What 'Isa ibn Hisham Told Us. Muhammad al-Muwaylihi
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of ʿĪsā ibn Hishām as the narrator of a sarcastic piece in the form of a fictional conversation between three well-known Egyptian political figures and holders of Egyptian ministerial office, Fakhrī Pāshā, Buṭrus Pāshā, and Maẓlūm Pāshā, about the latest developments in the Sudanese War. Quite apart from the obviously critical posture that the article adopts, of interest here is the process of fictionalizing the commentary and also the invocation of an illustrious name from the heritage of Arabic pre-modern narrative, ʿĪsā ibn Hishām, the narrator of and often participant in the famous collection of maqāmāt composed centuries earlier by Badīʿ al-Zamān al-Hamadhānī (358–98/969–1007). Given that the contents of newspapers usually brought (and indeed bring) almost instantaneous reactions from their readerships, we have to assume that the initial foray into this type of composition was well received, in that it was followed in quick succession by three others, all of them relating to the Sudanese War and the involvement (or rather non-involvement) of the Egyptian government and its ministers in what was projected as a joint enterprise (the so-called Anglo-Egyptian Sudan). The significance of these four initial articles introduced by ʿĪsā ibn Hishām is firstly that they are directly concerned with one particular aspect of Egyptian political life in the final years of the nineteenth century—the Sudanese war—which is completely missing from the published book text of Ḥadīth ʿĪsā ibn Hishām to appear later (1907). In addition, the final article of the four appears just one week before the first “episode” of Fatrah min al-Zaman, the series that, in heavily edited and rewritten form, was later to become the text of Ḥadīth ʿĪsā ibn Hishām. One is left to wonder whether this initial set of four articles (Miṣbāḥ al-sharq 21, 23, 24, and 30) was a kind of “dry run” for what was to become a much longer project—even though it is almost certain that, at this initial stage, Muḥammad al-Muwayliḥī himself could have had no idea of the runaway success that was to greet his work nor the length of time that weekly publication of episodes would involve.
The first episode of the series of articles entitled Fatrah min al-Zaman appeared in issue 31 of Miṣbāḥ al-sharq (November 17, 1898). The new title and the fact that ʿĪsā ibn Hishām, the narrator who is wandering in a graveyard, encounters a Pāshā from the era of Muḥammad ʿAlī, clearly implies that something new and different is intended, although the existence of the four previous articles also implies a clear and continuing linkage to current events. Another feature that marks this episode as being something different is the author’s virtuoso use of the traditional style known as sajʿ, literally the cooing of a dove, but used to represent the ancient style of cadenced and rhyming prose that is first encountered in the pre-Islamic era in the utterances of preachers and soothsayers, then found as the primary stylistic feature of the Qurʾanic revelations, and later adopted by Badīʿ al-Zamān al-Hamadhānī in his innovative narrative genre, the maqāmah. Over the course of the series—spread out over four years in total—almost every original episode begins with an extended passage of sajʿ, more often than not setting the scene and establishing the context.
The initial four episodes of Fatrah min al-Zaman were published in a flurry, one week after another, suggesting that their author had a basic “plot” in mind for at least the initial encounter of his Egyptian narrator and the resurrected Pāshā with the complexities of Egyptian law—a French-based system being applied to Egyptians during a British occupation. At the same time however, he clearly needed to assess the reaction of the continually growing readership of the newspaper to this new experiment, one that combined astute observation of late nineteenth-century occupied Cairo with a style redolent of the most famous of pre-modern Arabic narratives.40 Bearing in mind the reaction to both the original episodes and the subsequent book, one has to assume that the response was extremely positive. The episodes therefore continued after a five-week gap. The trials and tribulations of the Pāshā following his arrest for assault—his court case and eventual acquittal, and his quest for the misappropriated endowment that he had bequeathed to future generations—were recounted in a series of articles that take us to March 1899. What is significant in view of our current concern with the textual history of the narrative is that the publication sequence is interrupted with an episode in Miṣbāḥ al-sharq 40 (January 19, 1899) which is entitled “The Sudanese Government Monopoly” and involves yet another conversation between a newspaper reporter and a minister in the Egyptian government about events in the Sudan; in other words, we see a return to the topic dealt with in the four episodes preceding the opening episode of Fatrah min al-Zaman. Here is how this intrusion is justified by the author:
ʿĪsā ibn Hishām told us: I heard a story about a minister concerned with that topic which is on everyone’s mind at the moment. This happened when a newspaper reporter came to see him to try to get the benefit of his enlightened views and learn some accurate information about the new government in the Sudan. Because it seems to me so remarkable, I have decided to relay it to our readers immediately before we go back to the story of the Pāshā and his trial.
The insertion of this article into the sequence of episodes involving ʿĪsā ibn Hishām’s narration of the Pāshā’s encounter with the Egyptian legal system is certainly a symptom of the vagaries of serialized publication—as the careers of earlier generations of novelists in Europe can readily illustrate. But the insertion also shows that the situation in the Sudan was a preoccupation of the Egyptian press at the time when Muḥammad al-Muwayliḥī began to publish his narrative, and that it is clearly reflected in the original sequence of articles.
This concern with the Sudan is also responsible for another break in the publication sequence, but this time for a different reason. In ʿĪsā ibn Hishām’s Fatrah min al-Zaman narrative, the Pāshā is both emotionally and physically exhausted after his experiences with the law. A period of rest and contemplation is recommended, and it coincides with an actual occurrence of the plague in Egypt. Several episodes are thus concerned with medicine, the plague, and a resort to literature as a source of relaxation and contemplation. This brings the publication sequence of episodes to June 1899, at which point Muḥammad al-Muwayliḥī pauses. The gap is filled by his father, Ibrāhīm, who publishes three episodes of a narrative of his own, Mirʾāt al-ʿĀlam (Mirror of the World), where there is also an intense focus on the poor conditions under which the Egyptian army is laboring in the Sudan and, as experienced by Ibrāhīm directly, on the perils of speculation on the Stock Exchange.41
When Muḥammad al-Muwayliḥī resumes his narrative (Miṣbāḥ al-sharq 63, July 13, 1899), it is with a visit to a wedding hall, as part of which there is a section devoted to a lengthy history of singing. At the conclusion of an episode, the protagonists encounter a number of different social groups who have gathered at the wedding celebration—al-Azhar shaykhs, merchants, royal princes, and civil servants. Each of these categories subsequently becomes the topic of a later episode in Fatrah min al-Zaman. These shifts in narrative focus, each one involving a gap of varying duration in the publication of the articles, give us a hint as to how al-Muwayliḥī’s responded to reader interest in the way he composed and sequenced episodes, again a replication of the circumstances under which novelists like Charles Dickens frequently functioned in composing and publishing novels. It is in the episodes that follow the description of these “meetings” (majālis) that al-Muwayliḥī comes up with his most inspired creation, the provincial ʿumdah (village headman) who comes to the rapidly Westernizing capital city from the countryside in search of fun and is mercilessly exploited by a duly Westernized fop (Khalīʿ, which I have translated as “Playboy”) and his accomplice, a Merchant. The juxtaposition and confrontation of traditional mores and Western fashions is explored through a number of different venues and situations: restaurants and food, bars, tourism, money borrowing, and the theater. After a visit to the Pyramids, ʿĪsā ibn Hishām, the Pāshā, and their “Friend” (ṣadīq) leave the other group to their own devices and return home (Miṣbāḥ al-sharq 107, June 8, 1900). Given that Muḥammad al-Muwayliḥī was leaving almost immediately for Paris and the Exposition universelle, it is not surprising that, in what was at the time a final episode in the series, the Pāshā expresses to ʿĪsā his desire to see Western civilization firsthand. Plans are made to travel to France.
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