“Ramadan is not just a month. It is more a state of mind that comes with a certain light and shade — which is precisely why I think that for one to trace the influences of Ramadan on modern and contemporary Egyptian artists, one needs to go beyond looking for certain motifs, like the lantern or the crescent and to focus more on light and shade.”
This is how Egyptian painter Mohamed Mockbel sums up his thoughts on the association between the holy Muslim month of fasting and the works of modern and contemporary Egyptian painters, especially as opposed to those produced by the European orientalists in the 19th century.
According to Mockbel, the approach of the orientalists was more focused and direct, missing the light and shade of the holy month. “They were not part of it. They were looking at it as a sequel of rituals associated with specific places and acts, but they were never immersed in it as a state of mind,” he said.
But for Egyptian artists, Ramadan comes in many different forms because “it is a spirit that can be depicted even outside the specific days of the ninth month of the lunar year. “For example, when I go to moulids [religious festivals], any of them, I sometimes find a man who is so immersed in a state of zikr [remembrance of God] that it reminds me exactly of the zikr sessions that convene in the late evenings or pre-dawn hours of Ramadan,” he said.
“Many paintings done in [Old Cairo neighbourhoods] like around Al-Hussein Mosque or the Sayeda Zeinab Mosque come with some Ramadan element, especially crowds around food stalls,” he added.
According to Mockbel, it is impossible to negate the Ramadan light and shade from works of an artist like Abdel-Hadi Al-Gazzar, who spent a good part of his youth in the Cairo neighbourhood of Sayeda Zeinab.
Al-Gazzar, who passed away in March 1966 shortly before turning 40, made several paintings that depicted the lifestyle of Cairo’s older neighbourhoods. “Earlier in the 20th century and also today these neighbourhoods carry the essence of Ramadan,” Mockbel said.
Artist Mohamed Sabri is another example of a painter whose work carries a considerable Ramadan imprint. With his command of pastel, Sabri produced remarkable paintings that depict late evening gatherings and Quranic lessons, Mockbel said.
“There is no way that the idea behind these paintings is detached from the scenes of Ramadan that Mohamed Sabri must have seen,” he said. Born in 1917, Sabri passed away in 2018, having left behind an artistic legacy in which Old Cairo reigns supreme with all its traditional scenes.
Mockbel argued that the same could be said about Mahmoud Said’s famous paintings “Prayers” and “Quran Reciter”. These two paintings could come from a dawn prayer and a post-funeral gathering to recite the Quran. However, he added, they could also be images of Ramadan in the older quarters of many Egyptian governorates, including Cairo and Alexandria where Said himself lived from the late 19th to the mid-20th century.
It is hard to compare Said’s “Prayers” with something like “Prayers in the Mosque” by the 19th-century French orientalist painter Jean-Léon Gérôme. Said’s painting is about “the spirit” of men who are piously performing their prayers, whereas Gérôme’s is more about the “scene” of men performing prayers at a mosque.
“One is more focused on the sentiments, and the other is more focused on the details,” he said. “This is why I argue that Ramadan is a state of mind that is part of a wider state of spirituality,” he added.
Mockbel said that it would be unfair to underestimate the significance of works by orientalist painters such as Gérôme and Ludwig Deutsch, among others, who depicted the traditions of spotting the early crescent moon of Ramadan in a major parade in Cairo, the traditions of prayers and making Ramadan delights, and other elements of the habits and rituals of the Muslim fasting month.
“They are important for sure, and they are certainly accurate on the details. But they fall far short of reflecting the depth of the moments they are trying to capture,” he said.
CONTEMPORARIES: Ramadan is also present in the works of contemporary Egyptian artists, Mockbel said.
“The motifs of the month, like the crescent, the lantern, and the kunafa-maker and mesaharati [who wakes people for dawn prayers] are perfectly distinct images that could inspire, even if not always in a very direct way,” he added.
The works of artists Sayed Saadeddin and Mohsen Abul-Azm are among the most obvious examples. More recently, there has been an annual tradition of Ramadan-themed exhibitions in which several young artists contribute their works. “There, too, the representations are not always direct,” Mockbel said.
Born in Giza in 1983, Mockbel said that his childhood in a neighbourhood of Giza in the late 1980s and early 1990s had seen more of the spirit of Ramadan than the same neighbourhood or other similar districts would today.
“In a way, we are now seeing a sort of comeback of the traditional Ramadan ambiance, at least in folkloric way, but for sure the traditions are being re-embraced or are simply being introduced to those living further from the manifestations of the month and its traditions,” he said.
“One could argue that the replicas of original scenes of Ramadan that are assembled in open-air cafes in some high-end residential compounds are fake and artificial, but in reality the issue is that the images of the month are so intense that they are bound to generate attention.”
Mockbel insisted that Ramadan is much more profound than just a set of motifs. “One could safely argue that a painting depicting a family gathered around a dinner table could fall squarely within the theme of Ramadan, given that today for many the fasting month is one of the key family gathering slots of the year,” he said.
Mockbel himself has worked on both the spirit-based and the scenes-based sides of Ramadan. “I have done paintings of traditional Ramadan lanterns, of children playing with lanterns on the street, of people spending long evenings at a café, or of people stepping out of a mosque in the early dawn and of busy spice markets and many other elements of the month in the city,” he said.
In his years as a student at the School of Fine Arts in Cairo, Mockbel noticed the “inevitability” of the Ramadan theme. He also noticed the diversity of its meaning for many.
“Ramadan is not the same thing for everyone, especially if we go beyond the motifs of the month,” he said. “Some see Ramadan more in the context of rituals, while others see it more in the context of the changing tones of light from dusk to dawn,”
“Some see Ramadan in certain colours that are particularly associated with the month, and others see it as associated with specific places of significance,” he said. He added that this meant that some painters focus on the workshops where the Ramadan lanterns are made, and others focus on the charity Iftar tables in the streets.
But Mockbel insisted that to reduce the representations of Ramadan to its motifs or typical visual images would be unfair because what counts most about the month is its “essence, which is about spirituality rather than festivities.”
“Like other countries with old civilisations, traditions count a lot for us, but obviously art is about capturing a specific moment with a specific sentiment. This is why I think there is a great deal of difference between the work of the orientalists, which is great in terms of documentation, and the works of Egyptian artists when it comes to depicting Ramadan,” he concluded.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 27 February, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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