Alis al-Bustani’s ‘Sa’iba’ and the Arab Nahda
Alis al-Bustani’s ‘Sa’iba’ and the Arab Nahda
Women, Marriage, and Modernity in the Nineteenth-Century Nahda
Reviewed by Ilham Essalih
A Victorian gothic novel and an Ottoman-Arabic context – could such a peculiar combination be the ultimate manifestation of early Nahda production? Sa’iba, Alis al-Bustani’s first and only novel, is a product of Arab modernity, born from the introduction of European literature to the Arab intellectual during the renaissance of the nineteenth century, a context very familiar to the author.
Her surname likely sounds familiar: she was the daughter of the illustrious Butrus al-Bustani, scholar and major figure of the Nahda in the nineteenth century. Her novel was published in Beirut in 1891, during the early decades of the Arabic novel, and is probably one of the earliest long fictions in Arabic authored by a woman.
Sa’iba features the leading fictional theme of the era: the question of marriage and young people’s selection of a partner, at a time when that role was reserved to elders. Sa’iba, the eponymous heroine, rejects her dandyish cousin Farid who desperately wants to marry her, to marry the more dignified Lutfi Bey. Her choice of husband is motivated by her desire for companionship in marriage instead of a strictly patriarchal relationship pattern.
Rather than the lead-up to the wedding, the plot focuses on what happens after, with the jealous cousin’s attempts to sow discord between the newlyweds. Farid strives to persuade Lutfi Bey of his wife’s unfaithfulness, confirming old ideas of women’s sexual susceptibility and moral weakness. This also reinforces Lutfi Bey’s sense of the impossibility of true companionship and friendship between spouses.
Sa’iba is an early feminist work. It questions the dominance of gendered social institutions among educated Arab and Ottoman middle classes – and the story’s denouement shows the nefarious consequences of a society that relies heavily on preserving male ‘honour’. In typical Nahda fashion but with a feminist dimension, Sa’iba portrays the modernity-versus-tradition debate over marriage. Sa’iba vainly fends off the accusations against her and attempts to convince Lutfi Bey of her innocence and the authenticity of their love, and while they both believe in new, modern companionate ideals, the deeply entrenched gender roles still prevail. Sa’iba asks what constitutes ‘honor’ in their evolving times and whether that might include the weight and validity of a woman’s word.
Though the Nahda corpus was heavily male-dominated, there were a fair number of women producing literary works in the nineteenth century. There are, however, only a limited number of surviving book-length works compared to those of male writers, and they are almost exclusively available in Arabic. The recent translation by Marilyn Booth and publication of Sa’iba as an Oxford World’s Classic at last introduces such a text to an English-speaking audience. Booth writes a generous introduction to the text offering valuable historical and social context as well as Alis’s family history, which tremendously enriches the reading experience.
Sa’iba is not a classic or an important novel of Arabic literature per se, especially since the Arabic novel at that time had not yet fully matured, and a contemporary reader will find in it a number of ‘faults’. Its significance lies in its ability to both offer a glimpse into the challenges encountered by Arabic writers with this new form of writing and into the concerns of women intellectuals of the time.
Alis al-Bustani was born in 1870, the last of Butrus al-Bustani and Rahil Ata’s nine children. Hailing from Mount Lebanon and based in Beirut, Butrus was a prominent Nahda intellectual, reformer, translator, writer, educator, and Rahil was a teacher and translator, known to be the “wife and mother” of the Nahda movement. The Nahda, literally “awakening” or “renaissance”, was an optimistic era of cultural reform in the Arab world, mostly concentrated in Greater Syria (approximately present-day Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and historical Palestine) and Egypt, starting in the nineteenth century until the 1940s.
Its trigger is usually attributed to Napoleon’s 1798 invasion of Egypt, marking the first Arab encounter with European modernity, paired with the Tanzimat, a period of reform in the Ottoman Empire, set in motion to reverse the empire’s decline. Arab intellectuals strove for such modernity through the promotion of knowledge, the expansion of education (including schools for girls), new political and economic institutions, and the expansion of publishing.
In 1849, Butrus famously gave the speech “Khitab fi ta’lim al-nisa’” (“A Discourse on the Education of Women”) to the Syrian Society for the Acquisition of Sciences, in which he stressed the connection between the education of women and national progress, and the overall well-being of society. He founded Beirut’s National School, a secular institution in which children of all religions and backgrounds were educated, in Arabic, English, French, Turkish, and Greek. Rahil played a key role in the establishment and management of the school.
Butrus was also a pioneer of modern Arabic publishing, journalism, and lexicography, and he and his children were prolific writers who left behind some of the most foundational Nahda writing. Fiction was an essential part of the family’s toolkit for social and family reform, and Alis’s older brother, Salim al-Bustani, was a pioneer of Arabic historical fiction, and is sometimes credited with writing the first Arabic novel. Her sister Adelaide (Idlid) published a short novella, while her other sister Louisa was married to Khalil Sarkis, a leading figure and publisher of longstanding journals as well as fiction, including Alis’s Sa’iba.
This Arabic novel of the late nineteenth century was still, at the time of the Bustanis, in the early stages of development and was largely inspired by the European novel in translation. Traditional Arabic prose like the Maqama (episodic stories written in rhymed prose) gave way to European-inspired plot structures, while still retaining elements of old Arabic storytelling.
This new novel was mostly romance-driven and marriage-themed with a female protagonist, and usually ended in a wedding, as in the works of Alis’s siblings. Sa’iba attempts to move away from this plot structure by starting the story with the wedding, and focusing on the hardships that come after.
Oral storytelling had a major influence on the structure and framing of the novel, which uses external diegetic and intrusive narrators. Alis’s novel starts with Fahima, Sa’iba’s aunt, who meets her friend Saniyya for a shopping trip into town, where Saniyya is eager to hear about the news of Sa’iba’s recent marriage. Fahima indulges her friend and starts telling the story, with frequent interruptions of their comings and goings in the busy shops of Istanbul.
This framing is explicit and feels quite chaotic, because the reader keeps getting pulled in and out of the aunt’s story. While clumsy, this short chapter recenters oral storytelling by women, at a time when the insignificance of female voices was more likely to be the norm. Fahima’s conversation with her friend is not mere gossip but the reader’s introduction to the character of Sa’iba, her education, her refusal of her cousin Farid, and her choice of Lutfi Bey for a spouse. Having Fahima and Saniyya outside the home also puts them in a position of autonomy and mobility, although limited.
From the second chapter onwards, however, Fahima’s voice morphs into the voice of an omniscient narrator, who evidently isn’t the same narrator telling their curious friend a story, but an author-like figure:
“And here our pen pauses, for it is unequal to further description of this happy moment. We make excuses for it, and we give it a well-deserved rest in anticipation of the events we shall encounter in the chapter to follow.”
This old-fashioned involvement of the narrator is another vestige from oral storytelling, which was quite familiar to readers at the time, but feels very clunky to a present-day reader. The narrator especially likes to address the reader to alert them to the next transition, showing Alis’s experimenting with the sequencing of plot events and the inclusion of background information (“We take this opportunity to furnish our reader with a brief portrait-sketch”). This author-figure is also an overtly controlling manipulator of the narrative:
“Reader, from listening to the conversation between Fahima and Saniyya, you have learnt that Farid was Sa’iba’s cousin on her father’s side, son of his late brother. But, to this point, we have kept concealed from you the particulars of that life for which he was known in Istanbul society. It is time that you become more familiarly acquainted with him. We will set ourselves to that task now.”
The narrator is judgemental and makes sure to signal their moral position. Private printing and publishing in mid-nineteenth-century Ottoman Syria had an important didactic purpose; and the novel became, like its English counterpart in the eighteenth century, a crucial battleground for moral training and ethical education. The purpose of the novel was to provide young women with reading material that would serve as a secondary curriculum, for moral guidance and training. Sa’iba is a didactic story, with characters serving a rather straightforward, one-dimensional purpose.
Beyond this domestic use, al-Bustani might also have hoped for a broader audience, perhaps a Western one, which can be deduced from the inclusion of didactic passages by the narrator about the “ways of the Eastern world”:
“When people of the East decide to marry, they follow practices different to those of the Europeans. A European man will spend days, or months, in the company of his intended bride. The pair reveal their secrets to each other and share their sentiments on many subjects, to the point that each becomes as knowledgeable of the inclinations of the other as they are of their own. This custom is a necessity, given the rights women have obtained in Europe—which sometimes equal the rights men have—as well as the freedom women enjoy and the status they are able to insist on. Not to study his companion’s character closely would expose a man to the risk of regret once he is married, for he might encounter in his wife a nature contrary to his own, a character repugnant to his taste. And also, amongst most Europeans, marriage is a bond that is indissoluble save in death. Amongst Easterners, to the contrary, no shared sociability is permitted in advance of the wedding. At the time of life when daughters are customarily wed, they are as yet young girls whose characters have not fully matured. That is, they are married at a stage when a young female’s inclinations and personality are still in formation; when she is receptive to a man’s influence upon her such that her character assumes the colouring of his and she grows accustomed to the habits that he has already acquired. He is helped in this circumstance by the authority he can exercise over her —his precedence in law as much as in understanding. She learns to fear that if she behaves poorly, or rebels, he will divorce her or do her injury. All of this conduces her to obedience: she shall be led by his hand. Thus, spending time together before marriage, as the Europeans practise, is of little necessity or utility for those of the East.”
This didactic passage crucially expresses the novel’s principal concern: the vulnerability of women within the institution of marriage and the importance of education. Alis’s critique of the age at which girls are expected to marry, and more broadly, a patriarchal vision of marriage, in favor of a union of peers which does not expose a wife to her husband’s whims and impulses, is bold. These ideas were, in 1891, far from unchallenging, which explains Alis’s choice of setting of her novel. The story is composed in Arabic but takes place in Istanbul with Turkish-speaking Ottoman characters, likely Muslim, despite Alis being Protestant. Choosing to locate the story in the Ottoman capital rather than an Arab city that would be more familiar to her (it is unlikely that she ever set foot in Istanbul), creates enough distance to explore these ideas without risking marginalizing her readership.
This choice also situates the text as an Ottoman novel (rather than a Lebanese novel, which would be anachronistic) with Arabic as a language of the empire. In line with this, Alis dedicates the novel (in a page-long address) to “His Most Sublime Highness”, Sultan Abdülhamid II, and expresses her gratitude for the reforms that made the expansion of educational institutions for girls possible.
The novel nonetheless questions the limits of the reforms. Farid, Sa’iba’s jealous cousin, attempts to convince Lutfi that Sa’iba has a secret affair with him. Farid tricks Sa’iba into joining him in a hunter’s lodge by convincing her Lutfi has been injured and is recovering there. When Lutfi discovers his wife alone with Farid, he has doubts about her alleged unfaithfulness, despite deeply wanting to believe her. She tells him,
“Sidi, she said, I know what a serious matter this is—what I was led to by what I thought was your command. I know how firm, how immovable, is your sense of honor; and how terrible it would be to see it injured. It is this that has all but landed me in utter despair. The appearance of all that has happened grieves me, and I know that it compromises me—yet my love for you, and Farid’s treachery toward me, disguised as a trick to convince me that your life was in danger, surely must intercede for me and touch your sympathies. Her voice was steady and she showed no signs of uncertainty. As always, her demeanor radiated purity and impeccable good-ness. Lutfi did not fail to notice any of this. He softened towards her. Nothing is hidden but that it comes to light. If you are indeed telling the truth, then no one will adhere more closely to you than myself. But as soon as Lutfi had uttered these words he strode into his study and shut the door behind him.”
Sa’iba has no chance of convincing him of her innocence with the sanctity of her word, the confirmation of her love for him, or the purity of her character. She must reassert his position within the patriarchal structures that place his male honour and his patriarchal control over their friendship and love for each other. Lutfi Bey is haunted by doubt:
“These thoughts and others tugged at him, pursuing him without pity. They left him torn between scepticism and persuasion, in the suspicions about his wife that had invaded him. He had no appetite for examining her more closely: he dreaded the possibility that doing so might only confirm her terrible sin.”
To convince Lutfi, Farid plays with old misogynistic beliefs about ‘women’s wiliness’; i.e. a female tendency toward trickery and deception, as well as the belief of women’s susceptibility to sexual corruption. Al-Bustani plays with this theme by writing a male character, Farid, who deceives using patriarchal assumptions. Lutfi cannot help doubting his wife, making the Nahda-inspired companionate ideals impossible to live by as long as old attitudes towards masculinity prevail, showing the limits of gendered social reform.
The scene of the hunter’s lodge uses gothic motifs to evoke the heroine’s entrapment at the hands of Farid:
“She moved away, stepping back until she was perched at the very edge of the rooftop terrace where it faced the stony depression. Farid stood still. He warned her of the danger of falling. She stared at him, her gaze mingling scorn with fear. You-you treacherous man! Do you think I would sell my honor just to save my life? Stay where you are or I will throw myself off this rooftop. Unlock that door, open it so that I can go home. That is, if you have a shred of honor and manliness left in you.”
The lodge, a male space, plays the role of the classic gothic castle that confines the persecuted female protagonist, combining emotional intensity and atmospheric landscape, also typical of the genre. Sa’iba displays strong echoes of the Victorian Gothic novel, with motifs pasted onto an Arab-Ottoman setting.
Feelings are melodramatic, and the landscape and weather foreshadow gloom and strongly reflect the characters’ interiority:
“The rays of light vanished and the battalions of darkness attacked. Lutfi walked on, encased in his pain and the visions he could not banish from his head. Finally, he stopped in utter confusion: for he sensed the presence of a hidden, mysterious power, driving him toward a knot of trees in the midst of which he could see a small pool of water.”
The uncanny and supernatural—prominent Gothic motifs—play an important role in confusing and unsettling Sa’iba and Lutfi, but of course the reader knows the rational explanation behind them—Farid’s relentless cunning. They are haunted by the ghosts of their old beliefs about marriage, which pull them back and force them to mistrust their intuitions.
The denouement is in classic gothic style, with a lifting of the veil and revelation of secrets, and a swift restoration of justice. The rushed, morally charged ending attempts to restore order in a neat way, displaying the didactic purpose of the text but also the early experimentation with the Arabic novel in the 1890s, which would not fully mature until the mid-twentieth century. Still, Sa’iba pioneers the fictionalization of feminist concerns of the time and the restrictions of modernity within the Arab world. Its Victorian, Ottoman, and Arabic syncretism is a testament to an era of reform and the ability to create new forms of expression for new concerns, an era that is not so far removed from us.
Ilham Essalih is a Moroccan-Belgian researcher, book reviewer, and columnist specialised in literature from the SWANA region and its diasporas. Based in London, she is also an educator in postcolonial studies and a literary curator. You can follow Ilham on Instagram @ilhamreads.