Managing Egypt’s Poor and the Politics of Benevolence, 1800-1952

Abstract

In Egypt and elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire, the social safety net representedby the extended family branched off in many directions. By Mamluktimes, it encompassed the patronage of wealthy and noble families who distributedfood to the poor on religious festivals and during times of hardship,and who sponsored the construction of bridges, waterworks, and publicfountains. In addition, mosques sometimes housed schools, soup kitchens,and hospitals; merchants regularly fed beggars; Sufi lodges housed travelers;and waqf endowments sponsored various religious and charitable activities.Ruling dynasties, including their women, created funds that sponsoredorphans’ homes, paid the dowries of poor women, and provided pensions forthe widows and children of soldiers killed in battle.As Ener shows in her valuable and carefully researched book, the valuesof ihsan (generosity) and sadaqah (almsgiving) have been applied accordingto ideas about charity’s legitimate beneficiaries (e.g., clerics, the poor,orphans, and women without family support). Ener traces the fortunes of thepoor, the changing constellation of institutions available for their relief, andthe transformation in Egyptian understanding of those entitled to such care.By the middle of the nineteenth century, the traditional “mixed economy”of relief (p. 9), which incorporated countless donors and institutions,operated alongside a more centralized set of interests and practices intendedto control poor people’s movement and activities. Such practices had notbeen common previously (p. 15) and appear to have been unique in theMiddle East (p. 29). Authorities began to distinguish between the deservingand the undesirable poor and sought to prevent able-bodied men fromencroaching on urban space as beggars or “fake” mendicants and from usingpublicly available forms of assistance. In nineteenth-century Cairo andAlexandria, such men and peasants “absconding” from the countrysidewere often arrested, sent back to their home regions, and pressed into involuntaryagricultural, industrial, or military service. The growing modern statewas increasingly interested in controlling crime, immigration, and the flowof disease through internationalized urban spaces ...