By Mursi Saad El-Din A benchmark in the history of our enlightenment is Taha Hussein's book Pre-Islamic Literature. This reflected a new approach to literary analysis, namely a sustained Cartesian scepticism. Hussein was both the product of and a rebel against Al-Azhar, who chose to join the newly established secular university then went to obtain his PhD in France. His book Al-Ayyam (The Days) long since translated into English, is, to my mind, the first real autobiography published in Egypt. But to go back to our intellectual state of affairs, Hussein, adopting a Cartesian method, hypothesised that the canon and literary history should not be taken for granted, but should be subjected to scrutiny and close analysis. In other words, there should be doubt about any fact until research conducted in a scientific spirit ascertains its existence. This constituted a positive step towards rationalism. This new rational bent of mind was further sustained by the discussion by Egyptian intellectuals of Darwin's theory of evolution. In 1924, Ismail Mazhar translated Darwin's book. In his introduction to the Arabic text, Mazhar wrote "The theory of Darwin has such an influence on all branches of modern science, that it led me to believe that it should be rendered into Arabic at this juncture when Arab intellectuals are heading for a scientific and literary revolution, whose aim is to destroy old methods and replace them with modern canons of thought." In 1925, Salama Moussa published The Theory of Evolution. The writer was a proponent of the adoption of modern scientific thought, and strongly pitted himself against all old established traditional systems of thinking. He attacked those writers who gave precedence to style at the expense of the content. He advocated what he called the "telegraphic style", which meant linguistic economy, with omission of any stylistic gimmicks used only for the embellishment of the text. The period between the two wars was characterised by the emergence of the struggle between the old traditional legacy and the newly-introduced European thought. The question that preoccupied the intellectual was how to combine the two currents of thought, how to adopt one without discarding the other. In other words, what were the means by which to create an organic unity which does not turn its back on the old while embracing the new. One can discern three schools of thought: one propagated the strict adherence to the inherited intellectual and literary tradition, led by Mustafa Sadeq El-Rafei; the second, led by Salama Moussa, called for the complete overthrow of the canon and heritage and the adoption of the European way of life; and the third school tried to advocate a kind of compromise. Members of the latter school included such leading writers like Mahmoud Abbas El-Aqqad, Taha Hussein, Hussein Heikal, Ibrahim Abdel-Qadir El-Mazni, among others. Reading their articles and books, one invariably finds both European and Arab cultures in a pleasant association. One may find in a book a chapter on Homer or Shakespeare, followed by another on Imru' Al-Qais, Al-Rumi or Al-Mutanabi. During that period El-Aqqad published Observations on Literature and Life, and Hours Among Books ; El-Mazni wrote Qabd Al-Rih and Sandook Al-Donia ; Heikal wrote Leisure Time, as well as a two-volume book on Rousseau. Taha Hussein published 'Ala Hamish Al-Sira, which was met with strong criticism. Commenting on the book, Hussein Heikal noted that it marked a turning point in Taha Hussein's thought. This, he argued, is evident if we contrast it against his book Pre-Islamic Literature. "Both books," goes on Heikal, "are about the pre-Islamic age. While the first denounces the pre-Islamic legends and much of the poetry and prose of that period, we find that the second book embraces these legends and finds in them much food for thought." That was a period of healthy discussions which helped to draw the features of future intellectual life in Egypt.
