The Horse Carriage: A Class Motif in Egyptian Popular Music

This essay is part of a larger research project on the intersection of music, animals, and social class dynamics in Egypt. It draws on a fieldwork encounter that I had in Cairo in April 2022 with Salih, a horse-carriage driver, and his horse Ziko (Fig. 1). Together, they operate what is known in Egypt as ḥanṭūr (pl. ḥanāṭīr ), a lightweight four-wheeled horse-carriage, which, designed with a front seat for the coachman, one or two double passenger seats in the back, and a foldable leather hood, is often rendered as the Egyptian version of the English Victoria or the Italian Botticelle. Indeed, the ḥanṭūr is widely believed to have first been introduced to Alexandria in the mid-19th century by Italian immigrants, who constituted the city’s second largest European population at that time.