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In January 1952, the Egyptian monarchy, for the second time, banned a history book by
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Abd al-Rahman al-Rafi
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i (1889-1966). Several months later, in the wake of the July Revolution, al-Rafi
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i's status had changed dramatically. From his former position as an officially marginalized historian and politician he had become the editor of a daily newspaper, a member of the new constitutional committee, and the head of Egypt's bar association. He subsequently won several state prizes for his scholarly achievements. His books were reprinted and distributed widely. The president quoted him in his speeches. By the early 1960s, al-Rafi
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i had become Egypt's most awarded and celebrated historian of the 20th century and was selected as Egypt's candidate for the Nobel Prize.
Why is al-Rafi
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i considered Egypt's national historian? What kind of history did he write to become Egypt's most lauded historian? Was his perspective on modern Egyptian history originally his? Did other major historians share it, as well? And equally important, what role did politics play in the reception of al-Rafi
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i's work? In the following pages I will try to answer some of these questions.
Al-Rafi
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i was an independent historian whose only formal education was in the field of law. Like many young, ardent nationalists at the turn of the 20th century, he believed that law was a vocation necessary for changing the national reality in Egypt. However, al-Rafi
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i, a man of almost limitless energy, did not narrow his activity to any particular field, and he was both a part-time journalist and a lawyer engaging in political activity on behalf of the National Party (al-Hizb al-Watani). Nevertheless, from the mid-1920s on, he dedicated most of his time to the writing of sixteen detailed tomes encompassing Egyptian history from 1798 to 1959. In the early 1960s, this project came to be known as the "National Corpus" (al-Mawsu
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a al-Wa[tdotu ]aniyya ), the most extensive history of modern Egypt ever to be written.
Any researcher dealing...