Building a national case in interwar Egypt: Raya and Sakina's crimes through the pages of al‐Ahrām (Fall 1920)

Abstract

AbstractIn November 1920, the Alexandria police arrested two sisters, Raya and Sakina, along with their husbands and others, and charged them with the murder of seventeen women. At the end of a trial held in May 1921, the judges sentenced to death six members of the gang, yet it was Raya and Sakina who monopolized public attention as the first women sentenced to death in the Egyptian secular justice system. A century later, they are still alive in the Egyptian collective memory, which has turned them into a long‐lasting criminal myth and remembers them as former prostitutes, madams, and female murderers. Previous studies seem to see the myth as resulting from the supposedly exceptional character of the case. This paper is a first step toward exploring how this exceptionality was constructed and how it took on a national dimension after the announcement of Raya and Sakina's arrest. The focus is on al‐Ahrām, the main national daily newspaper at the time, which covered the issue systematically, providing information on the investigation while building the case in national terms. A micro‐historic approach to al‐Ahrām will enable a deconstruction of exceptionality through comparison with a precedent. An analysis incorporating both the precedent and Raya and Sakina's case will lead to a first hypothesis about the longevity of Raya and Sakina's case and the disappearance of the precedent from the Egyptian collective memory. This perspective offers insight into the connection between the press, public morality, and nation‐building in interwar Egypt, linking textual and extra‐textual realities and shedding light on the local aspects that make the nation. Indeed, the organization of al‐Ahrām in the provinces may be seen as a key factor in revealing what attracts national attention and what remains confined to a local dimension.