Political contestation in 19th-century Egypt worked through word meanings

Evidence

In Eight Words Husayn al-Marsafi warned the nationalists against dividing the country into hostile ethnic groups, invoking for the purpose some further associations of the word hizb. Compared to the unity implied by the word umma, which means community or nation, Marsafi argued, the word hizb implied self-interest and factionalism (tahazzub). The word’s associations were brought out to discredit the politics of those who used it. Political argument always worked through this power of language, seeking out the contradictions in words or their ability to evoke alternative meanings. Urabi in turn tried to bring out different associations of the word. When he was put on trial after the defeat of the nationalist movement by the British, his interrogators asked him why he had allowed himself to be called ‘the leader of al-hizb al-watani’. Urabi replied by associating the word hizb with the fractures running through the whole country, and its domination by foreigners. The inhabitants of Egypt, he pointed out, are divided into separate races each of which could be considered a hizb. ‘The native people of the country (ahi al-bilad) are a hizb in themselves’, he argued before the judges, adding that ‘they are called “the peasants” in order to humiliate them’. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 434

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the rhetorical-struggle-over-terms theme in Mitchell’s own overarching argument about language and power; also connects to how ‘nationalism’ itself was a contested term elsewhere. — connects to: the MOC “The Word Is a Fence: Language as Battleground, Property, and Partition”
• QUESTION: How did Urabi’s ‘peasants as a hizb’ argument fit with the fact that the nationalist movement was largely led by army officers of rural background — was the group-division framing also a class argument?