Al-Fokaha: An Early Egyptian Humor Magazine



Picking through antique junk in Cairo’s Khan Al-Khalili, I came across Egyptian humor magazines from nearly a century ago.

Al-Fokaha—a publication of the era’s preeminent printer, Dar Al-Hilal—is a beautiful 48-page periodical, with a drawing on almost every page. The art ranges from New Yorker-style gags to cubist illustrations with experimental lines, not to mention romantic-novel pin-ups and full-page comic strips. Some cartoons are in Modern Standard Arabic, others in Egyptian colloquial. The jokes are classist, crass, and occasionally funny.

And did I mention that the covers are stunning?

Mother Egypt faces the bayonets and bottles of colonialism. 16 July 1930

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Yet we know precious little about Al-Fokaha, which means “joke” or “jest” in Arabic. Google hasn’t helped at all; the Arabic histories of political cartoons on my shelf don’t even note Al-Fokaha’s existence. How have cartoon historians missed this?

All I can do, I suppose, is appeal to die-hard Oum Cartoon readers for tips. Or return to the bazaar and the grouchy bric-a-brac dealer to see what he knows.

In the meantime, here are some pages that caught my eye:

—How long does a train like this last? —Twenty… Thirty… and even longer if it doesn’t smoke.





Look at these two beautiful and innovative full-page comic strips:

“Pupils”

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On the right ride, arranged marriage gag; on the left, the art director is thown off a building.

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Silly gags you would see in any cosmopolitan mag:

Simple Question —If you were to meet someone ignorant who was very wealthy, would you marry him? —Why? Are you very rich?

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There’s also a section called “Jokes of the World,” translating Western cartoons: