(19th-century) Movement to develop a modern Arabic literature.
Inspired by contacts with the West and a renewed interest in classical Arabic literature, it began in Egypt with Syrian and Lebanese writers who sought the freer environment there, and it spread to other Arab countries as a result of the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire after World War I and the coming of independence after World War II. Its success in altering the direction of Arabic literature is related to the spread and modernization of education and the emergence of an Arabic press.