What is a kātib ‘āmm? The Status of Men of Letters and the Conception of Language According to Jurjī Zaydān

Jurjī Zaydān (1861–1914) defined himself as a kātib ‘āmm, a non-specialised writer and media man, who addressed the common reader, namely the newly literate classes generated by school reforms in Egypt and the Ottoman Empire. He was both a self-made, encyclopaedic moralist adīb and an intellectual who participated in a general reformist agenda and the elaboration of a national Arab literature. In such a conception, language had both to be preserved as a heritage and modernised until it would be able to express the new realities of a changing world. That explains why Zaydān, instead of the popular idiom, promoted al-lugha al-fuā, the ‘purest languageʹ, now regarded as a ‘classical languageʹ. How is one to write the ‘purest languageʹ? This question raised many polemics in which Zaydān appeared as a modernist and evolutionist while recommending regulations and producing himself new writing standards.