Mass Culture and Islamic Cultural Production in 19th Century Middle East

Two antinomies have determined the representation and self–representation of the cultural development of Islamic countries. It has in a linear sense been regarded as an alternating succession of eras of traditionalism and modernism, while these two notions have themselves been classified, and a value judgement attached to them, in terms of either cultural decadence or cultural renaissance. Decadence in the Islamic Middle East was discovered by Europeans. In order to legitimate his military invasion of Egypt in 1798, Napoleon fell back on the old European image of the Orient when he said the country had been driven into barbarism and decay. The Islamic elites hesitated to use the new means of production. One of the first books composed by a contemporary scholar and printed at Bulaq was a text on writing and the art of composition, written by Hasan al –Attar.