colloquial arabic poetry, politics, and the press in modern egypt

Colloquial Arabic Poetry, Politics, and the Press in Modern EgyptAuthor(s): Marilyn BoothSource: International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 24, No. 3 (Aug., 1992), pp. 419-440Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/164623 .

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Int. J. Middle East Stud. 24 (1992), 419-440. Printed in the United States of America

Marilyn Booth

COLLOQUIAL ARABIC POETRY, POLITICS, AND THE PRESS IN MODERN EGYPT

On 9 November 1956, a poem in colloquial Arabic appeared in the month-old Cairo daily al-Masda. The poet was an unknown named Hamid al-Atmas, a carpenter from the Delta city of Damanhur. Entitled "That's It, I'm Off to the Battle- field," al-Atmas's poem celebrated the worker as soldier, for British and French troops had just landed in Port Said. The narrator states that he will put down his tools-as will many laborers and craftsmen-to go and fight. Following victory, he will return to his shakush (hammer) and mingar (plane). This, he stresses, is a people's struggle.' The point is made no less subtly through the poet's choice of language: the narrator's diction is based on that of shop, home, and street.

The first eighteen colloquial poems to appear in al-Masd3-from November 1956 through early March 1957-were directly inspired by the Suez Crisis and highlighted the heroism of Port Said's populace.2 While following the Nasserist line on anti-imperialism, these poems focused on industrial workers' active roles in the conflict, hardly mentioning either army or government. By training the spotlight almost exclusively on one pole of the Nasserist "alliance of popular forces," they differed from the poems in classical Arabic on the Suez Crisis that also appeared in al-Masa'. These "literary" poems celebrated the regime and echoed or explicated its rhetoric closely, tending toward abstraction and away from the intimate message of personal participation that al-Atmas's hammer suggests.

During its first fifteen months of publication, al-Masda' carried thirty-seven colloquial poems. The consistent publication of colloquial poetry was significant in itself, for this genre (and it was seen as a separate genre) fell outside "educated discourse." Al-Masai's use of this poetry exemplifies the equivocal status of Ara- bic colloquial poetry as a public art. Publishing dialect verse in a newspaper closely associated with the regime could suggest admittance of a community of readers and writers broader than the formally educated elites; it could hint at an erasure of class borders; it could signal that literary discourse-hence "the establishment"-was now the province of all. Such messages hover over the colloquial verse of al-Masd'. But this poetry could also mark out boundaries by its very difference: asserting a separate or specific identity, proclaiming a distance from the center, and subverting the message of a regime attentive to language's power to

Marilyn Booth is an independent scholar and research associate at the Program in Comparative Litera- ture, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Ill. 61801, U.S.A.

? 1992 Cambridge University Press 0020-7438/92 $5.00 + .00



420 Marilyn Booth

communicate-and create-a new sense of nation. Finally, though, dialect verse could reproduce and further power relations. In Egypt, educated practitioners with ties of occupation, patronage, or training to the literary-political establishment have used it to speak to, not from, "the masses."

This essay focuses on some signal moments, some key periodicals and individuals, that have shaped a tradition of written colloquial poetry, specifically that published in the press for purposes of political commentary in Egypt over the past century. It maps a terrain that has been mostly ignored, with a modest goal of in- dicating the range of practitioners and contexts informing this art. I suggest that colloquial poetry's vitality in political discourse has been linked to its ambiguous status: neither "learned" nor "unlearned," straddling oral and print culture, it has been open to many uses and users, both producers and consumers.

Unpublished or untranscribed Egyptian poets of the 19th and early 20th centuries-not to mention those who maintained colloquial poetry as an oral art-are mostly lost to us, although traditions of orally transmitted verse, such as narrative ballads and epics, are not. There are undeniable biases in treating colloquial poetry solely as a written and published art (even if the audience sought for this published verse was one that extended beyond readers of the printed page). But if colloquial poetry published in the press cannot stand in for the whole range of versified colloquial expressive art found in Egypt, yet it has been an important and continuing strand of public poetry. Straddling "the popular" and "the elite," it has sought to move an audience including, but not limited to, the formally educated; its practitioners have included both those with a high degree of formal training and those who could probably barely read and write literary Arabic, let alone compose poetry in it.

LANGUAGE DIVIDES AND LITERARY TRADITIONS

Colloquial poetry's cultural positioning illustrates ambiguities that arise in any at- tempt to map "the popular." The potential import of writing literarily in colloquial Arabic derives from a situation of diglossia or perhaps multiglossia: the presence of multiple and distinct "levels" of language, coupled with a consciousness among its users that each level represents a different, if overlapping, communication sphere. Fushd, the language of elite or learned discourse, has been largely the province and the property of the educated few, while colloquial Arabic, al-'ammiyya, is shared by all, incorporating regional, class, and gender variations. Often disdained by the educated, it is yet their mother tongue in the true sense of that phrase. Articulating daily experience, it carries emotive immediacy.3

Thus, as a literary language, the vernacular's potential differs from that offushd, a difference enhanced by the poetic traditions to which fusha and 'ammiyya are each most closely linked. Written colloquial poetry shows the imprint in diction, imagery, and form of oral folk traditions. Although the origins of what has come to be known as the classical ode may lie in the oral poetry of tribal Arabia, classical poetry is at the center of the elite canon. In each case, the language signals a social and cultural sphere, although these are by no means isolated or exclusive spheres.



Colloquial Arabic Poetry, Politics, and the Press 421

Colloquial Arabic poetry is a centuries-old practice with its earliest preserved written attestation in medieval Andalusia. Throughout the Arabic-speaking world it has evolved in ways that reflect and encapsulate regional cultures.4 Until the new poetry movement of the 1950s (and for years after that for many colloquial poets), written and some oral stanzaic colloquial poetry in Egypt was known as zajal-as the medieval Andalusian poetry had been. This defined a stanzaic art employing poetic meters related, sometimes loosely, to those of classical Arabic.5 Seen as an art apart, zajal was never wholly separate from learned traditions.

With the divisions and consciousnesses wrought by diglossia, scholars of Ara- bic literature have often aligned "dialect" immediately and irretrievably with "popular" or "folk"; in some parts of the Arab world (notably Iraq and Sudan), any poem in dialect is still automatically termed shicr shacbi (popular or folk poetry). Yet, from Andalusia to al-Masa', zajal and related forms of dialect poetry exemplify how texts seen in isolation as part of something labeled and separated off as "the popular" can in fact signify interchange and appropriation. Encompass- ing a range of practices on cultural terrain perceived by the educated as "different," "opposed," and/or "inferior," zajal has yet appealed to the educated even as they have sought to contain it. And if the strong hostility that dialect's very exis- tence can arouse in the Arab world-an attitude shaped by a complex mix of political, religious, and social factors-means that dialect literature in Arabic has tended to keep an a priori distance from that which is represented by and in fusha ("elite culture," "the literature," "learned forms"), the distance kept has not neces- sarily been an oppositional one. As Martha Vicinus has shown for the 19th- century dialect poetry movement in northern England, dialect literature's potential to challenge the language and therefore the politics of an elite is not always trans- formed into practice.6 And of course vernacular rhetoric (poetic or not) can be coopted usefully by an elite, or by a leadership claiming to speak for all: it was not by chance that the speeches of Egypt's Nasser drew heavily on colloquial Arabic. Where a distinct dialect poetry movement has developed as a "plebeian" art, members of the educated classes have often enthusiastically "discovered" and then appropriated it.7 In Andalusia, zajal is likely to have grown from oral traditions of Arabic and Spanish dialect verse largely unaffected by learned culture, but the art became the province of educated individuals who manipulated dialect in forms associated with learned discourse. The same individuals preserved the texts on which our knowledge of premodern colloquial poetry is based, and it is clear that they preferred the "more educated" forms of colloquial verse.8 In al-Masa', while zajal was touted as "workers' poetry" and as "the voice of the people," it was members of early Nasserism's cultural elite who served not only as conduits but as vehicles, choosing the poetry for publication and presenting it-even if their choices signaled a slightly oblique or critical stance vis-a-vis emerging tenets and consequences of Nasserist ideology.

Although zajal cannot be circumscribed within a predefined social sphere in terms of practitioners, audience, concerns and contents, or even language, much of this poetry has been, until recently, "popular" in one sense stressed by Peter Burke: it has been aimed at the widest possible audience in the society-wealthy and poor, urban and rural, the lettered and the unlettered.9 Its functional appeal as



422 Marilyn Booth

an effective and timely means of mass communication has often been cited by its practitioners; a leading early-20th-century colloquial poet and patron of other poets, Husayn Shafiq al-Masri (1882-1948), labeled contemporary European poetry as zajal on the basis of its use of a modern idiom that all, he said, could un- derstand and that could convey the timbre of modern urban life.10

At the same time, one feature of political zajal in Egypt that has not been pointed out is its capacity for defining a specific audience through its choice of diction as well as the use of certain rhetorical strategies. In both capturing and constructing an audience, dialect is useful and gracefully flexible, and it intersects in an obvious way with the political. The capacities of colloquial poetry make it hardly surprising that so much zajal in Egypt has been politically oriented in the broadest sense: tackling public issues directly or indirectly, addressing a community, seeking change.

POETRY AND THE PRESS

The dominantly political nature of colloquial poetry published in Egypt from the late 19th century through the 1950s is also linked to the rise of a particular publication venue: it found great receptivity in sectors of the nonofficial press that began to flourish before the turn of the century. Through a mixture of forms and types of language-written and visual, dialect and "literary," nonfictional polem- ics and fictional narrative-this nonofficial press sought to attract an audience beyond the small circles of men-and a few women-of letters. The "popular press" forms the richest lode of published colloquial poetry; newspaper and magazine pages were in most cases the sources for the published collections (diwans) of recognized colloquial poets (often compiled by the periodical's owner to capitalize on the poet's popularity and sold through the periodical's office and agents) and for cheaply produced pamphlets containing one or a few poems, signed or anony- mous. Poems recited or sung at political rallies could achieve wider reach through newspaper circulation; conversely, newspapers could feed poetry-colloquial and classical-to the politicians.

Almost from the beginnings of the nonofficial Arabic press in the last quarter of the 19th century, newspaper and magazine publishers seem to have found colloquial poetry an effective tool of instruction and provocation, and equally to have found a rich source of contributions in their audiences. Politically oriented colloquial poetry was nothing new in Egypt; a few medieval sources cite it as evidence of "popular attitudes."" But the press offered a new kind of platform. While for many 19th-century practitioners zajal composition was a spontaneous spoken pas- time, a means of playful competition,'2 for others zajal presented the opportunity to convey messages of moral edification and political indoctrination.

Colloquial poetry's journalistic venue expanded through the 20th century from journals characterized by their proprietors as fukdhl-isldhl ("humorous reform- oriented," a linkage leading quickly to "satirical"), to the labor-oriented press and then into a broader range of periodicals focusing on social issues, culture, and politics. Al-Masa' was both an endpoint and a transition, representing the permeation of colloquial poetry into the mainstream, semiofficial news press, but also signal-




ing its growing role as an art identified with the working class. Throughout, colloquial poetry played the part of a public voice; almost exclusively, it addressed issues of public concern. Classical poetry appearing in the same periodicals was divided between public issues and personal, if generalized, themes of individual concern.

NATIONALISM AND COLLOQUIAL POETRY

It was the combination of political events and an emerging indigenous press that gave zajal a new impetus in the late 19th century, by giving new urgency to issues of communication. The growing nationalist movement inspired editors to seek an audience broader than the urban elite. Experimenting with language was a logical step in the drive to create a responsive public opinion, for propagating a nationalist ideology demanded an idiom in which it could be communicated to all. While attempts to simplify the classical idiom went on in the press, the language of the educated elite was still a limited medium. It articulated a cultural and psychological gap between the thin stratum of Egyptians forming the leadership of the incep- tive bourgeois nationalist movement and the masses whose support was needed to challenge the encroachment of Europe.

Out of these developments the satirical press emerged. Its publishers and writers-two roles often joined in one person-combined colloquial prose and zajal with the political cartoon. The flourishing of politically oriented periodicals written largely in colloquial Arabic in the late 19th century suggests both the need for an outlet for popular disaffection and a critical response that might intensify this disaffection and harness it. Publishers of these colloquial-satirical periodicals regarded the use of colloquial Arabic as a functional and perhaps temporary solution to the communications gap between the reformer/political activist and the man and woman in the street. Vernacular literature was a means to a political end, a means that suited the message perfectly by offering a critical response to the official world of politics and high culture in a language shut out of that world-a language that would generate immediate emotional identification. The political utilization of the vernacular at this tjme gave new life to zajal.

In a milieu where poverty and illiteracy hampered the print media's circulation and efficacy, what difference did it make that a periodical was written in the vernacular? One who could neither afford nor read a mainstream newspaper couched in "literary" Arabic would be equally unable to purchase and peruse a colloquial periodical, save perhaps for its cartoons. But the outreach of the press must be seen in an oral, communal context. A newspaper's actual circulation was greater than its paid circulation-or its readers, strictly speaking. And it is not hard to imagine how much more effective a satirical newspaper would have been-with its mockery of official language, criticism through verbal caricature, and often dramatic form-when read out loud to friends and neighbors, for here was something to be savored in company. Perhaps this is one reason why, as Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid Marsot has noted, periodicals "play[ed] a role that was out of all proportion in the political and cultural life of the country, when the literacy rate was still very low."13



424 Marilyn Booth

This sort of circulation enhanced zajal's usefulness. Satirical colloquial poetry could move effectively between print, recitation, and song-an important asset, for instance, during and after World War I, when under martial law public gatherings were banned and press censorship was at least partially in operation. Political

messages that could not be conveyed through mass oratory or easily passed on in

print could circulate in dialect poetry, especially as its rhythms and diction were familiar to listeners of ballads and epics. A British official present in Egypt at the time intimated this difference with a tinge of frustration:

The Independent Party are said to be increasingly active in its [sic] propaganda. I have not yet obtained a copy of the most obnoxious of their recent circulars as everybody is obliged to swear an oath not to reveal its contents before seeing it. I have however seen a very ribald piece of rhyme which is being much sung, I am told, in Cairo-abusing and casting ridicule on a number of British officials.'4

While declaimed fushd poetry took the spotlight for its grandeur and fire, the down-to-earth tones of a pithy colloquial poem could stir its listeners and readers

equally, if in a different way.

It has been noticed lately in native quarters that street-boys, lower-class natives, seed ven- dors, etc., have been publicly singing a new song in the vernacular in which open insinua- tions are made regarding the arrival in Egypt of the ex-Khedive and ENVER Pasha. The song also contains uncomplimentary remarks about the G.O.C. [General Officer Commanding].'s

THE ZAJAL POETS

Through the new press as well as more traditional channels, individuals had become noted as political zajjdals (composers of zajal) long before World War I. One was 'Abdallah al-Nadim (1844-96), active in oppositional politics, rural educa-

tion, and popular journalism. He put colloquial Arabic's political potential to use in several ways. As an orator for the 'Urabi movement (1881-82), which sought greater political power for the Egyptian army officer corps under the banner of

nationalist, anti-imperialist rhetoric and prefaced the British occupation of 1882, al-Nadim gave speeches in colloquial Arabic to mobilize popular sentiment. He continued to see colloquial poetry as a political tool that could educate the vast audience of the unlettered. In his newspapers al-Tankit wa-al-Tabkit (1881-82) and al-Ustadh (1892-93), a few zajals appeared alongside colloquial dialogues,fushd poems, and essays in a simplified fushd. Thought to have been a prolific zajjal,'6 al-Nadim straddles old and new media, for most of his colloquial poetry was orally delivered and circulated-and hence has unfortunately been lost. He was very much a part of the Alexandria coffeehouse culture wherein poets vied with each other in composing zajals in front of an audience; he has left us a vivid recollec- tion of these well-attended sessions, although he may have given himself center

stage to a greater degree than is quite believable.'7 Al-Nadim's few surviving zajals focus on the nationalist cause, using a strategy

found repeatedly in the colloquial poetry of the next several decades. He links politics to public behavior, particularly that of elite groups, as exemplified by a zajal that takes as its starting point a perceived lack of enthusiasm among Egyptian




Muslims for the obligatory Ramadan fast.18 Structured as a dramatic monologue with embedded dialogue, the poem has the narrator encountering a group of ulema in a public garden; he castigates them for laxity in their religion. The sheikhs claim initially that Ramadan has not yet arrived, but then admit their "miscalcula- tion" and say they are following a moda afrangiyya (foreign [i.e., European] fashion). Thus, al-Nadim links this group to the encroachment of foreign rule and imported customs-an explosive, if often heard, accusation.

Europe has fooled you, Turning your minds In order to reach you With women, song, wine. Piety's vanished, Your religion has gone As the barman fasts, Needing no line drawn.

The poet links religious to national duties, moral laxity to the foreigner's presence but more incisively to the willing submission of local elites. The satire is sealed in a reference to "the barman," an unlikely symbol of Muslim piety and an effectively ironic counterpoint to the community's supposed religious leaders, who are castigated for failing to act as positive role models. And by using a colloquial mode, al-Nadim in effect takes the sheikhs off their rhetorical pedestal and strips them of their protection: the learning that gives them prestige and privilege vis-a- vis the population at large. Finally, use of the colloquial enhances the drama of the confrontation, for it nicely suits the dialogic structure of the poem as well as the intimate rebuke of narrator to listeners, both those "within" and those "beyond" the poem.

Al-Nadim was not the first to use colloquial poetry politically in the press. Yacqub Sannuc (1839-1912), well known as a playwright, had employed zajal in his series of satirical journals beginning with Abii Nazzara Zarqda (founded 1877). If al-Nadim's poems treated social issues and linked them to the nationalist cause, Sannuc's were more directly political in their attacks on the British presence.19 But al-Nadim in all his guises became a popular hero, and more than Sannuc, he has remained an exemplar of the activist colloquial poet. Intriguing questions arise: to what extent was this due to his colloquial poetic corpus, and to what extent did it emerge from an image and a political activism? How and to what extent were his zajals appropriated by the audiences he sought? Were they seen in a different light from his poetry composed in classical Arabic?

POLITICS, SOCIAL CRITICISM, AND TURN-OF-THE-CENTURY ZAJAL

By the turn of the century zajal pervaded the satirical press. When Muhammad Tawfiq founded his satirical periodical Himdrat Munyati in 1898, it was not surprising that he chose to publish colloquial poems in almost every issue. Even more than al-Nadim and Sannuc, Tawfiq used colloquial verse to attack public figures and the policies of the day. If making social behavior the focus, he linked it to the politics of the moment; as in the zajals of al-Nadim, social comportment becomes a political issue as it is seen to bleed the political and economic strength of the nation (to the benefit of outsiders) or to deter the populace from their nationalist duty.20 Tawfiq did not mince words: several zajals address corruption in the police



426 Marilyn Booth

force, while his versified pay-up notice to subscribers is no less ascerbic.21 Yet Tawfiq complains that no one hears the message, with a tantalizing characteriza- tion of the disappointing audience:

Not one noble gent reads or listens Nor does the gracious matron Betwixt oaf and good man we're lost May the Patient One allow us His grace! We've been stumped in this direction Today our words have worn thin As if we're puffing on a reed Or on a torn water-skin!22

"Noble gents" and "gracious matrons": whom did Tawfiq seek to reach? Were others listening? In fact, the diction and direction of Tawfiq's zajals in Himarat Munyati suggest an altogether less polite audience. These "addressees" are being "politely" ironized, more target than audience. The same target is satirized through language mixing, as Tawfiq injects awkward French phrases into colloquial verse to poke fun at the partial Europeanization of "gents" and "matrons."23 Tawfiq excelled at exploiting the freedom from poetic convention that colloquial verse could offer.

Zajals sent in to the magazine by readers are more restrained than Tawfiq's but no less expressive of contemporary issues. Typically, the reader-writer begins by wishing Tawfiq well and complimenting Himdrat Munyati for usefully intervening in the nation's politics. The poet then moves to his24 major subject-most often, the state of public morals as he views them. But morals, again, become a political issue:

Now then, son of the fatherlands Hear my words and ponder For my heart is woefully full Of these disasters befalling us: Gambling's made inroads among us As the foreigner designed ruses for plunder25

In such poems, narrative description often includes reference to the proliferation of bars and dancing halls in Cairo and notation of a decline of religious practice. In zajals of this time from Himdrat Munyati and other journals, the urban Egyp- tian craftsman or wage laborer is contrasted with the bashd-the image of the aristocracy, portrayed as spendthrifts with no sense of moral or national duty-and with the khawdga (foreigner).26 There is recognition of the growth and danger of economic imperialism, as the poet typically laments the khawdga's acquisition of capital through exploiting the populace. These poems often end with pious cita- tions and the narrator's wish that Allah's providence and protection be visited upon the publisher/addressee, echoing stock endings of oral narrative literature. In Muhammad Tawfiq's case, such invocations seem to have been ineffective: apparently he was sentenced to six months in prison for attacking the prominent reformer Muhammad 'Abduh and ordered to close his newspaper.27

Zajjal journalists and contributors to the popular satirical press of this period employ direct rhetoric; metaphors often depend on colloquial wordplays, familiar nicknames, popular oaths, and stereotypes. Frequently, the poem moves from one subject to another; thus, its internal organization is superficially akin to that of the traditional Arabic ode, while the actual progression of themes differs. Like the neoclassical poets of the time who wrote in fushd, the colloquial poets address public issues with vigor, but the zajal poet tends toward more mundane, often




earthy, examples and language to drive home the rhetorical point. The use of dialogue adds liveliness and yields a notion of debate; poetic dialogue is especially effective in colloquial poetry, for there need be no artificiality.28 These poems signal that by making the message concrete, it is given the necessary urgency.

Moreover, colloquial diction permits the use of foreign vocabulary and particular pronunciation markers, chosen deliberately to characterize and satirize certain groups-the Europeanized bourgeoisie, Greek entrepreneurs, Upper Egyptian peasants, Sudanese bawwdbs, aristocrats of Turkish origin. Distancing a group through its stereotyped speech patterns carries political force as this group becomes the opposite pole to "the ordinary Egyptian" (the implied addressee) and is put in conflict with the latter's rights and needs. This was a characteristic of political zajal that would carry into the mid-20th century.29

First-person narrative personalizes pressing issues and puts the narrator in community with the audience intended, as illustrated by al-Nadim's poem. The use of a colloquial mode strengthens the construction of this bond as it signals familiarity and proximity. While the narrator is usually in the position of commentator-a thin disguise for the poet-around the turn of the century a finer use of dramatic monologue emerges. The narrator is constructed as a character who is not entirely a transparent cover for the poet. In an anonymously published zajal from 1904 entitled "Hidden Matters in the Religious Courts," a first-person narrative technique and a woeful tale yield concrete and comic treatment of a public issue that cap- tured zajjdls of the time and later.30 Explaining that his long-empty pocket had generated a quarrel with his wife involving his in-laws, the narrator describes how he went to the court seeking resolution. The poem treats the narrator's experience at the court in lively detail through the skillful use of versified colloquial dialogue. The narrator speaks to the hdgib (doorman), who expresses sympathy and then requests rashwa (bribery) on the basis of his allegedly close friendship with the judge. The irritated narrator then gets the same response from the bdshkdtib (head clerk) and his subordinates. Finally managing to see the qadi, he complains, whereupon the judge requests money and refuses to heed the narrator's plea of poverty. Comic interplays of colloquial oaths and expressions of respect and friendship used hypocritically ironize the characters and exploit the particular expressive strengths of the vernacular. The poor narrator rushes to the bank al- ruhiundt ("mortgage bank," here "pawnbroker"), where he pawns his watch and cloak for E ?3. Returning to the judge, he receives prompt and favorable treatment through this final depletion of resources. But the narrative is not allowed to stand on its own, as the poet launches his exhortatory finale with a question:

0 reformers, where's the reform? See how plainly the flaw appears! This court gets souls in its clutches By God, what wonders one hears!

These poets voiced the notion that the social, economic, and political ills they perceived were due in large part to a breakdown in the ideal social and moral sys- tems of a society they defined above all as Muslim. They suggested that it was this perceived disintegration that had allowed the European powers to acquire a defin- itive role in Egyptian life and politics. The treatment of oft-heard themes in colloquial poetry added concreteness, immediacy, and humor to an issue voiced more



428 Marilyn Booth

abstractly by those who wrote in standard literary Arabic for the educated. Yet much of this poetry is distinguished from mainstream intellectual discourse of the time by its emphasis on the complicity of elite groups in maintaining power structures militating against economic and social justice for the unprivileged. A colloquial counterdiscourse, if motivated explicitly by a communications imperative, highlighted the distinction.

But not all of those composing colloquial poetry for publication in the press at the turn of the century took the stance of Tawfiq or Sannuc. Not all exploited the hilarious possibilities of language mixing, trenchant caricature, punchy invective, and delicious double entendre characterizing much zajal of this time and later. Tawfiq, al-Nadim, and Sannuc sought to arouse by entertaining as well as through direct attack, and they seem to have deliberately distanced themselves in their tex- tual practice from all that construed "the polite." But there were others who wanted to guard zajal from any taint of "the popular." In the same period that these men wrote, what might be called a conservative line of colloquial poetry proliferated, in tension with but not isolated from the productions of Tawfiq and his cronies.

This parallel practice was characterized above all by stern moral teachings and was often framed in a "middle language" heavily laced with classical usages; its antecedents lay in a medieval subgenre of zajal focusing on wisdom sayings. The poetry and outlook of Sheikh Muhammad al-Najjar best represent this strand of zajal. A teacher at al-Azhar whose pedagogical activities included teaching zajal composition to young poets in a cafe in central Cairo, al-Najjar took his craft seri- ously.31 He believed that zajal's compositional boundaries-in terms of metrical patterns, rhyme schemes, diction, and allowable themes-should be protected zealously from "intruders." He seems to have felt that he and like-minded practitioners of zajal were fighting a rearguard action, to judge by the aggrieved tone of the short preface to the volume of zajal he published in 1900.32 In an article on "the art of zajal" that al-Najjar wrote for his magazine al-Arghul (founded 1894), he promoted zajal as an elite art wherein the poet must know and draw upon the diction and poetic patterns of classical Arabic literature.33 He attacked the uda- bitiyya (popular street-performers) who extemporized zajal for debasing the art he held dear. In other words, "bad zajal" was that which was most colloquial, least "learned," and least attentive to the contours of its classical cousin. But al-Najjar recognized the danger (if not the irony) of overattentiveness to "learned words" in composing effective zajal, the importance of keeping a communications goal in mind, as he made clear in the preface of his diwdn:

Because the most beneficial verse is that which reaches the ear with greatest speed and in- scribes its images in the heart . . and [because] this is often found in zajals, particularly those that comprise wisdom-sayings and proverbs, I thought it a good idea to bring together in this collection [the zajals] I have composed on empty days and those I have come up with on the spur of the moment and in the presence of many refined people, those who find no pleasure in [zajals] composed by individuals who mouth learned words without giving them meaning.

The conservative thrust of al-Najjar's literary stance paralleled his political outlook and choice of subject matter. Complaining, like those mentioned earlier, of a moral deterioration in the society, he emphasized behavioral change as they did.




But the suggestion runs through his poetry that it is the populace (and those who compose bad zajal?) who are entirely to blame for a deteriorating situation; if he highlights economic and political factors, or the antics of the aristocracy, it is to complain that social boundaries are breaking down. In the first issue of al-Arghul, al-Najjar states that the journal's purpose is to "train the soul, educate the mind and nourish the spirit. It has nothing to do with politics, external or internal, nor do we comment in it on anything related to links between governments or states...."34 His distance carries its own political message, and indeed his align- ment is clear: al-Arghul and his diwdn carry versified praises to the reigning khedive that are more lengthy and eloquent than the pro forma salutation to the ruler often found on the opening pages of turn-of-the-century periodicals.35 Al-Na- jjar's sermonizing in verse (for his poems are packed with moralizing aphorisms) focuses the attack on akhldq (morals) supposedly unsullied by politics.

Al-Arghul, like Tawfiq's Himdra, also features readers' contributions. The first volume contains colloquial poems sent from provincial population centers: Shibin al-Kom in the Egyptian Delta, the oasis of al-Fayyum to the south, the provincial capital of Banha, and the Upper Egyptian town of Bani Suwayf. Their authors in- clude a student of religious sciences, a police officer, and an employee of a provincial religious court. Similarly, in al-Manzium (founded 1892) in 1893, we find poems by a calligrapher working for one Muhammad Dirri Bey; by a buzbdshi or captain of the third regiment; and by an agent for Arabic newspapers in the Upper Egyptian provincial capital of Asyut. Thus, publishing colloquial poetry was not solely the province of a Cairo-based elite, or of a well-defined group of literati; but those who identify themselves do have links to elite culture and the structures of rule. The poems in al-Arghuil especially manifest training in classical Arabic rhetoric. Fushd usages and classical metaphors invade the colloquial patterns of the poems. This may tell us more about the editors than about those who submit- ted the poems; there are clear indications that al-Najjar chose poems for publication that mirrored his own elitist, protective attitude to zajal composition.36

TO THE ATTACK

Zajal had become established as a political voice even as it seemed to move further away from its popular roots. Of the many satirical journals founded in Egypt in the early 20th century, most published zajals on a variety of public issues. In 1919, when popular outrage at the banishment of the Wafdist leader-delegates Sacd Zaghlul, 'Ali al-Shacrawi, and Hamid al-Basil led to widespread demonstra- tions, colloquial poetry was a frequently employed form of public rhetoric. News- papers such as al-Sayf (founded 1910) and al-Misalla (founded 1919) published zajals attacking the government and king, supporting by contrast the nationalist call. The British censors noticed and recorded it, recognizing zajal's power as a political rallying cry and its appeal to all sectors of society:

Many popular poems are being circulated and sung. I heard one of them myself in front of the Continental Hotel this afternoon, which was sung by a priest from El Azhar. It was greeted with cheers and laughter.37



430 Marilyn Booth

Several "popular" native songs are in circulation. Their theme is advice to "Allenby" to leave the country and to allow ABBAS, who is returning shortly, to rule it in peace and

quiet. If their advice is not followed the consequences are to be serious.38

Not only did the occupiers notice this poetry, they tried actively to silence its practitioners. A leading political zajjal of this time-and founder of the newspaper al-Misalla mentioned earlier-was Mahmud Bayram al-Tunisi (1893- 1961), from a petit-bourgeois family in Alexandria with Tunisian immigrant roots. His career exemplifies the hardships to which committed poet-publishers of the time-whatever register of Arabic they employed-might be subjected. In 1916 al-Tunisi had begun to publish poems of social criticism, in classical Arabic, in an Alexandrian daily. In 1919 he turned to colloquial poetry in order to incite the Egyptian populace of Alexandria against the British and to alert them to their own interests. His trenchant and earthy poems were widely circulated orally and al- Misalla was closely watched by the British police; he was banished in October 1919, after allegedly incurring the Palace's wrath. Al-Tunisi continued to write for Egyptian periodicals from exile. His colloquial poems of the 1920s and 1930s address the entire range of public issues-from the continued British presence to the corruption of internal politics and the self-interested attitudes of certain Egyptian politicians, to Egyptians' adoption of European customs, which he attacked as un- dermining nationalist aims. This was a theme that had remained in the public eye since the days of al-Nadim and was a favorite subject for zajjals to tackle.39

In framing this politically constructed range of issues in zajal, al-Tunisi was certainly not unique for his time, though he was more outspoken than some (and a better poet than most). Both well-known, nationalist-oriented colloquial poets and unknown reader-poets contributed their colloquial verse and political comment to the press of the 1920s. Political differences and party rivalries, sustained by loyal editors, found their expression in "poetic duels" in print as well as in versified praise or blame-an extension of oral poetic dueling for the benefit of a broader audience in the service of political aims. For example, al-Latd'if al-Musawwara (founded 1915) received many letters, in verse and prose, supporting its criticism of the journal al-Kashkul's attack on the nationalist leader Sa'd Zaghlul in 1921. From those contributions it chose to publish a zajal that combines panegyric to the editors and magazine with censure of those who question the nationalist leadership:

Chief of the Pleasantries, my thanks Truly you fear not a soul Your answering the Scrapbook right off Left it dizzy and confused At a loss over how to reply: Truth took hold and it feels remorse. Chief of the Pleasantries, your words Are wise, serious, full of import Still spinning, 0 Scrapbook? And rebuking the hero of nations? Sa'd Pasha, now, he represents us So adjust your policy, you wretch! Stay with the truth: that's better And repent to your Lord, dim-wit ... O Lord, set right our circumstances, Protect Sa'd the Cherished for us And protect our dear little Pleasantries Now the adornment of the lands.40

This volume of the Lata'if is a good indication of the preoccupations of zajal in the press of this tumultuous period: out of twelve colloquial poems by eleven authors published during the year, eleven deal with public issues, putting "social




criticism" in political terms. For example, a "poet-journalist" ("Zajjal Sihafi" is the pseudonymous signature) writes of foreign enterprise in Egypt, lamenting rife exploitation of the Egyptian; focus on the consumer as gullible turns to a harsher focus on the worker as exploited. The poet finishes by accusing "the people" of complacency, when "thieves and swindlers" are in their midst. As so often tran- spires in the zajals of this period, the poet picks out one foreign group as a target and lampoons it through stereotyped, pastiche-created pseudonames and portraits. Here, Armenians are the target; it is "al-Khawaga Sigaratiyan" or "Sukhamniyan" who "moved into a lofty palace, fruit of [the workers'] hands/ After sucking out marrow and brain he threw out one and all."41 While the poet seems to speak on behalf of the working class, there is not a consciousness of working-class interests opposed to those of other class-identified groups as such. Nor is the narrator speaking as a worker. The workers are constructed as a handy counter to the foreigners, highlighting by contrast the foreigners' exploitation of the nation as a whole.

Popular magazines and newspapers of the 1920s and 1930s had "resident zajjals," whose poems appeared weekly or bi-weekly. The zajjdl played the role of editorial columnist, commenting on the events of the week or on a particularly res- onant public issue. In the mid-1920s, Mahmud Ramzi Nazim (1887-1959), also a prolific classical poet under the pen name Abu al-Wafa3,42 published in al-Lata'if al-Musawwara, Bayram al-Tunisi (from exile) in al-Shabdb (founded 1918), Badic Khayri in al-Sayf, and Muhammad CAbd al-Mun'im (pen name, Abu Buthayna), in al-Fukdha (founded in 1926 by a major publishing house to capitalize on the obvious popularity of satirical journals). In 1933, al-Radytu's "resident poet" was-unusually-a woman, Ruz Amin.43 Poets moved from one magazine to another, and "replaced" each other informally: Khalil Nazir had been al-Sayf's "columnist" in its early days, long before "Badic' was featured there, and Nazim had published many poems in the same periodical. Muhammad Yunus al-Qadi took Nazim's place at al-Lata'if al-Musawwara in the early 1930s. Bayram al- Tunisi moved from al-Shabdb to al-Funiin (which apparently saw an immediate jump in circulation44), and thence to some similar publications in Tunis, where he was residing in the early 1930s.

These periodicals and many others also published readers' zajals, mostly by civil servants, students, and schoolteachers-almost all male-from provincial towns as well as Cairo and Alexandria. Few readers' poems express perspectives outside this middle-class male purview.45

Like al-Najjar and Tawfiq before them, well-known zajjals of the 1920s published their own organs to feature their compositions and those of their immediate circle and to advance a particular political viewpoint. As noted, Bayram al-Tunisi had founded al-Misalla in 1919. Mahmud Ramzi Nazim founded Abu Qirddn in 1924, the prolific Husayn Shafiq al-Masri started al-Nas the same year, Badic Khayri founded Alf Sanf in 1925, Muhammad Yunus al-Qadi began al-Fanndn in 1927, and there were others.46 In each, we find many compositions by the publisher-poet and contributions from others. The editorializing function is clear, and so is the sense of political duty and audience, as expressed by Badic Khayri in an editorial ushering in the second year of his Alf Sanf:



432 Marilyn Booth

I truly abhor the way we limit journalistic style to this boring, heavy, depraved seriousness. I can testify on the basis of evidence that readers would not have showered Alf $anf with such affection ... or paid their pennies . . . were it not for one thing: we have dealt frankly and sincerely with our audience, speaking always in a language whose phrases cause laughter and whose meanings draw tears. For no other purpose did we found Alf Sanf. We felt bound by a heavy national duty, one which our colleagues ignored and we alone brooked. They boast of their subscribers and readers having the rank of pasha or bey. But we've been delighted above all by the formation of a new, strong bond drawing our brothers the craftsmen and farmers, and many others who, before we came into being, were deprived of having a popular newspaper which without difficulty or complication-and in equal measure- wearers of blue gallabiyyas and of elegant tailcoats could enjoy.47

Despite Khayri's claims of uniqueness, his magazine was certainly not alone at the time in its targeting of an audience, its use of language, or its copious editorial use of colloquial poetry. Of the thirty-four colloquial poems in the first volume

(1924-25) of Abu Qirddn (comprising twenty-two issues), the founder-editor Mahmud Ramzi Nazim had a poem in every issue but one. Most of the remaining poems were by the emerging zajjal Yusuf Amin from al-Fayyum. Nazim's first

poem is an opening editorial in colloquial verse, entitled "Fly, 0 Egret."48 Having chosen to name his newspaper for a beloved and beneficial Egyptian bird, he uses

imagery associated with the egret to express his aims, hoping that the newspaper "will fly everywhere." Egypt needs you, he tells the egret, to protect its fields from insects. He tells the egret to observe both the pasha and the peasant, and to reserve the tide of children running wild in 'Imad al-Din (the Cairo street renowned for music halls and theaters, and then for cinemas). He complains that the egret will see women in the streets clothed only in cosmetics, and will notice no sign of re-

ligious practice. Finally, Nazim constructs an obvious political metaphor through the same imagery, telling the egret to call out to the young pigeon, al-zaghlul-an obvious reference to the nationalist leader and prime minister at the time, Sa'd Zaghlul. Nazim thus announces support for the Wafd and confidence in the minis-

try. Ironically, "Fly 0 Egret" was published less than a month before the Wafdist

government fell subsequent to the assassination of Sir Lee Stack. This poem sets out the themes of Nazim's later poems in Abu Qirdan. Of his

other twenty colloquial poems in Volume 1, nine treat political themes directly while eleven deal with social issues that lead to a clear, and familiar, political message: unless these problems are dealt with, the nation will not be sufficiently strong or unified to attain a true independence. Also found among these poems is a form that becomes pervasive at this time in the press: the narrative poem that sketches a crisis moment in the mundane life of the ordinary urban Egyptian to

pinpoint a social critique, wherein a political message lurks.49 Thus, the combination of zajjdl and newspaper publisher continued to be impor-

tant as a way of maintaining a political voice that just might have echoes beyond the elite. A concept of the colloquial poet's role as articulated in a zajal from the 1910s by the well-known poet Khalil Nazir (d. 1920) suggests this. While not ad-

dressing the political role of colloquial poetry explicitly, Nazir's emphasis on the

importance of seeking a wide audience implies that zajal entails a public orienta- tion. Sketching guidelines for zajal composition, Nazir notes that the serious col-




loquial poet should not fall into classical morphological structures or syntax: mish tiqiul nahawi (don't speak grammatically, i.e., don't compose in classical Arabic). Moreover, the zajjal should compose with the broadest audience in mind, illi yiktib w-illi md yicrafsh yiktib (the one who writes and the one who can't).50

A LABOR-IDENTIFIED ART

In the 1920s, zajal may have benefited from the growing interest among "mainstream" writers in dialect as a language of literary realism, an expression of cultural nationalism, and, for some, an articulation of Egyptian separatism based on pride in Egypt's unique heritage. The demands of a national literature that would articulate Egyptian experience might well embrace the use of the Egyptian tongue. Dialect's greater acceptability as an artistic language, however momentary, may have been one factor in broadening the media context for zajal publication from the satirical press outward: around 1930, zajal began to invade other sectors of the press. But at the same time, zajal continued to be an art apart, and this was one of its political strengths. Notably, the emerging labor-oriented press could embrace it as a non-elite form perfectly suited to expressing workers' class solidarity and voicing their demands.

Encouraging contributions from workers, the labor-oriented press published zajals from readers who in some cases then became the publication's zajjal, writing every week or nearly so and thus building on a practice already followed in the colloquial-satirical press. Al-'Amil al-Misri (The Egyptian Worker, founded 1930) drew on zajal to propagate its ideas and show that its readers shared them. This newspaper-like most of the early labor-oriented press-was in fact founded by a white-collar professional, the lawyer Husni al-Shantanawi, Wafdist counsellor to the Egyptian Workers Union. Al-'Amil al-Misri began publication in February 1930, less than a month after the Wafd had regained power with Mustafa al-Nahhas as prime minister. It was the Wafdist labor organ at a time when political parties increasingly recognized the importance of controlling the labor movement.51 Yet, as Zachary Lockman noted, the newspaper's subtitle-"a newspaper of politics and social comment which speaks with the tongue of the workers"-signaled al-Shan- tanawi's awareness that this was a movement with some independence.52 Hence, self-presentation as a newspaper of the workers rather than for the workers was paramount. Publishing readers' zajals perfectly underlined that message.

In the first issue of al-'Amil al-Misri we find the zajal "A Petition" by Yusuf CAli, a worker in the government arsenal. The writer identifies himself in the first line as a zajjdl 'amil: a "zajal-poet/worker" but with echoes of "an active zajal- poet." In traditional fashion, the narrating voice greets the addressee. He says he wishes to serve the workers' cause, as he has "always" done. Saying he will contribute further zajals on public issues, he announces that and b-azgdli rah ansah ("Through my zajals I'll give advice"). He goes on to do so:

I'm counselling the worker To struggle on and on, Making him see that sluggards Are contemptible all their lives. I'm telling our workers: Unite And stretch forth your hands



434 Marilyn Booth

And strive to work together: It's honourable, weighty business. At issue is the loss of rights- And they won't come back again Except through striving plus cannon, And that's a heavy load. How can the worker on his own Bear such a burden Without his brothers helping him And all together bearing it?

The poet outlines a program for the working class, noting themes he will address in later poems. As forcefully as this poem exhorts workers to act in the name of labor rights, the poet's program is set within a nationalist context, for he ends his poem by saying:

In my program I also announce The glory of my country And my whole aim and goal Is the independence of the Nile.53

This is hardly surprising in a newspaper "with a stress on the patriotic obligations of the workers' movement."54 At the same time, political independence and reori- ented internal priorities are closely linked.

Subsequent issues of al-'Amil al-Misri feature two more zajals by Yusuf 'Ali, two by Ahmad Habashi-secretary of the shoemakers' union-and one with a pseudonymous signature. All focus on the nation as a whole rather than on labor- oriented questions, but they do portray workers suffering in a context characterized by low pay and high unemployment.

Zajjals in the labor press of this time usually identify themselves as students or graduates of technical schools. Thus, again, it appears that those submitting zajals to magazines-or at least those being published-were predominantly individuals with some formal education, albeit one oriented to technical training. Yet this in itself represented a broader sphere of published zajal poets, and therefore an expanded public role for zajal-a democratization, however hesitant, bespeaking the emergence of new political, economic, and social developments.

While in the 1920s zajal's major press venue had been in those magazines that, as Badic Khayri had put it, were to be enjoyed alike by "wearers of blue gallabiyyas and those in elegant tailcoats," increasingly it was the blue gallabiyya that came to be identified with this poetry, culminating in poetry collections in the 1940s that proclaimed a working-class identity and solidarity. A good example is the collection Ana al-'Amil (I the Worker, 1946) by Fathi al-Maghribi, a textile worker in the manufacturing center of Mahalla al-Kubra and "one of the most articulate expo- nents of working-class culture and identity" in the 1940s.55 He had published zajals in the newspaper Shubra (founded 1937), which sought a working-class reader- ship.56 While one of his poems seems directly inspired-structurally as well as in content-by Bayram al-Tunisi's famous poem "al-'Amil"57 (The Laborer), in al- Maghribi's poetry the plaint against circumstances has become a more sharply worded demand for rights, going into details that the early worker-identified zajal of the 1920s did not. Ibn al-Balad, the central character of the poem and sometimes its narrator, is more openly and proudly a member of the urban working class; the capitalist, like that of a generation before, is identified with foreign interests through the use of foreign loanwords and characterized as a spendthrift drunkard- a concrete synecdoche expressing the notion of a morally bankrupt, as well as wasteful, ruling class.




Zajal's growing plebeian identification would not go unnoticed by the new Nasserist establishment. From the late 1950s, the co-optation of this identification resulted in the publication of zajal not only in newspapers but also in series of booklets targeting workers and peasants, such as the tellingly titled Ikhtarnd li al- Fallah (We Have Chosen for the Peasant).58

Thus, we return to the heyday of al-Masa'. Some of its colloquial poems appeared on the literary page, others in the letters to the editor section, and still others in the column "The Working Class," edited by Lufti al-Kholi until May 1957. Al-Kholi encouraged worker-poets to contribute poems and prose; but he seems to have received an enthusiastic response from a broader range of poets, for early in 1957 a notice appears in the column to the effect that only literary compositions by workers will be accepted for publication.

Both classical and colloquial poems appear in al-Kholi's column, but the over- whelming majority are colloquial. While most are unexceptional in their support of Nasserist doctrine and their use of the regime's slogans, they do touch on subjects the regime preferred to ignore. The class interests of workers and their potential solidarity across national borders are suggested in a poem on the origins of May Day, as Joel Beinin noted.59 In another poem, the word idrab (strike) appears three times; dropped from the Nasserist vocabulary and the pages of the newspaper,60 this word re-inserted itself into public discourse through workers' colloquial verse. Language and content together evoke struggles within the society.

Under Khalid Muhyi al-Din's editorship, al-Masa' had a "strategy of supporting the regime while encouraging it to move to the Left by offering a particular inter- pretation of Nasserist slogans."6' In the newspaper's cultural section, emphasis on folk art as a product of the people echoed the regime's ideology. However, the colloquial poetry of working-class writers was something else, suggesting that the editors were trying, if cautiously, to assert that cultural discourse was no longer the province solely of an educated elite writing in "educated Arabic."62 On the practi- cal level, perhaps it was easier to explore contradictions within Nasserist practice through "innocuous" poems-especially those sent in by readers, and especially "nonliterary" colloquial poems-than to accomplish this directly through the paper's own editorializing. Colloquial poetry's linguistic and social distance from officialdom as well as its potentially broad audience made it especially useful in this ideological and educational task.

Al-Kholi's column also recognized colloquial poetry explicitly as a serious art form by inviting eminent writers to contribute critical analyses of poems.63 While these critiques verge on the paternalistic, their very presence signaled recognition that colloquial poetry was an art form worthy of serious critical commentary. The message was not lost: the editors of al-Masa' began to publish colloquial poetry on the literary page, thus acknowledging it as a significant form of contemporary crea- tive activity. And it is noteworthy that several worker-poets who first published in the "Working Class" column subsequently published poems on the literary page and then brought out dlwdns-our carpenter, Hamid al-Atmas, was one.64 This prefaced the later role of al-Masd's literary page as a forum for young, experimental colloquial poets seeking to break away from the traditional forms that had characterized zajal. The shift began in the mid-1950s under the myriad influence of



436 Marilyn Booth

new ideologies, radical developments in fusha poetry, and acquaintance with the revolutionary poetry of Europe and the Third World.

Colloquial poetry had finally asserted a presence in the capital's daily newspapers and large-circulation weekly magazines.65 Still regarded by the intelligen- tsia as an art apart, it retained its public role through the medium of the press. Poets led by Salah Jahin (1930-86) and Fu'ad Haddad (1927-85) would give colloquial poetry a new direction, while acknowledging a debt to the zajal poets.

With some exceptions-a notable one being Ahmad Fu'ad Nigm (b. 1929)- contemporary Egyptian colloquial poets no longer write explicitly to reach an audience that extends beyond the educated elite. But the political-populist element inherent-if not always realized-in this choice of language is present, for colloquial Arabic as a language of literary expression continues to occupy a social and psychological space distinct from that of fusha and the literary heritage it has borne. This is recognized both by colloquial poets and by fusha poets who have incorporated elements of the vernacular into their idiom and imagery. Choosing the vernacular can initiate a different set of visions, a different range of starting points, and a different perspective on the society's cultural heritage. It frees the poet from the resonances that classical Arabic carries, even for contemporary fusha poets. Most important, it is a choice based on personal experience and the poet's vision of reality and identity.

As in contemporary fusha poetry, the colloquial poet's treatment of political themes has become both sharper and finer as it has become a personal vision that simultaneously scrutinizes the ideal and the immediate. The direct rhetoric of attack that characterized late-19th- and early-20th-century political colloquial poetry has been replaced by an evocation of perceived contradictions in the society, which emerge through the construction of the poem itself, the use of irony, and the defamiliarization of everyday language. The colloquial poet once sought to pro- voke a specific audience into action against an externally imposed occupier. Now, he or she seeks to convey the alienation and the sense of intellectual drift and de- spair that a more complex set of enemies-external and internal-has imposed. The evolution of both politics and poetry in the Arab world has defined and demanded new kinds of poetic statements, in whatever register of Arabic the poet shapes the message.

NOTES

Author's note: I am grateful to the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Re- search Center in Egypt for grant support that made this essay possible.

1"Khalias Rayih 'ald al-Maydan," al-Masa' 35 (9 November 1956), 3. 20n 12 December 1956, the editors announced a competition for poems on Port Said, but a number

of these poems had already appeared, so the most popular subject focus for colloquial poetry in the magazine at this time was not entirely defined by that announcement.

30n this feature and in general on colloquial Arabic as a literary language in Egypt, see P. J. E. Cachia, "The Use of the Colloquial in Modern Arabic Literature," Journal of the American Oriental Society 87, 1 (January-February 1967): 12-22, repr. in Pierre Cachia, An Overview of Modern Arabic Literature, Islamic Surveys 17 (Edinburgh, 1990), 59-75.

4For example, the colloquial poetry known as al-shi'r al-nabati in the Arabian peninsula, a descen- dant of the bedouin poetry that has become part of the canon of "high literature," played an important




role in tribal politics until early in this century. See Saad Abdullah Sowayan, Nabati Poetry: The Oral Poetry of Arabia (Berkeley, 1985).

5On the origins and spread of zajal and the controversy over its identity, see Samuel Stern, His- pano-Arabic Strophic Poetry (Oxford, 1974); CAbd al-'Aziz al-Ahwani, al-Zajal fi al-Andalus (Cairo, 1957); T. J. Gorton, "The Metre of Ibn Quzman: a 'Classical' Approach," The Journal of Arabic Litera- ture 6 (1975): 1-29; T. J. Gorton, "Zajal and Muwassah: the Continuing Metrical Debate," The Journal of Arabic Literature 9 (1978): 32-40; F. Corriente, "Again on the Metrical System of Muwassah and Zajal," The Journal of Arabic Literature 17 (1986): 34-49. For a survey of colloquial poetry in the modern Arab world, see my "Poetry in the Vernacular," in Cambridge History of Arabic Literature, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming) 4:463-82.

6Martha Vicinus, The Industrial Muse: A Study of Nineteenth Century British Working-Class Lit- erature (London, 1974), chap. 5. See also Brian Hollingsworth, ed., Songs of the People: Lancashire Dialect Poetry of the Industrial Revolution (Manchester, 1977), intro.; Marilyn Booth, Bayram al- Tunisi's Egypt: Social Criticism and Narrative Strategies (Exeter, Eng., 1990), 134-35. Although it concerns a different linguistic situation (French vs. regional spoken languages of southern France), a similar phenomenon occurred in 19th-century Provencal, as educated individuals took up the cause of dialect poetry; see Emile Ripert, La Renaissance Provencale, 1800-1860, pt. 3 (Paris, 1918; reprint, Marseilles, 1978).

7See Nigel Cross, The Common Writer: Life in Nineteenth-Century Grub Street (Cambridge, 1985), 161-63. An example is also found in Gustav Klaus's discussion of 19th-century miner poets: see his The Literature of Labour (Brighton, 1985), 75-76.

8An example is provided by the treatise of Safi al-Din al-Hilli, Die Vulgararabische Poetik al-Kitab al-'Atil al-IHall wa-al-Muraft,has al-Qali des Safiyiddin Hilli, ed. Wilhelm Hoenerbach (Wiesbaden, 1956).

9Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (London, 1978), 28. ?'"Muqaddima," Diwdn Muhammad 'Abd al-Nabi (Cairo, n.d.), 4.

"See zajals reproduced by Ibn Iyas in his Tarikh Misr al-Mashhur bi-Badd'i' al-Zuhur fi Waqd'i' al-Duhuiir, 4 vols. (Cairo/Bulaq, A.H. 1311 [A.D. 1893]), 1:237-38, 247-48, 250-53, 259, by Khalaf al- Ghibari. On medieval colloquial poetry in Egypt, see Ahmad Sadiq al-Jammal, Al-Adab al-'Ammi fi Misrfi al-'Asr al-Mamluki (Cairo, 1966).

12Exemplified by Shaykh Hasan al-Alati, who after finishing his education at al-Azhar became a well- known zajjdl and song composer. He drew a regular audience of litterateurs with his compositions and entertaining personality; his informal gatherings were institutionalized as al-Mudhik khdna al-Kubrd. He preserved the memory of these gatherings in Kitdb Tarwih al-Nufus wa-Mudhik al-'Ubuis, 3 vols. (Cairo, 1889-91). See al-Alati, 1:3-4. This title echoes the collection of the 15th-century Cairene colloquial poet, 'Ali b. Sudun al-Bashbaghawi, Nuzhat al-Nufuiis wa-Mudhik al-'Ubuiis. On al-Alati and his circle, see also Husayn Mazlum Riyad and Mustafa Muhammad al-Sabahi, Tarikh Adab al-Shacb: Nash'atuhu, Tatawwuruhu, A'ldmuhu (Cairo, 1936), 104-6; J. Heyworth-Dunne, "Society and Politics in Modern Egyptian Literature: a Bibliographic Survey," Middle East Journal 2, 3 (July 1948): 313-14; Ahmad Amin, Qdmuis al-'Addt wa-al-Taqalid wa-al-Ta'abir al-Misriyya (Cairo, 1958), 11-12, 218, 309-10,374.

13Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid Marsot, "The Cartoon in Egypt," Comparative Studies in Society and History 13 (January 1971): 12. Vicinus makes a similar point about the orality of the dialect periodical for 19th- century England, although that was a situation characterized by a much higher literacy rate (Vicinus, The Industrial Muse, 201); on this factor in the 18th century, see Klaus, Literature of Labour, 9-10.

4A. H. Beaman, CID, GHQ 2d Echelon, 28 February 1919. PRO FO 141/781/8915. 5Police Report (Cairo), 31 July 1919. PRO FO 141/781/8915. 6See the chapter on al-Nadim in Riyad and al-Sabahi, Tarikh, 113-23. 17See al-Ustadh 1, 41 (6 June 1893), 985-95. On al-Nadim's possible exaggeration of his own role,

see Ahmad Taym-ur, Tardjim Acydn al-Qarn al-Thalith 'Ashar wa-Awd'il al-Rdbi 'Ashar (Cairo, 1940), 15; and Naffusah Zakariyya Sa'id, 'Abdallah Nadim bayna al-Fushd wa-al-'Ammiyya (Cairo, 1966), 102, n. 2.

18For the text see Riyad and al-Sabahi, Tarikh, 119-23. For an earlier zajal by al-Nadim on a similar theme, see al-Tankit wa-al-Tabkit 1, 9 (7 August 1881): 149-51.

19For the text and translation of one of Sannu"s poems, see my "Writing to be Heard: Colloquial Arabic Verse and the Press in Egypt (1877-1930)," ARCE Newsletter 140 (Winter 1987/1988): 3.



438 Marilyn Booth

20A reader's zajal compares Tawfiq to al-Nadim: "If al-Nadim and his unique merit left us/Your

thought would remind us of al-Nadim's words." Muhammad Effendi Imam, [Untitled Poem], Himarat Munyati 1, 15 (14 Muharram 1316 [4 June 1898]), 236.

20On the police: for example, "Bulisiyyat Ibn Samsun," Himdrat Munyati 2, 10 (11 Dhui'l-Hijja 1316 [22 April 1899]), 157-59; "Mawwal Ahmar, wa-al-Hidiq ila Akhirihi," Himdrat Munyati 2, 4 (29 Shawwal 1316 [9 March 1899]), 60-61. On subscribers: "Kull Sana wa-Antum bi-Khayr," Himdrat

Munyati 2, 10 (11 Dhu'l-Hijja 1316 [22 April 1899]), 160. 22"Mawaciz Karbuni wa-Isticarat Ashmuni," Himarat Munyati 1, 2 (11 Shawwal 1315 [5 March

1898]), 24-25. The idiom "puffing on a torn waterskin" is equivalent to "flogging a dead horse." 23For example, an untitled zajal appearing in Himarat Munyati 1, 22 (5 Rabic I 1316 [24 July

1898]), 341-43; "Zajal Halafawi, cArabi cala Faransawi," Himdrat Munyati 2, 35 (18 Jumada II 1317 [24 October 1899]), 554-57.

24I have found no zajals signed by women in this periodical, or in other periodicals of the turn of the

century. 25For the text and translation of most of this long zajal, see Booth, "Writing to Be Heard," 4. 26The urban Egyptian in these poems is labeled as ibn al-balad, a term comprising a complex set of

identities marking an urban traditional Muslim populace. See Sawsan El-Messiri, Ibn al-Balad: A Con-

cept of Egyptian Identity (Leiden, 1978). On the ibn al-balad image in Bayram al-Tunisi's poetry, see Booth, Bayram al-Tunisi's Egypt, chap. 2. The term khawaga (Turkish khoja) referred initially to Turk- ish and then to Arab Christian schoolteachers particularly in the countryside, or more generally to teachers of nonreligious subjects. By this time it had come to refer to foreigners in general, and it is usually with this meaning that the word appears in the colloquial poetry of this period.

27Riyad and al-Sabahi, Tdrikh, 149. 28This, of course, has been an impetus for the use by some authors of colloquial Arabic in novels

and short stories as well as for its widespread use in the theater; see Cachia, "The Use of the Collo- quial," 67-70.

290On this strategy in one popular corpus of the time, see Booth, Bayram al-Tunisi's Egypt, 252-57. Another who used this strategy effectively in zajal was Badic Khayri, especially in conjunction with first person narrative. Examples are his "Sacit Ma Taqdish Migansa," Alf Sanf 1, 13 (16 February 1926), 19 (also published in al-Sayf in 1922); "Hubb Sacidi," al-Sayf (1922); "Sirju is-Sundtuq Ya Mu- hammad," Alf Sanf 1, 6 (29 December 1925), 6 (also published in al-Sayf, 1922).

30"Al-Umuir al-Makhfiyya fi al-Mahakim al-Sharciyya," al-Macni 1, 4 (15 February 1904), 121-25. This poem exemplifies a curious form of zajal found in newspapers of the time, characterized by an al- ternation of stanzas, wherein a dawr 'dqil (rational stanza) is followed by a dawr majnuin (insane stanza), or a dawr jadd (stanza of seriousness) precedes either a dawr hazl (stanza of jesting) or, as in this poem, a dawr mujuin (stanza of buffoonery or shamelessness). The story is told in the "serious stanzas" and punctuated by the nonsense material of the "clowning stanzas." But here the latter bear their own serious message, through the surrealistic description of human actions and familiar scenes wrenched out of context as they are performed by animals and inanimate objects. It seems to me that the situation of social disorder narrated in the stanzas of seriousness is echoed in the utter suspension of reality of the clowning stanzas. For another example of "rational-insane" verse see Pierre Cachia, "An Uncommon Use of Nonsense Verse in Colloquial Arabic," The Journal of Arabic Literature 14 (1983): 60-66. In the turn-of-the-century satirical press this practice was not uncommon.

3'The zajjial Khalil Nazir, one of the attendants at al-Najjar's cafe sessions, acknowledges his debt in a zajal laced with puns: "I take my craft from the carpenter [i.e., al-Najjar]/ And my drink came from his seas [i.e., poetic meters]" ("Hizz al-Halal Y'Abui'l-cAl," al-Masdmir, 17 August 1919). Other important zajjals of the early 20th century who are said to have attended al-Najjar's sessions are Imam al- 'Abd, Husayn al-Halabi, 'Isa Sabri, 'Izzat Saqr, and Yuinus al-Qadi. See Riyad and al-Sabahi, Tdrikh, 124. But al-Najjar's sessions were not the only ones which an aspiring zajjdl could frequent; on the formation of a young poet in this cafe culture, see Isma'il Husayn, "Tarjamat Hayat al-Marhtum al-Ustadh Muhammad 'Izzat Saqr," in Diwan Amir Fann al-Zajal al-Marhuim CIzzat Saqr (Cairo, 1933), 12-13.

32Muhammad al-Najjar, Majmi'at Azjidl (Cairo, A.H. 1318 [A.D. 1900-1901]), 2. This preamble is written in the rhymed (classical) prose still characteristic of much learned discourse at the time, just as many colloquial poems in the press of the 1920s and later are given titles infushd.

33Muhammad al-Najjar, "Fann al-Zajal," al-Arghul 1, 2 (15 September 1894), 32-33; ibid., 1, 3 (1 October 1894), 58-60.




34Al-Arghiul, 1, 1 (1 September 1894), 3. Al-Najjar goes on to criticize political journalists for tak-

ing advantage of events in Egypt in order to sell their publications. 35For example, "Zajal al-Arghul fi Tahni'at Sumuww al-Khudaywi bi-'Id al-Jultus wa-'Id al-Fitr,"

al-Arghul 6, 8 (A.H. 1319 [no month given] [A.D. 1900-1902]), 131-33; "Himl Zajal: Tahni'a bi-Wila- dat Bint 'Aziz Misrina wa-Khidiwina 'Abbas Basha II al-Afkhar," in al-Najjar, Majmu'at Azjdl, 71-72.

36Al-Najjar, "Fann al-Zajal," 32-33. 370. M. Tweedy, Political Summary, 8 April 1919. PRO FO 141/781/8915. 38CID Intelligence Summary, 24 May 1919. PRO FO 141/781/8915. An unsigned colloquial poem

from 1919 was obtained by British officials and is preserved in FO 371/3714; I am grateful to Ellis

Goldberg for alerting me to it and providing me with a copy. 39See Booth, Bayram al-Tunisi's Egypt, chap. 1.

40Riyad Effendi Muhammad Amin, [Untitled Poem], al-Latd'if al-Musawwara, 7, 334 (4 July 1921), 12. 4l1"SaCidna fi al-Mas'ala Di, Rabbina Yikhallik," al-Latii'if al-Musawwara, 7, 308 (3 January 1921), 2.

42Colloquial poetry's status is tellingly illustrated in the way diwans of fusha poets who also wrote

zajal are structured. The zajals come at the end, as in the diwans of Abiu al-Wafa' and Hifni Nasif Bey. Or, as in the case of Ahmad Shawqi, they are left out of the official diwdn altogether.

43Few women published zajals in these publications-but there were a few, becoming slightly more numerous in the 1940s and 1950s in magazines such as al-Radyii wa-al-BaCkuka, al-Bahluiil, and Idhak. There are a number of women now publishing colloquial poetry in Egypt-both in periodicals and in diwdns of their own-but their number remains small compared to the number of men colloquial poets publishing their work.

There are also examples from the earlier period of female pseudonyms, such as Fatat al-cArab who published two poems in al-Latd'if al-Musawwara in 1921; one is subtitled "Zajalun bi-Qalami Sayyi- datin Misriyya" for those who might have missed that point. It is likely, however, that some female pseudonyms were used by men poets for particular effects. I am carrying out further research on women colloquial poets and the use of female pseudonyms in zajal.

44See Booth, Bayram al-Tunisi's Egypt, 87. 45For a possible exception, see Booth, "Writing to be Heard," 5. 460f course, between al-Najjair's al-Arghul and the 1920s, similar publications were founded by zajjaiils,

such as Isa Sabri's al-Rassam (founded 1903), Fathi Muhammad's al-'Asr al-'Abbdsi (founded 1903), Ahmad al-Qtusi's al-Saba wa-Dhimmituhd (founded 1907), but it was after World War I, and as part of a general upsurge in journalistic activity, that such periodicals became numerous. Much work remains to be done on networks of zajjals, patronage, and the ways in which these informal structures both built on and furthered the fortunes of zajal in the periodical press. This is a focus of my continuing research on zajal.

47Badic Khayri, `'Uqbal al-Talta," Alf Sanf 53 (23 November 1926), 4. The use of colloquial in the title of an editorial is unusual, even in the popular press. The article begins in a colloquial mode and shifts to a simple standard Arabic.

48"Tayyir Ya Abui Qirdain," Abu Qirddn 1, 1 (21 September 1924), 3. 49Bayram al-Tiunisi and Badic Khayri were especially skilled at this. On al-Tunisi's narrative poems,

see Booth, Bayram al-Tunisi's Egypt, chap. 2. 50For the text of this poem, see Riyad and al-Sabahi, Tdrikh, 248-50. Nazir also notes-following

al-Najjar-that the aspiring colloquial poet must study the compositions of his predecessors; and he discusses the requirements of different thematic spheres. In love poetry (ghazal), he says, it is impolite to mention buttocks; in satire, the fun should not reach the point of invective or the poet may find himself silenced. These guidelines were not followed by the poets themselves: buttocks appear frequently in Bayram al-Ttunisi's poems (but in satires rather than love poetry!), while Muhammad CAbd al-Nabi's zajals are so full of pointed invective that he is said to have lost most of his poet friends (ibid., 284- 85). Nazir alludes to his careful attitude in another zajal on the writing process, when he says that "I put my words through a sieve/ That is, what I say is clean." ("Hizz al-Halal Y'Abtu al-Al," al-Masamir, 17 August 1919.)

51 See Joel Beinin and Zachary Lockman, Workers on the Nile: Nationalism, Communism, Islam, and the Egyptian Working Class, 1882-1954 (Princeton, N.J., 1987), 190-91.

52Zachary Lockman, "Class and Nation: The Emergence of the Egyptian Workers' Movement" (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1983), 452-57. I am indebted to Zachary Lockman for information on the labor press of the 1920s and 1930s.

3"'Ard Hal," al-'Amil al-Misri 1, 1 (10 February 1930), 13.



440 Marilyn Booth

54Beinin and Lockman, Workers on the Nile, 190. 55Ibid., 318. One of al-Maghribi's poems is partially translated on p. 319. 56Ibid., 318, 280. 57"Al-cAmil fi al-cid," in Fathi al-Maghribi, Ana al-'Amil: Majmiiat Azjdl Shacbiyya (Cairo, n.d.

[1946?]), 11. For Bayram al-Tuinisi's poem, see Al-A'mal al-Kdmila li-Bayram al-TTunisi, vol. 3, Bayram wa-al-Nas (Cairo, 1976), 160-61.

58The twelfth number of this series' second year was a collection of zajals that the editors proudly proclaimed was the first issue to be authored by a peasant. Encouraging peasant authorship, continued the

preface by Yahya Ahmad, secretary of the Majlis al-Iclam al-Rifi who sponsored the series, had been one of the goals behind the series' inception. See CAbd al-Qadir Ahmad al-Salus, Falldh. . . wa-Aquilu al- Zajal, Ikhtarna li-al-Fallah 2, 12 (June 1968). A volume of colloquial poetry by the well-known Samir CAbd al-Baqi had already appeared in the series, and at least five more volumes of colloquial poetry (including only two by peasants) had been published by the time the series was five years old.

59Joel Beinin, "Labor, Capital and the State in Nasserist Egypt, 1952-1961," International Journal

of Middle East Studies 21, 1 (February 1989): 87. The poem is that of Darwish Muhammad al-Mihi, "Hikayat Awwal Mayu," al-Masa', 225 (21 May 1957), 7.

60Zakariyya Muhammad CIsa, "'Id Mayu!," al-Masd', 206 (30 April 1957), 7. On al-Masa' and the term idrdb, see Beinin, "Labour, Capital," 86.

6lIbid., 83. 62The literary editors' interest in colloquial poetry is suggested in other ways. Twice there appear

profiles of colloquial poets: Hamid al-Atmas in al-Masda, 155 (9 March 1957), 8; and Shafiq Khalid, an itinerant peddler, in al-Masa', 116 (29 January 1957), 8. There are numerous articles on folk literature and articles on both Sannuc and al-Nadim; finally, an article on diglossia in Arabic challenges the notion that "local languages" pose any threat to Arab unity. See al-Masad, 427 (11 December 1957), 8.

63There are critiques by Fathi Ghanim, Anwar CAbd al-Malik, Salah 'Abd al-Sabuir, Nucman 'Ash-ur, 'Ali al-Raci, and Lutfi al-Kholi.

64Hamid al-Atmas, SunndC al-RabiC (Cairo, 1959[?]); idem, Tarnimat al-'Ubur: Azjal Hamid al- Atmas (Cairo, 1976).

65This presence was often limited, however, to compositions by a few individuals, continuing the tradition of featuring a single "zajjdl columnist." Bayram al-Tunisi's regular commentary in verse on the rapidly unfolding political events of the 1950s in al-Jumhuriyya is a good example. This venue was constricted in the 1970s; abdah al-Khayr is the only remaining mass-circulation magazine which regu- larly publishes colloquial poetry. More experimental colloquial poetry appears in the opposition press centered around the Tagammu' party (Adab wa-Naqd, al-Ahali) and in the deliberately non-elitist al-Thaqdfa al-Jadida, published by the government's Department of Mass Culture.



colloquial arabic poetry, politics, and the press in modern egypt

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