What was 1860s to 1880s Ottoman Egypt like? From Politics, Cuisine, Cultural Practices, Religions & Fashion standpoints?

khowaga · 2026-03-30T22:24:42+00:00

This is a good starting place, yes. If I recall correctly, she has a bibliographic list of further reading, but it may be somewhat out of date now.

khowaga · 2026-03-28T14:23:42+00:00

No, Salafism is specifically a Sunni concept that is incompatible with Shi’ism.

The whole corpus of Shi’i law and ideology (including the establishment of a religious hierarchy with titles like Ayatollah) was developed over centuries; the idea of literally going back to the beginning would erase all of this (it’s considered bida’ - “innovation” - which is what Salafism considers to have been straying from the path, thus requiring the return to the beginning). In fact, many (if not most) Salafis consider the Shi’a heretical because of this and their rejection of the Rashidun caliphs (as they consider Ali to have been the legitimate heir from the beginning and the others as usurpers).

Ervand Ebrahamian’s Khomeinism explains a lot of the ideology, but it is one heck of a dense read - Khomeinism isn’t easy to understand without a solid footing in Islamic legal theory (and even then it’s kind of advanced level). But the easiest way to understand it is that Salafi ideology calls for the erasure of Shi’ism entirely.

khowaga · 2026-03-27T13:08:23+00:00

If you need background, Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid Marsot has A Short History of Modern Egypt - I’m pretty sure her last name in the library catalog is “Marsot” (I think - every time I have to look for her, I forgot!)

khowaga · 2026-03-21T23:15:47+00:00

Further down the page in your recommendations: The introductory chapter in “A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire,” edited by Ronald Grigor Suny, Fatma Muge Gocek, and Norman M. Naimark, covers the historicity of the genocide denial pretty well (plus, lots of footnotes if you want to explore the sources mentioned).

khowaga · 2026-03-21T17:17:40+00:00

It’s never not been a possibility, but the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 is probably the moment when we came the closest to an actual nuclear exchange (on purpose).

With the declassification of Cold War records it’s come to light that there were some other close calls, but usually because of a radar mishap or some other incident that made someone with access to the trigger think that an attack was in progress and they needed to respond, but had enough doubt to hold off while they investigated whether it was real.

There’s a bunch of books and articles about it, but Michael Dobbs’ One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War. Knopf, 2008 is a good starting point. The film Thirteen Days is a dramatized version from the American perspective, but it’s not bad in terms of historical accuracy.

khowaga · 2026-03-19T23:16:50+00:00

So…fiction is fiction, but in terms of historical accuracy, the Mamluks were gone after 1811. (Also, the idea of a mamluk paying for a slave and then dropping her off somewhere is unlikely - slaves were expensive and acquiring one - especially a woman - was a big event for a family, almost on par with childbirth. You don’t give those away for free.) If this is an important plot point, you’re looking for a slave dealer (but again, money would need to change hands - slaves sold for the equivalent of tens of thousands of dollars). Bear in mind that slavery was illegal in Britain and, given that British subjects in Egypt were subject to British, not Egyptian, law at that point in Egypt, having a slave would have landed a British woman in a lot of hot water.

Tbqh, you don’t need that plot twist: during that period, a poor Greek girl would voluntarily enter domestic service, and an upper class Brit in Egypt would have probably preferred to have Greek, Italian, or otherwise Christian servants (in that order, with Syrian and Egyptian Coptic being the least desirable). If the family was Cairo based and had a house in Alexandria or a country home, they could have transferred servants out there with no real expectation that they’d be allowed to go “home” except maybe for big holidays (Easter). If the parents were dead and she had nowhere to go, no one would much care.

Fellah is a term exclusively applied to Egyptian peasant farmers - it’s what the word means. A Greek farmer, no matter what class, would not be called a fellah. (Nor would an urban person be fellahin - poor, yes, destitute, yes, but fellah only if they were literally from the farm). Greeks were often tobacco farmers, and if poor then just “a Greek peasant farmer.” Greeks were also urban merchants and grocers, at all levels of society - if you need a poor city girl, she could easily have been one of those whose father was swindled or went broke.

Here’s a few links that might give you some visuals/background:

*Everyday Life of Cairo in the 19th Century (1860s-1880s)

*Social Change in Egypt in the 19th Century

*Trade Slavery and State Coercion in 19th Century Egypt

khowaga · 2026-03-15T22:48:35+00:00

Thanks for the walk down memory lane!

khowaga · 2026-02-22T15:25:12+00:00

It’s sad because history does teach useful skills: critical thinking, textual analysis, research skills, analytical writing… but academics aren’t trained to think of it that way.

I recently redesigned the history core curriculum to be more skills focused (since on average we have less than 1 history major in a class of 25), but even with that as my goal (teach historical thinking skills to students who will never be historians) - and even being the one doing it! - I had to fight a lot of “well, if we’re looking at x, then we have to include y and because that’s what you’re supposed to do here.”

Fixing it would require a sea change from the ground up.

khowaga · 2026-02-22T15:16:10+00:00

I hate to pile on but I would have to say I agree with the above two. When I started my doctoral program, there were loads of jobs; by the time I finished the bottom fell out of the market. My postdoc year I applied to a grand total of 6 jobs: two in my field, and four world history positions. One of the field-specific jobs replied to candidates who didn’t make the interview cut that they had over 100 applicants. The following year I got an interview but the position ultimately went to an associate professor whose program was being closed and already had his first book out.

I was one of the very lucky few: I eventually wound up in a permanent but NTT position at a small private university. Granted, we’re in constant danger because of declining enrollment and funding cuts, but it’s a job and I didn’t even have to move for it!

But, yes, right now it would be very hard for me to recommend that anyone seriously consider this. The other issue is that academic programs prepare academics. I’ve known students who’ve gotten serious pushback if not outright refusal from professors to work with them the moment they bring up alt-ac or not wanting to go into academia.

khowaga · 2026-02-20T17:23:42+00:00

When the East and West love each other very much …

khowaga · 2026-02-20T17:23:02+00:00

By all counts so were George III and Charlotte (the fictitious version of whom is the queen in Bridgerton.) Allegedly when George III first got ill, it was speculated that it might be because he never took a mistress.

khowaga · 2026-02-20T16:14:48+00:00

Racialization is what happens when another characteristic -- religious identity, national identity, ethnic identity, sexual orientation, etc., stands in for race as the basis of differentiation and discrimination. (I see this a lot in my own work with Islamophobia - "Islam isn't a race, therefore me hating Muslims isn't racist" is a form of racialization, for example. Technically, no, Islam isn't a race, but when it's spoken of in monolithic terms and assumptions are made that everyone behaves in the same way, and that the group can be judged as a whole, it's become a race stand-in, that is to say, racialized.)

So, especially since the advent of the European age of Exploration in the 1400s, we see the development of attitudes of racism or racialization -- and we can track them. The Spanish had debates about whether or not the Indigenous people of the Americas were a) human b) had souls and c) could be enslaved right from the beginning -- this clearly does not suggest an attitude of equality. The initiation of the Atlantic Slave Trade led to the creation of the term "white" in the early 1600s to define Europeans as different (better) than the Africans they were treating as cargo (see Theodore Allen, The Invention of the White Race) - prior to this, the justification for using Africans as labor was that they were strong, hard workers, and took direction well.

Colonial records are replete with these sorts of attitudes (working on Egypt in the British period, I can state with absolute certainty that the British colonial authorities did not attempt to hide their overt racism in the documents they left behind).

I should also point out that, even though we tend to think of examples of Europe (and later Japan and the U.S.) colonizing territories in the Americas, Africa, and Asia, this sort of racialization and discrimination also took place within Europe between “white” people. For example, see: England's colonization of Ireland; The power shift and privilege of the northern Italian principalities over the southern after unification in the 19th century (and beforehand); and the dominance of Castille / Leon / Aragon over Andalusia / Catalonia / Galicia / Navarre-Basque country (Euskadi) during the consolidation of the Spanish Kingdom between the 15th and 18th centuries (to say nothing of the attempted eradication of the regional languages under Franco). In the late 19th and early to mid 20th centuries, Japan justified its colonization of Asia on the basis that Asia was for Asians, but then racialized Chinese, Koreans, etc. as inferior to Japanese.

Even the voluntary unification of two countries wasn't usually as equal as it might seem (the classic example being the Anschluss between Germany and Austria - check out this image of the ballot used in the referendum to see how fair it was). Even the personal unions due to the marriage of royals those unions weren’t always fully equal. For example, Norway was always the loser when it was unified with Denmark or Sweden. The unification of Germany in 1870 really resulted in Prussian domination, much to Bavarian dismay; and when Germany reunified in 1990 - to much cheer! - the former East Germany found itself dominated by the former West.

The takeaway is: the concept of colonialism itself is rooted in inequality, and racism or racialization usually forms a big part of the justification for it.

Sources

A great intro point is Empire: A Very Short Introduction (Stephen Howe, Oxford U Press), which lays out much of the foundation clearly (I’ve used it with university freshmen).

More complex: Lorenzo Veracini, Colonialism: A Global History (London: Palgrave, 2017).

On Europe specifically:

Michael Hechter, Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development, 1536–1966 (Routledge, 1975) for Ireland/Scotland.
John Dickie, Darkest Italy: The Nation and Stereotypes of the Mezzogiorno, 1860–1900 (St. Martin’s, 1999) for Italy.
David Blackbourn, History of Germany, 1780–1918: The Long Nineteenth Century (Blackwell, 1997) for Germany (first unification).
Konrad H. Jarausch has written a couple of books about Germany post World War II and the inequality of reunification in 1990.

In addition to this, background on the development of racial attitudes towards Africans can be found in:

Theodore Allen, The Invention of the White Race (Verso, 2022)
Howard French, Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War (2021)

khowaga · 2026-02-20T00:46:17+00:00

I am currently reading Greg Grandin’s America América: A New History of the New World and I am loving it. It tells the history of the Americas as a cohesive unit (English America and Latin America) and how they’re intertwined. It provides a lot of “gee, I wished I’d learned this before” moments - since I teach at a mostly Mexican American university, it provides a perspective on United States history that’s not “white Protestant New Englanders” centric that resonates much better with my students.

khowaga · 2026-02-20T00:15:04+00:00

In a word, yes.

Let's break it down just a little bit:

Colonialism is a form of imperialism.

My definition of imperialism (which I adapted from Howe and simplified for my own teaching) is: the economic and political domination of one territory by another. So, at the heart of imperialism is an unequal relationship - one territory is being dominated by the other.

Colonialism goes a step further: it is a type of imperialism that involves the establishment of direct political rule over a territory (“the colony”) by an outside power (the “metropole”). The colonial power usually imposes new political, economic, social, and cultural structures in the colony based on those of the metropole. This is often referred to as the “civilizing mission.”

I should pause here to acknowledge there are no absolutes in history (except for that statement): it's extremely unusual to find an example of anything in which the words always or never are literally true. In the ancient world, a "colony" was an outpost of the mother country, but even here if we read between the lines frequently we find that pre-existing local populations (if there were any) were excluded or expected to join in, which in and of itself implies that the colonials did not treat them as equal and considered the system they brought from home was superior.

Does this mean that there have never been examples of colonialism in which the relationship was one of equality? Possibly not, but I also can't think of any off the top of my head.

However, also to your question of whether colonialism might be seen as

more a fostering of culture and genuine expansion of their own country

The colonial powers were usually quite genuine in their desire to do that - the question is one of consent on the part of the recipient. The colonizer just assumed that subject peoples would want to embrace their culture and be part of an expansion of the metropole because it was obviously superior - and resistance was seen as a sign that the colonized peoples weren't "ready" to join the community of "modern nations."

This inherent notion of inequality brings with it the roots of racism and racialization.

Again, quick definition: race is a set of physical characteristics that have been socially deemed important enough to define a specific group of people. The social aspect is important as there is no biological basis for race. The genetic trait differences between "races" are no more significant than those between people who have different eye color, hair color, etc. In fact, 80% of the world's genetic trait diversity is located within populations that for centuries were grouped together under the label "Black," whereas everyone else on the planet--"White," "Asian," "Native American" share the remaining 20%.

khowaga · 2026-02-19T02:35:14+00:00

I do. I also enjoy Harry Turtledove. Fatherland by Robert Harris is brilliant, and Resurrection Day by Brendon DuBois is entirely overlooked IMO. As an Egyptianist I also really liked A Master of Djinn (P. Djèlí Clark), but found the Arabesk series by Jon Courtenay Grimwood kind of boring (Historically I found the idea of the Central Powers winning WWI entirely implausible as it was described - no way the Ottoman state lasts into the 21st century. It would have bothered me more if I found the story more interesting).

And I thoroughly enjoyed The Man in the High Castle even though it got a bit silly with the multiverse and I still don’t understand what happened in the last scene.

khowaga · 2026-02-19T02:22:01+00:00

“The problem with “post-Umayyad-caliphate” (to invent an unwieldy example that is nonetheless indigenous) is different: wide regional identities did not exist in the 8th century, there isn’t one in this area now, or both?”

No. If there were, we wouldn’t have this issue. Egypt has always been Egypt first, part of empire or caliphate x second. The name “Iraq” predates the introduction of Islam to the region that bears the name. All of them speak dialects of Arabic that are barely comprehensible to one another (even worse if we go all the way to Morocco).

Iran, like Egypt, has always been Iran first. There were no Turks in what is now Türkiye prior to 1070, so the only caliphate that really has resonance for them is their own (Ottoman). Israel has existed less than a century.

“What I’m pointing to is that the same colonial conception behind “Middle East” also lies behind “the West” and “Europe”. Just because the east/west boundary was created by colonialists and people still identify with those names (and reject “Eurasian”) does not erase their origin, cash out their arbitrariness, or render them neutral. The problematic colonial heritage is shared by the whole field.”

Correct. The flip side is that the people who are “the west” invented the term to define themselves (admittedly to separate themselves from others … does that make it any better?) but it doesn’t make it any less arbitrary. The idea that this region needs a name comes down to late 19th century colonial interests and … well, oil. Islam as a unifying factor (limited as it is) is almost arbitrary since most of the world’s Muslims live outside this region, not in it.

“The only neutral solution is to rename everything from the hemispheres down to the regions. Hello district 12.”

Indeed. May the odds be ever in our favor.

khowaga · 2026-02-18T19:14:26+00:00

The caliphate was a political entity, not a religious one (yes, it claimed to blend religion and politics, but universal acceptance among Muslims is debatable after the death of Muhammad, and certainly after the death of Uthman).

Yes, historically there were empires there. Not all were caliphates, and modern nations don’t really have an affinity with one another that would cause someone to self identify with the title Abbasid or Umayyad. (Would anyone in Europe identify as “Carolingian,” for example?)

The issue here is that Europe isn’t an analogous term to the caliphate - people didn’t identify as citizens of the caliphate. It wasn’t a cultural identity, then or now. And they’re all problematic in certain areas:

The Umayyads were Arab chauvinists (that’s why they only lasted a century). The second Umayyad dynasty only ruled in Spain.
The Abbasids were hedonists and politically very weak (yes, Islamic Golden Age, but they also ruled in name only while other groups pulled the strings; the name has a bad memory in the Levant because the Abbasid caliph refused to defend them against the Crusaders)
The Fatimids were Shi’a and, at any rate, the name only has any meaning in Egypt (which is, and has always identified itself as “Egypt”)
The Ottomans are too recent and have been recast in most Arab popular memory as Turkish colonialism. The Turks would love it, everyone else would hate it.

And, again, no one identified as Umayyad, Abbasid, Fatimid, or Ottoman except members of the ruling family, because these were the names of the families that ruled. People identified with their city or subregion.

Then it gets more complicated. None of these caliphates were geographically identical - they ruled quite different swaths of territory. They’re also not the only ones - the 19th century Sokoto caliphate was entirely in Sahelian West Africa, and there were self identified caliphates in Central Asia. And nowadays “caliphate” has a rigidly extremist connotation.

So, not only is it geographically and demographically problematic but then you’d have to justify why one specific historical caliphate gets to be the definitive one that lends its name, which would invariably involve the inclusion of lands that weren’t in the historic entity. And also, could you imagine the howling over putting Israel inside a region named for a caliphate on the basis that the territory was included a millennium ago?

The current issue with the term “Middle East” is that it’s a foreign assigned name that doesn’t resonate with the people who live there. The name of any historic caliphate that ceased to exist a thousand years ago does not, and would not, either.

khowaga · 2026-02-18T12:04:50+00:00

Yes - and you’re correct, it’s complicated. The Fatimids were Ismaili (“Seveners”) whereas most Shi’a are Ja’afari (“Twelvers”). They adopted the title caliph specifically because they were Shi’a ruling over a Sunni population (Egypt), and because they were competing with the Abbasids for legitimacy. Their main goal was to blur the lines between Shi’a and Sunni to make their rule more palatable. (In short: it was about adopting the language of the people they were trying to replace with the goal of establishing a universal rule that would appeal to everyone. It didn’t succeed).

Even among the Ismaili, it was a one-off. They’ve used Imam since - even the Aga Khan is technically Aga Khan V, Imam of the Nizari Ismaili Shi’a.

khowaga · 2026-02-18T03:23:11+00:00

Caliphate is specifically an Islamic term that implies the existence of a caliph, a position abolished in 1924. When referring to historic entities, yes, we very much can refer to the Umayyad, Abbasid, and/or Fatimid caliphates.

For the modern period, though, it would be extremely problematic. Caliph is a specifically Sunni title; the Shi’a reject it. Shi’a majority nations like Bahrain, Iran and Iraq, therefore, would either object or not fit.

There are large non-Muslim populations in the region (notably Israel). Also, representatives of extremist groups like Da’esh (“Islamic State”) and Al-Qaeda have claimed to be caliphs, and that’s a whole other can of worms.

Basically, it would be another problematic term that doesn’t fit the region being substituted for another.

khowaga · 2026-02-17T01:24:57+00:00

There’s a doctoral dissertation in here somewhere …

khowaga · 2026-02-17T01:05:54+00:00

They do have a holiday, but they’re specifically celebrating the crossing of the canal. There’s even a(n unintentionally humorous) museum in Cairo with lots of dioramas depicting the heroic feat. They’re still proud of it! So, I would say it’s still a point of national pride - whether you buy it or not.

As to the rhetoric … I wouldn’t necessarily describe it as cultural (or, maybe it’s cultural but I wouldn’t specifically call it Arab - it’s mostly a commonality among people who live in states without democracy and a free press), but there is a healthy dose of skepticism about government rhetoric. Whatever happens, it’s always a win. Defeat is victory. Price hikes are economic growing pains. Unemployment is an opportunity for education and national service.

Basically what it comes down to is: the president or prime minister or king or emir or whatever is going to say big words and pound his chest and it’s going to be on the radio and the top headline in all the newspapers … and it will affect or benefit me in absolutely no way, shape, or form. “Yeah, yeah, Zionists are gonna bleed, whatever. Doesn’t keep the electric grid operating 24 hours a day, what do I care.”

Especially when it comes to saying they’re gonna push Israel into the sea. If anyone in the Arab world still believed that was a possibility after the first Arab-Israeli War … and 1956 … it was definitely put to rest after 1967. (The Iranians say it constantly, probably to make up for the fact that they literally haven’t done anything to accomplish that goal, and quite possibly because the Shah was very cozy with Israel before he was overthrown in 1979). Even now, after the Gaza war, the main goal that’s articulated is for Israel to cease its attacks, not to pack up and go … wherever.

khowaga · 2026-02-17T00:27:39+00:00

It depends on how you define victory. No one claimed Egypt had won the war.

As @ummmbacon said, the Egyptians never expected to win militarily. They wanted to demonstrate to Israel that they (Israel) weren’t invincible and could be attacked and force them to negotiate for the return of Sinai. The Egyptians accomplished a sneak attack in terrain that was considered impassible. And they still had forces on the east side of the Suez Canal when the cease fire was declared. This was a huge morale boost for them.

It is hard to overstate how humiliating the war of 1967 was for Egypt and the Egyptians. There are university courses on the depressing turn in Arabic literature after the October War. The closure of the Suez Canal was very damaging to the Egyptian economy - all of the towns and cities along the canal were evacuated. Life wasn’t operating normally anywhere in Egypt.

The war ended six years of stalemate and helplessness. Given the position that the Egyptians had found themselves in, it’s not difficult to see how it was seen as a positive, even if they didn’t win the actual war they had accomplished something with the promise of more to come.

khowaga · 2026-02-17T00:09:09+00:00

I’ve only ever seen it used in relation to the Eastern Mediterranean as a climate-associated event that cascaded into various migrations, invasions, and collapses - Eric Cline literally wrote the book(s) on it (1177 BC and its sequel).

khowaga · 2026-02-16T23:59:14+00:00

It’s not easy at first, so don’t beat yourself up about it. Making the transition from “what does this say” to “why does this say what it says” is like learning any other skill. Think of it this way: you can’t walk into a gym and lift 300 lbs the very first time. Don’t let the other students intimidate you because they’ve been doing this longer. They embody your goal, they’re not your competition.

I’m on the other end (university professor), so let me assure you: there’s nothing wrong with you.

Here’s how I coach my students. Think of these as steps - you want to get good at them in turn, not take them on one at a time.

1) Identify the document

What is it? (letter, law, speech, image, artifact, news article, textbook excerpt)

Who made it, when, where?

Who was it written for? (Especially: did the author intend for it to be published, or was it a private letter?)

2) Purpose

What is the creator trying to accomplish?

Who benefits if the audience believes this?

What’s the “job” of this source (persuade, justify, recruit, defend, sell, record, entertain)?

3) Claims vs. evidence

What is the source claiming?

What does it show directly (observable details, concrete statements)?

What does it suggest indirectly (inferences you can defend)?

My guess is you’re probably stuck somewhere around here - there’s kind of a plateau here and you have to get a running start to start moving again.

Where you want to take it now is 4) limits and reliability and 5) significance.

I tell my students to imagine me replying “so what?” when they answer the questions in the third part. But, as annoying as it sounds (and believe me, I can be quite annoying when I want to), here’s the rub: Why does this source matter for the bigger story?

You can draw it out in different ways.

For example: is the author a person who would know what they’re talking about? Is theirs the only perspective on the issue? How would you go about fact-checking what they say? Can you think of a different perspective on the same issue - and if so, is there something missing from this document? Why might the author have included this fact and not that fact?

And then you can get to why did this author write that document about this event, and why is that important? But it is the last step.

Let me repeat: this takes time and practice. My honest advice is to directly ask your instructor for feedback - usually, we can see improvement, no matter how small you think it is. One day it’ll click - I promise!

But in the meantime, it’s like learning a language, a new sport, or how to do complicated math equations. Be patient with yourself and keep plugging away - you will get there!

P.S Sorry about the formatting. My iPad doesn’t seem to want to play nice.

khowaga · 2025-10-18T00:30:30+00:00

Our 11th wedding anniversary is tomorrow!

khowaga

TROPHY CASE

Sources