More specifically, Albert Hourani has shown that westernization worked in the Middle East through the expansion of secularized schools—from pri- mary levels to highly specialized professional institutions—and books, peri- odicals, and newspapers that eventually came to be called a cultural awak- ening, or nahda, in the Levant and Egypt. This awakening created new arenas in which the most sensitive issues of the time could be discussed among a small but increasingly literate audience, setting the stage for nationalist discourse as print media expanded.

Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Coloni…, loc. 78