History matters

The Egyptian Historical Society moves to its new home. Amina Elbendary revisits
Is History dead? Western intellectuals and academics have been preoccupied for some time now debating this question. Historical narratives are being deconstructed, reread against every perceivable grain, exposed of every conceivable bias, and finally rejected for being a narrative to begin with. How is history different than fiction? Why does it matter? What knowledge, what truth if any, does it offer? How can it explain the world?
In response to these threats many Western historians have been trying to reclaim a territory for history and defend it against attacks from postmodernists across the intellectual spectrum. They have been questioning their methods and trying to incorporate postmodernism into their historiography. Acknowledging the inevitable bias of any discourse and the validity of multiple narratives they have made a "linguistic turn" towards literary criticism and anthropology, sociology and the social sciences in general. They have revised, rewritten and -- sometimes -- rehashed their histories. And they are coming up with new genres that for the time being can only be described as postmodern history.
In the meantime, however, historiography in Egypt and the Arab world has been facing different kinds of threats. Not as existentialist, perhaps, but possibly just as threatening.
For a nation undergoing tremendous political, social and economic changes, Egypt's intellectuals have not been producing enough original scholarship to make sense of and analyse these changes or to chart courses out of the predicament. In fact it is often argued that scholarly production in the Arab world has been in crisis for too long and has lagged behind the changes taking place on the ground. And history is suffering with the rest of the humanities and social sciences in this regard. In fact it would seem that the imperative of historical production is no longer appreciated by the powers that be; even, for that matter, by large sections of the intelligentsia. History is increasingly viewed as a backward-looking, antiquarian discipline. Fundraising for research has increasingly been geared towards scientific and technological research rather than the humanities, witness the new privately-owned institutions of higher education that have sprung up over the last decade in Egypt. Many are essentially polytechnics, while most do not bother with basic departments in humanities and social sciences. Gone are the liberal arts. Almost.
So it is with optimism that we look to the resuscitation of the Egyptian Historical Society. Established in 1945 as the Royal Historical Society, it changed its name after the July 1952 Revolution. The Society has been chaired by some of the best known modern historians of Egypt: Mohamed Shafiq Ghorbal (who is its true founder), Ahmed Badawi, Ahmed Ezzat Abdel-Karim and Ibrahim Noshi Qasem. But like most scholarly societies the historians' has lived largely in the shadows.
A few years ago the society faced serious challenges that threatened its very existence. It was ordered to vacate its premises, two flats it had occupied since 1958 in a building off Bustan Street, downtown. A dire need for funds made the situation tough. This brought it into the limelight for a while, prompting the ruler of the Emirate of Al-Sharqa, Sheikh Sultan Ibn Mohamed Al-Qasimi, a historian himself, to fund the building of a new headquarters in the northern Cairo suburb of Madinet Nasr.
A striking modern Arab-styled building of four stories, the new sunny premises includes a lecture hall, an auditorium and two floors for the library as well as room for an electronic library. The members excitedly inaugurated the new building on 23 May.
But the Egyptian Historical Society is, surely, more than just a building?
"Definitely," explains Raouf Abbas, the Society's chairman since 1999. He is professor of modern history at Cairo University and one of Egypt's leading historians. We met on a bright July morning at the Society's new headquarters.
"There is so much for us to do, so much on the mandate of the Society. Our aim is for it to become a real research centre where our members can engage in joint group research. We are also supposed to collect private memoirs of leading historical figures and we have a project to compile a bibliographical index of Egyptian history. And we aim to edit and publish documents."
"Right now the Society's activities are really confined to the weekly seminar and the annual conference. Even the Egyptian Historical Review, the annual periodical we publish, doesn't appear regularly, though we hope to make it a quarterly."
The Egyptian Historical Society's weekly seminar is a forum for junior scholars, and although it is a continuation of the weekly Ottoman seminar that Abbas started at Cairo University, the Society's seminar has broadened to include all sub-specialties of Egyptian history and host guest speakers from other disciplines. It attracts young scholars from various universities, including those in the provinces. It is also regularly attended by established historians like Nelly Hanna, Assem El-Dessouqi, Abdel-Moneim El-Geme'i, Qasem Abduh Qasem and Emad Abu Ghazi to name a few. This provides for interesting and fruitful exchanges and excellent opportunities for young historians who live an almost solitary existence in their little scholarly niches to reach out to others in their field. Yet despite the homely and familiar attitude the atmosphere is often far from placid. Exchanges can often be heated and charged. The historian at the podium is more often than not grilled, the work almost torn apart. And they love it -- welcome to Academia.
Yet even though there is an emerging generation of Egyptian historians currently in the making, they have not -- yet -- formed a distinct school of historiography, so that while established historians refer to themselves as the Egyptian historical school (others call them Egyptian nationalist historians) there is no coherent group of "new historians."
Raouf Abbas is concerned with the need to foster this rising generation of Egyptian historians. "Young historians are weak at theory and methodology," he laments. "In fact this is a problem all the humanities face. It is a weakness in our college education which stresses memorisation rather than critical thinking. There is not enough concern with the theoretical side. And this is where the Society and the seminar come in. In filling that vacuum it helps to open up to other disciplines and methodologies."
Perhaps the Society could organise workshops on theory and methodology for its junior scholars?
"Of course we could. We have all those ideas on the table. But right now they are curtailed by a severe lack of funds and sheer bureaucratic formalities."
The reason many projects remain stalled, Abbas insists, is basically a lack of funds. The Society does receive some support from governmental institutions like the ministries of culture and social affairs, but it takes different forms. So, for example, the Dar Al-Kutub, Egypt's national library, has assigned eight librarians from its staff to the Society. The Society has also received donations from Arab figures such as Al-Qasimi and Saudi Prince Talal Ibn Abdel-Aziz. But where are the Egyptian patrons?
The practical non-existence of Egyptian patrons of academic scholarship is part of the threat to history and the humanities alluded to above. It would seem there is not enough public consciousness of the imperativeness of history, of the fact that history is not about the past so much as it is about the present and the future. Any reconstruction of the past, any history, is in effect a statement on the present and the future, and by writing and rewriting history scholars are actually writing the future. Yet the politicisation of history as a discourse and as a discipline is little appreciated.
To counter this the Society attempts to greater publicise some of its activities. The annual conference is often held in a place like the Higher Council for Cultural Affairs where intellectuals from other disciplines might attend. According to Abbas, the Society would also like to publish works of a less-academic nature, appealing to a wider public. Promoting history and hence the Society seems to be essential in order to raise awareness and attract patrons.
Given this background, it was telling that the Society chose to invite Khaled Fahmy for its end-of-season public lecture (and the first to be held at the new building) on 24 June. An Egyptian professor and a member of the Society, Fahmy earned his PhD in history from Oxford University and taught at Princeton before moving to New York University. His dissertation was published by Cambridge UP in 1997 under the title All the Pasha's Men: Mehmed Ali, His Army and the Making of Modern Egypt and the Arabic translation is about to be released by Dar Al-Shorouq in Cairo. Educated in the West, Fahmy is well-versed in postmodern historiography. The book is what he terms a social history of the Egyptian army in the 19th century, a history from the point of view of the soldiers who did the dirty work rather than the generals who issued the orders, a history that tries to reincorporate the individual into history. He attempts to deconstruct the documents issued by the hegemonic powers of the army and glean the acts of resistance by those whom such documents ignore or silence.
But the book is also a deconstruction of Mohamed Ali, Egypt's ruler form 1805 to 1848 and the man often dubbed the founder of modern Egypt. This provoked not a little anger when the book first appeared, a sentiment that was amply evident at the Society's symposium on the Arabic translation last week. Traditional narrative regards Mohamed Ali's project, including his building of a modern army, as a nationalist project aimed at liberating Egypt from Ottoman rule. Many Western and Orientalist historians, such as Timothy Mitchell and Ehud Toledano, though, have argued for the existence of an Egyptian Ottoman elite and have chosen to regard Mohamed Ali as simply an Ottoman governor of his times rather than as an Egyptian national leader. But even Egyptian historians are not unanimous in their portrayal of Mohamed Ali, a point Fahmy tends to ignore. Instead of the argument that Mohamed Ali's army awakened a primordial national sentiment in Egyptians, Fahmy argues that it is soldiers' resistance to the invasive power of the modern army that created national sentiment.
It is obvious that his argument is not radically different. Many of the points that Fahmy raises in the book were critiqued by Assem El-Dessouqi, one of the leading historians of modern Egypt who insisted that any document cannot be read in isolation from its context. It is the way he presents it that is. His use of discursive analysis and Foucauldian references is different in this context. But even that was critiqued by younger members of the audience. The whole event, the heated exchanges and the views expressed were proof of the Society's important role in Egyptian scholarship and a sign that new challenging ideas are simmering.
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