© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2012 DOI: 10.1163/1570064x-12341236 Journal of Arabic Literature 43 (2012) 299-335 brill.com/jal Al-Azhar in the Bibliographic Imagination Dahlia E. M. Gubara Columbia University Abstract Tis article interrogates the discursive substance of the library in the modern production of knowledge. It proceeds in two parts: the frst section explores the locations of the idea of the Library in the modern episteme, while the second analyzes its importation and application in Egypt, and its implications for reforms at al-Azhar. Beginning with an exploration of the place of books and libraries as symbols and indices of civilizational progress in the modern West, it then moves to their mobilization in national and imperial state projects. Shifting to Egypt, it shows how modern assumptions distort readings of a pre-modern text by an Azhari scholar, before analyzing the internalization of a Western bibliographic discourse in the late nineteenth- century and beyond, culminating in today’s ‘Azhar Online’ digitalization project, where techni- cal, didactic and ideological aims are discursively positioned in a dialectic of ‘education for heritage, heritage for education.’ Keywords: al-Azhar, the Library, Michel Foucault, Orientalism, ʿAbd al-Raḥ mān al-Jabartī, turāth, nahḍ ah Introduction In 1882, the famed Egyptian intellectual ʿAlī Mubārak published ʿAlam al-Dīn, an eclectic educational travel epic. Covering almost 1500 pages, the text is divided into 125 “conversations” [musāmarāt] between an Azhari shaykh (ʿAlam al-Dīn) and an English Orientalist as they depart on a voyage of trans- lation and discovery from Egypt to France. 1 Tough seemingly written more than a decade before, the timing of the publication was rather signifcant, coming shortly upon the beginning of Colonel ʿUrābī’s popular revolt, and just preceding the violent British occupation of the country. Te place of pub- lication itself, that immortal city of Alexandria, would be savagely bombarded by Admiral Seymour’s feet a few months later. From the preface, a panegyric to his own service to the country, it is clear that ʿAlī Mubārak intended the book as a series of pedagogical lessons leading 1 ʿAlī Mubārak, ʿAlam al-Dīn (4 vols., Alexandria: Jarīdat al-Maḥ rūsah, 1882).