The First Women's Magazine in the Arabic Language

The art of journalism is of recent date in the history of Arabic letters, going back some hundred and fifty years — that is, to the time when Napoleon Bonaparte ordered the founding of "al-Tanbih" in Egypt in the year 1800, as the researcher Tawfiq Iskarus related in al-Hilal magazine, volumes 22 and 28, on the authority of the French writer Albert Geiss. This is the paper which the historian of our press, Viscount Philippe de Tarrazi, by way of surmise called "al-Hawadith al-Yawmiyya" (volume 1, p. 48), drawing his inference from the Egyptian historian Abdullah al-Jabarti; and he came back to regarding the two as one.

It was then succeeded by "al-Waqa'i' al-Misriyya" in 1828, in the time of Muhammad Ali Pasha, founder of the modern renaissance of the Nile Valley, and through the care of Dr. Clot Bey; it survives to this day. It was followed by "al-Mubashshir" in Algeria in 1847, by order of King Louis-Philippe — enduring to our own day, like its predecessor, as the official organ of the government.

Arabic newspapers did not become plentiful in the world until after the middle of the nineteenth century. In the half-century 1852–1893 those that appeared — apart from the Egyptian ones already mentioned — amounted to 146 newspapers and seventy-one magazines in various lands, east and west, from Morocco to Yemen and India, and from Constantinople to Europe and America, all of them the province of men. And the two hundred and twentieth publication was the magazine "al-Fatat."

The Nawfal and Nahhas families have been Tripolitan for hundreds of years. Two daughters of theirs were born in Beirut: Maryam Jibra'il Nahhas and Hind Nasim Nawfal. The first composed the book "Ma'rid al-Hasna' fi Tarajim Shahirat al-Nisa'" and printed a specimen of it in 1879 through the good offices of the wife of Ismail Pasha, Khedive of Egypt.

As for her daughters Sara and Hind, they grew up in Alexandria, educated by the Sisters of Charity and Sheikh Ahmad al-Iskandarani. The first wrote articles in the newspapers al-Ahram and Lisan al-Hal, asked the scholars of the language to devise two Arabic words for the French words "dame" and "demoiselle," and obtained the license for "al-Fatat" in the spring of 1892. When she married Iskandar Ilyas, the license passed to her sister.

Nasim Abdullah Nawfal had grown up in a literary milieu — his parents, his uncle Niqula Bey, and his grandmother Angelina, the accomplished writer. Thus he assisted his wife Maryam in her book "Ma'rid al-Hasna'," and took out a license for this magazine "al-Fatat," which his two daughters had founded.

So "al-Fatat" appeared in Alexandria on November 20, 1892, its proprietor and manager of its administration being Hind Nawfal, and the one responsible for its affairs Nasim Nawfal. A monthly of 48 pages, it described itself as a "scientific, historical, literary, humorous, illustrated" newspaper, and it opened its columns with these two verses:

O mistress of learning — nay, mistress of bounty,
lower your gaze from what my pen has traced;
Leaf through it graciously, with kindly affection:
here is your young daughter among the Arabs, like a banner.

The magazines welcomed it. "Al-Muqtataf" considered it a peerless pearl among the newspapers, and hoped to lend it support so that it might become a beauty-mark on the cheek of the age. "Al-Hilal" described it as the first Arabic newspaper founded by an Eastern lady, its first number uniting the gentleness of woman with the energy of man. And "al-Thamara" saw in it the daughter of thought, the lady of free women, unique among the daughters of her sex, taking learning for her mantle and love of the homeland for her device.

Poetesses made themselves at home in it, such as: Aisha Taymur, Zaynab Fawwaz, Wasila, Labiba Furayj, Maryam Khalid, Angelina Sayigh. And women writers: Hana Kurani, Esther Azhari, Afifa Azun, Maryam Haddad — who wrote much in it, along with Sara and Hind. And with them: Salma and Abla Nawfal, Labiba Hubayqa, Adma Ashqar, Olga Dimitri, Muhja al-Suqi, Maryam Antaki, Amelia Trad, Marie Shumayyil, Marie Shahir. The French writer Rose Elton corresponded with it from Lyon, her translators being Khalil Mutran and Zaki Mabro; and the English writer Elise Breton from London, her translator Salim Sarkis. Those who versified in it and for it: Ibrahim al-Hawrani, Qustantin Nawfal, Jirji Tuma al-Khuri, and Viscount Philippe de Tarrazi.

"Al-Fatat" was distinguished by its women's news, brief and abundant. It published chapters of "Ma'rid al-Hasna'," the novel "The Women's War" by Esther Azhari, and essays on letters, morals, household management, and other matters of concern to woman.

Then, beginning with its sixth number, it soon exchanged the word "newspaper" on its front page for "magazine," its printing continuing at the Oriental Press in Alexandria until it moved to Cairo, where from the tenth number onward it was printed at the press of "al-Muqtataf," the pages of its first volume reaching 576.

It first went into eclipse for four months, from September to January, and returned in February 1894 to complete its numbers twice a month, opening its second journalistic year at the beginning of the month of roses, with steady improvement.

We have said that from its founding it was managed by the father of its license holder, the man responsible for its affairs, Nasim Nawfal. When his daughter "Hind" married Habib Bey Dabbana, he took sole charge of the magazine — this before he composed his two books, "The Keeper of the Peace: Tsar Alexander III" and "The Hero of Lebanon," Yusuf Bey Karam.

At the time "al-Fatat" appeared, the Beirut society "Bakurat Suriyya," the first of the women's associations in the Arab East, elected each of the two sisters, the magazine's license holders, Sara and Hind, as a member.

And when Labiba Hashim published in her magazine "Fatat al-Sharq," in 1906, the biography of Maryam Nahhas Nawfal — taken from the book "al-Durr al-Manthur" by Zaynab Fawwaz, on the basis of the magazine "al-Muqtataf" — she promised to publish the biographies of her two daughters, Sara and Hind. But out of modesty they begged her to publish nothing about them. Viscount de Tarrazi made up for it in his History of the Press, 1914, as did Julia Tu'mah Dimashqiyah in her magazine "The New Woman," 1924, with what he had written about the proprietor of "al-Fatat" and the manager of its affairs. From this I have taken a number of facts which — together with the set of the magazine preserved in my keeping, and what I know of it from other sources — have helped me to set down this page on the first women's magazine in the language of the Arabs.

I thank "The Woman's Voice" for its good opinion of me and its reliance upon me. May God increase its melodies.

It is perhaps worth noting that our first woman journalist is still a resident of Egypt, and that today she is summering, as is her yearly custom, in Lebanon, at her house in Sofar, a stopping-place of men of merit. May God prolong her life and the life of her husband, Yusuf Bey.