JAMAL AL-DIN AL-AFGHANI

Abstract

W hen Tahtawi and Khayr al-Din looked at Europe, what they saw were its new ideas and inventions rather than the irresistible power it derived from them. Khayr al-Din indeed was aware of the dangers inherent in the growth of European influence over the affairs of the empire, but thought they could be resisted with the help of the liberal Powers themselves; they had not yet become so great as to constitute the central problem of political life, and the main problem was still what it had been for the Ottoman writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—internal decline, how to explain and how to arrest it. The political ideas and practical skill of Europe were necessary for the one and the other alike, and Europe therefore was first of all a teacher and political ally for those who wished to reform the life of the Ottoman community. Had Tahtawi and Khayr al-Din written their books a few years later they would no doubt have written with a different emphasis, for in the years between 1875 and 1882 there took place events which were to give a new turn to the relationship between Europe and the Near East. The eastern crisis of 1875–8 showed that the armies of a European Power could penetrate to the heart of the empire, and could only be checked there by a threat from another Power; and the Treaty of Berlin which ended it showed that the fate of the empire and each of its provinces was no longer in its own hands.