Egyptian Folk Traditions

In the gardens of Cairo in the last week of April, the Egyptians do something their ancestors have done for at least four thousand years: they go out into the morning, smell the breeze, and eat salted fish, lettuce, and onions. The festival is called Sham an-Naseem — “the smelling of the breeze” — and it is the older, folkloric way of marking the ancient Egyptian spring. It is also, in 2025, a public holiday, observed by Muslim and Copt alike, and a small, vivid example of the way modern Egypt keeps its older self alive.

The folk traditions of the Nile valley are among the most ancient in the world. They include the inheritance of the pharaohs and the temple, the inheritance of the Coptic Christians of the first centuries, the inheritance of the Arabs and Berbers of the seventh century, and the inheritance of the Ottoman and Mamluk world. None of these has ever quite died. They lie down on top of one another, layer after layer, and at the surface they form the rich, strange, and beautiful folklore of contemporary Egypt.

The Calendar of the Year

The Egyptian folk year is governed by three calendars at once. The first is the Coptic calendar, which begins in late August and whose months — Tut, Babah, Hatur, Kiyah, Tubah, Amshir, Barmhat, Barmudah, Bashans, Ba’nah, Abib, Misra — preserve the names of the ancient Egyptian months. The second is the Islamic lunar calendar, whose feasts of Ramadan, Eid al-Fitr, and Eid al-Adha are the great religious events of the year. The third is the festival calendar of the saints: the mawlid of the Prophet, the mawlid of Sayyid Ahmad al-Badawi in Tanta, the mawlid of al-Husayn in Cairo, the mawlid of Abu al-Hujuj in the oases.

The interaction of these three calendars is the rhythm of the Egyptian year. The moulid of al-Badawi in October is the largest, a week-long festival of dancing, drumming, horse-fairs, and the recitation of the Burdah poem. The Coptic Christmas, on 7 January, is a high point of the Christian folk year. The festival of Sham an-Naseem, the Coptic Easter, and the Islamic new year cluster in the spring, and the air of Cairo is full of drums, sweets, and the smell of biryani.

The Evil Eye and the Amulet

The most pervasive of all Egyptian folk beliefs is the evil eye, in Arabic al-ain (the eye), in Coptic meṭī en-Hōr. The eye can be cast by a stranger, a friend, a parent, an enemy; the most dangerous form is the eye cast by a person who admires something in another. A baby, a bride, a new house, a beautiful horse, a fine crop — all are vulnerable. The eye can cause illness, miscarriage, the loss of wealth, the death of a child.

The defences against the eye form a large part of Egyptian folk art. They include:

The khamsa, the hand of Fatima, often made of silver or of blue glass, hung at the door of a house or worn at the neck.
The recitation of the Bismillah before the meal, the alhamdulillah after it, the Mashallah at the moment of admiring.
The kohl pot, the black powder of the eyes, kept in the house to take the eye off the new baby.
The blue bead, with the eye painted on it, hung on the back of a taxi or a cart, and at the front of a child’s galabeya.
The sevinne of the Coptic Christian, the red string of yarn tied around the wrist of the bridegroom or the new-born.

The Coptic calendar plays a particular role here. The Coptic Christmas, on 7 January, is a day of mashrūbāt — sweet drinks — and no one is to be cursed. The Coptic year is also, in folk memory, the older year: the months of Tut and Babah are still the months of sowing in the Egyptian countryside.

The Ghawazi and the Zar

The dance tradition of the Egyptian folk is one of the most studied in the world. The ghawazi are the women dancers of Upper Egypt, particularly of Luxor and the villages of the Nile south of Aswan. They are not, as the orientalist image would have it, the dancers of the courts; they are the dancers of the mawālid, the saint-festivals, the great fairs. The ghawazi dance with the mizmār (the oboe) and the ṭabla (the drum), the sagat (the brass finger-cymbals) clicking, their long hair loose, their skirts spinning.

The zar is a related, but distinct, tradition: a ceremony of healing for women troubled by spirits, common in Upper Egypt, in the oases, and in the Coptic Christian community of Cairo. The zar is led by a kodia (a spirit-priestess), and is a long ceremony of drumming, dancing, the burning of incense, and the possession of the troubled woman by the spirit. The zar is the Coptic Christian equivalent of the saint-festival, but its older elements are clearly pre-Islamic and possibly pre-Christian. The contemporary Egyptian folklorist Hasan El-Sherbini has written of the zar as “the oldest theatre in Egypt.”

The Survival of the Ancient Myths

The survival of the older Egyptian myths in folk memory is one of the most striking features of the modern Egyptian tradition. The figure of Isis, mother of Horus, is still venerated in the small household shrines of the older women of Upper Egypt, often under the name of al-Lat, an older goddess of the Arabian Peninsula. The figure of Osiris, the dying god of the Nile, is still present in the great Coptic festival of al-Mulid al-Qiddis Samā’ān of the Fayoum, and in the cycle of stories of the saints.

The pharaonic revival of the early twentieth century, led by the Egyptologist Selim Hassan and the writer Taha Hussein, brought a wave of the older religion back into the popular imagination. Isis amulets, Anubis figures, and small wooden cats appeared in the markets of Khan al-Khalili, and the older gods were sold as good-luck charms. In the 2010s, the Cairo International Book Fair included a section of new Egyptian science-fiction novels set in the courts of the pharaohs.

The Folkloric Revival in Cinema and Literature

The Egyptian folkloric revival of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries is one of the most important artistic events of the Arab world. In cinema, the director Youssef Chahine made the trilogy of al-Ard (The Earth, 1969), al-Ikhtiyar (The Choice, 1970), and al-Usfür (The Sparrow, 1972), in which the rural folk traditions of Alexandria, Cairo, and the Delta are central. The director Asmaa El-Bakry has built a body of work around the Coptic calendar and the ghawazi of Luxor.

In literature, the novelist Naguib Mahfouz — Nobel Prize 1988 — wrote the Cairo Trilogy, in which the saints’ shrines, the zar ceremonies, the mawālid, and the smells of the alleyways are the architecture of the novel. The folklorist and writer Mahmoud Hemdan has spent fifty years collecting the songs, proverbs, and food traditions of the Egyptian countryside.

In the visual arts, the Cairo Studio of Folk Traditions has documented the surviving moulids of the oases, the zar ceremonies of the Coptic villages, and the dancing of the ghawazi of Luxor.

The Folklorist in the Egyptian Street

The Egyptian street is a working archive. The fqi of the quarter, who knows the Quran and the popular handbooks of magic, is consulted at every turn. The khataba of the neighbourhood, who matches the young men and the young women, knows the dates of the moulids and the local rules of hospitality. The cadi of the saint-shrine, who has the baraka of the dead, is consulted on every misfortune. The dalāla of the marriage-broker, the sawwāya of the mawlid, the shaykh al-balad of the quarter, the hammāmī of the bathhouse: each is a keeper of a piece of the older Egypt.

In the small towns and the oases, the mawlid of the village saint is the centre of the year. The zar of the Coptic village is the centre of the cure. The ghawazi of the festival is the centre of the wedding. Each is a piece of the older Egypt, alive in the present.

Sources and Further Reading

El-Sayed, Gamal. The Egyptian Folktale: From Ancient to Modern (in Marvels & Tales, 2014).
Mayberry, Christopher. Egyptian Folk Tales and Legends. Nile Press, 2009.
El Mahdy, Christine. Egypt: A Practical Guide to the Egyptian Museum and the Pharaohs’ Tombs. American University in Cairo Press, 2002.
Khalifa, Rami Z. Coptic Cairo: A History and Guide. AUC Press, 2023.