Networks of Praise and Politics: Unveiling the Taqriz Genre in Egyptian Periodicals

Mariam Elashmawy

“Bab al-Naqd wa al-Taqriz,” al-Maʻrifa, 1 June 1931. Source: Universitat Bonn.

In 1910, the Egyptian nationalist and anti-colonial writer ʻAbd al-ʻAziz Jawish (1876-1939) stood before a prosecutor in Cairo after yet another arrest. A recurrent visitor to the prosecutor’s office, Jawish was used to being subjected to political investigation following the publication of his inflammatory articles. This time, however, he was being charged with inciting the public “to revolt and for hostility towards the British colonial power” in Egypt because of a seemingly innocuous piece of writing: a taqrīẓ (plural taqārīẓ, book commendation; henceforth taqriz) he had written in praise of the nationalist poet Ali al-Ghayati’s (1885-1956) collection of poetry, titled Wataniyyati (My Patriotism).

During the interrogation, Jawish claimed that he had not read the collection before penning his commendation of the text, which was added as an addendum to the printed poetry book.

Prosecutor: “How can you put your name on something you had not yet read that may be a liability to you?”

Jawish: “This is normal among journalists and authors, and the likes … These were only a few words I wrote out of flattery for the poet, and it does not escape those well versed in Arabic expressions that all that is written in madh (praise), ritha’ (lamentation), and dham (slander) is not true, and most times [these words] are only an exaggeration.”

Unfortunately for Jawish, the prosecutor was not convinced by the writer’s attempt to downplay his endorsement of al-Ghayati’s nationalist poetry through his taqriz, and put him under house arrest.

Jawish had set out to paint the act of commendation as void flattery. Yet in this case, as in many other instances, book commendations were far from a simple matter of adulation with no substance. That same year, the Egyptian government had instituted new laws to restrict journalistic freedom of expression for local periodicals and journals. It is probable that the prosecutor, having trialed Jawish on several other political cases, suspected that the writer might have been using the poetic verses of the taqriz as a means of disseminating his own political stance about recent events.

This is but one instance in which a book commendation, when closely scrutinized—whether by the public prosecutor or a contemporary historian—can shed unique light on the broader political, social, and religious dimensions in which it was operationalized. In what follows, I recuperate the history of commendations during the age of print in Egyptian periodicals. With the development of periodicals starting around the end of the nineteenth century, a section dedicated to reviewing the latest books published in the Arabic-speaking world began to be systematically featured in publications. These commendations, however, stemmed from the already established practice, common to manuscript culture, by which authors solicited taqriz for their own work.  

Throughout the rest of the essay, I follow recent scholarly efforts to understand the genre of taqriz not simply as verbose poetic writings, but rather as a set of professional, economic, and intellectual networks that allowed Arabic-speaking intellectuals to amass social, economic, and literary capital in the publishing and intellectual scene. In addition to detailing the uses and functions of the taqriz section in periodicals, I investigate how Arabic-speaking intellectuals themselves thought of them. I am in fact particularly interested in foregrounding what nineteenth and twentieth-century scholars wrote about the history of the genre, and the continuities between pre-modern and modern uses of taqriz that they identified within the context of the intellectual and social life of Arabic writers. What did the editor of a periodical hope to achieve by recommending texts and exposing readers to them? How did he hope to construct the readers’ worldview? Finally, what can the taqriz section tell us about book culture in the Arabic-speaking world, and how can it help us reconstruct who was writing, translating, and publishing which books?

Praise and Critique as Network Analysis

Franz Rosenthal was one of the first Western scholars to stress the importance of studying the genre of the taqriz and call for the need to engage with this unexplored area of Arabic studies. Only a handful of scholars, however, have answered his call. Among them, Thomas Bauer dedicated considerable attention to expanding our understanding of the significance of taqriz as a medium to unearth communication between medieval scholars other than through the study of explicit letter communication. Amelia Levanoni highlighted the usage of taqriz by ‘ulama to establish and debunk scholars in their circles. Building on this scholarship, I turn to the shift from script to print and examine what kind of demands this new technology made of the taqriz genre. Similarly to Barbara Winckler’s approach to “a new era through an old genre,” I look at the twentieth century through the lens of this pre-modern genre and ask what the taqriz section in modern periodicals can tell us about intellectual connections and ties in this period. In this way, I identify a series of parallels in the relationship between the development of the genre of taqriz and changes in Egyptian society, attending to the content as well as the composition of taqriz, its form and function, and the actors and networks that it brought together.

Book commendations powerfully unveil the world of letters in which they operate. Hence, I situate the taqriz in a network of affective ties between the muqāriẓ, the author of the book commendation, and the author of the commended book. A cursory look at the taqriz section in Egyptian periodicals throughout the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century quickly reveals a stark fact: the commended authors are, almost always, already established scholars. The differential in power relation between the author of the commendation and the commended introduces the question of whether it was the journal editor—and, by extension, the periodical—or the author whose book was being reviewed by the editor or contributor who stood to gain the most from the taqriz in the form of literary capital.

It is precisely this aspect of taqriz, namely its functioning as a network, and as an indicator of which network(s) a writer or editor belonged to, that I wish to explore. I look at taqriz networks as ego-centered structures where participants exchanged and accumulated symbolic capital in the form of honor or prestige. Ego networks served as a form of social support and control, emotional and material help, companionship, information, and knowledge construction. This affective network can provide answers to its nodes (participants) on how the world can be interpreted, as well as ensuring that each individual abide by norms and regulate access to resources.

Echoes of Commendation: Mapping Early Taqriz Scholarship

Earlier orientalist analyses of taqriz have focused on cataloging instances of critique and commendation in pre-modern literature, followed by attempts to identify its social function. Going a step further, I investigate how Arab scholars and writers themselves approached this genre, with a focus on Cairene periodicals. In 1853, the German Orientalist Wilhelm Ahlwardt (1828-1909) published his Verzeichnis der arabischen Handschriften (1887–1899), a ten-volume catalog of Arabic manuscripts held at the Royal Library of Berlin. In a dedicated section, Ahlwardt compiled a list of “letters that scholars have sent to authors, thanking them for their published works,” labeling them as Kritiken and Lobschriften (“Reviews and Praises”). Ahlwardt identified different instances of praise, both in prose and poetry, which he later labelled with the name of the text alongside that of the scholar who had praised it.

It was not until 1981 that Franz Rosenthal came across Ahlwardt’s grouping and deemed it worthy of further examination. In his article “Blurbs from Fourteenth Century Egypt,” Rosenthal identified taqriz writings as a literary genre deserving of scholarly investigation in its own right. To familiarize readers with the genre, he compared it to the modern “blurbs” on the dust jackets of novels. However, he specified that the blurb “may not be an exact rendering of taqriz, [and was] as close to it as any other term, and more so than ‘review’ would be.” In keeping with his decision to translate it as “blurb,” Rosenthal defined taqriz as a “praise solicited for the promotion of a newly published work and, incidentally, its author.”

As noted, Thomas Bauer, Amalia Levanoni, and Christine Woodhead were among the first to regard taqriz as a genre, rather than simply as an advertisement. These scholars were interested in understanding how praise or criticism could be studied to understand social and scholarly relationships in the Mamluk medieval period. Accordingly, Levanoni conceptualized taqriz in fourteenth-century Mamluk society as “an established system of academic recognition and ‘ulama patronage networks.” Hence, critiques and commendations were seen by scholars of the time as tools for social survival, whereby individuals in Mamluk Egypt and Syria were able to secure appointments in religious and judicial institutions, as well as “open doors to social and political patronage networks.” Thomas Bauer similarly conceptualized commendations as network-making tools by looking at how Zaynaddin al-Atari (1364–1425) gathered commendations to create, consolidate, and document his intellectual network. In Bauer’s seminal contribution to the study of this genre, he identified two types of taqriz that were present in Mamluk scholarly society: “ordinary taqriz,” which is requested by the author of the text from individuals as a sign of friendship, or to foster relations with the muqāriẓ; and the “debut-taqriz,” which is seen as an institution functioning as a rite of passage, or initiation, for the scholar to enter the religious establishment.

This conceptualization of taqriz as a set of social and intellectual networks opens up innovative avenues for the study of this particular epitext, meaning any material that is not always “appended to the text within the same volume but circulating, as it were, freely, in a virtually limitless physical and social space.” Drawing on this scholarship, I expand the scope of the analysis of taqriz to bring to the fore how journalists and authors in the twentieth century made sense of the function and use of the commendation genre as a broader window through which we can observe literary and scholarly life in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Cairo.

Conceptualizing Taqriz in Arabic Periodicals

The journalists who were active in the early days of the press were quick to point out the continuities they saw with the manuscript age. Many of those who authored articles in twentieth-century periodicals on the use of taqriz highlighted the importance of the genre historically as an institution of initiation and as a way to foster professional relations, and noted how these functions were retained in their own time.

In the twentieth century, scholars were beginning to rethink the nature and function of commendations and critiques. In October 1905, the writer and scholar Sa‘id al-Shartuni (1847-1912) wrote an article titled “al-madḥ al-dham wa al-taqrīẓ wa al-intiqād” (“Praise, Slander, Commendation, and Criticism”) in the literary and scientific periodical al-Muqtataf, established in 1876 in Beirut, and later relocated to Cairo.[i] In the article, al-Shartuni highlighted what he saw as a key concern among scholars and writers of his time, namely that critique had become problematic for literary life. For Shartuni, it was a problem that had to do with the sycophants “who claim ‘I do not praise’ or ‘I do not like to praise’ … and yet when you look into the men they praise, or examine their history or the āthār (legacy) they have left, you would be surprised at their [the people they chose to praise] gall of willingly appearing before people.”[ii]  

To provide concrete examples of how to properly utilize the space of the commendation for both praise and critique (and in some instances, slander), al-Shartuni referred to pre-modern and pre-Islamic instances of poetic taqriz, offering ample evidence of the use of hyperbole in the genre. One such example was historian Ibn Khalikan’s (1211-1282) taqriz of the Khutab (Orations) of ‘Abd al-Rahim bin Nubata (947-983). In his taqriz, Ibn Khalikhan wrote that “there is a consensus that [Ibn Nubata’s orations] are like no others.”[iii] To this respect, al-Shartuni noted, “I do not wish to dismiss these orations, for they are, of course, eloquently written … but they have not come close to the Khutab al-Haririya, or even al-Khutab al-‘Alawiyya.”[iv] He proceeded to explain that the act of drafting a commendation is a personal one, as a mediation between the muqāriẓ and the text he is reading. According to al-Shartuni, the Khutab of Ibn Nubata was thus more in line with Ibn Khalikan’s literary taste, not because it had surpassed all others, but rather because Ibn Khalikhan’s taste reflected the literary currency and relevance of Ibn Nubata’s words to a particular individual and his worldview. In other words, the choice of an author of taqriz to praise a text was not an indication that said text surpassed all others according to one single metric of comparison as much as a reflection of the affective ties between the author of the commendation and the writing he read.

Another example provided by al-Shartuni in order to elucidate how to properly compose taqriz concerned the medieval Quranic exegete al-Zamakhshari’s (1075-1143) praise of al-Hariri’s (1054-1122) Maqamat. Al-Shartuni took no issue with al-Zamakhsari’s commendation of al-Hariri. What he criticized, however, was the hyperbole in al-Zamakhsari’s praise. “If I had been al-Hariri,” he noted, “and these were my maqamat, I would condemn such a taqriz that claims I am one of a kind.”[v] 

Building on al-Shartuni’s discussions of the genre of commendation, in 1932 Zaki Mubarak  (1982-1952), the Egyptian academic, ’adib, and journalist, published an article titled “Hayatuna al-adabiyya” (Our Literary Life), in which he criticized his contemporary literary scene.[vi] He was particularly concerned with the growing number of udaba’ (men of letters) who copied European story-telling styles, and wrote: “I was approached by one of those charlatans who faked writing a collection of ‘Egyptian short stories,’ begging me to commend [‘uqariz] his writing in al-Balagh magazine. However, when I did so and added some comments on his writing and what not, he was exceedingly upset and claimed I was jealous of his great art.”[vii] Here, Mubarak highlighted an important function of the genre of taqriz, namely offering a young inexperienced author a chance to approach a more well-known and established scholar to present his work to others. Appealing to Mubarak to commend his book in the al-Balaagh magazine, the inexperienced author sought to do two things. First, he aimed to establish affective and literary ties with Mubarak as a more experienced scholar who would be his benefactor of sort. Second, he wished to accumulate literary capital and currency by having his work commended by Mubarak, thus sharing in the literary and intellectual prestige that the latter owned.

A few years after his 1932 article, Mubarak found himself the victim of aggressive critiques of his own writings. His friend and poet Ibrahim al-Mazani (1889-1949) believed that Mubarak wrote too highly about himself. In response, Mubarak chastised his friend, saying: “When I wrote my book on Iraq, I did not seek a commendation from al-Mazani or al-Zayat, my pride did not allow me to depend too much on my friends (for approval or validation). Furthermore, I did not even pay attention to the taqārīẓ by [the magazines] al-Balaagh and al-Risala; it was enough that I commended myself in the introduction of the book.” This episode recasts the act of writing commendations as reiterating and establishing affective connections among “friends” and the literary and prestigious potential of taqriz-writing/receiving. Hence, for scholars to get their work commended, as the young ’adīb had sought from Mubarak, meant paving the way for a place in the pantheon of intellectuals.

Ahmad Amin (1886-1954), the prolific author of Fajr al-Islam and Duha al-Islam, among other works, also published an article on the commendation and critique of texts. He focused on the commercial and economic potential of the commendation sections of the taqriz, highlighting that the commercial circulation and popularity of periodicals was dependent on how biting and slanderous a criticism of the texts was. According to Amin, the editors of periodicals rightfully understood this, and believed that the popularity of their publications would increase “the louder the tone of their satire, the viler their criticism, and the more effective their arrows were.” Amin argued that this was a global phenomenon around the world, where periodicals “give praise in small amounts, and criticism in large amounts, and one of the signs of this is that people in every nation value (mostly) periodicals with an oppositional nature, more than they value well-balanced periodicals.” Amin thus clearly highlighted the economic aspect of running periodicals and the ways in which editors sought to use epitexts of their publications such as taqriz to gain readership.

From this perspective, the editors of periodicals possessed a kind of social capital, accumulated and maintained in the publication through its commendation sections, which provided them with the capacity to attract new and established authors. At the same time, editors were “scrutinized intensely by critics for the capital at their disposal, and for the capacity to attract new and established authors in this way is essential.”

According to Pierre Bourdieu, “social capital does not function as a ‘natural’ or ‘social given’, acquired once and for all and then retained by its holder. Rather, it is ‘the product of an endless effort at institution,’ of ‘investment strategies’ which transform otherwise contingent human relations into more durable relationships of mutual obligation.” From this perspective, the taqriz or commendation was the “investment strategy” through which editors transformed otherwise contingent human relations into more durable bonds of mutual obligation. Furthermore, the taqriz created a personal relationship between the editor and the author of the commended text as well as the reader, which depended on “the charismatic mode of journal editorship, a deeply personalized realization of the editorial role where the combined capital accumulated by the post-holder is validated largely in their own name and persona.” Editors thus functioned as nodes in multiple social networks that concentrated social capital under the name of their own periodicals, and by defining their publications based on their personal literary tastes and judgment. Crucially, it was in the commendation sections of periodicals that these social networks and literary tastes were in turn represented, negotiated, and attacked.

Conclusion

Let us return to the interrogation room with Jawish and his perceptive prosecutor. At a time of strict control over the public press, Jawish relied on poetic verses in the form of praise and commendation to express his political opposition. In celebrating the poetry collection Wataniyati, he strengthened his ties and solidarity with the nationalist dissident poet al-Ghayati. This episode ultimately unveils some of the multiple functions for which taqriz was operationalized, and that I have examined so far: as a discursive space to mark dissent through allegory and metaphor and establish a scholarly presence, as a means of economic enterprise, and as a method of circulating ideas and strengthening professional and personal ties.

Much remains to be explored on the history of taqriz in the manuscript and print ages. This essay is an initial attempt to think through the various functions and uses of commendations in Arabic periodicals, which I further develop in my research. In my larger work, I study taqriz as a genre on its own terms, reflective of book culture, scholarly and social networks, as well as a problem space to think through the development of Arabic literary criticism in the modern age.

I thank Olga Verlato, Zeyad el Nabolsy, Charles Milne-Home, and Borderlines’ editorial team for their generous feedback and comments.

Mariam Elashmawy is a PhD candidate in Arabic Studies at Freie Universitat Berlin. Her doctoral project focuses on the utilization of the genre of taqriz in Arabic printed periodicals, and the history of esotericism and easternism in the interwar period.

[i] Sa’id al-Shartuni, “Al-Madh, al-Dham, wa al-Taqriz, wa al-Intiqad,” Al-Muqtataf, October 1905, pp. 777-787. 

[ii] Ibid., 778.

[iii] Ibid., 782.

[iv] Ibid., 783.

[v] Ibid., 783-84.

[vi] Zaki Mubarak, “Hayatuna al-Adabiya,” Al-Ma’rifa, November 1932, pp. 1326-28.

[vii] Ibid., 1327.