No 2 (2013)

Karl Vilhelm Zetterstéen. Taha Husayn

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Taha Husayns Dagarna som religionshistorisk källa
(LIR. journal, 2013) Larsson, Göran; Olsson, Susanne
The Egyptian author Taha Husayn’s autobiographical novel The Days has not been used as a source to the history of religions to any large extent. This article wishes to address if and how it can serve as a potential source to illuminate and analyze how religion is portrayed. Even though autobiographical texts are not pretending to present actual historical facts, but rather appear as reconstructions of a past, we address The Days as a text that says something about a specific historical situation, in particular concerning the religious landscape in Egypt at the turn of the century 1900. The Days illustrates the tensions and conflicts that prevailed in Egypt at the time, mainly considering religious interpretations and practices, between urban centers and countryside, but also among the traditional religious elites and the modernizers, attempting at reforming Islam. Taha Husayn was in favor of a humanistic and critical perspective in general, which made him align with a modernized and reformist version of Islam, which explains his critical comments on traditional pedagogy at al-Azhar and the Sufi traditions prevalent in the countryside.