This is an interesting Youtube video posted by Mostafa Khalifa. It has the voice of Munira al-Mahdiya with footage taken in Cairo and Alexandria in 1920.
Cairo in 1920
All posts by tabsir
Visual Letter Art
Thesiger of Arabia
Anyone who knows anything about Arabia has no doubt heard of Lawrence of Arabia, even if only via Peter O’toole’s dazzling Hollywood version. But there is also Thesiger of Arabia, especially his extraordinary trips across the Empty Quarter in the 1940s. While in al-‘Ayn in 2014 I was able to visit the old fort, now a museum displaying a number of photographs that Wilfred Thesiger took on his trip from Yemen to the Emirates and his visit with Shaykh Zayed. The albums of Thesiger are preserved online at the Pitt Rivers Museum website. It is well worth looking at these.
I photographed several of the images in the al-‘Ayn exhibit dealing with Yemen, and these are reproduced below:
Baba ‘Aris (1950)
Youtube has quite a few old Egyptian films with music, dancing, the colorful Egyptian dialect and some very strange plots. Baba ‘Aris is well worth watching… For details on the film, click here.
Nai Barghouti – “About a human” by Mahmoud Darwish
A beautiful song by Mahmoud Darwish, sung by the Palestinian Nai Barghouti.
Marvels and Wonders: Al-Qazwini and Beyond
There is a fascinating talk on Youtube by Travis Zadeh on marvels and wonders in Islamic texts, especially the many versions of al-Qazwini.
Old “Arab” Postcards
If you would like to look at (or buy) old postcards and images from and about the Arab world, including North Africa, this site of cardcow.com is worth a look…
Egyptian agriculture in 1920
There is an early 1920 video on Youtube with views of agriculture, bread making, spinning and weaving in Egypt at the time. No details are provided on the Youtube page.
