Taha Husayns Dagarna som religionshistorisk källa
Taha Husayn’s The Days as a source for the history of religions
Abstract
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.
Publisher
LIR. journal
Collections
View/ Open
Date
2013Author
Larsson, Göran
Olsson, Susanne
Keywords
al-Azhar
självbiografi
tolkningskonflikt
Egypten
Religionshistoria
Islam
Sufism
Taha Husayn
Dagarna
Publication type
article, peer reviewed scientific
Language
swe