Abstract
In 1902 Ruhi al-Khalidi produced what may be the first modern work of comparative criticism in Arabic. In his History of the Science of Literature, Khalidi (1864-1913), a Palestinian polyglot, used the discourse of literary criticism to develop a modern understanding of liberty, but at the cost of obfuscating the coloniality on which this notion of liberty was predicated. The following discussion examines colonial relations of power in the rise of modem Arabic literary criticism as registered in Khalidi's comparative treatise. Thus the ensuing analysis employs the conceptual apparatus of decolonial thought to explore Khalidi's contribution to the nineteenth-century Arab cultural renaissance and modernization, known as the Nanda.