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Al-Ahram Weekly 10 - 16 February 2000 Issue No. 468 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 10 - 16 February 2000 Issue No. 468
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Masters of the Trade: Crafts and Craftspeople in Cairo, Pascale Ghazaleh,1750-1850, Cairo Papers in Social Science Volume 22, Number 3, Fall 1999. pp157
Monthly supplement
Light on the underground
A quoi rêvent les loups (What Wolves Dream Of), Yasmina Khadra, Paris: Julliard 1999. pp274Into the abyss
Yasmina Khadra
All in the detail
Masters of the Trade: Crafts and Craftspeople in Cairo, Pascale Ghazaleh,1750-1850, Cairo Papers in Social Science Volume 22, Number 3, Fall 1999. pp157A serious spinster
Passionate Nomad, Jane Fletcher Geneisse, London: Chatto and Windus, 1999. pp402Written by camera
Ayam Al-Dimoqratiya: Al-Nisa' Al-Misriyat wa Homoum Al-Watan (Days of Democracy: Egyptian Women and National Elections), Ateyyat El-Abnoudy, Cairo: Kassem Press, 1999. pp197Bizarre, perhaps
The Bazaar, Markets and Merchants of the Islamic World, Text by Walter M. Weiss and photographs by Kurt-Michael Westermann, London: Thames & Hudson, 1999. pp256All about Egypt
Egypt: Nile, Desert, and People, Wolfgang and Rosel Jahn, Trans. by Manuela Kunkel and Ian Portman. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press 1999. pp191 + 300 colour illustrationsThrough the mask of Yasmine
Layali Okhra (Other Nights), Mohamed El-Bisatie, Beirut: Al-Aadab Publishing House, 2000. pp180Photohgraphs of Egypt and the Holy land, Francis Frith, Zeitouna Publishing, 1999 --see caption--
To the editor
At a glance
A shorthand guide to the month compiled by Mahmoud El-Wardani* Hikmet Al-Missriyeen (The Wisdom of Egyptians), introduced and edited by Mohamed El-Sayed Said, Cairo: The Cairo Centre for Human Rights, 1999. pp273
* Ashr Sanawat maa Farouq (Ten Years with Farouq), Karim Thabit, Cairo: Al-Shorouq, 2000. pp472 (Adel Hammouda and Me), Ahmed Fouad Negm, Cairo: Zeinab Publishing House, 2000. pp108
* Mirayat Al-Dhat Al-Okhra (Mirror of the Other Self), Sabri Hafiz, Cairo: General Organisation for Cultural Palaces, Aswat Adabiya Series, 1999. pp365
* Moqarabat Al-Abad (Nearing Eternity), Gamal El-Ghitani, Cairo: Nahdit Misr Publications, 2000. pp96
* Al-Kotob: Wighat Nazar (Books: Viewpoints), monthly magazine, issue no. 13, February 2000 Cairo: The Egyptian Company for Arab and International Publication
* Al-Fonoun Al-Sha'biya (The Folk Arts), a specialised periodical, issue no.58-9, Cairo: General Egyptian Book Organisation
* Al-Osour Al-Jadida (New Eras), monthly magazine, issue no. 5, February 2000, Cairo: Sinai Publishing House
* Nizwa, quarterly magazine, issue no.11, Oman: The Oman Institution for Journalism, Publication and Mass Communication
* Al-Hilal, monthly magazine, issue no. 2, February 2000, Cairo: Al-Hilal Publishing House
Books is a monthly supplement of Al-Ahram Weekly appearing every second Thursday of the month. We welcome contributions and letters on subjects raised in this supplement. Material may be edited for length and clarity; and should be addressed to Mona Anis, Books Editor, Al-Ahram Weekly, Galaa St., Cairo, Arab Republic of Egypt; Faz: +202 578 6089; E-mail: m.anis@ahram.org.eg
For advertising call +202-5780233; Fax +202 394 1866To see other book supplements go to the ARCHIVES index.
Illustrations courtesy of International Commitee of the Red Cross
"Folk drawings and tales", Cairo, 1996
All in the detail
Reviewed by Amina Elbendary
Perhaps no period of Egyptian history had aroused as much interest and scholarship as has the 19th century. Seen as the period of modernisation, that century's history usually begins with accounts of the French expedition of 1798-1801. Egypt's ruler from 1805-1848, Mohamed Ali Pasha, is the focal figure of such narratives and is often presented as the father of modern Egypt. Such narratives implicitly and explicitly assume a sharp break between the modern, progressive, and advanced 19th century with its centralised modern state system and the traditional, backward, and underdeveloped Ottoman period with its decentralised Ottoman state. Alternatively, other writings praise the pre-modern Ottoman period and denounce Mohamed Ali for quelling the indigenous roots of development. In her new book Masters of the Trade: Crafts and Craftspeople in Cairo, 1750-1850, Pascale Ghazaleh tries to break away from the established frameworks of inquiry into this long century. She has chosen to begin her research on craft guilds, as her title indicates, in the Ottoman period, thereby avoiding the traditional trap of taking 1798 or 1805 as a watershed.
Craft guilds are often interpreted as medieval structures of labour organisation. Scholars working within a Eurocentric framework view them as an impediment to capitalist development and argue that it was only with the abolishment of guilds that capitalism developed in the West. The overriding concern of historians writing about 19th-century Egypt then is: What went wrong? Why did Egypt not advance and develop as well as did other countries? Therefore, inquiry into the structure, organisation, and eventual dissolution of craft guilds in Egypt is vital.
In studying the guilds, Ghazaleh uses what Fernand Braudel has termed the "longue durée", or the history of the long term. Hence she emphasises transformations rather than events, and processes rather than functions. She sees the guild as a constant process of constitution and reconstitution. The author follows the subtle and not-so-subtle ways in which workers -- crafts"people" -- influenced their history. As such, she empowers them as historical subjects. They do not come out as simply the objects upon which the decrees, laws, programmes and aspirations of the ruling classes were carried out. We see how they resented, resisted, adapted and manipulated the processes of modernisation and centralisation, how their actions shaped the outcome of events. This is relatively new for Egyptian historiography. It disputes and problematises dominant paradigms, such as that of the "Oriental Despot", which simplistically present an over-bearing absolutist despot ruling over a passive subject population.
Indigenous state archival documents have provided a mine of information for researchers, allowing them to write histories based on actual historical details rather than on assumptions and impressions. However, many historians have projected halos of sanctity onto these documents and have tended to take them at their face value. Pascale Ghazaleh, however, has been careful not to fall into that trap. She has consciously questioned her sources, what their presence or absence signifies, and what narratives they construct. For the Ottoman period many court records survive, providing information on the everyday lives of people. Many cases involve guild members' decisions and their disputes. In contrast, most of the extant documents from the 19th century are ones emanating from the state, often in the form of orders and decrees. The difference in the logic between both sorts of documents is noted.
The book is also largely a critique of existing secondary sources and writings on craft guilds in modern Egyptian history. Unfortunately, however, the author has given more attention to critiquing the works of Western historians -- such as André Raymond and Gabriel Baer -- than to Egyptian or Arab ones. It would have been interesting to compare the two to see whether nationalist historiography echoes Orientalist discourse to any degree.
Ghazaleh argues that throughout the 19th century, while the state was centralising, it worked simultaneously to strengthen guild sheikhs and to incorporate them into the state structure, only to eventually supplant them in dealing with craftspeople. By the 19th century, even though the guilds still enjoyed a degree of autonomy, the state sometimes removed the sheikhs and replaced them by government officials. However, guild members and sheikhs were not passive towards these developments: some they resisted, and some they actively sought to promote their own causes and to gain benefits from the state.
One interesting type of document used here is the hujaj al-mashyakha or investiture documents which recorded guild members' choice of their sheikh. The leadership was often strongly contested and subjected to bargaining and heavy politicking. Court records show that guild members often removed and replaced their sheikhs, even in the 19th century. This makes guild members active political actors. Ghazaleh cites the case of donkey-drivers who in 1832 petitioned the Majlis `aal, the highest government authority, to remove their new sheikh who had caused them harm and return their former sheikh to his position. The document fails to inform us what became of the petition. Yet it shows that whereas in the Ottoman period guild members had recourse to courts and judges to settle disputes and mediate conflicts, they now had to refer to state authorities to redress the situations the state itself had created by imposing a particular guild sheikh in the first place.
In an interesting chapter on the guilds' internal organisation, Ghazaleh analyses documents that pertain to members' acceptance into the guild. These reveal a stage of apprenticeship and codified professional education. It also denotes a form of quality control practiced by the guilds. Thus, in 1617, a certain barber-surgeon testified before a qadi (judge), with the sheikh of the guild of surgeons and a surgeon from Bulaq as his witnesses, that he would not perform circumcision on anyone before having been proved competent by a group of trustworthy experts. This barber-surgeon appears to have been an apprentice not yet qualified to practice. Such examples are evidence of a high degree of professionalism and quality control. They also demonstrate that the guild and its sheikh had a degree of authority in determining who was competent to practice a certain trade and who was not.
In the 19th century, however, the state increasingly became involved in approving the qualifications of craftsmen and allowing them to practice. Thus obtaining a license to work depended on factors beside the recommendation of experts. For example, pharmacists were granted permission to practice with the approval of the Medical Council (majlis al-tibb) and upon presentation of certificates of pharmacology from the Qasr Al-Aini medical school. In a parallel development, a new law issued in 1868 required construction workers to sit for an examination at the Ministry of Public Works in the presence of sheikhs of each of the construction guilds. Those who "passed" were given stamped documents from the ministry. Thus new qualifications were needed but in some cases, the traditional authorities, the guild sheikhs, were incorporated into the new system. In fact, the guild system itself was incorporated within the "modern" manufactories established by Mohamed Ali. Ghazaleh's case study of the manufactory at Al-Khurunfish reveals that the social organisation of labour within it was inspired by the guilds, though government officials now supervised and controlled production.
Masters of the Trade is Pascale Ghazaleh's first monograph and as such it is very ambitious. It starts with big questions such as what happened to the guilds? Yet ultimately, the overall picture that emerges of the 19th century is close to ones we have been treated to before. This was a century of deep systemic and structural change in Egypt, a century that witnessed the penetration of an overwhelmingly interventionist and centralising state. While Ghazaleh does not discover how exactly, when and why the guilds disappeared, her important contribution is, instead, in the details. By focusing on the working classes who are more often than not ignored by both Egyptian and Western historiography, she has upset many established paradigms. In the end, however, she leaves us with more questions -- albeit new questions -- than with answers.
