IFAO

The introduction of the record album in the field of the oral music tradition brings about a break that is as abrupt as it is complete. On the one hand, as an example of objectification, the act of recording undermines the ontological status of the oral musical form; the latter, being fixed on the technical support, acquires a specific material reality and can, therefore, be freed from the traditional environment in which it had remained enclosed. On the other hand, record albums, as commodities, carry ontological reversal to a universal dimension, as a result of which the musical form incorporates the effects of mass commercialization. Hence, such a subversion results in an aesthetic phenomenon of disenchantment. This article analyzes this phenomenon in the cultural context of the Arab world through three symptomatic aspects: 1. increased aesthetic rationality; 2. the intrusion of heterogeneity into musical form; 3. aesthetic reification. In this regard, I refer to the thought of Critical Theory, and more particularly to certain categories developed by Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno.

This article extends the results of a first study devoted to the Arabic verb combination kāna sa‑yaf ʿalu, and presents another and new combination, kāna sa‑yakūnu qad faʿala. It shows in particular how these two combinations are to be understood as the “logical” equivalents (from a linguistic point of view) of present and past conditionals of languages such as French and English, whether in the temporal uses of the conditional as well as in its modal uses. It ensures once again that kāna sa‑yaf ʿalu, if it can have a hypothetical counterfactual modal reading that French and English render by a past conditional to say what has not happened, has not, far from there, only this meaning and that it mainly expresses, in particular in its temporal and non-modal use, a present conditional reading such as the future of historians. The second combination, kāna sa‑yakūnu qad faʿala, allows to logically express the past ­conditional, which is the case in its modal uses as well as in its temporal use where it is then the equivalent of the future perfect of historians. Above all, these two combinations present themselves as immediately recognizable for what they are, unlike more classical forms that often risk exposing them to a first reading in the past of form AND of meaning and then to a second in order to restore the intended conditional meaning.

In a widely cited historical anecdote from the year 700/1301, an unidentified Maghrebi vizier is portrayed as visiting Cairo where he becomes outraged at seeing inappropriate non‑Muslim behavior. He then instigates an important act of sumptuary regulation by appealing to the sultan and his advisors. This study argues that the various iterations of this anecdote found in sources from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries show how historians and other authors integrated polemical anti‑ḏimmī discourse in narrative historical form and participated in diachronic discussions about how an ideal Islamic society should be governed. By applying many discursive elements also found in contemporaneous anti‑ḏimmī texts to their historical narration, historians used the character of a bigoted Maghrebi visitor intervening to challenge perceived social wrongs as a rhetorical node to exemplify that ideal Islamic society in an evocative anecdotal form.

The Eighth and last crusade organized by Louis IX in 669/1270 and aimed at Tunis ends in the king’s death; it leads to the conclusion of a truce for fifteen years between his son Philip III, Charles of Anjou and the hafsid sultan al‑Mustanṣir, which settles the conditions for the evacuation of the hafsid territory. The treaty, which is only preserved in its arabic redaction, is provided with an exceptional seal, only known example of a hanging seal from a muslim ruler. The diplomatic and codicologic analyse of the document shows its great interest for the study of the hafsid chancery’s practices and unveils the negociations process, the conditions of redaction and of ratification of all the clauses of the agreement. It is nonetheless an atypical document, written in haste in difficult circumstances, not by a professional from the chancery, and whose negociations have been led by an unexpected diplomatic actor.

Muslim sources focused on the conversion of the Rabbi of Medina, ˁAbdallāh ibn Salām to Islam. However, his biography remains limited and majority of sources revolve mainly around his life in Medina. Indeed, none of the books studied refer to his mausoleum in Egypt, apart from a modest Arabic publication mentioning ˁAbdallāh ibn Salām mausoleum in an eponymous village of the Nile Delta where this emerging figure, in early Islam, is venerated by the local population. This raises the question of the memory journey, from Medina to Timay al‑Amdīd, of the first Jewish converted to Islam in 622, after his meeting with the Prophet Muḥammad.

This article deals with three variations of a panegyric dedicated to Saint Theodore the Oriental, a saint venerated by the Egyptian orthodox Coptic Christians, especially in Upper Egypt: A manuscript version preserved in the late Ottoman period, a printed version from the inter-war period and a contemporary record. We will shed light upon the Middle Arabic used in the manuscript version, and discussed the genesis of the text, we will focus on the editorial process as a reinvention and a bifurcation inside the textual tradition. With respect to orality, it will manifest itself in the recitation as a unique performance, as well as in the weft of the texts as a fantasized model and a trace of the older performances.

The emergence of a hagiographic tradition relating the life, the spiritual qualities and the execution of the neo‑martyr Anbā Wannas al‑Aqṣurī expresses as much a problematic concerning the identity issues of the Christian community of Luxor at the beginning of the 20th century, as a means used by the guide of this community, Bishop Anbā Marquṣ, to legitimize the foundation of a holy place. This new sacred topography (the space) and the tradition that serves as its foundation (the myth) are respectively considered in the light of two approaches : the « hagiotopography » and what Lambros Couloubaritsis calls « the practice of myth ». The first aims to identify the historical and sociological reasons why, at the end of a process of dechristianization of the urban space (Sossie Andézian speaks about « rupture »), there is a need to create a new holy figure and to establish a new topos (S. Andézian speaks about « distinction »). The second allows us to analyze in depth the myth (the hagiographic tradition), to identify the cognitive mechanisms that make up its architectonic, and finally the reasons that explain its emergence.

The miracle tale of the Moving Muqaṭṭam mountain has been circulating among the Coptic community for a thousand years. Nowadays, members of the Coptic Church still refers to it as an example of victory of the Christian faith over Islam. This narrative, even if it bears some fixed structural features, went through numerous variations throughout times. On the basis of its first attestation in the Coptic‑Arabic text of the History of the Patriachs of Alexandria, it was later further developped, mainly under an apologetic angle. Finally, it included the episode of the Caliph al‑Muʿizz—founder of Cairo in the 10th century—converting to christianity. In the 20th century, this was subject to considerable debate in the press. From the 1970’s onwards, a young preacher revigorated the famous narrative by founding a huge place of worship at the Muqaṭṭam, commemorating the miracle. This paper, which is the result of a collective work by a historian and two philologists, intends to offer a collaborative approach, where the history of texts is combined with the analysis of contemporary practices. This research shows that, even if numerous traditions have very old roots, they are always reinveted, depending on successive contexts in which they take place.

After a brief presentation of Egyptian Catholic journals and newspapers of the twentieth century that can serve as sources, this article presents the most remarkable and most original of them: Ḥaqlunā (1949‑1970). It was initiated by the lawyer Pierre Cassab (Buṭrus Kassāb, 1913‑1986) to serve the Association of Catholic Youth of Egypt, founded in 1947. Giving news of the Catholic Church in the world, Ḥaqlunā was heralding the necessary role of the laity in the associations and in the Church. Valuable source for the reception of the Second Vatican Council (1962‑1965) in Egypt, the review was first animated by “Syrians of Egypt” of Greek-Catholic rite, like Pierre Cassab, or Maronite, like Michel Farah (Mīšīl Faraḥ). It is particularly attentive to the life of the Eastern Churches and the affirmation of Coptic Catholics as the National Church of Egypt. Towards the Coptic Orthodox, Ḥaqlunā, in an ecumenical spirit, supports the Renewal begun under Cyril VI. As for Islam, while faithfully supporting the conciliar orientations manifested in Nostra Aetate, Ḥaqlunā alludes to the concerns of Egyptian Catholics in the face of the Islamization of the Nasserian state. The feminine question finally, initially almost absent, becomes important in the 1960s.