The Arab Imago

The first history of indigenous photography in the Middle East The birth of photography coincided with the expansion of European imperialism in the Middle East, and some of the medium's earliest images are Orientalist pictures taken by Europeans in such places as Cairo and Jerusalem—photographs that have long shaped and distorted the Western visual imagination of the region. But the Middle East had many of its own photographers, collectors, and patrons. In this book, Stephen Sheehi presents a groundbreaking new account of early photography in the Arab world. The Arab Imago concentrates primarily on studio portraits by Arab and Armenian photographers in the late Ottoman Empire. Examining previously known studios such as Abdullah Frères, Pascal Sébah, Garabed Krikorian, and Khalil Raad, the book also provides the first account of other pioneers such as Georges and Louis Saboungi, the Kova Brothers, Muhammad Sadiq Bey, and Ibrahim Rif'at Pasha—as well as the first detailed look at early photographs of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. In addition, the book explores indigenous photography manuals and albums, newspapers, scientific journals, and fiction. Featuring extensive previously unpublished images, The Arab Imago shows how native photography played an essential role in the creation of modern Arab societies in Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon before the First World War. At the same time, the book overturns Eurocentric and Orientalist understandings of indigenous photography and challenges previous histories of the medium.

Examines the 'Nahda', a cultural renaissance in the Arab world, through the utopian visions of Arab intellectuals during the nineteenth century.

What was popular entertainment like for everyday Arab societies in Middle Eastern cities during the long nineteenth century? In what ways did café culture, theatre, illustrated periodicals, cinema, cabarets, and festivals serve as key forms of popular entertainment for Arabic-speaking audiences, many of whom were uneducated and striving to contend with modernity's anxiety-inducing realities? Studies on the 19th to mid-20th century's transformative cultural movement known as the Arab nahda (renaissance), have largely focussed on concerns with nationalism, secularism, and language, often told from the perspective of privileged groups. Highlighting overlooked aspects of this movement, this book shifts the focus away from elite circles to quotidian audiences. Its ten contributions range in scope, from music and visual media to theatre and popular fiction. Paying special attention to networks of movement and exchange across Arab societies in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and Morocco, this book heeds the call for 'translocal/transnational' cultural histories, while contributing to timely global studies on gender, sexuality, and morality. Focusing on the often-marginalized frequenters of cafés, artist studios, cinemas, nightclubs, and the streets, it expands the remit of who participated in the nahda and how they did.

This book examines the ways in which non-Arabic cultural influences interacted with the rich, complex and sometimes conflictual environment of the Arab world in the pre-independence era. It comprises a series of 11 detailed case studies, including topics such as the songs of Egyptian forced labourers in the British Army in World War I, the translation and commentary of an Ottoman text in interwar Palestine, and the contested use of French in the Algerian independence movement, that highlight the complex interplay of colonial pressures, traditional and novel art forms, local and international practices, notions of identity and belonging. The book demonstrates how the interaction between Arabic and non-Arabic cultural and intellectual production as well as influences from imperial Europe and the Islamic East, have in various times and spaces inspired creative tensions which challenge binary views of East-West relations and the standard imperialist-colonial frameworks. In this sense the volume seeks to offer a critique of both established modernising conceptions of cultural development and nationalist, nativist frameworks based on the values of a specific political project.

"This book has been published on the occasion of the exhibition 'Camera Ottomana: Photography and Modernity in the Ottoman Empire, 1840-1914', at Kooc University Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations, Istanbul, April 21-August 19th, 2015"-- Page 3.

The essays in this Oxford Handbook rethink the modern history of one of the most important and influential countries in the Middle East--Egypt. For a country and region so often understood in terms of religion and violence, this work explores environmental, medical, legal, cultural, and political histories. It gives readers an excellent view of the current debates in Egyptian history.

"Camera Palaestina is a critical exploration of Wasif Jawhariyyeh and his seven photography albums. Jawhariyyeh lived in Jerusalem from 1904 to 1972, and the nine hundred images in his albums chronicle a cultural history of Ottoman and Mandate Palestine. Shedding new light on this foundational period, the authors explore not just major historical events and the development of an urban bourgeois lifestyle, but an emerging Palestinian aesthetic. Issam Nassar, Stephen Sheehi, and Salim Tamari locate this photographic archive at the juncture between the history of photography in Palestine and the everyday social history of Palestine through photography. They offer evidence of the unbroken field of material, historical, and collective experience that constitutes an incontestable continuum of what is Arab Palestine, from its living past to its living present"--

Understanding the complexities of Arab politics, history, and culture has never been more important for North American readers. Yet even as Arabic literature is increasingly being translated into English, the modern Arabic literary tradition is still often treated as other--controversial, dangerous, difficult, esoteric, or exotic. This volume examines modern Arabic literature in context and introduces creative teaching methods that reveal the literature's richness, relevance, and power to anglophone students. Addressing the complications of translation head on, the volume interweaves such important issues such as gender, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and the status of Arabic literature in world literature. Essays cover writers from the recent past, like Emile Habiby and Tayeb Salih; contemporary Palestinian, Egyptian, and Syrian literatures; and the literature of the nineteenth-century Nahda.