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The Woman on Top and the Men Behind. Gendering Criminals in Colonial Egypt (1920-1922)
In the fall of 1920, the Egyptian police found seventeen female corpses buried under the floor of five houses in the working-class district of Labban, Alexandria. Several men and women were charged with the mass killing, yet two sisters among them – Rayyā and Sakīna – came to be remembered as its main perpetrators. This paper interrogates the genealogy of such representation. It seeks to show how, months before the trial and with no police evidence, the Egyptian press presented Rayyā and Sakīna as the masterminds of the crimes and Rayyā, in particular, as the boss of the gang. The violation of domesticity, at a time when the home was seen as a unit of the national project, will emerge as a key element. In parallel, the representation of disempowered male criminals under a powerful female boss elicited social panic. Both the press and the first theatrical play on the case, in 1921, sought to reverse the perspective of the “woman on top”.
Date:
11 November 2025, 17:00
Venue:
68 Woodstock Road, Woodstock Road OX2 6JF
Venue Details:
MEC Boardroom, Kirdar Building, 68 Woodstock Road
Speaker:
Dr Elena Chiti (Stockholm University)
Organising department:
Middle East Centre
Organiser:
Middle East Centre Administrator (St Antony's College, University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address:
mec@sant.ox.ac.uk
Host:
Professor Walter Armbrust (St Antony's College, University of Oxford)
Booking required?:
Not required
Cost:
FREE
Audience:
Public
Editors:
Caroline Davis,
Jennie Williams
