Exploring popular culture and entertainment in 1920s Cairo
A number of periodicals cropped up in 1920s Cairo that offered artistic critique, gossip, and cultural commentary. See them in person at the Penn Libraries or browse them online.
1920s Cairo was a place of great social and political change, and the city was home to a bustling international and cosmopolitan population. New venues and forms of entertainment were established during this time period, which catered to local and international residents across social classes. A number of periodicals cropped up during this time that offered artistic critique, gossip, and cultural commentary. Penn holds a number of these journals, which are now available to researchers both digitally and in person.
One such title is al-Masrah, or the Theater. Started in 1925 in Cairo by editors Muhammad Abd al-Majid Hilmi and Gamal al-Din Awad, it was an early Egyptian periodical focused on theater. Content ranged from information about performances to articles about performers and writers. In addition to theater, we can also find information about music, dance, and film. The material is focused on local performers and their work (as well as some social gossip), but also includes information about European and American performers, as well as cultural history more broadly.
While al-Masrah's run concluded after Hilmi’s untimely death two years later, the journal continued for a bit as al-Naqid (the Critic), which Penn also holds. While most covers featured the picture of an actress, the first issue of Naqid features a picture of the recently deceased Hilmi, and the journal published a series of articles on the tragic and dramatic events leading up to his death. For those interested in learning more about Hilmi’s life and work, I recommend Raphael Cormack’s Midnight in Cairo: The Divas of Egypt’s Roaring Twenties or Muhammad Abd al-Majid Hilmi by Ṣalāḥ Ḥusnī ʻAbd al-ʻAzīz, both of which are available at the Penn Libraries.
The co-editor of al-Masrah went on to edit another title called al-Sitar/le Rideau, or the Curtain with Habib Jamati, another prominent writer and intellectual. The first issue opened with a tribute to mark one year since Hilmi’s passing. Another title published around the same time was al-Mumathil, or the Actor. In Midnight in Cairo, Cormack describes al-Mumathil as part of the wider landscape of periodicals at the time sharing “news, gossip, and photos of celebrities.” For example, one edition included an article about the recent silent film “The Passion of Joan of Arc.” These magazines often showed examples of tours visiting Egypt, but we also get reports from local artists touring abroad. In one issue of al-Sitar, the famous violinist Sami Shawa provides a dispatch from his tour visiting Paris and New York and describes being welcomed by the Syrian community there.
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While these periodicals provide insight into a thriving art scene, they also provide an opportunity to learn about the lives of performers who came from diverse backgrounds and drove social change. Performers are often difficult to research, so these serials are a rich archive that provide insights into the lives of women, people from different social classes, and performers from different religious backgrounds, including Christian, Jewish, and Muslim. Scholars like Raphael Cormack have used these periodicals to paint a vivid picture of 1920s Cairo, exploring the lives of the characters who took the stage during this time period. Carmen M. K. Gitre has discussed gendered depictions in these periodicals in her study on theater and nationalism. As Hanan Hamad writes, discussing a later time period in her book about Layla Murad, “Celebrity- gossip publications are a valuable source of sociocultural history, particularly for studying gender and sexuality and historians have recently begun to use fan and celebrity publications to write the history of Egyptian cinema.” Hopefully these journals will offer new research opportunities and reach a wider audience now that they are digitized. You can see everything we have digitized in our digital collections online.
For help identifying other periodicals or resources related to Egyptian theater, feel free to contact me.
I would like to acknowledge Raphael Cormack, Assistant Professor in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at Durham University, for inquiring about these periodicals, which helped lead to their digitization.
Date
June 3, 2026