| Rifa'a at-Tahtawi | |
| Native Name: | رفاعة الطهطاوي |
| Native Name Lang: | ar |
| Birth Date: | 15 October 1801 |
| Birth Place: | Tahta, Egypt Eyalet, Ottoman Empire |
| Death Place: | Cairo, Khedivate of Egypt, Ottoman Empire |
Rifa'a Rafi' at-Tahtawi (Arabic: رفاعة رافع الطهطاوي|translit=Rifāʿa Rāfiʿ aṭ-Ṭahṭāwī; 1801–1873) was an Egyptian writer, teacher, translator, Egyptologist, and intellectual of the Nahda (the Arab renaissance).
One of the first Egyptian travellers to France in the nineteenth century,[1] Tahtawi published in 1834 a detailed account of his 5-year-long stay in France, Takhlīṣ al-ʾibrīz fī talkhīṣ Bārīz ('The Extrication of Gold in Summarizing Paris'[2]), and from then on became one of the first Egyptian scholars to write about Western culture in an attempt to bring about a reconciliation and an understanding between Islamic and Christian civilizations.
In 1835 he founded a School of Languages in Cairo, and he was influential in the development of science, law, literature, and Egyptology in 19th-century Egypt. His works influenced those of many later scholars such as Muhammad Abduh.
Tahtawi was born in 1801 in the village of Tahta, Sohag, the same year the French troops evacuated Egypt. He was an Azharite recommended by his teacher and mentor Hasan al-Attar to be the chaplain of a group of students Mohammed Ali was sending to Paris in 1826. Originally intended to be an Imam (an Islamic religious guide) he was allowed to associate with the other members of the mission through persuasion of his authoritative figures.[3] Many student missions from Egypt went to Europe in the early 19th century to study arts and sciences at European universities and acquire technical skills such as printing, shipbuilding and modern military techniques. According to his memoir Takhlīṣ al-ʾibrīz fī talkhīṣ Bārīz, Tahtawi studied ethics, social and political philosophy, and mathematics and geometry. He read works by Condillac, Voltaire, Rousseau, Montesquieu and Bézout among others during his séjour (visit) in France.[4]
In 1831, Tahtawi returned home to be part of the statewide effort to modernize the Egyptian infrastructure and education. He undertook a career in writing and translation, and founded the School of Languages (also knowns as School of Translators) in 1835, which become part of Ain Shams University in 1973.[5] The School of Languages graduated the earliest modern Egyptian intellectual milieu, which formed the basis of the emerging grassroots mobilization against British colonialism in Egypt. Three of his published volumes were works of political and moral philosophy. They introduced his Egyptian audience to Enlightenment ideas such as secular authority and political rights and liberty; his ideas regarding how a modern civilized society ought to be and what constituted by extension a civilized or "good Egyptian"; and his ideas on public interest and public good.[6] Tahtawi's work was the first effort in what became an Egyptian renaissance (nahda) that flourished in the years between 1860 and 1940.[7]
Tahtawi was a member of the Educational Council attached to the newly established Ministry of Education in the late 1860s.[8] He edited the magazine of the Ministry of Education entitled Rawdat Al Madaris between 1870 and 1873.[8] He died in Cairo in 1873.
Tahtawi is considered one of the early adapters of Islamic modernism. Islamic modernists attempted to integrate Islamic principles with European social theories. In 1826, Tahtawi was sent to Paris by Mehmet Ali. Tahtawi studied at an educational mission for five years, returning in 1831. Tahtawi was appointed director of the School of Languages. At the school, he worked translating European books into Arabic. Tahtawi was instrumental in translating military manuals, geography, and European history.[9] In total, Tahtawi supervised the translation of over 2,000 foreign works into Arabic. Tahtawi even made favorable comments about French society in some of his books.[10] Tahtawi stressed that the Principles of Islam are compatible with those of European Modernity.
Tahtawi, like others of what is often referred to as the Nahda, was spellbound by French (and Western in general) culture in his books. Shaden Tageldin has suggested that this produced an intellectual inferiority complex in his ideas that aided in an "intellectual colonization" that remains till today among Egyptian intelligentsia.[11]
Tahtawi rejected socialism and the labour movement, while supporting Egyptian policies progressive for their time.[12]
A selection of his works are: