The city of Qayrawan in the works of Salih Suwaysi: a place of memory

Writing midway during the complex social and political circumstances of the French Protectorate, Tunisian Salih Suwaysi al-Qayrawani wrote about his birth city of Qayrawan as a means to resist and critique colonial rule. Examination of two of his writings here demonstrates intellectual continuity from early Muslim writers, highlights his participation in cross-regional trends in the Arab world, and reflects the borrowing of European styles. Suwaysi's words convey his view about French actions in Qayrawan: they diminished the historical and religious significance of the city and the values and traditions of the people of the city. This article analyses Suwaysi's urban identification in his Dalil Qayrawan, a description of monuments, biographical sketches of historical figures, their tombs, etc., and Khasumah bayna madina wa-idara, a short story. The former reminds the reader of the khitat, a long-standing Arab-Islamic genre used by Suwaysi's nineteenth- and twentieth-century Arab world contemporaries to convey urban space and urban history; the latter reveals both a European inspiration and aspects of the millennium-old Arabic genre of maqama. Analysis of these two particular writings of Suwaysi highlights the ways in which he grappled with contemporary ideological trends, namely nationalism and anti-colonialism, while focusing on the principles of Islamic reformers.