Landlocked Islands: Two Alien Lives in Egypt

Landlocked Islands: Two Alien Lives in Egypt PDF Author: Anna Cachia
Publisher: American University in Cairo Press
ISBN: 1617972355
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
This is a highly unusual and beautifully written book. It is the double memoir of a mother and son, Anna and Pierre, and the story takes us from Anna's childhood in Russia and subsequent arrival in Egypt in 1901 to Pierre's enrollment at the American University in Cairo in the late 1930s. It is fascinating, therefore, not only as a personal account of an interesting group of people but also as a social document that portrays a segment of Egypt's society in the first forty years of the twentieth century. As a personal story, it is a rewarding insight into the early formation of a leading, well-known, and respected Arabist. His mother's account of her own early life and tragedies reveals a remarkable woman we would wish to have known. As a social document, it gives us a rare perhaps unique picture of the life of foreigners in Egypt who were not part of the elite, privileged, ruling class, revealing much about the choices that were available to them in education, career, marriage, and social mixing. Landlocked Islands thus offers the social historian a study of some minorities in Egypt during the first half of the twentieth century; it also opens up the whole question of expatriate life in Egypt. But, above all, it is an entertaining and intriguing tale, a book that one constantly finds oneself eager to pick up and read.

Landlocked Islands: Two Alien Lives in Egypt

Landlocked Islands: Two Alien Lives in Egypt PDF Author: Anna Cachia
Publisher: American University in Cairo Press
ISBN: 1617972355
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 193

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is a highly unusual and beautifully written book. It is the double memoir of a mother and son, Anna and Pierre, and the story takes us from Anna's childhood in Russia and subsequent arrival in Egypt in 1901 to Pierre's enrollment at the American University in Cairo in the late 1930s. It is fascinating, therefore, not only as a personal account of an interesting group of people but also as a social document that portrays a segment of Egypt's society in the first forty years of the twentieth century. As a personal story, it is a rewarding insight into the early formation of a leading, well-known, and respected Arabist. His mother's account of her own early life and tragedies reveals a remarkable woman we would wish to have known. As a social document, it gives us a rare perhaps unique picture of the life of foreigners in Egypt who were not part of the elite, privileged, ruling class, revealing much about the choices that were available to them in education, career, marriage, and social mixing. Landlocked Islands thus offers the social historian a study of some minorities in Egypt during the first half of the twentieth century; it also opens up the whole question of expatriate life in Egypt. But, above all, it is an entertaining and intriguing tale, a book that one constantly finds oneself eager to pick up and read.

Cairo

Cairo PDF Author: Claire E. Francy
Publisher: American Univ in Cairo Press
ISBN: 9789774162039
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
The guide described by The New York Times as "indispensable," revised and updated for 2008, fills a vital niche for expatriates and Cairenes alike who need a helping hand to organize--and enjoy--the challenges of a sojourn in Cairo. The basics of daily life--finding a flat, transporting personal goods, investigating school options for children, navigating Egypt's famous bureaucracy, and the intricacies of feeding and clothing oneself and one's family from the local market--are all detailed here. Advice gathered from a wide range of Cairo insiders, both native and foreign, gives the reader a cornucopia of current facts on prices, neighborhoods, product availability, work and business opportunities, and the dizzying range of cultural and leisure pursuits that Cairo is famous for. The format of this edition addresses the needs of independently minded tourists as well as residents by the inclusion of: an A-to-Z directory of goods, services, and interests subdivided by neighborhood; a language section on the basics of Cairene Arabic; and details on shopping and sightseeing from a resident's perspective. Cairo: The Practical Guide, now in its sixteenth edition, is the key to deciphering the complexities of living, working, and enjoying life in one of the world's most exciting and dauntingly complex mega-cities.

Historians, State and Politics in Twentieth Century Egypt

Historians, State and Politics in Twentieth Century Egypt PDF Author: Anthony Gorman
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 0415297532
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
This book deals with the relationship between historical scholarship and politics in twentieth century Egypt. It examines the changing roles of the academic historian, the university system, the state and non-academic scholarship and the tension between them in contesting the modern history of Egypt. In a detailed discussion of the literature, the study analyzes the political nature of competing interpretations and uses the examples of Copts and resident foreigners to demonstrate the dissonant challenges to the national discourse that testify to its limitations, deficiencies and silences.

Identifying with Nationality

Identifying with Nationality PDF Author: Will Hanley
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231542526
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
Nationality is the most important legal mechanism sorting and classifying the world's population today. An individual's place of birth or naturalization determines where he or she can and cannot be and what he or she can and cannot do. Although this system may appear universal, even natural, Will Hanley shows that it arose just a century ago. In Identifying with Nationality, he uses the Mediterranean city of Alexandria to develop a genealogy of the nation and the formation of the modern national subject. Alexandria in 1880 was an immigrant boomtown ruled by dozens of overlapping regimes. On its streets and in its police stations and courtrooms, people were identified by name, occupation, place of origin, sect, physical description, and other attributes. Yet by 1914, before nationalist calls for independence and decolonization had become widespread, nationality had become the defining category of identification, and nationality laws came to govern Alexandria's population. Identifying with Nationality traces the advent of modern citizenship to multinational, transimperial settings such as turn-of-the-century colonial Alexandria, where ordinary people abandoned old identifiers and grasped nationality as the best means to access the protections promised by expanding states. The result was a system that continues to define and divide people through status, mobility, and residency.

Zamalek

Zamalek PDF Author: Chafika Soliman Hamamsy
Publisher: American Univ in Cairo Press
ISBN: 9789774248931
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
Between the reign of Muhammad Ali Pasha (1805-48) and the end of the Second World War, a dramatic transformation of the Egyptian sociopolitical scene took place, particularly within the confines of the ruling class. During that period, and owing in large measure to Muhammad Ali's reforms, a new class system emerged, with its revised gradations from lower to upper strata. The central concern of this book is the change that took place in upper-class Egyptian society, from a staunch conservatism toward more westernized, liberal norms in the hundred years spanning the turn of the nineteenth century. The district of Zamalek, on the Nile island of Gezira, became, for a variety of reasons, the preferred neighborhood for a fast growing, rapidly evolving upper middle class, and by the mid-1920s it had become the abode of an elite group whose way of life was manifestly more westernized than that of its predecessors. Zamalek was the focal point of social change, and its elite role models actively engaged in the creation of these new social norms. By following the lives of one family, this book describes how these people lived, interreacted, and changed, often under the impetus of international events, and looks at some of the beliefs and traditions upon which their life was based. As Egypt enters the twenty-first century with a noticeable reappearance of the veil and an apparent return to the values of the past, this account by someone who grew up within that group is a timely examination of the social westernization of twentieth-century Egypt, the forces that led to it, and the events that made it possible.

Arabic Dialogues

Arabic Dialogues PDF Author: Rachel Mairs
Publisher: UCL Press
ISBN: 1800086180
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 573

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Book Description
During the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century, more Europeans visited the Middle East than ever before, as tourists, archaeologists, pilgrims, settler-colonists and soldiers. These visitors engaged with the Arabic language to differing degrees. While some were serious scholars of Classical Arabic, in the Orientalist mould, many did not learn the language at all. Between these two extremes lies a neglected group of language learners who wanted to learn enough everyday colloquial Arabic to get by. The needs of these learners were met by popular language books, which boasted that they could provide an easy route to fluency in a difficult language. Arabic Dialogues explores the motivations of Arabic learners and effectiveness of instructional materials, principally in Egypt and Palestine, by analysing a corpus of Arabic phrasebooks published in nine languages (English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Yiddish, Hebrew, Russian) and in the territory of twenty-five modern countries. Beginning with Napoleon’s Expédition d’Égypte (1798–1801), it moves through the periods of mass tourism and European colonialism in the Middle East, concluding with the Second World War. The book also considers how Arab intellectuals understood the project of teaching Arabic to foreigners, the remarkable history of Arabic-learning among Yiddish- and Hebrew-speaking immigrants in Palestine, and the networks of language learners, teachers and plagiarists who produced these phrasebooks.

Seeking Bread and Fortune in Port Said

Seeking Bread and Fortune in Port Said PDF Author: Lucia Carminati
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520385519
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 355

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Book Description
Seeking Bread and Fortune in Port Said probes migrant labor's role in shaping the history of the Suez Canal and modern Egypt. It maps the everyday life of Port Said's residents between 1859, when the town was founded as the Suez Canal's northern harbor, and 1906, when a railway connected it to the rest of Egypt. Through groundbreaking research, Lucia Carminati provides a ground-level perspective on the key processes touching late nineteenth-century Egypt: heightened domestic mobility and immigration, intensified urbanization, changing urban governance, and growing foreign encroachment. By privileging migrants' prosaic lives, Seeking Bread and Fortune in Port Said shows how unevenness and inequality laid the groundwork for the Suez Canal's making.

The Diffusion of “Small” Western Technologies in the Middle East

The Diffusion of “Small” Western Technologies in the Middle East PDF Author: Uri M. Kupferschmidt
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110777223
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
In recent years we have become interested in the diffusion of “small” Western technologies in the countries of the Middle East during the 19th and 20th centuries, the era of Imperialism and first globalization. We postulated a contrast between “small” and “big” technologies. Under the latter category we may understand railway systems, electricity grids, telegraph networks, and steam navigation, imposed by foreign powers or installed by connected local entrepreneurs. But many “small” Western technologies, such as sewing machines, typewriters, pianos, eyeglasses, and similar consumer goods, which had been developed and manufactured in Europe and America, were wanted, and willingly acquired by the agency of individual users elsewhere. In a few cases, however, the inventions had to be adapted, or were overstepped, and even delayed. Some were adopted as social markers or status symbols only by elites who could afford them. Processes of adoption and diffusion therefore differed according to cultural settings, preferences, and needs. Social and cultural historians, and social scientists, not only of the Middle East, will find in this collection of essays a new approach to the impact of Western technological inventions on the Middle East.

Egyptian Jewry

Egyptian Jewry PDF Author: Victor D. Sanua
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description


Cairo

Cairo PDF Author: Claire E. Francy
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789774246654
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
The guide described by the New York Times as "indispensable", revised and updated for 2002, fills a vital niche for expatriates and Cairenes alike who need a helping hand to organize -- and enjoy -- the challenges of a sojourn in Cairo. The basics of daily life -- finding a flat, transporting personal goods, investigating school options for children, navigating Egypt's famous bureaucracy, and the intricacies of feeding and clothing oneself and one's family from the local market -- are all detailed here. Advice gathered from a wide range of Cairo insiders, both native and foreign, gives the reader a cornucopia of current facts on prices, neighborhoods, product availability, work and business opportunities, and the dizzying range of cultural and leisure pursuits that Cairo is famous for. The format of this edition addresses the needs of independently minded tourists as well as residents by the inclusion of: an A to Z directory of goods, services, and interests subdivided by neighborhood; a section on Cairene Arabic; and details on shopping and sight-seeing from a resident's perspective. Cairo: The Practical Guide is the key to deciphering the complexities of living, working, and enjoying life in one of the world's most exciting and dauntingly complex mega-cities.