Egyptian students in 1820s Paris were confined yet turned into stage parodies

Evidence

The members of an Egyptian student mission sent to Paris in the 1820s were confined to the college where they lived and allowed out onto the streets only every second Sunday. But during their stay in Paris they found themselves parodied in vaudeville on the Paris stage, for the entertainment of the French public. ‘They construct the stage as the play demands’, explained one of the students. ‘For example, if they want to imitate a sultan and the things that happen to him, they set up the stage in the form of a palace and portray him in person. If for instance they want to play the Shah of Persia, they dress someone in the clothes of the Persian monarch and then put him there and sit him on a throne.’ — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 55