Arabisches Volkstheater in Kairo im Jahre 1909: Ahmad IlFar und seine Schwanke.

• Author: Stewart, Devin J.

An accomplished Arabic dialectologist and an equally accomplished historian of Middle Eastern drama have joined forces here to publish a fascinating collection of dramatic texts in Egyptian colloquial Arabic from the early twentieth century. These texts, probably recorded from live performances in Cairo ca. 1909 at the behest of the German drama scholar Curt Prufer, are important from the linguistic point of view because they represent thoroughly col1oquial dialogues recorded in a highly phonetic script; they are important, too, for the history of Arabic drama in that they represent a missing link of sorts between traditional folk dramatic forms such as the shadow play, aragoz, and the skits of street-performers (muhabbazin or awlad rabiyah) and the more formal theater which gained popularity during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Two full transcripts - each containing versions of the five farces which, according to Prufer, made up the entire repertoire of Ahmad al-Far's troupe - are presented with German translation on the facing page and an introduction discussing the background of the texts and their dramatic and linguistic features. The result is a book which will be heartily appreciated by anyone interested in drama, dialectology, or popular culture in the Arab world and in Egypt, in particular.

According to the short introduction to one of the transcripts, Ahmad al-Far, dressed in a traditional outfit with a large turban and a cane, generally performed his farces with a small troupe including a torch bearer, musicians, and several other actors, at lower-class wedding celebrations. After music and dancing had gone on for several hours, the actors would perform one of their five farces, replete with slapstick, plays on words, comical situations, and low humor, which would last nearly the entire night. The five pieces, called riwaya or talia in the text, include lively portrayals of social types from Cairo of the day and feature 1) a local Cairene who is enlisted to help a profligate youth from Alexandria retrieve the money he has lost gambling, 2) a peripatetic skaykh hired by a Cairene to exorcise his wife's demons, 3) a Saidi who is cheated by a Cairene couple, 4) a would-be pilgrim to Mecca who is fleeced and mutilated by the Bedouin he has hired as his guide, and 5) an incompetent Italian carpenter trying to find lucrative work in Cairo. The level of obscenity is quite shocking in comparison with contemporary Egyptian theater, despite the constant complaints that Egyptian...