section_path: National variations/Egypt
section_name: Egypt
paragraph_text: Egypt
  
  Eighteenth-century Egypt had "a form of 'cultural revival' in the making—specifically Islamic origins of modernization long before Napoleon's Egyptian campaign." Napoleon's expedition into Egypt further encouraged "social transformations that harkened back to debates about inner-Islamic reform, but now were also legitimized by referring to the authority of the Enlightenment." A major intellectual influence on Islamic modernism and expanding the Enlightenment in Egypt, Rifa al-Tahtawi "oversaw the publication of hundreds of European works in the Arabic language."