Gatekeepers of the Arab Past

This groundbreaking study illuminates the Egyptian experience of modernity by critically analyzing the foremost medium through which it was articulated: history. The first comprehensive analysis of a Middle Eastern intellectual tradition, Gatekeepers of the Past examines a system of knowledge that replaced the intellectual and methodological conventions of Islamic historiography only at the very end of the nineteenth century. Covering more than one hundred years of mostly unexamined historucal literature in Arabic, Yoav Di-Capua explores Egyptian historical thought, examines the careers of numerous critical historians, and traces this tradition's uneasy relationship with colonial forms of knowledge as well as with the post-colonial state.

Yoav Di-Capua is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin.

List of Illustrations
List of Tables
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction

1. Historicizing Ottoman Egypt: 1890-1906
2. Talking History: 1906-1920
3. The House of Records: The 1920s
4. Competing for History: 1930-1952
5. Ghurbal's School: 1930-1952
6. Partisan Historiography: The 1940s and Beyond
7. Demonstrating History: The 1950s
8. Controlling History: The 1960s
9. Authoritarian Pluralism: 1970-2000
Conclusion

Notes
Bibliography
Index