MANFALUTI, ...

born Dec. 30, 1876, Manfalut, Egypt died July 25, 1924, Cairo essayist, short-story writer, and pioneer of modern Arabic prose. Al-Manfaluti was born of a half-Turkish, half-Arab family claiming descent from Husayn, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. He received the traditional Muslim theological education at al-Azhar University but was deeply influenced by pan-Islamism, Egyptian nationalism, and the Syrian school of writers, who introduced him to Western, particularly French, learning. It is uncertain whether he learned French, but his collected essays (Nazarat, 3 vol., 190210; Mukhtarat, 1912) and short stories ('Abarat, 1946) were adapted or translated from French and other European sources. His easy, flowing Arabic style, free from the then-fashionable ornamentation of rhymed prose (saj'), had a lustre not found in journalistic jargon; it formed the basis of the more accomplished modern Arabic narrative of succeeding generations of writers.