Al Fajr Al Jadid

Al Fajr Al Jadid (Arabic: لفجر الجديد, romanized: al-Fajr al-Jadid, lit. 'The New Dawn') was a leftist magazine which was published in the period 1945–1946. Although the magazine was short-lived, it is one of the sources that laid the basis of the regime change in Egypt in 1952.[1]

Al Fajr Al Jadid
CategoriesPolitical magazine
Frequency
  • Biweekly
  • Weekly
FounderAl Fajr Al Jadid Group
Founded1945
First issue16 May 1945
Final issueJuly 1946
CountryEgypt
Based inCairo
LanguageArabic

History and profile

The first issue of Al Fajr Al Jadid appeared on 16 May 1945.[1][2] The founders and contributors of the magazine were called the Al Fajr Al Jadid group and included Ahmad Sadiq Saad, Raymond Duwayk, Yusuf Darwish and Ahmad Rushdi Salih who was the editor-in-chief of the magazine.[3][4] They were Marxist political figures and artists.[4] The magazine was started to produce a version of the leftist views and practices specific to Egypt.[4] It was started as a biweekly publication, but the frequency was switched to weekly from 1 November 1945.[3][5] The frequent topics featured in the magazine were social issues such as poverty, underdevelopment and agrarian reform.[4] It also covered literary and cultural writings and advocated the committed literary approach.[1] These articles were published in standard Arabic not in colloquial Arabic.[6]

The magazine was distributed to nearly all Arab countries and enjoyed support and financial assistance of the Marxist organizations based in Palestine, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq.[5] It was also financed by the Soviet Union.[7]

Al Fajr Al Jadid openly attacked significant cultural figures of the period, including Tawfiq Al Hakim, Abbas Al Aqqad, Ibrahim Al Mazini and Taha Hussein for living in their ivory towers and having close connections with capitalists and colonizers.[4] In this regard the magazine shared a common feature with Al Adab, a literary magazine which would be launched in Beirut in 1953.[8] Initially Al Fajr Al Jadid was not critical towards the Egyptian government, but became much more ardent opponent of the government soon which led to its closure in July 1946 by the government led by Prime Minister Ismail Sidky.[1]

References
  1. Rami Ginat; Meir Noema (November 2008). "Al-Fajr al-Jadid: A Breeding Ground for the Emergence of Revolutionary Ideas in the Immediate Post-Second World War". Middle Eastern Studies. 44 (6): 867–893. doi:10.1080/00263200802426005. S2CID 144087987.
  2. Elie Chalala (Spring 1999). "Ali al-Rai Exits Stage: Egypt Loses Critic Who Brought Masterpieces to Theater". Al Jadid. 5 (27).
  3. Selma Botman (1988). Rise of Egyptian Communism, 1939-1970. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. p. 160. ISBN 978-0-8156-2443-1.
  4. Giedre Sabaseviciute (2018). "Sayyid Qutb and the Crisis of Culture in Late 1940S Egypt". International Journal of Middle East Studies. 50 (1): 89. doi:10.1017/S0020743817000952. S2CID 166090174.
  5. Tareq Y. Ismael; Rifaat El Said (1990). The Communist Movement in Egypt, 1920-1988. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. pp. 41–42. ISBN 978-0-8156-2497-4.
  6. Joel Beinin (Summer 1994). "Writing Class: Workers and Modern Egyptian Colloquial Poetry (Zajal)". Poetics Today. 15 (2): 207. doi:10.2307/1773164. JSTOR 1773164.
  7. Rami Ginat (1991). The Soviet Union and Egypt, 1947-1955 (PhD thesis). London School of Economics and Political Science. p. 17. Archived from the original on 18 May 2021.
  8. Omnia El Shakry (June 2015). ""History without Documents". The Vexed Archives of Decolonization in the Middle East". The American Historical Review. 120 (3): 928. doi:10.1093/ahr/120.3.920.
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