Page "Egyptian Arabic" Paragraph 17

Proponents of language reform in Egypt included Qasim Amin, who also wrote the first Egyptian feminist treatise, former President of the Egyptian University, Ahmed Lutfi el-Sayed, and noted intellectual Salama Moussa.

They adopted a modernist, secular approach and disagreed with the assumption that Arabic was an immutable language because of its association with the Qur ' an.

The first modern Egyptian novel to be written in the vernacular was Muhammad Husayn Haykal's Zaynab in 1913.

Other notable novelists such as Ihsan Abdel Quddous and Yusuf Idris, and poets such as Salah Jaheen, Abnudi and Fagoumi, helped solidify vernacular literature as a distinct literary genre.