ABSTRACT
At the time when Europe triumphantly took possession of Egypt and Tunisia to impose direct rule (1881 and 1882), the literary and linguistic Arab Renaissance was at its height. So was the reform movement of Al-Afghānī and ‘Abdu. Therefore, colonization did not take the Muslim world by surprise, tearing it brutally from its stupor by this act of aggression. It disturbed the process of regaining control of a world that had already, for more than half a century, become aware of the ascension of Europe, of its own backwardness, and of the need to compensate for this without losing its identity. But the Europe of this first impact was that of the French Revolution, of Bonaparte, of liberalism, and scientific discoveries. This Europe was a strong military force, spreading values, on which the ideology of progress blew like a mighty wind. It was this first contact that gave rise to the modernizing, reforming impetus of Muḥammad ‘Alī (1804–1849) in Egypt; to a cascade of administrative reforms in Ottoman Turkey (Tanẓīmāt, Dustūr); to a tentative attempt at Europeanization in the States and societies: the liberal movement in Tunisia and the policies of Khayr-Addīn; but also, to a considerable extent, the literary Nahdha in the Arab Orient, and the predication of Jamāl-Addīn. This Europe offered the exemplary nature of its success. It led the world, took princes to task, imposing norms of conduct on them, seized concessions, also halting evolution, but it did not seem to want to absorb the planet. Islam, which confronted Europe with its empires, its states and its organization, was still in a position to stand up to it, and tried desperately—but with some hope—to compete with it whilst still retaining its identity: it was a world that was politically 66fragmented, but which retained a deep sense of its historical identity, and was, moreover, autonomous.
