Al Liwa (newspaper)

Al Liwa (Arabic: The Standard) was an Arabic language newspaper which was published in Cairo, Egypt, in the period 1900–1912. It was the first mass circulation newspaper in the country.[1] The paper was founded by Mustafa Kamil Pasha. From its start in 1900 to the death of its founder in 1908 Al Liwa adopted a nationalist political stance. Between 1907 and 1910 it was the official organ of the Watani Party which was also established by Mustafa Kamil Pasha. The paper adopted a pan-Islamist political stance between 1908 and 1910. Al Liwa was not affiliated with the Watani Party from 1910 to August 1912 when it was closed down.

Al Liwa
Founder(s)Mustafa Kamil Pasha
Founded2 January 1900
Political alignment
  • Nationalist (1900–1908)
  • Pan-Islamist (1908–1910)
LanguageArabic
Ceased publication31 August 1912
HeadquartersCairo
CountryEgypt

History and profile

Mustafa Kamil Pasha launched Al Liwa in 1900 when Al Muayyad, a newspaper in which he published articles, was shut down by the British.[2][3] The first issue appeared on 2 January that year.[4][5] The paper had a biweekly supplement entitled Majallat Al Liwa.[4] Al Liwa became popular among young men and one of the most read newspapers in the country.[6][7] It had the largest readership of 14,000 in the period 1900–1908.[8]

Kamil's articles published in the paper mostly contained his call to resist British existence in Egypt.[4] In 1906 the paper harshly criticized the appointment of Saad Zaghloul as education minister due to his pro-British tendency.[9] In March 1907 the French and English language editions of Al Liwa were launched, namely L'Etendard Egyptien and The Standard Egyptian, respectively.[4] All of these publications were financed by Khedive Abbas Hilmi.[10] In 1908 one of the contributors of the paper was Salama Moussa.[11]

Kamil established a political party, al-Hizb al-Watani (mostly known as Watani party; the National Party or Patriotic Party), in Alexandria on 22 October 1907, and Al Liwa became its official organ.[2][12] Following the death of Mustafa Kamil on 10 February 1908 Mohammad Farid took over the leadership of the party and reshaped the ideological approach of the paper.[13] Farid fired Mahmud Izzat who had been the executive director of Al Liwa and who was close to Ali Fahmi Kamil, brother of the Mustafa Kamil.[14] In addition, Farid appointed a new editor-in-chief to the paper, Abdulaziz Jawish, who was a religious conservative figure.[13][14] In 1909 the French and English editions of Al Liwa ceased publication.[4]

Jawish published articles in the paper, criticising the Khedive and his Coptic Prime Minister Boutros Ghali.[15] He supported radical conservative views which led to his arrest and imprisonment in 1909.[13] However, Jawish's writings produced much more significant consequences for both Muslims and Copts in that Prime Minister Boutros Ghali was assassinated by Ibrahim Al Wardani on 21 February 1910.[13] Wardani was close to the Watani party.[16][17] The British authorities demanded that the paper should change its editorial stance, but Farid denied their request.[14] Instead, he announced that Al Liwa was not affiliated to the Watani party anymore.[14] Farid and other party members established another paper, Al Alam, which was made the official organ of the Watani party.[14] The last issue of Al Liwa was published on 31 August 1912.[4]

References
  1. Israel Gershoni (Summer 1992). "The Evolution of National Culture in Modern Egypt: Intellectual Formation and Social Diffusion, 1892-1945". Poetics Today. 13 (2): 344. doi:10.2307/1772536. JSTOR 1772536.
  2. Haggai Erlich (2011). "Kamil, Mustafa (1874–1908)". In Henry Louis Gates; et al. (eds.). Dictionary of African Biography. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acref/9780195382075.001.0001. ISBN 9780199857258.
  3. Donald M. Reid (1969). Farah Antun: The life and times of a Syrian Christian journalist in Egypt (PhD thesis). Princeton University. p. 132. ISBN 9798658704937. OCLC 49371914. ProQuest 302477754.
  4. Majid Salman Hussain (2020). British Policy and the Nationalist Movement in Egypt, 1914-1924: A political study. Basel; Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter. pp. 82, 84. ISBN 978-3-11-220916-5.
  5. Nadia Fahmi (1976). Mustafa Kamil. Nationalism and Pan Islamism (MA thesis). McGill University. p. 32.
  6. Helen A. Kitchen (April 1950). ""Al-Ahram": The "Times" of the Arab World". The Middle East Journal. 4 (2): 167. JSTOR 4322163.
  7. Michael Laffan (1999). "Mustafa and the Mikado: A Francophile Egyptian's turn to Meiji Japan". Japanese Studies. 19 (3): 278. doi:10.1080/10371399908727682.
  8. Relli Shechter (Fall 2002). "Press Advertising in Egypt: Business Realities and Local Meaning, 1882-1956". The Arab Studies Journal. 10–11 (1–2): 46–47. JSTOR 27933831.
  9. Rania Maher (October 2017). "Saad Zaghloul Pro- or Anti-Concession Extension of the Suez Canal 1909-1910". IAJFTH. 3 (3): 68. doi:10.21608/ijaf.2017.95527.
  10. Kristin Shawn Tassin (2014). Egyptian nationalism, 1882-1919: Elite competition, transnational networks, empire, and independence (PhD thesis). The University of Texas at Austin. p. 73. hdl:2152/28411.
  11. Stephen Sheehi (2005). "Arabic Literary-Scientific Journals: Precedence for Globalization and the Creation of Modernity". Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East. 25 (2): 439. doi:10.1215/1089201X-25-2-439. S2CID 143166875.
  12. Fawaz A. Gerges (2018). Making the Arab world: Nasser, Qutb, and the clash that shaped the Middle East. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. p. 44. ISBN 978-1-4008-9007-1. OCLC 1022845920.
  13. Ziad Fahmy (2011). Ordinary Egyptians. Creating the Modern Nation through Popular Culture. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. pp. 101, 103, 105–106. doi:10.1515/9780804777742-007. ISBN 978-0-8047-7774-2. S2CID 242288608.
  14. Eliezer Tauber (2006). "Egyptian Secret Societies, 1911". Middle Eastern Studies. 42 (4): 606, 608. doi:10.1080/00263200600642290. JSTOR 4284478. S2CID 143221110.
  15. Arthur Goldschmidt Jr. (1993). "The Butrus Ghali Family". Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt. 30: 185. doi:10.2307/40000236. JSTOR 40000236.
  16. Malak Badrawi (2014). Political Violence in Egypt 1910-1925: Secret Societies, Plots and Assassinations. London; New York: Routledge. p. 29. ISBN 978-1-136-83229-1.
  17. Beth Baron (2000). "The making of the Egyptian nation". In Ida Blom; Karen Hagemann; Catherine Hall (eds.). Gendered Nations. Nationalisms and Gender Order in the Long Nineteenth Century. Oxford; New York: Berg Publishers. p. 147. ISBN 978-1859732649.
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