Ziad Fahmy is a Professor of Modern Middle East History at the department of Near Eastern Studies. Professor Fahmy received his History Ph.D. in 2007 from the University of Arizona, where his dissertation “Popularizing Egyptian Nationalism” was awarded the Malcolm H. Kerr Dissertation Award (2008) from the Middle East Studies Association. Professor Fahmy is the author of Street Sounds: Listening to Everyday Life in Modern Egypt (Stanford University Press, 2020) *[Winner of the Urban History Association's 2021 Award for Best Book in Non-North American Urban History] and Ordinary Egyptians: Creating the Modern Nation through Popular Culture (Stanford University Press, 2011). He is currently writing his third book, tentatively titled, Broadcasting Identity: Radio and the Making of Modern Egypt, 1925-1952. His articles have appeared in Comparative Studies in Society and History, the International Journal of Middle East Studies, History Compass, and in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East. His research has been supported by the Fulbright-Hays Commission, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Research Center in Egypt. Address: Cornell University 416 White Hall Ithaca NY, 14853
Street Sounds: Listening to Everyday Life in Modern Egypt (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2020), 2020
Book Description:
As the twentieth century roared on, transformative technologies—from trains, tr... more Book Description: As the twentieth century roared on, transformative technologies—from trains, trams, and automobiles to radios and loudspeakers—fundamentally changed the sounds of the Egyptian streets. The cacophony of everyday life grew louder, and the Egyptian press featured editorials calling for the regulation of not only mechanized and amplified sounds, but also the voices of street venders, the music of wedding processions, and even traditional funerary wails. Ziad Fahmy offers the first historical examination of the changing soundscapes of urban Egypt, highlighting the mundane sounds of street-life, while “listening” to the voices of ordinary people as they struggle with state authorities for ownership of the streets. Interweaving infrastructural, cultural, and social history, Fahmy analyzes the sounds of modernity, using sounded sources as an analytical tool for examining the past. Street Sounds also addresses the sensory class-politics of noise by demonstrating how the growing middle classes sensorially distinguished themselves from the Egyptian masses. This book contextualizes sound and layers historical analysis with a sensory dimension, bringing us closer to the Egyptian streets as lived and embodied by everyday people.
REVIEWS: "With considerable skill, Ziad Fahmy listens to listeners in a place and time wholly underexplored by historians of the senses. In the process, he offers us an important and trenchant interpretation of the sensory definition of modernity." —Mark Smith, University of South Carolina
"Street Sounds brings the boisterous soundscape of modernizing Egypt to life. Ziad Fahmy has an ear for the noise of history in motion—street hawkers, calls to prayer, braying donkeys, wagon wheels, claxons and screeching tires, recorded song, and the ever-present buzz of electricity. He allows us to hear an Egypt we might otherwise discount." —Joel Gordon, University of Arkansas
"In this fascinating and highly original study, Ziad Fahmy takes sound seriously as both a primary source and a qualitatively distinct phenomenon of modernity. Street Sounds apprehends sonic and scopic regimes as interrelated aspects of a larger sensorium, thereby pioneering a new and extraordinarily rich form of Middle Eastern cultural history." —Walter Armbrust, University of Oxford
The popular culture of pre-revolution Egypt did more than entertain—it created a nation. Songs, j... more The popular culture of pre-revolution Egypt did more than entertain—it created a nation. Songs, jokes, and satire, comedic sketches, plays, and poetry, all provided an opportunity for discussion and debate about national identity and an outlet for resistance to British and elite authority. This book examines how, from the 1870s until the eve of the 1919 revolution, popular media and culture provided ordinary Egyptians with a framework to construct and negotiate a modern national identity. Ordinary Egyptians shifts the typical focus of study away from the intellectual elite to understand the rapid politicization of the growing literate middle classes and brings the semi-literate and illiterate urban masses more fully into the historical narrative. It introduces the concept of "media-capitalism," which expands the analysis of nationalism beyond print alone to incorporate audiovisual and performance media. It was through these various media that a collective camaraderie crossing class lines was formed and, as this book uncovers, an Egyptian national identity emerged.
This article historically traces some of Egypt’s early private radio stations which operated from... more This article historically traces some of Egypt’s early private radio stations which operated from the late-1920s until May 1934 when they were all forcefully shut down by the Egyptian government. It sheds light on this important early period in Egyptian media history and highlights the role of many unacknowledged early radio pioneers. More importantly, the article analyzes the early forced transition to government-controlled radio and the impact this sudden shift must have had on the owners, producers and listeners of these stations as well as its broader implications on Egypt’s media landscape. This top-down transition from media-capitalism to what I call media-etatism started with radio in the 1930s and, later on under Gamal Abdel Nasser, expanded to print and other media, exemplifying state control of media in Egypt for at least an entire generation.
International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2016
Historians have recently started listening to the past, contributing to what David Howes has desc... more Historians have recently started listening to the past, contributing to what David Howes has described as a “sensorial revolution in the humanities and social sciences.” In the same way that all five senses are relevant to our daily understanding of the world around us, they should be vital to our understanding of historical events. Interpreting how peoples of the past sensorially experienced their world makes possible a richer, more comprehensive grasp of historical events. A sensorially grounded historical narrative is an embodied history that is connected to everyday people and lives. Historians of the Middle East, however, with few exceptions, are still largely producing soundproof, devocalized narratives of the past.
International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2010
In Egypt, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, older, fragmented, and more localized fo... more In Egypt, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, older, fragmented, and more localized forms of identity were replaced with new, alternative concepts of community, which for the first time had the capacity to collectively encompass the majority of Egyptians. The activism of Mustafa Kamil (1874–1908) and the populist message of the Watani Party began the process of defining and popularizing urban Egyptian nationalism. After Kamil's premature death in 1908, there was more of an “urgent need,” as described by Zachary Lockman, for “tapping into and mobilizing new domestic constituencies in order to build a more broadly based independence movement.” This article argues that the eventual mobilization of the Egyptian urban masses, and their “incorporation into the Egyptian nation,” was due in large part to the materialization of a variety of mass media catering to a growing national audience. To be more specific, I will examine early Egyptian nationalism through the lens of pre...
This speculative essay is a call for further research and the beginning of a long overdue convers... more This speculative essay is a call for further research and the beginning of a long overdue conversation among historians of the Middle East about the importance of sounds and soundscapes in studying history. In the process, I will suggest some research strategies for uncovering the sounds and noises of the past – especially before the introduction of recording technologies. All the while, I hope to encourage more multidisciplinary conversations by Middle East historians with other scholarly disciplines that examine sound and listening.
This essay highlights the role of thousands of nineteenth-century Alexandrian residents with mult... more This essay highlights the role of thousands of nineteenth-century Alexandrian residents with multiple extraterritorial legal identities. The manner with which extraterritoriality was practiced in Egypt effectively gave Western consulates legal jurisdiction not only over their citizens but also over all those able, through whatever means, to acquire protégé status. Many Alexandrians acquired legal protection from multiple consulates, shifting their legal identities in order to maximize their immediate social and economic interests. These legal realities present historians with the dilemma of how to account for and “classify” this highly flexible and syncretic society. I strive to answer this question through the use of a borderland lens. Realizing that the heart of Egypt's borderland society was legal has led me to consider the concept of “jurisdictional borderland” as a productive method for examining the complexity of Egypt's nineteenth-century heterogeneous population. I d...
Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, 2022
This article historically traces some of Egypt's early private radio stations which operated from... more This article historically traces some of Egypt's early private radio stations which operated from the late-1920s until May 1934 when they were all forcefully shut down by the Egyptian government. It sheds light on this important early period in Egyptian media history and highlights the role of many unacknowledged early radio pioneers. More importantly, the article analyzes the early forced transition to government-controlled radio and the impact this sudden shift must have had on the owners, producers and listeners of these stations as well as its broader implications on Egypt's media landscape. This top-down transition from media-capitalism to what I call media-etatism started with radio in the 1930s and, later on under Gamal Abdel Nasser, expanded to print and other media, exemplifying state control of media in Egypt for at least an entire generation.
The popular culture of pre-revolution Egypt did more than entertain - it created a nation. Songs,... more The popular culture of pre-revolution Egypt did more than entertain - it created a nation. Songs, jokes, and satire, comedic sketches, plays, and poetry, all provided an opportunity for discussion and debate about national identity and an outlet for resistance to British and elite authority. This book examines how, from the 1870s until the eve of the 1919 revolution, popular media and culture provided ordinary Egyptians with a framework to construct and negotiate a modern national identity. Ordinary Egyptians shifts the typical focus of study away from the intellectual elite to understand the rapid politicization of the growing literate middle classes and brings the semi-literate and illiterate urban masses more fully into the historical narrative. It introduces the concept of "media-capitalism," which expands the analysis of nationalism beyond print alone to incorporate audiovisual and performance media. It was through these various media that a collective camaraderie cro...
Street Sounds: Listening to Everyday Life in Modern Egypt (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2020), 2020
Book Description:
As the twentieth century roared on, transformative technologies—from trains, tr... more Book Description: As the twentieth century roared on, transformative technologies—from trains, trams, and automobiles to radios and loudspeakers—fundamentally changed the sounds of the Egyptian streets. The cacophony of everyday life grew louder, and the Egyptian press featured editorials calling for the regulation of not only mechanized and amplified sounds, but also the voices of street venders, the music of wedding processions, and even traditional funerary wails. Ziad Fahmy offers the first historical examination of the changing soundscapes of urban Egypt, highlighting the mundane sounds of street-life, while “listening” to the voices of ordinary people as they struggle with state authorities for ownership of the streets. Interweaving infrastructural, cultural, and social history, Fahmy analyzes the sounds of modernity, using sounded sources as an analytical tool for examining the past. Street Sounds also addresses the sensory class-politics of noise by demonstrating how the growing middle classes sensorially distinguished themselves from the Egyptian masses. This book contextualizes sound and layers historical analysis with a sensory dimension, bringing us closer to the Egyptian streets as lived and embodied by everyday people.
REVIEWS: "With considerable skill, Ziad Fahmy listens to listeners in a place and time wholly underexplored by historians of the senses. In the process, he offers us an important and trenchant interpretation of the sensory definition of modernity." —Mark Smith, University of South Carolina
"Street Sounds brings the boisterous soundscape of modernizing Egypt to life. Ziad Fahmy has an ear for the noise of history in motion—street hawkers, calls to prayer, braying donkeys, wagon wheels, claxons and screeching tires, recorded song, and the ever-present buzz of electricity. He allows us to hear an Egypt we might otherwise discount." —Joel Gordon, University of Arkansas
"In this fascinating and highly original study, Ziad Fahmy takes sound seriously as both a primary source and a qualitatively distinct phenomenon of modernity. Street Sounds apprehends sonic and scopic regimes as interrelated aspects of a larger sensorium, thereby pioneering a new and extraordinarily rich form of Middle Eastern cultural history." —Walter Armbrust, University of Oxford
The popular culture of pre-revolution Egypt did more than entertain—it created a nation. Songs, j... more The popular culture of pre-revolution Egypt did more than entertain—it created a nation. Songs, jokes, and satire, comedic sketches, plays, and poetry, all provided an opportunity for discussion and debate about national identity and an outlet for resistance to British and elite authority. This book examines how, from the 1870s until the eve of the 1919 revolution, popular media and culture provided ordinary Egyptians with a framework to construct and negotiate a modern national identity. Ordinary Egyptians shifts the typical focus of study away from the intellectual elite to understand the rapid politicization of the growing literate middle classes and brings the semi-literate and illiterate urban masses more fully into the historical narrative. It introduces the concept of "media-capitalism," which expands the analysis of nationalism beyond print alone to incorporate audiovisual and performance media. It was through these various media that a collective camaraderie crossing class lines was formed and, as this book uncovers, an Egyptian national identity emerged.
This article historically traces some of Egypt’s early private radio stations which operated from... more This article historically traces some of Egypt’s early private radio stations which operated from the late-1920s until May 1934 when they were all forcefully shut down by the Egyptian government. It sheds light on this important early period in Egyptian media history and highlights the role of many unacknowledged early radio pioneers. More importantly, the article analyzes the early forced transition to government-controlled radio and the impact this sudden shift must have had on the owners, producers and listeners of these stations as well as its broader implications on Egypt’s media landscape. This top-down transition from media-capitalism to what I call media-etatism started with radio in the 1930s and, later on under Gamal Abdel Nasser, expanded to print and other media, exemplifying state control of media in Egypt for at least an entire generation.
International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2016
Historians have recently started listening to the past, contributing to what David Howes has desc... more Historians have recently started listening to the past, contributing to what David Howes has described as a “sensorial revolution in the humanities and social sciences.” In the same way that all five senses are relevant to our daily understanding of the world around us, they should be vital to our understanding of historical events. Interpreting how peoples of the past sensorially experienced their world makes possible a richer, more comprehensive grasp of historical events. A sensorially grounded historical narrative is an embodied history that is connected to everyday people and lives. Historians of the Middle East, however, with few exceptions, are still largely producing soundproof, devocalized narratives of the past.
International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2010
In Egypt, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, older, fragmented, and more localized fo... more In Egypt, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, older, fragmented, and more localized forms of identity were replaced with new, alternative concepts of community, which for the first time had the capacity to collectively encompass the majority of Egyptians. The activism of Mustafa Kamil (1874–1908) and the populist message of the Watani Party began the process of defining and popularizing urban Egyptian nationalism. After Kamil's premature death in 1908, there was more of an “urgent need,” as described by Zachary Lockman, for “tapping into and mobilizing new domestic constituencies in order to build a more broadly based independence movement.” This article argues that the eventual mobilization of the Egyptian urban masses, and their “incorporation into the Egyptian nation,” was due in large part to the materialization of a variety of mass media catering to a growing national audience. To be more specific, I will examine early Egyptian nationalism through the lens of pre...
This speculative essay is a call for further research and the beginning of a long overdue convers... more This speculative essay is a call for further research and the beginning of a long overdue conversation among historians of the Middle East about the importance of sounds and soundscapes in studying history. In the process, I will suggest some research strategies for uncovering the sounds and noises of the past – especially before the introduction of recording technologies. All the while, I hope to encourage more multidisciplinary conversations by Middle East historians with other scholarly disciplines that examine sound and listening.
This essay highlights the role of thousands of nineteenth-century Alexandrian residents with mult... more This essay highlights the role of thousands of nineteenth-century Alexandrian residents with multiple extraterritorial legal identities. The manner with which extraterritoriality was practiced in Egypt effectively gave Western consulates legal jurisdiction not only over their citizens but also over all those able, through whatever means, to acquire protégé status. Many Alexandrians acquired legal protection from multiple consulates, shifting their legal identities in order to maximize their immediate social and economic interests. These legal realities present historians with the dilemma of how to account for and “classify” this highly flexible and syncretic society. I strive to answer this question through the use of a borderland lens. Realizing that the heart of Egypt's borderland society was legal has led me to consider the concept of “jurisdictional borderland” as a productive method for examining the complexity of Egypt's nineteenth-century heterogeneous population. I d...
Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, 2022
This article historically traces some of Egypt's early private radio stations which operated from... more This article historically traces some of Egypt's early private radio stations which operated from the late-1920s until May 1934 when they were all forcefully shut down by the Egyptian government. It sheds light on this important early period in Egyptian media history and highlights the role of many unacknowledged early radio pioneers. More importantly, the article analyzes the early forced transition to government-controlled radio and the impact this sudden shift must have had on the owners, producers and listeners of these stations as well as its broader implications on Egypt's media landscape. This top-down transition from media-capitalism to what I call media-etatism started with radio in the 1930s and, later on under Gamal Abdel Nasser, expanded to print and other media, exemplifying state control of media in Egypt for at least an entire generation.
The popular culture of pre-revolution Egypt did more than entertain - it created a nation. Songs,... more The popular culture of pre-revolution Egypt did more than entertain - it created a nation. Songs, jokes, and satire, comedic sketches, plays, and poetry, all provided an opportunity for discussion and debate about national identity and an outlet for resistance to British and elite authority. This book examines how, from the 1870s until the eve of the 1919 revolution, popular media and culture provided ordinary Egyptians with a framework to construct and negotiate a modern national identity. Ordinary Egyptians shifts the typical focus of study away from the intellectual elite to understand the rapid politicization of the growing literate middle classes and brings the semi-literate and illiterate urban masses more fully into the historical narrative. It introduces the concept of "media-capitalism," which expands the analysis of nationalism beyond print alone to incorporate audiovisual and performance media. It was through these various media that a collective camaraderie cro...
Comparative Studies in Society and History 55, no.2 (April 2013): 305-329.
"This essay highlights the role of thousands of nineteenth-century Alexandrian residents with mul... more "This essay highlights the role of thousands of nineteenth-century Alexandrian residents with multiple extraterritorial legal identities. The manner with which extraterritoriality was practiced in Egypt effectively gave Western consulates legal jurisdiction not only over their citizens but also over all those able, through whatever means, to acquire protégé status. Many Alexandrians acquired legal protection from multiple consulates, shifting their legal identities in order to maximize their immediate social and economic interests. These legal realities present historians with the dilemma of how to account for and “classify” this highly flexible and syncretic society. I strive to answer this question through the use of a borderland lens. Realizing that the heart of Egypt’s borderland society was legal has led me to consider the concept of “jurisdictional borderland” as a productive method for examining the complexity of Egypt’s nineteenthcentury heterogeneous population. I define a jurisdictional borderland as a significant contact zone where there are multiple, often competing legal authorities and where some level of jurisdictional ambiguity exists. Jurisdictional borderlanders
have their own unique and independent agenda that often conflicts with many of the competing “national” or imperial positions. Without an allegiance to any single government—be it Egyptian, Ottoman, or Western—and living in a peripheral environment with multiple, separate, and often competing “national” institutions, these borderlanders thrived in the jurisdictional spaces created in between multiple authorities. I conclude by suggesting how a jurisdictional borderland lens is useful for globally investigating other colonial and precolonial
cities, many of which had similar extraterritorial legal systems."
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As the twentieth century roared on, transformative technologies—from trains, trams, and automobiles to radios and loudspeakers—fundamentally changed the sounds of the Egyptian streets. The cacophony of everyday life grew louder, and the Egyptian press featured editorials calling for the regulation of not only mechanized and amplified sounds, but also the voices of street venders, the music of wedding processions, and even traditional funerary wails. Ziad Fahmy offers the first historical examination of the changing soundscapes of urban Egypt, highlighting the mundane sounds of street-life, while “listening” to the voices of ordinary people as they struggle with state authorities for ownership of the streets.
Interweaving infrastructural, cultural, and social history, Fahmy analyzes the sounds of modernity, using sounded sources as an analytical tool for examining the past. Street Sounds also addresses the sensory class-politics of noise by demonstrating how the growing middle classes sensorially distinguished themselves from the Egyptian masses. This book contextualizes sound and layers historical analysis with a sensory dimension, bringing us closer to the Egyptian streets as lived and embodied by everyday people.
REVIEWS:
"With considerable skill, Ziad Fahmy listens to listeners in a place and time wholly underexplored by historians of the senses. In the process, he offers us an important and trenchant interpretation of the sensory definition of modernity."
—Mark Smith, University of South Carolina
"Street Sounds brings the boisterous soundscape of modernizing Egypt to life. Ziad Fahmy has an ear for the noise of history in motion—street hawkers, calls to prayer, braying donkeys, wagon wheels, claxons and screeching tires, recorded song, and the ever-present buzz of electricity. He allows us to hear an Egypt we might otherwise discount."
—Joel Gordon, University of Arkansas
"In this fascinating and highly original study, Ziad Fahmy takes sound seriously as both a primary source and a qualitatively distinct phenomenon of modernity. Street Sounds apprehends sonic and scopic regimes as interrelated aspects of a larger sensorium, thereby pioneering a new and extraordinarily rich form of Middle Eastern cultural history."
—Walter Armbrust, University of Oxford
Ordinary Egyptians shifts the typical focus of study away from the intellectual elite to understand the rapid politicization of the growing literate middle classes and brings the semi-literate and illiterate urban masses more fully into the historical narrative. It introduces the concept of "media-capitalism," which expands the analysis of nationalism beyond print alone to incorporate audiovisual and performance media. It was through these various media that a collective camaraderie crossing class lines was formed and, as this book uncovers, an Egyptian national identity emerged.
As the twentieth century roared on, transformative technologies—from trains, trams, and automobiles to radios and loudspeakers—fundamentally changed the sounds of the Egyptian streets. The cacophony of everyday life grew louder, and the Egyptian press featured editorials calling for the regulation of not only mechanized and amplified sounds, but also the voices of street venders, the music of wedding processions, and even traditional funerary wails. Ziad Fahmy offers the first historical examination of the changing soundscapes of urban Egypt, highlighting the mundane sounds of street-life, while “listening” to the voices of ordinary people as they struggle with state authorities for ownership of the streets.
Interweaving infrastructural, cultural, and social history, Fahmy analyzes the sounds of modernity, using sounded sources as an analytical tool for examining the past. Street Sounds also addresses the sensory class-politics of noise by demonstrating how the growing middle classes sensorially distinguished themselves from the Egyptian masses. This book contextualizes sound and layers historical analysis with a sensory dimension, bringing us closer to the Egyptian streets as lived and embodied by everyday people.
REVIEWS:
"With considerable skill, Ziad Fahmy listens to listeners in a place and time wholly underexplored by historians of the senses. In the process, he offers us an important and trenchant interpretation of the sensory definition of modernity."
—Mark Smith, University of South Carolina
"Street Sounds brings the boisterous soundscape of modernizing Egypt to life. Ziad Fahmy has an ear for the noise of history in motion—street hawkers, calls to prayer, braying donkeys, wagon wheels, claxons and screeching tires, recorded song, and the ever-present buzz of electricity. He allows us to hear an Egypt we might otherwise discount."
—Joel Gordon, University of Arkansas
"In this fascinating and highly original study, Ziad Fahmy takes sound seriously as both a primary source and a qualitatively distinct phenomenon of modernity. Street Sounds apprehends sonic and scopic regimes as interrelated aspects of a larger sensorium, thereby pioneering a new and extraordinarily rich form of Middle Eastern cultural history."
—Walter Armbrust, University of Oxford
Ordinary Egyptians shifts the typical focus of study away from the intellectual elite to understand the rapid politicization of the growing literate middle classes and brings the semi-literate and illiterate urban masses more fully into the historical narrative. It introduces the concept of "media-capitalism," which expands the analysis of nationalism beyond print alone to incorporate audiovisual and performance media. It was through these various media that a collective camaraderie crossing class lines was formed and, as this book uncovers, an Egyptian national identity emerged.
have their own unique and independent agenda that often conflicts with many of the competing “national” or imperial positions. Without an allegiance to any single government—be it Egyptian, Ottoman, or Western—and living in a peripheral environment with multiple, separate, and often competing “national” institutions, these borderlanders thrived in the jurisdictional spaces created in between multiple authorities. I conclude by suggesting how a jurisdictional borderland lens is useful for globally investigating other colonial and precolonial
cities, many of which had similar extraterritorial legal systems."