Dear friend of the OIB,

We are delighted to invite you to the next OIB/COSIMENA Seminar series lecture, which will be held on Wednesday,
27th of November 2024 and as usual it will start promptly at 6.00 p.m. at the DAAD Regional Office Cairo, 11 El-Saleh Ayoub St. off
26th July, Zamalek.

The lecture will be followed by a network gathering in the garden and is titled “The Contribution of ‘Syrians’ to the Early Stages of the Egyptian “Nahḍa” in the Reign of Muḥammad ʿAlī”. The lecture will be held by Dr. Carsten Walbiner Stefan Leder (DAAD)

Concept Note

Muḥammad ʿAlī (r. 1805-1848) is generally regarded as the father of modern Egypt, who, through the development of industry and infrastructure and the creation of a modern army, transformed the backward country into a powerful state capable of challenging even the sultans in Istanbul.
The presentation will take a closer look at these processes of change, knowledge transfer and creation in the fields of culture and education, developments that are often referred to as the "Nahda", the cultural, especially literary, reawakening of the Arab world during the 19th and early 20th centuries, which had its main stages in Egypt and Lebanon.
Muḥammad ʿAlī's modernisation activities are often associated with the Europeans who served him as advisers, educators and managers. Rarely mentioned is the fact that there was also a south-south transfer of knowledge and expertise by mostly Christian Syrians who had immigrated to Egypt since the 18th century. Their role will be examined in more detail. Special attention will be given to "Don Raphael" (Rūfāʾīl Zakhkhūr), an illustrious figure of Syrian origin who was an advisor to Napoleon in Egypt and the only Arab member of the famous Institut d'Egypte. Don Raphael was involved in many of Muḥammad ʿAlī's educational and cultural projects, such as the medical school, the printing press and translation activities. Through the portrayal of him and a few others, it will be shown that 'Syrians' already contributed significantly to the early stages of the 'Nahḍa' in Egypt.

Bio

Dr Carsten Michael-Walbiner has been the Director, DAAD Regional Office in Cairo since December 2022. He received his doctorate from the University of Leipzig in 1995. He specialized in the history of Arab Christianity in the Ottoman period and is a member of the Research Centre for the Christian Orient at the Catholic University of Eichstätt and for the past decade has been section editor for Christian Arabic texts in the mega-project "Christian-Muslim relations: a bibliographic history" (CMR), implemented by the University of Birmingham and Brill Publishers. He has published on a wide range of topics, including church history, travel literature, book printing and manuscripts. He is currently preparing two catalogues of the Oriental manuscript collections of Andechs Abbey (Bavaria) and the Custody of the Holy Land in Jerusalem.
We look forward to seeing you there.

Kindly register at the following link:
https://www.daad.de/surveys/184164?lang=en

Registration Deadline: 23rd November 2024

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