In February 1926, government troops arrived at Dar al-ʿUlum, an educational institution founded by the Khedival state in 1872, to train Egyptians to teach Arabic and Islam in the civil educational system. The reason for soldiers’ presence was not a politically seditious plot nor the outbreak of violence among students. Rather, it stemmed from the fact that a segment of Dar al-ʿUlum's students—who had previously studied in the Azhari system—insisted on their right to shed the scholarly robe and turban in favor of the suit and tarbush, a tasseled red brimless hat. Just a few weeks earlier, many students at Dar al-ʿUlum had returned from their mid-year vacation in this alternative outfit in a protest against the government's efforts to categorize them as members of the scholarly establishment. Instead, these young men wished to be considered full-fledged members of the effendiyya, a sociocultural, middle-class formation that had emerged in the context of late nineteenth-century modernization efforts.
Why were government troops called to Dar al-ʿUlum, and what can it teach us about modern Egyptian history? In her fascinating study of this teacher-training institution and its graduates, Hilary Kalmbach explores the “culture war” (2) that undergirded and shaped Egyptian experiences of modernity and nation building under both British colonial (1882–1923) and semi-colonial (1923–52) rule. Critiquing the tendency by historians of this period to focus on a tripartite battle between the monarchy, British officials, and nationalists of the Wafd and Liberal Constitutional Party, Kalmbach argues for the importance of sociocultural history, in general, and a focus on the roots of mass movements such as Young Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood, in particular.
The monograph's core goal is to trace the roots of contemporary contestations over the role of Islam in education and public life during a crucial period between 1890 and 1952, when the Egyptian state first integrated Islam into the civil educational system through Dar al-ʿUlum. To do so, Kalmbach focuses on this institution as a site for the transmission of a particular “hybrid” habitus (18–19) that equipped graduates to be perceived as both modern and authentically linked to a longer Islamic tradition. Unlike the traditional model of Islamic education, Dar al-ʿUlum reflected both disciplinary models of education popular in Europe at this time and an “ocularcentric” (as opposed to “audiocentric”) (46) approach to the transmission of knowledge. The author then traces how and why graduates of Dar al-ʿUlum came to play crucial roles in the “revival of Arabic literature, the reform of Arabic language instruction, and the rejuvenation of Islamic practice through grassroots associations (jamʿiyāt)” (47). Far from a story of these graduates alone, this model of modern authenticity was crucial to the formation of Egyptian nationalism more broadly, as it reproduced colonial logics of the alleged backwardness of the ʿulamaʾ while also distinguishing Egyptians from their colonial occupiers.
This story of Dar al-ʿUlum and the ways that its graduates spread hybrid forms of knowledge and social practice is a welcome and well-argued challenge to scholarship on Islamic thought and Islamic movements alike, which often foregrounds ostensibly self-contained spaces of religious thought and practice. By contrast, Kalmbach shows the constant and dynamic development of Islamic knowledge in late nineteenth- through early twentieth-century Egypt and its linkage to both the state-sponsored modernization efforts and bottom-up social and economic transformations. Just as important, the history of Islamic knowledge cannot be divorced from social practice, and it is here that Kalmbach's analysis shines as she deftly draws on anthropological scholarship and social theory to detail the ways in which graduates of Dar al-ʿUlum engage in “code switching” and “boundary straddling” (24–25). In doing so, she tells a vibrant and textured story of the diverse ways in which ideas are lived.
Over the course of this study, Kalmbach makes two linked arguments for the broader significance of Dar al-ʿUlum and its graduates. The first is structural: Dar al-ʿUlum's hybrid model equipped its students to emerge as leaders because Egyptian nationalism, transmitted through the civil education system, was premised on a fusion of modernity and authenticity. As the author argues, training at this institution “made it possible for them to adapt not only Islamic thought…but also Islamic practices to meet the demands of new circumstances and lifestyles” (180). It is for this reason that a school that enrolled a relatively small number of students (it peaked at 300 during the 1908–9 academic year) boasted influential graduates, most famously, leading Islamic movement figures such as Hasan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb, and Taqi al-Din al-Nabhani. Just as important, she argues for the broader influence of Dar al-ʿUlum's alumni within “the lower and mid-level ranks of the educational system, working as teachers, school directors, school inspectors, and teacher trainers” (125). In the conclusion, Kalmbach expands on the first argument, stating that “the long-term success of the Muslim Brotherhood is one of the most significant outcomes of the hybridisation of religious and civil knowledge at Dar al-ʿUlum’” (213).
Kalmbach's innovative and nuanced arguments also challenge us to better elaborate the relationship between educational institutions—whether those sponsored by the government or by Islamic movements—and religio-political formations. First, what is the relationship between education and religio-political leadership and mobilization? To what extent can we understand the rise of al-Banna and the Brotherhood as a function of habitus, and to what extent does it reflect the founder's charisma and preexisting social networks? How central is the provision of hybrid Islamic knowledge to the Brotherhood's appeal, and how does it relate to the organization's successful creation of a dynamic structure of internal socialization, on the one hand, and powerful mechanisms of socioeconomic service provision, on the other?
Just as important, this study leads to questions about how we are to make sense of Islamic movements led by Azharis who could not lay claim to such a hybrid habitus. Kalmbach notes the negative perceptions of al-Azhar and broader view of “religious knowledge and audiocentric pedagogies…” that it represented (148–49). It is precisely during this period, however, that Azhar graduates Mahmud Muhammad Khattab al-Subki (d. 1933) and Muhammad Hamid al-Fiqi (d. 1959) founded two major Islamic movements, al-Jamʿiyya Sharʿiyya li-Taʿwun al-ʿAmilin bi-l-Kitab wa-l-Sunna (The Lawful Society for the Cooperation of those who Work According to the Quran and Sunna, generally known as the Jamʿiyya Sharʿiyya) and Ansar al-Sunna al-Muhammadiyya (Proponents of the Muhammadan Model), respectively. In particular, al-Fiqi's Salafi appeal to religious distinction and emulation of the first three generations of the Muslim community represented a polemical rejection of the values of modernity in favor of a model of authenticity that prizes continuity through theological rigor, legal precision, and embodied daily practice. These contrasting examples suggest the existence of multiple successful projects of Islamic subject formation in early-to-mid twentieth-century Egypt, and underscore the value of the author's emphasis on the linkage between intellectual and social history.
In sum, Hilary Kalmbach has written a captivating, meticulous, and well-sourced study of a period of Egyptian history that is often neglected in studies of the relationship between Islam and politics in modern Egypt. This book will be of value to scholars of Egypt, Islamic thought, and education and can be used with students at both undergraduate and graduate levels.
