Journal Article Converting the Missionaries Get access Sharkey Heather. American Evangelicals in Egypt: Missionary Encounters in an Age of Empire. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008. xx + 318pp. Notes, illustrations, bibliography, index. $39.50 (cloth). Michael Reimer Michael Reimer Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Diplomatic History, Volume 35, Issue 1, January 2011, Pages 47–50, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7709.2010.00916.x Published: 27 December 2010
On 15 July 1935, a group of residents in the small port town of Aqaba sent a rough handwritten petition to the prime minister of Transjordan. Its clumsy script betrayed the humble origins of its signatories. Inscribing their destitution in virtually every clause, the petitioners wrote: Because we, the common people and notables of Aqaba and its bedouins (ahālī wa-wujūh al- al-Aqaba wa-urbānuha) are in a state of poverty, our town being very poor, and since our poverty and our wretched conditions are not hidden from Your Eminence, our desire is for the cancellation of the municipality of Aqaba. Our town does not merit a municipality because it is poor and small, and many of its people have migrated over the past two years to Maan for the sake of making a living, and only the very poor remain in it. And the municipal administration of Aqaba has cut off from us the bedouins and others we depend on. Last year, they estimated the municipal budget at £P 60 [Palestine pounds] and it was not collected justly. Therefore we ask the mercy of Your Eminence in cancelling the municipality.
Arab History and the Nation-State: A Study in Modern Arab Historiography, 1820-1980, by Youssef M. Choueiri. xix+238 pages, appendices, glossary, list of dynasties, bibliography, index. Routledge, London and New York1989. $59.95. - Volume 24 Issue 2
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
The King–Crane Commission of 1919 was authorized by the Paris peace conference to conduct a ‘scientific investigation’ of conditions in the Middle East and to advise the conference as to the politi...
The Ottoman sultan was Egypt's titular sovereign until 1914, but in the late nineteenth century some historians of Egypt were already locating the terminus of Ottoman rule in the French invasion (1798) and the inauguration of Mehmet `Ali's government (1805). This periodization was later canonized in Egyptian academia, so that Egypt's Ottoman history was defined as beginning in 1517 and ending in 1798. However, the vagaries of Egypt's relationship with Istanbul meant that this periodization was neither obvious nor uncontested. The purpose of this article is to compare evolving, discordant interpretations of Ottoman history presented in four works by notable Egyptian historians: `Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti (ca. 1824), `Ali Pasha Mubarak (ca. 1889); Muhammad Farid (ca. 1912); and `Umar al-Iskandari and Salim Hasan (ca. 1919). The article investigates how the defeated Mamluk sultanate (which preceded the Ottomans) is related to Egypt's identity in these works, how the Ottomans are positioned in the flow of Egyptian and Islamic history, and how their conquest and rule over Egypt is characterized. The article also reviews these authors' reflections on the causes of Ottoman “decline” and analyzes what Mehmet Ali's rule portended for Egypt. The findings show that Egyptian historians differed radically on the relationship between the Mamluks and Egypt—oppressors versus protonationalists—and in their assessment of the Ottoman conquest's impact. There is no linear evolution of opinion before Egypt's independence in 1922 or a strict correlation between an Egyptian-nationalist orientation and attitudes toward the Ottoman state: Mubarak was a moderate nationalist but anti-Ottoman/anti-Turk, while Farid was an ardent and outspoken nationalist but treasured and promoted Egypt's organic bond with the Ottoman Empire. Broadly, one may distinguish between an appreciation of the Ottomans in their defense of Islam and implementation of Muslim justice (al-Jabarti and Farid), and a repudiation of the Ottoman period as Egypt's “dark ages” (Mubarak, Iskandari, and Hasan). However, Iskandari and Hasan's book's acceptance as a secondary school textbook represents the fixing of a historiographical orthodoxy that categorized Ottoman rule as alien, corrupt, and retrograde, a view that remains dominant in Egyptian popular consciousness until today.
