Original air date: 3 February 2016 | More than just a type of leisure and amusement, theatre was a way for late Ottoman Egyptians to express their ideas about class, gender, and politics as both performers and spectators. In this episode, Adam Mestyan shares his research on Egyptian theatre during the nineteenth century and explains its relationship to an emerging notion of patriotism.

More at: http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2016/02/theatre-in-egypt-history.html

Adam Mestyan is a Junior Fellow at the Society of Fellows, Harvard University and currently writing his first book entitled Arab Patriotism: The Ideology and Culture of Power in Late Ottoman Egypt, which explores the relationship between political power and theater in nineteenth-century Egypt.

Nir Shafir is a historian of the Middle East whose research examines the intersections of knowledge production, religious practice, and material culture in the early modern world (1400-1800). He curates Ottoman History Podcast’s series on history of science in addition to being one of the co-founders of hazine.info, a website that explores the archives and libraries of the Islamic world. He is currently an advanced doctoral candidate in the History Department at UCLA.

CREDITS

Episode No. 224
Release Date: 3 February 2016
Recording Location: Cambridge, MA
Editing and production by Chris Gratien
Sound excerpt: Salāma Ḥijāzī (1852?-1917), "Salāmun ʿalā Ḥusnin" from the play "Shuhadāʾ al-Gharām" (Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliette, Arabised by Najīb Ḥaddād around 1889/1890), recorded between 1906 and 1910 by the Odéon company. Republished by Frédéric Lagrange in a CD: Les Archives de la musique arabe - Shaykh Salama Higazi AAA 085, CDA401 (Club du Disque Arabe, 1994).
Images via Muḥammad Fāḍil, al-Shaykh Salāma Ḥijāzī and Max Karkegi Collection
Bibliography courtesy of Adam Mestyan