1. Also included in magazines publishing biography are Antūn's sequels, Majallat al-sayyidāt/al-sayyidāt wa-al-rijāl (Ladies'/Ladies' and Men's Revue), which began with vol. 3:1 (Nov. 1921) and ran through 1931; al-Rajā‘‘ā’ء (Hope, 1922); al-Hisān (Belles, 1924–59; I covered 1924–30); Adāb al-Fatāt (Letters/Morals of the Young Woman, 1926); Fatāt Misr (Young Woman of Egypt, 1930); al-‘‘Arūsa (The Bride, 1925–39); Ummahāt al-mustaqbal (Mothers of the Future, 1930). I examined all extant magazines aimed at a female audience in this period; I do not mention those in which no biographies appeared. For reasons of space I have not included journals that began right at the end of the 1930s and lasted into the 1940s, notably al-Tāliba (founded 1938), which did publish “Famous Women” sketches; from Nabawiyya Mūsā's al-Fatāt, I give a few examples but do not discuss the journal's biographies comprehensively. Nor do I include in the counted sample articles of collective biography, entries from biographical dictionaries, or biographies from pre-1940 mainstream magazines, a few of which I mention in the book.

Mir’ءāt al-hasnā‘‘, the “women's journal” founded by “Maryam Mazhar” (male journalist Salīī;m Sarkīī;s) in 1896, had a double-paged “Shahīī;rāt al-nisā‘‘/Mashāhīī;r al-rijāl” feature with short news of European royalty and celebrities, and later, local men and women. It sought contributions: “The management announces that it accepts every news item readers send on native women [al-nisā‘‘ al-wataniyyāt] from Syria and Egypt or foreign women if it concerns news of goodness and virtue, literary refinement, and knowledge [al-fadl wa-al-adab wa-al-‘‘ilm].” The first issue featured the queen of England, the empresses of Austria and Russia, Sarah Bernhardt, Princess Beatrice, Juliette Adam, and the duchess of Fyfe, whose aversion to publicity led her to wear “a thick niqāb.” Mir’ءāt al-hasnā‘‘ 1:1 (Nov. 1, 1896), 6. Male criteria for inclusion differed slightly: al-fadl wa-al-shuhra wa-karam al-akhlāq wa-al-‘‘ilm (goodness, fame, noble morals, knowledge) (7). Not biography, the feature hinted at the exemplifying potential of famous personalities.

On the early women's press, see Beth Baron, The Women's Awakening in Egypt: Culture, Society, and the Press (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994), which surveys the magazines and their institutional beginnings; Ijlāl Khalīī;fa, “Al-Sihāfa al-nisā‘‘iyya fīī; Misr, 1919–1939” (M.A. thesis, Cairo University, 1966), introduction. On later journals, see the work just cited, and idem., “Al-Sihāfa al-nisā‘‘iyya fīī; Misr, 1940–1965” (Ph.D. diss., Cairo University, 1970). On the EFU journals, see Badran, Feminists.Al-Hasnā‘‘ā’ء (Beirut) and al-Mar’ءa al-jadīda (Damascus) carried “Famous Women” features, which I consulted but do not discuss here. I also rely on Tarrāzīī;, Tārīkh; Nuwayhad, Nisā‘‘; Kustākīī; ‘‘Attāra, Tārīkh takwīn al-suhuf al-misriyya (Alexandria: Matba‘‘at al-taqaddum, 1928); Yūsuf Q. Khūrī, ed., Mudawwanat al-sihāfa al-‘‘arabiyya, vols. 1–2 (Beirut: Ma‘‘had al-inmā‘‘ al-‘‘arabīī;, 1985).

2. Khalīī;fa, al-Haraka, 49.

3. Susan Groag Bell and Marilyn Yalom, “Introduction,” in Bell and Yalom, Revealing Lives, 1; Carolyn Heilbrun, “Margaret Mead and the Question of Women's Biography,” in Hamlet's Mother and Other Women (New York: Ballantine, 1990), 27.

4. Gershoni and Jankowski, Egypt, introduction.

5. Jacques Berque, Egypt: Imperialism and Revolution, trans. Jean Stewart (New York: Praeger, 1972), chaps. 4–5; quotation on 199.

6. Anxiety about the marriage institution was articulated in the main-stream nongovernmental press from its inception. Not only polemics on marriage and news from Europe about climbing divorce rates and declining birth rates but also local events reported in newspapers' hawādith columns contributed to this anxiety. The events were not new; their reporting, and therefore their discursive presence for a wide audience, was. The first years of the nationalist daily al-Mu’ءayyad occasionally featured stories about women who killed or tried to kill their husbands, e.g., 2:313 (Dec. 23, 1890): 2; 3:595 (Jan. 17, 1892): 3; 3:604 (Jan. 27, 1892): 2.

7. But recall his less than enthusiastic reference to European feminism in introducing Nāsif's Nisā‘‘iyyāt.

8. Gershoni and Jankowski, Egypt, 7–10.

9. On Egyptian feminisms' intersections with these processes, see Badran, Feminists; Khalīfa, al-Haraka; Leila Ahmad, Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992); Amal al-Subkī, Al-Haraka al-nisā‘‘iyya fī Misr mā bayna al-thawratayni 1919 wa-1952 (Cairo: al-Hay‘‘a al-misriyya al-‘‘āmma lil-kitāb, 1986); Thomas Philipp, “Feminism and Nationalist Politics in Egypt,” in Women in the Muslim World, ed. Lois Beck and Nikki Keddie (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978), 277–94; Juan Ricardo Cole, “Feminism, Class, and Islam in Turn-of-the-Century Egypt,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 13 (1981): 387–407; Beth Baron, “Mothers, Morality, and Nationalism in Early Twentieth-Century Egypt,” in The Origins of Arab Nationalism, ed. Rashid Khalidi, Lisa Anderson, Muhammad Muslih, and Reeva S. Simon (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 271–88; idem., “The Construction of National Honour in Egypt,” Gender and History 5 (1993): 244–55; Irène Fenoglio-Abd el Aal, Défense et illustration de L'Egyptienne: Aux débuts d'une expression féminine (Cairo: CEDEJ, 1988); Latīfa Sālim, al-Mar’ءa al-misriyya wa-al-taghyīr al-ij-timā‘‘ī (Cairo: al-Hay‘‘a al-misriyya al-‘‘āmma lil-kitāb, 1984).

10. “Sajāh bt. al-Hārith,” FS 21:2 (Nov. 1, 1926): 49–50. DM, 240–41.

11. Three in 1921 (NN, NN, FMF),one in 1922 (NN), one in 1925 (MM), two in 1926 (AF, NN). Others were more scattered: 1903 (SB), 1911 (FS), then 1929 (A), 1933 (MM), 1937 (MM).

12. “SN: Kātirīī;na Brishkufskāyā,” FS 15:5 (Feb. 15, 1921): 161–67. The text quotes an autobiographical passage resonant perhaps for some elite readers in Egypt; the subject recalls her sensitivity to the chasm that divided her aristocratic childhood from the “fallāhīn” she visited (163).

13. “Bint al-Azwar,” NN 2:11 (June 1, 1923): 298–99.

14. On Sha‘‘rāwīī;'s explication of the EFU program, see Badran, Feminists, 91–92.

15. Khalīī;fa, al-Haraka, 59–65, 83. NN, she says, was first to get “many” Egyptian women writing. She stresses Ahmad's nationalist work and provision of “a pulpit for women's issues,” putting NN in the lead of the women's movement. Badran, Feminists, 96. Muhammad Kāmil al-Bannā, “Ilā fatayātinā al-mab‘‘ūthāt,” NN 4:5 (Apr. 1926): 148.

16. Gershoni and Jankowski, Egypt.

17. “Ilīī;sābāt Stāntūn mu‘‘assisat al-nahda al-nisā‘‘iyya al-amirīī;kiyya,” FS 19:4 (Jan. 15, 1925): 145–46.

18. Habīī;b Jamātīī;, “SN: Shā‘‘irat al-Hind (Sārūjīī;nīī; Nāyidū),” NN 11:3 (Mar. 1, 1933): 100. Another profile of Naidu reminded readers of pressures on visibly activist women, although it did not criticize such pressure. She had been entrusted with the Indian people's hopes (and called by them “the Jeanne d'Arc of India”) because “so far she has walked a rightly guided path that her worst enemies cannot dispute.” AR 1:70 (June 2, 1926), 6.

19. Sālim, al-Mar’ءa al-misriyya, 38–40.

20. Ann Rosalind Jones on strategies of sixteenth-century European writers, as conduct books taking court behavior as their ideal were giving way to manuals stressing “domestic virtues.” Ann Rosalind Jones, “Nets and Bridles: Early Modern Conduct Books and Sixteenth-Century Women's Lyrics,” in The Ideology of Conduct: Essays in Literature and the History of Sexuality, ed. Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennenhouse (New York: Methuen, 1987), 68.

21. Maryam Makāriyūs published an essay on relative air and water temperatures in al-Muqtataf, consonant with its mission to educate readers in “Western” science; but unlike other articles on atmospherics, this is addressed to women. The author refers to “my female neighbors” who declare their wells warm in winter and cold in summer; “they attribute this to a special force in the well's source or an extraordinary blessing befalling it or other things that we do not doubt are purely legendary. I desired to speak on this hoping to meet acceptance and benefit my female companions in a way simple [to fathom].” “Harārat al-miyāh,” al-Muqtataf 2:10 (1877): 223–24.

22. Jurjīī; Niqūlā Bāz noted the growing potential readership of newly educated women and girls in connection with the production of women's magazines. See his “al-Majallāt al-nisā‘‘iyya,” FS 2:6 (Mar. 15, 1908): 212–15.

23. Baron, Women's Awakening.

24. Ibid., 43–50, 177.

25. “Idāh wa-iltimās wa-istismāh,” F 1:1 (Nov. 20, 1892): 3.

26. The earliest of this genre of letters between female friends I have found is “Sahīī;fat al-udabā‘‘: Bayna sadīī;qatayni, al-risāla al-khāmisa,” R 1:6 (Aug. 1907): 159–62.

27. Zaynab Fawwāz, “Iqtirāh,” F 1:3 (Feb. 1, 1893): 115–16. ‘‘Afīī;fa Azan, “al-‘‘Ilm wa-al-‘‘amal,” F 1:3 (Feb. 1, 1893): 116. Kathryn Shevelow, Women and Print Culture: The Construction of Femininity in the Early Periodical (London: Routledge, 1989).

28. “Bismillāhi al-Fattāh,” AJ 1:1 (Jan. 31, 1898): 5.

29. An article by “Shajarat al-Durr” might have been by Muslim writer Sa‘‘diyya Sa‘‘d al-Dīī;n. Baron thinks she used this pen name in AJ (Women's Awakening, 22), since she founded a magazine by this name. But that magazine is not extant and comparisons cannot be made; this remains speculation. Fawwāz used this pen name too, although in F she signed her name, so this was probably someone else. The first article signed by “Shajarat al-Durr” (in 1:7 [July 31, 1898]) is a hard-hitting attack on divorce and polygyny; this seems at odds with Baron's observation that at first AJ avoided religious topics (Women's Awakening, 107). She cites Martin Hartmann (107–8), writing in 1901, who appears not to have read Avierino's paper carefully, for it did express itself vigorously on such issues before 1901.

30. “I‘‘lān min idārat jarīī;dat al-Fatāt,” F 1:10 (Feb. 15, 1894): 435.

31. Even in AJ one senses exasperation two years later, when Avierino speaks of “the Sunna of gradualism” and the necessity of listeners repeatedly hearing “the hopes of the East's women and those men who support them.” “‘‘Awd ‘‘alā bad‘‘,” AJ 4:7 (July 31, 1901): 715–19; quotations on 716, 715. Khalīī;fa stresses progressive aspects of AJ: it criticized abuse against women (alHaraka, 98).

32. Signals in this magazine suggest it was addressed to men as much as to women; see an announcement of “Mrs. Catherine Istifān's school for girls in Muharram Bek (Alexandria),” addressed to fathers (“I‘‘lān,” AJ 2:7 [July 30, 1899]: 281); and the article “Choosing Wives” by “al-‘‘Ujayzīī;” (AJ 2:8 [Aug. 31, 1899]: 298–301). The same author later writes an article on choosing husbands, saying he “wants to be fair”; but in the title, it is addressed to fathers! “al-‘‘Ujayzīī;,” “Li-yanzir ahadukum ayna yadi‘‘u karīī;matah,” AJ 2:12 (Dec. 31, 1899): 64–68. Also (as in most women's magazines), the poetry of social criticism in AJ is authored by men and focuses on the state of the female in Egyptian society. See also an article in 3:3 by “Zakiyya” addressed to “O men of virtue” (111–15). The same issue features a speech given by Farīī;da Mūsā ‘‘Ufaysh in Beirut, to a female audience. Yet the two preserve a gendered difference in address: the speech addresses female comportment and bahraja, while the article directed to men addresses the meaning of learning and the significance of female education to the production of better mothers and economizing homemakers. AJ's predominance of male writers is paralleled as early as 2:3 by what appears a circumscribed interest in gender issues: women appear only through the existence of a “Home Management” section, where we learn that “woman is Sultan in her household.” “Tadbīī;r al-manzil,” AJ 2:3 (Mar. 31, 1899): 110–12. Increasingly, in volumes 3–4, the polemics are unsigned (hence by the editor) or signed by men; only conduct material is by women.

33. “Muqaddima,” SB 1:1 (Apr. 1903): 1.

34. Ibid., 2. “Bāb al-nisā‘‘ al-mazlūmāt,” SB 1:1 (Apr. 1903): 17. Invocations of a female authorship and readership include a reference to “we Easterners” as nahnu al-sharqiyyāt (“‘‘Awā‘‘idunā al-dhamīī;ma,” SB 2:1 (Nov. 1904): 8); and one to “Many of the readers” as kathīrāt min al-qāri’ءāt (“Akhbār al-sayyidāt,” SB 2:1 (Nov. 1904): 30, but this refers to subscribers as both female and male). A reference to “complaints of male and female readers” precedes examples almost entirely of females writing in. The magazine does not usually subsume the female reader in the “masculine universal,” although one article in this issue, “Wearing Décolleté,” refers to readers in the masculine (9). When Farah Antūn explains the temporary suspension of SB as linked to his own maga-zine's problems, he addresses “the readers” as solely female (Farah Antūn, “‘‘Awdat Majallat al-Sayyidāt: Ilā hadarāt qāri’ءāt majallat al-Sayyidāt fīī; Misr wa-khārij Misr,” SB 2:7 [May 1906]: 177–80.) When he praises female subscribers for the “gentleness and delicacy” in their letters, saying “all their letters to the magazine went through my hands” (179), this puts in question the male-female division of responsibility for correspondence the first issue announced. What did this mean for SB's “female” orientation?

35. “Akhbār nisā‘‘ al-sharq fīī; sihāfatih,” SB 1:1 (Apr. 1903): 23. My impression (requiring further reading) is that the truly women-oriented magazines, unlike AJ or MI, spend a greater proportion of space discussing men's conduct. Perhaps editors of male-oriented, male-authored magazines did not wish to do this. An essay on “the sagacious husband” says women readers responded to SB's two articles on “the two [kinds of] wives, intelligent and ignorant” by declaring that if one wants to see thinking wives one must provide thinking husbands. “Wājibāt al-zawj al-‘‘āqil, wa-wājibāt al-zawj al-jāhil,” SB 2:1 (Nov. 1904): 10–13; quotation on 10.

36. This feature first appears in 2:1; the editor feels compelled to define “salon”—a place to receive visitors and hold conversations. In line with SB's rather defensive (unlike AJ's) and selective adoption of practices and discourses it defines as “Western,” the editor justifies using the French term in place of an Arabic word “because the former is more widely used and sounds better to the ear.” “Hadīī;th al-sālūnāt,” SB 2:1 (Nov. 1904): 1–4.

37. One wonders also whether Avierino's hero worship of Gabriella Wisznieska, later her adoptive guardian and the only female whose biography is featured after volume 2 of AJ, might have contributed to a relative lack of interest in other female “role-model” lives.

When Rūz “revived” her journal in 1921, it claimed to be a “general-interest” magazine; nisā’ءī was further down the list of descriptive subtitles, and now “readers” (masculine “universal”) or “readers, male and female” were ad-dressed. Rūz's position shifted; still owner of the license, she was now “editor of the women's section,” while her husband, Niqūlā Haddād (a prolific novelist), was “editor in charge” on the masthead of 3:1 (Nov. 1921). See “Muqaddimat al-sana al-thālitha,” S 3:1 (Nov. 1921): 1. “Talk of the Salons,” articles on “women's subjects,” and news of women's activities around the world re-mained, but as the scope “broadened” there were losses, among them the “Famous Women” (a few obituary-biographies of Syrian women appear). There is less sense of a dialogue among women. The magazine engages in self-criticism: its first two years had been “narrow in focus”; now it was “family,” not “women.” “What women read [on the family] is worth men reading too.” “Baynanā wa-bayna al-qāri’ءāt wa-al-qurrā‘‘,” S 3:1 (Nov. 1921): 64. The family focus is obvious in its obituary-biographies; see chapter 5.

38. “Iftitāh,” FS 1:1 (Oct. 15, 1906): 1–2.

39. See “Rijāl al-sharq wa-al-iqtisād,” FS 1:1 (Oct. 15, 1906): 3–6, a critique directed to men; and “Wājibāt al-zawja,” FS 1:1 (Oct. 15, 1906): 11–15, on duties of both parents to daughters (but focused on that duty as preparing the daughter to be a proper spouse). Later it features the essay “Duties of the Husband,” previously published in al-Diyā‘‘, in which Hāshim had published fic-tion (pp. 40–45). From 1910 on, there seems to be an increasing number of male contributors.

40. FMF addresses itself at the start to female and male readers but notes in its prefatory article that its parent organization is composed mostly of female teachers. This is its primary audience, but it announces a concern to reach women “who have been kept from education.” Al-Idāra, “Muqaddima,” FM 1:1 (Apr. 1921): 3–4. In volumes 1 and 2 all articles carry female bylines or are by the female editor except for a translated book excerpt (1:6); a poem by Ahmad ‘‘Abd al-Majīī;d, teacher in the Female Normal School in Alexandria (2:1); and a response to an article called “If I Were a Man” that objects to the author's attack on men's behavior toward women. ‘‘Abbās Amīī;n Khalīī;l, “Law kuntu imra‘‘a,” FM 2:4 (July 1922): 109–11. The magazine expresses its authorship policy here: it has “decided to print this despite [the magazine] being specifically for women's pens, because such a response can come only from a man.”

41. “Taqrīī;z al-matbūāt al-jadīī;da: al-Nisā‘‘iyyāt,” al-Manār 14:1 (Jan. 30, 1911): 72. Nāsif was the only woman whose obituary-biography was published in al-Manār, literally encircled by a string of obituary-biographies of male religious scholars. “Bāhithat al-Bādiya wa-Hifnīī; Nāsif Bek: Wafātuhumā watarjamatuhumā,” al-Manār 21:2 (Mar. 2, 1919): 105–9; “Bāhithat al-Bādiya—tatimmat tarjamatihā,” al-Manār 21:3 (May 29, 1919): 163–68. Ridā also praised Mayy Ziyāda's study of Nāsif, recognizing its uniqueness at that time as a work by an Arab woman on an Arab woman's life and work. Al-Manār 23:1 (Jan. 28, 1922): 77–78.

42. What men's discourse on the woman question signified is beyond the scope of this book, but I want to propose here that to focus on “women” in the context of “nation” was, among other things, to institute a discourse on masculinity that restricted the need to talk about men as “men,” or to broach the possible relationships between “men” and a “private” sphere as constructed in the public, discursive realm through biography and other texts. To elide “men” was to construct a silence that could effectively maintain a naturalizing link between “women” and “domesticity.” See Booth, “al-Mar’ءa fī al-Islām,” where I question the term “women's press”; my use of it here follows its widespread use in Arabic within the period I treat to describe all periodicals taking “women” as subject matter or predominantly targeted at a female audience.

43. Gershoni and Jankowski, Egypt, 15–16.

44. In its early years FS published the following number of Arab and/or Muslim women: 1906–7, 11 out of 12; 1908, 7 out of 9; 1909, 5 out of 9; 1910, 4 out of 10; 1911, 6 out of 10; 1912, 5 out of 9. For the period 1913–20, when FS and JL were both appearing, the numbers are as follows: 1913, FS, 5 out of 7; JL, 2 out of 5; 1914, FS, 2 Arab women and 3 ancient “eastern” women; JL, no Arab/Muslim/Eastern women out of 6 biographies; 1915, FS, 9 out of 11; JL, 0 out of 3; 1916, FS, 5 out of 7; JL, 1 out of 7 (the Begum of Bhopal is another); 1917, FS, 11 out of 11; JL, 2 out of 3; 1918, FS, 3 out of 3; JL, 0 out of 5; 1919, FS, 9 out of 9; JL, 0 out of 4 (one is Esther bt. Abīī; Hā‘‘il); 1920, FS, 9 out of 10; JL, 4 out of 4. This is significant: at the height of nationalist activism in Egypt, JL abruptly turns to Arab subjects, while both magazines suddenly profile women known for political prominence and nationalist activism.

45. Muhammad ‘‘Abd al-Fattāh Ibrāhīī;m, “‘‘Azīī;māt al-nisā‘‘ fīī; al-‘‘ālamayni al-sharqīī; wa-al-gharbīī; qadīī;man wa-hadīī;than 5: Nāzik ‘‘Abid,” NN 5:53 (May 1927): 166–68. “I admire the woman who makes her own way in life and works to give her name eternity,” says the biographer.

46. NN 2:12 (July 1923): 329.

47. Although DM was published in 1894, it was complete by November 1892 when F first came out, if we are to judge by Fawwāz's letter to Palmer, published in al-Nīl in August 1892, saying her book was complete and she hoped to send it to the Columbian Exposition. On Syrians in the women's press, see Baron, Women's Awakening, and Thomas Philipp, “Feminism and Nationalist Politics.”

48. The EFU's French-language journal, L'Egyptienne, which I do not in-clude in my study, published portraits of famous women, predominantly Egyptians but also others, at the start of every issue (see Badran, Feminists, 103–4), akin to the biographical sketch under the masthead of Young Woman of the East.L'Egyptienne's “hors-texte” portraits carried only brief captions. The journal's occasional biographical sketches were usually of different women: poets Henriette Roland Holst, Helene Vacaresco (with portrait), and Anne de Brancovan; magician Wanda Landowska, Marie Curie, Hester Stanhope. Neither biographies nor captioned portraits in this journal tended to claim the didactic terrain of exemplarity that other magazines' biographies did. And the “hors-texte” frequently featured prominent men: Clot Bey, Mustafa Kemal, Gandhi, Zaghlūl, Wīī;sā Wāsif. Was there a deliberate politics of personality here? For the “hors-texte” subject (of either gender) was most often “Eastern,” while profiles within the magazine tended more to feature European subjects. The EFU's later Arabic-language journal al-Misriyya (founded 1937) had no regular biography feature, but it highlighted accomplishments of contempo-rary Egyptian women and at least once featured an ancient Egyptian woman. This was Unekhs neb atun, daughter of Akhenaten and spouse of Tut-ankhamen; the article says little about her. Isīī;z Habīī;b al-Misrīī;, “Malikāt Misr al-qadīī;ma: Unikhs nab ātun,” al-Misriyya 3:49 (Feb. 15, 1939): 12–13. The author's sister Eva was managing editor. Occasional biographical subjects include Pocahontas (3:66 [Nov. 1, 1939]: 16–18) and several Indonesians in an essay by “an Indonesian youth” disturbed by a lack of information on Indonesia in the Egyptian press (3:50 [Mar. 1, 1939]: 25–32).

49. Durriyya Muhammad ‘‘Alīī; Bek, “Min shahīī;rāt al-nisā‘‘: Ulghā imra‘‘at Iyfūrdūr,” NN 5:57 (Sept. 1927): 307; DM, 71, 72, 71. If Olga's conversion led to the spread of Christianity in Russia, neither Arabic biography mentions it. Jennifer S. Uglow, The Continuum Dictionary of Women's Biography, ex-panded edition (New York: Continuum, 1989), 412.

50. Gershoni and Jankowski, Egypt, 12–13.

51. al-Mu’ءayyad 2:277 (Nov. 10, 1890): 3.

52. Gershoni and Jankowski, Egypt, 164; more generally, chap. 8.

53. DM, 516–18; “SN: Nā‘‘ila zawjat ‘‘Uthmān b. ‘‘Affān,” FS 13:2 (Nov. 15, 1918): 41–42.

54. “SN: Ba‘‘d al-shahīī;rāt fīī; Sūriyā,” FS 32:5 (Feb. 1937): 257–59.

55. Hāshim featured articles on the Syrian community, whether in their homeland, in Egypt, or in the Americas, but she had a more Egypt-centered perspective than did earlier Syrian editors, at least to judge by the greater number of Egyptians writing for her, Muslims but also Copts, and an evidently more intense interest in ancient Egyptian history as providing precedents and pride.

56. Gershoni and Jankowski, Egypt, 97, 105. But as they note elsewhere, one must keep in view the simultaneous production of seemingly clashing views even within one person's writing (xiii).

57. SR (edited by Syrian Christian Rūz Antūn and her husband) featured eight Syrian Christians, one Copt, and one Muslim Egyptian (Umm Kulthūm) out of eleven biographies in extant issues, 1923–26; its predecessor, SB (1903–5), offered lives of four European or American women and one ancient Muslim, al-Khansā‘‘. Out of 96 biographies in extant issues from 1920 to 1938, the Egyptian Copt-edited MM featured one contemporary Copt (1924); two Syrian Christians (1923, 1926); three contemporary Egyptian Muslims (1920–27, each twice: S. Zaghlūl, M. H. Nāsif, the queen mother); and—unique in these magazines—a portrait of an “ordinary Egyptian [Muslim], Umm Muhammad” (1926); two more Copts and another Muslim Egyptian (1934); and Nāsif again (1938). NN, with far fewer profiles (37 in extant issues, 1921–35), featured seven Egyptian Muslims, one (Zaghlūl) twice, and no Egyptian Copts or Syrian Christians. JL, once it turned to “local” subjects, focused entirely on early Muslim women. Al-Hisān in 1926 featured only Arabs (if one admits Zenobia to this group), only one contemporary, Syrian Chris-tian singer Mary Jubrān, and, deceased two decades before, Taymūr (13 biographies total in this volume).

58. Badran, Feminists, 108–10. The combination of an internationalist outlook and a class alliance visible in Sha‘‘rāwīī;'s brand of feminism is not dissimilar to the foci of women's magazine biographies. Both manifested elitism in interest and approach. Badran situates the EFU's turn toward international feminism in the post-1919 disappointment of feminists with nationalist men's loss of enthusiasm for women's rights (92). This makes sense, but perhaps the internationalist turn, coupled with class considerations, was also produced by the very nature of the movement. In biography this internationalist/class identity is evident before Egypt gained its “independence.”

59. “Shahīī;rāt al-nisā‘‘,” JL 12:3 (Dec. 1919): 81, 81–82.

60. “Athār adabiyya: Malikat al-mumarridāt,” FS 19:2 (Nov. 15, 1924): 85, 86.

61. Jurjīī; Bāz, “SN: Luwīī;zā Birūktir,” FS 3:1 (Oct. 1908): 3–8; quotation on 6.

62. Ibid., 8.

63. “Suwar al-majalla: Shahīī;rāt al-nisā‘‘,” AJ 2:6 (June 30, 1899): 205–6. There follows acknowledgment of great Arab women of the past, but the emphasis throughout is on comparing women “of the West” and “of the East.” The magazine does label the great women of the Arab/Islamic past as a “legacy” Arab women will regain.

64. Sālim says school field trips for girls became generally accepted only in the 1930s (al-Mar’ءa al-misriyya, 89). “SN: Māriyā Mitshil al-falakiyya,” MM 8:1 (Jan. 1, 1927): 9. That this text appeared in al-Muqtataf in 1898 suggests the complexity of circulation and “origins”; it seems women's magazines insistent on their indigenous character did not find it troublesome to borrow from periodicals known for West-identified stances. Of course, there may have been an earlier, or interim, publication of this biography that was the “origin” of its appearance in MM.

65. “SN: Bāhithat al-Bādiya wafātuhā wa-tarjamatuhā,” MM 6:9 (Nov. 15, 1925): 466–67, likely by Balsam ‘‘Abd al-Malik. Another biography of Nāsif asks: “I wonder how much more she would have written if her husband [a prominent nationalist Bedouin leader] had not cast her into the desert far from the sessions of the men of literature?” Muhammad ‘‘Abd al-Fattāh Ibrāhīī;m, “‘‘Azīī;māt al-nisā‘‘ fīī; al-‘‘ālamayni al-sharqīī; wa-al-gharbīī; qadīī;man wa-hadīī;than 4,” NN 5:52 (Apr. 1927): 136–37. This was authored by a man; juxtaposing the two gestures toward a phenomenon we have seen, women's more cautious rhetoric on the woman question versus men's more direct attacks on practices they regarded as retrograde. But both passages make women's intellectual output, or at least its production in print, dependent on men's setting or relaxing of boundaries. The comment that points to restrictions on women in a patriarchal society comes from NN.

66. “SN: Lūwīī;zā Alkūt,” FS 27:5 (Feb. 1933), 225, 226.

67. al-umam al-gharbiyya kaffatan. Ibid., 226.

68. “Al-Nahda al-nisā‘‘iyya fīī; al-‘‘ālam: Lādy Burtun,” MM 7:4 (Apr. 20, 1926): 187.

69. Ibid.

70. Ibid., 189.

71. Kerber notes but does not consider the presence of British figures among the “Famous Women” roster of those calling for female education in immediately post-Revolutionary America—the possibly paradoxical figuration of exemplarity through those who were part of a British colonialist hegemony. As in Egypt, Mary Wortley Montagu was a subject (Kerber, Women, 206).

72. See Burton, Burdens of History.

73. *** [Farah Antūn], “Ashhar al-nisā‘‘: al-Khansā‘‘: Ashhar shā‘‘irāt al‘‘arab,” SB 1:3 (June 1, 1903): 77. This biography carried the same prefatory words about famous women as fitting models that SB's biographies of Stone and Jeanne d'Arc had carried.

74. “Mudhakkirāt ‘‘Ajūz, 13,” MM 4:3 (Mar. 1923): 119.

75. E.g., see a letter in F 1:4 (Mar. 1, 1893): 153; a book notice in AJ 1:10 (Oct. 31, 1898): 330–31; an article on the reception of the Egyptians at the Rome Conference in FS 17:8 (May 15, 1923): 288–93, by Nabawiyya Mūsā; “Khawātir al-amīī;ra,” JL 12:8 (May 1920): 364.

76. “Idāh wa-iltimās wa-istismāh,” F 1:1 (Nov. 20, 1892): 3.

77. “Adilīī;nā Bātīī;,” F 1:1 (Nov. 20, 1892): 14.

78. Attributed to Tammām Karkabīī;, this biography is identical to DM's (348–49). “‘‘Ikrisha ibnat al-Atrūsh,” FS 1:2 (Nov. 15, 1906): 47–48.

79. “Al-Anisa Salīī;ma Rāshid, [sic] nazīī;lat Misr,” FS 6:9 (June 15, 1912): 349. It is interesting that the subject was, like Hāshim, a Syrian immigrant to Egypt. “She is the only woman in our present era who manages a political newspaper; Egypt welcomes the mistresses of finesse and literature [good comportment] just as Syria takes pride in its daughters in the Arab countries.”

80. “Al-Fatāt,” F 1:10 (Feb. 15, 1894): 436.

81. Badran, Feminists, 16–17.

82. “Misiz Barawnin,” MM 8:5/6 (May 15, 1927): 260–63; quotation on 260.