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Concept
Youssef Wahbi
Summary
Youssef Abdallah Wahbi Qotb (يوسف عبد الله هديب وهبي قطب) (14 July 1902 – 17 October 1982) was an Egyptian stage and film actor and director, a leading star of the 1930s and 1940s and one of the most prominent Egyptian stage actors of all time, who also served on the jury of the Cannes Film Festival in 1946. He was born to a high state official in Egypt but renounced his family's wealth and traveled to Rome in the 1920s to study theatre. Besides his stage work, he acted in around 50 films, starting with Awlad al-Zawat (Sons of Aristocrats; 1932) to "Iskanderiya... lih?" (Alexandria... Why?, 1978).
Youssef Wahbi was born into an Egyptian family, from the Fayoum region. He was named after the place where he was born, Bahr Yussef and his father worked as an inspector in the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation.
In 1926, Turkish filmmaker Vedat Örfi Bengü approached Wahbi to play the role of the Prophet Muhammed in a European film which would be financed by the Turkish government and a German producer. Whilst the President of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and the Istanbul council of ulamas gave their approval to the film, the Islamic Al-Azhar University in Cairo published a juridical decision stipulating that Islam forbids the representation of the prophet and his companions. Thereafter, King Fouad warned Whabi that he would be exiled and stripped of his Egyptian citizenship if he took part in the film. Consequently, the film was later abandoned.
Wahbi started acting in the golden age of the Egyptian Cinema in 1932, he has also starred in several plays which he translated into many languages due to his fluency in English, French, and Italian, along with his native Arabic tongue. He played many roles that were different and unusual for both Egyptian film and plays. He once played the Devil and he later on wanted to play Muhammad but the media and Al-Azhar University, the authoritative institution on Sunni Islam, were opposed to the idea and he was forbidden from going through with it.
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