Further reading: Abdullah al-Ahsan, Umma or Nation?
Identity Crisis in Contemporary Muslim Society (Leices-
ter, England: Islamic Foundation, 1992); Frederick
Mathewson Denny, “The Meaning of Ummah in the
Quran,” History of Religions 15, no. 1 (1975): 35–70;
Dale F. Eickelman and James Piscatori, Muslim Politics
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996),
141–155); R. Stephen Humphreys, Islamic History: A
Framework for Inquiry. Rev. ed. (Princeton, N.J.: Princ-
eton University Press, 1991), 92–98, 255–283; C. A. O.
Nieuwenhuijze, “The Ummah: An Analytic Approach,”
Studia Islamica 10 (1959): 5–22; F. E. Peters, The Chil-
dren of Abraham, 2d ed. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press), 41–66; David Waines, An Introduc-
tion to Islam, 2d ed., 175–184 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2003).
Umm Kulthoum (Umm Kulthu m) (1904–
1975) famed Egyptian singer
First a provincial religious singer, Umm Kul-
thoum became one of the most prominent artists
in the 20th-century arab world. Her childhood
in the Nile Delta village of Tammay al-Zahayra
laid the foundation for her career: She studied
Quranic recitation from age five and joined her
family’s local performances of songs narrating the
Prophet’s life. In the 1920s she established herself
in cairo by singing an increasingly romantic rep-
ertory in elite homes and mUsic halls.
By the 1930s she was performing this reper-
tory with a growing instrumental ensemble. Her
performances were distinguished by skills she
had developed through quranic recitation and
her religious repertory—correct pronunciation,
breath control, melodic ornamentation, and var-
ied vocal timbres. She excelled in improvising and
communicating poetic meaning. As her commer-
cial recordings, radio airplay, and musical films
boosted her popularity, she ensured her success
through business acumen and artistic control.
The work of outstanding poets and compos-
ers, her songs appealed to changing popular
sensibilities. Thus, the 1940s featured her sing-
ing two contrasting groups of songs: accessible
romantic songs in colloquial Arabic and denser
qasidah compositions in formal Arabic, including
several on religious themes (e.g., “Wulid al-Huda”
and “Nahj al-Burda”). Following the 1952 revolu-
tion in Egypt, she recorded numerous patriotic
songs and the radio program (later film) Rabia
al-Adawiyya. She married in 1954.
Her final years were distinguished by her
response to the war of June 1967. She offered
fund-raising concerts in egypt, the Arab world,
and Europe to rebuild the Egyptian military. These
concerts reinvigorated the sexagenarian’s career,
intensified her fan base across the Arab world, and
solidified her image in national and regional mem-
ory as a patriotic figure—an image persisting long
after her death in Cairo on February 3, 1975.
While romantic texts dominate her output of
roughly 300 songs, her career’s trajectory reveals a
commitment to religious projects and a return to
her beginnings with her 1960s plan to record the
Prophet’s life story, including quranic recitation.
Having established a popular, yet respectable,
platform by singing romantic songs, she repeat-
edly used it to disseminate serious religious songs
to an extraordinarily wide audience.
See also cinema; Women.
Laura LohmanFurther reading: Virginia Danielson, The Voice of Egypt:
Umm Kulthum, Arabic Song, and Egyptian Society in
the Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1997); Michal Goldman, Umm Kulthum: A Voice
like Egypt (Waltham, Mass.: Filmmakers Collaborative,
1997); Laura Lohman, “ ‘The Artist of the People in the
Battle’: Umm Kulthum’s Concerts for Egypt in Political
Context.” In Music and the Play of Power in the Middle
East, North Africa and Central Asia, edited by Laudan
Nooshin (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate Press, 2008).umra (Arabic)
The umra is the lesser pilgrimage to mecca.
Unlike the haJJ, it is not obligatory for most Mus-K 690 Umm Kulthoum