A Blog by the Editor of The Middle East Journal

Putting Middle Eastern Events in Cultural and Historical Context

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Nostalgia Website: Egypt Before the Hijab "Obsession"

This Facebook collection  is called "A look at women and Egyptian society before the Wahhabi invasion and obsession with hijab and niqab  رصد للمرأة والمجتمع المصري ما قبل الغزو الوهابي وهوس الحجاب والنقاب

Egyptian Miss World, 1954
It's old pictures of an Egypt before the hijab was so widespread even among elites; I think the title shows the host's viewpoint. It's also a great nostalgia collection.

It's definitely worth a browse.

1 comment:

xoussef said...

I'm not really buying that there were a time when bare headed women were the norm in Egypt. Photos are bound to be very selective as veiled women would refuse to be photographed or just not be interesting subjects, and later media were instructed to reflect a "progressive" image of Egypt so they wouldn't be suitable to publish. The indigenous tar7a is a form of Hijab after all. Not to mention the attrition of Jewish, European and Ottoman minorities. It strikes me as another form of "It was all better fifty years ago", only a liberal one. I'd take the observations of someone who actually was there in the 50s and 60s seriously though, I was not even a thought then, after all :)