Category Archives: Egypt

Princeton Geniza Project

Archaeology and Antiquities, Egypt, Islamic Economics, Languages, Yemen

The Princeton Geniza Project of the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University seeks to extend the methodologies available to Hebrew and Arabic scholars working with the documents found in the Geniza chamber of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo in the late 19th century. The project is dedicated to transcribing documents from film copies to computer files, creating a full text retrieval text-base of transcribed documents, developing new tools such as dictionaries, semantic categories and morphological aids to further the study of Geniza texts. The project is committed to disseminating its materials as widely as possible to the international community of scholars with an interest in the life of the medieval Middle East, as well as to all with an interest in Judaica. It is our hope that by making materials from this very esoteric field widely available that new insights can be gained into the interaction of the peoples of the Middle East in past time. Since inception in 1986, funding has been provided by Princeton University, the Department of Near Eastern Studies, and from 2000 to 2005 by the Friedberg Genizah Project.

US Freezing of Military Aid to Egypt: How Much of a Dent?

"Arab Spring", Egypt, Obama Administration, Terrorism Issue


By James M. Dorsey, RSIS Commentaries, October 16, 2013

Synopsis
The decision by the Obama administration to freeze military aid deprives the Egyptian military of its favourite toys but does little to weaken its military capability. It further strains relations with key US allies in the Gulf, and highlights Washington’s difficulty in balancing its twin goals of stability and democratisation in the Middle East and North Africa.

Commentary

THE OBAMA administration’s decision to impose sanctions on Egypt’s military-appointed government following the killing of 51 anti-military protestors in Egypt illustrates the US’ limited leverage on one of its closest allies in the Middle East and North Africa. It also reflects its difficulty in striking a balance between acknowledging that the region has entered into an era of messy transition and maintaining close ties to its counter-revolutionary allies such as Saudi Arabia.

Washington had refrained in the past three months to define as a coup the military’s overthrow of Egypt’s only democratically-elected president and brutal suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood that left more than 1,000 people dead, to avoid being legally obliged to cut off aid.

Reinforcing worries about US stance

The aid freeze comes on the heels of the announcement of a November date for the start of court proceedings against ousted president Mohamed Morsi. It is likely to reinforce Saudi and Israeli fears that Washington is steering a dangerous course not only by its perceived support for fundamental change of the region’s established order but also by its willingness to engage with revolutionary Iran, seen by Arab conservatives as a threat to their national security.

In anticipation of the US sanctions, Egyptian interim President Adly Mansour secured pledges for continued support from Saudi Arabia and other cash-rich Gulf states that have already funded his government to the tune of US$12 billion. In advance of the coup against Morsi, Saudi Arabia had already assured the Egyptian military that it would compensate for any loss of US economic and financial aid.

The Gulf’s support has kept the post-Morsi government afloat but does little to address Egypt’s festering, structural economic problems nor does it offer the prospect of substituting military hardware for what is the world’s 14th largest armed forces. Continue reading US Freezing of Military Aid to Egypt: How Much of a Dent? →

T. S. Eliot’s Influence Upon Salah Abdel-Sabour, #3

Egypt, Languages, Literature, Poetry


Abdel Sabour

By George Nicolas El-Hage, Ph.D.

[For Part 1 of this essay, click here. For Part 2, click here.]

7. Sabour’s Departure from Traditional Arabic Poetry

Up until now, I tried to demonstrate Eliot’s influence on Abdel Sabour’s poetry, especially with regard to his themes and techniques. Because of the vast gulf that separates the two poets culturally, spiritually, and educationally, it seems a vain effort to look for absolute similarities. On the other hand, it is easier for the critic with an adequate knowledge of the traditional models of Arabic poetry to notice that Sabour’s modern poetry departed almost completely from the classical tradition.

Prior to his exposure to the poetry of T.S. Eliot, Sabour wrote traditional poetry using the classical meters. After reading Eliot, the Egyptian poet adopted new themes, techniques, and structures. He no longer used traditional meters with the long, heavy lines, built on two hemistiches and rhyming with each other throughout the poem. This new type of poetry was able to come into existence and flourish after a long struggle led by contemporary poets like Abdel Sabour. (19)

Starting in the late 1950s, the experience of writing in free verse became a familiar occurrence. In the poetry of Sabour, not only the mood, style, use of myth and illusion, and the interior monologue resemble Eliot’s, but “we have a sense of aimlessness and isolation, of memory and futility, it is definitely the mood of The Wasteland and the Hollow Men.” (20) Moreover, there are clear-cut images in Sabour’s poetry which demonstrate Eliot’s great influence on the Arab poet’s attitude toward life and death. Sabour also makes use of Eliot’s theme of alienation and of his description of empty rooms. In “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, Eliot says:
“The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes.
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes.”

Sabour says, echoing Eliot in his “My Peerless Star”:

“Fingers of an eastern wind
Rub the window-panes.” Continue reading T. S. Eliot’s Influence Upon Salah Abdel-Sabour, #3 →

T. S. Eliot’s Influence Upon Salah Abdel-Sabour, #2

Egypt, Languages, Literature, Poetry


T. S. Eliot

By George Nicolas El-Hage, Ph.D.

[For Part 1 of this essay, click here.]

4. A Brief Summary of Eliot’s Background

T.S. Eliot, the Anglo-American poet, was born in 1888 in Saint Louis, Missouri. He studied at Harvard, the Sorbonne, and Oxford. Despite the fact that Eliot was brought up in a conservative Christian atmosphere, he exposed himself later to a completely different culture when he went to live in England. It is obvious that the political and spiritual world in which Eliot lived bestowed upon him its own distinguishing characteristics.

Eliot was lucky in his education. Harvard offered him a thorough introduction to Dante and to Romance literature. Since his earlier poetry, Eliot was influenced by Dante. Dante held a central position in Europe and linked the Roman past with the modern age. In Dante, Eliot found the spiritual identity of Europe. This allowed him to try to make Europe more conscious of itself. Eliot also allowed the French culture to influence him. Originally an American without the inherited English rigidity, he accepted the characteristics of the French civilization. His views of criticism were those of Remy de Gourmont’s school, and Charles Maurras influenced him politically.

Although it is always possible to argue that Eliot is, after all, an American, no one can deny that his exposure to different cultures gave him a unique political and literary background. Of course, it was his genius and talent which contributed most to the production of his great works of poetry and criticism.

5. A Brief Summary of Salah Abdel Sabour’s Background

Salah Abdel Sabour was not only a major poet, but also the literary editor of a wide spread newspaper, Al-Ahram. He was born in 1931 in the provincial district of Zaqaziq, Egypt, in a conservative Islamic house. When he was twenty, he graduated from Cairo University with a degree in Arabic Language and Literature. Continue reading T. S. Eliot’s Influence Upon Salah Abdel-Sabour, #2 →

Enough! Damn this continued violence

"Arab Spring", Egypt, Iraq, Islamophobia, Libya, Pakistan, Syria, Terrorism Issue, Tunisia


Up to 600 worshipers had attended the service and were leaving to receive free food being distributed on the lawn outside when two explosions ripped through the crowd. Photograph by Mohammad Sajjad/Associated Press

Enough blood has been shed in the past few days to make any sane person question how anyone could possibly justify such cold-blooded and senseless attacks on innocent people. The poison gas in Syria is bad enough, but now we hear that the Somali Shabab have decided to kill shoppers in a Nairobi mall rather than play Captain Hook off the East African coast and now at least 78 Pakistani Christians are killed in a blast at a historic church. This is the ugly side of religion. More than a hijacking of Islam, this is dragging the faith that produced great scholars like Ibn Sina and al-Ghazali into the sewer. To say that the Prophet Muhammad would have condoned this kind of indiscriminate murder is as absurd as the medieval Crusader claim that Jesus would bless the slaughter of Jews and Muslims. But at least the crusades ended several centuries ago.

Muslims killing fellow Muslims or Muslims targeting Christians for death are both equally insane acts. Every day the death toll rises in Iraq and Syria, as though we have returned to the days of the Mongols and Mamluks. Continue reading Enough! Damn this continued violence →

T. S. Eliot’s Influence Upon Salah Abdel-Sabour, #1

Egypt, Languages, Literature, Poetry


Salah Abdel-Sabour, left; T. S. Eliot, right

T. S. Eliot’s Influence Upon Salah Abdel-Sabour

By George Nicolas El-Hage, Ph.D.

The degree of influence of the Anglo-American poet, T.S. Eliot, on the Egypto-Arabic poet and dramatist, Salah Abdel-Sabour, has not yet been vastly explored. In this article, I shall not only attempt to compare the two poets in a more enlightened perspective, but I shall also probe the fundamental methodology governing a general comparative study. My approach includes the following:

1. A Valid Comparative Study and the Importance of Comparative Literature
2. Traditional Arabic Poetry
3. Why T.S. Eliot?
4. A Brief Summary of Eliot’s Background
5. A Brief Summary of Abdel Sabour’s Background
6. A Practical and Comparative Analysis of One of Sabour’s Poems
7. Abdel Sabour’s Departure from Traditional Arabic Poetry
8. A Brief Comparison between Two Plays
9. Conclusion

1. A Valid Comparative Study and the Importance of Comparative Literature

A fruitful and acceptable treatment of a subject which discusses the influence of one poet upon another must not stop at the limits of a shallow consideration of the most obvious similarities of forms, meanings, and techniques. It must go to the depths to consider the various elements that concern the sources of similarities, as well as the differences, in the light of the cultural backgrounds of the two poets. For example, a comparative study between Corneille and Racine, Wordsworth and Coleridge, and Sabour and Mahmoud Darwish would not be valid for each pair of these poets or writers belongs to the same culture and submits to the same political and social atmospheres.

Comparative Literature is neither a literary comparison nor a mere translation of a foreign literature. It is, as Jean-Marie Carre says, a study of the international and spiritual relations between men and cultures. A meaningful comparative study requires two artists belonging to remote cultures, yet dealing with the same literary genre. The comparativist, thereby, investigates the major differences existing between the environments which produced habits, customs, and verbalization of thought. Again, it appears necessary to investigate the spiritual and material factors which establish the concepts of every culture. It is also necessary to determine the degree of understanding each poet has of his own literary tradition and to ascertain the extent to which his cultural heritage pervades his poetry. The political, religious, economical, and linguistic elements are important factors to be considered. Continue reading T. S. Eliot’s Influence Upon Salah Abdel-Sabour, #1 →

Unbrotherly Brotherhood, Undemocratic Military

"Arab Spring", Egypt, Ethics, Syria, Terrorism Issue

The debate over whether or not to send a cruise missile or two into Syria and spank Bashar al-Assad for adding chemical weapons to his bloody arsenal of putting down the revolt in Syria has overshadowed the continuing battle in Egypt for control of the political future. In both situations there is an alarming paradox for most Western observers: there seem to be no good guys wearing white hats, like in an early John Wayne movie. The al-Assad clan has run a security-based dictatorship that, like Saddam Hussein, tortured and killed opponents. But the major opposition, at least at this point in the ongoing civil war, includes a number of extremists who would be as bad a choice to take over. As the American experience in both Iraq and Afghanistan well demonstrates, the friendly (to us) leaders we would like to install (and did with impunity in the old days) do not work out so well these days.

Egypt may not be today’s top story coming out of the Middle East, but it is hardly a stable situation. An article just out in the New Yorker by Joshua Hersh illustrates the clear objective of the Muslim Brotherhood to de-secularize Egypt. Those who came to power around Morsy were not very brotherly brothers and created a backlash by attempting to muscle out those who were not of their ideology. Continue reading Unbrotherly Brotherhood, Undemocratic Military →