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*This is a revised and extended version of a paper entitled ‘Anti-Colonial Classics or Manumission through Reception: The Case of Twentieth-Century Egypt’, given at the conference ‘Subversive Classics: Politically Subversive Appropriations of Mediterranean Antiquity’. I am extremely grateful to the organiser, Grant Parker (Stanford), for having invited me to participate in this meeting, and for his and the delegates’ feedback. I owe the inspiration for writing this article to a paper given at Cairo University by Māhir Šafīq Farīd in March 2008, entitled ‘The Influence of Classics on Our Contemporary Arabic Culture: The Example of Louis (Awaḍ () Aṯr al-Klāsīkīyāt fī ṯaqāfatinā al- ( Arabīya al-mu ( āṣira: Louis ( Awaḍ maṯalan)’, and published in ) Awrāq Klāsīkīya (Classical Papers) 8, ed. O. Fayez Riyadh (Cairo, 2008), 49–58. There is, however, little overlap between Šafīq’s paper and mine, as the former has a much narrower scope. He notably explores the reaction of Egyptian classicists to Louis (Awaḍ’s work, a topic with which I do not deal here. Finally, I would also like to record my debt and gratitude to those who read an earlier draft and made many invaluable comments; they are Wolfgang Haase, Jeremy Kurzyniec, Zakia Pormann, Simon Swain, and Phiroze Vasunia. All translations, unless otherwise stated, are my own; I have often given longer quotations than otherwise necessary where the sources are only available in Arabic.
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Pormann, P.E. Classics and Islam: From Homer to al-Qā(ida*. Int class trad 16, 197–233 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12138-009-0120-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12138-009-0120-8