From turban to tarboush : Dār al-ʹUlūm and social, linguistic, and religious change in interwar Egypt

This dissertation uses the Dar al-iulum teacher-training school and its graduates as a prism through which to view sociocultural change in Egypt, 1900-1950. Founded in 1872 as part of Khedive Isma'Il's efforts to expand the Egyptian government's civil- school system, the school trained top students from religious schools such as al-Azhar to be schoolteachers with strong Arabic skills. It became a faculty of Cairo University in 1946. The dissertation as a whole presents a new vision of how modernisation and colonialisation affected colonised societies. It demonstrates that a major engine driving sociocultural change in interwar Egypt was the agency exercised by individuals who crossed boundaries and consciously mixed elements oflocal tradition and European-inspired modernity. Dar al-Uliim is best seen as a hybrid institution that not only bridged but also mixed elements of civil and religious education. Throughout its seventy-four years as a higher school, its curriculum combined the Arabic and Islamic disciplines that formed the core of religious tradition with basic instruction in the non-religious subjects - such as mathematics, science, geography, and history - taught in the European-influenced civil-school system. The school represents a new type of religious education, as it taught religious subjects using the ocularcentric, concept-driven pedagogies of civil schools. It was an early contributor to the functionalisation of Islam, or the use of religious knowledge further specific sociocultural, religious, or political goals. Dar al-Ulurn presented opportunities and challenges to its graduates. The mixed range of cultural capital it provided enabled graduates to cross and straddle sociocultural boundaries, such as the one drawn between the efendiyah and the culamcF, which presented top students in religious schools with a chance at becoming an efendz professional. The school and its graduates have often been incorrectly described as overly conservative, in part due to their in-between status. While the graduates generally maintained a strong connection with Egypt's Arabic and Islamic traditions, their commitment to adapting these traditions to meet the needs of a rapidly modernising Egypt was equally strong. Graduates combining the authenticity gained from local Arabic and Islamic knowledge with the cachet of European-influenced practices to modernise Arabic or Islam include Hasan Tawfiq al-cAdl, Bifni Nasif, cAli al-Iarirn, Tantawi Iawhari, Muhammad Madi Abu al-Aza'im, Taki aI-Din al-Nabhani, as well as Hasan al-Banna and Sayyid Outb of the Muslim Brotherhood.