Adam Mestyan's Arab Patriotism is an ambitious project on the Ottoman province of Egypt (known as the khedivate from ca. 1867 onward) in the nineteenth century. The author successfully investigates the history of Egypt (ca. 1800s–1890s) via the lens of Arabic language theater and examines performance culture as a vibrant expression of political thought and activism in this transformative period. The primary goal of the book is to formulate a revisionist narrative for nation-ness and patriotism (wataniyya), within the context of the empire (Ottoman Empire), by examining the role and contribution of theater production(s) in shaping patriotism. The focus is mainly on the sociopolitical and cultural dynamics unfolding in Cairo rather than Istanbul or the Arab provinces. The narrative traces the Ottoman influence on the sociopolitical, religious, and cultural contexts to investigate how Arab patriotism was formed in khedival Egypt. The author introduces a new understanding of the concept of patriotism, one that replaces “nationalism” as well as religion. He presents performance as an aspect of patriotism, which was staged as public acts in the urban, intellectual milieu of Ottoman Egypt. Tackling the concept of “Arab patriotism” as a historiographical problem, Mestyan examines the nineteenth-century history of the province as the converging point of two traditions: Egyptian nation-state and “Arabism,” contextualizing both concepts from the vantage point of the Egyptian khedivate in connection with the Ottoman Empire.Emphasizing historiographical distinctions in terminology, such as the differences between territorial nationalism (wataniyya) and pan-Arab nationalism (qawmiyya), the author also revisits the problem of translation from Arabic source material. He argues that Arab-ness (as a moral principle) and Arabic (as the linguistic component) served as connecting nodes between different groups of ruling elites in Ottoman Egypt, which utilized the discourse of patriotism to achieve political goals. Mestyan frames the Arab and Ottoman intellectual elites and their ideological products of Ottomanism, Arab-ness, patriotism, dynastic loyalty, and Islam, arguing that the end product was Arab patriotism in the khedivate. In the book's introduction, Mestyan underscores how patriotism, in the khedival context, had become a communal experience as members of the “citizen audience” participated in entertainment while at the same time receiving ideological inculcation. Mestyan provides careful source analysis and interpretation throughout the book, demonstrating that competing understandings of patriotism, along with experimentation with patriotism using the participation of “citizen audiences,” contributed to the formation of nineteenth-century political culture in khedivate Egypt. This ultimately paved the way for the emergence of Arab nationalisms in the twentieth century.What were the Ottoman origins and cultural sources of Arab nationalisms? In seeking answers to this controversial question, Mestyan is also self-critical, explaining that his book provides a narrative that can be described as “Cairo-based” and that it is a “history of educated groups” (304). In that sense I see a similar approach shared with Selim Deringil's book, The Well Protected Domains: Ideology and Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire, 1876–1909. Mestyan's book investigates the history of the province, Ottoman Egypt, with the added emphasis on “Ottoman” but in its own right nevertheless, and not as a necessary prelude to the formation of a “sovereign nation-state” (1). In parallel, Deringil argues in The Well-Protected Domains that his goal was to strip the nineteenth-century Ottoman “Empire” from blinding ideological stereotypes propagated by “Kemalist denigrators,” “the Turkish Right,” and “Western perpetrators of the image of the ‘Terrible Turk’” to instead examine the “Empire” divorced from the various misleading mythologies. Deringil's goal was to investigate how the self-legitimation policies of the Ottoman sultan and elite networks in Istanbul worked to achieve the desired image abroad through an examination of Ottoman Turkish archival materials found in the Prime Minister's Archives at the Yildiz collection in Istanbul.1Mestyan's work also focuses on an examination of elites, but with Cairo and Arabic sources at the center. He investigates the performances and discourses, visual and textual, tracing “the ways in which ideas, practices, and power struggles were enacted and constituted through these networks and imperial hierarchies” (1). Mestyan does not dwell on official legitimation policies and ceremonials originating from Cairo; instead he focuses on viable symbolisms of power and shows how the khedives and their networks envisioned, enabled, and manipulated “new public practices, institutions, and technologies”—with the emphasis on public practices and institutions—toward the development of a new ideology, one of patriotism, that legitimized power for the ruling elites. Thus, Mestyan decodes the various articulations of patriotism as novel phenomena, which blossomed with the emergence of performance culture in the nineteenth-century “Ottoman” Arab world.I agree that Mestyan's narrative is “Cairo-based” and that his story deals mainly with the “history of educated groups.” Mestyan does not deal with the ways in which the khedivate and its sociopolitical transformation were perceived by the Ottoman ruling and religious elites, as well as the intellectuals and literati, in the empire's center, Istanbul. In particular, Mestyan does not engage with the literature that was written and published in Istanbul. Another intriguing element that would add to Mestyan's narrative would be to examine the political backstories of the literati, dignitaries, and envoys from the other Arab provinces (vilayets), for instance, the elites from the Hijaz and the Greater Syrian provinces, which included Damascus, Aleppo, and Beirut from 1888 onward. For example, ʿAbdulhamid II appointed two figures who became influential voices: ʿAbd al-Huda al-Sayyidi from Aleppo, who became the Shaykh al-meshayih (in charge of professional guild and trade organizations at the time), and Ahmad Asʿad, born in Anatolia, who served as his special envoy to the ʿUrabi supporters in 1881–82. These authors presented their visions—in books, articles, correspondence, treatises, and so on—supporting the role of the Ottoman Sultan as the caliph of Islam and taking critical positions vis-à-vis notions of “Arab caliphate” that were vibrant in the late 1880s.2 In his conclusion, Mestyan acknowledges that much work remains to be done on how regional patriotic experiences were formed in the urban centers of the empire's Arab provinces, such as the cities in Syria and Iraq (305), which lacked the “khedival mediation.”Looking back again at how the “Ottoman” aspect of the book is presented, a few questions come to mind. Did Ottoman Turkish publications in Egypt contribute to the formation of a “Turcophone” culture during the first half of the century? Did these publications (and/or translations between Ottoman and Arabic) influence cultural affiliations or tastes of the khedival elites? Did Ottoman Turkish journals published during ʿAbdulhamid's rule in Istanbul reflect on the cultural events in Cairo and their political subtexts? Politics and elite patronage of literature and arts were intricately intertwined during ʿAbdulhamid's rule.Perhaps a comparative analysis (Istanbul and Cairo) of performance arts may have helped better contextualize the cultural/political dynamics unfolding in Cairo under the rule of the khedive. Did Ottoman, Cairene, or other Muslim/Arab, and non-Muslim/Western intellectuals, artists, and their networks converge in Istanbul, observing and interacting with performances and people in Cairo? Arab Patriotism focuses on the Cairene networks in elaborate and fascinating detail (see, for instance, sections on Draneht Bey, 97–111) to establish how these networks of individuals functioned in Cairo serving the khedivate as well as conducting business. Their work and impact in Cairo's vibrant urban performance scene is explained in the section, “Cultural Transfer from Istanbul, Paris, and Alexandria” (90–92).Here Mestyan portrays the careers and accomplishments of individuals such as Seraphin Manasse (d. 1888), the Ottoman Armenian impresario arriving from Istanbul who later became the first director of the French theater in Cairo. He also provides an in-depth biography of the famed Paul Draneht Bey (97–111) and includes important information on others such as Julius Franz (d. 1915) (the khedive's private German architect, 90), Mattatias Nahman (a Greek Jewish merchant, 91), and Pietro Avoscani (the Italian architect from Alexandria, 94) just to name a few, in an effort to build a global micro-history of Cairo. This analysis makes perfect sense. However, when mapping individuals who navigated politics, patronage, and arts—for example, performance, architecture—in this transformational period, Mestyan still leaves the “Istanbul connection” open-ended.When discussing the construction of an opera house in Cairo from a letter dated 1869 (in the section “Opera in Cairo as Global Power,” 92), Mestyan notes that “no direct link could be established between Ismail's decision in Cairo and the developments in the Ottoman imperial capital,” but he says that it had seemed that an “aesthetic competition had been taking place next to the political one as the world had prepared for the opening ceremonies of the Suez Canal,” adding also that the “opera craze” had established global cultural hubs in the Ottoman Eastern Mediterranean (92). The reader is left wondering what the “aesthetic competition” between Istanbul and Cairo entailed, and what the “aesthetic competition next to the political one” means in the context of “opera in Cairo as global power” (92). If we have a cultural transfer between Istanbul, Paris, and Alexandria that converges in Cairo, what is the nature and function of it with respect to “Arab patriotism”? How can we better understand “global power” playing out in nineteenth-century Egypt? Individuals such as Manasse and Paul Draneht Bey were proficient and able players and agents in the “khedival game of political aesthetics” (93), but since they “were not Arabic-speaking modern Egyptians and did not want to become ones” (119), they only indirectly contributed to the idea of patriotism that would be welcome to Egyptians. In other words, perhaps the “aesthetic competition” that Mestyan is describing may be understood as a competition of visions between “European” and “Ottoman but non-Muslim” providers of performance, on the one hand, and their Muslim/Egyptian/Arabic-speaking audiences in the khedivate, on the other. Some contributors formulated an official ideology of patriotism, outside of the “empire,” that was instead based on a common cultural “identity,” as Arabic-speaking patriotic Egyptians.Mestyan's choice to focus on the educated elites is legitimate, and this book does it considerable justice. It deserves serious praise for the scope of its Arabic primary source materials. However, Mestyan's in-depth research into an eclectic array of Arabic sources and periodicals, as well as his honest effort to provide a novel conceptualization of difficult terminology, such as “patriotism” and “nation-ness,” leaves the investigation of the empire from the inside wanting because of the limited scope and use of Ottoman Turkish literature and Ottoman periodicals/printing press publications. If Mestyan's quest was to examine the sociopolitical origins and impact of culture and arts that turned the independent province of the eighteenth century into a “re-Ottomanized” one, that is into the “khedivate” in the nineteenth, one of the major tasks was to understand what being or becoming Ottoman and Ottomanized meant for the different communities of Ottomans in the empire, capital, and provinces in the century under investigation. If “Arabness had an earlier, non-colonial Ottoman mode,” as Mestyan aptly notes, and if “revivalism and invented traditions were deployed to negotiate compromises within the various Ottoman subsystems” (7), then the reader will look for various aspects of the “Ottoman side” of this story, especially among the “educated groups” that would provide the broader Ottoman cultural, social, and political framework, within which to situate the investigation on the Egyptian/Arabic side.The book is organized in three thematic sections. In the first part, “The Making of the Khedivate,” Mestyan examines how power was negotiated between the local elites and the members of the hereditary khedivate beginning with the rule of Mehmed Ali, his successor Ismail, and Ismail's mother Hoshyar's role. There are three chapters in this section. In the first chapter, “The Ottoman Origins of Arab Patriotism,” the author makes the case that Mehmed Ali's actions “awakened” the Arabs to the idea of autonomous power. He argues that Mehmed Ali became an elite Ottoman, albeit in the position of a governor and subordinate to the power of the sultan, and that he used local power dynamics for political survival. There is an omission in this chapter's discussion: the author situates his own research as a continuation of Toledano and Fahmy's works (p. 6 of the introduction) but does not fully address İhsanoǧlu's The Turks in Egypt, other than to refer to it in the introduction as a useful publication (6 fn. 18).3 Yet in chapter 1 Mestyan returns to İhsanoǧlu, stating that his goal has been to “deromanticize” the picture İhsanoǧlu painted in The Turks in Egypt.4 However, without a full discussion of how İhsanoǧlu romanticizes Egypt, the reader is left in the dark about the discursive framework Mestyan is building for his own argument.Mestyan accurately points out that there remains much work to be done “tracing Ottoman Turkish-Arabic translations, both cultural works and legal documents; studying payments by Istanbul to local ‘ulama and reopening the study of military connections” (48). However, some of the missing work that Mestyan mentions has already been done by Ihsanoglu, in addition to İhsanoǧlu's expansive bibliographic research in The Turks in Egypt.5 While some of İhsanoǧlu's ideas and arguments have already been pointed out as erroneous (such as Ihsanoǧlu's claim of a “lack of Turco-Egyptian antagonism in the army and the civil service”),6 İhsanoǧlu's research is a useful starting point for locating Ottoman Turkish works that could bolster a case for the development of Egyptian patriotism during the rule of Mehmed Ali and that of his successors; trace the nexus of imperial and local patriotisms; reassess the “re-Ottomanization of Egypt” in the mid-nineteenth century in light of Ottoman Turkish literature published in Cairo; and trace the evolution of the khedivate during the time of Mehmed Ali's successors from different and multilingual narrative source perspectives.In chapter 2 the author puts the post–Mehmed Ali khedivate under the magnifying glass focusing on Mehmed Ali's grandson and successor, Ismail. Expanding the scope of Ottomanization/localization theory of Toledano, Mestyan examines Ismail's political strategy of “being an Ottoman” in the 1860s, extending the analysis on the success of Ottoman sovereignty in Egypt. He says that political stability was mutually dependent on both the empire and the khedivate. Mestyan outlines Ismail's childhood and traces his possible familial connections to Sultan ʿAbdulaziz (the two were said to be cousins, 54). Mestyan also examines the network of Ismail's extended zevat (the Ottoman Turkish-speaking elite), members of which independently set their sights on power. In doing so, Mestyan establishes how Mehmed Ali's household was accepted as part of the Ottoman order but nevertheless walked a fine line to maintain its position. In the remainder of the chapter, the author builds the argument for Ismail's exposure to court music, Italian operas, French comedies, and so on, in the Ottoman capital during the rule of Sultan ʿAbdulmecid. It would have been interesting to have more information, or documentation, on these performances and how they were received by the audiences in Istanbul, as the author argues that “the European cultural infrastructure in khedival Cairo paradoxically originated, in part, from Abdulmecidian Istanbul” (55). How was “Abdulmecidian Istanbul” unique, or not, in its acceptance of “alafiranga” performance arts and music to such an extent that it would later set an example for Ismail?In the latter part of the chapter, the author establishes how the khedivate was formed: the codification of Egypt as a special Ottoman provincial regime (1866–67), the establishment of the new dynastic order of primogeniture (1866), and the codification of the khedivate (1867). Focusing on the improvement of Ismail's military, the author explains how the khedive's military successes were framed by the public contributions of administrative elites, local notables, members of the religious hierarchy, and merchants as launching a new age in Egypt—one that, with Ismail at the helm, portrayed Egypt as a homeland and khedival power. In reviewing the extant literature produced in the 1850s and 1860s, Mestyan shows that the idea of homeland became the representation of an elite political community.The establishment of the Consultative Chamber of Delegates in 1866 further connected the governor with the local elite communities to share power, making patriotism the ideology of the khedivate. The introduction of “Muslim patriotism” in the latter part of the chapter explains how Islam and the idea of the homeland became compatible on the imperial and provincial levels—a theme that is further expanded on in the second part of the book. In the section on Arabic music and the khedivate, the author presents the ways in which Ottoman language and music and colloquial Arabic songs and performances became part of the official culture of the khedivate. The importance of Ismail's mother, Hoshyar, and the relations of the khedival family to Sultan ʿAbdulaziz (58–61)—depicted in ʿAbdulaziz's visit to Egypt in 1863—provide an illuminating window into how women were an integral part of politics. For instance, Hoshyar not only exerted personal power in managing a number of situations that could have generated negative public opinion (59–61), but she, as a savvy power broker behind the scenes, was also influential in the Ottoman legitimization of her son's status.The “Ottomanization of Abdul al-Hamuli” provides a fascinating narrative about a superbly talented career musician/performer who emerged from the inner circles of the Khedive Ismail and who traveled to the Ottoman court of Sultan Abdulaziz (r. 1861–76). Paving the way for al-Hamuli's “Ottomanization” (79) was the indisputable influence of Ottoman Turkish language, taste in performance arts, and music on Egyptian performers. As a frequent traveler to Istanbul, al-Hamuli was greatly influenced by Ottoman music. This reader was left wondering how al-Hamuli's acculturation into the Ottoman world via the influence of “Ottoman” music took place. How did “acculturation” occur apart from the change in al-Hamuli's attire and his translation of Turkish songs into Arabic and Egyptian musical modalities (79)? What does being “Ottomanized” mean in this context, especially since al-Hamuli did not have to travel to Istanbul to learn about music, as Cairo had Ottoman musicians at the time (79)? Perhaps al-Hamuli was not “Ottomanized” after all, but instead adopted certain aspects of Ottoman culture and music to satisfy the expectations of his khedival patrons and benefactors. Mestyan relates that al-Hamuli later sang for ʿAbdulhamid II in 1894, and instead of the performer studying Ottoman music, the sultan had his musicians learn the Egyptian tunes. This section also proposes the idea that “being Ottoman” was “the everyday, private culture of Ismail” and that there was a disconnect between “the high Ottoman language and music on the one hand, and the colloquial Arabic songs and mimetic entertainment on the other” (81). Mestyan returns to this theme later in the book. In this chapter, Mestyan might have provided more analysis about what “being Ottoman” entailed, and what it meant, given that it defined “the everyday, private culture” of the khedive.In the final chapter of part 1 (chapter 3), Mestyan makes a well-argued case for the significance of the images of Ismail as a sovereign ruler that were created with Western European aesthetics. In doing so, the reader is given a microhistory of Cairo and its urban transformation, with a focus on how new public entertainment spaces reflected a new type of political aesthetics, for example, the Khedieval Opera House or the public garden in al-Azbakiyya, among other locations. The section on Draneth Bey's life and career, as the expert who made the system of khedival theaters function, is informative as well as intriguing. In this section one can observe and appreciate the depth of Mestyan's research. He constructs a reliable biography of Draneth Bey as a cultural agent and loyal enforcer of the khedivate's cultural renaissance, while also documenting the extensive network that Bey relied on for his success. In the section titled “The Power of Symbols and Aida As A Khedival Opera,” the author examines the new style of symbolic rule and the opera Aida—which rendered Ismail's “image as the representation of what Egypt would be” (111) alongside that of the Khedival Opera House. The conclusion to this chapter depicts the contradictions between the concept of Muslim patriotism and European political aesthetics. It reiterates that Muslim patriotism located Ismail in the old world order with its Arabic, Turkish, and Persian vocabulary but also behind the Ottoman sultan and the caliph. At the same time, Mestyan also summarized how European political aesthetics provided a relative “independence” from established norms of Ottoman sovereignty. It did so by fabricating an “imported type civilization” that defined patriotism. That lens puts the emphasis on dynastic sovereignty with a Western/Europe-oriented that pushed back on local, Islamic, and Egyptian notions of patriotism.The second part of Arab Patriotism, “A Garden with Mellow Fruits of Refinement,” has two chapters. This part tackles the nature and purpose of the khedivate between the 1860s and 1890s. It also explains how imported European political aesthetics were reconciled with Muslim patriotism. Here Mestyan introduces the idea of “Arabness” as a third, and viable, solution to the dilemma of what type of regime the new khedivate had been. The particulars of this dilemma, as discussed in previous chapters, detailed the dynamics of the old Ottoman order and its competition, European aesthetical representations, as possible solutions to an idea of patriotism, a complex ideology that would find acceptance in Egypt. The discussion here is about how the Muslim intellectuals used the literary Arabic and ethical connotations of being an Arab as a connection between the Ottomans and the local populations. Mestyan makes the case that these intellectuals were committed to the new spaces and technologies that would come to define modernity. Here the importance of Arabic theater and press are emphasized since they serve as powerful instruments of public education.The first chapter of this part, “A Gentle Revolution” (chapter 4), introduces intellectual production of this period, with a focus on the Arabic language and the retelling of Egypt's history as an Arab narrative, with the key term “homeland” as a political argument. Covering an array of literary production between the 1860s and the 1870s, especially the activities of ʿAbd Allah Abu al-Suud and Muhammad ʿUnsi (d. 1885/1886) depict how the printing press and the journal Wadi al-Nil gave direction to the creation of patriotism—one that was closely linked to the official use of Arabic in the administration in 1870 thanks to the khedive's initiative. The next sections detail how fusha Arabic became the leading medium in teaching and production of knowledge in a number of government institutions and schools. The discussion also aptly includes Italian, Greek, and French private journals and presses alongside a detailed table on the publications of the Wadi al-Nil Printing Press between 1867 and 1878. In the section, “The Muslim Press and Arabness in Egypt, 1866–1873” Mestyan investigates the successful Wadi al-Nil enterprise, the first private Egyptian Arabic periodical, which contributed to patriotism primarily by presenting government news in fusha Arabic. Branching out from the Wadi al-Nil enterprise, the author next focuses on a government production Rawdat al-Madaris al-Misriyya, whose audience consisted of teachers and students. This publication had a wide range of authors and topics, fostering a sense of cultural revival. This intellectual revolution built patriotic culture and was spearheaded by empowered bureaucrats who showcased their service to the khedivate. In the final chapter of this part (chapter 5), “Constitutionalism and Revolution: The Arab Opera,” Mestyan examines the historical events that provided the backdrop for the intersection between patriotism and theater. This chapter sheds important light on how the Ottoman Empire became relevant for intellectuals. Metsyan's analysis of select plays, opera productions, and “Jahiliyya”-period verse literature presents strong evidence for the Arabization of public staged productions and a shift in the vision, or visions, of what the khedivate meant to its diverse communities.The third and final part of the book has three chapters. In chapter 6, “The Reinvention of the Khedivate,” Mestyan investigates the position of the khedival regime and its relationship to local elites after the British occupation. He argues that patriotism functions in the restoration and subsequent reinvention of the khedivate between the 1880s and 1900s. The final chapters examine the relationship between law and the public space through the theaters in Egypt, shedding light on the formation of the culture of Arab patriotism. In the late 1880s, the role of Qardahi, the Syrian Christian impresario, alongside Salama Hijazi, furthered the Arabization of performance arts. With the focus shifting to these two important figures and public performances that they promoted, sponsored, and took part in, Mestyan explores how patriotic imagination, and the duo's interpretations of patriotism, aligned with the khedival conception of it, while at the same time depicting the diverse cultural networks that thrived in Egypt's urban landscape. This chapter does a good job tracing the trajectory of the khedive's image in history, and in stage productions, which flourished during the Qardahi-Hijazi period. It also advances the argument that events transpiring in the post-1882 period did not necessarily change, or manage, a consensus regarding ʿUrabi's controversial status and reception among different groups. In the decades after 1880, civic patriotism and Arab solidarity flourished with the overlap of performance arts audiences and “imagined communities” of a nation with the goal of gaining independence from the British.The transformation of theaters into state institutions, under the control of the Committee of Khedival Theatres (supervisor of the Opera House, the Comedie, and the Azbakiyya Garden Theatre between 1881 and 1900), is the subject of chapter 7. The Committee had control over finances and could thus exert immense power over the Opera House and the performances designed for the entertainment of Ottoman Egyptian ruling and colonial elites. Mestyan's microhistory of the Committee, its members, and their decision-making choices and priorities provides valuable information on the multifaceted overlap between the clashing orbits of authority and hierarchies of power of the khedive at a time of cosmopolitan renaissance pitting the “European” and “Arabic speaking elite” cultures against one another. In the latter part of the chapter the discussion turns to the legal framework of government and private theaters before and after the British occupation to explain how public activities in public spaces were regulated and policed. An overview of the laws about private theaters and plays depicts increasing levels of government control and censorship.The final chapter of the book (chapter 8) is about the patriotic and colonial elites, with a discussion of public codes of elite honor and how these elites related, or not, to the khedivial authority. Mestyan examines the final phase of Arab patriotism in Ottoman Egypt with a focus on Abbas Hilmi and Mustafa Kamil's biographies, arguing that their foray into politics marks the end of patriotism and the beginning of an era of anticolonial nationalism. Here the young khedive Abbas Hilmi (r. 1892–1914) is introduced as a source of imagined Ottoman-Egyptian sovereignty standing against the British in the 1890s. Mestyan suggests that Ottomanism and khedival authority were sometimes “identical” in this period. He defines the “audiences of patriotism,” arguing that the participants belonged to the upper strata of Egyptian society, members of which socialized with colonial elites and followed distinctive cultural markers.This chapter also highlights the florescence of Arabic theater productions that challenged public norms and textual standards. In defining the patriotic elite in urban Ottoman Egypt, the author relies on Bourdieu's theory of distinction and capital in outlining an elite audience. He adapts this model to the sociocultural and economic dynamic seen in Egypt. Solidarity and markers of culture establish a set of norms linked with the idea of a homeland. Mestyan's assessment that while patriotic collectivity was configured as a nation for all, in reality, it had been confined to the possession of a select few who shared these norms strikes me as appropriate. After all, throughout the book, we consistently observe that the theater productions staged in cultural arenas represent carefully selected artful pieces of a larger puzzle in the making, which depict changing perceptions of patriotism as envisioned by different groups of “patriotic elites.”In the section “Arabizing the Khedive 2.0: Mustafa Kamil and the Patriotic Imagination,” Mestyan deals with the early relationship between Kamil and Abbas Hilmi II in the 1880s, with the argument that the khedive once again served as an Ottoman representative. The connection between Kamil and Hilmi is picked up again in “The Student and the Prince,” as Kamil imagined Hilmi as “an Arab prince”—not delegated by the Ottoman Sultan to rule Egypt, but instead as a figure who gained popular support to represent the sultan. In the following discussion, Mestyan investigates how Mustafa Kamil (d. 1908), who as a young politician had formed a romanticized image for the khedive, eventually ended his relationship with Hilmi, as patriotism in late Ottoman Egypt transformed into mass Egyptian nationalism in search of independence from the British. The initial phase of this journey toward the conceptualization of a sovereign nation was presented early on in Kamil's career in a play titled “The Conquest of Andalusia.” As an Ottoman Arab patriot, Kamil allegorized and moralized the story set in eighth-century Hispania to tell the actual story, or his version, of reimagined patriotism in late Ottoman Egypt. Kamil's story foreshadows the idea of a sovereign state with him emerging as an Ottoman, anti-British Egyptian nationalist author, but this time far removed from being a supporter of the khedivate.In the conclusion, Mestyan outlines the main themes and ideas such as the analysis of patriotism as an urban and learned ideology and practice; private and government sponsorship of new public spaces and performance venues; and, rethinking and reconceptualizing the Ottoman background of Arab nation-states. But more important, Mestyan finishes by examining potential avenues for future research on secularist Arab nationalisms in the twentieth century.