Ibn Khaldun

The first clue to an understanding of Marsafi's purpose is the book's title. 'Eight words' refers to the eight political terms discussed, but it also refers, I think, to politics itself. The reference is to the so-called 'ring of eight words' found in popular wisdom literature and political writings, in which the nature of the political was always expressed. Rifa`a al-Tahtawi's major work Manahij al-albab al-misriyya , for example, which had appeared a decade before Marsafi's text, began its interpretation of the meaning of politics by citing the circle of eight words.^[13] The eight words denoted the eight parts of the political world, with the meaning of each one interpreted in terms of the next: ' ... the sovereign is an order supported by soldiers, the soldiers are assistants sustained by means of wealth, wealth is nourishment gathered by the subjects' and so on, so that 'each term is tied to the next and the last returns to the first, joining them in a circle whose end is not marked'.^[14] The circle derives from the same origins as Aristotle's golden octagon, but the source for Arab scholars of the nineteenth century was the work of the great fourteenth-century North African writer, Ibn Khaldun. Ibn Khaldun's seven-volume study of the conditions and history of human social life, Kitab al-ibar , had been one of the first works published on the

new presses set up in Cairo in the 1860s, in the first printed edition of the complete text.^[15] The work was being read among students and intellectuals, in particular at the new teachers' training college, where both Marsafi and Muhammad Abduh are known to have lectured on Ibn Khaldun.^[16]

Book one of Ibn Khaldun's work, known as The Muqaddima , presented his theory of human society, a theory addressed to the political crisis of his own age. The entire theory of the governing of human communities, he wrote, if studied with due attention, could be understood as a commentary upon the ring of eight words.^[17] Marsafi, taking his title perhaps from this passage, was also writing in a period of political crisis. In many ways, of course, the crisis of Marsafi's age was unique, for the penetration of European capital had caused an unprecedented weakening of the kind of local authority whose nature I want to describe. Yet the weaknesses of this authority were something generic, and were described better than anywhere in the work of Ibn Khaldun. It was an authority, in the first place, as I suggested in an earlier chapter, that seemed by nature to be unstable. Its tendency was to expand continuously, until its strength began to degenerate and it proceeded to fragment itself and become dispersed. Its effectiveness always decreased towards its edges, being weaker in the countryside than in the city and weakest of all where the countryside met the desert. Its strength lay in the strength of those who ruled, and the strength of the bonds between them. In the second place, it was an authority that made particular use of the authoritative interpretation of texts. Texts too carried their own authority, an authority which mirrored that of politics in its tendency to degenerate over time and become corrupt. The proper preservation and interpretation of the authority of writing was in this sense an essential resource of political power. The crisis and collapse of political power, in turn, was addressed by Ibn Khaldun in terms of the degeneration and collapse of scholarship.

Marsafi's own intellectual career was part of an attempt, on the part of himself and other Azhar-trained scholars drawn into the educational politics, to extend and make secure political authority in Egypt by means of the revival of learning. He wished to draw on Ibn Khaldun's discussion of scholarship, in an effort to revive on the basis of existing notions of authorship and the power of writing a political authority that worked through literature. The attempt failed, but the failure can throw light on the change in the nature of writing and politics that was to take place.

The subject of Marsafi's lectures was the art of proper writing in Arabic, taught through the study of its literature. Marsafi had revived through his lectures the study of an enormous range of Arabic literature, both poetry and prose, which most al-Azhar scholars, entrenching themselves intellectually during the upheavals of the previous fifty years or more, had neglected.^[18] The purpose of this learning was more political than the term 'literature'

might suggest. The body of literature being taught was known as adab , a word meaning manners, politeness, or propriety. 'Polite letters' was a literature that embodied the manners of a threatened social order and the values of an imperilled social class. There was an adab appropriate to every social position, establishing in life the patterns of proper conduct.^[19] The study of polite letters would establish among people the boundaries and the patterns of social action. 'The real meaning of adab ', Marsafi explained, 'is that each should know the limits of his position, and not overstep them.'^[20]

The manner in which a proper learning would serve a political authority was made clear in Eight Words . The book was introduced as a sharh , a work of textual criticism, which would interpret the real meanings of important words.^[21] The book was full of references to written sources whose texts were grafted into its own, including the Quran, the Traditions of the Prophet, an enormous range of works in Arabic literature, and even a number of works in French.^[22] But these were not its only sources. Political activity itself was a sort of reading, that is, an interpretation of words which required criticism.

Marsafi understood the political crisis within which he wrote as the attempt by particular groups to give particular meanings to words, such as liberty and injustice.^[23] The liability of these words was to be misused and misinterpreted. Like all words, they carried the risk of being placed out of context, or spoken in the wrong sense. This verbal liability was not the result of the prevailing political disorder, but the symptom and nature of the crisis. There was no analytic separation in this approach between writing and politics, or between theory and practice. Every political act was an interpretation of words, and thus a textual act, a reading. Marsafi's own purpose was to interpret the 'real meaning' (haqiqa ) of every word he treated, and from there to see that meaning 'realised' (haqqaqa, tahaqqaqa ) in political life. The political world was not a posited object, independent of written language. Words were not labels that simply named and represented political ideas or objects, but interpretations whose force was to be made real.^[24] The scholar responded, therefore, to a socio-political crisis such as the events of 1881–82 with attempts to provide the proper interpretation of words.

Employing and reworking the writing of Ibn Khaldun, Marsafi said that besides the specialised knowledge required in every occupation there was a general body of understandings (umum al-ma`arif ) that all individuals must acquire. The survival and well-being of the community depended on the acquisition of such shared understandings, for it was these that enabled the separate social groups to think of their work, in its variety and diversity, as the labour of a single person. Without this conception of a single body that a shared understanding produces, the 'realisation of the community'

(tahaqquq al-umma ) was not possible. It was through its common learning, shared among its members, that the community itself is distinguished from other groups. The danger for a community that failed to realise these shared meanings was that the community would split into separate factions and fall into the hands of foreigners.^[25] It was to counter such a crisis that Marsafi wrote.

Marsafi concluded Eight Words by stating that intelligent men in the community were to pay particular attention, within these understandings, to what concerned the habits and character of the people, and distinguish between the good and the bad; and that those who taught in the new schools were to make patriotism (al-wataniyya ) the basis of their instruction. Every trade and occupation was to be taught in a way which brought out that the work is in the service of the community. By using the word 'patriotism' frequently in class, teachers could help to realise its meaning, so that the community would deserve its name and become one in reality.^[26]

To sum up so far then, Marsafi's book was suspicious of printing and suggestive of Ibn Khaldun. Printing was part of the general problem of the 'spreading of words' that seemed somehow the nature of the political crisis. Political authority, in turn, was associated with the authority of writing. Extending the authority of writing, through schools and proper learning, was the means to restore and make secure political authority. The importance of Ibn Khaldun was that he addressed the general question of authority in terms of the question of authorship, thus directly linking the political crisis to the issue of writing. To understand the nature of this link, I want to compare what writing was, for Ibn Khaldun and for Husayn al-Marsafi, with our own understanding of how words work. I will begin with certain strange assumptions of our own.

This Ideal Existence

In the events of 1880–82, Ahmad Urabi and his fellow political leaders called themselves al-hizb al-watani . A hizb is a party or faction, and the phrase meant the patriotic or nationalist faction, those who were opposed to the control of Egypt by foreigners, whether Turkish or European. In Eight Words Husayn al-Marsafi warned the nationalists against dividing the country into hostile ethnic groups, invoking for the purpose some further associations of the word hizb . Compared to the unity implied by the word umma , which means community or nation, Marsafi argued, the word hizb implied self-interest and factionalism (tahazzub ). The word's associations were brought out to discredit the politics of those who used it. Political argument always worked through this power of language, seeking out the contradictions in words or their ability to evoke alternative meanings. Urabi

in turn tried to bring out different associations of the word. When he was put on trial after the defeat of the nationalist movement by the British, his interrogators asked him why he had allowed himself to be called 'the leader of al-hizb al-watani '. Urabi replied by associating the word hizb with the fractures running through the whole country, and its domination by foreigners. The inhabitants of Egypt, he pointed out, are divided into separate races each of which could be considered a hizb . 'The native people of the country (ahl al-bilad ) are a hizb in themselves', he argued before the judges, adding that 'they are called "the peasants" in order to humiliate them'.^[27]

Urabi's statements in court are quoted in the article on the modern term 'Hizb' in the Encyclopaedia of Islam , with a very different approach to language. The article's purpose is to show how the word hizb , 'albeit slowly, unconsciously and hesitatingly ... has come to be stabilized in meaning and to signify unambiguously a political party'. Urabi's powerful claim that both the nationalist leadership and the Egyptian people could be called a hizb is cited to illustrate what is called the originally 'ambiguous and fluctuating' meaning of the term. The word 'stands in Urabi's mind for two different meanings', says the Encyclopaedia , 'which he cannot clearly distinguish'. Since Urabi's time, it can then be shown, the word has evolved, 'albeit slowly', from this state of confusion to one of clarity - a movement, in other words, from hesitation to certainty, from ambiguity to unambiguousness, from instability to stability, and from unconsciousness, it is implied, to political awareness. The movement traced by the Encyclopaedia , moreover, is not just the history of a word. The word stands in people's minds for a meaning, and its development is taken to represent the gradual development of this meaning, this political mind.^[28]

There are two assumptions that govern this approach to language, neither of them fully shared by Urabi or his contemporaries. The first is that the proper nature of words is to be clear, stable and univocal, and that a word acquires more power the closer it comes to this ideal. The second is that the study of words is the study of some larger abstraction for which they stand - the political mind or culture or meaning of a certain community.