Embodiment of the Revolutionary Spirit: The Mustafa Kamil Mausoleum in Cairo

Following the 1952 Revolution, over a period of six months, the Free Officers developed their new revolutionary agenda. The last week of January 1953 was dedicated as a "liberation festival" (Mihrajan altahrir), comprising a series of celebrations in Egypt's main cities. During the festival the Free Officers launched their first popular movement ("the Liberation Rally"), marking a turning point in Egypt's mass politics and shaping the popular style and the political symbolism of what would become "Nasserism." As part of the "renewal process" that characterizes many revolutionary regimes, an extensive and ambitious project was launched -- the shaping of a pioneering revolutionary environment. The first phase in this process consisted of the renaming of streets and squares,(1) replacing old statues with new ones,(2) designing a new revolutionary iconography(3) and, finally, planning new projects in the field of public architecture.(4) The second phase involved long-term projects such as the organization of the "people" and the rewriting of history.(5) The third and final phase attempted (with little success) to create a new temporal order by a gradual introduction of a revolutionary festive calendar.(6) In short, these trends were to shape the people's daily experience under the Egyptian revolution and create a new revolutionary experience in which all would participate. In this speech [Muhammad Naguib] traced a direct line from `[Umar Makram], Cairo's popular leader against the Mamluks, through the army revolt instigated by Ahmed `Urabi against the monarchy in protest against the social, political and economic realities of his day (which unexpectedly led to the British occupation of 1882) to Mustafa Kamil and [Muhammad Farid], the standard-bearers of Egyptian nationalism in the early twentieth century and the founders of the National Party. In terms of modern Egyptian historiography Naguib's speech marks a shift from the type of "official nationalism" advocated by the monarchy, its historians and partially by the Ward Party (formed in 1919 by those political leaders who represented Egypt at the Versailles peace conference) toward a new revolutionary historiography.(9) As will be demonstrated below, the "new" historiography was by no means a new cultural product but rather the appropriation and revival of various existing narratives, which had been consistently marginalized under the monarchy. Let us now return to Naguib's speech at the liberation rally and