(Re)collecting Egyptian Folk Songs

In 1958, the Egyptian folk-song collector Bahiga Sidqi Rashid published a small anthology entitled Aghanin misriyya sha‘abiyya (Egyptian Folk Songs). It contained lyrics and melodies to 56 songs and was the first in a series of books she would publish over the next two decades to “preserve for my dear country” a “great and eternal heritage that is surely on its way to being lost.”