Naguib Mahfouz - Khan Al-Khalili

New Road (al-Sikka al-Gadida): the road that connected the newly built nineteenth-century part of Cairo, named al-Ismailiya after the Khedive Ismail during whose reign it was constructed, with the old city, the al-Azhar Mosque, and the eastern edge of the city.

Night of Power (Laylat al-Qadr): falling between the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth day of the month of Ramadan, the night during which the Prophet Muhammad received the first revelation of the Qur’anic text (an event recorded in Sura 97 of the text).

al-Qali (d. 967): a famous philologist who moved from Baghdad to Cordoba in Spain. His best known work is al-Amali (Dictations) .

Rud al-Farag: an area of Cairo to the north of Bulaq, renowned for its fruit and vegetable market.

al-Sakakini: one of Cairo’s middle-class suburbs (like al-Abbasiyya where Mahfouz spent the latter part of his childhood) that sprung up outside the bounds of the old city during the latter part of the nineteenth century. It lies immediately to the south of al-Abbasiyya.

Shaaban: the eighth month of the year in the Islamic calendar.

shahada: the Islamic statement of faith, “I bear witness that there is no god but God and that Muhammad is His Prophet.”

Shawqi, Ahmad (d. 1932): the Egyptian neoclassical poet, renowned for the musicality of his verse, who was given the title “Prince of Poets.”

shisha: the local name for the water pipe, narghileh, “hubble-bubble.”

Sitt: by contrast with “Hanem” (see above), “Sitt” is the commonly used word for the female head of a household. It means “woman” but implies something close to the English “Mrs.”

taamiya: a characteristic Egyptian dish, made with fried beans and garlic.

Umm Kulthum (d. 1975): “the Star of the East,” the Arab world’s most famous singer of the twentieth century and a personal favorite of Mahfouz himself.

Zaghlul, Saad (d. 1927): Egyptian nationalist leader who was a personal hero of Mahfouz. References to him appear in many of the novelist’s works.

zar: an exorcism ceremony conducted by and for women.

al-Zaytun: a district in the central northern part of Cairo, between Shubra and Heliopolis.