Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T22:08:22.279Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Drama as a Vehicle of Protest in Nāṣir's Egypt

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Khalil I. Semaan
Khalil I. Semaan
Affiliation:
State University of New York, Binghamton
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The aim of this essay is to explore the possibility, remote as it is or might be, of dramatists employing their trade and using their skill to transmit political messages. In Arabic culture, there is enough ground to suspect that such an endeavor is possible, forthe culture is known to have used the medium of drama to support religiopolitical ideas. I am referring to the well-known fact that the Shī'a sect of Islam, perhaps as early as the time of Yazīd (late A.D. seventh century) has been mourning the martyrdom of Husayn at Karbalā in dramalike fashion. We may well pause to contemplate the ultimate sociopolitical reason for the performance of this ancient Arabo-Islamic passion play.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , February 1979 , pp. 49 - 53
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Author's Note: This paper was read at the 1974 meeting of the American Research Center in Egypt in Boston, Massachusetts.

1 Salāh 'Abd al-Sabūr, , Murder in Baghdad (Ma'satal-Hallāj), trans. Khalil, I. Semaan(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1972).Google Scholar

2 Al-Kitāb al-Aswad (Damascus, n.d.).Google Scholar