What’s in a Name? Branding Punch in Cairo, 1908

Abstract

In February 1908, a double-page colour cartoon appeared in the new Cairo-based journal al-Siyāsa al-musawwara (politics illustrated, founded December 1907). Reflecting on the 'press wars' in Cairo at the time, the cartoon features men in fezzes and coats (and one in a turban and abāya) representing editors of leading nationalist and anti-London newspapers—al-Liwāʾ (founded 1890, Mustafa Kamil), al-Muʾayyad (founded 1889, ʿAli Yusuf), and al-Minbār (founded 1906, Hafiz ʿAwad).1 Marching in procession, each bears a banner on which the title of his newspaper is stamped in Arabic and English. They head in the direction indicated by a sign saying 'To the Way of Independence [sic] and Lyberty [sic]' (in both English and Arabic). To the right, a beast with cloven hooves and three human heads (ears pointed) carries three flags with small Union Jacks on them. The heads face in three directions, straining against each other. One faces a sign saying 'To the way of protection'—in Arabic, himāya, meaning also the 'Protectorate'. This was the fiction by which London named its occupation of Egypt, which had lasted for a quarter century. One of the triple Union Jack flags bears the name AL MOKATTAM (al-Muqattam)—a newspaper slammed in the nationalist press as funded by and supportive of the British occupation. This cartoon exemplifies several consistent, strongly marked features of a journal that was visually and thematically a culmination of the earliest period of political caricature in Arab media culture. The cartoon suggests, first, fierce interest in the nascent Egyptian Arabophone press as a player in national and nationalist politics, able to shape the outlooks of a rising constituency called the nation. Second, it locates its own critical power within that activist press in vivid graphic satire. Third, it manifests a strongly anti-imperialist nationalist stance. Fourth, it offers visual markers of a collective Egyptian belonging that embraces portions of a westernising intelligentsia and a more locally oriented one—signalled in different clothing styles—while also demarcating a national 'us' and a varied 'them' predicated on international and local politics. The beast with three heads satirises the three Syrian publishers-editors of al-Muqattam (founded 1889), Faris Nimr, Yaʿqub Sarruf and Shahin Makaryus, representing them as both subhuman and evil, turning one face toward Egypt and the other toward England. Finally, though, the cartoon and the journal imagine a broader circuit of visual satiric politics in the use of a non-Egyptian brand name, the multilingual play of labels and captions, and an evocation of transcultural recognition. From its very beginnings in the winter of 1907, the journal showed its nationalist colours. In successive cartoons it lampooned the Egyptian elite's collusion with the British, the European powers' eagerness to carve up West Asia and North Africa, the usefulness of colonial possessions as dumping grounds for unemployed European subjects, the ready adoption by an emerging Arab bourgeoisie of practices labelled as Western, and vagaries of local politics. None of these topics were unusual for the time or unique to this publication, but the newspaper's art was something new, as local observers remarked. Through its indebtedness to European visual satirical traditions and its deployment of three languages within and around its caricatures, al-Siyāsa al-musawwara seemed to signify the transnational circulation of a visual language of political satire, emanating outward from Cairo, including Arabophone audiences elsewhere whilst gesturing to readers of French and English. How appropriate, then, that the journal had a second name: The Cairo Punch. This title appeared in English letters on every masthead and above every issue's double-page cartoon. Yet the linkage between Punch of the imperial capital and Punch of the Egyptian capital seems tenuous, a mere gesture via a title that fronts a journal written almost entirely in Arabic but with French and English hovering in and around its caricatures. While the visual satire of the two journals exhibits a similar level of complexity, albeit in one cartoon per issue in Cairo rather than the virtual bombardment of images (cartoons, illustrations, page décor) in London's paper, their association appears notional rather than genetic. This association inheres in the idea of visual caricature in service to political and social critical goals, and in the use of certain common visual tropes and strategies, rather than in any direct or traceable borrowing of genres or images. However, we do find in al-Siya ¯sa al-musawwara a notion that visual and written genres and registers work together to produce particular kinds of humour and social commentary. As in Punch, I will argue, it is not simply the visual but the interplay of visual images and verbal satire produced by juxtaposing different 'local' registers (including English and French) that constructs the satire. Finally, though, Punch's 'self-conscious business practices', as Brian Maidment calls them in his study of the London magazine in this volume, may have inspired The Cairo Punch's more modest but continually self-promoting presence: and surely appropriation of the title was itself a branding move, a signal to readers that this journal's producers intended a lavish cosmopolitan abundance of image and text, albeit one with local...