its
techniques and forms, "from the spirit of the West and not from the
spirit of Islam" (ibid.: 15). It had effaced itself before the culture of
the West. The Egyptian modernists, hostile to and ignorant of Islam,
had shunned it and had been ashamed of it, accepting unreservedly
the Western canard that "Islam is the reason for the Muslims' back-
wardness" (ibid.). Haykal's book marked the turning point. Essentially,

it constituted the modernist movement's recognition of its failure to

Westernize Egypt's Muslim culture. HayatMuhammadtestified to mod-
ernism's rediscovery of Islam, of a desire to study and understand
Islam. For it was only in the revival of the classical historical heritage,
first shaped by Muhammad, that one would find a solid foundation
for creating modern art and literature which would be both authentic
and progressive (ibid.: 14-15).
The other important cultural journal that responded extensively
and favorably to Hayat Muhammadwas al-Hilal. Characteristically, al-
Hilal, in the 1930s, approached and interpreted texts with an Arabist-
Easternist "horizon of expectations" which presupposed a cultural
opposition between East and West. According to al-Hilal's reviewer,
the significance of Haykal's book was not confined "to Islam or to
the Islamic nations alone," but extended "to the entire East.... For a
study of Muhammad's life is, undoubtedly, a study of the roots of the
Eastern civilization that has existed for thousands of years" (Al-Hilal
1935: 869). Moreover, in his view, the book constituted a breakthrough
in the writing of "the history of the East" by local historians. Hayat
Muhammadappropriately and effectively countered the Orientalist his-
toriography that constantly distorted the image of the East, displayed
hostility toward Islam and the Arabs, and, especially, maligned the
Prophet's person. This reviewer was convinced that Haykal's superi-
ority over the Orientalists was undeniable. In the first place, Haykal,
as "an Easterner" who was deeply involved in its cultural and politi-
cal life, was "more familiar than the Orientalists with Islam and the
nuances of its history" (ibid.). Secondly, and no less importantly, by
employing the techniques and methods of critical historical research,
"by faithfully endeavoring to expose the facts and pursuing truth for
its own sake" (ibid.), Haykal had produced a modern revisionist his-
tory of the origins of Islam which was both remarkably original and
undoubtedly authentic and which utilized the highest standards of
objective scientific inquiry. Western Orientalism could not match this
achievement. Hayat Muhammad thus met the expectation of Eastern
readers
that an author who identifies himself first as a Muslimand secondly as an

Easternerand who takes pride in his Easternismwill arise to write a lucid
history of this Arab Prophet that is grounded in the proofs of the laws of
science and is free of all that is base or counterfeit. In this way he will re-
veal to people the secret of this great Arab ... who founded a religion and
a culture which were rapidlydisseminatedthroughoutthe civilized world.
(Ibid.; see also 869-71)
Another review article published in al-Hilal followed the appearance
of the second edition, which was issued as a result of the book's enor-

mous commercial success. Here, HayatMuhammadwas interpreted as a

manifestation of the ever-stronger reciprocal relationship between the
eager consumption by the reading public of the products of genuine
Islamic history, which recorded the lives of the great Islamic heroes,
and the growing readiness of intellectuals to produce such studies.
Haykal, asserted the article's author, "wrote this book less for himself
than for his readers" (Al-Hilal 1936: 594).
The acclaim showered on Hayat Muhammadby the intellectual elite
reached its peak in a semiofficial festive reception held in Haykal's
honor at the Continental Hotel in May 1935 to mark the selling out
of the first edition. Among the prominent figures in attendance were
Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid, who headed the organizing committee for
the event, Shaykh Muhammad Mustafa al-Maraghi, Mustafa cAbd al-
Raziq, Taha Husayn, Muhammad cAli 'Alluba, Amin Sa'id, Antun al-
Jamil, and the poets Muhammad al-Asmar and 'Ali Mahmud Taha
(Al-Risala 1935b: 798; 1935c: 837; OrienteModerno1935: 289-90). The
speeches delivered at the affair were broadcast over Egyptian state
radio (Al-Risala 1935b: 798), and al-Ahram gave the event consider-
able coverage, including a front-page photograph of the participants
(Al-Ahram 1935: 1, 7). In a poem written especially for the occasion,
the popular poet 'Ali Mahmud Taha (1972) praised Haykal's book
as "an echo of the Divine Revelation in a new mode" (ibid.: 358). In
his keynote address, Mustafa cAbd al-Raziq expressed appreciation
for the fact that an intellectual luminary like Haykal had decided to
study the life of the Prophet. He too likened Haykal to Ibn Hisham:
"As the sira of Ibn Hisham marked the first renaissance in the study of
the Prophet, so is that of Haykal worthy to be regarded as an example
and a model of the new renaissance in this study." Haykal, in Raziq's
view, was indeed "the bearer of the banner of the modern renaissance
in the history of the Prophet's sira" (Al-Ahram1935: 7; see also Wessels
1972: 40-41).
Al-Risala, which also gave the reception extensive coverage, inter-
preted the event in a typical fashion. Its main significance was said to
be that it marked the substantive turning point which had occurred
in the cultural orientation of Haykal and other modernists like him.
In the past (i.e., until the late 1920s), Haykal, a captive of strong
European cultural influences, had worshiped at the altar of French
literature. Having been obsessed with Egyptianism, "he became a
fanatic of the Pharaonic arts" (Al-Risala 1935c: 837). Yet Haykal, as
an Arab writer expressing himself in Arabic, could not disavow his
true Arab-Islamic culture forever. His Western orientation had been
artificial and inevitably temporary. Therefore, "it was not long before
Dr. Haykal, who had submitted to French and Pharaonic influences
and had begun with Zaynab,turned to Arabism and Islamism, finish-

ing with Hayat Muhammad"(ibid.). Al-Risala's reporter had no doubt

about the true meaning of this shift:
It is a great triumph for Islam, for the Arabs,and for the East that Haykal
has published this spiritual,eternal book! It is powerful testimonythat our
original (and authentic)literaturehas returnedanew to its sources,is draw-
ing on their inspirationand is enjoyingtheir independence. The reception
in Dr. Haykal'shonor . . . marks this genuine and praiseworthydevelop-
ment through which Egyptian thought has been elevated to the level of
creativity,and Arabicliteratureto the statusof authenticity. (Ibid.)
Hayat Muhammadas the symbol of "the return to authentic Islamic
roots" was also a recurrent theme in the later remarks of a group of
intellectuals who hosted a gala celebration of Haykal's appointment as
Minister of Education and his being granted the title of Pasha in April
1938 (Al-Majalla al-Jadida 1938: 94-104). Mustafa 'Abd al-Raziq de-
clared that the book had given "a new direction to Arabic literature"
which would enable it "to guard against losing its personality amid
foreign literatures," while at the same time ensuring that it would not
abandon "the elements of renewal, modernism, and progress" (ibid.:
98). Ibrahim 'Abd al-Qadir al-Mazini found the book to be an ex-
pression of "the spirit of faith seizing [Haykal's] soul." In his Islamic
writings, Haykal was revealed as a salient spiritualist and idealist, as
a "spiritual millionaire" in whom reposed a "treasure of faith" (ibid.:
100). 'Abbas Mahmud al-'Aqqad praised Hayat Muhammad (and Fi
Manzil al-Wahy)for restoring the wayward and the heretics to the roots
of Islam, to prophecy, to Muhammad, and to the holy places in the
Hejaz (ibid.: 100-102). And for cAbd al-Aziz al-Bishri, Haykal's book
was proof that "there is no contradiction between science and religion"
and that "true science draws on and needs religion" (ibid.: 104).
2. TheIslamicSalafiteReading
Special importance attaches to the reception held for Hayat Muham-
mad in the 1930s by the Islamic Salafite movement and organizations.
These forces were on the rise and gaining ground in public opin-
ion. They represented an important segment of the young effendiyya,
who moved to the center of the political and cultural stage during
this decade. They were at the center of the antiestablishment senti-
ments and extra-parliamentary orientations that were spreading
through society. Although these groups approached the text with an
Islamic-Arab revivalist "horizon of expectations," at certain points
their reading overlapped with the intellectuals'. This occurred pri-
marily because Salafite readers tended to interpret Haykal's book as the
intellectuals' "constructive adaptation" to the Islamic wave then surg-
ing through society, that is, as their recognition and acknowledgment
of the rightness of the Islamicist Salafiyyacourse.

Muhibb al-Din al-Khatib and the popular Islamicist weekly that he

edited, al-Fath, were the most prominent purveyors of Salafite dis-
course, and they also expressed the official positions of the YMMA.
Khatib reviewed HayatMuhammadwith undisguised sympathy, extract-
ing every drop of what he viewed as its "national significance" (al-
Khatib 1935). Khatib believed that Arab Muslims had a fundamental
existential need for their own national history. In the modern era
of nationalist revival, nationalist struggle, and the creation of an in-
dependent national culture, the Arab-Muslim community needed a
distinct national history, specifically one composed by Arab-Muslim
historians. It was wrong and contemptible to turn to Orientalist lit-
erature, which was alien and hostile, in order to become acquainted
with this history. It was inconceivable that "a nation that possesses a
tremendous wealth of historical glories ... should be deprived forever
of modern historical accounts documenting that richness" (ibid.: 119).
The national present required a national past, an authoritative history
that would reveal the nation's splendors and heroes. "We will not be
able to understand our essence in the present unless we understand
our essence in the past; it is impossible for us to define our national
aspiration [matmahunaal-qawmi]if we do not grasp the direction of our
development in history" (ibid.). This, then, was the discursive context
in which Khatib read Hayat Muhammad, that is, as an extraordinary
contribution to the formation of a genuine Islamic-Arab national his-
tory.
Nevertheless, Khatib was not completely uncritical of Haykal's book.
In a manner characteristic of the general Salafite response to the
work, he objected to Haykal's efforts to totally rationalize and histori-
cize the Prophet's life. Eliminating the miraculous aspects of Muham-
mad's work, casting doubt on the supernatural phenomena and forces
often associated with him, and turning the Prophet into a "reformer,"
a "guide," or a "commander" threatened to diminish the Prophetic
uniqueness which was grounded in an unprecedented divine reve-
lation (ibid.: 120). Khatib thus rejected Haykal's attempt to posit a
rationalistic, scientific explanation for Muhammad's midnight journey
to the seven heavens (isra wa'l-micraj)and reaffirmed the traditional
miraculous account of this event (ibid.). However, his criticisms and
reservations were clearly overshadowed by Khatib's great esteem for
Hayat Muhammad. Besides the book's important nationalist message
and in addition to the fact that Haykal displayed the abilities of a
great historian, controlling with superb virtuosity the tools and the
subjects of his study, Khatib praised Hayat Muhammedas an eminently
readable literary product, well suited to the style and taste of the mod-
ern age. Since "the reader" found the book "readily likable," it was
sure to be well received by broad segments of the reading public. It

would be particularly useful to "the young reader, . . . accustomed

to the modern style and . . . able to enjoy and benefit . . . from it."
It was therefore not surprising to find "many who believe that when
Haykal wrote his book, he probably had in mind only these readers"
(ibid.: 119)
A different and more traditionalist reading of Hayat Muhammadwas
offered by Mustafa Ahmad al-Rifa'i al-Lubban (1935), another lead-
ing YMMA publicist. In general, Lubban welcomed Haykal's study of
the sira. Aware of the book's popularity, Lubban noted its constructive
role in awakening the public's interest in the Prophet and in Islam.
But Lubban was more reserved than Khatib. He was unconvinced by
Haykal's critique of the Orientalists and their writings. Indeed,
Haykal, he noted, far from proposing a plausible alternative to those
hostile writings, drew his inspiration and his preconceptions from
them. Predictably, Lubban also rejected the modernist, humanist ap-
proach of Hayat Muhammad,which depicted the Prophet as an ordinary
person and thereby deprived him of the hallowed status of one "who
in his sensitivities [was] loftier than all human beings and in his con-
sciousness [was] more exalted than them" (ibid.: 13). These flaws had
their roots in a more basic deficiency: the fact that Haykal was a non-
Believer, a secular intellectual. Lubban left no doubt as to his conclu-
sions: "If Haykal had had a religious education, and if his mind were
filled with the meanings of the holy Quran and the great Prophetic
hadith ... then his book would have been far more successful" (ibid.).
Great importance attaches to Hasan al-Banna's (1935) interpre-
tation of Hayat Muhammad. As the "General Guide" of the Muslim
Brotherhood who was destined to become within the decade the leader
of the Islamic Salafite movement and its organizations in Egypt and
throughout the Arab world, Banna's response merits special attention.
It opened with a reminder to the reader of Banna's longtime acquain-
tance with Haykal's work. In the late 1920s, he had been strongly
influenced by Haykal's Easternist outlook, which was the inspiration
for his own early writing (ibid.: 30). Later, in 1933, he had briefly
been Haykal's associate in an opposition political body, the Association
for the Defense of Islam.8 This background clearly led Banna to be
sympathetic toward Hayat Muhammad.His one reservation concerned
"those historical tales which conflict with the truth as we know it and
8. For Haykal's early intellectual influence on the young Hasan al-Banna, see,
for example, al-Banna (1929); for Haykal's and Banna's activities in the Associa-
tion for the Defense of Islam, see Haykal (1977: 271-73); al-Banna (1935); Smith
(1983: 113, 216 n. 18). The association was established in Cairo in June 1933, and
its declared goal was to counter missionary activities. Mustafa al-Maraghi was its
president. Later, at the beginning of 1936, Banna met Haykal again when they
both went on the pilgrimage to Mecca (see Haykal 1977: 329-31).

clash with several of the solid Islamic traditions which we believe in"
(ibid.). Although Banna did not elaborate, there are hints of his dis-
agreement with Haykal's decision to strip the miraculous veneer from
the Prophet's life and of his disappointment with the book's vague-
ness on the subject of Orientalist literature. On the other hand, Banna
read the text in the light of what he perceived to be an intellectual
reorientation undergone by Haykal since the late 1920s and in an
Easternist-Islamic direction. This intellectual shift had been propelled
by Haykal's growing awareness of the "greatness and everlastingness"
of "the Eastern civilization" and its ability "to renew itself," leading
to the conclusion that "humanity [would] not be redeemed unless the
Eastern civilization, with its spiritual sources, its mental qualities, and
its humanistic virtues, [was] revived" (ibid.). HayatMuhammadwas pro-
nounced the mature culmination of this welcome intellectual shift.
Therefore, Banna asserted, those who linked "Haykal's name with
the skeptics . . . distancing themselves from the Islamic spirit" were
wrong. In having published his book about the Prophet and earned
"the admiration, esteem, praise, and honor" of the reading public,
Haykal had proved himself to be "a different person from what people
thought" (ibid.).
A slightly different reaction came from a follower of Banna's, a
young Muslim Brother named Muhammad 'Abduh (1939). cAbduh
was then a high school student,9 and his interpretation of Hayat
Muhammad (and of Fi Manzil al-Wahy)may well provide a crucial key
to our understanding of the way in which younger and more ordinary
readers received and perceived Haykal's texts. 'Abduh's response was
a late one, not appearing until 1939. It was an indictment of Haykal,
the education minister who was in effect implementing an antireli-
gious, secular educational policy that, in 'Abduh's view, was grossly at
odds with Haykal, the author of Hayat Muhammadand other Islamic
writings. The Muslim community's expectations of Haykal as educa-
tion minister, cAbduh explained, had been raised by his significant
intellectual turnabout in the 1930s, in which he was seen as having
acquired an Islamic orientation and having become deeply committed
to it (ibid.). The following passage from 'Abduh's article, which was
entitled "Haykal between Yesterday and Today," sheds light on the
way in which Haykal's intellectual shift was typically perceived at the
"lower" levels of the reading public:
No one could have imagined that Dr. MuhammadHusaynHaykalPasha-
one of those who was indebted to the civilizationof Europe ... and who as-
signed themselvesthe taskof creatinga Europeanintellectualrenaissancein
Egypt which derived its teachingsfrom Westernthought and philosophy-
9. He signed himself, at the end of his article, "tilmidh" (pupil, student).

would make the life of the great Prophetthe subjectof an extended study.
Nor could anyone have imagined that Dr. Muhammad Husayn Haykal
Pasha would go to the Holy Placesof Pilgrimage.... All this no one could
imagine, yet all of it transpired. Haykalwrote on the life of the Prophet
[siratal-nabiy].... And Haykalwent on Pilgrimageto the House of God
and stood in the place where Muhammadhad stood and thus realized the
Islamic ideal in his soul and committedhimself to strivingas Muhammad
and his Companionshad striven. (Ibid.: 3)
The official response of Young Egypt to Hayat Muhammadwas simi-
lar in content, albeit from a different perspective. The spokesmen
of Young Egypt approached the text with an integralist-nationalist
"horizon of expectations." From this vantage point, Haykal's book
was viewed as "a great victory for both Egypt and Islam" (Al-Sarkha
1935: 7, 14). Al-Sarkha's reviewer attributed the book's enthusiastic
reception to its reassertion of the strength and vitality of Islam and
Arabism as the central elements of the Egyptian national-cultural
identity. Typically, he expressed the basic theme of the contemporary
Salafite movement: Haykal and his intellectual generation, who, at the
start of their literary careers, had seemed to be letting "Europe take
over their whole being with its seductive materialistic and rationalistic
allurements," were finally returning to their authentic sources, namely,
belief in Islam and in the exemplarity of the Prophet's life, but also
Arab culture and literature (ibid.: 7). Hayat Muhammaddemonstrated
Haykal's further ability to rework the traditional sira in a modern
form, creating a readable and enjoyable literary product "which it
[was] incumbent on all young people in Egypt and the Arab world to
read" (ibid.: 14).
3. The Islamic Orthodoxy's Response
Orthodox Islamic circles, headed by the 'ulama of al-Azhar, took a spe-
cial interest in HayatMuhammad.After all, until the 1930s, dealing with
the sira had been their exclusive prerogative. To some of them, the
possibility that a secular, modernist intellectual would write a biogra-
phy of the Prophet was nothing short of absurd, not to mention totally
undesirable (see Wessels 1972: 1-6). Nevertheless, in the unique con-
text of that period, the orthodoxy's response to Hayat Muhammadwas
neither monolithic nor by any means uniformly negative. Two main
responses-the reformist and the conservative-stood out from the
others. The tone of the reformist response, which was largely favor-
able, was set by none other than the progressive rector of al-Azhar,
Shaykh Muhammad Mustafa al-Maraghi. In his laudatory introduc-
tion to the book, he warmly recommended it to Muslim readers be-
cause "they [would] find that in it Haykal [had] been completely faith-
ful to the truth" (Haykal 1935: 6). In a subsequent press interview,
Maraghi declared, "Haykal's book on Muhammad marks something

of an advance in thought and research. It will not be long before we

see other modernist Egyptian writers following in his footsteps with
innovative historical studies" (Majallati 1935: 1143). Such demonstra-
tive approbation from the rector of al-Azhar bestowed legitimacy on
Hayat Muhammad in the eyes of the official orthodoxy and thus as-
sured the book a benevolent reception among the more conservative,
traditionalist segments of the reading public.
It is also noteworthy that Maraghi's introduction to the book was
published in the official organ of al-Azhar, the monthly Nur al-Islam
(1935). Its editor, Farid Wajdi, the well-known Islamic modernist,
prefaced the article with several important comments of his own on
Haykal's work. First, he disagreed with Haykal's theories concerning
the reasons for the enmity between Muslims and Christians. Secondly,
he rejected as false and unscientific Haykal's contentions that Euro-
peans had begun to turn to India in their quest for spiritual solace
and that Quraish Mecca resembled a free republic. But these criticisms
notwithstanding, Wajdi "officially" recommended Hayat Muhammad,
seeing in it the birth of a new era of modern, scientific studies of the
sira (ibid.: 137-38; see also Wessels 1972: 40).
The conservative response to Haykal's biography of the Prophet was
well represented in the sharply negative critique by Shaykh Muham-
mad Muhammad Zaharan (1935) in al-Manar.l0 Zaharan interpreted
the text according to the "horizon of expectations" of the ultra-ortho-
dox. He considered Hayat Muhammadto be a gross distortion of the
sira, due to Haykal's mutilation and falsification of all the traditions
and beliefs that had become associated with the sira over many gen-
erations. Predictably, what especially vexed Zaharan was Haykal's at-
tempt "to garb the sira in fashionable dress in order to pander to the
tastes of the period and [to be] in harmony with present-day culture"
(ibid.: 789). The popularization and vulgarization of the sira, Zaha-
ran believed, could have no other purpose than "to deceive the weak
[in faith] with exaggerations by dressing the baseless in the garb of
truth, misrepresenting chimeras as ostensibly solid facts, and turning
totally unfounded things into the word of the living God" (ibid.). Hayat
Muhammadthus effectively denied "everything that is generally known
and accepted by both the elite and the masses [al-khassalal-'amma]
among the Muslims" (ibid.: 789-90).
More specifically, Zaharan was outraged by Haykal's efforts "to deny
10. This article was also published in al-Fath (1935). Another contemporary, ultra-
orthodox critical response to Haykal's book was that of Shaykh 'Abd Allah Ibn 'Ali
al-Najdi al-Qasimi, a Saudi. Al-Qasimi published a series of articles which were
later collected in a volume entitled Naqd Kitab Hayat Muhammad (al-Qasimi 1935).
See also Wessels (1972: 40-42) and Smith (1983: 218 n. 31).

all of Muhammad's miracles other than those cited in the Quran" and
on the basis of such an absurd claim as "that all these miracles contra-
dict the law of God" (ibid.: 790). Haykal, moreover, had cast doubt
on the supernatural phenomena associated with the earlier prophets,
particularly Moses and Jesus (ibid.). In view of what he regarded as
the inherently dangerous distortions and corruptions in Haykal's biog-
raphy of the Prophet, Zaharan urged the editors of the two journals in
which he published his comments, al-Manar and al-Fath, "to save the
Islamic religion." This was to be accomplished "by rooting out here-
sies [al-ilhad] and by adducing crushing proofs and cogent arguments
to refute them" in such a way as to be "universally accepted" and to
capture "the hearts of the elite as well as the masses" (ibid.).
That al-Fath's editor, Muhibb al-Din al-Khatib (1935), responded
only indirectly to Zaharan's plea on behalf of Islam clearly indicated
that he was not receptive to it. In contrast, al-Manar editor Muhammad
Rashid Rida offered a direct response to Zaharan's criticism. But even
in this case, Zaharan and his ultra-orthodox colleagues were in for a
disappointment. Rida's (1935) extended review of Haykal's book fell
firmly within the parameters of his (and al-Manar's) "horizon of ex-
perience," which meshed reformism and traditionalism.
Generally speaking, Rida rejected the main accusation leveled
against Hayat Muhammad by Zaharan and the "other culama of al-
Azhar," namely, that it constituted heretical, antireligious libel by a
secular modernist who was maliciously endeavoring to destroy belief
in Islam. "I have a good opinion concerning the new religious orienta-
tion of Dr. Muhammad Husayn Haykal," Rida stoutly declared, add-
ing, "I believe that through [this orientation] he wishes to serve Islam
and fight apostasy and licentiousness." Moreover, Haykal's book was
drawing "many of those who have gone astray back to belief in the pro-
phetical nature of Muhammad, the last of the Prophets" (ibid.: 791).
To Rida, then, Hayat Muhammadhad an important socio-ideological
role to play in attracting a secular reading public, currently "infatu-
ated by materialistic ideas" and inclined to "imitate the West," to belief
in Islam and the exemplary virtue of the forefathers. Nevertheless,
Rida was not wholly uncritical of Hayat Muhammad.Indeed, on some
points he even agreed with Zaharan. Thus, for example, he faulted
Haykal for an excessive reliance on Orientalist literature in describing
various episodes in the Prophet's life. Predictably, he also rejected the
scientific explanations adduced by Haykal for the "miraculous events"
in the Prophet's life (ibid.: 64-70). On the other hand, with respect to
some other central issues, Rida accepted Haykal's interpretation and
spurned Zaharan's. For example, Rida declared Haykal's (1963: 118-
19) description of the struggle between the Abyssinians and the people
of Mecca over the Kacba in the year of the Prophet's birth (570 C.E.)

to be accurate in every respect. "I see nothing in this chapter which

could be construed as heresy, or as contradicting the definitive proofs,
or as conflicting with the fundamentals of Islam or with its laws," he
reproved Zaharan (Rida 1935: 64).
Rida's attitude toward Hayat Muhammadwas determined in part by
its public reception. Well aware of the book's popularity among the
"many readers who consider it a most powerful defense of Islam"
(ibid.: 792; see also 787-89), Rida ultimately rejected the criticisms
of the ultra-orthodox. Although Haykal's book did have some short-
comings and flaws, "these [could] not justify . . . [Zaharan's] appeal
to me to eradicate it by citing crushing proofs" (ibid.: 64). Haykal's
modernist approach to Muhammad's biography, based on "scientific
and rationalistic evidence, primarily the Quran," should be recognized
as a legitimate historiographic mode for the study of the sira, Rida
concluded (ibid.: 72).
4. TheResponseof theModernistSecularOpposition
Negative reviews of Hayat Muhammaddid not emanate only from the
ultra-orthodox fringe. The book was also assailed by an opposition
minority among modernist intellectuals who regarded it as a worry-
ing sign of a retreat from liberal Western values, hence as a threat to
Egypt's progressive secular culture. Two reactions, each by a different
intellectual group, are particularly noteworthy. One response came
from "insiders"-those who saw themselves as belonging to Haykal's
intellectual generation and as sharing his modernist ideals, but who
were intensely critical of his shift (and that of others from his gen-
eration) to Islamic subjects in the 1930s. The second response came
from "outsiders"-those who were extremely apprehensive about the
current wave of intellectual Islamic literature and who condemned it
as a cultural reaction that would undermine the secular foundations
of the Egyptian state.
The most complete expression of the first group's response dur-
ing this period was provided by Ahmad Amin (1936b). Amin held
that the "intellectual leadership" (namely, Haykal and Taha Husayn),
by having turned so profoundly to Islamic subjects, had forsaken the
liberal ideals and rationalistic principles to which they had been com-
mitted in the 1920s. In Amin's view, the production of popular Islamic
writings by intellectual luminaries was a manifestation of moral disar-
ray and of a drastic decline in the quality of literature and the level of
artistic writing, with the luminaries having jettisoned the European-
style methods of literary and historical criticism that had previously
been held sacrosanct. These intellectuals had thus betrayed their role
as avant-garde bearers of modern high culture to their society, as
intellectuals whose commitment to that culture's dissemination was
uncompromising. Thus, when Amin compared the 1920s-a decade

characterized, in his view, by genuine ideational ferment, dynamic

revolutionary thinking, creative intellectual imagination, rigorous self-
criticism grounded in cultural refinement, and fecund literary contro-
versies at the highest level-with the present-day mid-1930s, he found
"the development to have been subject not to the law of evolution and
progress but, on the contrary, to the law of decline and deterioration"
(ibid.: 881).
What were the causes of this rapid regression, this trahisondes clercs?
Amin was convinced that the popularization of intellectual works fol-
lowed from a capitulation by the intellectual leadership to the "whim
of the masses" (hawan al-jumhur). The production of Islamic litera-
ture intended for mass consumption reflected the self-abnegation of
these intellectuals vis-a-vis the populist caprices of the masses, with
their debased and vulgar literary tastes (ibid.: 881-83). The price paid
by such intellectuals for their popularity was a high one: the loss of
intellectual independence and courage, "which do not heed public
opinion," as well as freedom of individual thought, and, ultimately,
the betrayal of their distinctive elitist mission in society. Their prior
struggle to introduce "high culture" into society through the education
and refinement of the masses had "ended with the crushing defeat
of the intellectual avant-garde" (ibid.: 883). Amin was well aware of
the new political conditions which emerged in the 1930s and placed
harsh sociocultural constraints on the free pursuit of intellectual cre-
ation: the pressure of the masses, who had attained a dominant posi-
tion in the literate sectors of society that consumed print culture and
politically influenced public opinion; the pervasive politicization of
literature and art; and the material threat faced by intellectuals "in
positions, ranks, and money," along with their fear that "their fol-
lowers [readers and consumers of their products] were abandoning
them in a time of distress" (ibid.). But to understand is not necessarily
to forgive. Amin still saw no reason for this disgraceful regression. In-
stead of fighting back, these intellectuals had actually contributed to
a situation of "vox populi vox Dei." As a result, claimed Amin, "mass
public opinion [had] grown stronger and more entrenched. It [had]
intensified and taken revenge. It [had] become the total authority. In
its face the faction of sincere intellectuals [had] sustained a crushing
defeat . . . [to the point where] their views [were] often dependent
on the views of [the mass], and their program ... set by its program.
Conformity . . . thus [took] the place of struggle, and hypocrisy ...
replaced sincerity" (ibid.)."
A somewhat different opposition reaction to the intellectual Islamic
11. See also the responses by Taha Husayn and Haykal to this criticism (Al-Risala
1936a: 921-22, 957-58; 1936b: 1004, 1039-40); and the reply by Ahmad Amin
(1936a).

literature was provided by Salama Musa. Musa and his monthly, al-
Majalla al-Jadida, faithfully expressed the views of the "outsiders." The
"horizon of expectations" they brought to Haykal's book was that of
a radical modernism striving for the complete Europeanization and
secularization of Egyptian culture and society (Musa 1935a, 1935b,
1938; see also Egger 1986: 169-207). Guided by this worldview, Musa
read Hayat Muhammad, and indeed all the Islamic writings of Taha
Husayn, Tawfiq al-Hakim, Ahmad Hasan al-Zayyat, and others, as a
dangerous manifestation of a cultural reaction impelled by an emo-
tional and irrational yearning to glorify the classical Islamic past. "The
return of Islam," "the Arab revival," the cult of Islamic heroes and
symbols, the worshiping of the Prophet and his life, and the orotund
rhetoric coupled with the anachronistic neoclassical Arabic language-
all threatened, in Musa's perception, to undermine the secular founda-
tions of the liberal political culture which the Egyptian society, particu-
larly its intellectuals and writers, had developed so assiduously until
recent years (Musa 1935a). It was precisely because of the popularity
of the Islamic wave and the enthusiastic reception accorded the intel-
lectuals' Islamic writings among broad segments of the reading public
that Musa found the danger to be both so concrete and so clearly im-
minent. Musa condemned the phenomenon out of hand. To combat it
he sought to reassert a Western liberal system of values grounded in
rationalism, pragmatism, and utilitarianism (ibid.: 11-13). The fash-
ionable obsession with "reviving" the lost Islamic-Arab heritage, he
warned, ran counter to the interests of Egypt's progress, welfare, and
modernity. Old Islamic-Arab literature, he wrote,
is first of all medievalliterature.We read it solely for our historicalbenefit.
Through it we cannot solve a single one of our present-dayproblems, for
it is totally sterile. It does nothing to help us understand the meaning of
freedom, independence, equality,and fraternity.... Yet freedom, social
reform, the struggle against povertyand despotism,and the thrust for sci-
entific study are the issues that preoccupyme today in the Cairo of 1935.
(Ibid.: 13)
Nor did Musa ignore the Coptic aspect. On this sensitive point he
aimed his critical barbs directly at Hayat Muhammad-this time not for
archaism, but for discrimination. "The fact that in recent years a large
group of secondary and luminary Muslim authors [had] produced di-
verse works on the Prophetic sira and biographies of the Companions
of the Prophet Muhammad" undercut the delicate balance that had
been worked out in Muslim-Copt relations in Egyptian culture and
society (Musa 1938: 85; see also 81-87). The resulting imbalance was
clearly discriminatory to the Coptic minority. Worst affected were Cop-
tic youngsters, for while Muslim youth could take pride in and draw
inspiration from the Islamic heroes being presented in a new and

relevant light in modern Islamic literature, Coptic youth were being

deprived of any comparable sources of pride and inspiration. "The
Copts [were] barred from producing modern writings that elucidated
the life of Jesus, the Apostles, or the other heroes of the Christian
Church like those that Haykal, Taha Husayn, Tawfiq al-Hakim, and
others . . . produced about the Prophet, his Companions, and the
other heroes of Islam" (ibid.: 85). Hayat Muhammadhad been written
for Muslims alone. For Musa, it was precisely the book's tremendous
success with the Muslim reading public that underscored the growing
inequality of and injustice toward the Copts in 1930s Egyptian culture
and politics (ibid.: 84-87).
Conclusion
As I have tried to show, the contemporaneous responses to Hayat
Muhammad were not uniform, and the differences among them
stemmed from the different "horizons of expectations" that pre-
vailed among readers, or "reading communities," when the book first
appeared. These reflected an extended and diversified range of ex-
periences and perceptions, of the different social origins, educational
backgrounds, political affiliations, ideological commitments, cultural
predilections, and literary tastes which characterized the broad, edu-
cated Egyptian public in the last half of the 1930s. However, the
diversified reception accorded to Haykal's biography of Muhammad
should not blind us to the common interpretive elements to be found
among virtually all readers. The identification of these "common
themes" is important, as they can lead us to more general conclusions
regarding the public's attitude toward Hayat Muhammadand, beyond
those, to a deeper understanding of the intellectual shift to Islamic
subjects that occurred in the 1930s.
The first common element, which stands out clearly among the
readers' responses, is that, for most readers, there was no "crisis of ori-
entation" among the intellectuals that had ostensibly thrust them into
a state of intellectual anarchy, ideological confusion, or cultural re-
actionaryism (Safran's thesis). With the possible exception of Ahmad
Amin, virtually all readers interpreted the intellectual shift as a posi-
tive and legitimate cultural reorientation which was also a functional
one in terms of the changes that were occurring in Egyptian culture
and society. As they saw it, this shift was guided by the positive motiva-
tion and foresight of these intellectuals, who were very conscious of the
need to adapt their intellectual modes and messages to the changing
historical context of Egypt in the 1930s. Even such a salient opposition
commentator as Salama Musa, who took a completely negative stance
toward this reorientation, did not deny its authenticity in the sense
that it was structured by the profound changes sweeping through the

whole society. Moreover, for the majority of readers, these intellectu-

als (and Haykal, above all) successfully posited an attractive, suitably
modernist Muslim alternative, one that stood an excellent chance of
being favorably received by the public. For such readers, this alter-
native would supersede the intellectuals' previous Western cultural
orientation, which they now perceived as dysfunctional and irrele-
vant. The intellectual metamorphosis was thus seen as welcome and
legitimate, as a reorientation with which many groups in society could
sympathize and identify because (in contrast to the recent past) it cre-
ated the desired common ideological ground between intellectuals and
broad sectors of literate society.
At the same time, however, it would be incorrect to portray the
readers' view of the shift as a merely tactical step taken at the level of
the adoption of new methods and the utilization of new terminology
by Haykal or the other intellectuals, who "were trying to achieve their
previous goals by different means" (Smith's thesis). We have no evi-
dence that his readers attributed instrumental motivations of this kind
to Haykal or that they took note of his own inner ambivalence regard-
ing the shift. For them-meaning, in this case, most readers, whether
they viewed the shift sympathetically and even enthusiastically or with
reservations and even hostility-Haykal's reorientation was substan-
tive: a deliberate, strategic move with long-term implications. Haykal
had turned his back on the Westernist and Pharaonic cultural orienta-
tions whose chief spokesman he had once been; in their place he had
systematically restored Islam as the central cultural orientation and
the primary civilizational heritage of both Egypt and the Arab world.
But, this having been said, what needs to be stressed is that, for many
of these readers, Haykal's distinctiveness and genuineness lay in his
extraordinarily skillful reshaping of the traditional sira into a modern
literary product that succeeded as a popular, even fashionable, genre
and that rapidly became a model for emulation by other contempo-
rary modernist intellectuals. Haykal had accomplished this, moreover,
by drawing on scientific methods and Western tools of historical re-
search. In their eyes, then, Haykal had produced a cultural artifact by
felicitously fusing old with new, traditional with modern, the authen-
tic with the progressive-an artifact which successfully defended the
Islamic-Arab heritage precisely by renewing and modernizing it and
by adapting it to the present-day situation. In doing so, Haykal had
met the cultural expectations of those broad reading communities: on
the one hand, they were repulsed by tradition in its orthodox and
reactionary mode, but they were also estranged from a secular West-
ern culture that they found "alien"; on the other hand, they sought
an apt cultural synthesis between their Islamic-Arab heritage and the
contemporary culture of the modern world. It was at this junction

that a fusion of "horizons of expectations" was forged between the

author and the various constituencies of his reading public. Haykal's
intentions and expectations of producing a modern historical version
of the Prophet's biography met with positive responses from readers,
who praised him for having produced a work which was well suited to
their literary tastes and their cultural norms and preferences. Their
response in this regard also supports Smith's thesis (in contrast to
Safran's) that Haykal intended his book to be a nontraditional, mod-
ernist, progressive, and rationalist text (in order to counter, on the one
hand, the activities of Christian missionaries and Orientalists, and,
on the other hand, the stagnation of Muslim orthodox conservatives).
Yet, as already noted, readers did not take this motivation as implying
a tactical or instrumental move on Haykal's part; on the contrary, his
Islamic writings were seen as having created a new cultural discourse
which would be common to the intellectual elite and to broad sectors
of the reading public.
Finally (the interpretations of Safran and Smith notwithstanding),
the nationalist factor, namely, the need to "shape an identity," to "re-
store the ideal past," and to "revive the genuine heritage," was per-
ceived as crucially important to this intellectual shift. In the reviewers'
representations, at least, Hayat Muhammadand similar texts concern-
ing the rediscovery of early Islam fulfilled the function of cultural
reassertion, defended the collective self-image, and reimagined the
"imagined community." Underlying these processes was a modern in-
terpretation of Islam and its transformation into a dynamic force in
the modern national culture and identity of Egypt and the Arab world.
At a more theoretical level, the poststructuralist position-"there is

no dialogue between writer and reader" (Harlan 1989: 587; see also
585-99), and "the reader [alone] writes the text" (Derrida, quoted in
Crosman 1980: 149) because, with "the death of the author" (Barthes
1977, 1975), "the author vanishes [and] his or her intentions dis-
appear" (Harlan 1989: 587)-is not affirmed by the Egyptian case
under discussion. Nor does it support this position as articulated by
Paul Ricoeur (1981: 146-47; see also 145-81): "The reader is absent
from the act of writing; the writer is absent from the act of reading.
The text thus produces a double eclipse of the reader and the writer.
It thereby replaces the relations of dialogue." 2 Clearly, this does not
apply to the "contemporary readers" of HayatMuhammadin mid- 1930s
Egypt. True, as I have tried to show, the reader, or "community of
12. For Ricoeur (1981: 147), "to read a book is to consider its author as already
dead and the book as posthumous. For it is when the author is dead that the
relation to the book becomes complete and, as it were, intact."

readers," has autonomy in interpreting the text, in creating "other"

meanings than those intended by the author (or those created by other
interpreters in the reading arena). But autonomy does not mean a
relationship constrained by a lack of contact, communication, or dia-
logue with the author, his text, or his intentions in writing that text; it
means, rather, a definitive role in shaping both text and authorial in-
tentions through sharing in the control of their public interpretation
and social reception.
Far more germane to our case is the approach of Wolfgang Iser
(1980a: 107-34; 1980b; see also Suleiman 1980: 22-26; Holub 1984:
92-106), which posits an interaction between text and reader, an ex-
change of dialogue between author and reader, as the basis for our
understanding of the text's role in culture and history. His readers
were not "absent" from Haykal's "act of writing" Hayat Muhammad,
and he took them even further into account when he wrote a revised,
expanded second edition of the work. And although these readers, for
their part, interpreted the book each in his own way and in accordance
with his own distinctive "horizon of expectations" or "experiences,"
none was entirely impervious to its impact or wholly dissociated from
the effect of its author's intentions. Nor was Haykal "absent" from
their "act of reading." Even though Hayat Muhammadallowed for a
high degree of "free" interpretive variation, it was ultimately the text
itself (including the authorial intentions) which directed, at least in
part, the reader's realization of it. The text demarcated, however gen-
erally and loosely, the boundaries of its interpretation, determining
the extent of the repertoire of meanings with which it could be im-
bued. Thus, the meaning of the text was conditioned historically by
its readers, but under the guidance of textual instructions. And, in
the Egyptian context, to the degree that the reading public's interpre-
tation constituted the primary authority to define Hayat Muhammad's
place in the culture and the society, the book itself, and Haykal as its
author, exercised a defined influence on those readers, on the evolu-
tion of their interpretation, and on the manner in which they utilized
both the book and its interpretation in that culture and that society.
References
'Abduh,Muhammad
MuhammadHusaynHaykalBaynaal-Amswa-al-
1939 (A.H. 1358) "Al-Duktur
Yawm,"Al-Nadhir (Jumadaal-Ula29): 3-4.
Al-Ahram
1935 (16 May):1, 7.
Amin,Ahmad
1936a"IlaAkhiTahaHusayn,"Al-Risala(15June):963-65.
1936b"Al-NaqdAydan,"Al-Risala(1June):881-83.

Badawi, M. M.
1985 "Islam in Modern Egyptian Literature," Modern Arabic Literature and the
West, 44-65 (London: Ithaca Press).
al-Banna, Hasan
1929 "Al-Sabil ila al-Islah fi al-Sharq," Al-Fath (25 April): 1-3.
1935 "Al-Duktur Haykal wa-Kitab Hayat Muhammad," Jaridat al-Ikhwan al-
Muslimin (21 May): 30.
Barthes, Roland
1975 The Pleasure of the Text, translated by Richard Miller (New York: Hill
and Wang).
1977 "The Death of the Author," Image-Music-Text, translated by Stephen
Heath, 142-48 (New York: Hill and Wang).
Berque, Jacques
1972 Egypt, Imperialism and Revolution (London: Faber and Faber).
Busool, Assad N.
1978 "The Development of Taha Husayn's Islamic Thought," The Muslim World
68: 259-84.
Certeau, Michel de
1980 L'Invention du quotidien. Vol. 1, Arts defaire (Paris: Gallimard).
Chartier, Roger
1982 "Intellectual History or Sociocultural History? The French Trajectories,"
in LaCapra and Kaplan 1982: 13-46.
Chejne, Anwar G.
1960 "The Use of History by Modern Arab Writers," The Middle EastJournal 14:
387-98.
Colombe, Marcel
1951 L'Evolution de l'Egypt: 1924-1950 (Paris: Editions G. P. Maisonneuve).
Crosman, Robert
1980 "Do Readers Make Meaning?" in The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience
and Interpretation, edited by Susan R. Suleiman and Inge Crosman, 149-64
(Princeton: Princeton University Press).
Darnton, Robert
1984 "Readers Respond to Rousseau: The Fabrication of Romantic Sensitivity,"
The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History, 215-82
(London: Allen Lane/Penguin Books).
Deeb, Marius
1979 Party Politics in Egypt: The Wafd and Its Rivals, 1919-1939 (London: Ithaca
Press).
Egger, Vernon
1986 A Fabian in Egypt: Salama Musa and the Rise of the Professional Classes in Egypt,
1909-1939 (New York: University Press of America).
Erlich, Haggai
1989 Students and University in Twentieth Century Egyptian Politics (London: Frank
Cass).
Al-Fath
1935 (A.H. 1354) (6 Safar): 16.
Fish, Stanley
1980 Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
Fu'ad, Ni'mat Ahmad
1966 Qimam Adabiyya: Dirasat wa-Tarajim lial-'Alam al-Adab al-Misri al-Hadith
(Cairo).

Gershoni, Israel
1983 "Between Ottomanism and Egyptianism:The Evolution of'National Sen-
timent' in the Cairene Middle Class as Reflected in Najib Mahfuz's 'Bayn
al-Qasrayn,'" Asian and African Studies 17: 227-63.
1985 "Egyptian Intellectual History and Egyptian Intellectuals in the Interwar
Period," Asian and African Studies 19: 333-64.
1987 "The Role of Periodicals in Shaping the Intellectual and Cultural Life in
Egypt between the Two World Wars," Bulletin of the Israeli Academic Center in
Cairo 8: 5-8.
Gershoni, Israel, and James P.Jankowski
Forthcoming Beyond the Nile Valley:Arabism, Islam and Egyptian Nationalism, 1930-
1945. Cambridge Middle East Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press).
al-Ghamrawi, Muhammad Ahmad
1939 "Al-Qadimwa-al-Jadid,"Al-Risala(2 January): 14-15; (23 January): 166-
69.
Grunebaum, G. E. von
1961 Islam: Essays in the Nature and Growth of a Cultural Tradition (London: Rout-
ledge and Kegan Paul).
al-Hakim, Tawfiq
1935 "Al-Difac'an al-Islam,"Al-Risala(15 April): 576-80.
1936 Muhammad (Cairo).
Harlan, David
1989 "Intellectual History and the Return of Literature,"TheAmericanHistorical
Review94: 581-609.
Haykal, Muhammad Husayn
1932 "Kayfa wa-Limadha Aktubu 'Hayat Muhammad,"' Mulhaq al-Siyasa
(23 May): 1.
1935 Hayat Muhammad (Cairo).
1937 Fi Manzil al-Wahy (Cairo).
1963 Hayat Muhammad. 8th ed. (Cairo).
1977 Mudhakkiratfi al-Siyasa al-Misriyya, Vol. 1 (Cairo).
Al-Hilal
1935 "Hayat Muhammad"(1 May):869-71.
1936 "Muhammad"(1 March): 594.
Holub, Robert C.
1984 Reception Theory: A Critical Introduction (New York and London: Methuen
Press).
Husayn, Muhammad M.
1956 Al-Ittijahat al-Wataniyyafi al-Adab al-Mu'asir, Vol. 2 (Cairo).
Husayn, Taha
1933 'Ala Hamish al-Sira, Vol. 1 (Cairo).
Iser, Wolfgang
1974 The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to
Beckett(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press).
1980a The Act of Reading: A Theoryof AestheticResponse (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press).
1980b "Interaction between Text and Reader,"in TheReaderin the Text:Essays
on Audience and Interpretation, edited by Susan R. Suleiman and Inge Crosman,
106-19 (Princeton: Princeton University Press).
Issawi, Charles
1954 Egypt at Mid-Century: An Economic Survey (London: Oxford University
Press).

Jankowski, James P.
1975 Egypt's Young Rebels: "YoungEgypt," 1933-1952 (Stanford: Hoover Institu-
tion Press).
Jauss, Hans Robert
1982 Toward an Aesthetics of Reception (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press).
Johansen, Baber
1967 Muhammad Husain Haikal: Europa und der Orient im Weltbildeines aegyptischen
Liberalen(Beirut: Franz Steiner Verlag).
Kelley, Donald R.
1987 "Horizons of Intellectual History: Retrospect, Circumspect, Prospect,"
Journal of the History of Ideas 68: 143-69.
al-Khatib, Muhibb al-Din
1935 [A.H. 1354] "Hayat Muhammad," Al-Muqtataf (1 June): 118-21; and Al-Fath
(Rabi' al-Awwal 12): 8-10.
LaCapra, Dominick
1982 "Rethinking Intellectual History and Reading Texts," in LaCapra and
Kaplan 1982: 47-85.
1985 Historyand Criticism(Ithaca: Cornell University Press).
1989 Soundings in Critical Theory (Ithaca: Cornell University Press).
LaCapra, Dominick, and Steven L. Kaplan, eds.
1982 Modern European Intellectual History: Reappraisals and New Perspectives (Ithaca
and London: Cornell University Press).
al-Lubban, Mustafa Ahmad al-Rifa'i
1935 (A.H. 1354) "Al-Duktur Haykal wa-Rasul Allah," Al-Fath (Sha'aban 17):
12-14.
Al-Majalla al-Jadida
1938 (April): 94-104.
Majallati
1935 (1 November): 1142-43.
Mitchell, Richard P.
1969 The Society of the Muslim Brothers (London: Oxford University Press).
Muhammad, Muhammad Sayyid
1982 Al-Zayyat wa-al-Risala (Riyadh).
Musa, Salama
1935a "Al-Lughawa-al-Adab al-'Arabiyan,"Al-Majallaal-Jadida(1 September):
9-13.
1935b "Qimat al-Lugha fi al-Tafkir,"Al-Majallaal-Jadida(1 October): 8-12.
1938 "Masa'il al-Shabab al-Misriyyin al-Iqtisadiyya wa-al-Qawmiyya wa-al-
Ruhiyya wa-al-jinsiyya,"Al-Majallaal-Jadida(1 April): 80-87.
al-Najjar, Husayn Fawzi
1970 Haykal wa-Hayat Muhammad: Manhajfi Dirasat al-Ta'rikh al-Islami (Cairo).
al-Najjar, Muhammad 'Ali
1935 "Anzar fi Kitab Hayat Muhammad," Al-Risala (17 June): 999-1000.
Nur al-Islam
1935 Vol. 6: 136-44.
Oriente Moderno
1935 Vol. 15: 289-90.
al-Qasimi, 'Abd Allah Ibn 'Ali al-Najdi
1935 Naqd Kitab Hayat Muhammad (Cairo).
Quraishi, Zaheer M.
1967 Liberal Nationalism in Egypt: Rise and Fall of the Wafd Party (Delhi: Jamal
Printing Press).

Ramadan, 'Abd al-'Azim Muhammad

1968 Tatawwur al-Haraka al-Wataniyyafi Misr, 1918-1936 (Cairo).
1981 Dirasatfi Ta'rikh Misr al-Mu'asir (Cairo).
Ricoeur, Paul
1981 Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, edited and translated by John B.
Thompson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Rida, Muhammad Rashid
1935 "Kitab Hayat-Muhammad,"Al-Manar(3 May): 787-93 (part 1); (1 July):
64-72 (part 2).
Al-Risala
1935a (15 April): 637-39.
1935b (13 May): 798.
1935c (20 May): 837.
1936a (8 June): 921-22, 957-58.
1936b (22June): 1004, 1039-40.
Safran, Nadav
1961 Egypt in Search of Political Community (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-
sity Press).
Al-Sarkha
1935 (30 March): 7, 14.
Semah, David
1974 Four Egyptian Literary Critics (Leiden: E. J. Brill).
Skinner, Quentin
1988 "Motives, Intentions and the Interpretation of Texts," in Meaning and
Context: Quentin Skinner and His Critics, edited by James Tully (Cambridge:
Polity Press).
Smith, Charles D.
1973 "The 'Crisis of Orientation': The Shift of Egyptian Intellectuals to Islamic
Subjects in the 1930's," InternationalJournal of Middle East Studies 4: 382-410.
1983 Islam and the Searchfor Social Order in Modern Egypt: A Biography of Muham-
mad Husayn Haykal (Albany: State University of New York Press).
Suleiman, Susan R.
1980 "Introduction: Varieties of Audience-Oriented Criticism," in The Reader in
the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation, edited by Susan R. Suleiman and
Inge Crosman, 3-45 (Princeton: Princeton University Press).
Taha, 'Ali Mahmud
1972 "Sadan al-Wahy." Reprinted in Diwan 'Ali Mahmud Taha, 358-63 (Beirut).
Toews, John E.
1987 "Intellectual History after the Linguistic Turn: The Autonomy of Mean-
ing and the Irreducibility of Experience," The American Historical Review 92:
879-907.
Vatikiotis, P. J.
1969 The Modern History of Egypt (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson).
Wadi, Taha 'Umran
1969 Al-Duktur Muhammad Husayn Haykal: Hayatuhu wa-Turathuhu al-Adabi
(Cairo).
Wessels, Antonie
1972 A Modern Arabic Biography of Muhammad: A Critical Study of Muhammad
Husayn Haykal's "Hayat Muhammad" (Leiden: E. J. Brill).
Zaharan, Muhammad M.
1935 [A.H. 1354] Al-Manar 34 (3 May): 789-90; Al-Fath (6 Safar): 16.

al-Zayyat,Ahmad Hasan
1933 Editorial, Al-Risala(15 January): 1.
1936 "Muhammad,"Al-Risala(3 February): 161-62.
1938 "Al-Risalafi 'Ammiha al-Sadis,"Al-Risala(3 January): 1-2.


Gershoni Reception Haykal&#39;s Bio

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Gershoni Reception Haykal&#39;s Bio

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

http://www.jstor.org/stable/1773166 .

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 24 Jan 2015 14:26:20 PM

We must recall that any text is the product of a read-

Abstract This paper is an attempt to rethink the much-discussed topic of

PoeticsToday15:2 (Summer 1994). Copyright ? 1994 by The Porter Institute for

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 24 Jan 2015 14:26:20 PM

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 24 Jan 2015 14:26:20 PM

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 24 Jan 2015 14:26:20 PM

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 24 Jan 2015 14:26:20 PM

According to Smith, Hayat Muhammad,far from reflecting any sub-

3. However, it should be added that Smith's contextual analysis is not exhaustive;

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 24 Jan 2015 14:26:20 PM

Egypt of a modern Islamic society, humanistic and progressive in its

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 24 Jan 2015 14:26:20 PM

account) whether Haykal's strategy to transmit his reformist message

2. The Autonomy of the Reader as a Producer

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 24 Jan 2015 14:26:20 PM

reader's mind. Thus the intellectual transformation that centered on

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 24 Jan 2015 14:26:20 PM

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 24 Jan 2015 14:26:20 PM

(Chartier 1982: 37-38). Referring in particular to the performance of

4. For various methodological elaborations on this approach, see also Dominick

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 24 Jan 2015 14:26:20 PM

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 24 Jan 2015 14:26:20 PM

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 24 Jan 2015 14:26:20 PM

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 24 Jan 2015 14:26:20 PM

rived from four different "horizons of expectations." Fundamentally,

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 24 Jan 2015 14:26:20 PM

Haykal's unswervingly rationalistic and objective portrait also allowed

7. This "officialstatement,"which was part of al-Risala'sprogram to unify the cul-

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 24 Jan 2015 14:26:20 PM

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 24 Jan 2015 14:26:20 PM

it constituted the modernist movement's recognition of its failure to

that an author who identifies himself first as a Muslimand secondly as an

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 24 Jan 2015 14:26:20 PM

mous commercial success. Here, HayatMuhammadwas interpreted as a

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 24 Jan 2015 14:26:20 PM

ing with Hayat Muhammad"(ibid.). Al-Risala's reporter had no doubt

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 24 Jan 2015 14:26:20 PM

Muhibb al-Din al-Khatib and the popular Islamicist weekly that he

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 24 Jan 2015 14:26:20 PM

would be particularly useful to "the young reader, . . . accustomed

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 24 Jan 2015 14:26:20 PM

9. He signed himself, at the end of his article, "tilmidh" (pupil, student).

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 24 Jan 2015 14:26:20 PM

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 24 Jan 2015 14:26:20 PM

of an advance in thought and research. It will not be long before we

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 24 Jan 2015 14:26:20 PM

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 24 Jan 2015 14:26:20 PM

to be accurate in every respect. "I see nothing in this chapter which

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 24 Jan 2015 14:26:20 PM

characterized, in his view, by genuine ideational ferment, dynamic

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 24 Jan 2015 14:26:20 PM

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 24 Jan 2015 14:26:20 PM

relevant light in modern Islamic literature, Coptic youth were being

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 24 Jan 2015 14:26:20 PM

whole society. Moreover, for the majority of readers, these intellectu-

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 24 Jan 2015 14:26:20 PM

that a fusion of "horizons of expectations" was forged between the

At a more theoretical level, the poststructuralist position-"there is

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 24 Jan 2015 14:26:20 PM

readers," has autonomy in interpreting the text, in creating "other"

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 24 Jan 2015 14:26:20 PM

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 24 Jan 2015 14:26:20 PM

Gershoni Reception Haykal's Bio

Gershoni Reception Haykal's Bio