Rifa’a al-Tahtawi Extended Biography
Rifa’a al-TahtawiExtended BiographyYou may wish to share this biography with students, or just to read it for your own information.In 1827 a giraffe named Zarafa arrived in France. She made the trip as a gift from Pasha Muhammad Ali to Charles X. Muhammad Ali was the Ottoman ruler of Egypt and Charles X was the king of France. Zarafa was met with massive crowds and popular acclaim as the French worked to reconcile the scientific learning of the Enlightenment with the exoticism she represented. As they strove, with the help of experts, to classify and thereby demystify her, Zarafa was labeled in scientific terms and because science was claimed by the West, so too was Zarafa. Her main companion was the French zoologist and biologist Geoffroy St. Hilaire, who walked her from the coast to Paris and gave well-attended scientific presentations about her throughout the journey. However, one of the residents of Paris at the time of Zarafa’s visit was working from another direction, to understand the exoticism of French scientific reasoning through the familiarity of Islam. That resident was a twenty-four-year-old named Rifa’a al-Tahtawi, who was in Paris as both a student and imam, or religious instructor. Not only did Zarafa and al-Tahtawi meet, but they starred in a vaudeville show together in Paris. The play was called La Girafe and featured al-Tahtawi and seventeen other Egyptian students alongside Zarafa engaged in comedic antics. On the stage, al-Tahtawi and the students, the youngest of whom was 15, were connected to Zarafa as curiosities from “exotic” Egypt. It was a small leap for the audience to associate and extend the scientific naming and claiming of Zarafa to her co-stars. This dark side of the Enlightenment found expression in pseudoscientific racism across the West and was the basis for everything from unethical experimentation to flawed theories of criminality. But, even as al-Tahtawi understood firsthand how taxonomy could be harmful, he also understood the capacity for scientific classification to improve society. Al-Tahtawi wanted to learn about science in order to reclaim the glory of the ancient Islamic world, where it was initially harbored and nurtured before blossoming in Europe. He became the first advocate of “Muslim modernity,” which attempted to incorporate the scientific method into Islam in order to enhance it. At the political level, al-Tahtawi saw in science an alternative base of power to Pasha Muhammad Ali’s (the guy who sent Zarafa to France) increasing control of all Egyptian institutions. But when al-Tahtawi began publishing books in Arabic to share the scientific knowledge he had acquired in France, Muhammad Ali was thrilled. Ali also saw the potential of this rediscovered and expanded learning, especially in its military applications, and rewarded al-Tahtawi. In order to realize his goals, al-Tahtawi worked as a teacher and translator in his home country of Egypt. Muhammad Ali put him in charge of his own school. Al-Tahtawi’s school was unique in many ways. It was not as famous as Al Azhar, where al-Tahtawi had been educated after showing great promise as a child including learning the Qur’an by heart. But it was less confining than the French schools because foreign students were not subject to a two-week quarantine and instruction was in Arabic rather than French. Instead al-Tahtawi’s school was a place for local students to gain literacy, scientific knowledge, and opportunities. This was important because the other schools in Egypt were primarily places to educate the Ottoman Turks who ruled the country. Al-Tahtawi’s school quietly became a place not only for scientific experiments but for experimenting with ideas of Egyptian nationalism. One facet of education that al-Tahtawi advocated for was girls’ education. In his book Al-murshid al-amin li’l banat wa ‘l-banin [The Trustworthy Guide for Girls and Boys] he argued that girls should receive the same education as boys. But it was not until his death in 1873 that his school for girls was finally opened. Because of his efforts in education and translation, a wealth of knowledge was carried on after his death and was available to girls who had lacked access to it during his lifetime. The most important aspects of “Muslim modernity” as advocated and practiced by al-Tahtawi were burgeoning nationalism and greater access to education. For better or worse, al-Tahtawi played a key role in helping Egyptians learn to name and reclaim their own Zarafas.