Archive Forensics: Al-Dunya al-Musawwara (Issue 34, 8 January 1930) – The Illustrated World

Archive Forensics: Part of an Ongoing Series

In Archive Forensics, we pull one magazine out of Khajistan's digitized archive and read it closely. This week: issue 34 of Al-Dunya al-Musawwara (The Illustrated World), published Wednesday, 8 January 1930 by Dar al-Hilal in Cairo.

A deposed Maldivian sultan is on the cover. Silk-shirt thieves are arrested at 2 a.m. on Badal Street. Drug sellers operating from behind perfumery counters are called "the public poison shops." A blind newspaper seller races bicycles and robs his fellow blind man during the dawn prayer. Cairo's most famous singers are drawn as footballers. A seventeen-year-old who married twice burns himself to death. Cairo pigeon keepers fight aerial wars and ransom their birds. A man in Alexandria writes in to claim the throne of Armenia and has the astrologer confirm it. An American railway worker strangles his pregnant wife rather than let her go hungry.

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Retail & Subscription

Cover & Lead Story

Local Reporting & City Life

Women, Performance & Sport (p. 9, illustrated)

World News & Curiosities (pp. 16–24)

Stage, Screen & Music

Advertisements & Commerce

Fikri Abaza's Column

"Ma'rad al-Dunya" — "The Exhibition of the World" — by Fikri Abaza sits on page 3 under a small globe-and-face logo. It runs as short items with headings: "The Message!!", "The New Ministry," "Don Salim??", "Beware!!!", "Turkey, Awake?", "A Second Expert in Chastity?!", "Who Is Responsible?" "The New Ministry" touches the king, the constitution, and the dismissal of notables as the Wafd cabinet forms. "Turkey, Awake?" reports a new draft law on compulsory schooling of children. "Who Is Responsible?" turns on a reception held in Alexandria for the country's notables. The column reads as if the audience already knows the players and just needs the latest score.

Winter in Switzerland

Before politics, there is snow. "The Joys of Winter in Switzerland" calls Switzerland in winter "God's paradise on earth… a playground of amusement and play and a field of sport and merriment." The photographs show skating, sledding, skiing, and ice hockey on the snow-covered heights of Bern. One caption describes a comic sled contest where each sled carries a man and a woman, each trying to push the other off the run. Another shows a Scotsman playing the bagpipes on the snow. Below the photographs, an advertisement for Al-Fukaha — Dar al-Hilal's humor weekly — shows a giant tarboosh-wearing figure stopping traffic with one raised hand: "Everyone is asking for Al-Fukaha in its new form. Ask for Al-Fukaha every Monday."

In the Path of Recovering the Throne

The Maldives are explained for Egyptian readers as islands in the Indian Ocean south and west of Ceylon, running about seven hundred kilometres north to south and divided into fourteen districts. Sultan Muhammad Imaduddin Iskandar was their ruler. In 1903 he left for Egypt with his minister Qalam Didi, his secretary Wad Abari, and his personal physician. A photograph captioned 1903 shows him and his son on arrival. A second, dated 1922, shows Prince Abdullah as a young man still working to recover the throne.

By the time the writer visits, the old sultan is living near Kubri al-Qubba in a small room beside a garden whose leaves have withered and whose stalks have yellowed. A servant leads the writer in. The sultan answers in a soft, calm voice: "Yes, I am Muhammad Imaduddin." He lives on memory and on the monthly rupee allowance sent by the reigning sultan. Each year, Maldivian pilgrims passing through Cairo on their way to the Hijaz stop to visit and bring news of home. Sultan Shamsuddin let the family stay in Egypt after 1911. A son, Ismail Imaduddin, was born in 1913; another son died soon after.

Prince Abdullah grew up carrying what the issue calls "a strong yearning" for his country and his lost throne. The events of 1919 in Egypt turned it into a vow to struggle until he reached the throne "or die." His attempts failed. He travelled to Ceylon — the only sea route home — and collapsed there one night after midnight. He told the writer: "I always used to console myself with the hope of returning to my country, and that hope was the joy of life… But now…" The sentence breaks off. His illness had grown so severe, the issue says, that any further movement was almost impossible.

The Public Poison Shops

Headed "A Lesson and a Jest," with the subtitle "How do the sons of kif recognize the dealers in narcotic substances?" — hashish, opium, and cocaine are named directly. The dealers need no shop sign. They work from behind perfumery counters, mixing their goods with spices into what they call "the curio." Recognition passes through glances, signals, and small tricks. A buyer is led into a back room, asked questions, watched closely.

Two headings carry the argument: "Friends of the Sons of Kif" and "Where Is the Government?" The piece notes that the authorities have fought the trade in some places and then asks why these shops still "open their doors openly." The almanac advertisement at the foot of the page: "Have you read Taqwim al-Hilal? Ask for it from sellers of newspapers and books."

The Thieves with Silk Shirts

"Corrupt love leads to crime!" runs above the headline. Al-Sayyid Sulayman Mahmud and Muhammad al-Tawil are photographed in fez and jacket. The story runs through sections: "The Infatuated Girl," "Love Leads to Crime," "Gunshots," "The Ambush," "The Seized Items," "The Previous Records of the Two Thieves."

A plainclothes police unit watches a shop on Badal Street through the night of Saturday, 28 December. At the second hour after midnight, two young men approach the door. Gunshots. The ambush closes. Muhammad al-Tawil had been a worker at a trade school before he dropped his studies. The elder of the pair is "tall, muscular, dressed in luxurious clothes," a mocking, merry smile that never leaves his lips. The police catalogue what they take off him: iron bars for forcing doors large and small, forged keys and locks, a flashlight, and tools for breaking open iron safes. Al-Sayyid Sulayman Mahmud receives the death sentence. His accomplice gets ninety-nine years' hard labour.

A Blind Man Competes with the Sighted

Ali Kashk is a man in his forties, dark-complexioned and strong-bodied, who sells newspapers and magazines at al-Qanater al-Khayriyya. One photograph shows him with his papers on the street. Another shows him on a bicycle with a boy seated in front and a second boy behind.

He travels by train, drives a cart and a hantour, and races bicycles — including a race near the Opera on Friday, 27 December. He knows the city through movement, memory, and sound. The section "To al-Qanater" follows him onto the train and through stations he names without seeing. "A Blind Man Catches the Fugitives!!" describes him tracking a man by ear, following at distance, judging speed, closing in.

On page 15, two more stories. In "A Blind Man Steals from a Blind Man," Ali visits the loft of his blind colleague Sheikh Muhammad Mutawalli during the dawn prayer, takes the money box, slips out the window, and returns before anyone notices. In "Ali Kashk, the Clever Advocate," he is hauled to court on a theft charge. Asked his trade, he says he drives a car. The judge doubts a blind man drives. Ali says he is a watchmaker. The judge says that makes no sense either. Ali turns on him: "How can I be blind when I can see you at this moment?" The court laughs. He is acquitted.

Our Stars in the Sports Fields

"Our Stars in the Sports Fields" is caricatures, not photographs. The piece opens by noting that women in Europe and America now hold administrative and judicial office and have won the vote, then asks where Egyptian artists stand on the care of their bodies. It answers by staging a comic football match from the biggest names in Cairo performance. Umm Kulthum wears a striped jersey and holds a ball. Insaf Rushdi commands her team. Munira al-Mahdiya strains at a barbell, reaching for the world weightlifting record. Badia Masabni dives to defend her goal. On page 14, Ratiba Rushdi takes the referee's whistle. The full lineup: Badia in goal, Munira al-Mahdiya in defence, Umm Kulthum, Insaf Rushdi, and Fatima Sirri on the attack.

Seventeen, Two Wives, and the Aghas

A village youth of seventeen marries two women in quick succession, is caught between them, and kills himself a few months after the wedding. The account ends with the cry of "Fire! Fire!" in the night — his father, brother, and mother rushing in and burning their own hands trying to reach him — the doctors finding him in the throes of death, and his death at two o'clock after midnight.

Sharing the same page, "The Rulers by Command in the Old Houses" is subtitled "A state that is disappearing, and that had great importance in the past." Walk Cairo's streets, it says, and near the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Awqaf, Abdin, and Qasr al-Walida you will still find certain tall, dark-skinned men in the cafes — the aghas. Brought from distant places at about the age of seven, they rose through household ranks until they earned the title. They guarded the women, controlled access, managed servants, and held real authority inside elite and royal homes without ever being the formal head of the family. The institution is old and almost gone.

The Aerial Battles Between Cairo Pigeons

"The Aerial Battles Between Cairo Pigeons" is the most leisurely piece in the issue — a tour, it says, among the pigeon lovers, organized around the breeds, the feeding schedule, the flying hours, the aerial contests, the cafe where the men gather, and the ransoming of a captured bird.

The breeds are listed and ranked: al-Qumri, al-Tamri, al-Qatghali, al-Islambuli — named for Istanbul — and al-Maraghandi. The champion flyer is the piebald Ablaq. One owner released his Ablaq pigeons from a train at Alexandria station; they were back at their Cairo loft before the train arrived.

Feeding happens twice a day, at dawn and after the afternoon prayer. The pigeon leaves its loft at dawn, flies until the second feeding, then returns. Each flock has its own character: some birds are powerful and aggressive, some gentle and easy to lure. In summer the flying time extends because the heat thins the air and the birds climb higher and longer. In winter they come back earlier. The owner who knows his birds knows when they are tiring and when they are ready for a fight.

The contests are aerial wars. Two flocks meet at altitude. The stronger flock draws individual birds away from the weaker and claims them. A bird that crosses over becomes a captive of the other loft. To get it back, the owner must go to the other man's rooftop, negotiate, and pay. On page 20, under "Peace Negotiations," the settlement is described as a small legal transaction: the ransom is set, paid, and the bird returned. The cafe is where all of it gets discussed — the wars of last week, the captures, the debts still outstanding.

The history reaches back to the princes of Egypt: Abbas Pasha I kept pigeons. The photographs show a fully stocked loft, cages layered up the wall, and the thatched pigeon houses standing above the Cairo skyline.

Under Egypt's Sky

Headed "The strangest incidents and true stories," the column runs four items. In "False Accusation," a well-dressed young woman walks into the Darb al-Ahmar district to accuse a government employee; the story shifts under questioning, and the editors warn that a new court principle could become "a dangerous weapon" in the hands of anyone seeking revenge. "Five Years" covers a drug trafficker sentenced to five years, with the courts praised for fighting "this plague."

"Did She Die Poisoned?" returns to the late Amin Bey Amin, a fund treasurer who shot himself at the Modern Hotel on Imad al-Din Street on 21 October. His mother-in-law, Lady Kamila Hanim, insured her life for four thousand pounds in late 1927 and died in September 1929. The insurer suspects poisoning and is contesting the claim. "The San Stefano Tragedy" tells of Michel, a thirty-two-year-old broker ruined on the Bourse, who kills a Greek woman in the Alexandria seaside suburb of San Stefano. The Italian and Greek consulates both enter the case.

Sednaoui, Frigidaire, and Bank Misr

Salim and Sim'an Sednaoui and Company — Cairo, Alexandria, and Mansoura — run a winter clearance from Monday, 6 January, with reductions reaching fifty percent. Below it on the same page, Frigidaire: "Frigidaire in every home," sold on easy terms by Mifano Brothers. On page 14, readers are invited to subscribe to shares in the Misr Transport and Navigation Company through Bank Misr at ten and a half pounds per share, subscriptions closing 31 January 1930. The same page carries Edward Levy al-Masri's ghee, "extracted from pure butter," and "The Little Queen" dress shop on Imad al-Din Street — its own clearance at thirty, forty, and fifty percent off from 6 to 11 January.

Ramses, Badia's Hall, and the Correspondence Schools

Youssef Wahbi is at Ramses Theatre in "Al-Jahim" — The Inferno — from Monday 6 January for one week. Muhammad Abdel Wahab, "Amir al-Tarab" and "leader of the modernists," sings on Tuesday 7 January at nine in the evening. Badia's Hall runs a daily January programme of dance, music, and Arabic monologues, with Fatima Sirri and Fitna Ahmad, and a ladies' matinee every Tuesday. Suad Mahasin sings at the former Casino Alhambra. "Madness at Midnight" plays for the first time in Egypt from 2 to 8 January. Alongside the film notice, a profile of its lead actor: a Great War officer who won rank and medals, fell wounded, and went to the United States in 1924 to work in film.

International Correspondence Schools at 17 Shari Manakh offer courses in engineering and railways, wireless, architecture, poultry, commerce, agriculture, and automobile engineering, with London University examinations and French-language commercial and electricity tracks. A separate notice offers "The Complete Man," a free ninety-six-page book on improving health by natural methods. "Handwriting Forgery" is advertised directly to lawyers as a guide to detecting forged documents. Tokalon skin-food runs a competition closing 31 January: six hundred prizes, among them gramophones, records, and statues of Saad Zaghloul Pasha, backed by a hundred-thousand-franc guarantee. Malacéine — cream, powder, eau de cologne, and soap — competes on the same page.

The Revolt of the Prisoners

New photographs have arrived for a prison uprising the issue covered before: police scaling the walls, and two officers leading away one of the rebel leaders after his capture. Three leaders organised the prisoners, who seized weapons and tried to force their way out.

Three shorter items share the page. "Moral Disorder in Europe!" reports a Berlin court asked in December how many lovers disqualify "a high-society lady" — a husband has testified to fifteen and wants the marriage annulled. "£34,000" tells of Mr. Macon, a banana-plantation owner from Jamaica, who came to London with his wife and was swindled of that sum by a single stranger he met near the Bourse. "An Officer in the Army" profiles a film actor who joined in 1914, won rank and medals, fell wounded, and went to the United States in 1924 to work in film. On page 17, beside a full-page Cognac Otard advertisement — "Cognac de Santé," from a house established in 1795 — "The People's Wrath" reports that two thousand people in a Texas town lynched a bank robber who had killed during his raids.

Four Thieves Take Seventy People Prisoner

The subtitle: "Greek gangs still capture people and then demand ransom to release them." The gang is led by Karatzas, photographed at his mountain lair. Among the seventy captives are Mr. Hajija Kis, his son-in-law, and Dr. Zahos. The ransom is demanded in pounds and in drachmas. After eight days "in humiliation and misery" all the prisoners are freed except a handful held for higher sums.

Earlier cases are recalled: an English visitor named Dorothy Robinson, held and badly treated before escaping; a party of English tourists on the plain of Marathon, seized and held for twenty-five thousand pounds. The Greek government is trying every means to exterminate the gangs, the issue says, but struggles against bands that know the mountains and can disappear into the terrain. Ibrahim Wakid and Sons sell suiting cloth on the same page.

I Alone Have the Right to Be King over Armenia

Ohanis Krilian of Alexandria, bearded, in fez and Western suit, is captioned "His Majesty Ohanis Krilian, King of Armenia." His letter is dated 18 December 1929. He sets out a line of descent: son of Hawsh, son of Toma, son of Hakob, son of Mansur, son of Amid, tracing to "Dikran," king of Armenia. He gives his itinerary — Basra to Persia to Russia, where he stayed from late 1914 to 1917 — and claims the military rank of yüzbaşı. He proposes an "Eastern League of Nations" with its seat in the Armenian capital and a cabinet of fifteen ministries. He also reports consulting the astrologer Sheikh Omar al-Falaki, who cast his horoscope and confirmed that the king of Armenia was in Alexandria and was named Ohanis Krilian. The letter closes with a seal: king over all the lands of Armenia. The issue prints it as a curiosity.

He Kills His Wife So She Won't Go Hungry

Set "in the land of the millions" — America, "home of the money-kings" — where, the issue says, such tragedies follow from poverty. George, twenty-two, strangles his wife. She is eighteen, pregnant with their first child, close to delivery. He has lost his work and cannot face the coming winter with nothing. He had laboured on the railways servicing the refrigerated cars that carry meat and fish, moved for better pay, and been laid off. They met in a town church, married a year earlier, and saved nothing.

He buries her, goes home, sleeps, and the next day reports that his wife has "disappeared." When investigators press him he confesses. At the grave he stands calm, showing no remorse. He tells the investigator: "Because I loved her and could not bear to see her go hungry with our coming child this winter."

A drawing shows him standing above while below, police with a lantern and a spade stand over the body in a field. The story continues on page 23 under "How Was the Crime Discovered?" and "He Resolves to Kill Her So She Won't Go Hungry."

The Suicidal Bride

Elizabeth Nicholson marries in Liverpool. Two weeks later her husband finds her dead in the kitchen, having gassed herself. He had doubted her conduct during the engagement and became convinced after the wedding that she had been unfaithful. They quarrelled through the first week and spent the second in silence. At the end of it she rose, came to him, and kissed him. He did not return the kiss. She went to the kitchen. The lower half of the page is taken by a large Lux advertisement: "So inexpensive that every individual can enjoy this white fragrant soap." Lever Brothers Limited, Port Sunlight, England.

In the World

Mano Thomas, five years old, stands before a drum kit and is said to play "expertly." A long streamlined locomotive — "a wondrous locomotive," built by an English works, one of the fastest in the world — runs across the middle of the page. A circle photograph shows the American "Queen of Skiing," crowned in Massachusetts. Two boys eat with so much relish the caption says no proof is needed. The bottom row shows the winners of France's annual paper-hat competition, in which each entrant builds a strangely shaped hat from paper. The first-prize forms this year: a ship, a rooster, and anchors.

Khajistan holds a nearly complete run of Al-Dunya al-Musawwara. The Khajistan scan of this issue is available to download for free here.