Translating Machiavelli in Egypt : The Prince and the Shaping of a New Political Vocabulary in the Nineteenth-Century Arab Mediterranean

This chapter examines the unique manuscript copy of the first Arabic translation of The Prince, produced at the court of Muḥammad ‘Alī in 1832, and currently preserved in the Egyptian National Library and Archives in Cairo. In addressing the transformation of the language and the interpretation of key political concepts in Machiavelli’s text, the primary aim of my study is to examine this translation as an illustration of nineteenth-century Italian-Arabic cultural exchanges. Furthermore, this chapter reveals how the Arabic translation of Machiavelli relates to texts that were circulating in the same time period, against the background of nineteenth-century ideas about language and state reforms and the rise of nationalism in the eastern Mediterranean.