Al Liwa (newspaper)

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

Al Liwa (Arabic: The Standard) was a nationalist 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 National 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 National Party from 1910 to August 1912 when it was closed down.

History and profile

[edit]

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, the National Party (mostly known as Al-Watani 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 National 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 National party anymore.[14] Farid and other party members established another paper, Al Alam, which was made the official organ of the National party.[14] The last issue of Al Liwa was published on 31 August 1912.[4]

References

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  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. ^ a b 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. ^ a b c d e f 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". International Academic Journal Faculty of Tourism and Hotel Management. 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. ^ a b c d 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. ^ a b c d e 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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