This project was completed only with the assistance of a great number of mentors, teachers, colleagues, and friends. Since this book is based on my doctoral dissertation it is fitting that I begin by thanking my advisor and the rest of my committee. Zachary Lockman’s unwavering support and gentle persistence were essential to the completion of the dissertation. His guidance and advice continued through the writing of this book. I am forever grateful. Khalid Fahmy and the rest of my committee, Michael Gilsenen, Bernard Haykel, and Yanni Kotsonis, all contributed in significant ways to the shaping of the dissertation on which this book is based. Of course I take full responsibility for any error or misstatement in this pages.
I have had the good fortune over the years to study with gifted and generous teachers. My debt to them is manifest. They include: Samira Haj, Peter Gran, Sima Fahid, Talal Asad, Timothy Mitchell, Lila Abu-Lughod, Michael Hanagan, Louise Tilly, Aisha Jalal, Ra’uf Abbas Hamid, and Hasan Hanafi.
I am deeply indebted to the many critics, advice givers, counselors, editors, guides, gurus, mentors, and friends who consistently challenged me in so many beneficial ways and from whom I learned (and continue to learn) so much. Although some of them may not even be aware of their importance to this project, to my education, and to my growth as a person, I want to thank them one and all, Özlem Altan, Wael al-Ashari, Sabri Ateş, Aslı Bali, Banu Bargu, Michael Behrent, Cecile Belavoine, Laura Bier, Eileen Bowman, Koray Çalişkan, Jessica Cooperman, Florence De Lavalette, Samera Esmeir, Tamara Fadl, Ilana Feldman, Nancy Finton, Leila Hamdan, Hanan Hammad, Dyala Hamza, Taja-Nia Henderson, Charles Hirschkind, Najib Hourani, Aisha Ikramuddin, Wilson Jacob, Hamdy El-Jazzar, Arang Keshavarzian, Nermeen al-Khafagi, Saba Mahmood, Khalil Makary, Karuna Mantena, Lisa Pollard, Ramzi Rouighi, Armando Salvatore, Joshua Scherier, Lise Nathan Scherier, Ahmad Shahata, Omnia El Shakry, Nicole Tammelleo, Rabie Wahba, and Muhammad Yousry.
The research and the writing of this book was conducted in Egypt, Lebanon, Italy, and the United States and I would like to express my gratitude for those who made this possible. Yale University’s Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies and its Middle East Council funded several summer research trips to Egypt. The Whitney Humanities Center at Yale University awarded me an A. Whitney Griswold Faculty Research Award to conduct research for this project. I am also grateful to them for awarding me a Frederick W. Hilles Publication Award for the preparation of this manuscript. New York University’s Institute for the History of the Production of Knowledge was kind enough to award me a Dissertation Fellowship in 2001–2002 which afforded me the time to read for and write much of my dissertation. The American Research Center in Egypt awarded me a USIA Fellowship in 1998–1999 to conduct research in Cairo. The United States Department of Education provided funds for Foreign Language and Area Studies awards that I received from New York University. FLAS fellowships funded both a year of study at Cairo University and research related to this project in the Egyptian National Library and National Archives and several other libraries and collections in Cairo and Beirut, Lebanon. I am also grateful to the Center for Arabic Study Abroad at the American University in Cairo for awarding me a fellowship to study Arabic in 1995–1996.
I would also like to express my deep gratitude to the faculty of the History and Philosophy departments at Cairo University (in particular to Ra’uf Abbas Hamid and Hasan Hanafi), who welcomed me so warmly into their midst in 1998 and 1999. Finally, I wish to thank the ever helpful and resourceful staffs of the National Library and National Archives in Cairo and the Egyptian National Geographic Society. With near certainty I can say that without their kind words, their encouragement, and most of all their wry sense of humor this project would never have come to fruition.