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ABSTRACT
The year 1935 marked the 800th anniversary of the birth of the Jewish scholar Moses ben Maimon, better known as Maimonides. This article focuses on representations of Maimonides as a cultural hero during this anniversary year, taking as its central case the commemorations in Cairo. Specifically, the article examines Jewish historiography and discussions on the Jewish past in Egypt tied with debates on revival, commonly known as the nahḍa. It argues first of all that Egyptian Jewish and non-Jewish intellectuals dominantly embraced Maimonides as a philosopher, to be studied in the context of Arabic and Islamic thought. Second, these intellectuals stressed the critical role that Jews and Islamic thought at large had played in the transmission of knowledge to the West. Third, for the Jewish historians who organised the celebrations, Maimonides symbolised the rich heritage of Jewish intellectual culture in the Islamic world, which they perceived to be in current decline and stagnation. Lastly, the celebrations were entangled with discussions on heritage and ownership, as will be shown by the case of Jews in Egypt debating ownership of the Cairo Genizah.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Prof. em. Wout van Bekkum, Prof. Karène Sanchez-Summerer and Prof. Orit Bashkin for commenting on previous versions of this article, the latter during the Middle East History and Theory (MEHAT) Workshop at the University of Chicago on 25 May 2022. I would like to thank Jamal Karim for his valuable assistance in collecting global news coverage of the Maimonides celebrations in 1935, and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Celebrations took place in, amongst others, the cities where Maimonides had resided: Cordoba, Fez, Tiberias, and Cairo. Other notable celebrations were held in New York, Berlin, London and Paris. The global celebrations will be the subject of a subsequent publication.
2 This phrase is derived from the title of (Robinson Citation2009).
3 According to the Egyptian census of 1937, the Jewish population in Egypt numbered 62,953. The census does not list stateless persons, only Egyptians and foreign nationals. According to Krämer (Citation1989), it might have been the case that stateless Jews were listed as ‘Egyptians’ on the basis of their eligibility for Egyptian citizenship or their non-foreignness.
4 See the Arabic version of the 1947 edition of the bulletin published by the Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale: Majallat Tārīkh al-Isrāʾīliyyīn fī Miṣr. Jamaʿiyyat al-Abḥāth al-Israʾīliyya al-Miṣriyya (Maṭbaʿat al-Maʿhad al-ʿIlmī al-Faransī li-l-Athār al-Sharqiyya Citation1947).
5 See for overviews of lectures organized by the society between May 1926 and May 1928, and in the 1930s: CAHJP, ET 4 inv 7123 1e; ET 4 inv 7123 1 G.
6 See for a list of its executive committee and members as of 1925: (Farhi).
7 These were: the president of the historical society Joseph Aslan Cattaui, the Sephardic Chief Rabbi Haim Nahum Effendi, Max Meyerhoff, professor of Semitic languages at the Egyptian University Israel Wolfensohn, secretary of the society and translator Alfred Yallouz, and the secretary of Nahum, Moise Sanua.
8 The Sephardic Chief Rabbi Haim Nahum, Rabbi David Prato, Israel Wolfensohn, and Alfred Yallouz gave speeches at the school. In an announcement of the program published in al-Ahrām, Wolfensohn writes that the historical society intended to publish the speeches held during the celebrations as a book: Al-Ahrām, 18 March 1935, 9. The archive of the society does contain some of the printed speeches with pen corrections, suggesting that the society was indeed preparing a publication. Wolfensohn’s bibliography (Citation1936, p. 176) contains a title that likely concerns this publication: Société d’Études Historiques Juives D’Égypte. Le Cairo: Cérémonie Commémorative du VIIIme Centenaire de la naissance de Maimonide. Le Caire, 1936.
9 The article does not specify which radio station broadcast the celebrations. It was likely Radio Cairo, which had been established in 1934 by the British-owned Egyptian State Broadcasting (ESB). The royal family was also invited to the ceremony at the Opera House, but no mention is made in reports on the festivities that the King and his entourage attended: L’Aurore, 28 March 1935, 4.
10 Letter from the society to the editor of al-Ahrām: CAHJP, ET-4 7123 1 A.
11 Established by the French in the wake of the invasion of Egypt in 1798, the Institut d’Égypte had closed its doors in 1801 when the French were evacuated. In 1869, the Institut égyptien was established in Alexandria and moved to Cairo in 1918, readopting the Napoleonic name Institut d’Égypte. The scholarship of the Institut spanned all modern scientific areas in relation to Egypt (Ellul Citation1952).
12 On the career of ʿAlī Ibrāhīm, see: (Reid Citation1990, p. 134).
13 I have not been able to find information about this author, except the title of a book by her hand in the catalogue of the Library of the Dominican Institute for Oriental Studies in Cairo: Catherine Henry, Al-Tārīkh fī al-Kitāb (Cairo: Dār al-Taʾlīf wa-l-Nashr lī-l-Kinīsa al-Asqafiyya, Date unknown).
14 The term ‘jins’ can be translated as ‘sort’, ‘species’, ‘nation’ or ‘race’. I have opted for ‘nation’ as the most appropriate term denoting a religious community, though I am aware of the ambivalent and shifting meanings of the term ‘jins’ during this period in Arabic intellectual and journalistic discourse. See: (El Shakry Citation2007, pp. 55–61, Gribetz Citation2014, pp. 24–29).
15 This was the case, for example, during the celebrations in Cordoba, as appears from reports in the B’nai B’rith Messenger of 29 March 1935 and 12 April 1935.
16 As the preface and introduction do not contain page numbers, but Arabic letters, I refer here to the corresponding Arabic letters in transliteration.
17 Wolfensohn writes in his introduction that the reason for such a concise second chapter on Maimonides’ ‘Hebrew and religious’ works was to serve his readers who were not well versed in Jewish culture and did not possess a sufficient understanding of Jewish law, and hence to ensure that they would not be ‘bored’: (Citation1936, m).
18 By the time Wolfensohn was researching and publishing the book on Maimonides, a new edition of Munk’s translation had appeared in Jerusalem in 1930/31, published by Issachar Joel. I have not been able to establish whether Wolfensohn used this edition, though I assume that he must have been aware of it due to his intellectual upbringing and extensive contacts in Palestine. The bibliography of Wolfensohn’s book (Citation1936) does not contain a reference to the consulted edition(s) of the Guide, including Munk’s edition.
19 Following Elshakry, I use ‘golden ages’ in the plural here, as the golden age topos of nahḍa intellectuals did not constitute a uniform idea. The era of the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad and the period of Umayyad rule of al-Andalus were commonly referred to as a ‘golden age’ in Egyptian Jewish nahḍawi narratives. Jurjī Zaydān, a key nahḍa figure, reckoned three golden ages: the rise of Islam, the translation movement of the Abbasids, and the contemporary nahḍa of his time: (Elshakry Citation2020, pp. 91–92).
20 The recently expanding literature on Jews and the nahḍa includes: (Levy Citation2007, Citation2013, Schlaepfer Citation2011, Snir Citation2019).
21 On the efforts of the society to establish a communal library, see: CAHJP, ET-4 7123 1 E.
22 See for example the letters addressed to the society by rabbi Pinchas Katz, dated 6 November 1934, and dr. M. Ravdin, dated 20 December 1934: CAHJP, ET-4 7123 1 C. The society also received letters by individual scholars who wished to inform the society about their published works on Maimonides. J. Münz, writing from Tel Aviv, recommended his Maimonides, Sein Leben und Seine Werke (Frankfurt: Kauffmann, 1912). S. Meisele, writing from Vienna, recommended a new edition of his popular work Mose ben Maimon. Ein Porträt (Publisher and date unknown). See: CAHJP, ET-4 7123 1 A.
23 CAHJP, ET-4 7123 1 C.
24 CAHJP, ET-4 7123 1 C. Yallouz had also received a letter from a certain Naftali Wikler from Germany in response to the announcement of the celebrations organized by the society, who wished to inform the society about his donation of a manuscript of Maimonides’ medical work (he did not mention the title) to the National Library in Jerusalem. See: CAHJP, ET-4 7123 1 A.
25 Jerusalem City Archives (AIY), personal papers of Israel Ben Zeev, 1074.
26 The fragment contained Book I, ch. 17 to ch. 21. See: (Hopkins Citation1987, p. 465). According to Wolfensohn, the fragment was important because it showed Maimonides’ handwriting: he had removed and cut some words, and the text contains grammatical errors. Wolfensohn referred to an article written by David Yellin (then professor of literature at the Hebrew University) in Hebrew about the fragment: D. Yellin, 1929–1930. Two Pages of the Autograph of Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed. (In Hebrew) Tarbiz, 1, 93. I have derived the reference to Yellin’s article from (Sirat Citation2014, p. 19, footnote 39).
27 The Jacques Mosseri collection was given to the Cambridge University Library as part of a long-term loan agreement with the Mosseri family in 2006. It contains more than 7,000 documents. On the issue of where the collection should go after the end of the loan, see (Shaker and Ballout Citation2021).
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Lucia Admiraal
Lucia Admiraal is an Assistant Professor in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Groningen. She holds a PhD in History and Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Amsterdam. Her research focuses on modern Arab intellectual history, historiography, and Arabic literature.