ABSTRACT
Of the modern literatures of the East, that of the Arabic-speaking peoples has received singularly little attention in Europe. The most probable explanation is that the small body of Europeans who read Arabic with any ease are so occupied with researches into the rich historic past of Islam and the Islamic peoples that the present holds no interest, or possibly no attraction, for them. But the fact, whatever its cause, is regrettable. It creates a misunderstanding in the minds of less qualified but more interested persons, a misunderstanding which even years of residence in the east may do nothing to remove. There is prevalent, indeed, in France and Germany, no less than in England, a markedly negative attitude towards neo-Arabic literature, which reaches its absolute point in the dictum of a recent writer that “Modern Egypt has no language, no literature, no legends of its own.” 1 As it stands the statement is untrue; but for the tag it would be grotesque. Modern Egypt has not yet indeed severed its connection with the Arabic and the Islamic world. Yet in the same work it is recorded 2 that “Cairo has two hundred and seventeen printing presses, which turn out on an average one book or brochure a day.” Even granting the addendum that “Much of this is translation into Arabic of western fiction,” there is a substantial residue, to some part of which no unbiased critic would deny without examination the status of literature.
