The Definitive Guide to Living in the Capital , Cairo , Egypt

The very origins of the Ramadan fanous aren’t clear. There are various plausible theories but a lack of certainty and historical data to support them. Some sources claim the use of a lantern to celebrate lunar holidays goes back to ancient Egypt, and the tunes we associate with Ramadan today, ‘Wahwy ya Wahwy, I’aha’, started there as well, originally a praise and welcome to the moon in the ancient Egyptian tongue.

When it comes to the lanterns’ association with Ramadan, most trace it to the Fatimid period of Cairo’s history, although, again, the stories vary.

However, there are a few indisputable facts: the Ramadan fanous certainly originated in Cairo, and the tradition is around 800 years old and made it to the rest of the Middle East.

There isn’t a clear indication of when the fanous started getting manufactured on a widespread scale in Cairo. At first, the industry’s “headquarters” was Bab al-Khalq, Downtown Cairo. Later, it moved to other local districts like Al-Sayeda Zeinab and Khaiamia. The workshops there are still the essential manufacturers of Al-Fawnous in Egypt.

Fanous Abu Shama’a

Essentially, Ramadan lanterns in their traditional forms are simple, made from tin, and hold a single candle inside. Locally, they’re referred to as Fanous Abu Shama’a, roughly translated to the candle-fanous.

Fanous Saj

Later on, tin started to be used more with stained glass, and it’s referred to as Fanous Saj nowadays.

Stained Glass Fanous

After the craftsmen refined their creations, they worked with different colours of stained glass and created many other variations; It could be circular, rectangular, or square-ish. The top of the fanous was designed to resemble the dome of a mosque. 

It remained quite a large industry in Egypt across the decades and centuries, and despite the season being a single month a year, the workshops, craftsmen and sellers still made a steady living, creating old and new fawanees throughout the whole year.

It was around the early 2000s when China started manufacturing the fanous on a scale that was wide enough to threaten the Egyptian craftsman. The Chinese fanous differed from the Egyptian one, mainly in the material used. While glass and tin remained the standard for centuries in Egypt, China used plastic. 

This coincided with the rising economic problems of Egypt and fluctuating exchange rate, and the materials started to cost more, which led to a remarkable increase in the average fanous price. Meanwhile, the Chinese one was cheaper since it was made of plastic. It was also more attractive to children as the fanous was also supplied with an audio recording of a traditional Ramadan song.

The Chinese fanous dominated the market and became the new normal for nearly two decades. When the Egyptian government realised Egypt’s entire industry was being run into the ground, they put an official ban on importing the Ramadan fanous.

There remained a resistance, mainly from sellers who had a harder time selling the more expensive options. But, interestingly, it led to a new era of the Ramadan fanous: The hybrid toy-lantern. 

Importing the fanous itself from China was banned, but children’s toys weren’t. Toys usually have nothing to do with Ramadan, but the new move of adding Ramadan recordings to the toys remained, and sellers started marketing them during Ramadan. 

It helped, of course, that the chosen figures of the toys were always the ones most popular of the year; for example, the Mohamed Salah figurine at the beginning of his fame was highly popular in Ramadan, or before him, the figure of “Detective Krombo.”

Sometimes, the toy-fanous hybrid was relevant to Ramadan, when the characters or figures were associated with Ramadan already, like the Ramadan cartoon characters “Boogy and Tamtam”. 

A few years ago, shortly around the hit of the pandemic, the traditional tin-and-stained glass Egyptian fanous started making a strong comeback. This year, 2022, it’s dominating the markets yet again.