Masters of Tricks and Magical Games in Egypt and the Levant (Modern Era)

The People of Tricks and Their History... A history inseparable from the history of the homeland, which is truly a yearning for life. As the poet Matran says: "There is a difference between thieves, high and low; for the young, a wretched death; for the old, the highest honor." From here we begin to study the people of tricks and magic tricks, after the marginalized community of the common folk, their role in society, and the skills, arts, and tricks they mastered were obscured in Arabic and foreign writings. Even if such skills existed, they were not as numerous or varied as expected. This created a gap between the historical reality of the community and the indications that confirm the existence of practitioners of magic tricks among the common folk. The study chronicles the secret and contradictory life that permeated the spaces of society, its bustling markets, and its cheap celebrations and gatherings frequented by the marginalized, the outcast, and the working classes, seeking fleeting amusement to forget the worries of reality and the harshness of life. This is what gives the study its value, as it attempts to uncover the secret history of Egyptian society during the era of the Ayyubid and Mamluk sultans, with its markets and alleyways, and the history of its underground culture and its pioneers from different social classes, recording its transformations and the suffering of its people. In this context, it is impossible to separate the transformations of society from the transformations of those who practiced trickery, deception, and magic tricks; each was intertwined with the other, and this is what we will explore in detail here.