19 Facts About Aisha Taymur

Aisha E'ismat Taymur was an Egyptian social activist, poet, novelist, and feminist in the Ottoman era.

Aisha Taymur was active in the early 19th century in the field of women's rights.

Aisha Taymur's writings came out in a period of time where women in Egypt were realizing that they were being deprived of some of the rights that Islam granted them.

Aisha Taymur used her work of fiction, social commentary and poetry to expand the definition of the nation-building process to include different social classes, ethnic groups and women of different generations and nationalisties.

Aisha Taymur was the daughter of Isma'il Aisha Taymur, a member of the Royal Turkish entourage.

Aisha Taymur's father provided Taymur with an education and when he died she assumed the education of her brother, Ahmed Pasha Taymur.

Aisha Taymur's father taught her composition, where she began her literary career with poetry in all three of her learned languages.

Aisha Taymur was dedicated to education but because of gender at time in Egypt, she was restricted to only study in her home.

Aisha Taymur voiced her anger with the segregation in poems when only 13.

Aisha Taymur was born to a literary family; her brother Ahmed Pasha Aisha Taymur was a researcher and novelist.

Aisha Taymur had two nephews: Muhammad Taymur, a playwright and Mahmud Taymur, a novelist.

The Aisha Taymur's believed Persian is the language of literature and refinement, whereas the Arabic language is used for religion and the people.

Aisha Taymur got married in 1854 when she was 14 to Mahmud Bey al-Islambuli, a Turkish notable, and left with her husband to Istanbul.

Aisha Taymur's father died in 1882, followed closely by the death of her husband in 1885, which prompted her to return to Egypt where she resumed her writing.

Aisha Taymur's works came out at the time of a socioeconomic transformation of Egypt where women realized they were being deprived of the rights Islam gave them.

Aisha Taymur worked with other female intellectuals and activists to campaign for education, do charitable work, and challenge colonialism.

Aisha Taymur arguably had a fundamental influence on the emergence of Arabic women's writing.

Aisha Taymur made use of the word insan, meaning human being in Arabic, rather than using man.

Aisha Taymur used imagery of female solitude to convey visibility of the life of a woman in Egypt.