On Zionism or The Zionist Question by Muḥammad Rūḥī al-Khālidī (1864-1913): Exploring the Context of a Pioneering Work

Every critical evaluation that reviews written contributions by Arab intellectuals in the late Ottoman period is certainly vital; nevertheless, one has to engage in this endeavor cautiously. Not unlike other traditions from the past, the Arabic scholarly legacy during the early 1900s is elusive, multi-layered, and does not just give itself up to “rediscovery.”1 Revisiting any work composed in Arabic in the first decade of the twentieth century should proceed systematically through a process of textual analysis, with the sociocultural milieu of the era firmly kept in mind.