Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T15:48:31.053Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Asyut in Modern Times: The Problem of Invisibility

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2021

Peter Gran
Peter Gran*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA
*
pgran@temple.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

If a major city, the major administrative capital of the south and an integral part of how the system reproduces itself, is invisible beyond an occasional passing reference in the familiar narrative of the history of a country, something has gone amiss. Such is the situation of Asyut, a city so invisible that even the English spelling of its name is elusive—variably Asyut, Assuit, Assiut, Siout, or even Essiout—sometimes appearing to be a deliberate attempt to retain an ancient pharaonic or biblical rendering. So why is there this invisibility and how can it be overcome?

Type
Roundtable
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 53 , Issue 1 , February 2021 , pp. 113 - 117
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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 Gran, Peter, Persistence of Orientalism: Anglo-American Historians and Modern Egypt (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2020)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Djebar, Assia, Les Nuits de Strausbourg: Roman (Arles: Actes Sud, 1997)Google Scholar; Fanon, Frantz, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 2004)Google Scholar. The idea of Egyptian decolonization has not penetrated Anglo-American thought to the extent that the idea of North African and Palestinian decolonization has, Edward Said's Orientalism serving as an unfortunate reminder.

3 Jennings, Francis, The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1975)Google Scholar.

4 Chris Toensing, in “Chosen People Ideology” (Middle East Report Online, 20 January 2012), presents a summary of my argument.

5 Gran, Peter, The Rise of the Rich: A New View of Modern World History (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2010)Google Scholar.

6 Abul-Magd, Zeinab, Imagined Empires: A History of Revolt in Egypt (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2013)Google Scholar.

7 Barakat, ‘Ali, al-Qarya wa-l-Sulta fi Misr fi al-Qarn al-Tasi‘ ‘Ashar (Cairo: GEBO, 2018)Google Scholar.

8 Gramsci, Antonio, Prison Notebooks, 3 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007)Google Scholar; Rodinson, Maxime, Israel: A Colonial Settler State (London: Pathfinder Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

9 Gran, Peter, Beyond Eurocentrism (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1996)Google Scholar, chs. 3–5; Gran, Peter, “Upper Egypt in Modern History: A Southern Question?” in Upper Egypt: Identity and Change, ed. Hopkins, Nicholas and Saad, Reem (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

10 Gordon, F. Moore, “Notes on the Industries of Asyut,” L’Égypte Contemporaine 1 (1910), 337–39Google Scholar.

11 Allah, ʿUthman Fayd, Madinat Asyut (1940; Cairo: Qusur al-Thaqafa, 2010), 172Google Scholar.

12 Shalabi, Hilmi, Tarikh Idha'a al-Misriyya: Dirasa Tarikhiyya, 1934–1952 (Cairo: GEBO, 1995)Google Scholar; Heidi M. K. Abdel-Rahman, “Running Head-Women, Regional Development, the Role of North Upper Egyptian Radio” (MA thesis, American University in Cairo, 2010), 43, 50, 56.

13 Di-Capua, Yoav, Gatekeepers of the Arab Past: Historians and History Writing in Twentieth-Century Egypt (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2009), 155CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 ‘Umar Makram is commemorated in Asyut with a statue, a street, and a mosque. Was he the first leader of Egypt, or was it Muhammad ʿAli? The Hawwara remain active today; see https://akhbarelyom.com/news/newdetails/2927251/1/- صور-قبائل- للجيش-والشرطةالهوارة-والعرب-والأشراف-بقنا-يعلنون-دعمهم (accessed 29 June 2020).

15 Gran, Peter, Islamic Roots of Capitalism (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1998)Google Scholar, chs. 1–4.

16 Ibrahim, Nasser and Abbas, Raouf, Deux cent après Expédition d’Égypte, Vision Égyptienne (Cairo: Dar al-ʿArabiyya li-l-Kitab, 2008)Google Scholar. Nelly Hanna's early scholarship includes Construction Work in Ottoman Cairo 1517–1798 (Cairo: IFAO, 1984). Ibrahim, Nasir, al-Azamat al-Ijtima‘iyya fi Misr fi al-Qarn al-Sabi‘ ‘Ashar (Cairo: Dar al-Afaq al-‘Arabiyya, 1998)Google Scholar; Jirjis, Majdi, al-Qada’ al-Qibti fi Misr (Cairo: Mirit, 1999)Google Scholar.