To Be a Describer, Not the Described, at All Times

At all times, (2) you, too, should be that sparkle of hope in the eyes of others, described and describing. What most astonished the German intellectuals concerned with foreign cultures, during the Frankfurt International Book Fair, was the abundance of texts by Arab travelers to Europe.

At a time when Europeans had accustomed themselves to dealing with a literary void regarding their interaction with others, these same Europeans suddenly found themselves facing a richly filled cabinet of diaries written over the preceding ten centuries, all by Arab pens of travelers who had crossed the European continent on horseback, in horse-drawn carts, old trains, and sailing and steamships.

These means of transport in themselves are exciting for the imagination of twenty-first-century inhabitants whose memory retains only fictional images of these vehicles and their environments, drawn from nineteenth-century literature, twentieth-century cinema, or from the works of classical and impressionist visual artists, and the existing photographs in the albums of early photographers depicting life in nineteenth-century Europe and the beginning of the twentieth century. The existence of a text by an Arab or Eastern pen about daily life scenes in nineteenth-century Europe is like a complete fantasy.

For the Westerner is accustomed to viewing himself as the subject for the other, that other, especially the Easterner, as a describer, an explorer, a conqueror for the other. This is what he is not accustomed to – something that much stimulates the imagination – rather, that he himself be the subject of it.

The Westerner is accustomed to seeing himself as the subject of the "other," while the "other," especially the Easterner, is seen as the one describing and exploring, opening up to the "other." That he himself is the subject is what he has not grown accustomed to and is even more exciting to the imagination.

I cannot, from now on, imagine the reactions of European readers to the diaries of Arab thinkers and intellectuals such as Ahmed Zaki Pasha, known as "Sheikh of Arabism," who visited the European continent, staying in London, Paris, and Rome, and visited the cities of Andalusia in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and documented valuable impressions and observations; or Ahmed Faris Al-Shidyaq, who lived in Britain and France in the first half of the nineteenth century; or even Rifa'a Rafi' Al-Tahtawi, who lived in France during the same period; or Salim Bustrus; and Edward Bek Elias; and Muhammad Labib Al-Batanouni; and Hassan Tawfik Al-Adl; and Muhammad Amin Fikri; and Dimitri Khalat; and Idris Al-Ja'eedi Al-Saliwi; and Francis Al-Rash; and Al-Fasi.

These and others wrote diaries about their travels in nineteenth-century Europe, not to mention those who visited Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such as the Iraqi Elias Hanna Al-Mawsili and the Moroccan Muhammad Al-Ghassani. When it comes to Arab travelers to Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century, and the diaries they wrote about their travels, their number is countless.

However, from initial observations, merely mentioning some of these names and the dates of their journeys, documented on forgotten yellowed paper in the shelves of Arab libraries, was an extremely inspiring act and a cause for questioning by a number of German writers and researchers who listened to my lecture on Arab travelers to nineteenth-century Europe, within the framework of the Frankfurt International Book Fair.

When it comes to Arab travelers to Europe at the beginning of the 20th century, and the diaries they wrote about their journeys, their number is countless.

If merely mentioning a handful of unknown names and works brought astonishment to European researchers specialized in the literature of the relationship with the other, then translating a collection of these works into European languages and making them accessible to the general Western readers, who show great eagerness to read travel literature, would contribute to overturning common perceptions of Arabs, which often suggest that they are people prone to avoiding reading about others, engaging in dialogue with them, and interacting with them.

On the contrary, the European reader will discover that the overwhelming majority of Arab travelers’ writings about Western civilization reflect an extremely positive view of the other, if not looking to it with hope, as a commendable civilizational model to be emulated. It is no wonder, for the ancestors of these travelers traversed the continents of the ancient world with open eyes and hearts beating with a love of knowledge.

Despite the gaps of difference and disparity that cemented the East as East and the West as West, ever since the Andalusian edifice of coexistence between cultures collapsed under the blows of Catholic zealotry, Arabs never ceased to nourish the desire for an encounter with the European Other, whether on their land or on their own, despite the river of blood that flowed between the two sides due to a conflict that has both subsided and rekindled since the First Crusade in 1096, until the entry of the French army into Damascus and its occupation in 1920.

And if Arabs hold a memory for the French General Gouraud that can in no way be good, his famous statement at the tomb of their national hero: "Here we are back, Saladin!" did not prevent them from appreciating Western civilization as a cultural achievement whose human face never disappeared. From here, one can understand that hope that shone in the eyes of the educated Arab elites as they roamed Europe and documented diaries about societies they yearned to emulate in civilization and knowledge.