Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T22:37:56.322Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Domestic Sovereignty, A‘yan Developmentalism, and Global Microhistory in Modern Egypt

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 March 2018

Adam Mestyan
Adam Mestyan*
Affiliation:
History, Duke University
*
adam.mestyan@duke.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Through a new type of global microhistory, this article explores the remaking of the political system in Egypt before colonialism. I argue that developmentalism and the origins of Arabic monarchism were closely related in 1860s Egypt. Drawing on hitherto unknown archival evidence, I show that groups of Egyptian local notables (a‘yan) sought to cooperate with the Ottoman governor Ismail (r. 1863–1879) in order to gain capital and steam machines, and to participate in the administration. Ismail, on his side, secured a new order of succession from the Ottoman sultan. A‘yan developmentalism was discursively presented in petitions, poems, and treatises acknowledging the new order and naturalizing the governor as an Egyptian ruler. Consultation instead of constitutionalism was the concept to express the new relationship. The collaboration was codified in the Consultative Chamber of Representatives, often interpreted as the first parliament in the Middle East. As a consequence of the sultanic order and the Chamber, Egypt's position within the Ottoman Empire became similar to a pseudo-federal relationship. I conclude by contrasting different ways of pseudo-federalization in the global 1860s, employing a regional, unbalanced comparison with the United Principalities and Habsburg Hungary.

Keywords

EgyptArab monarchismdevelopmentalismdomestic sovereigntynotablesIslamOttoman Empireconstitutionalismfederalizationa‘yan
Type
Egyptian Vernacular
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 60 , Issue 2 , April 2018 , pp. 415 - 445
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Attachment to undated letter from Sayyid Ahmad Agha Nafi‘, headman of Dandit, to Isma‘il Siddiq Pasha, 421/39, microfilm 199, al-Ma‘iyya al-Saniyya Turki (Turkish correspondence of the Governor's Entourage, henceforth MST), Dar al-Watha'iq al-Qawmiyya (National Archives of Egypt, Cairo; henceforth DWQ). Dandit is a small town in the Daqahliyya Province of Egypt. All translations are my own unless otherwise indicated. Arabic and Ottoman Turkish transliteration follows the simplified standard of the International Journal of Middle East Studies. Names of Ottoman elite individuals are written according to Turkish orthography.

2 Schielke, Samuli, “Hegemonic Encounters: Criticism of Saints Day Festivals and the Formation of Modern Islam in Late 19th and Early 20th Century Egypt,” Die Welt Des Islams 47, 3–4 (2007): 319–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Barak, On, On Time: Technology and Temporality in Modern Egypt (Berkeley, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gelvin, James L. and Green, Nile, “Introduction,” in Gelvin, James L. and Green, Nile, eds., Global Muslims in the Age of Steam and Print (Berkeley, 2014), 2–22 Google Scholar; Green, Nile, Terrains of Exchange: Religious Economies of Global Islam (New York, 2015), 18 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kozma, Liat, Schayegh, Cyrus, and Wishnitzer, Avner, eds., A Global Middle East: Mobility, Materiality and Culture in the Modern Age, 1880–1940 (London, 2015)Google Scholar.

3 ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Rafi‘i, ‘Asr Isma‘il (The age of Ismail), 2 vols. (Cairo, 1987 [1932]); Schölch, Alexander, Egypt for the Egyptians! The Socio-Political Crisis in Egypt (London, 1981)Google Scholar; Salim, Latifa Muhammad, Al-Quwa al-Ijtima‘iyya fi al-Thawra al-‘Urabiyya (The social force in the ‘Urabi revolution) (Cairo, 1981)Google Scholar; Cole, Juan R., Colonialism and Revolution in the Middle East: Social and Cultural Origins of Egypt's ‘Urabi Movement (Princeton, 1993)Google Scholar; Weipert-Fenner, Irene, Starke Reformer oder schwache Revolutionäre? Ländliche Notabeln und das ägyptische Parlament in der ʻUrabi-Bewegung, 1866–1882 (Berlin, 2011)Google Scholar; Davis, Eric, Challenging Colonialism: Bank Misr and Egyptian Industrialization, 1920–1941 (Princeton, 1983), 26–27 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gelvin, James, The Modern Middle East: A History, 2d ed. (New York, 2008), 108 Google Scholar.

4 For the analysis of later monarchical systems, see Butovsky, Avriel, “Reform and Legitimacy: The Egyptian Monarchy,” in Roussillon, Alain, ed., Entre réforme sociale et mouvement national (Cairo, 1995)Google Scholar; Matt Ellis, “King Me: The Political Culture of Monarchy in Interwar Egypt and Iraq,” M. Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 2005; De Gayffier-Bonneville, Anne-Claire, L’échec de la monarchie égyptienne, 1942–1952, 2 vols. (Cairo, 2010)Google Scholar; Whidden, James, Monarchy and Modernity in Egypt: Politics, Islam and Neo-Colonialism between the Wars (London, 2013)Google Scholar.

5 Barak, On, “Outsourcing: Energy and Empire in the Age of Coal, 1820–1911,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 47 (2015): 425–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sönmez, Erdem, “From Kanun-ı Kadim (Ancient Law) to Umumun Kuvveti (Force of People): Historical Context of the Ottoman Constitutionalism,” Middle Eastern Studies 52, 1 (2016): 116–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Brown, Nathan J., Constitutions in a Nonconstitutional World—Arab Basic Laws and the Prospects for Accountable Government (Albany, 2002), 26–27 Google Scholar; EzzelArab, Abdelaziz, “The Fiscal and Constitutional Program of Egypt's Traditional Elites in 1879: A Documentary and Contextual Analysis of ‘al-La'iha al-Wataniyya’ (‘The National Program’),” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 52 (2009): 301–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mitchell, Timothy, Colonising Egypt (Berkeley, 1991), 75–76 Google Scholar; Thompson, Elizabeth, Justice Interrupted: The Struggle for Constitutional Government in the Middle East (Cambridge, Mass., 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, does not mention this institution.

7 Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid Marsot evaluated that “every concession he gained from it [the Ottoman center] was in fact a new constitutional development”; “The Porte and Ismail Pasha's Quest for Autonomy,” Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 12 (1975): 89–96, 89CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hunter, Robert, Egypt under the Khedives: From Household Government to Modern Bureaucracy (1984; Cairo, 1999), 53 Google Scholar; Thompson, Justice Interrupted, 62; Musa, Nifin Muhammad, “Al-Dirasa—al-Hayat al-Niyabiyya fi Misr (Study—the history of parliamentarism in Egypt),” pages h-ta’, in Al-Hayat al-Niyabiyya fi Misr—Mukhtarat min Watha'iq al-Arshif al-Misri (The history of parliamentarism in Egypt: selections from the documents of the Egyptian archive) (Cairo, 2016)Google Scholar.

8 Haedrick, Daniel R., The Tools of Empire—Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1981)Google Scholar; Gelvin and Nile, “Introduction,” 3.

9 Barkey, Karen, Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge, 2008), 259–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Philliou, Christine, Biography of an Empire: Governing Ottomans in an Age of Revolution (Berkeley, 2010), 25–27 Google Scholar; Blumi, Isa, Reinstating the Ottomans: Alternative Balkan Modernities, 1800–1912 (New York, 2011), 45–51 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Yaycioglu, Ali, Partners of the Empire: The Crisis of the Ottoman Order in the Age of Revolutions (Stanford, 2016), 113 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Hourani, Albert, “Ottoman Reform and the Politics of Notables,” in Hourani, Albert, Khoury, Philip, and Wilson, Mary C., eds., The Modern Middle East (London, 2004 [1966]), 83–109 Google Scholar.

12 Cuno, Kenneth, “Joint Family Households and Rural Notables in 19th-Century Egypt,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 27, 4 (1995): 485–502 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gelvin, James L., “The ‘Politics of Notables’ Forty Years After,” Middle East Studies Association Bulletin 40, 1 (2006): 19–29 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Toledano, Ehud R., State and Society in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Egypt (Cambridge, 1990)Google Scholar; Mitchell, Colonising; Fahmy, Khaled, Mehmed Ali: From Ottoman Governor to Ruler of Egypt (Oxford, 2009)Google Scholar; Fahmy, Ziad, Ordinary Egyptians: Creating the Modern Nation through Popular Culture (Stanford, 2011)Google Scholar.

14 For social collaboration, see Beik, William, “The Absolutism of Louis XIV as Social Collaboration,” Past & Present 188, 1 (2005): 195–224 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for similar questions, see Davies, Challenging Colonialism, 6–7; Cooper, Frederick, Colonialism in Question—Theory, Knowledge, History (Berkeley, 2005), 27 Google Scholar. Importantly, this is a study about their discursive developmentalism. To tell the story of development through this collaboration would require a longer enquiry. Hammad, Hanan, Industrial Sexuality—Gender, Urbanization, and Social Transformation in Egypt (Austin, 2016)Google Scholar; Vitalis, Robert, When Capitalists Collude: Business Conflict and the End of Empire in Egypt (Berkeley, 1995)Google Scholar.

15 Gelvin and Green, “Introduction”; Mitchell, Timothy, Carbon Democracy—Political Power in the Age of Oil (London, 2011)Google Scholar; Barak, “Outsourcing.”

16 Bayly, Christopher A., The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914: Global Connections and Comparisons (Malden, Mass., 2004)Google Scholar; Osterhammel, Jürgen, The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, 2014)Google Scholar.

17 Barak, On Time, 83–87; Daniel Stolz, “The Lighthouse and the Observatory: Islam, Authority, and Cultures of Astronomy in Late Ottoman Egypt,” PhD. diss., Princeton University, 2013; Mestyan, Adam, “Upgrade?—Power and Sound during Ramadan and ‘Id al-Fitr in the Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Arab Provinces,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 37, 2 (2017): 262–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Benton, Lauren A., A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400–1900 (Cambridge, 2010)Google Scholar; Lewis, Mary, Divided Rule: Sovereignty and Empire in French Tunisia, 1881–1938 (Berkeley, 2014)Google Scholar; Minawi, Mostafa, The Ottoman Scramble for Africa: Empire and Diplomacy in the Sahara and the Hijaz (Stanford, 2016)Google Scholar; Genell, Aimee M., “Autonomous Provinces and the Problem of ‘Semi-Sovereignty’ in European International Law,” Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies 18, 6 (2016): 533–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hanley, Will, Identifying with Nationality: Europeans, Ottomans, and Egyptians in Alexandria (New York, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Anscombe, Frederick, State, Faith, and Nation in Ottoman and Post-Ottoman Lands (New York, 2014), 90–93 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Deringil, Selim, The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire, 1876–1909 (London, 1998)Google Scholar.

21 Karateke, Hakan, “Legitimizing the Ottoman Sultanate: A Framework for Historical Analysis,” in Karateke, H. T. and Reinkowski, M., eds., Legitimizing the Order: The Ottoman Rhetoric of State Power (Leiden, 2005), 13–52 Google Scholar.

22 Ceylan, Ayhan, Osmanlı Taşra Idarî Tarzı Olarak Eyâlet-i Mümtâze ve Mısır Uygulaması (İstanbul, 2014)Google Scholar; Kızıltoprak, Süleyman, Mehmet Ali Paşa'dan II. Abbas Hilmi Paşa'ya: Mısır'da Osmanlı’nın Son Yüzyılı (İstanbul, 2010)Google Scholar; Akalın, Durmuş, Süveyş Kanalı: açılışı ve Osmanlı Devleti'ne Etkisi 1854–1882 (İstanbul, 2015)Google Scholar; Aimee Genell, “Empire by Law: Ottoman Sovereignty and the British Occupation of Egypt, 1882–1923,” PhD diss., Columbia University, 2013.

23 See the special issue edited by Taglia, Stefano, Die Welt des Islams 56, 3–4 (2016)Google Scholar.

24 Hanley, Identifying with Nationality, 7–8.

25 Darling, Linda T., A History of Social Justice and Political Power in the Middle East (London, 2013)Google Scholar; Thompson, Justice Interrupted; McLarney, Ellen, “Freedom, Justice, and the Power of Adab,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 48, 1 (2016): 25–46 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ghalwash, Maha, “On Justice: Peasants, Petitions and the State in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Egypt,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 43, 4 (2016): 523–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Hourani, Albert, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age (London, 1962)Google Scholar; Philipp, Thomas, “From Rule of Law to Constitutionalism: The Ottoman Context of Arab Political Thought,” in Hanssen, Jens and Weiss, Max, eds., Arabic Thought beyond the Liberal Age: Towards an Intellectual History of the Nahda (Cambridge, 2016), 142–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hill, Peter, “Ottoman Despotism and Islamic Constitutionalism in Mehmed Ali's Egypt,” Past & Present 236, 2 (2017): 135–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see sociology references in the methodology section on patriotism.

27 Mardin, Şerif, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought: A Study in the Modernization of Turkish Political Ideas (Princeton, 1962)Google Scholar; Davison, Roderic H., Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856–1876 (Princeton, 1963)Google Scholar; Lewis, Bernard, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (New York, 1965)Google Scholar; Zürcher, Erik Jan, Turkey: A Modern History (London, 2004)Google Scholar; Çiçek, Nazan, The Young Ottomans: Turkish Critics of the Eastern Question in the Late Nineteenth Century (London, 2010)Google Scholar; Yalçınkaya, M. Alper, Learned Patriots: Debating Science, State, and Society in the Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Empire (Chicago, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 I learned the expression “segmented sovereignty” from an anonymous CSSH reviewer; it is used casually by Shmuel N. Eisenstadt in several essays, and historian-sociologists, such as Julia Adams in her The Familial State: Ruling Families and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe (Ithaca, 2005)Google Scholar. For “layered sovereignty” see Burbank, Jane and Cooper, Frederick, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, 2010), 17 Google Scholar.

29 This resembles the method in Green, Terrains.

30 See Davis, Natalie Zemon, Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim between Worlds (New York, 2006)Google Scholar; and her “Decentering History: Local Stories and Cultural Crossing in a Global World,” History and Theory 50, (2011): 188–202 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Ginzburg, Carlo, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller (New York, 1982)Google Scholar; Robisheaux, Thomas, The Last Witch of Langenburg: Murder in a German Village (New York, 2009)Google Scholar.

32 Carminati, Lucia, “Alexandria, 1898: Nodes, Networks, and Scales in Nineteenth-Century Egypt and the Mediterranean,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 59, 1 (2017): 127–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Boyle, Stephanie Anne, “Cholera, Colonialism, and Pilgrimage: Exploring Global/Local Exchange in the Central Egyptian Delta, 1848–1907,” Journal of World History 26, 3 (2016): 581–604 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 Omich, Dale, “The Order of Historical Time: The Longue Durée and Micro-History,” Almanack 2 (2011): 38–52 Google Scholar.

34 Hobsbawm, Eric, The Age of Capital, 1848–1875 (London, 1995), 91 Google Scholar.

35 Partner, Simon, The Merchant's Tale—Yokohama and the Transformation of Japan (New York, 2017)Google Scholar.

36 Orlowska, Izabela, “The Legitimizing Project: The Coronation Rite and the Written Word,” Aethiopica 16 (2013): 74–101 Google Scholar.

37 Bayly, Birth, 161, 169.

38 Yaycioglu, Partners, 114–15; Anscombe, State, Faith, and Nation, 64.

39 Lewis, Emergence, 112.

40 Davison, Reform, 362–71.

41 Later, Tripoli in Libya was somewhat reintegrated into the Ottoman imperial system, too. Ahmida, Ali Abdullatif, The Making of Modern Libya: State Formation, Colonization, and Resistance (1994; Albany, 2009), 30–31 Google Scholar; Oualdi, M'hamed, Esclaves et maîtres: Les mamelouks au service des beys de Tunis du XVIIe siècle aux années 1880 (Paris, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 Ceylan, Eyalet-i mümtaze, 28–29, 45; Genell, “Autonomous Provinces,” 542.

43 Genell, “Autonomous Provinces,” 541.

44 Toledano, Ehud, “The Emergence of Ottoman-Local Elites (1700–1900): A Framework for Research,” in Pappé, Ilan and Ma'oz, Moshe, eds., Middle Eastern Politics and Ideas: A History from Within (London, 1997), 145–62; 155Google Scholar. Recently, mamluks have been analyzed as social bridges between rulers and society: Oualdi, M'hamed, “Mamluks in Ottoman Tunisia: A Category Connecting State and Social Forces,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 48, 3 (2016): 473–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 In the Balkans and in Anatolia a‘yan was a rank; Yaycioglu, Partners, 127.

46 Carl Brown, The Tunisia of Ahmad Bey, 1837–1855 (Princeton, 1974); Ceyhan, Eyalet-i mümtaze, 28–29; Oualdi, Esclaves et Maîtres, 376–83.

47 Brown, Constitutions, 16–20.

48 Ehud Toledano, State and Society; Cuno, Kenneth M., The Pasha's Peasants: Land, Society, and Economy in Lower Egypt, 1740–1858 (Cambridge, 1992)Google Scholar; Khaled Fahmy, Mehmed Ali; Patrick Scharfe, “The Islamic Politics of Ottoman Reform: Muslim Scholars and the Public Sphere in Mehmed Ali Pasha's Egypt, 1801–1848,” PhD thesis, Ohio State University, 2015; Mestyan, Adam, Arab Patriotism—The Ideology and Culture of Power in Late Ottoman Egypt (Princeton, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 Mestyan, Arab Patriotism, 60–61.

50 Letters from French consul in Alexandria to Direction Politique (French Ministry of Foreign Affairs), 26 April 1866 and 8 May 1866, 166PO/D25/67–68, MEAN.

51 See more in Mestyan, Arab Patriotism, 63–64.

52 Cooper, Colonialism, 28, 153, 156.

53 Letter from Şahin Kabh, governor of the Citadel to Ismail Pasha, 26 Dhu'l-Hijja 1282 (12 May 1866), 468/37; and undated letter from Ismail Salim, Minister of War, 486/37, both in microfilm 197, MST, DWQ.

54 al-Rahman, Jamal ‘Abd, Isma‘il Siddiq al-Mufattish—Rajul al-Azamat—Dahiyya al-Wishaya (Isma‘il Siddiq, the inspector: man of crises, victim of conspiracies) (Cairo, 2004)Google Scholar.

55 Letter from Isma‘il Siddiq, 7 Muharram 1283 (22 May 1866), 29/38, microfilm 197, MST, DWQ.

56 Letter from Mehmed Şerif, 7 Muharram 1283 (22 May 1866), 31/38, microfilm 197, MST, DWQ. See Hunter, Egypt, 152–57.

57 Letter from Mehmed Şerif, 7 Muharram 1283 (22 May 1866), 32/38, microfilm 197, MST, DWQ.

58 Sarhank, Isma‘il, Ḥaqa'iq al-Akhbar ‘an Duwal al-Bihar (The true news about the sea dynasties) (Cairo, 2009, reissue)Google Scholar, al-Juz’ al-Thani, vol. 2, 521; Mitchell, Timothy, The Rule of Experts (Berkeley, 2002), 64 Google Scholar; Abul-Magd, Zeinab A., Imagined Empires: A History of Revolt in Egypt (Berkeley, 2013), 109–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59 van Donzel, E., “Masawwa‘,” in Bearman, P. et al. , eds., Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2d ed. (Brill Online, 2014)Google Scholar. See also Talhami, Ghada H., Suakin and Massawa under Egyptian Rule (Washington, D.C., 1979)Google Scholar; and al-Jamal, Shawqi ‘Ata Allah, al-Watha‘iq al-Tarikhiyya li-Siyasat Misr fi al-Bahr al-Ahmar (Historical documents pertaining to Egyptian politics in the Red Sea) (Cairo, 196?)Google Scholar.

60 First letter about the victory is dated 6 Muharram 1283 (21 May 1866), from the Governor of Masawwa‘ to Ismail Pasha, 21/38, microfilm 197, MST, DWQ.

61 Letter from French consul in Alexandria to Direction Politique (French Ministry of Foreign Affairs), 8 Sept. 1866, 166PO/D25/67–68, MEAN.

62 Most letters are in microfilm 197, MST, DWQ.

63 Letter dated 20 Muharram 1283 (4 June 1866), 98/38, microfilm 197, MST, DWQ. For merchants, Omar Cheta, “Rule of Merchants—The Practice of Commerce and Law in Late Ottoman Egypt, 1841–1876,” PhD thesis, New York University, 2014.

64 Letter dated 13 Muharram 1283 (28 May 1866), from Mehmed Şerif, 51/38, microfilm 197, MST, DWQ.

65 The decree is analyzed in detail in Mestyan, Arab Patriotism, 63–64.

66 Davis, Challenging Colonialism, 28–29.

67 Cuno, “Joint Family Households,” 495–96.

68 Davis, Challenging Colonialism, 36–38; Hamed, Raouf Abbas and El-Dessouky, Assem, The Large Landowning Class and the Peasantry in Egypt, 1837–1952, Gran, Peter, ed., Mohsen, Amer and Zikri, Mona, trans. (Syracuse, 2011), 61, 65–66 Google Scholar.

69 Hunter, Egypt, 41.

70 Mitchell, Rule of Experts, 65.

71 Letter from French consul in Alexandria to Direction Politique (French Ministry of Foreign Affairs), 18 June 1866, 166PO/D25/67–68, MEAN.

72 Sharubim, Mikha'il, al-Kafi fi Tarikh Misr al-Qadim wa-l-Hadith (Compendium of the ancient and modern history of Egypt), 4 vols. (Cairo, 2004 [1890s]), iv, 184Google Scholar.

73 Letter from Leopold Sellari, 20 Aug. 1866, 45/39, microfilm 198, MST, DWQ.

74 Letter from Isma‘il Siddiq, 14 Muharram 1283 (29 May 1866), 62/38, microfilm 197, MST, DWQ. For Tanta, see Boyle, “Cholera.”

75 Undated letter from Isma‘il Siddiq (ca. 21 Muharram 1283/5 June 1866), 111/38, microfilm 197, MST, DWQ.

76 For groupness, see Cooper, Colonialism, 75–76. For the Arabic translation of the firman: letter from Ismail Sal, 23 Muharram 1283 im (7 June 1866), 125/38, microfilm 197, MST, DWQ.

77 Letter from Ali Cevdet, 2 Muharram 1283 (17 May 1866) 148/38, microfilm 197, MST, DWQ.

78 Letter from Qasim Pasha, 26 Muharram 1283 (10 June 1866), 138/38, microfilm 197, MST, DWQ.

79 Letter from Mehmed Zeki, 28 Safar 1283 (12 July 1866), 217/38, microfilm 198, MST, DWQ.

80 French Consul in Alexandria letters to the Direction Politique (French Ministry of Foreign Affairs), 28 June and 9 July 1866, 166PO/D25/67–68, MEAN.

81 See letters in MST and Diwan al-Khidiwi ‘Arabi (Civil Administration Department in Arabic) in DWQ; Hunter, Egypt, 146.

82 French consul in Alexandria letter to the Direction Politique (French Ministry of Foreign Affairs), 19 July 1866, 166PO/D25/67–68, MEAN.

83 Smith, Anthony D., “Biblical Beliefs in the Shaping of Modern Nations,” Nations and Nationalism, 21 (2015): 403–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

84 Smith, Anthony D., Chosen Peoples (Oxford, 2003), ch. 3Google Scholar.

85 Hastings, Adrian, The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism (Cambridge 1997), 4–5 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Smith, Chosen Peoples.

86 Friedland, Roger, “Religious Nationalism and the Problem of Collective Representation,” Annual Review of Sociology 27 (2001): 125–52, 126CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

87 Brubaker, Rogers, “Religion and Nationalism: Four Approaches,” Nations and Nationalism 1, 18 (2012): 2–20, 11CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

88 Ahmed, Shahab, What Is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic (Princeton, 2016), 323 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

89 Omar, Hussein, “Arabic Thought in the Liberal Cage,” in Devji, Faisal and Kazmi, Zaheer, eds., Islam after Liberalism (Oxford, 2017), 17–45 Google Scholar.

90 Asad, Talal, The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam (Washington, D.C., 1986), 14 Google Scholar; Green, Terrains, 10.

91 Taymur, Ahmad, Tarajim A‘yan al-Qarn al-Thalith ‘Ashar wa-Awa'il al-Rabi‘ ‘Ashar (Biographies of notables in the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth centuries) (Cairo, 2001, repr.), 137 Google Scholar.

92 Mustafa Salama al-Najjari, “Rawd Madih Isma‘il bi-Ashraf al-Thana’ al-Jamil (The meadows of Isma‘il's praise with the most noble and beautiful admiration),” MS 2389 Tarikh Taymur, Dar al-Kutub al-Misriyya (National Library of Egypt). I am preparing an Arabic-English bilingual study and edition of this manuscript, to be published by Institut français d'archéologie orientale (Ifao).

93 Crone, Patricia, Medieval Islamic Political Thought (Edinburgh, 2004), ch. 13Google Scholar; Darling, Linda T., “Mirrors of Princes in Europe and the Middle East,” in Classen, Albrecht, ed., East Meets West in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: Transcultural Experiences in the Premodern World (Berlin, 2013), 223–42Google Scholar.

94 For an analysis of al-Tahtawi's travel description as a mirror of princes, see Gran, Peter, “Al-Tahtawi's Trip to Paris in Light of Recent Historical Analysis,” in Boroujerdi, Mehzrad, ed., Mirror for the Muslim Prince: Islam and the Theory of Statecraft (Syracuse, 2013), 193–217 Google Scholar.

95 Al-Najjari, “Rawd Madih,” 42–46.

96 Ibid., 14, 31, 33.

97 Ibid., 32–33; 50.

98 Mittermaier, Amira, Dreams that Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination (Berkeley, 2011), 91 Google Scholar.

99 Undated letter from Sayyid Ahmad Agha Nafi‘ to Isma‘il Siddiq Pasha, 421/39, microfilm 199, MST, DWQ.

100 Hoffner, H., “Ancient Views of Prophecy and Fulfilment: Mesopotamia and Asia Minor,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 30 (1987): 257–65Google Scholar.

101 Lewis, Emergence, 139–40.

102 Ghazal, Amal, “Illiberal Thought in the Liberal Age—Yusuf al-Nabhani (1849–1932): Dream-Stories and Sufi Polemics against the Modern Era,” in Hanssen, Jens and Weiss, Max, eds., Arabic Thought beyond the Liberal Age: Towards and Intellectual History of the Nahda (Cambridge, 2016), 214–33, 227CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

103 Mittermaier, Dreams that Matter, 6, 143.

104 Al-Ghazali quoted in Talha, Abu Ibrahim, ‘Umar bin, Ru'yat Allah Ta‘ala fi al-Manam (The vision of the Almighty God in sleeping) (Oman, 2002), 16 Google Scholar.

105 Deny, J., Sommaire des archives turques du Caire (Cairo, 1930), 76–78 Google Scholar. See Tottoli, Roberto, “‘Aziz Misr,” in Fleet, Kate et al. , eds., Encyclopaedia of Islam, Three. Brill Online, 2014 Google Scholar.

106 On a later period, see Baron, Bath, Egypt as a Woman: Nationalism, Gender, and Politics (Berkeley, 2005)Google Scholar.

107 Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London, 2006 [1983]), 85–88 Google Scholar.

108 Crone, Medieval Islamic Political Thought, 158–61.

109 Konrad, Felix, “‘Fickle Fate Has Exhausted My Burning Heart’: An Egyptian Engineer of the 19th Century between Belief in Progress and Existential Anxiety,” Die Welt des Islams 51, 2 (2011): 145–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

110 Salama, Al-Shaykh Mustafa [al-Najjari], Majmu‘ al-Thana’ al-Jamil li-Dawar al-‘Adl Isma‘il (A collection of beautiful praise for the just prince Ismail) (Cairo, 1866 or 1867)Google Scholar.

111 Hamadeh, Shirine, The City's Pleasures: Istanbul in the Eighteenth Century (Seattle, 2008), ch. 6Google Scholar.

112 [Al-Najjari], Majmu‘, 3.

113 He was an Azharite sheikh and Sufi leader. See, in particular, Hatina, Meir, ‘Ulama’, Politics, and the Public Sphere—An Egyptian Perspective (Salt Lake City, 2010), 60, 67Google Scholar.

114 [Al-Najjari], Majmu‘, 25.

115 Ibid., 38.

116 Ibid., 4.

117 Ibid., 33.

118 Ibid., 45.

119 Smith, Chosen Peoples, 162–63.

120 The title malik is not new: Said Pasha had already been praised as “possessor/king of Egypt” in the 1850s. [Salih Majdi], Diwan (Collected poems) (Bulaq, 1311 [1893 or 1894]), 1, 12, 55, etc.

121 M. Plessner, “Mulk,” and A. Ayalon, “Malik,” both in P. Bearman et al., eds., Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2d ed., Brill Online, 2014.

122 Lewis, Bernard, “Monarchy in the Middle East,” in Kostiner, Joseph, ed., Middle East Monarchies: The Challenge of Modernity (Boulder, 2000), 15–22 Google Scholar.

123 Al-Azmeh, Aziz, Muslim Kingship: Power and the Sacred in Muslim, Christian, and Pagan Politics (London, 2001), 74 Google Scholar.

124 [Al-Najjari], Majmu‘, 13.

125 Ibid., 28. Not identical with the al-Abyari above. Hatina, ‘Ulama,’ 56.

126 Al-Najjari, “Rawd Madih,” 28.

127 Hanssen and Weiss, Arabic Thought; McLarney, “Freedom”; Hill, “Ottoman Despotism”; Omar, “Liberal Thought.”

128 Rafi‘, Rifa‘a Bey [al-Tahtawi], Manahij al-Albab al-Misriyya fi Mubahij al-Adab al-‘Asriyya (The paths of the Egyptian hearts in the joys of modern arts) (Cairo, 1869), 232–38Google Scholar; Zolondek, Leon, “Al-Tahtawi and Political Freedom,” Muslim World 54. 2 (1964): 90–97 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cole, Colonialism and Revolution, 39; McLarney, “Freedom,” 37–38.

129 Hourani, Arabic Thought, 72–82.

130 Sperl, Stefan, “Kingship and Arabic Panegeric Poetry in the Early 9th Century,” Journal of Arabic Literature 8 (1977): 20–35 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Al-Azmeh, Muslim Kingship, 91.

131 Noorani, Yaseen, Culture and Hegemony in the Colonial Middle East (New York, 2010), 23 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

132 Chalcraft, John, “Engaging the State: Peasants and Petitions in Egypt on the Eve of Colonial Rule,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 37, 3 (2005): 303–325, 318CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

133 Ghalwash, “On Justice.”

134 Quoted in Moreh, Shmuel, Modern Arabic Poetry, 1800–1976 (Leiden, 1976), 70 Google Scholar.

135 Davis calls the practice “native capitalism”; Challenging Colonialism, 7.

136 Letter from French consul in Alexandria to Direction Politique (French Ministry of Foreign Affairs), 9 July 1866, 166PO/D25/67–68, MEAN.

137 Letter from French consul in Alexandria to Direction Politique (French Ministry of Foreign Affairs), 19 July 1866, 166PO/D25/67–68, MEAN.

138 Al-Najjari, Rawd Madih, 59.

139 Davis, Challenging Colonialism, 24; Mitchell, Rule of Experts, 62–65; Stolz, Daniel, “The Voyage of the Sammanud: Pilgrimage, Cholera, and Empire on an Ottoman-Egyptian Steamship Journey in 1865-67,” International Journal of Turkish Studies 23, 1–2 (2017): 1–18 Google Scholar.

140 Chalcraft translates huquq at the time in peasant petitions as “dues,” but in this context it seems that “rights” may work better; “Engaging the State,” 323, n. 57.

141 “We pay for the expenses of the train line” (yakun takalif al-sikka ‘alayna). Letter from Hasanayn Hamza, 16 Rabi‘ al-Awwal 1283 (29 July 1866), 265/38, microfilm 198, MST, DWQ.

142 Letter from Musa al-Jundi, 11 Rabi‘ al-Thani 1283 (23 Aug. 1866), 55/39, microfilm 198, MST, DWQ.

143 Letter from Ahmad Mustafa, 15 Rabi‘ al-Akhir 1283 (25 Oct. 1866), 82/39, microfilm 198, MST, DWQ.

144 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 21.

145 Undated letter from Muhammad al-Shawarli, village headman of Qayub, and Hamza ‘Ali, village headman of Tasma, 150/39, MST, DWQ.

146 Undated letter from Ahmad al-Yamani entitled “Malhuzat tata‘allaq bi-aqlam min al-irad wa-l-masarif wa-umur al-dabt wa-l-rabt” (Notes related to the Offices of Income and Expenditure and General Security), 151/39, microfilm 198, MST, DWQ.

147 Yavari, Neguin, Advice for the Sultan: Prophetic Voices and Secular Politics in Medieval Islam (London, 2014), 79 Google Scholar.

148 Aytekin, E. Attila, “Peasant Protest in the Late Ottoman Empire: Moral Economy, Revolt, and the Tanzimat Reform,” International Review of Social History 57 (2012): 191–227, 219CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ben-Bassat, Yuval, Petitioning the Sultan: Protests and Justice in Late Ottoman Palestine, 1865–1908 (London 2013), 58 Google Scholar.

149 Gasper, Michael Ezekiel, The Power of Representation: Publics, Peasants, and Islam in Egypt (Stanford, 2009)Google Scholar.

150 Cuno, Pasha's Peasants; Maha Ghalwash, “Peasant Land Tenure in Mid-Nineteenth Century Egypt, 1848—1862,” PhD thesis, Princeton University, 1997.

151 Darling, History of Social Justice, 166.

152 Davison, Reform, 188–91; Nazan, Young Ottomans, 72–78.

153 Davison, Reform, 191–205; Nazan, Young Ottomans, 48; Riedler, Florian, Opposition and Legitimacy in the Ottoman Empire: Conspiracies and Political Cultures (London, 2011), 28–38 Google Scholar.

154 Arsan, Andrew, “The Strange Lives of Ottoman Liberalism: Exile, Patriotism and Constitutionalism in the Thought of Mustafa Fazıl Paşa,” in Isabella, Maurizio and Zanou, Konstantina, eds., Mediterranean Diasporas: Politics and Ideas in the Long Nineteenth Century (London, 2015), 153–70Google Scholar.

155 Ami Ayalon, “Shura,” in P. Bearman et al., eds., Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2d ed., Brill Online, 2014.

156 Sariyannis, Marinos, “Ottoman Ideas on Monarchy before the Tanzimat Reforms,” Turcica 47 (2016): 33–72, 58Google Scholar.

157 Diyaf, Ahmad ibn Abi, Consult Them in the Matter—A Nineteenth-Century Islamic Argument for Constitutional Government (Fayetteville, 2005)Google Scholar; Sönmez, “From Kanun-ı Kadim”; Hill, “Ottoman Despotism.”

158 There is a short series of articles entitled “Usul al-Hukm fi Nizam al-Umam,” from n. 422, Tasvir-i Efkar, 8 Jumada al-Ula 1283 (18 Sept. 1866), 4.

159 Tasvir-i Efkar, n. 439, 18 Rajab 1283 (27 Nov. 1866), 1–2.

160 Muhbir, 25 Sha‘ban 1283 (2 Jan. 1867), 3.

161 Nazan, Young Ottomans, 152–53, 165.

162 Canatar, Mehmet, “Şura-yi Devlet Teşkilatı ve Tarihi Gelişimi Üzerine Bazı Tespitler,” İlmi Araştırmalar 5 (1997): 107–39Google Scholar.

163 Turnaoğlu, Banu, The Formation of Turkish Republicanism (Princeton, 2017), 71–72 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

164 Hunter, Egypt, 52; Hamed and El-Dessouky, Large Landowning Class, 142–43.

165 Davis, Challenging Colonialism, 26–36.

166 Mitchell, Colonizing, 75–76.

167 al-Rafi‘i, ‘Asr Isma‘il, ii, 94–96.

168 Chalcraft, “Engaging the State,” 313–17. Cole provides details about later elections in guilds, in Colonialism and Revolution, 169–74.

169 French consul in Alexandria letter to Direction Politique (French Ministry of Foreign Affairs), 30 July 1866, 166PO/D25/67–68, MEAN.

170 The decision was sent to the governorates on 22 October 1866. Amr Karim, p. 18 from qayd 24, microfilm 23, Ma‘iyya Saniyya ‘Arabi (Correspondence of the Governor's Entourage in Arabic, henceforth MSA), DWQ.

171 Sayyid-Marsot, Afaf Lutfi, Egypt in the Reign of Muhammad Ali (Cambridge 1984), 108 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

172 Musa, “Al-Dirasa.”

173 Yaycioglu, Partners.

174 Hunter, Egypt, 53.

175 al-Rafi‘i, ‘Asr Isma‘il, ii, 96–97.

176 Amr Karim, p. 18 from qayd 24, microfilm 23, MSA, DWQ.

177 “Khedive” (A. Mestyan), Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3d ed., Brill, forthcoming.

178 Hunter, Egypt, 54.

179 See, for instance, p. 90, qayd 40, microfilm 33, MSA, DWQ.

180 Ghalwash, “On Justice,” 528.

181 Chalcraft, “Engaging the State,” 309; Ghalwash, “On Justice.”

182 EzzelArab, “Fiscal and Constitutional Program.”

183 Benton, Search for Sovereignty, 237–38.

184 Hitchins, Keith, Rumania 1866–1947 (Oxford, 1994), 14–15 Google Scholar.

185 Kónyi, Manó, ed., Deák Ferenc beszédei, 6 vols. (Collected speeches of Ferenc Deak) (Budapest, 1903), ii, 397–403 Google Scholar.

186 Cieger, András ed., A kiegyezés (The compromise) (Budapest, 2004), 15–183 Google Scholar.