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Al Tali'a

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Al Tali'a
Editor-in-chiefLutfi Al Kholi
Managing EditorMichel Kamil
CategoriesPolitical magazine
FrequencyMonthly
PublisherDar Al Ahram publishing house
Founder
  • Michel Kamil
  • Lutfi Al Kholi
Founded1965
First issueJanuary 1965
Final issueJuly 1977
CountryEgypt
Based inCairo
LanguageArabic

Al Tali'a (Arabic:The Vanguard) was a monthly Marxist magazine which was based in Cairo, Egypt. It was in circulation between 1965 and 1977.

History and profile

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Al Tali'a was established by Michel Kamil, an Egyptian Coptic, and Lutfi Al Kholi, and the first issue appeared in January 1965.[1][2] The magazine was published by the state-run Al Ahram company on a monthly basis, but its editorial was independent due to Mohammed Heikal's protection of Al Tali'a against government influence.[1][3] Lutfi Al Kholi was the editor-in-chief, and Michel Kamil served as its managing editor until 1970.[2] In the late 1950s the Egyptian Marxist and writer Latifa Zayyat was its editor for the cultural affairs.[4]

In a visit to magazine's offices in Cairo President Gamal Abdel Nasser expressed his views about the editors as follows: "Your role is like St. Peter – you’re here to do propaganda, but not to lead."[5] Nasser's successor President Anwar Sadat dismissed Mohammed Heikal who had been the editor-in-chief of Al Ahram, and therefore, Al Tali'a lost its major defender.[1] Al Tali'a was close to Nasser-era officials, including Sami Sharaf and Sharawi Gomaa, who were arrested in May 1971 after they resigned from office.[6] Following these events the relationship of the magazine with the Sadat government became much more strained,[1] and in 1977 it was redesigned as a youth magazine.[7] Al Tali'a was closed down by the government in 1977, and the last issue was published in July that year.[1][8]

Political stance and content

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The magazine had a Marxist political stance and featured articles by the Egyptian Marxists.[3][9] Following the defeat in the 1967 war against Israel Al Tali'a began to offer analyses of this incident.[10] The magazine published articles on the 1968 student movements in Egypt and in other countries written by Saad Zahran.[11] It also adopted an anti-Zionist approach and argued that until World War II Zionism had not been an influential ideology for the Jewish people in Europe and that Jews should be reintegrated into the Arab societies.[1]

The topics covered in Al Tali'a were mostly about the Arab socialism and the relationships with the Soviet Union.[3] However, it also included articles about various policies implemented in Egypt, including educational policies.[12] The magazine was a mild critic of Gamal Abdel Nasser.[13] Lutfi Al Kholi published many articles emphasizing the barriers against the revolution which had been included in the nationalist charter developed following the 1952 revolution in Egypt.[13] He also made interviews with the leading figures of the period, including the Fatah leader Salah Khalaf which was featured in June 1960s.[14]

The political and military communiques of the Palestinian Fatah group were published in Al Tali'a in the late 1960s although their publication was banned by the Arab states.[15] The magazine also published the Israeli communiques about the operations to avoid legal sanctions.[15] An article of George Habash, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was featured in the magazine.[16]

In addition to the political content Al Tali'a also featured comprehensive analyses about literary tendencies of the writers at that period.[8] One such analysis was published in 1969 which reported the findings of a survey collected from writers and articles.[8] From 1972 Al Tali'a published a literary supplement of which the editor was Yahya Haqqi who had been fired from the editorship of the cultural magazine Al Majalla in 1970.[8][17]

Contributors

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Some of the contributors of Al Tali'a included Mohammed Sid Ahmed and Abou Seif Youssef who also headed the magazine.[5] They provided the ideological basis for the left-leaning leadership in the country.[3] In the early 1970s Samir Farid worked for the magazine as a film critic.[18]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f Dominic Coldwell (2003). Egypt's 'Autumn of Fury': The Construction of Opposition to the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Process between 1973 and 1981 (PDF) (MPhil thesis). St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. Archived from the original (PDF) on 18 April 2016.
  2. ^ a b "Michel Kamel Papers". International Institute of Social History. Archived from the original on 29 October 2019. Retrieved 3 November 2021.
  3. ^ a b c d Reem Abou El Fadl (2016). "Nasserism". In Amal Ghazal; Jens Hanssen (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Middle-Eastern and North African History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 224–247. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199672530.013.18. ISBN 9780199672530.
  4. ^ Hannah Davis Taieb (1998). "The Girl Who Found Refuge in the People: the Autobiography of Latifa Zayyat". Journal of Arabic Literature. 29 (3): 212. doi:10.1163/157006498x00055.
  5. ^ a b Didier Monciaud (2000). "Struggling and Surviving: The Trajectory of Sheikh Moubarak Abdu Fadl. A Historical Figure of the Egyptian Left". In Cynthia Nelson; Shahnaz Rouse (eds.). Situating Globalization. Views from Egypt (PDF). Globaler lokaler Islam. Biefeld: transcript Verlag. p. 172. doi:10.14361/9783839400616. hdl:20.500.12657/23390. ISBN 9783933127617.
  6. ^ Pradeep Sen (1981). "Party system under Sadat. Change or continuity?". India Quarterly. 37 (3): 415. JSTOR 45071641.
  7. ^ "Al-Tali'a: tariq al-munadilin ila al-fikr al-tawri al-mu'asir [Al-Talia; the Vanguard]". Abe Books. Retrieved 3 November 2021.
  8. ^ a b c d Yasmine Ramadan (2012). "The Emergence of the Sixties Generation in Egypt and the Anxiety over Categorization". Journal of Arabic Literature. 43 (2–3): 409–430. doi:10.1163/1570064x-12341242.
  9. ^ Yasser Mohamed Elwy Mohamed Mahmoud (2009). A political economy of Egyptian foreign policy: State, ideology, and modernisation since 1970 (PhD thesis). London School of Economics and Political Science. p. 129.
  10. ^ Rebecca C. Johnson (2021). "Cross-Revolutionary Reading: Visions of Vietnam in the Transnational Arab Avant-Garde". Comparative Literature. 73 (3): 361. doi:10.1215/00104124-8993990.
  11. ^ Patrizia Manduchi (2015). "Students and Dissent in Egypt: From the Khedival Period to the Protests of 1968". Oriente Moderno. 95 (1–2): 140. doi:10.1163/22138617-12340078. JSTOR 44289938.
  12. ^ Ahmed Abdalla (2008). The Student Movement and National Politics in Egypt, 1923-1973. Cairo; New York: American University in Cairo Press. pp. 109, 253. ISBN 978-977-416-199-5.
  13. ^ a b Fawaz A. Gerges (2018). Making the Arab World: Nasser, Qutb, and the Clash that Shaped the Middle East. Princeton, NJ; London: Princeton University Press. p. 289. ISBN 978-0-691-16788-6.
  14. ^ Yehoshafat Harkabi (1970). "Liberation or genocide?". Society. 7 (9–10): 63. doi:10.1007/bf02804064. S2CID 144048700.
  15. ^ a b Judith Nottingham (1973). A study of the ideology of Palestinian Arab nationalism since 1948 (MA thesis). Durham University. p. 79.
  16. ^ Michael C. Hudson (Spring 1972). "Developments and Setbacks in The Palestinian Resistance Movement 1967-1971". Journal of Palestine Studies. 1 (3): 81. doi:10.2307/2535867. JSTOR 2535867.
  17. ^ Sabry Hafez (2017). "Cultural Journals and Modern Arabic Literature: A Historical Overview". Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics (22): 22–23. JSTOR 26191813.
  18. ^ Hugo Darroman (2021). "Towards a decentered history of Palestinian revolutionary cinema ? Case study of the film Tall El Zaatar in the audiovisual archives of the Italian Communist Party". Regards. Revue des Arts du spectacle (26): 4.