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Abstract
This article interrogates the discursive substance of the library in the modern production of knowledge. It proceeds in two parts: the first section explores the locations of the idea of the Library in the modern episteme, while the second analyzes its importation and application in Egypt, and its implications for reforms at al-Azhar. Beginning with an exploration of the place of books and libraries as symbols and indices of civilizational progress in the modern West, it then moves to their mobilization in national and imperial state projects. Shifting to Egypt, it shows how modern assumptions distort readings of a pre-modern text by an Azhari scholar, before analyzing the internalization of a Western bibliographic discourse in the late nineteenth-century and beyond, culminating in today’s ‘Azhar Online’ digitalization project, where technical, didactic and ideological aims are discursively positioned in a dialectic of ‘education for heritage, heritage for education.’
Abstract
Like ancient philosophy in Pierre Hadot’s conception, the polysemic notion of adab in the Arabic-Islamic tradition was a way of life, and not merely a scholarly discipline or cultural field. This essay explores this proposition in reference to the life and work of the Palestinian historian Ṭarīf al-Khālidī, where adab has been a central locus of reflection. Although steeped in present-day historical, literary, and philosophical discussions, we argue that al-Khālidī’s approach has an uncanny resemblance to classical conceptions of adab and thereby invites a re-examination of current scholarly practices, presaging an ethical turn in the study of history.