Rifa'a at-Tahtawi

Rifa'a at-Tahtawi
رفاعة الطهطاوي
Born	(1801-10-15)October 15, 1801 Tahta, Egypt Eyalet, Ottoman Empire
Died	May 27, 1873(1873-05-27) (aged 71) Cairo, Khedivate of Egypt, Ottoman Empire

Rifa'a Rafi' at-Tahtawi (Arabic: رفاعة رافع الطهطاوي, romanized: Rifāʿa Rāfiʿ aṭ-Ṭahṭāwī;^[a] 1801–1873) was an Egyptian writer, teacher, translator, Egyptologist, and intellectual of the Nahda (the Arab renaissance).

One of the first Egyptian travellers to France in the nineteenth century,^[1] Tahtawi published in 1834 a detailed account of his 5-year-long stay in France, Takhlīṣ al-ʾibrīz fī talkhīṣ Bārīz ('The Extrication of Gold in Summarizing Paris'^[2]), and from then on became one of the first Egyptian scholars to write about Western culture in an attempt to bring about a reconciliation and an understanding between Islamic and Christian civilizations.

In 1835 he founded a School of Languages in Cairo, and he was influential in the development of science, law, literature, and Egyptology in 19th-century Egypt. His works influenced those of many later scholars such as Muhammad Abduh.

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