The margin between documentation and fiction. (c2012)

Abstract

Published in the context of a larger modernization project, on the European model, of the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire as a whole, and Egypt in particular, Rifāᶜa Rāfiᶜ al-Tahtāwī’s Takhlīs al-Ibrīz fī Talkhīs Bārīz stands out as one of the earliest works of its type—in content and style. This thesis addresses al-Tahtāwī’s book as a literary representation, i.e. as one of the “stories” about the social life in Paris in the first half of the nineteenth century. It employs comparison in its analysis of the text’s severance from documentation and tendency towards fiction. Adopting Michel Foucault’s insights, it reads in the text’s inaccuracies— facts al-Tahtāwī misses or intentionally ignores, misinterprets or willingly distorts— truths about the different influences to which his account was subject, whether these were related directly to the author himself, to the society he was writing about or to, or even to the intentions and expectations of his supervisors and benefactors.