History

The first Ottoman conquest of Tunis took place in 1534 under the command of Kheireddine Barbarossa. However, it was not until 1574 that the Ottomans finally wrested control of the former Hafsid Ifriqiya (modern-day Tunisia), retaining it until the French occupation of Tunisia in 1881. The Regency of Tunis was thus born as an imperial province, and individuals originating from throughout the vast territory of the Ottoman Empire settled there, rapidly creating a new elite via marriage with women from local notable families. This book studies the former Hafsid territory’s position within the Ottoman world and the social developments that accompanied the genesis of the united Regency of Tunis until the death of Hamouda Pasha.
On the social plane, who were these Turko-Ottomans who were able to drive the Hafsid kings from their throne? Were they noble officers, as is so often remembered? The sources paint a different picture: one of rogues from distant Anatolia, and captives of corsairs from across the Mediterranean. These men expanded privateering for their own profit, seizing the country’s riches for themselves and monopolizing exports to Europe.
Leïla Blili revisits the conventional historiography of Ottoman Tunisia, widely considered by historians to be an autonomous province ruled by a dominant class of Turko-Ottomans cut off from local society. She shows that the Regency of Tunis was much less autonomous than secondary scholarship has alleged and, through her analysis of the marriages of these Turko-Ottomans, that they were in fact well-integrated into the local population. In doing so, she also illuminates the place of kinship ties in the establishing of inheritances, access to spheres of power, and the very acquisition of titles of nobility.

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In 1986, when this memoir opens, Khaled al-Berry is a typical fourteen-year-old boy in Asyut in Upper Egypt. Soon, his love of soccer draws him into the orbit of members of a radical Islamist group, university students from the surrounding countryside who play the game regularly on a pitch near his home. Attracted at first by the image of the group as “strong Muslims,” al-Berry’s involvement develops until he finds himself deeply committed to its beliefs and implicated in its activities. This ends when, in his third year at university, he is arrested on campus by the police and thrown in jail. His experience of confinement and a return to life on the outside lead to his eventual alienation from radical Islam.
Vulnerable, searingly honest, gripping, and often funny, this tale of one man’s journey to the edge of radicalism and back also gives critical and intelligent insight into an Islamist movement’s debates, preoccupations, motives, and intentions.

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The 2011 Egyptian Revolution gave birth to an unprecedented explosion of popular political and social expression in the form of bold, defiant, and often unforgettable street art and graffiti. This acted as both the revolution’s chronicle, its commentary and response to the headlong rush of events, and as a driver of the revolution, a powerful means of influencing and directing what people felt, thought, and did during the heady days and months that followed from the 25 January 2011 uprising. Wall Talk takes us on an epic journey through the street art and graffiti that filled Egypt’s streets between 25 January 2011 and 30 June 2012. Matched with a corresponding timeline of the key events of those eighteen months, it presents an enthralling and invaluable record of a moment in time that changed the course of Egyptian history forever.  A Zeitouna publication.

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The Egyptian Stock Exchange in its glory years is beautifully remembered in this collector’s volume of stock and bond certificates and brief histories of the Egyptian companies which issued them

This large-format album of reproduced images of choice stock and bond certificates issued in by registered companies through the Egyptian Bourse, or Stock Exchange, will be a source of delight and fascination, not only for scripophilists, notaphilists, and economists, but for anyone interested in early twentieth-century Egyptian financial history and memorabilia and the aesthetic value of these beautiful collectors’ items. Each certificate tells a story about the company which issued it, and the fascinating and dynamic business families that drove Egypt’s economy at the time.

Founded in 1903 at the behest of Maurice “Moise” Cattaui Bey (1848–1924), scion of one of Cairo’s then most powerful business families, the newly incorporated Bourse and Banking Company of Egypt Limited, also known as the Bourse Khediviale du Caire, was initially housed in the Manuk Building, once home to the Ottoman Bank on Adly (formerly Maghrabi) Street. It was later moved to a building at the center of Cairo’s downtown district of Ismailia, not far from the National Bank of Egypt (today’s Central Bank). The real-estate boom which began in Cairo around 1895 would end in what became known in the annals of speculative history as the Crash of 1907. In The Egyptian Bourse Samir Raafat tells the story of the rise and fall of the Egyptian Bourse, from the sale of the century by Khedive Ismail of Egypt’s shares in the Suez Canal in 1875 to the Free Officers coup of 1952. Beautifully illustrated with more than fifty vintage shares and stocks in full color.

A nostalgic, gorgeously illustrated anthology of nineteenth and twentieth century writing on Alexandria

At the end of the eighteenth century, the city of Alexandria was a small backwater with a population of less than five thousand. Then in 1801 Muhammad Ali arrived in Egypt as second‐in‐command of an Albanian contingent, part of an Ottoman force sent to re‐occupy the country after Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion in 1798. By 1805, Ali had become ruler of Egypt and in a short time, he built a new modern cosmopolitan Alexandria―a thriving commercial hub and court city, the country’s unofficial capital, and home to a large number of immigrants from the surrounding Mediterranean. Alexandrea ad Ægyptum, the old Latin adage meaning “Alexandria by Egypt,” re‐emerged, underlining Alexandria’s singular separateness.

Foreign dominance was further reinforced by British colonialism beginning in 1882, until 26 July 1956, when, from the parapet of the Bourse on Muhammad Ali Square in Alexandria, Gamal Abd al-Nasser announced the nationalization of the Suez Canal. As the city’s sizeable foreign community left, following the Suez War then through waves of nationalization, the international Alexandria ceased to exist. This beautifully illustrated anthology brings together the work of contemporaneous writers who witnessed the stages of Alexandria’s dramatic rise and growth during the nineteenth and early- to mid-twentieth centuries.

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A meticulous deconstruction of Maronite history writing and the ways in which Lebanese nationalist myths have been invented and perpetuated by historians

As a frequently contested territory, Mount Lebanon has an equally contested history, one that is produced, shaped, and revised by as many players as those who molded the Lebanese state since its inception in 1920. The Lebanese Maronite Church has had more at stake in the process of history writing than any other group or institution. It is arguably one of the most influential institutions in Lebanese history and definitely the most influential institution in the country at the moment of the state’s birth.

Writing the History of Mount Lebanon traces the genealogy of Maronite identity by examining the historical traditions that shaped its contemporary manifestation. It explores the presence of a tradition in Maronite Church historiography that was maintained by the historians of the Church, whose claims and hypotheses ultimately defined the communal identity of the Maronites in Mount Lebanon and deeply influenced subsequent Lebanese national identity. Rooted in a reexamination of  the existing literature and bringing evidence to bear on this particular aspect of history-writing in Lebanon, it shows how early Maronite ecclesiastic historiography’s plea for inclusion as a part of Catholic orthodoxy was transformed and recast in subsequent centuries by lay and secular historians into a demand for exclusion and exclusivity, which in turn led to the rise of exclusivist political identities based on sectarian belonging in Mount Lebanon.

Ultimately, Mouannes Hojairi shows how history-writing is one of the main instruments in generating and perpetuating nationalist ideologies and how historians are central agents of nationality.

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A collection of original short plays that focus on sexual harassment and assault in Egypt, by debut Egyptian playwrights

These five original short plays, written by Egyptian students from the American University in Cairo in collaboration with Jillian Campana and Dina Amin, mark the first published plays in Egypt that deal directly with sexual harassment. Sexual crimes are not limited to the workplace or the street—they happen everywhere, from the bedroom to the café, in shops, on modes of transportation, and in businesses, homes, outdoor areas, and educational and religious institutions. They can be perpetrated by a stranger, acquaintance, friend, family member, or loved one and they can encompass many different types of sexual violence, including verbal, non-verbal, physical, or visual violence.

This collection breaks social taboos by offering dramatic texts that reflect the reality of survivors of sexual harassment from multiple perspectives—families and couples, bystanders, victims and perpetrators, men and women. Many of the women portrayed in these plays are independent, educated, and well to do, but they are all subjected to varying degrees of sexual harassment and violence. Accompanied with narrative commentary that places the events in context, these plays and the issues they explore seek to challenge dominant perceptions about sexual harassment in the region and to shine light on the power imbalances and disparities that give rise to it. They will be of interest to artists, social science researchers, educators, and anyone interested in the issue of sexual harassment, and collaborative theater processes.

Playwrights: Yehia Abdelghan, Marwan Abdelmoneim, Nour El Captan, Passant Faheem, Nour Ibrahim, Noran Morsi, and Omar Omar

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A challenge to the “end of the shari‘a” thesis in Islamic legal historiography

In the second half of the nineteenth century, states across the Muslim World developed new criminal codes and reshaped their legal landscapes, laying the foundations of the systems that continue to inform the application of justice today. Influenced by colonialism and the rise of the modern state’s desire to control its populations, many have seen the introduction of these codes as a pivotal shift and divergence from the shariʼa, the dominant paradigm in premodern Muslim jurisdictions.

In A Continuity of Shari‘a, Brian Wright challenges this view, comparing among the Egyptian, Ottoman, and Indian contexts. By examining the environment in which the new codes were created, highlighting the work of local scholars and legal actors, and examining the content of the codes themselves, Wright argues that the criminal systems of the late nineteenth century have more connections to their past than is previously understood. Colonial influence was adapted to local circumstances and synthesized with premodern understandings in an eclectic legal environment to create solutions to local problems while maintaining a continuity with the shari’a.

This book will be of interest to scholars and students of Islamic Studies, Islamic Law, and Islamic Legal History.

To read an excerpt, click here.

For the Table of Contents, click here.