Reintroducing Aisha

Aisha Taymour was the focus of a multi-disciplinary conference last week, attended by Amina Elbendary
The current preoccupation with what one might tentatively term a rebirth of the taragim tradition, a renewed interest in biography as a window on to historical and cultural discourse, continues apace. Thus most -- almost all, in fact -- of the mega conferences sponsored by the Supreme Council for Culture (SCC), to cite but one institution, have had a famous individual -- always deceased -- as their announced topic; from Salah Abdel-Sabbour to Rifa'a El-Tahtawi to Ibn Rushd. And while it would be too optimistic to presume that this signifies an attempt to empower the individual as an agent of change, in history and in contemporary society, it certainly presents an easy strategy within which to formulate the problematics of a large conference.
But all of the individuals promoted as icons of Egyptian and Arab culture are men. Tellingly, even the Woman's Conference hosted by SCC in 1999 was arranged to coincide with the centenary of the publication of Qassem Amin's "canonical" book The Emancipation of Women, and is still recalled as the "Qassem Amin conference."
As a counterpoint to such activity the Women and Memory Forum (WMF), an NGO established in 1996 and concerned with rereading Arab cultural history from a gender-sensitive perspective, has been highlighting the roles of pioneering women, traditionally ignored or else marginalised within cultural discourse. Theirs is in part an attempt to create an iconography of pioneering women in various fields of public activity, to promote these women's contributions and introduce them to national discourse, thus balancing the male-biased collective memory. So in 1998 the group hosted a conference on Malak Hefni Nassef (1886-1918) and in 1999 another in memory of Nabawiyya Moussa (1886-1951), one of the pioneers in Egyptian women's educational history. This is the context, explained WMF chairperson Hoda El-Sadda, in which the conference "Remembering Aisha Taymour (1840-1902)" comes.
The daughter of an upper middle-class family associated with the ruling family Aisha was lucky in that her father, Ismail Pahsa Taymour, encouraged her to receive a sophisticated education at home at a time when there was no formal education for girls in Egypt. Tutors were brought in for Qur'an, Arabic calligraphy, Arabic grammar, poetry and Persian. The young Aisha mastered three Middle Eastern languages; Arabic, Turkish and Persian, to the extent that she wrote poetry in all three. Her Arabic diwan Hilyat Al-Tiraz was published in 1884 while her Turkish diwan Shakufa appeared in the early 1890s. She was herself a product of various cultural/ethnic backgrounds having Kurdish, Turkish and Circassian roots to her family. Living through the age of Egyptian enlightenment, as Kamal Mughith, professor of education pointed out in his paper "Aisha El-Taymouriyya and the Questions of Renaissance," Aisha received a thoroughly classical and traditional education. Unlike other (slightly younger) women of her class she was not taught French or any other European languages, which meant that the whole body of knowledge associated with Westernisation and the Enlightenment was not available to her.
Married in 1854 at the age of 14 to Mahmoud Bek El-Islambouli, Aisha was taken away from her intellectual pursuits for a while and was busy with household duties until her husband's death in 1875. She resumed her studies with the help of two women tutors, Seteta El-Tablawiyya and Fatma El-Azhariyya, who helped her master Arabic grammar and rules of poetry. She is also the author of a work of fiction Al-Luqa Ba'd Al- Shatat (Reunion After Separation) as well as an allegorical tale, Nata'ig Al-Ahwal fi Al-Aqwal wa Al-Af'al (The Conclusions of Circumstances in Words and Deeds), and a treatise on gender relations, Mir'at Al-Ta'mmul fi Al-Umur (The Mirror of Contemplating Affairs), which the WMF has republished on the occasion of the conference.
The new edition comes with an illuminating introduction by Mervat Hatem, professor of political science at Howard University, who is currently writing a book on Aisha Taymour. Hatem discussed Mir'at Al-Ta'mmul at the conference along with the sharp rebuttal it received from the Azharite Sheikh Abdallah El-Fayoumi. Hatem argued that Aisha, a woman who was not specialised in religious sciences, was a pioneer in discussing the Qur'anic bases for men's superiority over women and coming up with innovative readings, arguing that this superiority was not an innate and absolute status but one that was conditioned by a man's adequate performance of his duties of maintenance and protection of his family according to prescribed gender roles. Aisha lamented what she perceived as an imbalance in marital relationships and the prevalence of material motivations for marriage. When a husband does not carry out his duty his wife will disobey him, Aisha argued, and that included going out of the house. Aisha was criticised sharply for meddling in affairs of exegesis and her discussion of the imbalance of power in marital relationships was ignored by the cultural establishment, as Hoda El-Sadda explained in her paper discussing the way Abdallah El-Nadim reacted to Aisha Taymour's writing and the way he presented women's issues in his magazine Al-Ustaz. She argued that modern middle class norms and ethics, which focus on the role of women within the household, were being promoted and stressed at the end of the 19th century.
At the opening session Rania Abdel- Rahman read out autobiographical quotations from Aisha's writing, including articles she'd contributed to newspapers, with the aim of allowing Aisha a voice at this event organised in her honour. The language the author used, eloquent if excessively stylised, was striking. It is a point that participants, including professor of Arabic literature Nabila Ibrahim, would repeatedly refer to. While it was a testament to Aisha's mastership of the Arabic language, as well as further testimony to how learned in the classics she was, it was also perceived by some critics to be limiting and stifling to her as a writer.
Iman Amer, professor of modern history, discussed the reactions to Aisha's creative work by her contemporaries through readings in the newspapers of the time. While some contemporary critics salute Aisha for taking traditional Arab literary structures as her inspiration and attempting to work her way through them, others find them anachronistic, contrived and limiting. Her contemporaries, it appeared from Amer's presentation, were also indignant that she allowed herself to write ghazal (Arabic love) poetry in the tradition of classical Arab poets -- all of whom are men, of course. Writing like a man, Aisha was seen to be transgressing gender boundaries and imitating men, a charge full of insinuations.
Aisha was a pioneer in taking creative writing seriously and publishing her works. Yet as Hatem, Amer, Mughith and others pointed out -- without any undue attempt at defending her reputation as a "pioneer" from a modern feminist perspective -- she was otherwise a product of her traditional conservative milieu. Thus it remains a subject of debate what her position on the hijab was; was she for or against women's seclusion as she moves between these positions in her writings. In the few instances when she commented on affairs of high politics Aisha was firmly in line with the ruling elite. Thus she expressed strong animosity towards the Urabi rebels, for example. Yet the very fact that she had an opinion on any political affair, and that she expressed it publicly, Hatem argued, was not common for women at the time and is in itself pioneering.
The Taymours are an important family of scholars and writers. Yet, it is more often the men of the family, Aisha's brother Ahmed, and his sons Mohamed and Mahmoud, who are usually mentioned in discussions on the history of modern Arabic literature. The WMF conference takes credit for reintroducing the aunt, Aisha, and highlighting her contributions to literature and to the women's movement in general. Even if Aisha were too conservative to associate herself with the cause of women's liberation she indirectly served that cause simply by virtue of being a learned and creative woman.
Another pioneering woman whose name kept popping up in almost every paper and discussion is May Ziyada who repeatedly wrote about Aisha's work. Will anyone second the motion, then, for a conference to "Remember May Ziyada"?
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