Experimenting with Ṭabaqāt and Muʿğam: A history of modern Egypt through the biographies of ordinary citizens in Ḥadīṯ al-ṣabāḥ wa-l-masāʾ by Nağīb Maḥfūẓ

Abstract

Inspired by the search for an authentic literature, several Arab writers have experimented with their literary tradition after the cultural turn that followed 1967. Among them, the Egyptian novelist Nağīb Maḥfūẓ (1911-2006), who, determined to find alternatives to the hegemonic model of the Western novel in the post-Naksa period, has interacted with premodern forms of writing. In this paper, we will analyse one of his last fictional experiments, Ḥadīṯ al-ṣabāḥ wa-l-masāʾ (‘Morning and Evening Talk,’ 1987), the novelisation of a subgenre of Islamic historiography, i.e., the biographical dictionary (ṭabaqāt, muʿğam). Drawing upon scholarship on palimpsestuous textuality and dialogism as theories suitable for postcolonial intertextuality, we will put the novel in dialogue with its antecedents to highlight how the chronotope, the non-linear structure, the narrative techniques, the conception of history and death endorsed by the precursors are interrogated by Maḥfūẓ in order to reflect on the outputs of modern Egyptian history on ordinary citizens. As it will emerge, the result is a fictional biographical dictionary that claims for the distinctiveness of the Arab novel and that, at the same time, aspires to participate in modern world culture.