ABSTRACT
Egyptian literary critics seem to be hard put to define Najib Mahfuz's role as a historiographer of contemporary Egypt. The Egyptian intellectual was faced with the dilemma of choosing between the alternate possibilities of identification: that of the Egyptian-Arab-Muslim, or that of the Egyptian-Arab-Pharaonic. It is a story of a people who have a great cultural and spiritual heritage. Most of them live in a city, under the autocratic rule of a King, and are subject to the power of inscrutable fate. There is understandably no place for dynastic upheavals or religious strife. Miracles are part of daily life, mystery is everywhere to be encountered, but the highest wisdom is to interpret everything in accordance with the precepts handed down over the generations. It is clear that the old Arabic term ”mu'arrikh” for Najib Mahfuz no longer has the traditional meaning of historiographer, but that of the modern Western “historian.”
