“I did not purchase anything for him because of the prevailing hunger, and because food prices were higher in the countryside than Fusṭāṭ”: Egyptian famines in the 10th-12th centuries through the lens of the countryside. (original) (raw)
Related papers
Famines in medieval Egypt: natural and man-made
Leidschrift : Verraderlijke rijkdom. Economische crisis als historisch fenomeen, 2013
The typology of famines in medieval Egypt is rather simple since famines occurred either as a result of speculative withholding of supplies, or as a result of the Nile not rising enough. As simple as this situation is, it determined what successive dynasties could or couldn't do, and any assessment of such actions must be directly related to the type of shortage that occurred. Furthermore, one must emphasize that in the case of shortages caused by insufficient inundation of the Nile, the situation in the year that the Nile failed ('the current year') was determined by the rise of the river in the preceding year, which could have been quite normal. The knowledge about a shortage in the next year created a buyers' market in 'the current year', leaving wide room for governmental intervention in both Cairo's grain market and the bread supply system. When in the year following 'the current year' the full impact of grain shortage hit Cairo, the ability of the government to intervene and its efforts to alleviate the situation, if taken at all, were quite limited. This paper will discuss three cases of famine in medieval Egypt: two caused by insufficient rise of the Nile (in 1024-1025 and in 1200-1202) and one caused by withholding of supplies in 'the current year' (the famine of 1263-1264). However, any discussion of these events must be preceded by a short description of the Nile's annual cycle and the structure of Cairo's bread market. The Nile's annual cycle The agricultural life of medieval Egypt was governed by the Nile and the Coptic calendar. The Nile's annual rise used to begin during the month of Baʼunah (8 June-7 July) and intensified during Abib (8 July-6 August), and came first in Upper Egypt. The Nile usually reached plentitude, i.e. sixteen cubits (1 cubit = 46.2 cm) as measured at the Cairo Nilometer, during Misra (7 August-5 September), while the new agricultural year began during Tut (11/12 September-9/10 October). During Tut the seeds needed for the planting of wheat and barly were delivered to the peasants, but the actual sowing began in Upper Egypt during Babah (11/12 October-9/10 November), and in other parts of the country during Kiyah (10/11 brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by Leiden University Scholary Publications been collected, translated into French and annotated by Charles Pellat: C. Pellat, Cinq calendriers Égyptiens (Cairo 1986). 2 The basic distinction between the household grain economy of the regime and the commercial urban grain market has been put forward by: I.M. Lapidus, 'The Grain Economy of Mamluk Egypt', Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 12 (1969) 1-15: 12-14, and is applicable for the Fatimid period too. See A. Maqrizi, Musawwadat Kitab al-Mawaʻiz wa-l-Iʻtibar fi Dhikr al-Khitat wa-l-Athar [English translation], A.F. Sayyid ed. (London 1995) 246-248.
Farm to Fork: Cairo's Food Supply and Distribution during the Mamlūk Sultanate (1250-1517)
The wealth of Cairo’s markets throughout the Mamlūk period is well attested in the sources. From roving peddlers to stationary markets, the city’s food supply was a testament to Egypt’s agricultural bounty. This study attempts to understand the food economy that provisioned these food markets. In doing so, Egypt’s agricultural production, its transportation network, distribution system, and Cairo’s markets are discussed with a focus towards understanding both the nature of the many aspects of the Mamūk food economy as well as the changes occurring within it. In providing an overall description of the mechanisms by which the Mamlūk food economy functioned, this thesis argues that the structure of the system was an ongoing dialectic between the labor and efforts of the peasants, the activities of the food merchants and sellers, and the contrivances of those with power, especially the Mamlūk regime itself. The complexities of this system were not only influenced by the activities of these three groups but were also driven by environmental and geographic factors as well. When all of these factors worked in concert, an intricate, multi-layered system produced the abundance and wealth of Cairo’s markets that were evident for all to see. However, the effects of the plague, starting in the fourteenth century CE, combined with the labor-intensive nature of the Egyptian agricultural and transportation systems disrupted this multiplex system. The agricultural sector being key to the overall Mamlūk economy, this breakdown created the conditions from which the agricultural system and, correspondingly, the economy failed to recover.
Ancient Egyptian Society: Challenging Assumptions, Exploring Approaches, ed. D. Candelora, N. Ben-Marzouk, and K. Cooney. New York: Routledge, 265-278., 2022
Autobiographical texts composed during Egypt’s First Intermediate Period and the somewhat later related genre of ‘pessimistic’ literature both describe a natural world gone awry, people suffering from acute hunger, and a society riven with strife. The trend in modern scholarship has been for these ancient sources to be dismissed, either as tendentious or as purely literary meditations on the theme of theodicy. This contribution argues that these autobiographical and literary texts deserve to be taken far more seriously as sources for understanding Egypt’s social history. In the last two decades alone numerous and varied scientific studies have assembled compelling evidence for a centuries-long megadrought, now known as the 4.2-kiloyear BP aridification event. Taking this recent research into account, this contribution draws on records of extreme famines in both Medieval and Ottoman Egypt, as well as on accounts of catastrophic famines elsewhere, to argue that, when contextualized, neither the autobiographical nor the pessimistic texts read as hyperbolic
Famine, Disease, and Death in Egypt, 1914-1919
Egypt in World War I symposium, Pembroke College, Oxford, 2018
I take as my point of departure on this topic an assertion made by an advisory commission on Egypt’s Department of Public Health (DPH) in 1918 that public health spending had declined “since the commencement of the war.” The report goes on to clarify that DPH officials had been requisitioned for duty to provide health services for the large number of British Imperial armed forces that were stationed in Egypt, but then states optimistically that “the fact that there have been no very serious outbreaks spreading to British troops is a tribute to the excellent machinery devised for dealing with epidemics, and which, though crippled, yet remained comparatively efficient.” The Department of Public Health–which was intended to be a department concerned with Egyptian public health—took on a military support role during the war and neglected its duty toward the civilian population. As I will demonstrate in my talk, the report’s self-congratulations about the lack of serious outbreaks among British troops in Egypt elides the fact that serious outbreaks of disease, both epidemic and epizootic, spread throughout Egypt during the war, with their effects most visible in the densely populated Nile Delta. As part of my research, I have undertaken a mapping project to demonstrate the widespread nature of infections of both typhus and smallpox during the war, as well as a two-year epizootic of cattle plague. These diseases, combined with the locust infestation of 1915 and repeated crop blights, had a tremendous impact on rural and poor Egyptians that can be seen through the meteoric rise in the cost of basic commodities such as food and fuel during the war. The most serious outbreak occurred during a six-week period between October and December 1918, when 139,000 Egyptians perished in the worldwide pandemic of influenza commonly known as the “Spanish flu.” As co-panelist Khaled Fahmy has shown in his work, most of the Egyptian population perceived the existence of the Egyptian nation as a negative force since the rise to power of Muhammad Ali Pasha in the early 19th century. For the poor and rural, the state bore associations with physical violence via tax collection and mandatory conscription into forced labor corvées and the armed forces. In March of 1919, a nationalist uprising broke out in Alexandria, and quickly gained unprecedented support in rural areas, paralyzing the nation for several weeks. While nationalist historians have long claimed this as the moment when Egyptians rallied together behind the cause of nationhood, I find it highly unlikely that rural workers from the fields who had spent the previous five years starving and dying of disease as the bulk of rations and health care were given to the troops and government officials would have suddenly rallied around the nationalist cause. As Fahmy and others have argued, it seems more likely that years of rampant unemployment, the surge in the price of commodities, housing shortages, and the establishment of the Egyptian Labor Corps (which pressed Egyptians into mandatory service for little or no pay under constant threat of violence) instead served as triggers for rural participation in the rioting. I argue that the strain of years of starvation, disease, and death should also be considered a contributing factor for the widespread participation in 1919. Far from being a moment enshrined in nationalist history, the strikes and riots were a chance to vent simmering anger and resentment that had been building for the duration of the war.
The Famine during the Reign of Mohamed Ali Pasha(Its Causes & Consequences)
GAS Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, 2024
Mohamed Ali collected the taxes on wheat in the years 1810, 1811 and 1812, and began trading in it. Then, in 1812, the Pasha monopolized the wheat that exceeded the consumption of its owners, and he did not let anyone sell anything of it to others, or transport it in boats, and took this crop. And he deducted its price from the taxes on the land for the following year (1813), then transferred it on his ships that he built and prepared for that, and from there to the ships of foreigners, where he sold the ardeb to them for a hundred piasters. Any quantities of them are sold to others. Therefore, it was necessary to present a study on the problem of famine for several years during the rule of Muhammad Ali Pasha, with his application of the monopoly system on grain, and what measures he took to limit the spread of famine in the country by presenting a set of themes and answering their questions.
Food, Hunger, and Rebellion: Egypt in the First World War and its Aftermath
The Provisions of War: Expanding the Boundaries of Food and Conflict, 1840-1990, 2021
“Food, Hunger, and Rebellion: Egypt in World War I and its Aftermath,” in Justin Nordstrom, ed., The Provisions of War: Expanding the Boundaries of Food and Conflict, 1840-1990, Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 161-176. ISBN: 978-1-68226-175-0. PLEASE CONTACT ME DIRECTLY FOR PRE-PRESS VERSION. Over two percent of the Egyptian population perished during World War I due to starvation, malnutrition, and disease. Although technically neutral, Egypt was the staging ground for British and Dominion troops fighting the campaign against the Ottoman Empire. The prioritization of military needs led to government recruitment of civilian labor—mostly from the agricultural sector—and requisitioning of food supplies for the troops. The drop in labor and available supplies for the civilian market caused supply shortages and runaway inflation in the cost of basic provisions. This chapter uses government documents, statistical data, and the press to illustrate anxieties over the cost and availability of food among Egyptian civilians during the war. There are few studies that examine the history of wartime Egypt at all, and even less that focus on the civilian home front. Most work heretofore has focused on political developments that led to a nationwide uprising against British rule in the spring of 1919. I discuss the impact of the war years on the home front, when the colonial government took little action to alleviate suffering or address the needs of the civilian population. Although a tariff regime was introduced to standardize the cost of staples, it was ineffective, and complaints were frequently lodged that goods could not actually be purchased at the official price. The lack of coordination in the cost of raw materials and finished products led to strikes, bread famines, and food riots. The relationship of the Anglo-Egyptian government toward the civilian population was profoundly affected by government and military policies about the requisitioning of food during the war. This is not only an important factor in the historiography of early 20th century Egypt, it is also an important case study to consider the obligations of governments toward civilian populations in war time.
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 1995
Reviews 289 made the "long peace" in Mount Lebanon possible. Surely, the brief and enlightening biographical notices Professor Akarli gives of these remarkable figures-all of them typical products of the Tanzimat-would have been featured to far better effect had they been put in the text of the book where their appointments are just mentioned. These, however, are faults that can easily be attended to in subsequent editions of the work, at the author's discretion. Otherwise, the book is meticulously researched and as rich in content as in insights and altogether a most valuable addition to the historical library on Lebanon.