A Brief History of al-Waqa'i' al-Misriyyah

Rezk Nori, Ahmed Kamal, Adam Mestyan

Al-Waqāʾiʿ al-Miṣriyyah is one of the oldest official newspapers in the Arab World (see Project Jara'id). Mehmed Ali Pasha ordered the publication of news in a newspaper called “Vekayi-i Misriye,” a title in Ottoman Turkish. The first issue was published on 25 Jumādā al-Awwal 1244/3 December 1828 in Ottoman Turkish and Arabic.

The journal was initially published in four pages, each containing two columns, one in Ottoman Turkish and the other in Arabic. It used only the Hijrī calendar. (See for instance an example from 1244/1829). The newspaper initially published official news glorifying the ruler or government officials. It continued to be published in the two languages side by side until 1263-1265/1847-1848, when it was published in two separate editions, one in Arabic and the other in Ottoman Turkish. The Ottoman Turkish edition remained in print only until 1268/1851, while no editions were published in either language between 1267/1851 and 1282/1865.

Ismail Pasha, the new Ottoman governor of Egypt from 1279/1863, issued al-Waqāʾiʿ al-Miṣriyyah in its new form again in an Arabic and in an Ottoman Turkish edition. In the title page, the new design contained the Coptic and Gregorian calendars, next to the Hijrī calendar and numbering started in a new sequence beginning with Issue 1 on 7 Rajab 1282/17 Hator 1582/25 November 1865. Although some researchers believe that the separate Ottoman edition ended in 1283/1866, it actually continued until 1300/1882.

Aḥmad Khayrī Bey, the secretary of Ismail Pasha, took over supervising al-Waqāʾiʿ al-Miṣriyyah in the 1860s. In this period the journal’s literary style improved and it contributed to the new Arabic literary movement through the scientific and literary articles it published in addition to government news. The editors of al-Waqāʾiʿ in Ismail’s age had a special attention on printing and transmitting incoming news and telegraphs from Europe. They also published African, Hejazi and Yemeni, and Indian news. In addition to the official and commercial news, the newspaper’s administration began publishing poems, most of which praised Ismail and his family on occasions such as his birthday, his accession to power, and public holidays and official celebrations.

In 1298/1880, Sheikh Muḥammad ʿAbduh became the editor of the Arabic edition of al-Waqāʾiʿ al-Miṣriyyah. His first editorial in the Arabic edition was titled “Al-Waqāʾiʿ al-Miṣriyyah enters a new style.” The Arabic version was published in the government press (Būlāq), and it began to appear daily, except for Friday, while the Ottoman Turkish version continued to be published weekly in the army press at the Citadel. Under Sheikh Muḥammad ʿAbduh, the newspaper's content was split into several sections: a section of the official decrees of the khedive, decisions, and important correspondence of the Council of Ministers; the second section was for the Ministries and their publications, with each bureau distinguished by its own title; the third section was for the provinces and districts; the fourth section was for decisions of the juridical councils, commissions, and courts of all kinds; and the fifth section was dedicated to the sciences and literature of all kinds under the title “Miscellaneous Arts.” The newspaper also created an advertising system: the cost was two piasters per line, at a time when the cost of one issue was one piaster.

After the British occupation of Egypt, the journal continued to be published only in Arabic daily, except Fridays and holidays (as was the case under the administration of Sheikh Muḥammad ʿAbduh) until the end of 1884. Its yearly subscription price in Cairo was 100 piasters, 120 piasters in the provinces of Lower and Upper Egypt, and 130 piasters in the Sudan. From 1332/1885, the journal began to be published on Saturday, Monday, and Wednesday of each week, except the holidays. From 17 Rabīʿ al-Awwal 1302/3 January 1885, a new system of numbering was used. Instead of sequentially numbering each issue year after year, now numbering began from issue 1 at the beginning of each new year and continued until the end of the year, then the new year would again begin from 1. (That is, from 1885 we have “volumes” according to the Gregorian calendar). Therefore, we find in the colophones of each issue only the issue number and the year of publication, the Hijrī and Gregorian dates - it stopped to indicate the Coptic date.

The first foreigner to take over the supervision of the newspaper was Shimli Bey, supervisor of the printing press and newspaper at the end of the 19th century. Next, Mr. Triloni took over in 1911, and he remained working in this position until 1917. During this period, the newspaper did not publish a set number of pages but rather increased or decreased depending on the articles, texts, or decisions that had to be published, with some editions even reaching one hundred pages.

Our project

Our project is only concerned with the pieces of news about buildings and streets, rules and regulations, governmental organizations related to urban development, pious endowments and religious buildings, and natural disasters like fires or earthquakes in Cairo. The full issues of al-Waqāʾiʿ al-Miṣriyyah (and so the remainder of the news that were not included in this website) can be viewed in the microfilms of Dar al-Kutub al-Miṣriyyah (the Egyptian National Library), hard copies in Dār al-Maḥfūẓāt (the Egyptian Finance Ministry’s Archive), in The Library of the Egyptian Parliament, the Bayt al-Ummah Library, the Atatürk Kitaplığı (Istanbul), The British Library (London), the Bibliothèque national de France (Paris), and the digital collection accessible on the Center for Research Libraries website.

Preserving and Digitizing Al-Waqāʾiʿ

The Egyptian National Library in the early 1990s created microfilm copies of the hard copy issues in order to protect them from wear and tear and to make them accessible to researchers in a general project of preservation. In cooperation with the al-Ahrām company, it microfilmed the issues between 1828 and 1882. The Egyptian National Library's own team microfilmed the issues post-1882. Now the microfilms are digitized in Dār al-Kutub but only available to researchers in computers in the building.

There are two main scanned collections available on the Internet. Some early original copies are accessible online on the the Gallica website of the BnF and in our website. Second, there is a rich collection of scanned microfilms available at the Center for Research Libraries website.

For more information see also Project Jara’id and our online blog.