ʻAbd al-Raḥmān Jabartī (1754–1822)

I don't suppose anyone but an extreme specialist seriously *needs* this level of historical detail on the Napoleanic occupation of Egypt, but this book is actually extremely good for the casual reader.

Napoleon is a _modern_ figure more than anything else, contemporaneous with the early Industrial Revolution, postdating the American Revolution; to see him referred to by an Arabic title, or described through the eyes of an author and a culture that seem like a better fit with the Middle Ages, is an experience so jarring as to verge on the comedic -- and to inspire some deep thoughts about the real nature of 'progress' and the extreme contingency of societies in the process.

No latent belief in social evolution, social progress, as a necessary thing, survives contact with the profoundly unintentional hilarity of this book: human societies, it reminds us, are really rather artificial, things of consensus rather than necessity, and they do not necessarily "develop" or "progress." "Evolution" of a society can be backwards as well as forwards; the mere fact that a century has a larger number does not mean that it's better than the century preceding it; and human societies never _have_ to change.… (mehr)