Jurjī Zaydān was a Lebanese novelist, journalist, and scholar of the Nahḍa (‘awakening’), an intellectual current of the long nineteenth century for the renewal of Arab culture. With his cultural journal al-Hilāl (The Crescent), established in 1892 in Cairo, Zaydān developed a very successful medium to popularise knowledge about Arab history and Arabic literature in order to establish a national consciousness. He became especially famous for his novels on the history of Islam, ranging from the seventh to the beginning of the twentieth century (most of them serialised in al-Hilāl), which are outstanding for their impact both on the history of Arab nationalism and Arabic literature and remain well-read classics to this day.