Arabic literary study was reorganized around European-origin decline narratives

Evidence

Appearing in 1882, it tells the story of two Egyptians who travelled to France and England in the company of an English Orientalist. On their first day in Paris, the two Egyptian protagonists wander accidentally into the vast, gas-lit premises of a wholesale supplier. Inside the building they find long corridors, each leading into another. They walk from one corridor to the next, and after a while begin to search for the way out. Turning a corner they see what looks like an exit, with people approaching from the other side. But it turns out to be a mirror, which covers the entire width and height of the wall, and the people approaching are merely their own reflections. They turn down another passage and then another, but each one ends only in a mirror. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 78 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The decline-of-Islamic-science narrative is a Eurocentric fabrication.; The decline of Islamic science after the eleventh century is a fabricated narrative; European philology externalized Islamic traditions into a museum past (+14 more)

Broader Connections

• Arab rediscovery-of-Europe narratives were a popular nineteenth-century genre #complicates (0.80)
• Early Arabic fiction depicted European commerce as a maze of mirrors with no exit #complicates (0.72) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 78