Famous Speeches and Celebrated Orators

"Famous Speeches and Celebrated Orators" by Salama Moussa: A Historical and Critical Analysis

Oratory as a Driving Force in History

Salama Moussa’s Famous Speeches and Celebrated Orators (1904) is a foundational work in the study of rhetoric as both a historical and literary phenomenon.

At the heart of the book lies a central idea: oratory is humanity’s oldest literary art, practiced since the earliest tribal societies through to advanced civilizations. The orator was the prime mover of collective passion—rousing people to defend their land, wage wars, or demand their rights.

For Moussa, great orators are exceptional individuals who can transform an abstract idea into a lived creed, one that people embrace so deeply they are willing to die for it:

“The master orator can turn an abstract idea into a creed through which people perceive the entire world.”

Bridging History and Literature

Moussa employs a unique method that fuses history with literary analysis. He selects historical figures whose rhetorical brilliance shaped collective consciousness and altered the course of events.

He goes beyond simply quoting speeches: he analyzes their historical context, explores the lives of the speakers, and insists that the speech is inseparable from the speaker’s personality and delivery.

At the same time, he acknowledges a key difficulty: speeches often lose their essence when recorded, because oratory is a performative art that resists transcription:

“The speech loses its essence when recorded, for the historian, sitting quietly at his desk, analyzes what was never meant for analysis but for immediate confrontation.”

The Arabic Tradition of Oratory

Historical Development

Moussa traces the evolution of Arabic oratory across major eras:

Pre-Islamic Arabia: Rhetoric was limited to tribal leaders and soothsayers. With the rise of Islam, most of these speeches disappeared, dismissed as remnants of pagan pride.
The Islamic Era: Oratory became a central religious institution (Friday sermons), alongside martial orations such as those of Khalid ibn al-Walid.
The Umayyad Period: The golden age of Arabic oratory, when political sermons flourished to the point where even the caliph’s posture during a sermon—such as al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik sitting instead of standing—was noted by historians.
The Abbasid Era: Decline set in, as spontaneity gave way to pre-written texts detached from their immediate audience.

Key Examples

Quss ibn Sa‘idah al-Iyadi (Pre-Islamic): Moussa presents his sermon at the Ukaz marketplace as an early example of philosophical oratory. The Prophet Muhammad is reported to have praised him: “May God have mercy on Quss; I hope he will be raised on Judgment Day as a nation unto himself.”
Quss’s famous words—“O people, listen and understand: whoever lives, dies; and whoever dies, is gone; and all that is to come will come…”—illustrate the existential tone of early Arabic oratory.
The Prophet and the Rightly Guided Caliphs (Early Islam): Their speeches, Moussa notes, were characterized by brevity, directness, and moral focus—tools for uniting the community.
Bishr ibn al-Mu‘tamid (Abbasid Era): His pedagogical advice on oratory emphasizes matching style to audience: “Seize your moments of vitality… give every listener noble words and fresh meanings.”

The Western Tradition of Oratory

Historical Shifts

Moussa also examines Western oratory, tracing its progression through:

Religious oratory: embodied by figures such as St. Bernard.
Revolutionary oratory: forged in the crucible of European revolutions.
Modern political oratory: shaped by the democratic age.

Key Examples

Theodore Roosevelt (United States): Moussa cites a passage from Roosevelt’s 1899 Chicago speech, where he rejected “the doctrine of ignoble ease” in favor of “the doctrine of the strenuous life.” For Moussa, Roosevelt turned rhetoric into an instrument for forging national identity.
Victor Hugo (France): Hugo exemplified the “writer-orator,” blending literary eloquence with social advocacy, uniting literature and rhetoric.
Abraham Lincoln (United States): Though Moussa does not reproduce Lincoln’s speeches, he highlights how they marked a turning point in democratic oratory, rooted in appeals to the collective reason of the people.

The Psychology of Oratorical Power

Moussa offers a penetrating psychological account of why speeches move people. He argues that audiences become a different psychological entity when gathered:

“When people assemble, they share a different consciousness than their individual minds… they descend from the realm of reason to the depths of emotion.”

Thus, the inspired orator speaks primarily to emotion rather than intellect, wielding tools such as:

passionate delivery
expressive gestures
vocal modulation

He stresses that much of this impact is lost once the speech is reduced to text.

The Art of Effective Oratory

From the examples presented, Moussa distills the core elements of powerful rhetoric:

Sensitivity to social context: tailoring language to audience, as Bishr ibn al-Mu‘tamid advised—true eloquence lies in making sophisticated ideas accessible to the masses.
Balance of word and meaning: lofty ideas deserve lofty expression, but not needless complexity.
Emotional sincerity: Roosevelt’s national fervor and Quss’s existential candor illustrate how authentic feeling anchors great oratory.
Performative vitality: voice, gesture, and improvisation are essential.

About the Author

Salama Moussa (1887–1958), born in the village of Bahnbay near Zagazig, Egypt, developed his intellectual vision through:

Time in Europe (1906–1909): exposure to Darwin, Marx, and Voltaire.
Ideological affiliations: membership in the Fabian Society and influence from George Bernard Shaw.
Intellectual controversies: attacked by contemporaries like Abbas Mahmoud al-Aqqad and Mustafa al-Rafi‘i, who accused him of severing ties with the Arabic tradition.

Al-Aqqad once remarked: “What Salama Moussa has proved is one thing—that he is not Arab.”

Legacy and Critical Reception

Contributions:

Pioneer in studying oratory as a historical and psychological phenomenon.
Advanced critical reading of speeches as texts inseparable from performance.
Brought Arabic and Western traditions into comparative perspective.

Limitations:

Clear Western bias, evident in the division between “Arabic” and “European” oratory, with disproportionate space given to the latter.
Selectivity—omitting some influential Islamic speeches.
Oversimplification at times, especially in his account of Abbasid decline.

Oratory in the Modern Era

Moussa concludes by noting that oratory in Egypt reawakened during the ʿUrabi Revolution of 1881 after centuries of stagnation.

The essence of rhetoric, he argues, remains timeless:

“If the orator is gifted, he can still transform an abstract idea into a creed.”

Despite changes in media and style, the psychological and social foundations of oratory endure.

“Perhaps oratory is the oldest literary art. Both the primitive and the civilized alike need the orator.”

Over a century since its publication, Famous Speeches and Celebrated Orators remains a historical and literary document of lasting value.

Moussa’s analysis of collective psychology and the mechanisms by which rhetoric creates belief continues to resonate in our own age, where the power of speech has lost none of its relevance.

For the original summary in Arabic