Historian Khaled Fahmy, who teaches at Cambridge and has studies the history of Mehmed Ali Pasha and his son Ibrahim, speaks to LiFo on the occasion of his participation in the “1821: The Known-Unknown Revolution” conference. This is an English translation of an interview with Vassili Siyouti which appeared in Lifo Magazine on 11 November 2021. A different conference on the Greek revolution of 1821 is being held these days (December 9-12) at the Law School and the Cultural Center of the Municipality of Athens. The aim of the organizers is to highlight the perspectives that have been enlightened by…
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Talk delivered on October 13, 2021 to the Islamic Art Circle of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). This talk tells the story of the külliyye (pious endowment complex) that Muhammad Ali Pasha (r. 1805-1848) built in his home town of Kavala in modern-day Greece over a period of thirteen years, 1808 -1821. It traces the story of this complex of interconnected buildings that includes a medrese (theological seminary), a sıbyan mekteb (primary school), a kütüphane (library), a dershane (lecture hall) which also served as a mosque, a Mühandeshane-i Hayriyye (Charitable College of Engineering), sixty rooms to house…
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Adam Sabra published the following review of In Quest of Justice in al-Ahram Weekly, issue 1437, 4-10 April 2019. Khaled Fahmy’s fascinating and important new book addresses fundamental questions about the nature of Egypt’s modernity. Tracing the origins of forensic medicine to the middle of the 19th century (1830-1880), Fahmy offers a revisionist account of the origins of the modern Egyptian state and its relationship to Islamic law. Critical of modernisation theories of both the right and left as well as of Islamist critiques of the legitimacy of Egypt’s path to modernity, Fahmy suggests that Egypt under the descendants of…
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Last semester, spring 2017, I taught a class at Harvard on Arabic paleography and archival skills. Each week, we’d read a couple of Arabic, hand-written archival documents that I had culled from the Egyptian National Archives. The documents were mostly from the 19th century, although some dated from the 16th and 17th centuries. I’d have the documents transcribed and the quaint and odd words explained in advance. On their part, the students were supposed to a. translate the document, and b. practice reading it at home and be prepared to read it in class from the original, hand-written text. The documents…
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Published in Ahram Online on August 25, 2013 Even in exceptional times, legitimate violence as embodied by the state — its army and police — is based on popular consent, which means oversight and asking questions. Without this, the state itself is at risk It is often said that Egypt saw the first centralised state in world history. That may be very well true. However, the modern Egyptian state cannot be said to be more than 200 years old. It has nothing to do with the Pharaohs or the Ptolemy. Two pivotal events contributed to the foundation of this modern…
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An interview with AUC on the subject of my new book, Bodies of Law: Science, Religion and State Formation in Modern Egypt
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Originally published in Al-Ahram Weekly, December 20, 2012. In 1805 Mohamed Ali, a young upstart who hailed from Kavala in what is now Greece, who spoke no Arabic and who had no prior links with the land, ended up as governor of Egypt on behalf of the Ottoman sultan. In the few years to follow, he struggled to establish his authority and to restore the productivity of a country ravaged by years of internecine warfare, devastating plagues and foreign invasion. Most seriously, he found himself embroiled in the quagmire of complex Mamluk politics with literally hundreds of Mamluk war lords,…
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Published in Ahram Online on November 21, 2012 Cultural and civilisational diversity of the Egyptian society inspired mega project like arabising medicine in the 19th century. But, unfortunately it did not motivate the members of the Constituent Assembly. A few days ago I met with some friends to read the draft constitution that the Constituent Assembly is about to finalise, the first copy of which was published in the press a few days ago. As soon as we started to closely read the text, we were shocked by the poor language, lack of vision, contradictory ideas and flawed logic in…
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Published in Ahram Weekly on November 12, 2012 As I go through the draft of the new Egyptian constitution, Article 11 strikes me as one of many curious articles in that supposedly foundational text: “The state protects the cultural, civilisational and linguistic unity of Egyptian society, and strives to Arabise science and knowledge.” Like others who have commented on the draft constitution, I have a problem with this article, but unlike others my problem is not that Arabising science might result in our doctors and engineers losing touch with the latest developments in medicine and engineering. Nor does my problem…
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