[1] The two went to Paris in 1884 and helped Jamāl ad-Dīn al-Afghānī and Muḥammad ʿAbduh with the publication of the anti-colonial Islamic revolutionary journal al-ʿUrwa al-wuthqā.
[1] Muḥammad al-Muwayliḥī was a famous critic of Egypt's poet laureate Ahmed Shawqi, particularly after the first volume of his anthology ash-Shawqiyat was published.
[3]: 249–251 In at least two dedicated articles, al-Muwayliḥī accused Shawqi of a kind of experimentation he considered heretical: he saw Shawqi's publishing of an autobiography as boastful and unprecedented in Arabic poetry; his prose, unbecoming of a poet whose single expressive voice should be poetry; his Western influence from his studies in Europe, "repugnant" and unworthy of the proud Arabic poetic tradition.
[3]: 249–251 These discussions about tradition, authenticity, and formality against experimentation, vulgarity, and Westernization were typical of the Nahda and transcended language and literature, reaching more broadly into other changes happening in culture and society at the time.
[3]: 249–251 Professor Gaber Asfour, Director-General of the Supreme Council for Culture in Egypt [ar], requested this edition of Roger Allen.