Rifa'a al-Tahtawi

Rifa'a Rafi' at-Tahtawi (Arabic: رفاعة رافع الطهطاوي, romanized: Rifāʿa Rāfiʿ aṭ-Ṭahṭāwī; 1801–1873) was an Egyptian writer, teacher, translator, Egyptologist, and intellectual of the Nahda (the Arab renaissance). One of the first Egyptian travellers to France in the nineteenth century, Tahtawi published in 1834 a detailed account of his 5-year-long stay in France, Takhlīṣ al-ʾibrīz fī talkhīṣ Bārīz ('The Extrication of Gold in Summarizing Paris'), and from then on became one of the first Egypti...