Nabawiyya Mūsà: “oriental” identity and female leadership in Egyptian society

In Egypt the process of renewal which was begun at the beginning of the 19th Century by Muhammad ‘Ali brought to the attention of public opinion “the woman question” which was of interest not only to intellectuals and the upper class but also to the middle class as evidenced by the involvement of Nabawiyya Musa (1886-1951) who was the first Egyptian woman to become school inspector for the girls’ schools. In this article I analyse Ta’rikhi biqalami by Nabawiyya Musa which came out in 1937 in the periodical al-Fatat and was subsequently published under the same title by the author herself. The text offers points for reflection on various levels: on the one hand, regarding the literary genre – autobiographical writings by female authors – and, on the other, regarding the content of the work, as the author advocates for women’s right to education and equality in the workplace whilst respecting gender segregation, even though she does not regard the veil as a prerogative of Islam, to the extent that she does not wear it. Nabawiyya Musa’s entire life may be considered a “jihad”, as she herself affirmed, a struggle to uphold the rights of women, albeit within the system in power which she tries to modify without, however, attempting to overthrow it. She interpreted, according to the vision of a “sharqiyya” oriental woman, the Egypt of modernity, thus demonstrating that feminism was not a movement imported from the West, a movement that was totally extraneous to Arab-Islamic society.