In the late nineteenth century, an active slave trade sustained social and economic networks across the Ottoman Empire and throughout Egypt, Sudan, the Caucasus, and Western Europe. Unlike the Atlantic trade, slavery in this region crossed and mixed racial and ethnic lines. Fair-skinned Circassian men and women were as vulnerable to enslavement in the Nile Valley as were teenagers from Sudan or Ethiopia. Tell This in My Memory opens up a new window in the study of slavery in the modern Middle East, taking up personal narratives of slaves and slave owners to shed light on the anxieties and intimacies of personal experience. The framework of racial identity constructed through these stories proves instrumental in explaining how countries later confronted—or not—the legacy of the slave trade. Today, these vocabularies of slavery live on for contemporary refugees whose forced migrations often replicate the journeys and stigmas faced by slaves in the nineteenth century.
Tell This in My Memory
Stories of Enslavement from Egypt, Sudan, and the Ottoman Empire
10 b/w illus., 3 maps
For sale only in the Middle East
A Topographical Study
Neil D. MacKenzie
A Topographical StudyNeil D. MacKenzie
This comprehensive study, first published by the AUC Press in 1992 examines the structure of the Ayyubid administration in Cairo and the associated military, religious, and commercial milieux. It goes on to survey in detail the changes in the general layout of Cairo–in defenses, governmental and private buildings, water resources, religious institutions and cemetery areas, and markets and commercial establishments. Click here to download the free PDF....read more
Free e-book208 pp.
A Muslim Manual of War
being Tafrij al-kurub fi tadbir al-hurub by ‘Umar ibn Ibrahim al-Awsi al-Ansari
Edited and translated by George T. Scanlon Foreword by Carole Hillenbrand
being Tafrij al-kurub fi tadbir al-hurub by ‘Umar ibn Ibrahim al-Awsi al-AnsariEdited and translated by George T. Scanlon
Foreword byCarole Hillenbrand
One of the first three books published by the AUC Press after its founding in 1960 was A Muslim Manual of War, an annotated editing and translation of a hitherto little-known fifteenth-century Arabic manuscript on the art of war, prepared by George Scanlon, then embarking on his career to become one of the most respected scholars in the field of Islamic art, architecture, archaeology, and history. Now, in celebration of 50 years of the AUC Press, and in honor of Professor Scanlon’s recent retirement after an illustrious career, most recently as professor of Islamic art and architecture in the Department of Arab and Islamic Civilizations at the American University in Cairo, the AUC Press is proud to make available once again this long out-of-print book, as a freely accessible scanned facsimile with a new Introduction by the author and a Foreword by eminent scholar Carole Hillenbrand, a former student of Professor Scanlon. Click here to download the free PDF....read more
Free e-book246 pp.
Dividing the Nile
Egypt’s Economic Nationalists in the Sudan 1918–56
David E. Mills
Egypt’s Economic Nationalists in the Sudan 1918–56David E. Mills
Most scholarship has attributed Sudanese independence in 1956 to British dominance of the Condominium, historical animosity toward Egypt, or the emergence of Sudanese nationalism. Dividing the Nile counters that Egyptian entrepreneurs failed to develop a united economy or shared economic interests, guaranteeing Egypt’s ‘loss’ of the Sudan. It argues that British dominance of the Condominium may have stymied initial Egyptian efforts, but that after the First World War Egypt became increasingly interested in and capable of economic ventures in the Sudan. However, early Egyptian financial assistance and the seemingly successful resolution of Nile waters disputes actually divided the regions, while later concerted efforts to promote commerce and acquire Sudanese lands failed dismally. Egyptian nationalists simply missed opportunities of aligning their economic future with that of their Sudanese brethren, resulting in a divided Nile valley. Dividing the Nile will appeal to historians, social scientists, and international relations theorists, among those interested in Nile valley developments, but its focused economic analysis will also contribute to broader scholarship on nationalism and nationalist theory....read more
27 March 2015
American Travelers on the Nile
Early U.S. Visitors to Egypt, 1774–1839
Early U.S. Visitors to Egypt, 1774–1839Andrew Oliver
The Treaty of Ghent signed in 1814, ending the War of 1812, allowed Americans once again to travel abroad. Medical students went to Paris, artists to Rome, academics to Göttingen, and tourists to all European capitals. More intrepid Americans ventured to Athens, to Constantinople, and even to Egypt. Beginning with two eighteenth-century travelers, this book then turns to the 25-year period after 1815 that saw young men from East Coast cities, among them graduates of Harvard, Yale, and Columbia, traveling to the lands of the Bible and of the Greek and Latin authors they had first known as teenagers. Naval officers off ships of the Mediterranean squadron visited Cairo to see the pyramids. Two groups went on business, one importing steam-powered rice and cotton mills from New York, the other exporting giraffes from the Kalahari Desert for wild animal shows in New York. Drawing on unpublished letters and diaries together with previously neglected newspaper accounts, as well as a handful of published accounts, this book offers a new look at the early American experience in Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean world. More than thirty illustrations complement the stories told by the travelers themselves....read more
27 March 2015
34 color illus.