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Later dynasties detested the Fatimids. Al-Hakim's government administration depended on a series of subordinate ranks, a true bureaucracy, ranging from offices at the top. Given that the empire in his time stretched over vast territories, only part of which was Egypt, a description of government operations in the capital does not reliably indicate the situation elsewhere. Those reports tend to deal in more detail with the highest ranks—wazir and qadi, for example—and pay less and less attention to the lower. The choosing of the men appointed to high office was, in general, carefully managed; and those chosen were constantly supervised afterward by the imam. The primary exception to such a policy occurred when al-'Aziz raised one of his aides, Ya'qub Ibn Killis, to the position of wazir in 978. Al-Hakim continued this latter policy of his father; he himself appointed no wazirs.

Al-Hakim rode off on his last known excursion barely months beyond the 400th anniversary of the Prophet's death. Even though the Fatimid dynastic establishment, led by Sitt al-Mulk, had determined to carry on by elevating al-Zahir to the caliphate and vigorously suppressing all sentiment to the contrary, there are in the record too many reports, first of individuals who refused to acknowledge the succession pending final news of al-Hakim, and then later of claims of his actually having reappeared. More significant was the year 400 of the Islamic era, which came ten lunar years later. The turn of a century raised hopes among the Muslims of the coming of a renewer, a person who could and would reform religious doctrine and observance, bringing it back once again to what it had been in the days of the Prophet.

This chapter identifies religion as a key problematic in early examples of the Arabic novel in Egypt before embarking on an in-depth discussion of the religious/secular opposition in seminal words by Haykal, Taha Husayn and Tawfiq al-Hakim. It examines how texts like Zaynab (1914), Al-Ayyam (vols 1 and 2; 1929, 1933), ‘Awdat al-Ruh (1933) and ‘Usfur min al-Sharq (1938) promote national and secular values on the level of story and character yet undermine these same values through self-contradiction and slippage, and how religious patterns remain deeply embedded in characters’ thought and behaviour even as formal religion is subjected to harsh critique on the surface of the plot and theocentrism is displaced as ideology.

This chapter explores religious intertextuality in works by Jamal al-Ghitani, Najib Mahfuz and ‘Abd al-Hakim Qasim. It examines how al-Ghitani reworks elements of Ibn ‘Iyas’ Badaʿiʾ al-Zuhur fi’l-Waqaʿiʾ al-Duhur to bring out themes relating to the collusion of religion and power in Al-Zayni Barakat (1971) and how messianic thought and prophetic myth are deconstructed in Mahfuz’s Malhamat al-Harafish (1977). It analyses the reimagining of Christ’s crucifixion in ‘Abd al-Hakim Qasim’s short novel Al-Mahdi (1984) as a comment on modern-day religious violence and the practice of scapegoating, and discusses religious conflict in the text as an example of René Girard’s mimetic rivalry leading to communal self-purification through sacrifice. It also explores the dialogue with Islamic eschatology and dream narrative in Qasim’s Turaf min Khabar al-Akhira (1984), examining how the scene of the interrogating angels and pattern of judgement in the afterlife are transformed to communicate social and religious themes.

Chapter Three centers around works by Abd al-Hakim Qasim, Yahya Taher Abdullah, and Yusuf al-Qaid. Here we move to the villages of the Delta and Upper Egypt, the latter appearing in Egyptian novels for the first time. These novels are read in opposition to the social realist works of the previous generation, with their concentration upon the countryside as the space of revolutionary struggle and political mobilization. The rural here is transformed into a space of suffering and degradation, in which the villagers struggle to contend with the difficulties of their daily life. The village is thus represented as mystical and mythical space, with the writers employing literary techniques from fantastic literature and magical realism, in order to represent the ongoing marginalization of the Egyptian village and its separation from the rest of the nation. These works of fiction are situated within the broader socio-economic context of the period, particularly Abdel Nasser’s agricultural reforms begun in the 1950s. The failure of the policies is reflected in the literary output of the generation, who grappled to come to terms with the continued marginalization and exclusion of the Egyptian village.

In the 1930s and 1940s, Hassan al-Banna's Muslim Brotherhood grew into a mass movement, but the retreat of pharaonism before Islam and Arabism was not the rout that is sometimes assumed. Some deplored the pitting of pharaonism against Islam and Arabism as a false dichotomy and embraced the entire Egyptian past. Saad Zaghlul's mausoleum and his statues in Cairo and Alexandria were steeped in pharaonism. Even those with little interest in ancient Egypt took pride in Selim Hassan's and Sami Gabra's discoveries and advancing careers. Journalist Salama Musa, who had named his own son Khufu for the builder of the Great Pyramid, stood by his earlier pharaonist nationalism. Among the younger generation, Ahmad Husayn confessed to “pharaonic mania” even as his Young Egypt movement took on a more Islamic tone, King Faruq avidly collected pharaonic antiquities, schoolboy Gamal Abdel Nasser thrilled to Tawfiq al-Hakim's pharaonist Return of the Spirit, and Naguib Mahfouz set his first three novels in ancient Egypt.

This chapter discusses the elite treatment of honour crimes in modern Egypt. It focuses on the ways and mechanisms in which elite literature has departed or distanced itself from the traditions and practices of honour crimes that prevailed in folk literature. It takes a look at Tāhā Husayn's Du al-Karawān; Tawfīq al-Hakīm's Uxniyat al-Mawt; and Najīb Surūr's Minēn ajīb Nā. Even leading modernists like Tāhā Husayn looked upon colloquial forms of Arabic as debased. Most Arab writers of the twentieth century saw themselves not only as artists but also as agents of cultural and social reform, and shied away from themes that struck them as trivial or reactionary.

This chapter investigates the arguments exchanged about a lay believer’s obligation to emulate a high-ranking scholar (marji‘) in his daily conduct (taqlid). The findings question the view of Pakistan as a mere Shi‘i “backwater.” Instead, the chapter argues that the country should be understood as a veritable center of religious vitality in its own right. Local Shi‘i ‘ulama in the “periphery” displayed remarkable creativity when arguing about the “centers”, using a variety of strategies to bolster their own authority. This chapter explores how the leading grand ayatollahs, residing mostly in Najaf and Qum, attempted to influence the debate about who should be recognized in Pakistan as the preeminent global scholar and how these claims to authority were received and reinterpreted. The discussion illuminates the crucial moments of succession after the death of one widely accepted and revered marji‘, the Iraqi scholar Sayyid Muhsin al-Hakim (d. 1970). His demise played into the hands of the decidedly internationally minded Iranian jurist Sayyid Muhammad Kazim Shari‘atmadari (d. 1986) who had acquired the largest following of any marji‘ in Pakistan by the mid-1970s.

Examines the transformation of public texts (both Qur’anic and historical) from Kufic, in particular floriated Kufic, to cursive in the 11^th and 12^th centuries. As mandated by Nur al-Din in the middle of the twelfth century, legible cursive scripts would completely replace the ambiguous floriated Kufic script, reflecting and embodying the exoteric and inclusive doctrines of the Sunni revival.

This chapter talks about the meaning of denominational affiliation in the conflict between two towering intellectuals of the war period. Yusif al-Hakim was a leading Syrian judge and public prosecutor in Jaffa and Jerusalem, and a significant force in the Arabization of the Antioch Orthodox Church. His nemesis during the pre-war years was Issa al-Issa—arguably the most important journalist in twentieth-century Palestine—who founded, published, and edited the Filastin daily paper. One of Hakim's tasks as a public prosecutor was to apply the Ottoman press laws against talasun (religious blasphemy) and qadhf (defamation of character), which Issa was often accused of. It is no accident that both Issa and Hakim at the end of the war became pillars of the Faisali movement and members of the first independent Arab government in Damascus in 1919.

In this chapter, Sajad al-Hakim, Wissam al-Rashied, and Saif Majeed al-Ta'ee talk about their experiences during the Iraq war. Sajad al-Hakim was a student at Baghdad University in 2003 studying graphic design. The early days of the U.S. occupation opened something of a boom industry for young men like al-Hakim who were eager to work and spoke a reasonable amount of English. The U.S. military and defense contractors such as KBR were in desperate need of translators. Wissam al-Rashied and his family were longtime residents of Sha'ab, a district north of Baghdad not far from Sadr City. He was pursuing a master's degree in software engineering in 2003 at the time of the invasion. Saif Majeed al-Ta'ee began working with U.S. forces as an interpreter shortly after they appeared in his neighborhood in 2003 and served off and on as a translator for many years before deciding finally to quit for good.

This chapter is an analysis of two famous literary representations of the 1919 revolution, Tawfiq al-Hakim’s ‘Awdat al-Ruh (Return of the Spirit, 1933), and Naguib Mahfouz’ Bayn al-Qasrayn (Palace Walk, 1956), the first volume in his trilogy. The chapter shows that these two canonical works have been central in polishing a class-biased narrative about 1919 that sublimates the organised middle class’ role and imposes a myth-like image of Saad Zaghlul. In addition to its articulation of the concept of a modern Egyptian Nation, ‘Awdat al-Ruh posits 1919 as a key moment in the birth of that nation and identifies Saad Zaghlul as the embodiment of historical continuity with the country’s Pharaonic past. Likewise, Bayn al-Qasrayn insists on the trope of national unity through a depiction of the emergence of Egypt as a ‘new nation’, and presents the effendiyya as the main actors of the revolution. In addition, the chapter contains a brief analysis of an earlier short story about 1919: Mudhakkirat Hikmat Hanim (The Memoirs of Hikmat Hanim, 1921) by ‘Isa ‘Ubayd (189?-1922), a pioneering short story writer.

The fourth chapter restores hieroglyphs to their historical and cultural context in post-Revolutionary Egypt, exploring how interpretations of the Pharaonic past and its hieroglyphs intervened in Egypt’s twentieth century struggles for cultural and national identity. The first novels by Naguib Mahfouz and Tawfiq al-Hakim, from the 1920s and 30s, draw on the ‘Pharaonicist’ movement of the period, co-opting the European Orientalist discourses with which Egypt was defined in order to forge their own definitions of the racial and cultural ‘essence’ of Egypt. Yet these national concerns remain linked with an interest in the ontology of media forms; the chapter concludes by focusing on Shadi Abd al-Salam’s film al-Mummia, from 1969, which looks back to early twentieth century Pharaonicism and connects its attempt to reclaim the past with film’s ability to record and preserve Egyptian hieroglyphs and artifacts.

This chapter examines the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and its consequences for Egypt. Egypt's new regime under Gamal Abd al-Nasser was a “dictatorship without a dictator”; it was the security aristocracy that ruled. Both Nasser and army chief Abd al-Hakim Amer blamed the country's misfortunes on the “mukhabarat (intelligence) state.” As a matter of fact, what appeared to be a personal battle between the president and his field marshal, between 1956 and 1967, masked a power struggle within the security community. This chapter first provides a background on the Suez War that erupted after Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956 and argues that the war was a political triumph for Nasser but exposed Amer's military shortcomings. It then recounts the events leading up to the Arab-Israeli war and considers why the loss to the Israelis did not spark a popular revolt in Egypt.

This chapter focuses on SCIRI (SAIRI), the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, created by Tehran, and the utilization by the Iranian government of SCIRI in 1982–2003, in the context of the Iran-Iraq war, and in the 1990s. Tehran utilized exiled Shi’i clerics, headed by Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim, in outreach with Iraqi prisoners of war and refugees; in matters of security and military operations against Iraq; in outreach and public relations; and in altogether advancing Iranian goals vis-à-vis Iraq. The status of al-Hakim and the reference to Ayatollah al-Sadr underscored religious veneration as a source of authority and influence over the Shi’i diaspora. This chapter also shows how the theoretical model applies in the political setting of a theocracy with elements of democracy, and how it is not limited to democratic regimes.