SUBALTERNS AND SOCIAL PROTEST

The articles in this collection, by the intensity of their focus on the oppressed
and the excluded, offer a challenge to the elitist nature of the history and
historiography of the Middle East and North Africa.
The collection is unique in its historical depth, ranging from the medieval
period to the present, and its geographical reach, including Iran, the Ottoman
Empire/Turkey, the Balkans, the Arab Middle East and North Africa. It is the first
to encompass both major social classes and sectors, the working class, the
peasantry, the urban poor, women, and marginal groups such as gypsies and
slaves, and their differing strategies: of survival, of negotiation, and of protest and
resistance.
Based on perspectives drawn from the work of the great European social
historians, and especially inspired by Antonio Gramsci, the collection seeks to
restore a sense of historical agency to subaltern classes in the region.

Stephanie Cronin is Iran Heritage Foundation Fellow at the University of

Northampton. Her most recent book is Tribal Politics in Iran: Rural Conflict and
the New State, 1921–1941, also published by Routledge.
 SOAS/ROUTLEDGE STUDIES ON
THE MIDDLE EAST
Series Editors:
Benjamin C. Fortna
SOAS, University of London
Ulrike Freitag
Freie Universität Berlin, Germany

This series features the latest disciplinary approaches to Middle Eastern Studies. It
covers the Social Sciences and the Humanities in both the pre-modern and modern
periods of the region. While primarily interested in publishing single-authored
studies, the series is also open to edited volumes on innovative topics, as well as
textbooks and reference works.

1. ISLAMIC NATIONHOOD AND 5. MEDIEVAL ARABIC

COLONIAL INDONESIA HISTORIOGRAPHY
The Umma below the winds Authors as actors
Michael Francis Laffan Konrad Hirschler

2. RUSSIAN-MUSLIM
6. CITIES IN THE
CONFRONTATION IN THE
PRE-MODERN ISLAMIC
CAUCASUS
WORLD
Alternative visions of the conflict
The urban impact of
between Imam Shamil and the
religion, state,
Russians, 1830–1859
and society
Thomas Sanders, Ernest Tucker and
Amira K. Bennison and
G.M. Hamburg
Alison L. Gascoigne
3. LATE OTTOMAN SOCIETY
The intellectual legacy 7. SUBALTERNS AND
Edited by Elisabeth Özdalga SOCIAL PROTEST
History from Below in
4. IRAQI ARAB NATIONALISM the Middle East and
Authoritarian, totalitarian and North Africa
pro-fascist inclinations, 1932–1941 Edited by
Peter Wien Stephanie Cronin
 SUBALTERNS AND
SOCIAL PROTEST
History from Below in the Middle East
and North Africa

Edited by Stephanie Cronin

 First published 2008
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business

First issued in paperback 2011

© 2008 Stephanie Cronin for selection and editorial matter;
individual contributors their contribution
Typeset in Times New Roman by
Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd, Chennai, India
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested

ISBN13: 978–0–415–42355–7 (hbk)

ISBN13: 978–0–415–66582–7 (pbk)
ISBN13: 978–0–203–93926–0 (ebk)
 CONTENTS

Notes on contributors viii

Acknowledgements xii
Note on transliteration xiv

Introduction 1
STEPHANIE CRONIN

PART I
The urban crowd and popular protest 23

1 Street violence and social imagination in late-Mamluk

and Ottoman Damascus (c.1500–1800) 25
JAMES GREHAN

2 Women and popular protest: women’s demonstrations

in nineteenth-century Iran 50
VANESSA MARTIN

PART II
Poor people’s politics 67

3 Popular protest, the market and the state in nineteenth-

and early twentieth-century Egypt 69
JOHN CHALCRAFT

4 Workless revolutionaries: the unemployed movement

in revolutionary Iran 91
ASEF BAYAT

v
 CONTENTS

5 Transforming the city from below: shantytown dwellers and

the fight for electricity in Casablanca 116
LAMIA ZAKI

PART III
Peasants and nomads 139

6 Resisting the new state: the rural poor, land and

modernity in Iran, 1921–1941 141
STEPHANIE CRONIN

PART IV
Marginals and outcasts 171

7 Probing the margins: Gypsies (Roma) in

Ottoman society, c.1450–1600 173
FAIKA ÇELIK

8 Emancipated female slaves in Algiers: marriage,

property and social advancement in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries 200
FATIHA LOUALICH

PART V
European subalterns 211

9 “Making It” in pre-colonial Tunis: migration, work, and

poverty in a Mediterranean port-city, c.1815–1870 213
JULIA CLANCY-SMITH

10 Foreign workers in Egypt 1882–1914: subaltern

or labour elite? 237
ANTHONY GORMAN

PART VI
Subalterns and national movements 261

11 From national heroes to national villains: bandits,

pirates and the formation of modern Greece 263
GERASSIMOS KARABELIAS

vi
 CONTENTS

12 Seizing the initiative, regaining a voice: the Palestinian

al-Aqsa intifada as a struggle of the marginalized 284
ROGER HEACOCK

Index 313

vii
 CONTRIBUTORS

Asef Bayat is Academic Director at the Institute for the Study of Islam in the
Modern World (ISIM), and holds the ISIM Chair at Leiden University, The
Netherlands. Before joining Leiden, he taught Sociology and Middle East Studies
at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. His interests range from Political
Sociology, Urban Space and Politics, International Development to Social
Movements and Contemporary Muslim Societies. His publications include Workers
and Revolution in Iran (London, 1987), Work, Politics and Power (London and
New York, 1991), Street Politics (New York, 1998), Making Islam Democratic:
Social Movements and the Post-Islamist Turn (Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, 2007).

Faika Çelik is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill

University. She has recently been awarded an SSHRC (Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada) doctoral fellowship for her dissertation
project on marginality and deviance in early modern Ottoman Istanbul. Her
publications include ‘Limits of Tolerance: The Status of Gypsies in the Ottoman
Empire’, Studies in Contemporary Islam 5, nos 1–2 (2003), pp. 161–82; and
‘Exploring Marginality in the Ottoman Empire: Gypsies or People of Malice
(Ehl-i Fesad) as Viewed by the Ottomans’, European University Institute Working
Papers no. 2004/39.

John Chalcraft is Lecturer in the History and Politics of Empire/Imperialism

Department of Government, LSE. He is the author of The Striking Cabbies of
Cairo and Other Stories: Crafts and Guilds in Egypt, 1863–1914 (State University
of New York Press, 2004); ‘Labour in the Levant’, New Left Review 45 (May–June
2007), pp. 27–47; ‘Engaging the State: Peasants, Petitions, Justice and Rights on
the Eve of Colonial Rule in Egypt’, International Journal of Middle East Studies
37, no. 3 (2005), pp. 303–25; ‘Of Specters and Disciplined Commodities: Syrian
Migrant Workers in Lebanon’, Middle East Report 35, no. 3 (2005); ‘Pluralising
Capital, Challenging Eurocentrism: Toward postMarxist Historiography’, Radical
History Review 91, Winter (2005), pp. 13–39; ‘The End of the Guilds in Egypt:
Restructuring Textiles in the Long Nineteenth Century’, in Crafts and Craftsmen

viii
 CONTRIBUTORS

in the Middle East. Edited by Faroqhi, S; Deguilhem, R. (I.B. Tauris, 2005),

pp. 338–69; ‘The Cairo Cab Strike of 1907’, in Empire in the City: Arab
Provincial Capitals in the Late Ottoman Empire. Edited by Philipp, T; Hanssen,
J; Weber, S. (Orient Institute, 2002), pp. 173–200; ‘The Coal-Heavers of Port
Sa‘id: State Building and Worker protest, 1869–1914’, International Labour and
Working Class History 60 (2001), pp. 110–24.

Julia Clancy-Smith is an Associate Professor of History at the University of

Arizona, Tucson. She published Rebel and Saint: Muslim Notables, Populist
Protest, Colonial Encounters (Algeria and Tunisia, 1800–1904) (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 1994), co-edited and authored Introduction and a
chapter in Domesticating the Empire: Gender, Race, & Family Life in the Dutch
and French Empires (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1998) as
well as a special issue of (‘Writing French Colonial Histories’), French Historical
Studies 27, no. 3, Summer (2004), pp. 497–505 (Durham, NC: Duke University
Press) and edited North Africa, Islam, and the Mediterranean World from the
Almoravids to the Algerian War (London: Frank Cass Publications, 2001) [Special
issue of the Journal of North African Studies 6 (2001): 5]. She is currently
completing a monograph entitled ‘Migrations: Trans-Mediterranean Settlement in
19th-Century North Africa’, to be published by the University of California Press,
Berkeley, CA and is working on another book devoted to colonial education for
Muslim girls in French North Africa. In addition to these works, she is also
the co-editor for The Walls of Algiers: Narratives of the City in Text and Image
(Los Angeles, CA and Seattle, WA: The Getty Research Institute and the
University of Washington Press) to be published in 2009.

Stephanie Cronin is Iran Heritage Foundation Fellow, University of

Northampton. She is the author of The Army and the Creation of the Pahlavi State
in Iran, 1910–1926 (I.B. Tauris, 1997) and Tribal Politics in Iran: Rural Conflict
and the New State (RoutledgeCurzon, 2007), and the editor of The Making of
Modern Iran: State and Society under Riza Shah, 1921–1941 (RoutledgeCurzon,
2003); and Reformers and Revolutionaries in Modern Iran: New Perspectives on
the Iranian Left (RoutledgeCurzon, 2004). She is a member of the editorial
boards of Iranian Studies and Middle Eastern Studies, a member of the advisory
council of Qajar Studies, and assistant editor of Holy Land Studies. Her current
work focuses on subaltern responses to modernity in Iran. She has recently
published ‘The Tehran Crowd and the Rise of Riza Khan: Popular Protest,
Disorder and Riot in Iran’, in the International Review of Social History (2005),
and is completing a new book entitled Shahs, Soldiers and Subalterns: Contesting
Power in the New Iran (Palgrave, forthcoming).

Anthony Gorman has taught at universities in Australia, Egypt and London and
is currently a Lecturer in Modern Middle Eastern History at the University of
Edinburgh. He is the author of Historians, State and Politics in Twentieth Century

ix
 CONTRIBUTORS

Egypt: Contesting the Nation (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003) as well as

a number of articles on aspects of radical secular politics in Egypt, among them
‘Egypt’s Forgotten Communists: The Postwar Greek Left’, Journal of Modern
Greek Studies 20 (2002), pp. 1–27 and ‘Anarchists in Education: The Free Popular
University in Egypt (1901)’, Middle Eastern Studies 41 (2005), pp. 303–20. His
work on the history of the Middle Eastern prison appears, ‘Regulation, Reform
and Resistance in the Middle Eastern Prison’, in Cultures of Confinement:
A History of the Prison in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Edited by F. Dikötter and
I. Brown (London: Hurst, 2007), pp. 95–146.

James Grehan is Assistant Professor of History at Portland State University. His

research deals mainly with the social and cultural history of the Ottoman Middle
East. He is the author of a study entitled Everyday Life and Consumer Culture in
18th-Century Damascus (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2007).

Roger Heacock is a Professor of History at the Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Institute of

International Studies at Birzeit University in Palestine, where he has been teaching
for the past two decades. He previously taught at the University of Paris 7,
Geneva’s Institut Universitaire de Hautes Études Internationales and the American
University in Cairo. His numerous publications deal with Mediterranean history,
and the history of the Palestinian question in its international dimensions. He
co-edited Intifada: Palestine at the Crossroads (with Jamal Nassar: New York)
and his recent publications include ‘Le long parcours du tripolarisme politique
en Palestine’ (Naqd, Algiers), ‘Palestinians: The Land and the Law, an Inverse
Relationship’ (Journal of International Affairs, Columbia University) and ‘Le
système international aux prises avec le colonialisme: les délibérations sur la
Palestine dans la Commission des Mandats de la Société des Nations’, Leiden,
The Netherlands.

Gerassimos Karabelias is Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology

at Panteion University in Athens. His research interest concentrates on civil–
military relations and the behaviour of armed groups in the Balkans. He has
written three books in Greek and is the author of ‘Civil–military relations in
Albania, Bulgaria and Romania during the post-Cold War period’, Mesogeios,
Fall (2006); ‘State Modernization and Military Intervention in the Ottoman
Empire and Modern Greece during the Early Twentieth Century: A Comparative
Analysis of the 1908 and 1909 Coups d’État’, Oriente Moderno, Issue XXIIII,
n.s. (LXXXV), 5 (2004); ‘A Brief Overview of the Evolution of Civil–Military
Relations in Albania, Greece and Turkey during the Post-WWII Period,’ Journal of
Political and Military Sociology 31, no. 1, Summer (2003); ‘The Role of the
Hellenic Air-Force during the Second World War’, Revue Internationale d’Histoire
Militaire 79, Fall (2001); ‘The Evolution of Civil–Military Relations in Postwar
Turkey, 1980–1995’, Middle Eastern Studies 35, no. 4, Fall (1999); ‘Twenty years

x
 CONTRIBUTORS

of Civil–Military Relations in Post-Dictatorship Greece: Steps toward a Democratic

Consolidation’, Mediterranean Quarterly 10, no. 2, Spring (1999).

Fatiha Loualich is Reader in the Faculty of Human and Social Sciences,

Department of History, University of Algiers. Her publications include ‘Femmes
et pouvoir juridique à travers les actes des biens habous à Alger XVIIe- XVIIIe
siècle,’ la Revue Cirta, no. spécial, Octobre 2000, Constantine, pp. 25–32; ‘Les
affranchies à Alger, fins XVIIIe début XIXe siècle d’après les actes des Mahakim
Shar’yya d’Alger’, in AHRFOS, no. 25 (2002), pp. 181–96; ‘Les esclaves noirs à
Alger (Fin du XVIII[e]-début du XIX[e] siècle): De l’esclave à l’Affranchi, vers
une relation d’allégeance’, Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome. Moyen
Âge, 115, no. 1 (2003), pp. 513–22; ‘Alger au XVIIème siècle: le regard d’un
captif porteur d’eau (Le sieur de Rocqueville)’, Biblio 17–149, Tübingen (2003),
pp. 181–8; ‘Alger aux XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles: itinéraires de familles, itinéraires de
biens,’ Revue d’histoire maghrébine, année 32, no. 117 (2005), pp. 83–98.

Vanessa Martin is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at Royal

Holloway, University of London. She has written three books, Islam and
Modernism: The Iranian Revolution of 1906 (I.B. Tauris 1989), Creating an
Islamic State (I.B. Tauris 2000) and The Qajar Pact: Bargaining, Protest and the
State in Qajar Iran (I.B. Tauris 2005). She has also edited two volumes, Women
Religion and Culture in Iran (RoutledgeCurzon 2001), and Anglo Iranian
Relations since 1800 (RoutledgeCurzon 2005). She is the Series Editor and Chair
of the Publication Committee of the the British Institute of Persian Studies, and
is a member of the Editorial Board of the Royal Asiatic Society.

Lamia Zaki has recently defended her PhD in political science at the Institut
d’Études Politiques de Paris. She taught for two years at the Institut d’Études
Politiques d’Aix-en-Provence (as an Attachée Temporaire d’Education et de
Recherche) while finishing her dissertation on the political representations and
practices of slum inhabitants in Casablanca. She currently has a post-graduate
scholarship and is conducting fieldwork in Morocco on changes in the local
political game. Her publications include ‘Deux candidats en campagne: formes
de propagande et répertoires de légitimation politique au bidonville’ in Scènes et
coulisses de l’élection au Maroc, législatives 2002, edited by Bennani-Chraïbi, M.,
Catusse, M., Santucci, J.-C., Paris, Karthala; Aix-en-Provence, IREMAM (2005),
pp. 187–234; ‘L’action publique au bidonville: de l’éradication des kariens à
l’accompagnement social des habitants,’ L’Année du Maghreb, 2005; and
‘L’écriture d’une thèse, entre contingences et nécessités’, Genèses, Décembre 2006.

xi
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This volume is the product of two workshops organized as part of an Economic

and Social Research Council project on “Popular Resistance to Elite Modernization
in the Middle East: Iran 1921–1941.” I am grateful to Professor Robert Springborg
for offering the hospitality of the London Middle East Institute at SOAS to the
first workshop, held in January 2004, entitled “Iran and History from Below.”
This workshop was also generously supported by the Iran Heritage Foundation.
The second workshop, “Subalterns and Social Protest: Politics from Below in the
Middle East and North Africa,” co-organized with Driss Maghraoui, was held as
part of the Fifth Mediterranean Social and Political Research Meeting in Florence
in March 2004. My thanks go to Imco Brouwer and the Mediterranean
Programme of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Study at the European
University Institute in Florence for hosting the workshop and for their assistance
with the translation of two articles from their original French. I am grateful to
the Economic and Social Research Council for funding the original project and
I would especially like to thank Farhad Hakimzadeh and the Iran Heritage
Foundation for providing the fellowship which allowed me the time to work on
my own contribution to this collection and on its editing.
“Street Violence and Social Imagination in Late Mamluk and Ottoman
Damascus” by James Grehan was first published in the International Journal of
Middle East Studies, 35: 215–36 (2007) © Cambridge University Press, has been
reproduced with permission.
“Women and Popular Protest: Women’s Demonstrations in Nineteenth-Century
Iran” by Vanessa Martin was first published in The Qajar Pact: Bargaining,
Protest and the State in 19th-century Persia (I.B. Tauris, 2005).
“Workless Revolutionaries: The Unemployed Movement in Post-revolutionary
Iran” by Asef Bayat was first published in the International Review of Social
History, 42 (1997), pp.159–85.
An earlier version of “Resisting the New State: The Rural Poor, Land and
Modernity in Iran, 1921–1941” by Stephanie Cronin was published in The
Journal of Peasant Studies.
I am grateful to the editors of all three journals, Judith Tucker, editor of IJMES,
Marcel van der Linden and Aad Blok, editors of IRSH, and Tom Brass, editor

xii
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

of JPS, and to Iradj Bagherzade of I.B. Tauris, for their kind permission to
republish.
Finally, I would like to thank Natalja Mortensen, my editor at Routledge, for all
her help and hard work, and Peter Housego and Joanne Burman at the BP archive
for finding the photograph which has served as the cover image for this book.

xiii
 NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION

There has been no attempt to impose a uniform system of transliteration for

the Arabic, Persian and Turkish names and terms employed in the contributions
to this volume. Since spellings derived from non-Roman scripts are often
compromises and may always be disputed, and no system is ever completely
adequate, decisions about transliteration have been left to individual authors.

xiv
 INTRODUCTION

Stephanie Cronin

Historical scholarship on the Middle East and North Africa has conventionally
focused on elites, political, religious, military or other, and in periods of social
crisis, occasionally on counter-elites. The mentalities, agendas and ideological
underpinnings of these elites have been relatively accessible to the historian, as they
were historically both literate, generating voluminous documentary sources, and
also powerful, able to generate a dominant discourse, framing and reinforcing their
own versions of themselves ready-made for the scholar. In contrast, comparatively
little attention has been paid to the experience of non-elite, ‘subaltern’ groups in
the region.
This collection deliberately shifts the spotlight downwards, towards the
oppressed and the marginal, in a challenge to the elitist nature of the historiography
of the Middle East and North Africa and in an attempt to uncover ‘the politics of
the people’. The collection situates itself within the broader effort to write ‘history
from below’ as developed by pioneers such as Eric Hobsbawm and E.P. Thompson
and as subsequently developed by scholars of the South Asian Subaltern Studies
school.1 The collection seeks especially to restore a sense of the agency of subaltern
social classes in Middle Eastern and North African history, stressing both their
ability to initiate action independently of the elites, whether indigenous or foreign,
which claimed hegemony over them, and also their crucial contribution to the
dynamics of historical change.
The chapters which follow, on diverse chronological periods, geographical
areas and themes, attempt to reconstruct the experience of ‘subalterns’ in the
Middle East and North Africa, examining both strategies of protest and resistance
employed by major social categories and strategies of survival, including accom-
modation and collaboration, adopted by marginal groups. Many of the chapters
focus particularly on key transitional periods, characterized by social, political
and ideological crises, when society accelerated rapidly from rural to urban, from
agricultural to industrial, from ‘traditional’ to ‘modern’, and thus the collection
begins to map the contours of popular responses to elite agendas, and to recon-
struct the experiences of groups excluded from political power and marginal to
the dominant ideological and cultural discourses.

1
 STEPHANIE CRONIN

In general terms, the collection is distinguished from conventional social history

by the fact that its focus is not merely on the poor, as objects of state policy, of the
charity of the elite or as menacing embodiments of social chaos. Its overarching aim
is, rather, to rescue the ordinary people of the Middle East and North Africa
from E.P. Thompson’s ‘enormous condescension of posterity’ and to restore to them
the dignity of consciousness, agency and independence.2 With Ranajit Guha the
collection celebrates subalterns as the makers of their own history, but with Marx it
acknowledges that they do so always in circumstances not of their own making.3
The collection encompasses a range of theoretical and methodological
approaches, its interpretive pluralism drawing on the broad traditions established
by the British Marxist historians and on the critiques of the Subaltern Studies group.
It does not, however, seek to position itself in relation to the debates which have
raged within and between these trends, a debate which has become increasingly
bitter as some elements within Subaltern Studies have moved radically away from
the group’s Gramscian origins into postmodernism.4
The question immediately arises: who is the ‘subaltern’? These chapters are
predicated on the broad premise, derived from Ranajit Guha, that the term refers
to a wide range of groups who possess a subordinate social, political, economic and
ideological status.5 In this collection, the term is used most centrally to refer to
numerically large, even preponderant, groups, such as the urban poor, the emerging
working class, the peasantry, and to smaller but sociologically salient groups such
as slum dwellers and the unemployed. However, the term also encompasses
marginal and excluded groups whose activities may vividly illuminate social
realities, such as bandits, gypsies and slaves. Furthermore in its conceptualization
of the subaltern, the collection has been careful to integrate into its analysis an
understanding of the gender dimensions of each of the social conflicts which it
describes, and posits women both as active members of broader subaltern groups
and as constituting a subaltern group on their own account. Indeed, women are
very much present and visible in the chapters in the book: the respectable and
ritualistic women’s demonstrations of nineteenth-century Iran; the socially ambitious
emancipated female slaves of Algiers; the largely female gypsy ‘vice trades’ of
singing, dancing and prostitution; the female captains of Greek pirate ships.
Many of the chapters in this collection follow a tradition, deeply embedded in
‘history from below’, of focusing on episodes of social protest. It is indeed during
such episodes that subaltern groups most often emerge, albeit temporarily and
contingently, onto centre stage. Subalterns tend to appear in the written sources
only when they withdraw their cooperation from elite projects and agendas.
Otherwise they, and their perspective, tend to remain invisible or subsumed under
the hegemony of more powerful social groups. Studies of crowd protest, riot and
rebellion have always proved useful for an understanding of subaltern groups as
they allow the often sudden appearance of a larger set of lower-class ideas and
practices that might otherwise remain hidden to scholarly enquiry.
As well as a focus on strategies of protest and resistance, the collection also
encompasses an analysis of the strategies of survival characteristic of marginal

2
 INTRODUCTION

groups shunned by wider society, including other subaltern elements. In this way
the collection hopes to avoid any romanticization of the subaltern, incorporating
a discussion of the ways in which the excluded might not only resist but some-
times manipulate, negotiate and collude with the authorities, even to the extent of
acting as agents of political or social repression. Recent research has, for example,
begun to interrogate the roles of ‘native’ troops in colonial armies, and of informers
and collaborators. Driss Maghraoui has shown how Moroccan colonial soldiers
were either represented in a colonial discourse which sought to appropriate them,
or, later, excluded from a nationalist discourse which tried to silence them. Using
oral history, he has begun to write them back into history, arguing that those poor
Moroccans who joined the French colonial army were trying to renegotiate terms
within the conditions of exploitation to which they were subjected as subalterns,
their choices determined by local politics and the limited economic options available
to them.6 Again, Ahmad Sa‘di has examined collaborators and informers among
the Palestinians in Israel, looking not only at who collaborated, why and how, but
also describing the strategies of public repentance used by ex-collaborators to
reclaim an ‘honourable’ status in their communities after the end of their ‘careers’.7
In this collection Faika Çelik outlines the ways in which gypsies struggled to
negotiate a route through the multiple disadvantages imposed on them by both elite
and popular hostility. She looks, for example, at their role as Ottoman executioners,
demonstrating how, by occupying this role, Ottoman gypsies confirmed and
reinforced their negative image in the eyes of ordinary people, their pariah status
persisting even after death when they were buried in a separate cemetery.
Although taking as its central concern the collective, rather than the individual,
strategies and options available to subalterns, the collection has deliberately
excluded any treatment of formal political parties, even where these were clearly
and overtly subaltern formations, and has also tried to avoid, as far as possible, a
focus on what Gramsci has described as ‘organic intellectuals’.8 Also largely
absent from the collection, although in this case due not to a deliberate decision
but rather to the current state of research, is any sustained discussion of ways in
which J.C. Scott’s notion of ‘offstage dissent’, the deployment of his famous list of
weapons of the weak, ‘foot dragging, dissimulation, desertion, false compliance,
pilfering, feigned ignorance, slander, arson, sabotage’, might be applicable to
subalterns in the Middle East and North Africa.9
In general terms, the chapters below illustrate two key features of subaltern
activism: first its generally defensive character, and second, its extraordinary
sensitivity to shifts in the wider political context. Of all the chapters in this
collection, only Roger Heacock’s account of the Palestinian intifada shows the
camp-dwellers and villagers offering a transforming challenge to their own elite
and to the Israeli occupation. Such revolutionary moments are exceptional in
subaltern history. In fact, popular protests rarely offered a comprehensive
defiance of, or aimed to transcend, the existing order, rather they tended to be
provoked by what was perceived as the elite’s departure from socially sanctioned
norms and values, a perception which might often be buttressed by reference to

3
 STEPHANIE CRONIN

a mythologized past. Indeed, popular discourse often demanded a return to what

was imagined as the status quo ante. The language of petitions, for example,
typically suggests a strong sense on the part of both the urban and rural poor of
natural justice, of the recognition of conditions for the exercise of legitimate
authority and of their own rights. Such petitions habitually couched their appeals
in the language of legitimacy and justice and protested against their violation by
a usurping power.10 However, this perennial feature of the popular discourse of
protest should not be interpreted to mean that the accompanying political activity
was simply an essentially conservative struggle by subaltern groups to ‘keep things
as they were.’ It was, rather, an effort by the relatively powerless to negotiate
actively the terms of change while using the ideological tools available to them.
In fact, the collection illustrates vividly that subaltern political activity in the
Middle East and North Africa was far from timeless or unchanging, but rather
responded to every change, whether subtle shift or major transformation, in the
character of the dominant groups and of the power that they exercised.
As a new European social history developed in the 1960s, its concerns and
methods were imported into Middle Eastern and North African studies almost
immediately, and work began to appear from the late 1960s onwards which bore
clear traces of its influences. The first Middle Eastern ‘historians from below’ then
trained another generation whose books and articles contributed to the further
development of the field. In particular, the enormous success of women’s history
and gender studies was of great significance in breaking down resistance to
methodological and interpretive innovation.11 Yet, ‘history from below’ has not,
so far, come to dominate the intellectual landscape of Middle Eastern studies as
the British Marxist historians dominated their milieu, nor has it stimulated the
controvery which has surrounded subaltern south Asian histories, its impact on its
own broader field much weaker than both those traditions.12
How may the continuing relative marginalization of the ‘subaltern studies’ of
the Middle East and North Africa be explained? To some extent, at least, it may
be related to fundamental features of the region’s political development. The
critique of nationalism in south Asia developed by the Subaltern Studies school
was formed within the context of the actual success of the sub-continent’s local
elites, especially the cadres of the nationalist movements themselves, in seizing
and retaining hegemony within the independence movements and subsequently
political and economic, and therefore ideological, power in the newly established
independent states. Thus empowered, these elites were able to fashion a coherent
version of the conflict with empire in which they claimed for themselves a leading
role and a consequent overweening historical legitimacy. It was this version of
the struggle for independence, as well as the older colonialist discourse, which the
Subaltern Studies school contested. In the Middle East, the challenge to Western
domination has remained incomplete and profoundly problematic, the very
failure of elites in the region to realize the nationalist project itself impeding and
distorting the emergence of a class-based analysis of the historical development

4
 INTRODUCTION

of the region. Other impediments, arguably stronger in the case of the Middle East
than other geographical regions, may also perhaps have played their part.
Most important, perhaps, is the still burdensome legacy of orientalism, with its
methodological privileging of prescriptive texts, especially religious texts, over
the analysis of actual social realities.13
As well as the weight of politics and ideology on intellectual activity, there are,
of course, real difficulties intrinsic to scholarship. Scholars of the Middle East
and North Africa have often cited the myriad difficulties surrounding the identi-
fication, location and utilization of source material as a major impediment
to writing the history of non-elite groups in the region. The perspectives of
subaltern groups are under-represented or even absent altogether from the sources
and, themselves largely unlettered, they have left little archival material, while
extant descriptions have usually reflected elite (and hostile) attitudes.
Certainly the difficulties posed by methodological problems are real and
significant and need to be addressed both theoretically and in practice.14 Yet
recently powerful arguments have also been made which insist that such method-
ological problems conceal a political perspective hostile to certain kinds of
subaltern history. Afsaneh Najmabadi, for example, has spoken of the ‘erasure of
gender-marked historical events’ necessary for the construction of a male-centred
version of the narrative of the constitutional revolution in Iran, while Donald
Quataert has also argued that it is the will and desire to study the subaltern which
is lacking, not the source material.15
The chapters in this volume, having adopted a premise which places and
maintains the subaltern at the centre of attention, experiment with and adopt
various solutions to the methodological problems of writing the history of non-
elite, often non-literate groups in the Middle East and North Africa. As the
pioneers of women’s history proved, against a chorus of doubt and opposition,
the difficulties are not insuperable. Many of the authors here base their work on
a re-reading, ‘against the grain’, of conventional archival sources. Others, acting
on Eugen Weber’s observation that the illiterate are not in fact inarticulate, and
that they can and do express themselves in different ways, adopt approaches from
other disciplines, especially anthropology, and explore the use of material such
as popular literature, folklore, song and oral history.16 The collection, with its
chronological depth, also illustrates that not only the world of the modern subal-
tern figure, but also the lives of medieval subalterns may be reconstructed.17
Unfortunately, however, a major absence remains in the collection, reflecting a
wider failure in Middle Eastern and North African ‘history from below’. There
has, so far, been little success in using the sources that have proved so invaluable
in European approaches: police, prison and especially legal, records, such records
furnishing a wealth of data drawn from the most direct and most frequent points
of contact between the official world and the world of the subaltern.18
The chapters in this volume fall into six parts. Part I looks at the urban crowd
and its role in popular protest. The political or historical crowd was one of the

5
 STEPHANIE CRONIN

first topics to grasp the attention of the new social historians and the chapter by
James Grehan clearly acknowledges its debt to the seminal work on the European
crowd produced by scholars such as George Rudé and E.P. Thompson. Although an
interest in crowds, their social composition and their political role, communicated
itself to Middle Eastern studies almost immediately, with Ervand Abrahamian’s
ground-breaking work of the late 1960s, yet the study of the Middle Eastern
crowd is still in its earliest stages.19 Despite the visibility of urban crowds in the
crises which have periodically wracked the region, perhaps most spectacularly
during the Iranian revolution of 1979, they have so far failed to attract a fraction
of the scholarly attention devoted to their European counterparts.
The social and political significance of the great urban centres of the Middle East
and North Africa has long been recognized but they have conventionally been
viewed exclusively as arenas of elite activity and contestation. Yet they were also
sites of intense popular political activity, ranging from peaceful engagement and
negotiation with the authorities to more determined and prolonged confrontations,
to outright mass defiance emphasized by the use of different forms of violence.
James Grehan offers an account, based on a critical re-reading of Damascene
chronicles and biographical literature, of a variety of different types of crowd in
Ottoman Damascus from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. His account
shows the Damascene crowd to be extraordinarily sensitive to changes in the
character and location of power in the city, and he looks specifically at the subtle
shifts in forms of popular protest which took place in response to the transfer of
power in the city from a Mamluk to an Ottoman elite. He uncovers a local culture
of protest, situating his narrative of crowd action securely within a pre-existing
tradition of legitimate protest, arguing that there was a recognized repertoire of
actions with which both the people and the authorities were intimately acquainted
and through which conflict between rulers and ruled could be choreographed.
Discussing a bread riot which convulsed the city in July 1745, he comments on
the ultimate unanimity of the participants, both the crowd and the governor,
throughout the confusion and strife, the governor never disputing the right of the
demonstrators to assemble in public. Both sides, Grehan concludes, ‘understood
the other perfectly well’.
Furthermore, not only was protest legitimate in itself, but it even served,
paradoxically, to reinforce the legitimacy of the authorities against whom it was
apparently directed. Asking why local accounts of popular protest often contained
an element of ambivalence, displaying a fear of violence but stopping short of
outright condemnation, Grehan argues that such protest, which ‘petitioned as much
as it denounced, supplicated as much as it threatened’, was in fact an outlet that the
local political culture allowed to desperate people who had reached breaking-
point and could find no other remedy for their grievances.
Chapter 2 in this part turns to Iran, and focuses on the role of women in
crowd protest. Vanessa Martin begins her account by noting that one of the
features of the 1979 revolution which appeared most remarkable was that of
the demonstrations by large groups of women. Noting that this was at the time

6
 INTRODUCTION

almost universally assumed to be an entirely modern phenomenon, developing

out of the mass demonstrations organized by the political left, the gender exclu-
sivity resulting from the ascendancy of Islamist norms, she then argues that in
fact these demonstrations belonged to a much older, and entirely indigenous
tradition of independent female collective protest, dating back to at least the mid-
nineteenth century and probably beyond. Martin looks at two types of crowd
protest, bread riots by women alone, and bread or other types of riot in which
there was collaboration between women and men. Agreeing with Grehan, Martin
stresses the generally sanctioned legitimacy of the crowd’s actions, riots, even
those by women alone, actually representing protests by the whole community.
Although there now exists a substantial amount of work making visible the
history of elite women, in Iran and across the Middle East, it is now becoming
clear that women from poorer classes were also present and active in the political
lives of their communities. Indeed, the picture which emerges rather contradicts
assumptions about the leading role of elite women in emancipatory movements
and in challenging female seclusion and passivity. As far as participation in public
protests was concerned, the lower the social class, the more likely were women
to be involved in large numbers. Where the protests were organized by a more
‘respectable’ leadership, of some social standing and with a concern to maintain
prestige and respectability, women were discouraged from participating and were
in fact largely or totally absent. Where the protests were more spontaneous and
plebeian in character, for example, bread riots or anti-conscription riots, women
were not only involved but sometimes played a central role. This conclusion bears
out recent research into European crowd activity which has suggested that women
were more likely to take part in crowd disputes where these were related to the
economic interests of the domestic household, even if these apparently bread-and-
butter disputes had obvious political implications.20 Furthermore, with little to
lose in terms of status and social prestige, such poor women could act as a
radicalizing force, readier than their male counterparts to resort to mockery and
insult and even to violence, relying on the reluctance of the authorities to violate
social codes by physically dispersing or arresting females. Recent research
has shown, for example, how the wives of workers, during the 1929 strike in the
Anglo-Persian Oil Company, publicly exploited heavily gendered notions of honour
and shame in order to maintain the solidarity of the strike. Again, in a Tehran bread
riot in 1925, poor women invaded the Majlis session room and put on a theatrical
parody of a parliamentary sitting, the rich symbolism of their reassertion of
popular control over a site of almost sacred significance, and their ‘inversion’
of parliamentary procedure, providing fascinating material for the study of the
subaltern cultural world.21 The Iranian case even suggests the existence of organ-
ized networks of women in the Tehran slums who would hire themselves out as
required for the purpose of public protests.
Both chapters on the urban crowd deal at some length with bread riots, within
the seminal framework established by E.P. Thompson.22 As Grehan comments,
few causes stirred the emotions of townspeople like the rising cost of bread and

7
 STEPHANIE CRONIN

food riots are indeed far from a vanished historical phenomenon but rather still
a common occurrence across the Middle East and North Africa, even rising in
frequency as a result of new waves of privatization and financial reform.23 In
Grehan’s and Martin’s accounts we can also hear clear echoes of E.P. Thompson’s
moral economy, with Ottoman and Iranian crowds trying to defend customary
practices, sometimes believed to have legal sanction, against the operations of
the market. As in early modern England, so in Ottoman Damascus and Qajar
Tehran, do we hear invocations of a ‘just price’, popular suspicions and rumours
of plots to hoard grain and manipulate prices, anger against merchants, millers
and bakers, and demands for official intervention and the energetic regulation of
the grain trade.
Part II looks at efforts by different subaltern groups to organize themselves into
movements of self-protection against the various impositions of political author-
itarianism and economic liberalism. This type of politics manifested itself not
only in dramatic ‘crowd’ eruptions, but in carefully planned movements, sus-
tained over time. John Chalcraft looks at the struggles of Egyptian workers and
small cultivators to defend themselves against new forms of exploitation arising
from the spread of market forces and the cash nexus, Asef Bayat examines
the movements of the unemployed in post-revolutionary Tehran and Lamia Zaki
describes the resistance of Casablancan slum-dwellers to a loss of access to a key
resource through market ‘reforms’. All three studies highlight the extraordinary
resourcefulness of subaltern groups and the imaginative modes of organization and
struggle which they are able to devise to suit their circumstances and the stance
of their antagonists.
John Chalcraft takes Egypt in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
as his context. During these decades Egypt saw rapid industrial growth and
development in transportation, communications and urban utilities, with a con-
comitant growth in the numbers of the labouring poor and eventually the earliest
emergence of a socially significant modern working class in the region. By 1914,
for example, the Egyptian state railways alone employed 12,000 workers. This
rapidly advancing process of proletarianization and the rise of modern political
and industrial militancy coexisting alongside older forms of subaltern organiza-
tion make Egypt in this period a rich source of case studies for working class
history.24 Chalcraft draws together a number of episodes from settings usually
thought of as radically diverse – town and country, ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’,
working class as well as guild, to illustrate the methods by which various cate-
gories of the labouring poor, the coal-heavers of Port Said, the porters of
Alexandria, the weighers and measurers of Cairo, and the small cultivators of
Lower Egypt, tried to resist the new forms of social and economic exploitation
that were being imposed upon them by both local elites and the colonial state.
Chalcraft continues the conversation begun in Part I of the book with his
discussion of the responses of the Egyptian labouring poor to the spread and
intensification of market relations and their attempts to assert their own concept of
a moral economy complete with appeals to the state and its regulations and codes.

8
 INTRODUCTION

He describes the emergence of a range of collective movements of self-protection,

which utilized methods including petitions, protests, strikes and attempts to seize
electoral rights. The Egyptian poor objected to injustice, tyranny, treachery,
captivity, slavery, loss of livelihood, land seizure, monopoly and low wages,
among other things, while in their struggle for justice they asserted a variety of
social and political rights. They appealed for the recognition of norms drawn from
moral economy, guild custom or Ottoman codes, requested electoral rights, and
demanded the redistribution of wealth.
A particularly original feature of Chalcraft’s chapter is his analysis of the
significance for subaltern politics in both town and countryside of elections. In a
cogent analysis which mirrors his emphasis on the subaltern ability to respond to
changing conditions, Chalcraft develops a sharp critique of modernization theory
which credits elites with the sole authorship of progressive change. Asserting that
positive change might and indeed did come from below, Chalcraft shows how
concentrations of power associated with the state, the economy and the empire
typically worked not to extend representative government and democracy but
rather to oppose and repress subaltern social and political rights.
In his inclusion of both workers and peasants in a single analytical framework,
Chalcraft points to ways in which a fusion might be effected, in the context of an
urbanizing and industrializing economy and society, between categories that are
usually kept quite distinct. After all, the dockers, coal-heavers and other unskilled
workers along the Suez Canal were themselves drawn from the ranks of the land-
less peasantry, their journey from peasant to worker profoundly affecting both the
mentalite of the new working class and the rural communities they left behind.25
Asef Bayat highlights an extremely unusual case, the sustained and organized
struggle for jobs and protection which appeared among the unemployed in post-
revolutionary Iran. He points out that, in developing countries, such movements
by the unemployed are extremely rare, despite high rates of open and concealed
joblessness, family kinship, patron–client relations and especially the informal
sector providing essential mechanisms of protection and survival. Furthermore
the difficulties of organization for the unemployed (even in the first world), gen-
erally prevent the emergence of sustained protest movements. Bayat chronicles
the story of the unemployed movement in Iran immediately following the revolu-
tion of 1979, examining its genesis and organization, and its tactics of collective
protest, including demonstrations, sit-ins, sometimes combined with hunger
strikes, and the issuing of resolutions. He relates its emergence to the unfolding
political conjuncture, the key features of which were the consolidation of the
Islamic republic and the rise of a revolutionary ideology among the jobless.
Lamia Zaki returns to Chalcraft’s general theme, the efforts made by the newly
urbanized and proletarianized poor to defend themselves against the spread of
market forces, in her discussion of the collective determination of Casablanca
shantytown dwellers to negotiate terms for their access to electricity. She shows
how an aggressive unleashing of market forces disrupted the existing social
balance between the shantytown dwellers and the wider society. The shantytowns

9
 STEPHANIE CRONIN

had been accustomed to appropriating illegally the electricity they needed, relying
on a tacit understanding with the State and the former public company whereby
the State had come to accept the hijacking of electricity, partly to preserve social
peace but also to keep the shantytown dwellers out of the city proper. The newly
privatized company however, motivated purely by financial considerations,
embarked on a confrontation with the shantytown dwellers. The latter, after a
protracted struggle, a crucial element of which was their elaboration of a justifica-
tory discourse of human rights, succeeded in exploiting the differing goals of the
State and the company to retain and even expand their access to cheap electricity.
Part III turns to the rural poor. In general, the rise of peasant studies as a
discrete field of research in the 1970s found comparatively little response among
historians of the Middle East and North Africa.26 Since the region appeared to lack
the large-scale peasant risings characteristic of countries such as China, or even
the politically significant peasant movements of Latin America, historians of the
Middle East and North Africa tended to dismiss the countryside as uninteresting,
its people passive, apolitical and socially conservative. Yet, even for the British
Marxist historians, who worked in and wrote about the country which saw the
first triumph of capitalism and the earliest formation of an industrial working
class, the fate of the rural poor was a subject of immense significance.27 Again,
in the foundational works of Subaltern Studies, the peasant rebel was a key
figure. Nonetheless, although the great majority of the people of the Middle East
and North Africa have, until recently, lived in the countryside, their consciousness
and historical agency has been little investigated. If historians of the Middle East
have too often been content to share Marx’s characterization of peasants as so
many potatoes in sacks, their view of tribal nomads has typically been actively
hostile. The ordinary nomads have frequently been depicted as mere instruments
of their khans, and all layers of the tribal pyramid as backward and reactionary,
any resistance from them to government policy merely a symptom of an eternal
and unchanging conflict between tribal chaos and state-imposed order.
These conventions are challenged by Stephanie Cronin in her account of the
experience of the rural poor in early Pahlavi Iran, experience which was framed
by the project of the new regime established after the coup d’état of 1921. Cronin
relates changes in the consciousness and modes of action of the rural poor to
changes in the relations of production in the countryside, particularly emphasiz-
ing the impact of the penetration of capitalism, of the proletarianization of large
numbers of the rural poor, and of the ideology of the nationalist elite itself.
Riza Khan, later Riza Shah, deploying slogans drawn from a nationalist and
populist discourse, implemented policies which nourished and entrenched
capitalist economic relations in Iran. Posing as an iconoclast and as incorrigibly
hostile to the old Qajar elite (the Qajar dynasty ruled Iran between 1797 and
1925 and presided over a prolonged period of political and economic decline),
Riza Shah first inflicted a comprehensive political defeat on the exhausted Qajar
political order and, following the Qajar elite’s accommodation to his regime and
acceptance of his new dynasty, guaranteed the ascendancy of a class drawn

10
 INTRODUCTION

essentially from that elite and its lieutenants among the modern intelligentsia.
Cronin shows how, within the harsh terms of the nationalist project of early Pahlavi
Iran, the rural poor offered terms and formulated responses on their own account.
Despite the paucity of their material and ideological resources, the rural poor made
persistent efforts to modify and occasionally to challenge both their existing cir-
cumstances and the impact upon them of the novel and radical policies introduced
in Iran during the 1920s. These efforts seem to have acquired a greater then usual
dynamism (and an ability to leave evidence in the sources) particularly when they
were lent support, albeit temporary and tactical, by the new regime itself in its own
struggle with refractory remnants of the Qajar elite. It is clear from Cronin’s
account that the constituent categories of the rural poor made in these years no bid
to assert a hegemony of their own. Indeed they were quite incapable of offering
any such bid. Rather they appear to have acted often as a consequence of being
drawn into the orbit of other, more powerful and coherent, social forces, whether
the industrial working class, the urban intelligentsia or the functionaries and
ideologues of the new state itself. Although the narrative contained in this chapter
clearly demonstrates the pervasiveness of peasant activism and agency, it also
demonstrates the extent to which this activism was inevitably limited in its scope
and political object, and incapable of posing anything other than local perspec-
tives. It also illustrates the rather conservative nature of this activism. The strug-
gles of the rural poor in Iran described here, insofar as they were anti-capitalist or
opposed to ‘modernity’, sought neither to overturn existing private property rela-
tions nor to transcend them, but rather evinced a desire to restore the status quo
ante, specifically a mythologized version of ancient collective forms of ownership.
Caught between forms of economic exploitation and political subordination
which were, on the one hand ‘traditional’, represented by subsistence agriculture
and pastoralism and the rule of the khans and rural magnates, and on the other
hand, ‘modern’, represented by private property and the authoritarian state, the
rural poor experienced a series of crushing defeats in the 1920s. Their struggles
were denied and suppressed at the time and have been largely ignored or forgotten
since. Nonetheless traces remain, in archives and in folk memory. Although the
narrative which may be reconstructed from these traces is ‘necessarily fragmented
and episodic’,28 yet it provides a tantalizing glimpse of the realities of rural con-
flict conventionally obscured by the triumphant nationalist discourse of the new
Pahlavi state.
Part IV casts its searchlight further downwards, into the lower depths of Middle
Eastern and North African society, to the marginal and the outcast, with studies
of gypsies and slaves. Indeed marginality in the Middle East and North Africa
has become a sub-genre of its own, perhaps reflecting a fascination among
respectable scholarship with an underworld of deviance and transgression.29
Whereas the influence of social historians such as George Rudé, E.P. Thompson
and Eric Hobsbawm has been apparent in ‘history from below’ in general, in the
analysis of the marginal, prisoners, prostitutes, the insane, the influence of Michel
Foucault has been paramount.30

11
 STEPHANIE CRONIN

Gypsies have constituted, everywhere and at all times, a marginal group par
excellence. With their own social codes, boundaries and notions of transgression,
mirroring those of non-Gypsy society, they have tried to protect themselves
against a hostile social environment, surviving individually and collectively by
the employment of the only strategies available to them, strategies of criminality
and deviance which served to further reinforce their exclusion. In a highly original
account, Faika Çelik first discusses the mechanisms, segregation, expulsion and
stigmatization, through which Gypsies, both men and women, settled and nomadic,
Muslim and non-Muslim, were legally and socially marginalized by the Ottoman
state and society during the ‘classical’ period of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries. Observing that avenues of upward mobility open to other subjects
of the sultan, such as the devvirme,31 were closed to Gypsies, she describes the
occupations and ways of life into which they were driven. These covered a spec-
trum from the more or less legitimate to the disreputable, to the legally forbidden
but tolerated, to the criminal and downright sinister. The common Gypsy trade of
iron-making, for example, easily metamorphosed into counterfeiting, while their
most usual work, as entertainers, singing, dancing and fortune-telling, invariably
descended into prostitution. Indeed Gypsies were particularly identified with
prostitution, and ran many brothels in Istanbul. As well as making use of Ottoman
legal codes for her analysis of the wider socio-economic realities and moral
values of Ottoman society, Çelik also excavates Ottoman-Turkish oral traditions
to explore the place of Gypsies and their image in popular culture. Her work also
invites the application of a comparative perspective. She points out that, although
Gypsies were a despised ‘Other’ in Ottoman society, they were never enslaved,
as occurred in the non-Ottoman Balkans, nor were they persecuted. It was, after
all, in Europe after the triumph of modernity that the Gypsies experienced their
darkest historical moment in the Nazi death camps.
In Chapter 8, Fatiha Loualich discusses the situation of emancipated female slaves
in Algiers in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, and the options available to them
in terms of social advancement. As a recent study on slavery in Morocco has pointed
out, although we are aware of the main features of slavery in the Muslim world, we
have little detailed information on the material or affective conditions of slave life in
these regions.32 It is this absence which Loualich begins to rectify.
Such scholarship as exists on slavery in the Muslim world has tended towards
an ‘artificially sweetened’ view,33 especially in light of frequent and inappropri-
ate comparisons to slavery in the Americas and due to the Islamic legal prescrip-
tions declaring the freeing of slaves to be a pious act. Certainly the conditions of
slaves in the Middle East and North Africa never sank to the level of slaves on
the plantations of the New World. Unlike the ante-bellum American South, the
societies of the Middle East and North Africa were not slave societies, nor was
economic activity geared to a free and open market. Their economic systems
did not depend on slave labour. Slaves were rather employed mostly in domestic
service and concubinage, were signs of power and prestige, and were items of
consumption, not production.34

12
 INTRODUCTION

Up until the beginning of the twentieth century, black slaves were present in
North Africa in relatively large numbers. It has been estimated, for the nineteenth
century, that in an average year 20,000 slaves probably crossed the desert from
West Africa to the Maghrib, this figure indicating about 2 million black people
arriving in North Africa every 100 years. The conditions in which they lived
varied enormously, depending on the wealth and status of their owners. The role
of emancipation in checking the extent of slavery in the Muslim world has been
the subject of some debate.35 In general, it seems that, although Islam did soften
the institution by urging its believers to free their slaves, emancipation was far
from the rule, and even when bestowed, was ambivalent, resulting in a condition
barely distinguishable from the former slavery. The freed slave became a second-
class citizen and they and their male decendansts remained in a patron–client
relationship with one who had freed them. Newly freed slaves continued to need
social and legal protection, they lacked opportunities in work and were usually
reduced to the lowest and worst-paid trades, or begging. It has usually been
assumed that the prospects for emancipated women were even worse then for
men, and that many ended up as prostitutes.36
Fatiha Loualich looks at the experiences of emancipated female slaves in
Algiers. She clearly distinguishes between the situation of white slaves, mostly
Christian Europeans who were often ransomed, and black slaves, who were never
ransomed and repatriated, and between men and women. She describes the typical
path followed by female slaves in Algiers, as they moved from slave to emanci-
pation, and on to occupy the role of domestic servant. She demonstrates that a
high proportion of slaves were women, reflecting the high demand for female
labour, as domestic servants. She also shows that women were more frequently
emancipated than men and that emancipated women eventually became relatively
better off than their male counterparts.
By focusing on women, Loualich challenges conventional views of the options
open to emancipated slaves. Illustrating the importance of gendered history to
understanding a complex social reality, she shows that freed women possessed
access to a strategy not open to men. While social custom dictated that emanci-
pated men marry only emancipated women, or even fall back to a slave woman,
emancipated women were allowed to marry freeborn men, and often did so.
Women were able to transform their social position by marriage since they were
assimilated to the status of their husbands. Conversely, the marriage of a freeborn
woman to an emancipated man was a social disaster for the woman and her
family. Thus Loualich argues that in fact freed women possessed greater possi-
bilities for social mobility then freed men. Furthermore, not only was marriage
outside their own community to men well placed in the social hierarchy a route
to social integration and advancement for emancipated women, but they also
seem to have been in a stronger position than men to improve their independent
financial position. Loualich provides evidence of the means used by emancipated
women to accumulate modest means, including gifts from their former masters,
bequests in wills and the endowment of a waqf.

13
 STEPHANIE CRONIN

Clearly both the marginal groups described here, black ex-slaves of North
Africa and Ottoman Gypsies, were the victims of widespread prejudice. Yet,
although they were despised, Gypsies were never persecuted by the Ottomans, nor
did the ex-slaves find their colour the absolute bar to social advancement which
it constituted in other former slave-owning societies, such as the southern states
of the United States. In general the societies of the Middle East and North Africa
produced no intellectual equivalent to the ‘scientific’ theories of racial hierarchy
which became so prevalent in modern Europe. These societies, which were in
reality diverse and complex, multi-racial and multi-religious, lacked the sharp
demarcations which modernity was imposing on contemporary Europe, the
boundaries between free and unfree, black and white, legitimate and transgressive,
remianing fluid, porous and permeable.
Part V of the book illustrates the inadequacy of conventionally rigid
dichotomies of European/Middle Eastern and elite/subaltern through studies of
foreign, mainly southern European migrant workers. The European presence in
the Middle East and North Africa has usually been understood to refer to an
official and mercantile elite embedded within imperial or colonial power and
cocooned within an assumption of racial superiority. Here, however, a different
kind of European presence is described. Julia Clancy-Smith and Anthony
Gorman, in their studies of pre-colonial Tunis and Egypt in the formative period
of the ‘veiled protectorate’ (1882–1914), both problematize the counterpoint of
indigenous/foreign and the equation of European/elite.37
Clancy-Smith takes up the story begun in Loualich’s account of white slaves.
She traces the origins of the nineteenth-century European population of domestic
servants in Tunis to slavery, beginning with a description of sixty Christian
Neapolitan servants, freed slaves who had remained with their Mamluk masters
after emancipation, probably for want of other options. She then shows how those
whom today would be called economic migrants moved not into Europe but from
Europe to Tunis, their numbers expanding rapidly during the nineteenth century,
reaching 15 per cent or more of the city’s population by the 1870s, ‘although who
and what was a European remained somewhat fluid for much of the century’.
There was, for example, a large population of British subjects, although the
majority of these were Maltese and some were Greeks; a group of families
under French protection, some nationals, some not; and an uncertain number of
Italo-Sicilians.
Clancy-Smith shows Tunis as a place of work and even opportunity for those
denied it in their own country, and shows how, although the lives and circum-
stances of these European subalterns were being defined and refashioned by the
changing relations between North Africa and the West, yet there was never a
straightforward correlation between nationality and class. Most of the migrants
who went to Tunis in search of a living, both men and women, initially became
domestic servants, moving to tavern or hotel work by the last quarter of the century.
Clancy-Smith points out that, although from mid-century the growing number of
hotels, cafes, restaurants, taverns and inns in the city, catering to Europeans,

14
 INTRODUCTION

functioned as mechanisms of social betterment for some newcomers, misfortune

was never too far away. She concludes her account with a portrayal of those
migrants, their fate obscured by false notions about the automatic prestige possessed
by Europeans, who failed to make a living and fell into abject poverty, became
down and out.
Clancy-Smith describes with sympathy the lives of the southern European poor
who, battered in their own countries by economic and political forces over which
they had little control, ventured to Tunis in search of a better life. Her account
concludes in 1870, a decade before the French occupation of Tunis in 1881.
French colonialism was of course to transform the position of the European poor
in North Africa and the character of their relations, economic and political, with
the indigenous society. Within the context of French political and military power,
these poor migrants from Italy, Spain and Malta, as well as from France itself,
attached themselves to the colonial state and became part of a settler-colonial
elite, benefiting directly from the dispossession of the native population. This
transformation was to be finally and most infamously represented by the ‘pieds
noirs’ of Algeria.
Anthony Gorman also discusses European migrant workers, but not only as
subalterns moving horizontally from the bottom of European society to the bot-
tom of Tunisian society in their struggle for survival and betterment, but as mili-
tant and conscious activists in the vanguard of the Egyptian working class.
Gorman observes that Egypt, like Tunis, was an ethnically plural society, and that
the concept of Egyptian ethnicity developing within the framework of modern
nationalism tended to obscure the actual diversity within its population. Many of
the foreign workers whom he discusses were born in Egypt of families who had
been resident there for generations. He describes a diverse mix of foreign workers,
Armenians, Greeks, Levantines, Italians, Maltese and various other European
nationalities, some of whom did not hold foreign nationality and those who did
were not under the system of Capitulations, subject to Egyptian law.
In common with recent scholarship on other Middle Eastern countries at a
similar threshold of modernity, Gorman, through his analysis of the ideological
and political activities of foreign workers in Egypt, disputes the accuracy of
the ‘nationalist–imperialist polarity’, the ‘dichotomy of the Egyptian and the
foreign’.38 On the contrary, he argues that foreign workers, although occupying a
relatively privileged position vis-à-vis the mass of the Egyptian labouring poor,
nonetheless directed their ideological and political energies towards developing
an internationalist trend that sought to defend the rights of both foreign and
Egyptian workers against capital and the colonial state. Articulating an idiom
based on a conception of a common working-class interest, this trend constructed
a muliti-ethnic class-based identity that opposed affiliations based on nationality
and religion.
Gorman uses a rich periodical and pamphlet literature to reconstruct his
account of the activities of these workers. He describes their formation of new
and militant labour organizations and their adoption of industrial tactics based on

15
 STEPHANIE CRONIN

a core of anarcho-syndicalist ideas then thriving in the countries of southern

Europe from which these workers were predominantly drawn, and their extensive
intellectual and educational activities. He goes on to discuss their political
conflicts with both nationalist and imperialist elites, and their economic struggle
with the emerging capitalist system, showing how these activists were inspired by
a commitment to internationalism, brotherhood and self-help as a way to defend
the collective interests and rights of the worker, to combat the depradations of
capitalism, and to oppose the malevolent authority of the state.
In certain respects these foreign workers played the same role as migrant
workers, both internal and international, in other countries of the Middle East,
acting as a conduit for the transmission of ideological radicalism and new
organizational forms.39 Furthermore, their internationalism may be seen as
profoundly in their own interests. Only within such a discourse could they carve
out a future for themselves within an independent Egypt. Naturally opposed by
the colonial state, the syndicalist labour unions were also challenged by Egyptian
nationalists, who attempted to rally workers to a multi-class agenda, and by the
bourgeois leadership of local ethnic communities who aimed to keep control of
‘their own’ working class. Gorman concludes by stressing the significance of the
legacy of these foreign workers. Although the political landscape shifted in favour
of nationalism after 1919, leading to a decline in syndicalism, radical labour
activism was channelled into the new communist movement where foreigners and
foreign workers would again play an important role. Indeed, right up until the
Nasser period, foreign workers in specialized sectors in the Egyptian economy
continued to be active in progressive politics.
Part VI of this volume discusses the intervention of subaltern groups in the
independence struggles of the region and the often complex and tense relation-
ship between subaltern demands and forms of activity and elite nationalist
movements, with two case studies of very different political moments, the Greek
fight for statehood against the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century, and
the continuing Palestinian struggle for national independence. Although popular
mobilizations have been essential for the victory of elite nationalist movements,
which have in ideological terms always advanced a multi-class agenda, the survival
in power of those elites after independence demands the rapid closure of subal-
tern activity. For example, subaltern protests such as bread riots may, in pre-
independence years, be integrated within the discourse of nationalist elites as
exemplifying the nationalist spirit, but after independence be disowned by those
same elites as primitive and reactionary.
Part VI begins with a discussion of another marginal group, but one with a
quite different social position and role to that of the despised and detested
gypsies. Gerassimos Karabelias provides an account of the part played by Greek
bandits in the war of independence, detecting in the nature of their contribution
and their subsequent treatment a compass for understanding key features of the
evolution of modern Greece. Bandits constituted the backbone of the forces fight-
ing the Ottomans and Greek political and military leaders used their services

16
 INTRODUCTION

extensively. Yet after the creation of the new state, the new ruling political
and economic elites were quick to depict them in extremely negative terms,
as common robbers and criminals and as deserving of harsh repression and
punishment.
Karabelias’s chapter touches on another debate which was one of the earliest
to flourish in the field of ‘history from below’. It is indeed now impossible to
discuss the meaning of the phenomenon of banditry without reference to the work
of Eric Hobsbawm whose famous book sparked an ongoing controversy among
social historians. The bandit has often been depicted in popular discourse as a rep-
resentative and a champion of the rural oppressed and it was this attitude, and the
social reality which lay beneath it, which Hobsbawm theorized in a number of
case-studies. However, Hobsbawm’s imputed inclination to romanticize banditry
has been criticized by Anton Blok and Karen Barkey, who have pointed out that
bandits have often acted not as challengers to, but as enforcers of, landlord power
in the countryside.40 Karabelias admits that shepherds and peasants often suffered
from bandit depradations, yet he cites the large body of popular songs and poems
which glorified their actions and expressed admiration for their defiance of
an unjust and oppressive government and central administration. It seems that,
whatever the reality, everywhere there has been a marked tendency for popular
discourse to contrast the power of the bandit, transformed into a mythical figure
imbued with heroic qualities, with the venality, corruption and cowardice of the
authorities, probably reflecting not the actual experience of the rural poor at
the hands of bandits but rather their resentment at their treatment by landlord and
state. Thus far, in the case of the Middle East and North Africa, the figure of the
bandit has been investigated more deeply in literature than in scholarship, for
example in the novels of the Turkish author, Yashar Kemal.41 Yet the bandit is by
no means of purely historical significance. Hobsbawm, in a response to the
critiques produced by his original thesis, produced a reflection on the mutation
and survival of social banditry in developed capitalist economies up to the present
day. In the Middle East and North Africa banditry, far from being merely a
survival from the past, was often the product of the very process of modern state-
building. Across the region the introduction and enforcement of conscription, for
example, led to an increase in banditry as reluctant recruits and deserters fled to
the countryside. According to the view of nationalist elites in the region, banditry
typified a period characterized by the weakness and disintegration of state authority,
the backwardness and isolation of the countryside, and the uncontrolled power of
the tribal khans and their armed followers. According to this view, with modern-
ization and national integration, banditry, already an anachronism, would easily
be suppressed. In fact, however, the twentieth century saw, in many countries,
not the gradual disappearance of banditry, but rather a change in its character, a
‘modernization’ of banditry into new forms of criminal activity such as smuggling,
kidnapping and even armed rural separatist groups.
Karabelias shows how the Greek nationalist elite first used, and then suppressed,
a subaltern rural mobilization. Roger Heacock, in a discussion of the Palestinian

17
 STEPHANIE CRONIN

resistance to Zionism, adopts a similar framework to understand the dynamics of

the second, ‘al-Aqsa’ intifada. In rethinking the predominant historical interpreta-
tions of national resistance in India Ranajit Guha and others argued that the
historical protagonists in colonial India were in reality neither the dominant
groups of the indigenous society nor the colonial authorities but the subaltern
classes and groups constituting the mass of the labouring population and the
intermediate strata in town and country. Heacock admits that the relationship
between Palestinian elites and masses was and is blurred because of the precari-
ousness of the social formation, always threatened with obliteration, and it is not
easy therefore to set the Westernized elites and the locally nourished movement
in stark contrast to one another. Yet he details how the poor, the camp dwellers
and villagers cum wage labourers of the Occupied Territories always showed the
greatest readiness for militancy, and how the al-Aqsa intifada in reality pitted the
leadership created by the Oslo Accords and its middle- and lower-middle-class
supporters against the broad masses of the people in the camps and villages. He
concludes that, to a great extent, the al-Aqsa intifada was the continuation of a
movement of national resistance by the dispossessed against the Israeli occupation,
after a seven-year hiatus based on the Oslo Accords, but it was also significantly
a movement imposed by the dispossessed on their own reluctant elites who were
deemed responsible for the degradation of living conditions and widespread
corruption. The efforts and sacrifices of the intifada were borne overwhelmingly
by the people of the refugee camps and the villages, day labourers, peasants and
the unemployed.
These chapters, by the intensity of their focus on the oppressed and the excluded,
offer a challenge to the elitist nature of the conventional history and historiography
of the Middle East and North Africa and propose new directions for research. The
collection is unique in its historical depth, ranging from the medieval period to
the present, and its geographical reach, including Iran, the Ottoman Empire/
Turkey, the Balkans, the Arab Middle East and North Africa. It is the first to
encompass both major social classes and sectors, the working class, the peasantry,
the urban poor, women, and marginal groups such as gypsies and slaves, and their
differing strategies: of survival, of negotiation and of protest and resistance, and
to attempt to develop comparative perspectives consciously based on the adoption
of parameters drawn from the work of the great European social historians.
Bringing together a range of scholars working on different countries and different
themes within the general field of Middle Eastern and North African ‘subaltern
studies’, the collection hopes to begin to overcome the highly fragmentary nature
of this field, and the marked tendency for scholars working on different countries
to remain isolated within their national and chronological boundaries.
The focus of this volume has remained resolutely fixed on the subaltern yet, as
Gramsci observed in his inspirational ‘Notes on Italian History’,42 the history
of subaltern classes is inevitably and inextricably intertwined with the history
of civil societies and of states. Thus, through the study of the subaltern, much
may be revealed not only about the experience and narratives of the powerless

18
 INTRODUCTION

but also about the nature of the powerful, whether classes, regimes, states or
economic relationships.
In this collection we set ourselves the task of attempting to begin to reconstruct
something of the lives of those in the region whose history has been largely
forgotten, and even sometimes deliberately erased. We have tried to recover, as
Gramsci instructed, ‘every trace of independent initiative on the part of subaltern
groups’.43 Having begun this project with the intention not of surrendering to,
but of overcoming, the ‘fragmented and episodic’44 character of the subaltern
histories we have recorded here, we conclude with the hope that these narratives
may point towards new possibilities for writing a ‘people’s history’ of the Middle
East and North Africa.45

Notes
1 See, inter alia, Eric J. Hobsbawm, ‘History from Below – Some Reflections’, Frederick
Krantz (ed.), History from Below: Studies in Popular Protest and Popular Ideology in
Honour of George Rudé (Montreal, 1985), pp. 63–73; Harvey J. Kaye, The British
Marxist Historians: An Introductory Analysis (Basingstoke, 1984); Ranajit Guha et al.
(eds), Subaltern Studies: Writings on South Asian History and Society (11 vols, Delhi,
1982–2001). The use of the term ‘subaltern’ derives from Antonio Gramsci, see
Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey
Nowell Smith (London, 1971), pp. 52–5.
2 E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (London, 1963, 1968), p. 13.
3 Karl Marx, ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’, Surveys from Exile, ed. and
introd. David Fernbach (London, 1973), p. 146.
4 For a Marxist critique of Subaltern Studies see Tom Brass, ‘Moral Economists,
Subalterns, New Social Movements and the (Re-) Emergence of a (Post-) Modernized
(Middle) Peasant’, Vinayak Chaturvedi, Mapping Subaltern Studies and the
Postcolonial (London, 2000), pp. 127–62. For the history of Subaltern Studies see,
inter alia, Chaturvedi, Mapping Subaltern Studies; Dipesh Chakrabarty, Habitations of
Modernity: Essays in the Wake of Subaltern Studies (Chicago IL, 2002); David
Ludden, Reading Subaltern Studies: Critical History, Contested Meaning and the
Globalization of South Asia (Wimbledon, 2002).
5 Gramsci originated the use of the term ‘subaltern’ as a codeword for the more
obviously Marxist ‘proletariat’ in order to evade the Italian Fascist censorship. Its
subsequent evolution has been the subject of some controversy. Guha’s definition has
been criticized as politically and sociologically problematic, its all-embracing social
composition resulting in the presence of economically opposed subjects within the
category of the subaltern/subordinate, leading to ‘the sliding, increasingly elusive and
finally vanishing category of class’. For a fuller discussion of this point, see Brass,
‘Moral Economists’.
6 Driss Maghraoui, ‘The Moroccan Colonial Soldiers: Between Selective Memory and
Collective Memory’, Ali Abdullatif Ahmida (ed.) Beyond Colonialism and
Nationalism in the Maghrib (New York, 2000), pp. 49–70.
7 Ahmad H. Sa‘di, ‘The Politics of “Collaboration”: Israel’s Control of a National
Minority and Indigenous Resistance’, Holy Land Studies: A Multidisciplinary Journal,
vol. 4, no. 2, November 2005, pp. 7–26.
8 Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, pp. 5–23.
9 James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance,
New Haven and London, 1985, p. xvi; see also The Moral Economy of the Peasant,

19
 STEPHANIE CRONIN

New Haven and London, 1976; Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden
Transcripts, New Haven and London, 1992. For an application of Scott’s approach to
the Middle East see Fereydoun Safizadeh, ‘Peasant Protest and Resistance in Rural
Iranian Azerbaijan’, in Farhad Kazemi and John Waterbury (eds), Peasants and Politics
in the Modern Middle East (Miami, 1991).
10 Such deferential appeals to socially sanctioned values might, however, occasionally be
backed up by anonymous and much more menacing communications, such as Iran’s
shabnamahs (night-letters). See Stephanie Cronin, ‘The Tehran Crowd and the Rise of
Riza Khan: Popular Protest, Disorder and Riot in Iran’, International Review of Social
History, vol. 50, part 2, 2005, pp. 167–2001. On the general significance of anony-
mous threats, and the seriousness with which they were viewed by the authorities in a
European context see E.P. Thompson, ‘The Crime of Anonymity’, D. Hay, P. Linebaugh,
John G. Rule, E.P. Thompson, Cal Winslow (eds) Albion’s Fatal Tree: Crime and
Society in Eighteenth Century England (London, 1975), pp. 255–344.
11 See, for example, Judith Tucker, Women in Nineteenth-Century Egypt (Cambridge, 1985).
12 The recent appearance of a textbook is a sign of a growing implantation within the field.
Joel Beinin, Workers and Peasants in the Modern Middle East (Cambridge, 2001). This
work contains a comprehensive bibliography on ‘history from below’ for the Ottoman
Empire/Turkey, Egypt and Bilad al-Sham, but excludes Iran and North Africa.
13 Edward Said, Orientalism (London, 1978).
14 These methodological difficulties have been rehearsed with increasing sophistication
within a range of Subaltern Studies publications. See, most famously, G.C. Spivak,
‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, C. Nelson and L. Grossberg (eds), Marxism and the
Interpretation of Culture (Urbana, 1988).
15 Afsaneh Najmabadi, The Story of the Daughters of Quchan: Gender and National
Memory in Iranian History, Syracuse, NY, 1998), p. 9; Donald Quataert, International
Labor and Working Class History, special issue on Ottoman Labor History, no. 60,
Fall 2001.
16 Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France,
1870–1914 (Stanford, CA, 1976), p. xvi.
17 For a further example of the possibilities of medieval ‘history from below’ see Boaz
Shoshan, Popular culture in medieval Cairo (Cambridge, 1993).
18 See George Rudé, The Crowd in History: A Study of Popular Disturbances in France
and England (London, 1964), pp. 3–16. Perhaps the most significant use so far of
police records in Middle Eastern studies has been by Hanna Batatu, The Old Social
Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq (Princeton, NJ, 1978) although the
focus of this work was on political, rather than social, history.
19 Ervand Abrahamian, ‘The Crowd in Iranian Politics, 1905–1953’, Past and Present,
vol. 41, December 1968, pp. 184–210; see also ‘The Crowd in the Persian Revolution’,
Iranian Studies, vol. 2, no. 4, autumn 1969, pp. 128–150.
20 This may also, however, be an optical illusion produced by the sources due, for example,
to the tendency of policing and judicial authorities quelling political riots to arrest and
prosecute male ringleaders. In instances where the policing net was cast wider, women
were more in evidence. For a discussion of this point, see Tim Harris (ed.) The Politics
of the Excluded, c1500–1850 (Basingstoke, 2001), pp. 17–20.
21 Cronin, ‘The Tehran Crowd’, pp. 194–5.
22 E.P. Thompson, ‘The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth
Century’, Customs in Common (New York, 1991). Thompson’s article proved both
influential and provocative. For a recent reappraisal, see Adrian Randall and Andrew
Charlesworth (eds) Moral Economy and Popular Protest: Crowds, Conflict and
Authority (Basingstoke, 2000).
23 J. Walton and D. Seddon, Free Markets and Food Riots: The Politics of Global
Adjustment (Oxford, 1994).

20
 INTRODUCTION

24 See, for example, Joel Beinin and Zachary Lockman, Workers on the Nile: Nationalism,
Communism, Islam and the Egyptian Working Class (Princeton, NJ, 1987); Ellis Jay
Goldberg, Tinker, Tailor, and Textile Worker: Class and Politics in Egypt, 1930–1954
(Berkeley, CA, 1986); Zachary Lockman, ‘ “Worker” and “Working Class” in pre-1914
Egypt: A Rereading’, in Zachary Lockman (ed.), Workers and Working Classes in the
Middle East: Struggles, Histories, Historiographies (Albany, NY, 1994).
25 For the role of such peasants-turned-workers as transmitters of urban unrest and
political ideas see Eric Wolf, ‘Peasant Rebellion and Revolution’, in Jack A. Goldstone
(ed.), Revolutions: Theoretical, Comparative and Historical Studies (San Diego,
CA, 1986).
26 A scan of the contents of the Journal of Peasant Studies reveals how little work of this
kind has been done on the Middle East and North Africa. For some examples see
M. Buheiry, ‘The Peasant Revolt of 1858 in Mount Lebanon: Rising Expectations,
Economic Malaise, and the Incentive to Arm’ in T. Khalidi (ed.) Land Tenure and
Social Transformation in the Middle East (Beirut, 1984), pp. 291–301; Julia Clancy-
Smith, Rebel and Saint: Muslim Notables, Popular Protest, Colonial Encounters
(Algerin and Tunis, 1800–1904) (Berkeley, 1994); Ellis Goldberg, ‘Peasants in Revolt:
Egypt 1919’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 24, no. 2, 1992,
pp. 265–80; and the collection edited by Farhad Kazemi and John Waterbury, Peasants
and Politics in the Modern Middle East (Miami, FL, 1991). The Egyptian peasantry
has probably received the most attention. See, for example, Nathan J. Brown, Peasant
Politics in Modern Egypt: The Struggle Against the State (Yale, CT, 1990); Kenneth M.
Cuno, The Pasha’s Peasants: Land, Society and Economy in Lower Egypt, 1740–1858
(Cambridge, 1992). Although there is still relatively little work on the rural producer
as a conscious political actor, the literature on agrarian relations and the various land
reforms is rather more plentiful.
27 See, especially, E.J. Hobsbawm and George Rudé, Captain Swing (London, 1969); see
also the work of Rodney Hilton on the medieval English peasantry, for example, Bond
Men Made Free: Medieval Peasant Movements and the English Rising of 1381
(London, 1977); Class Conflict and the Crisis of Feudalism: Essays in Medieval Social
History (London, 1985).
28 Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, pp. 54–5.
29 See, for example, Eugene Rogan, Outside In: On the Margins of the Modern Middle
East (London and New York, 2002). For a pioneering study of itinerant crooks and
petty criminals see C.E. Bosworth, The Medieval Islamic Underworld (Leiden, 1976).
30 Unsurprisingly, therefore, the French-language literature on marginality in the Middle
East and North Africa is especially rich. See, for example, Malek Chebel, L’Esprit de
Serail: Perversions et Marginalités au Maghreb (Paris, 1988); Fanny Colonna and
Zakya Daoud, Être Marginal au Maghreb (Paris, 1993); Dalenda and Abdelhamid
Largueche, Marginales en Terre d’Islam (Tunis, 1992), Abdelhamid Largueche, Les
Ombres de la ville, pauvres, marginaux et minoritaires à Tunis (XVIIIème et XIXème
siécles) (Paris and Tunis, 2000).
31 The devvirme was a form of human taxation, a compulsory levy of Christian boy
children. It constituted a mean, by which large numbers of Balkan Christians entered
the political and military elites of the Ottoman Empire.
32 Mohammed Ennaji, Serving the Master: Slavery and Society in Nineteenth-Century
Morocco (Basingstoke, 1999).
33 The phrase is Mohammed Ennaji’s.
34 See R. Segal, Islam’s Black Slaves (New York, 2001); Vanessa Martin, The Qajar Pact:
Bargaining, Protest and the State in Nineteenth-Century Persia (New York and
London, 2005), 150–82; B.A. Mirza’i, ‘The African Presence in Iran: Identity and its
Reconstruction in the 19th and 20th Centuries’, Outre-mers: Revue d’Histoire, 2002,
no. 2, pp. 229–46.

21
 STEPHANIE CRONIN

35 See Ennaji, Serving the Master, pp. 53–65.

36 Ennaji, Serving the Master, p. 58.
37 The port cities of the eastern Mediterranean have recently attracted considerable
attention from social historians due to their polyphonic nature and the intensity of their
interaction with the wider worlds. See, for example, Rogan, Outside In.
38 For a similar analysis, see, for example, Janet Afary, The Iranian Constitutional
Revolution, 1906–1911: Grassroots Democracy, Social Democracy and the Origins of
Feminism (New York, 1996).
39 This phenomenon has been extensively studied in relation to the early spread of social-
democratic ideas in Iran through the migration of Iranian labourers to the Baku oil
fields. See Touraj Atabaki, ‘Disgruntled Guests: Iranian Subaltern on the Margins of
the Tsarist Empire’, International Review of Social History, 2003, vol. 48, no. 3,
pp. 401–26; Janet Afary, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, pp. 21–2.
40 Hobsbawm, Bandits; Anton Blok, ‘The Peasant and the Brigand: Social Banditry
Reconsidered’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 14, no. 4, 1972;
Karen Barkey, Bandits and Bureaucrats: The Ottoman Route to State Centralization
(Ithaca, NY, 1994).
41 See, for example, Yashar Kemal, Memed, My Hawk, translated by Edouard Roditi
(London, 1990). See also David Hart, Banditry in Islam: Case Studies from Morocco,
Algeria and the Pakistan North West Frontier (Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, 1987); David
Prochaska, ‘Fire on the Mountain: Resisting Colonialism in Algeria’, in Donald
Crummey (ed.) Banditry, Rebellion and Social Protest in Africa (London, 1986).
42 Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, pp. 44–120.
43 Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, pp. 54–5.
44 Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, pp. 54–5.
45 We thus implicitly reject that tendency within Subaltern Studies which has been
criticized for its ‘postmodernist valorization of the fragment’ and which has challenged
the very possibility of constructing a totalizing national history through narratives of
subaltern experience. For a discussion of this point see Chakrabarty, Habitations
of Modernity, p. 18. For exponents of this tendency see Gayanendra Pandey, ‘In Defense
of the Fragment: Writing about Hindu-Muslim Riots in India Today’, Ranajit Guha (ed.),
A Subaltern Studies Reader (Minneapolis, MN, 1998) pp. 1–33; Partha Chatterjee, The
Nation and Its Fragments (Delhi and Oxford, 1994); Shahid Amin, Event, Memory,
Metaphor (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, 1995).

22
 Part I

THE URBAN CROWD AND

POPULAR PROTEST
 1
STREET VIOLENCE AND SOCIAL
IMAGINATION IN LATE-MAMLUK
AND OTTOMAN DAMASCUS
(c.1500–1800)

James Grehan

Crowds have always puzzled historians. As essentially anonymous and spontaneous

movements, they often seem to possess a mysterious, irrational, and even primal
quality. They can form suddenly and unpredictably, unite strangers behind an
apparently common cause, move through the streets as if acting with a single will,
and then unexpectedly melt away into the surrounding neighborhoods and
markets from which they came. Explanations are not easy to find. Once the sound
and fury have subsided and participants have left the streets, it is nearly impossible
to trace identities or determine individual motives for joining demonstrations.
This obscurity only deepens when one moves to the more distant past, as the
number of records and firsthand accounts rapidly dwindles.
Due in large part to these murky and confusing features, crowds appeared to an
earlier generation of scholars as profoundly disquieting breakdowns of the civil
order, which the scholars most often attributed to groups on the fringes of
law-abiding society. Many authors expressed their unease by uncritically accepting
and promoting a number of myths, which collectively took their place in the
literature as the credulous, fickle, simple-minded “mob.” One of the most renowned
exponents of this view was the French sociologist Gustave LeBon (d. 1931), who
argued that crowds were “governed by forces of which we are unconscious” –
hence, their imperviousness to the calm voice of reason and sobriety. As he blandly
assured his readers: “among the special characteristics of crowds, there are
several – such as impulsiveness, irritability, incapacity to reason, the absence of
judgment and critical spirit, the exaggeration of the sentiments, and others
besides – which are almost always observed in beings belonging to inferior forms
of evolution – in women, savages, and children, for instance.”1
Only with the growth of social history over the past generation have these con-
descending stereotypes lost ground to more sophisticated and sympathetic
images. Beginning with George Rudé,2 European historians have led the way in

25
 JAMES GREHAN

showing how, contrary to received opinion, crowds were not outsized bands of
criminals, vagrants, working-class malcontents, denizens of the slums, and other
marginal elements of society. In fact, they were often downright “respectable,”
consisting of a broad spectrum of the working population, most of whom had a
substantial investment in the welfare of the community. Even at their most violent
moments, crowds were not mindlessly brutal “mobs.” They were guided by
unspoken goals and ideals that transcended motives of hunger, envy, or revenge.
In light of such discoveries, popular protest has come to appear not as a senseless
outburst of hatred, hardly worthy of serious reflection, but as a rare window into
some of the least accessible areas of popular culture.
Despite increasing interest over the past generation,3 the study of the Middle
Eastern crowd is still in its earliest stages. The challenges are particularly daunt-
ing for the premodern period, largely because of the nature of the sources. The
greatest handicap for historians is undoubtedly the dearth of testimony from par-
ticipants and witnesses. Even in a large town such as Damascus, one of the major
centers of learning in the Ottoman Middle East, premodern culture was almost
entirely oral. The great majority of people were illiterate – or virtually so – and
left behind no traces of their personal lives in diaries or other writings that might
cast light on their daily experiences.
How, then, can we understand Damascenes’ perceptions of the social violence
that occasionally racked their city? For this local perspective, we can begin by
exploring the surviving literature produced in Damascus itself – above all, the
chronicles and biographical dictionaries in which Damascenes recorded what
they themselves regarded as the main personalities and events around town.
All these accounts, of course, have their own limitations, starting with the iden-
tity of the authors, nearly all of whom were ulama (members of the local Muslim
religious establishment). By background and training, they were privileged men –
literate, educated, and honored as the living repositories of the Islamic tradition.
The most eminent ulama easily ranked among the social elite, along with the great
merchants and tax-farmers and the highest-ranking military officers and imperial
officials. Their writings reflect their social position in displaying an overriding
preoccupation with the affairs of the high, the mighty, and the learned. This elitist
perspective was normal and seems to have characterized nearly all the literary
output of the period. One of the most remarkable documents that has come down
to us, the chronicle of Ahmad al-Budayri (d. 1763?), an ordinary barber, differs
little from the narratives of his more educated and illustrious contemporaries. Even
in the eyes of this humble artisan, the common folk rarely figure as anything more
than the backdrop to the gaudy stage of high society and politics.
In local accounts, popular protests therefore appear mostly as sporadic erup-
tions that shake the social order for a brief time before sinking again into the
anonymous bustle of urban life. Authors took little interest in recounting these
outbursts of frustration and despair. They report no manifestos, formal petitions,
or even the crudest chants and rarely dignify crowds with more than a few lines of
their attention. Visual clues are sparse and fleeting and reveal little about popular

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motives and beliefs. In eighteenth-century Cairo, for example, demonstrators

sometimes pounded on drums, carried banners, and shouted appeals to the ulama,
one of whom might be placed at the head of a public procession.4 There are spotty
references to similar gestures in the crowds of Damascus, but the snapshots are
no less dim and blurry. In 1716, rioting janissary soldiers were accompanied by a
man who held a banner (‘alam), but we know of its existence only because the
authorities, in making an example out of him, took their revenge by impaling him
on it.5 Compared with other descriptions of civil disorder, this small detail was as
exceptional as it was gruesome.
Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to dwell on all the deficiencies in docu-
mentation. Though their accounts are often bare and laconic, chroniclers and
biographers still have much to tell us, primarily through their intimate knowledge
of the local scene and the conditions in which social unrest silently brewed.
Whenever demonstrations or uprisings occurred, they were quick to name the
leadership and affiliation of crowds, which seem to have been an open secret that
Damascenes learned easily by word of mouth or inferred from the latest trends in
urban politics. Through this urban grapevine, from which the authors drew much
of their information (if they did not witness the events themselves), it is possible
to work up a general image of popular protest.
But can anyone really speak of a single image, as if the crowd presented the
same face and held the same significance for every generation? Popular protest
is no different from other aspects of popular culture insofar as the slow pace
of change can create the illusion of a timeless “folk” tradition persisting over the
centuries. Contemporaries themselves were frequently unaware of many shifts in
custom and belief, for which the brief span of a lifetime is a deceptive unit of
measurement. To illuminate these seemingly glacial movements, we need to study
popular protest over the long term, thereby bringing together several centuries of
accumulated perceptions.
From the sixteenth to eighteenth century, the culture of protest in Damascus
underwent precisely this kind of gradual transformation. Local observers began
to emphasize a new understanding of demonstrations, which diverged from ear-
lier traditions and thereafter acquired distinctively “Ottoman” traits. Thus, the
transition to Ottoman rule, which had such obvious consequences for the politi-
cal and economic order, also left its imprint on habits of thought. Some of the
effects have already been noted for the upper reaches of society, particularly
among the leading ulama, who drew ever closer to the Ottoman religious
hierarchy.6 But the scope of these changes extended beyond strictly religious and
administrative affairs and touched the broader political culture, which, like
Damascus itself, evolved markedly during the Ottoman period.

Not all crowds are alike

If the crowd has many faces, as Rudé would remind us, we should be equally
aware that there are many types of crowds. The first task, then, is to understand

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the subtle differences in mass behavior that Damascenes sometimes noticed but
hardly bothered to define with any precision.
At the outset, we should recognize that not all crowds were violent or driven by
opposition to the authorities. Chief among these docile gatherings were the large
meetings that took place in mosques, particularly for the noon prayers on Friday,
in which the sermons typically had a political as well as a religious function. In
the grand tradition of Islamic politics, both the Mamluk and Ottoman authorities
made use of these congregations for their own ends. Shortly before his death in
1498, the ailing and perhaps repentant governor of Damascus had his entourage
distribute 2,000 dinars to a crowd of “the poor and unfortunate” at the Umayyad
Mosque, which “shook from the multitude of voices.”7 The Ottoman Sultan Selim
I showed the same flair for public munificence during his brief stay in the city.
After returning from the conquest of Egypt in 1517, he appeared one Friday at the
main mosque in al-Salihiyya, the northwestern suburb of Damascus. As the noon
prayer concluded, he was besieged by a swarm of “the poor, beggars, and women”
who were hoping for alms. Seizing the opportunity to strike a benevolent pose,
the sultan ordered that the women be sent into the mosque and the men into
al-Qaymari hospital next door, then showered both groups with pouches of coins.8
It was a deft touch of diplomacy, ensuring the sultan’s good name in a recently
conquered city where the Ottomans were still establishing themselves.
Some crowds were considered so useful that the authorities might go to great
lengths to sponsor them. To aid the sultan’s forces in the field, one governor
(1668) gathered all the people “except for a few” atop Mount Qasyun, which
overlooked the city behind al-Salihiyya; the whole community then offered its
prayers for victory (presumably in Crete).9 The demonstration came in the wake
of an earlier emergency, during the dry winter of 1662–1663, when popular anx-
iety had mounted over the shaky prospects for the spring harvest. A large crowd
had twice convened at the Umayyad Mosque, where a procession departed with
great pomp to the suburbs to hold a public prayer for rain. According to the
source, it was not until a third attempt that the pleas of the faithful were answered,
ostensibly because the people had not conducted themselves on the previous
occasions with the requisite modesty and humility.10
Religion was crucial in providing legitimation and support for the authorities,
but it was not always so amenable to their control. Though normally committed
to law and order, religious leaders were perfectly capable of stirring up hostile
crowds or, with less fanfare, discouraging public cooperation by quietly with-
drawing their support from offensive officials. Recognizing this potential for both
active and passive resistance, the Egyptian commander Muhammad Bey
Abu’l-Dhahab, who had a whole army at his disposal during ‘Ali Bey’s brief
rebellion against Istanbul (c.1770–1772), first sought the acquiescence of the
ulama before occupying Damascus with his troops in 1771.11 Exercising similar
power were the Sufi shaykhs, influential and prestigious figures whose followings
extended deep into local society. The governor’s attempt to ban the tahlila (1738),
a cherished Sufi ritual, turned the entire city against him in an open revolt.12

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As he had failed to appreciate, popular loyalties were quickly activated in the

name of religion.
Many of the links between the religious establishment and the general populace
ran through the marketplace, where guilds of artisans and merchants, often in
alliance with the ulama, proved quite adept at organizing their own protests. One
of the most prudent displays of anger was the closure of shops, often coupled with
a boycott of the Friday prayer in the mosques. This early version of a general
strike was the preferred method of applying pressure: opposition without actual
violence, denunciation with a minimum of confrontation. Staged on a wide
enough scale, this threat of violence could be as effective as violence itself. When
the city’s silk weavers objected in 1491 to the extra financial levies demanded by
one of the sultan’s companions (khassiki), they grabbed banners from local
mosques and headed straight for the governor’s palace, where their noisy demon-
stration hastened a negotiated compromise.13 In 1703, the mere hint of an
uprising caused the governor to cancel the forced sale (tarh) of silk that he had
planned to impose on leading merchants. Speaking through the mufti, who had
been carefully recruited to the cause, leading merchants brazenly reminded the
governor that “even if there were thousands to defend you, the insurrection of the
people would be difficult [to suppress].”14 Not every protest was capped with
such success, but the marketplace was always ready to mobilize for its interests.
Of a more informal nature than the guilds were the affiliations that bound together
people of the same ethnicity or geographical origin. Damascus was home to large
numbers of immigrants from throughout the Middle East, including minorities of
Turks, Kurds, Turcomans, North Africans, and Persians, who testified both to the
city’s cosmopolitan character and its reputation as one of the major religious centers
of the Islamic world. Regardless of background, all these newcomers kept some-
thing of their original identity and often clung to their communities for protection
and support. The murder of a Kurdish man, allegedly by a Baghdadi, set in motion
a public feud in 1750 that began with armed Kurds (probably mercenaries) storming
through al-Darwishiyya and Bab al-Jabiyya in a vain search for Baghdadi scape-
goats. When two Baghdadis were murdered several weeks later, a group of their
brethren (almost certainly mercenaries, as well), together with immigrants from
Mosul and allies from local military units, appeared outside Khan al-Akrad (Khan
of the Kurds) and provoked a heated gunfight in which a number of men were
killed and wounded. Frustrated in their attempt to take the khan, they attacked
nearby coffeehouses associated with the Kurds and might have done even more
damage if the governor, As‘ad Pasha al-‘Azm (r. 1743–1757), had not personally
intervened and prevented the conflict from spiraling out of control.15 Thus, ethnic
and regional ties were not merely a matter of language, religion, and culture. For all
these minorities, their identity was a lived social reality, placing them within familiar
networks, determining wider allegiances and political alignments and, to one degree
or another, marking them off from their fellow townspeople.
No less important than these non-Damascene forms of identity was the sense
of local attachment, of belonging to a particular quarter within the city. Set apart

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from the main thoroughfares, the residential areas formed crowded, self-contained
worlds full of winding lanes and sudden cul-de-sacs and bounded by thick gates
that were closed after dark. Each quarter had its own name, identity, and leadership,
all of which bred a feeling of community among neighbors, who lived in close
proximity to one another amid the dense urban construction that was typical of all
Arab towns. In many parts of the city – especially outside the medieval walls –
these loyalties manifested themselves in the formation of neighborhood gangs
(pl. zu‘ar), who in the spirit of all extra-legal protection combined patronage with
extortion. Few other organizations could raise crowds as quickly as the gangs,
which were generally composed of young men who seem to have created their own
subculture of honor, courage, and violence. They undoubtedly reached their heyday
during the last decades of Mamluk rule, as the empire was slowly pushed toward its
ultimate disintegration.16 Governors came to depend on them as supplemental
levies for the army and did not hesitate to involve these makeshift militias in
intra–Mamluk rivalries.17 Sensing the weakness of the state, gangs sometimes
defied officials and were even known to attack Mamluk troops.18 They also fought
with other gangs, acted as self-appointed guardians of their quarters, and occasion-
ally staged public marches through the city in a show of strength and intimidation.19
After the conquest of Syria, the Ottomans took brutal measures to suppress them but
could never root them out altogether.20 As late as the eighteenth century, chroniclers
were still referring to local gangs and their leaders, proving that they were an
essentially permanent feature of neighborhood life in many parts of the city.21
Although gangs remained active, their influence was soon eclipsed by janissary
troops, who gradually intermingled with the local population through marriage,
common economic interests, and the trickling of civilians into the ranks. By the
seventeenth century, the corps had already lost of much of its rigor and discipline.
Most janissaries resembled neighborhood toughs more than the crack infantry-
men of an earlier epoch, but on the local scene they remained a formidable force.
In Damascus, their position became unusually complicated on account of their
open disloyalty during the revolt of Abaza Hasan Pasha, governor of Aleppo, in
1658. Seeking to divide and rule, Istanbul sent a contingent of fresh troops in
1660, dubbed the qabiqul (kapıkulları in Turkish), who took up residence in the
citadel and adjacent neighborhoods in the northern suburbs, such as al-‘Amara.
The local janissaries ( yerliyya), on the other hand, retained their control over the
Midan and surrounding areas in the southwest and penetrated as far as the north-
western suburb of Suq Saruja.22 The unceasing rivalry between these two factions
soon became one of the main flashpoints of local violence.
Throughout these sporadic clashes, we should not be surprised to find residents
from each of the janissary strongholds actively participating in the fighting. As
André Raymond has observed for Ottoman Cairo and Aleppo, it is often possible
to read local political alignments as if they had been plotted on a map.23
Damascus offers proof of exactly the same political geography as other large Arab
towns, most notably during its turbulent eighteenth century, which ushered in
a long period of paramilitary violence. To take one of the longest and bitterest

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feuds as an example: the prolonged disorders of 1757–1758 not only set the two
janissary factions against each other; it also involved clients from their respective
neighborhoods. During the first street battles in June 1757, the imperial janis-
saries besieged the southern neighborhoods of Bab al-Sarija and al-Shaghur,
which supported the local janissaries. When fighting erupted again during the
following month, the same imperial janissaries found it natural to call on their
own allies in al-‘Amara (in the northwest), who joined them in attacking the
southwestern neighborhood of al-Darwishiyya, where they burned warehouses
belonging to officers of the yerliyya corps. They did not have to wait long for a
response. Armed men from al-Haqla (in the southwest) reinforced the infuriated
yerliyyya, and together they swarmed through al-‘Amara, torching homes and
markets and driving scores of families into the Umayyad Mosque for refuge.24
The depth and durability of these attachments can be seen decades later, as local
janissaries and their clients from the southern suburbs rampaged through
al-‘Amara in 1802 during another round of clashes with the kapıkulları.25 In all
of these actions, the line between soldiers and civilians is nearly impossible to
draw with much precision.
Can we therefore conclude that popular violence is really a projection of urban
networks? In all of the preceding clashes and demonstrations, crowds were indeed
mobilized by means of some preexisting social solidarity – above all, the bonds
of religion, work, ethnicity, and quarter. As one historian has explained, “the
existence of these [urban] networks makes it easier to understand why the Arab
cities did not remain passive during the Ottoman era.”26 Only in this way, runs the
argument, were the people able to come together and register their disaffection.
Without these networks, they had no real voice in urban affairs – or, for that
matter, in the making of history.
The main problem with this view, which implicitly reads history from the top
of the social order, is that some crowds had little or nothing to do with factional
struggles and social networks and sprang up as entirely spontaneous gatherings.
A few were tame and adoring, such as the throngs of women – “more than a
hundred at a time” – who used to hover around Hasan al-Majdhub (d. 1619), a
local folk saint (wali) and something of a celebrity about town.27 Others, however,
proved far more explosive and can be regarded only as genuinely popular protests.
It is not easy to categorize these movements, which were complex, disparate, and
guided by only the loosest convictions, but they often took the form of tax revolts,
bread riots, and demonstrations against corruption, extortion, and abuse of power.
Chroniclers recognized the essentially popular character of many disturbances
in their choice of terminology. Confronted with sudden uprisings that had no
obvious links to organizations or factions, they attributed them by default to the
“people” (‘amma, ‘awamm, or nas). All these terms are simultaneously vague and
precise insofar as they capture the essential anonymity and spontaneity of popular
protest, which, unlike mobilized crowds, existed only in the moment and possessed
no more than a tenuous sense of solidarity. Members of military units, gangs,
religious confraternities, ethnic groups, and other social cliques undoubtedly

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joined these movements but without taking command of them or acting in a

coordinated manner. The most that can be said about some crowds is that they
consisted predominantly – or, at least, originally – of residents from the same
neighborhood. The murder of a Mamluk official in the Midan in 1504 resulted in
a heavy fine, which, according to standard administrative practice, was levied
on the entire neighborhood. When troops came to collect it, a large group of
residents ambushed them and inflicted several casualties; among the slain was the
official in charge of the expedition, whose corpse was paraded around the streets
and thrown into an open sewage channel in Bab al-Musalla before it was finally
deposited in a nearby cemetery.28 But few crowds were so closely associated with
a single area of the city, and, in any event, knowing the location of a riot is no
guarantee that all, or even most, of the participants lived in the same area. For
contemporaries, who seemed to recognize this difficulty, it was enough to note
that “the people have risen” (qamat al-‘amma).

Late-Mamluk depictions of popular protest

Having recognized that the “people” might resort to violence, how did contem-
poraries understand the motives of crowds? One keen observer of the local scene
was Ibn Tulun (d. 1546), a scholar who witnessed the Ottoman conquest of
Damascus and left behind a large number of works that detailed the city’s
development during his lifetime. His account of the final decades of Mamluk rule
contains frequent references to popular protest, which seemed to intensify as the
external struggle with the Ottomans found an echo in the convulsive politics of
its largest towns. His terse but pointed commentary places the blame squarely on
the shoulders of Mamluk officials, who unleashed violence in the streets through
illegal and extortionate policies.
One of the recurring themes was the corrupt or tyrannical governor (na’ib),
who ignored the plight of the people or recklessly pushed them into open rebellion.
Perhaps the most sensitive issue was the maintenance of the marketplace – which
is really to say the supply of bread, which had been the staple of the diet since
antiquity. Few causes stirred the emotions of townspeople like the rising cost of
bread, which could single-handedly mean the difference between privation and
prosperity for most of the population. One Friday afternoon in 1506, after the new
governor had concluded his first prayers at the Umayyad Mosque, tempers began
to flare as members of the congregation approached him with complaints about
the widespread shortage of bread in the city (along with charges, which were
fairly typical in times of crisis, that wine drinking had become rampant). Their
grumbling came to nothing, however, and he refused to pay any attention to their
pleas.29 Only during a later subsistence crisis (1513) was a crowd able to persuade
another governor to set up a panel of supervisors, who began to regulate prices
and sell “old wheat” (qamh ‘atiq) from storehouses in the citadel. Unfortunately,
the measures proved worthless as the emergency supplies were sold short of
weight on the market, and by the next day “there was no bread in Damascus.”30

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Despite the poor record of the Mamluk administration in handling these

shortfalls – which in any case were often beyond the capacity of any premodern
government to remedy – townspeople continued to view the governor as their
main source of relief, or in more trying circumstances as the cause of their misery
and despair. As the highest-ranking official in the city, he naturally loomed as the
most visible target for their frustration and grievances and faced vocal criticism
whenever he appeared slow or unwilling to act.
Petty administrators and other servants of the state might also feel the fury of
the crowd. The victims did not have to be active in shaping or implementing policy;
they only had to be seen as an appendage of the regime or as the instrument of
some particularly odious measure. When an ordinary crier announced the cancel-
lation of certain old coins in 1480, bystanders tried to attack him as if he were
somehow personally responsible for drawing up the decree himself.31 One can
easily understand this reaction (which, admittedly, was extreme even by the
standards of the day) as a way to strike vicariously at unpopular officials, whose
high walls and armed retinues put them beyond the immediate reach of the people.
Thus, the hapless crier, for one unlucky moment, became the incarnation of a
detested policy and paid the price for decisions made by superiors.
Most crowds appear far more discriminating. They were careful to track down
individuals close to the real sources of power in town. Soldiers were particularly
hated and, for many Damascenes, came to personify the abuses of Mamluk
authorities. The execution of a young sharif, apparently without justification,
incited a violent crowd in 1504, which then descended on Harat al-‘Abid, where
slave-soldiers in the governor’s personal escort resided (the so-called ‘abid
barudiyya). In taking their revenge, the rioters killed several soldiers and plun-
dered homes throughout the quarter.32 Among local villains, another favorite was
the tax collector, who was universally despised. In one unusually sensitive case
(1488), an official brandished a sultanic decree that permitted him to share the
profits of grain dealers and suspend inspections of the wheat supply. As the city
boiled into an outright frenzy, a large group of townspeople chased him into the
Umayyad Mosque, where his search for refuge ended tragically. After stabbing
him at the tomb of Zachariah, his tormentors dragged his bloody body to the
neighborhood of al-Kharab, where they burned him alive.33 Far more fortunate,
though no more beloved, was the powerful Mamluk whose exactions pushed the
village of al-Mezze, just to the west of Damascus, beyond the limits of endurance
in 1485. The villagers, who were apparently familiar with urban forms of protest,
pursued the more restrained course of petitioning the administrator in person and
arousing public sympathy for their plight. They marched to his residence in the
city, and for good measure they occupied the Umayyad Mosque as well.34
The arrival of a crowd at the Umayyad Mosque was neither an accident nor a
detail that chroniclers were likely to overlook. Together with the censure of
individual officials, it was the other outstanding feature of popular protest at the
beginning of the sixteenth century. As the principal house of worship since
the eighth century, the prestige of the mosque was unchallenged. It served as

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the focus of Islamic religious life and, together with the citadel, loomed as one
of the most prominent landmarks in the city. Though it did not stand exactly in
the geographical center of town, it acted as the pivot of communal consciousness,
especially during public emergencies. Adding further luster was its international
reputation for Islamic learning and widely recognized status as an important holy
site that held the tombs and relics of several famous rulers and saints from Islamic
history. No other place in Damascus was so steeped in the lore and heritage of
Islam and, as a consequence, so deeply endowed with political symbolism.
Rioters who entered the mosque did not simply run amok. They were conscious
of its sanctity and almost reflexively made their appeals through religious ritual.
The most conspicuous act was to mount the minarets and broadcast their grievances
directly to the larger audience of the city, typically through takbir, the repetitive
chanting of “God is great!” (Allahu akbar). The intention was not to subvert or
mock religion but to challenge the Islamic credentials of authorities and thereby
goad them into upholding the law. The punishment of a prominent Meccan by the
chief chamberlain of Damascus sparked an occupation of the Umayyad Mosque
in 1484 in which protesters swarmed up the minarets and publicized their dispute
against him (kabbara al-‘amma ‘ala al-ma’adhin bi’l-jami‘ al-umawi ‘ala hajib
al-hujjab bi-dimashq).35 An official sent by the new sultan in 1497 set off an
identical disturbance not only in the Umayyad Mosque but also in mosques
throughout the city after it was learned that he was planning to tamper with local
religious foundations (waqf ; pl. awqaf ).36 In 1506, it was the lieutenant governor’s
turn to incite unrest by imposing fines on the neighborhood of al-Qubaybat, in the
southwestern suburbs of the city, as a penalty for several murders that had been
discovered there. After he took hostages as surety for the payments, people from
the area, holding banners and chanting the name of God, surged into the Umayyad
Mosque and ascended the minarets. To rid themselves of this public embarrassment,
the commander of the citadel and assistant chamberlain, acting in the absence of the
lieutenant governor, soon freed the prisoners and cancelled the levies.37
Sometimes it was not enough to take over the minarets before or after prayers.
Instead, protesters might insist on silencing the call to prayer altogether, sending
one of the most forceful signals that law and religion had been profaned and that
the entire town was now in the grip of a serious crisis. Two members in the
entourage of an eminent shaykh were arrested in 1493 for conspiring to prevent
donkey drivers from entering Damascus, probably as a prelude to manipulating
local haulage. Soon afterward, an outraged crowd poured into the Umayyad
Mosque, took over the minarets, and hindered the muezzins from issuing the nor-
mal midday and afternoon calls to prayer.38 Townspeople understood exactly what
these spectacles meant and appear to have accepted them as legitimate, even
righteous, acts of protest that sought – and claimed – religious sanction. The state,
too, was careful not to suppress these demonstrations, keeping its distance and
allowing passions to burn themselves out. It tacitly recognized popular expecta-
tions for justice and resigned itself to the paradox that religious symbols, which
functioned as such a vital bulwark to power, could also be turned against it.

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These tactics never vanished entirely. Though far less common in later generations,
they remained familiar to everyone, even when put to novel uses. The biography
of one Damascene scholar, Mustafa al-Dimashqi (d. 1650), records how this
talented man came to suffer from midlife fits of “melancholy” (al-sawda’), which
affected his behavior in strange ways. One of his most outrageous antics was to
mount the minaret of his neighborhood mosque and insult “some of the great
scholars and shout their names” at the top of his voice.39 More dramatically,
Hasan al-Rifa‘i chose the minaret of al-Daqqaq Mosque as his means of com-
mitting suicide in 1743. One evening, his brother-in-law brought a prostitute back
to the house that they shared. Hasan confronted him, reproved him for his
immorality, and in the ensuing altercation suffered a terrible beating. He appealed
to the elders of the neighborhood for support, but they took no action. Sunk in
shame and depression, he arrived at the mosque the next morning, said his
prayers, and climbed the minaret. Addressing the entire congregation, he
denounced the decadence of the times and promptly hurled himself below.40 Like
Mustafa al-Dimashqi’s impromptu speeches, Hasan’s tragedy was an essentially
personal act that held much less political than social significance. As a gesture of
outrage, their use of minarets was more meaningful for the smaller stage of petty
rivalries and personal grievances than for grand demonstrations over justice and
oppression – more remarkable as the pulpits of broken and despondent individu-
als than as rallying points for entire neighborhoods. Nevertheless, the memory of
earlier rituals had survived, and contemporaries had no trouble understanding the
traditions on which these men were drawing. Long after Ibn Tulun’s crowds had
receded into history, the mosque and its minarets could still be incorporated into
messages of protest.

“Ottoman” images of the crowd

It was during the long centuries of Ottoman rule that a subtle shift began to take
place in attitudes toward popular protest. This break with Mamluk traditions
implied neither a growing profession of loyalty to the Ottoman sultan and his
dynasty nor anything like simmering resentment against Ottoman rule, which was
never really questioned. It meant, rather, that Damascenes were gradually turning
to new explanations for the behavior of crowds, which now seemed bent on a
different kind of revenge. At the center of attention was a new figure – the qadi,
or chief judge of the city – who soon emerged as one of the favorite scapegoats
of elite commentators and ordinary townspeople alike.
To be precise, one must distinguish between the chief judge (qadi al-qudat) and
other judges in the local judicial hierarchy. The city had a qadi for each of the four
madhhabs, or legal schools, recognized as orthodox in Sunni Islam. During the
Mamluk period, these judges were already important figures in Damascus,
especially the Shafi‘i qadi, who enjoyed slightly more state patronage than his
Hanafi, Maliki, and Hanbali counterparts. In nearly all other respects, however,
the judges shared a similar outlook and easily ranked among the urban elite.

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As state functionaries, they had a wide range of duties, presiding over the courts
attached to their legal school, appointing deputies and other judicial subordinates,
and administering the funds of charitable foundations.41 They also acted with
other urban notables as informal representatives of the local population, with
whom they wielded immense influence through their wealth, prestige, and social
contacts. Standing with one foot in the state and the other in Damascene society,
they often played a key role as mediators in factional or popular disputes, for
which they were ideally qualified to serve as liaisons. This dual prominence gave
them an uncommon visibility among both the ruling elite and ordinary subjects.
One cost of this social distinction was that, as early as the Mamluk period,
judges occasionally courted the wrath of the crowd. Although most of these
disturbances were little more than conflicts with officials and soldiers or scuffles
among cliques of ulama and students over jobs and stipends, a few rare episodes
can truly be regarded as popular protests.42 In one of the most open confrontations,
in 1495, the residents of al-Salihiyya were so unhappy with official treatment
of their neighborhood, and so outraged at having to pay restitution for the murder
of a Mamluk agent, that they staged a procession that almost reached the house of
the chief qadi until the governor intervened and put a stop to it.43 Thus, it would
not be entirely accurate to claim that demonstrations against judges were an
innovation of the Ottoman period. As the events in al-Salihiyya show, there were
certainly historical precedents. What really distinguishes Ottoman crowds,
according to the evidence of contemporaries, was not necessarily the hunt for the
qadi, but the frequency with which it occurred. Unlike authors of the Mamluk
period, who hardly ever mention attacks on the qadi,44 those writing in later
centuries increasingly point toward this office as a magnet for popular disaffection
and violence.
The new understanding of the crowd stemmed in large part from administrative
changes made by the Ottomans in their first century as rulers of Syria. From the
start, they made no secret of their preference for the Hanafi legal tradition, whose
judge and judicial apparatus were now permanently elevated over their rivals.45
When Ottoman observers refer to the qadi of Damascus, they always mean the
Hanafi qadi, whose supremacy was so widely acknowledged that no further
comment was needed. Accompanying this shift within the religious hierarchy was
the growing importance of the qadi within the larger administrative system.
The governor (wali or basha) continued to function as the chief representative of
the sultan’s authority, but, as Haim Gerber has argued, the Ottomans seem to have
created a counterweight to this office by gradually expanding the powers of the
chief judge in towns throughout the empire.46 The new prerogatives undoubtedly
bred new suspicions. In one of their earliest measures (1516), the Ottomans
officially transferred the duties of the muhtasib, or market inspector, into the
hands of the qadi,47 who, in the eyes of the city, thereafter became one of the main
culprits for high prices and food shortages. It did not help that the qadi, like the
governor, was almost invariably a Turcophone outsider who came to Damascus
and other Arab towns for a short term, often no longer than a year, before moving

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on to his next assignment. This peripatetic round of appointments made it highly

unlikely that he would develop lasting ties with townspeople.
By the end of the sixteenth century, the qadi had clearly emerged in local
accounts as the main quarry of popular protest. Most attacks grew out of charges
of administrative corruption, which contemporaries saw as one of the greatest
evils of their day. The empire was faced with a series of internal rebellions
(especially in Anatolia), mired in protracted warfare on the Persian and European
fronts, and suffering from the onset of economic and demographic stagnation.
Inflation was rampant, and the treasury was in disarray due to rapid and fitful
devaluations of the currency. As salaries dwindled, some officials made up their
losses by accepting bribes or resorting to extortion.48 The courts had never been
entirely free of rumors of corruption and malfeasance,49 but by the 1590s,
Damascenes believed that the problem had reached new and intolerable propor-
tions. One qadı was considered so avaricious that a large crowd gathered outside
the courthouse (1591) to demand back all the bribes and loans that he had
previously pocketed. They made such a terrifying impression that, according to
the source (who does not hide his hostility), he began to cry, and after borrowing
money from a fellow judge made plans to flee the city immediately.50 In 1597,
another qadi, equally renowned for his cupidity, made the mistake of provoking a
tax revolt when he pressed ahead with plans to collect a large installment of irreg-
ular taxes (avarız in Turkish) in the midst of an economic slump. He was accosted
at the Umayyad Mosque by two shaykhs who pleaded that the rate was excessive
and that the people would be unable to pay “on account of their poverty.” When
the qadi brushed them aside, “the people became agitated.” A crowd quickly
formed and drove him from the mosque, denouncing his “oppression,” spewing
ugly epithets, beating him with their fists, and hurling eggs that splattered over
his clothes. In the end, he escaped only by taking refuge in nearby houses.
Meanwhile, in a confusing twist of events, a separate crowd descended on the two
shaykhs who had spoken on their behalf, apparently in the belief that they had
done too little to dissuade the qadi. They pursued their victims through Bab Jirun,
east of the Umayyad Mosque, until yet another crowd intervened. “Chase the qadi
(ilhaqu al-qadi )!” they scolded their fellow townspeople.51 Their words could
easily be taken as the motto for the new culture of protest. In 1598/1599, during
an attack on a third qadi, demonstrators gave voice to exactly the same motif.
“Damascus is a ruin,” they cried, “the qadi has ruined it (al-sham kharab, al-qadi
kharrabaha)!”52
The tendency to focus on the qadi and the courthouse becomes unmistakable
in eighteenth-century descriptions of popular protest.53 When a group of local
mercenaries began seizing shops and extorting money from the local populace in
1707, the people tried to stone the qadi for failing to restrain them.54 Opting for
more peaceful measures in 1724, the residents of al-Salihiyya closed their shops
and called on the qadi, whom they accused of “much oppression,” to cancel a
series of objectionable decrees. To avert an uprising, the qadi promptly backed
down, thereby defusing the crisis.55

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Other protests centered on the supply of food. Whenever prices rose, public
opinion suspected mischief in the marketplace and quickly demanded official
inspections of the various merchants, brokers, millers, and bakers who handled
the city’s grain. These anxieties were not entirely unfounded. Many local notables
(pl. a‘yan) had become increasingly active in the grain trade, primarily through
the purchase of tax-farms that allowed them to collect taxes (and whatever else
they could wring from their offices) on behalf of the state. During years of
scarcity, their control over a large part of the countryside inevitably fed rumors of
sinister plots to manipulate prices and hoard secret reserves of grain. No one was
immune from suspicion. In an entry for 1749, the chronicler al-Budayri accused
Hamid al-‘Imadi, the chief mufti (the religious official who issued formal
interpretations of Islamic law), of speculating in grain “like the notables and
dignitaries who do not fear [God].” Word was spreading of a fatwa, or legal opin-
ion, that al-‘Imadi had handed down to the brokers of the grain warehouses, who
had approached him for permission to raise the price of grain to fifty piasters per
ghirara. Not only had he given his consent; he had authorized them to sell at
higher rates if they wished. “If the mufti of the Muslims has no compassion for
the people,” lamented the barber, “there is no one else to blame.”56
Failure to keep prices down was often interpreted as official collusion, which
was most evident in “a lack of inspections” of the markets.57 According to popular
wisdom, only energetic regulation of the grain trade could prevent foul play and
forestall widespread suffering. This skepticism toward the marketplace was so
deeply entrenched that chroniclers might actually express surprise (as well as
lingering doubt) when the price of bread dropped without the intervention of the
state.58 Responsibility for inspections lay with the highest officials, including the
governor and lieutenant governor (mutasallim), who might conduct their own
occasional tours of the markets.59 But no one was more closely identified with the
supervision of trade than the qadi, who had long assumed these duties within the
Ottoman administration. The appearance of the qadi in the markets was enough
to restore the confidence of the entire city at one stroke. During the dark days of
1757, as Damascus slipped into a prolonged civil war and news came of the anni-
hilation of the pilgrimage caravan in the desert to the south, morale briefly
revived after the qadi began to inspect local shops in person, checking prices and
weights, and rendering justice on the spot. Violators received the bastinado at
once, whereas compliant traders were rewarded with a silver missriyya.60
Matching this gratitude and relief were the gloom and pessimism spread by a
corrupt or indifferent qadi who was either unwilling or unable to take action. The
entry of Khalil al-Bakri, a native son who had been appointed as chief judge in
1752, was a cause for elation among much of the population (and, as the chroni-
cler pointedly notes, a cause for consternation among others – presumably, the
speculators and hoarders). Disappointment soon followed, however, as the people
realized that he had no intention of doing anything about the high prices
that reigned throughout the city.61 For most Damascenes, the connection was
easy to make: the source of their troubles ultimately could be traced back to the

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courthouse, where the qadi was somehow personally accountable for their misery.
In 1743, as the city quickly grew restless from a wave of soaring prices, grumbling
voices were heard everywhere. Who received the blame? It was not the governor
but the qadi whom the people openly cursed.62
Popular resentment against the qadi sometimes flared into the open as bread
riots, which, as protests touching on survival itself, were among the most
emotional disturbances, venting the desperation of the poor and occasionally
leading to bloodshed in the streets. During a shortage of bread in July 1743, a
crowd converged on the main courthouse, expelled its occupants, and began sack-
ing bakeries. They held the qadi directly responsible for their hunger, and, citing
a well-known theme, alleged a “lack of inspection of the owners of grain, the
millers, and the brokers.”63 A second riot, in July 1745, was far more violent.
When demonstrators approached the courthouse, the qadi’s entourage emerged
with clubs and drove them back. But the crowd was not easily discouraged: fling-
ing rocks, it soon regrouped and launched a counterattack. At this point, the qadi
assumed personal command and ordered his men to open fire, killing one person,
and wounding several others. The burst of gunfire further enraged the crowd,
which then received unexpected reinforcements from local janissaries, who were
probably using the fray to intimidate the qadi at a time that their faction held the
upper hand in the city. The tide of the battle quickly turned as the attackers surged
forward in a second wave, setting fire to the door of the courthouse and forcing
their way inside. During the fighting that ensued, the attackers killed several of
the qadi’s men. The others, including the qadi himself, barely escaped with their
lives, fleeing ignominiously over the rooftops of neighboring homes until they
reached the safety of the citadel, where they hid for nearly a month while local
notables arranged for their personal safety and financial reparations.64 The clash
was not soon forgotten. Several months later, the next qadi entered the city
accompanied by an armed escort. To the chronicler al-Budayri, it was an unprece-
dented sight.65 But as the judges themselves quickly realized, the times had
changed. They were now fully aware of their place in the public eye and of all the
mistrust, animosity, and even violence that their office might inspire at the wrong
turn of events.
By the end of the eighteenth century, the qadi had become more than an
important official. He and his courthouse were now one of the most visible
emblems of the social order itself. Notables sometimes gathered at the courthouse
to hear imperial orders being read aloud or to consult with the governor in one of
his informal councils (diwan).66 In recounting the factional tumult that spilled
onto the streets of the city in 1803, Hasan Agha al-‘Abd, a seasoned Ottoman
official, noted that the qadi shut down his tribunal for ten days until the fighting
died out.67 His comment is more than a casual detail dropped randomly into the
narrative. It shows how the operation of the courthouse had become one of the
main barometers of urban life. Suspension of legal proceedings could mean nothing
other than a full-blown political crisis, a silent declaration that the city had come
to the edge of the precipice. The symbolism of the courthouse in turn needs to be

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understood as the culmination of a long-term shift in attitudes toward the figure

of the qadi. The growing attention that this office received is striking and provides
strong evidence that an “Ottoman” culture of protest was gradually emerging in
the city.68 This new logic for assigning blame and responsibility in times of unrest
should not come as a surprise, for, as Charles Tilley has insisted, popular protest
“is not an epiphenomenon. It connects directly and solidly with the great political
questions,”69 among which historians of the Middle East can certainly place the
Ottoman conquest of the Arab lands.

Popular protest as deferential violence

In our examination of popular protest, the Damascene crowd has taken shape
entirely through the eyes of chroniclers and biographers, nearly all of whom came
from a different social background from demonstrators and showed little inclina-
tion to identify with the “people.” Has this somewhat distant perspective skewed
our understanding of these popular movements? Is it impossible, through this
thick and perhaps deceptive filter, to learn anything about the beliefs and ideals
of the participants themselves?
Simply in sketching out the routes of demonstrations, observers have already
enabled the crowds of Damascus to tell us a great deal about themselves. Mutely
gesturing and explaining their motives beneath the narratives of the chroniclers,
the protesters can still speak to us with their feet, for unlike Cairo under the
French occupation (1798–1801), during which rioters often battled behind barri-
cades constructed in their neighborhoods,70 popular protest in Damascus was
almost always mobile. The itinerary of a demonstration was a significant detail
that could be as eloquent in setting forth aims and expectations as any public
manifesto.
Of course, not all crowds are so easy to follow. Some were more unruly and
unpredictable than others, and at their worst they could dissolve into a destructive
stampede. The bread riot of May 1749, for example, was little more than a melee
of hunger and vengeance in which demonstrators seemed to have no clear objec-
tive other than the plundering of bakeries in the marketplace.71 But as historians
of Europe have long noted, popular protest is remarkable less for the violence that
it unleashed than for its penchant for self-restraint and purposive action. This
observation applies equally to Damascene crowds, which on the whole exhibited
a discipline and cohesion that can have arisen only from a shared set of assump-
tions and expectations. People had a fairly consistent idea about what was right
and wrong, legitimate and abusive, legal and extortionate. Their protest was not
merely the blind release of frustration and rage; it was predicated on a widely
held, albeit crudely expressed, understanding of the social order.
Even at the height of their passions, crowds were careful to present themselves
as the guardians of community values. Few incidents provoked the same outrage as
the arrest in 1501 of a Mamluk (coincidentally, of “Frankish” origin) who had
committed a string of murders and robberies in several neighborhoods near the

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citadel. The governor promptly ruled that the soldier should have an arm and a leg
cut off, but the sentence failed to satisfy the crowd of local people who had
gathered to watch the punishment. Unable to contain their fury, they seized the
culprit, who was still alive and bleeding from his wounds, and began beating and
stabbing him. The violence ended only after they had dragged him to the town
scaffold in the neighborhood of Madhinat al-Shahm, and, as if imposing their
own judgment, set fire to his body.72 Despite its viciousness, the gesture had its
own significance, which went well beyond revenge. By hauling their victim to the
scaffold, the crowd was invoking official procedures and in effect asserting
the legitimacy of its actions. Overruling the authorities, whose responses were
condemned as inadequate, it claimed the right to carry out its own rough brand
of justice.
On the surface, this vigilantism bears a distant resemblance to forms of popular
protest in early modern Europe, where perceptions of abuse, exploitation, or
negligence sometimes led crowds to rise up and usurp official prerogatives for
themselves. Natalie Zemon Davis has shown how urban crowds in sixteenth-century
France incorporated religious rituals into their protests and, as part of the larger
climate of post-Reformation sectarian strife, performed symbolic purifications of
their communities. Through these “rites of violence,” as she calls them, rioters
might conduct their own executions, haul their victims off to jail in public
processions, or stage their own heresy trials.73 E.P. Thompson reached a similar
conclusion in his study of bread riots in eighteenth-century England. Crowds, he
argued, adhered to a sort of “moral economy” that defended customary practices
(sometimes enshrined in older portions of the legal code) against the doctrines of
the emerging “free-market” ideology. In times of dearth, rioters did not hesitate
to seize stocks of grain and sell them at a “just price” that they themselves deter-
mined, thereby placing the needs of consumers above the interests of suppliers
and the rulings of magistrates.74 They regarded their actions as perfectly justified
and openly claimed legitimacy by imitating official rituals, which, as they saw it,
helped to distinguish their protests from mere lawlessness.
Did rioting Damascenes entertain a similar image of themselves as surrogate
agents of justice? Few crowds were so direct in taking matters into their own
hands. In fact, they displayed a diffidence that, at its extreme, actually pushed
some rioters into seeking formal authorization for their protests. One of the most
reticent uprisings of the period came at the expense of a shaykh (and recent
convert to Islam) who served as civilian supervisor of the army (nazir al-jaysh)
under the Mamluk sultan al-Ghawri (r. 1501–1516). Grieving for his deceased
son, the shaykh had tried to build a small mausoleum (qubba) near the shrine of
Shaykh Arslan on the eastern edge of town, but the local people adamantly
opposed it, ostensibly because the structure was being built in a cemetery
attached to a waqf. Their reaction is instructive. Instead of simply knocking down
the new tomb, they first showed a determination to legitimize their actions by
appealing to two separate religious scholars. One refused to cooperate, but they
succeeded in winning consent from the other, a mufti, who issued a fatwa in their

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favor. Only after receiving the mufti’s blessings did the crowd proceed on its
rampage through the cemetery.75 So ingrained was this mentality that we can even
find traces of it in factional violence. In 1730, the janissaries and their allies
among the gangs of al-‘Amara staged a riot in the neighborhood of al-Salihiyya
that resulted in the death of a leading member of the ashraf (sing. sharif ), the
reputed descendants of the Prophet Muhammad. The ashraf soon began to fill the
streets and clamor for vengeance. After first pleading with the official head of
their organization (naqib al-ashraf ), who was so terrified that he immediately
resigned his office, a delegation took the final step of approaching the qadi, who
failed, however, to give a clear answer. The debate was rendered moot when a
contingent of janissaries stumbled across them and opened fire.76 All these
scrupulous precautions were not really typical of crowds but manifested a much
deeper impulse and captured their instinctive caution. Demonstrators used
violence not to overturn or arrogate authority but to activate it on their own
behalf.77 Their behavior was essentially deferential, prodding and exhorting the
social order to honor its professed ideals.
Thus, popular protest had two distinct aims that coexisted within nearly every
crowd. The first, which has always attracted more attention, was to rebuke or
intimidate individuals – most often officials – who were held responsible for
some wrongdoing or flagrant misconduct. Chroniclers commonly explained such
aggression by relating social disturbances to acts of “oppression” (zulm). These
attitudes are reminiscent of the “culture of retribution” that William Beik has
found in the towns of seventeenth-century France, where crowds sought to pun-
ish governors, tax collectors, and other officials for alleged transgressions or
obnoxious decrees.78 But the focus on violence is sometimes overstated, and even
misleading, as it overlooks an equally important point about popular protest.
Despite their frequent violence and unruliness, demonstrators were not really
challenging the established order. They made relatively modest and conservative
demands, and in bothering to approach officials at all implicitly reaffirmed the
legitimacy and authority of the law, even if they objected to a few of its agents. In
other words, popular protest petitioned as much as it denounced, supplicated as
much as it threatened. This inner ambiguity was fully visible in the crowd that
greeted the new governor in 1598/1599 outside his official residence (Dar
al-Imara). When the chief judge arrived to offer a formal welcome, they implored
the governor to do something about the bribery that was rampant at the court-
house; as the chronicler noted, however, “they refrained from stoning [the qadi].”
Their mood changed only after the governor retreated into his palace. As the qadi
took his leave, “they shouted in his face and addressed him with inappropriate
words.” The verbal assault then escalated into a physical attack as they began pelt-
ing him with rocks and eggs, forcing him to flee along the moat of the citadel
while “egg yolks and whites flowed from his turban and shoulders.” Only the
intervention of soldiers prevented demonstrators from seizing him and inflicting
more serious harm.79 Was the qadi the victim of a capricious crowd that hardly
knew its own mind? The fickleness is only apparent. In its underlying logic,

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nearly every popular protest was simultaneously respectful and hostile, submissive
and defiant, obedient and seditious.

Conclusion: crowds and a common culture

The conflicting impulses within popular protest may explain why local accounts
often contain a certain ambivalence toward it. Authors feared the potential for
violence and disorder but stopped short of condemning the crowd’s actions. If
officials had committed mischief or injustice, then they ought to be called to
account. People had an implicit right to gather and demand an end to abuses. And
because their actions contained deferential undertones, commentators could feel
assured that the storm would pass and that their familiar world would not be
turned upside down.
The strongest hints of these attitudes crop up in the language used to describe
crowds. Throughout the local literature, popular protest often appears in quite a
different light from factional feuds, most notably in the choice of terminology.
Confronted with popular demonstrations, authors were far more likely to define
the crowd with neutral references, as an uprising of the “people.” Factional feuds,
on the other hand, often came with pejorative labels, as chroniclers hardly both-
ered to conceal their contempt and distaste for what they were witnessing. Battles
among janissaries, mercenaries, and neighborhood gangs appear as destructive
rampages that could close the markets for days and bring severe hardship to the
entire city. In the eyes of Ibn Tulun, the paramilitary gangs of the outer quarters
qualify as little more than “riffraff ” (ru‘a‘), “rabble” (ghawgha’), and “ruffians”
(zu‘ar).80 Looking on at fighting between the main janissary factions (1740), Ibn
Kannan could not contain himself: “May God remove them from Damascus
through His blessing.”81 To the barber al-Budayri, the local janissaries – “may
God desire their destruction” – had become so decadent that “their corruption
spread throughout the land and [all] the believers. Their leaders were a deviant
band and rebellious faction,” thereby justifying ‘Asad Pasha al-‘Azm’s ruthless
suppression of them in 1746.82 He was no fonder of the many mercenaries in
town, such as the Dalatiyya, whom he rated “among the greatest degenerates”
(min a‘zam al-mufsidin).83 In all these accounts, the disparaging tone is impossible
to overlook and seems all the more conspicuous when measured against the
restrained language that chroniclers reserved for popular demonstrations.
Ultimately, popular protest had a legitimacy that authors did not extend to other
kinds of social violence. It was one of the outlets that the local political culture
allowed to desperate people who had reached the breaking point and could find
no other remedy for their grievances. During the bread riot that occurred in July
1745, a large crowd, “raising their voices with wails and entreaties,” first gathered
outside the governor’s residence, where they issued their usual demands for jus-
tice in the marketplace. The chronicler al-Budayri, who may have been a witness,
has them plead, “You are the governor of Damascus and are responsible unto God
for us and for all of these circumstances.” But the governor, who at the time was

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the formidable As ‘ad Pasha al-‘Azm, did not accept the crowd’s reasoning and
insisted that the courthouse was the proper destination for their protest. “Go to the
courthouse and complain about your condition to the qadi! (idhhabu ila
al-makama wa ishku halakum ila al-qadi).” After momentarily wavering, the crowd
agreed and immediately set out for the main tribunal.84 Throughout the confusion
and strife, what is interesting about this bread riot is the ultimate unanimity of the
participants – both the members of the crowd and the governor himself, who
never disputed the right of the demonstrators to assemble in public. His main
objection, which sprang only in part from the instinct for self-preservation, was
merely that they had come to the wrong place. He needed no show of force, only
a speech, to persuade them of their error. Having listened, the crowd offered no
resistance, no counter-arguments. Each side understood the other perfectly well.
Indeed, this bizarre deliberation in the midst of a riot makes sense only if everyone
held the same premises about acceptable and legitimate behavior.
It may seem odd, even paradoxical, to find signs of cultural unity in the midst
of the deepest social turmoil, for we often think of violent conflict as exposing
only the contradictions and tensions within a society. But in a larger sense, it can
also reveal broad areas of agreement, shared values and ideals, and a deep-seated
cohesion that transcends the divisions of the moment and quickly allows the
social order to reassert itself. The “Ottoman” understanding of the crowd, which
had slowly been taking root since the sixteenth century, was never confined to one
particular social group or set of commentators. It expressed changing attitudes
about justice, authority, and culpability that ultimately need to be set against the
much larger transformation of local society under Ottoman rule. Popular culture
was not inert. It responded to the political developments of this period, which
brought a new legal, administrative, and fiscal framework to the Arab provinces.
Among the upper echelons of society, one of the chief consequences of these
changes, as one historian has aptly put it, was the progressive “Ottomanization”
of provincial notables.85 Far more obscure are reactions at the more pedestrian
level of neighborhood, market, and street, which are not so easy to track and may
have varied considerably from one region to the next.86 Popular protest helps to
bring this history of “mentalities,” often so dim and elusive, spectacularly into
focus. If Damascus was truly typical of Arab towns, then “Ottomanization” must
have occurred in profound and previously unexpected ways, reaching beyond the
charmed and privileged circles of elite society, which have so captivated chroni-
clers and contemporary historians, and coloring the perceptions of ordinary people.

Notes
1 Gustave LeBon, The Crowd (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1995),
49, 55–6.
2 George Rudé, The Crowd in History: A Study of Popular Disturbances in France and
England, 1730–1848 (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1964).
3 For some of the most notable studies, see Ervand Abrahamian, “The Crowd in Iranian
Politics, 1905–1953,” Past and Present 41(1968): 184–210; idem, “The Crowd in the

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Persian Revolution,” Iranian Studies 2(1969):128–50; Gabriel Baer, “Popular Revolt in

Ottoman Cairo,” in idem, Fellah and Townsman in the Middle East (London: Frank
Cass, 1982), 225–52; Juan R. Cole, Colonialism and Revolution in the Middle East
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 190–213; Juan R. Cole and Moojan
Momen, “Mafia, Mob, and Shiism in Iraq: The Rebellion of Ottoman Karbala,
1824–1843,” Past and Present, 112(1986): 112–43; Ira M. Lapidus, Muslim Cities in
the Later Middle Ages, 2nd edn (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984),
143–53; Steven McFarland, “Anatomy of an Iranian Political Crowd: The Tehran Bread
Riot of December 1942,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 17(1985):
51–66; Bruce Masters, “The 1850 Events in Aleppo: An Aftershock of Syria’s
Incorporation into the Capitalist Economy,” International Journal of Middle East
Studies, 22(1990): 3–20; André Raymond, “Quartiers et mouvements populaires au
Caire au XVIIIe siècle,” in Political and Social Change in Modern Egypt, ed. P. M. Holt
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1968); idem, “Urban Networks and Popular
Movements in Cairo and Aleppo (End of 18th–Beginning of 19th Centuries),” in The
Proceedings of the International Conference on Urbanism in Islam (Tokyo: Middle
Eastern Culture Center, 1989), 2: 219–71; Boaz Shoshan, Popular Culture in Medieval
Cairo (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 52–66.
4 André Raymond, Artisans et commerçants au Caire au XVIIIe siécle (Damascus:
Institut français de Damas, 1974), 2: 432; Baer, “Popular Revolt in Ottoman Cairo,”
232. Much of this behavior resembles rituals of protest in early modern Europe. In
eighteenth-century England, for example, demonstrators commonly beat drums, blew
horns, hoisted flags, and, in the most volatile confrontations with authority, such as
bread riots, might carry a loaf of bread daubed with blood or swathed in crepe. See
John Stevenson, Popular Disturbances in England, 1700–1870 (New York: Longman,
1979), 105.
5 Ibn Jum‘a, al-Bashat wa al-qudat, in Wulat dimashq fi al-‘ahd al-‘uthmani, ed. Salah
al-Din al-Munajjid (Damascus, 1949), 56; Ibn Kannan, Yawmiyat shamiyya, ed. Akram
Hasan al-‘Ulabi (Damascus: Dar al-Tiba’, 1994), 251. For other instances of banners
being flown, see Ibn Tulun, Mufakahat al-khillan fi hawadith al-zaman, ed. Muhammad
Mustafa (Cairo: Dar Ihya’ al-Kutub al-‘Arabiyya, 1968), 1: 65, 146.
6 See, for example, John Voll, “Old Ulama Families and Ottoman Influence in 18th-
Century Damascus,” American Journal of Arabic Studies, 3(1975): 48–59.
7 Ibn Tulun, Mufakahat, 1: 203.
8 Idem, I‘lam al-wara bi-man waliya na’iban min al-atrak bi-dimashq al-sham al-kubra,
ed. Muhammad Ahmad Dahman (Damascus, Dar al-Fikr, 1984), 242–3.
9 Isma‘il al-Mahasini, “Safahat min tarikh dimashq fi al-qarn al-hadi ‘ashar al-hijri
mustakhraja min kunnash Isma‘il al-Mahasini,” ed. Salah al-Din al-Munajjid, Ma‘hid
al-makhtutat al-‘arabiyya, 6(1960): 132–3.
10 Ibid., 131. For another example, see Muhammad Khalil al-Muradi, Silk al-durar fi
a‘yan al-qarn al-thani ‘ashar (Beirut: Dar Ibn Hazm, 1988), 1: 68.
11 Ibn al-Siddiq, Ghara’ib al-bada’i‘ fi ‘aja’ib al-waqa’i‘, ed. Yusuf Nu‘aysa (Damascus:
Dar al-Ma‘rifa, 1988), 46–7; Abd al-Karim Rafeq, The Province of Damascus,
1723–1783 (Beirut: Khayats, 1966), 265–7.
12 Ibn Jum‘a, al-Bashat, 66–7; Rafeq, Province, 133.
13 Ibn Tulun, Mufakahat, 1: 146.
14 Ibn Kannan, Yawmiyat, 78–9.
15 Ahmad al-Budayri, Hawadith dimashq al-yawmiyya, ed. Ahmad ‘Izzat ‘Abd al-Karim
(Cairo: al-Jam‘iyya al-Misriyya li’l-Dirasat al-Tarikhiyya, 1959), 148.
16 Lapidus, Muslim Cities, 53–64.
17 See, for example, Ibn Tulun, Mufakahat, 1:195, 245, 283, 2:123–4; Ibn Tulun, I‘lam,
174, 183, 252.

45
 JAMES GREHAN

18 See, for example, Ibn Tulun, Mufakahat, 1: 126–7, 181–2, 219, 250–1, 258–60, 299,
2: 24; Ibn Tulun, I‘lam, 167–8.
19 See, for example, Ibn Tulun, Mufakahat, 1: 27–8, 92–3, 179–82, 232, 247, 2: 7, 100.
20 Ibid., 2: 43.
21 See, for example, Ibn Kannan, Yawmiyat, 56–7, 150, 411. For the survival of gangs
into the early twentieth century, see Philip S. Khoury, “Syrian Urban Politics in
Transition: The Quarters of Damascus during the French Mandate,” International
Journal of Middle East Studies, 16(1984): 507–40.
22 André Raymond, Grandes villes arabes à l’époque ottomane (Paris: Sindbad, 1985), 73.
23 Raymond, “Urban Networks,” 2: 220.
24 Al-Budayri, Hawadith, 200–2; Rafeq, Province, 208–12.
25 Hasan Agha al-‘Abd, Tarikh Hasan Agha al-‘Abd, ed. Yusuf Nu‘aysa (Damascus:
Wazarat al-Thaqafa wa al-Irshad al-Qawmi, 1979), 76–7.
26 Raymond, “Urban Networks,” 2: 221.
27 Hasan al-Burini, Tarajim al-a‘yan min abna’ al-zaman, ed. Salah al-Din al-Munajjid
(Damascus: al-Majma‘ al-‘Ilmi al-‘Arabi bi-Dimashq, 1959), 2: 162–4; Muhammad
al-Muhibbi, Khulasat al-athr fi a‘yan al-qarn al-hadi ‘ashar (Beirut: Dar Sadr, n.d.), 2: 77.
28 Ibn Tulun, Mufakahat, 1: 279.
29 Ibid., 1: 303.
30 Ibn Tulun, I‘lam, 217.
31 Ibn Tulun, Mufakahat, 1: 29.
32 Ibid., 1: 280.
33 Ibid., 1: 95.
34 Ibid., 1: 71; for another example of peasant protest in the city, see ibid., 1: 147.
35 Ibid., 1: 62.
36 Ibid., 1: 178.
37 Ibn Tulun, I‘lam, 198–9; idem, Mufakahat, 1: 299.
38 Ibn Tulun, Mufakahat, 1: 153–4.
39 Al-Muhibbi, Khulasat, 4: 367.
40 Al-Budayri, Hawadith, 49–50.
41 Lapidus, Muslim Cities, 136–8.
42 See, for example, Ibn Tulun, Mufakahat, 1: 69–70; Ibn Tulun, Qudat dimashq:
al-thaghr al-bassam fi man wuliya qada’ al-sham, ed. Salah al-Din al-Munajjid
(Damascus: al-Majma‘ al-‘Ilmi al-‘Arabi bi-Dimashq, 1956), 96, 152. Some qadis (and
other leading ulama) commanded the equivalent of their own gangs, which might even
come to blows with one another on behalf of their patrons: see Lapidus, Muslim
Cities, 113.
43 Ibn Tulun, Mufakahat, 1: 160.
44 One cannot, for example, find a single reference to popular protest directed against
judges in the history of Damascene judges compiled by Ibn Tulun, who also incorporated
the work of an earlier author, ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Nu‘aymi (d. 1520/1521). In his account,
Qudat dimashq, Ibn Tulun lists all of the scholars who had ever served as chief judge
for each of the four madhhabs in Damascus. His coverage is most thorough from the
thirteenth century onward and can be taken as significant evidence for the different
conception of this office that prevailed throughout the Mamluk period. The judiciary
was certainly less bureaucratized in the thirteenth century than it would become under
the Ottomans. On this earlier absence of an elaborate, formalized judicial hierarchy,
see Michael Chamberlain, Knowledge and Social Practice in Medieval Damascus,
1190–1350 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 39.
45 Muhammad Adnan Bakhit, The Ottoman Province of Damascus in the Sixteenth
Century (Beirut: Libraire du Liban, 1982), 120.
46 Haim Gerber, State, Society, and Law in Islam: Ottoman Law in Comparative
Perspective (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994), 58–78.

46
 LATE-MAMLUK AND OTTOMAN DAMASCUS

47 Ibn Tulun, Mufakahat, 2: 29–30.

48 It should be noted that the corruption bred by the fiscal turmoil of the late sixteenth
century was not entirely new to the local religious establishment. Although most judges
and deputies maintained honorable reputations, occasional scandals had erupted even
during the first decades of Ottoman rule: see Bakhit, Ottoman Province, 125–8.
49 See, for example, Sharaf al-Din Musa ibn Yusuf al-Ansari, Nuzhat al-khatir wa bahjat
al-nazir, ed. ‘Adnan Muhammad Ibrahim and ‘Adnan Darwish (Damascus: Wazarat
al-Thaqafa, 1991), 2: 173–4, 179–80.
50 Al-Ansari, Nuzhat, 2: 193.
51 Najm al-Din al-Ghazzi, Lutf al-samar wa qatf al-thamr, ed. Mahmud al-Shaykh
(Damascus: Wazarat al-Thaqafa, 1981), 2: 608–9; al-Muhibbi, Khulasat, 3: 356–7.
52 Al-Burini, Tarajim, 1: 86.
53 It should be pointed out that the main courthouse did not always occupy the same
location. In the sixteenth century, it was known as Bab al-Efendi and probably functioned
in the old Mamluk Palace of Justice (Dar al-‘Adl). By the early eighteenth century, the
court had relocated to al-Mahkama al-Kubra, inside al-Madrasa al-Jawziyya in the
neighborhood of al-Buzuriyya. In 1752/1753, it was transferred to nearby Mahkamat
al-Bab, which stood opposite the now vanished madrasa of al-Nuriyya al-Kubra in the
southwestern portion of the walled city. See, respectively, Bakhit, Ottoman Province,
120; al-Budayri, Hawadith, 64, 172, 178; Brigitte Marino, Le Faubourg du Midan à
Damas àl’époque ottomane: espace urbain, société et habitat (1742–1830)
(Damascus: Institut Français de Damas, 1997), 32.
54 Ibn Kannan, Yawmiyat, 130–1.
55 Ibid., 357.
56 Al-Budayri, Hawadith, 127.
57 See the laments in ibid., 25, 48–9, 81–2, 197.
58 See, for example, Ibn Kannan, Yawmiyat, 106; al-Budayri, Hawadith, 163.
59 See, for example, Ibn Kannan, Yawmiyat, 389 (for a lieutenant governor who jointly
toured the markets with the qadi); al-Budayri, Hawadith, 172, 197; Raslan al-Qari,
“al-Wuzara’ aladhina hakamu dimashq,” in Wulat dimashq fi al-‘asr al-‘uthmani,
ed. Salah al-Din al-Munajjid (Damascus, 1949), 77, 83; Mikha’il al-Dimashqi, Tarikh
hawadith al-sham wa lubnan, aw tarikh Mikha’il al-Dimashqi, ed. Ahmad Ghassan
Sabbanu (Damascus: Dar Qutayba, 1982), 59.
60 Al-Budayri, Hawadith, 222. For another energetic qadi, see Ibn Kannan, Yawmiyat, 331.
61 Al-Budayri, Hawadith, 164.
62 Ibid., 52.
63 Ibid., 41.
64 Ibid., 63–4. The incident also earned a brief comment in the chronicle of Mikha’il
Burayk, a Greek Orthodox priest, who saw it as an uprising of lawless soldiers
(pl. zurbawat). See Mikha’il Burayk, Tarikh al-Sham, ed. Ahmad Ghassan Sabbanu
(Damascus: Dar Qutayba, 1982), 27. It is another reminder of the difficulty in distin-
guishing popular protest from the actions of paramilitary contingents.
65 Al-Budayri, Hawadith, 65.
66 See, for example, Hasan Agha, Tarikh, 26, 40, 48.
67 Ibid., 101.
68 It should be emphasized that the increasing focus on the qadi did not mean that, by the
eighteenth century, all crowds invariably had one target. Under certain circumstances,
they might easily revert to older forms of action or single out other officials for pun-
ishment. After news reached the city about the destruction of the pilgrimage caravan in
1757, angry protesters sought out the lieutenant governor who had failed to come to its
aid. The death of the feared and despised Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar (1804), appointed
several times as governor of Damascus, set loose a crowd that attacked and lynched a
number of his local henchmen who had apparently served their patron too zealously.

47
 JAMES GREHAN

To reiterate, the shift toward the qadi in the culture of protest should be understood as
a highly pronounced trend, not an absolute transformation. For these protests, see,
respectively, al-Budayri, Hawadith, 196–8; al-Dimashqi, Tarikh, 28–9.
69 Charles Tilley, The Contentious French (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1986), 404.
70 Baer, “Popular Revolt,” 234–5.
71 Al-Budayri, Hawadith, 128–9.
72 Ibn Tulun, I‘lam, 151; idem, Mufakahat, 1: 235.
73 Natalie Zemon Davis, “The Rites of Violence,” in Society and Culture in Early Modern
France (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1965), 152–88.
74 E.P. Thompson, “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth
Century,” Past and Present, 50(1971): 76–136, repr. in idem, Customs in Common:
Studies in Traditional Popular Culture (New York: New Press, 1993), 185–258.
75 Al-Burini, Tarajim, 2: 3–5. This appeal to religious authorities probably drew on a
much older tradition in which the people sought the consent of high-ranking ulama
before launching uprisings. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, we find qadis
issuing declarations that legalized popular rebellions in cities throughout the Mamluk
empire. The state recognized their culpability and as punishment sometimes fined
them (along with other notables held responsible for maintaining civil order) once the
clashes had subsided: see Lapidus, Muslim Cities, 151–3.
76 Ibn Kannan, Yawmiyat, 411–12.
77 See also al-Budayri, Hawadith, 90, for the crowd that seized an old woman accused of
casting spells and dragged her to the qadi. Submitting themselves to the authority of
the court, they called for an investigation, which in the end secured her release.
78 William Beik, Urban Protest in Seventeenth-Century France: The Culture of
Retribution (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
79 Al-Burini, Tarajim, 1: 85–6; al-Muhibbi, Khulasat, 1: 209.
80 For the term ru‘a‘, see Ibn Tulun, Mufakahat, 1: 328–9; for ghawgha’, see ibid., 1: 9,
146, 166, 179, 180, 190–1, 194, 203–4, 217, 245, 260, 265, 278–80, 282–4, 337, 344,
2: 96, 99, 103, 110, 116; and for zu‘ar, which was practically standard terminology for
gangs, see ibid., 1: 92, 110, 153, 166, 176–7, 179–83, 185, 191, 194–7, 202–4, 207,
212–13, 219–21, 227, 232, 238, 245, 247, 251–2, 259–60, 262, 268–70, 279–81, 283,
286–7, 293, 295, 299–300, 314–16, 330–2, 2: 24, 27, 42–3, 58, 62, 98, 101, 105. See
also Lapidus, Muslim Cities, 154.
81 Ibn Kannan, Yawmiyat, 516. Among other references in his chronicle are a cutting
poem about Ottoman soldiers, an unflattering portrait of a neighborhood gang leader
in al-Salihiyya, and jubilant condemnation of the imperial janissaries on their expulsion
from the city in 1740 (a new detachment would be summoned back six years later).
See, respectively, ibid., 214, 411, 519.
82 Al-Budayri, Hawadith, 67–8, 77. See also his remarks in ibid., 62, 66. Another author
who had disparaging comments for the local soldiery was al-Muradi, who blamed
the “rabble of the janissaries” (ru‘a‘al-ujaqat al-yarliyya wa al-qabiqul ) for the
disturbances that tore apart the city in 1757–1758: see al-Muradi, Silk, 2: 61. For a
discussion of these events, see Rafeq, Province, 166–9. Al-Muradi also uses the term
ru‘a‘ for the janissaries who staged an uprising (1703/1704) against ‘Abdullah
al-Jarkasi (his maternal great-grandfather), who was the commander of the yerliyya at
the time: see al-Muradi, Silk, 3: 90.
83 See, for example, al-Budayri, Hawadith, 19, 51, 77; for similar language, see ibid., 18,
87–8, 118. For other harsh language directed at the janissaries, see Ibn Jum‘a,
al-Bashat, 68.
84 Al-Budayri, Hawadith, 63–4.
85 Ehud R. Toledano, “The Emergence of Ottoman-Local Elites (1700–1900): A
Framework for Research,” in Middle Eastern Politics and Ideas: A History from

48
 LATE-MAMLUK AND OTTOMAN DAMASCUS

Within, ed. Ilan Pappé and Moshe Ma’oz (New York: Tauris Academic Studies, 1997),
154. Toledano actually highlights two processes that he sees as key developments by
the eighteenth century. As mentioned, one was the “Ottomanization” of local notables,
who increasingly identified themselves with the Ottoman political order. The other, he
maintains, was the progressive “localization” of officials and soldiers – above all,
members of the janissary corps – who took up positions in the provinces, struck roots
in local society, and became permanent fixtures in urban politics.
86 On the subject of popular protest, preliminary research already hints at this regional
diversity. In eighteenth-century Aleppo, popular protests most often singled out the
qadi as their target, holding him responsible, like their Damascene contemporaries, for
manipulation of prices and food stocks. In eighteenth-century Cairo, however, crowds
seem to have followed patterns that, by Damascene standards, were more typical of the
late-Mamluk period. Although rioters in 1711 sought out the courthouse as their first
objective, most demonstrations continued to mobilize around al-Azhar, the city’s main
mosque, and to organize marches to the governor’s residence. To explain these diver-
gences, future research may need to explore the balance of power among the governor,
qadi, and local notables, which could have shaped popular perceptions in different
ways. See, respectively, Abraham Marcus, The Middle East on the Eve of Modernity:
Aleppo in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), 100,
116, 124; Baer, “Popular Revolt”; and Raymond, “Quartiers.” The author owes the
reference to the disturbances of 1711 to Barbara Flemming, “The Story of the Cairene
‘Fitna’ of 1711,” presentation delivered at Leiden University, January 26, 2002.

49
 2
WOMEN AND POPULAR PROTEST
Women’s demonstrations in
nineteenth-century Iran

Vanessa Martin

In the Iranian Revolution of 1979 one of the most notable features was that of
political demonstrations by women in large groups.1 At the time such separation
of the sexes seemed to be an Islamized form of the organized mass demonstra-
tions of a Marxist–Leninist kind which had been a feature of twentieth-century
politics. In addition, the demonstrations seemed to indicate a growing conscious-
ness of women’s role in the political arena, particularly as a result of new style
modern organizations and societies. Yet, whilst it is true that twentieth-century
Western methods of organization had an influence on the Islamist movement
of 1962–1979, it is evident that separate women’s political demonstrations were
a much older characteristic of Iranian politics. There is in particular one well-
known reference in the Tarikh-i bidari-yi Iranian to such a demonstration during
the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, when a group of women attacked the
Shah’s carriage whilst the ‘ulama were in bast in Shah ‘Abd al-’Azim.2 The
Revolution was characterized by other demonstrations by women either as a
separate group or in collaboration with men.3 More recently photographs have
come to light showing women as an organized presence.4 Afary has demonstrated
how the roots of modern Iranian feminism were firmly established in the
Constitutional Revolution, and shown how women protesters were part of the new
movement from its earliest beginnings.5 This chapter raises the possibility that
ordinary women were involved in open political activity much earlier, with
motives that were probably mixed and not necessarily of a secular influence. In a
word, women’s demonstrations have a history going right back into the nineteenth
century, and possibly before.6
It must, however, first be noted, that it was very unusual for women to demonstrate
as a distinct group before the twentieth century. It was certainly not common in
other countries of the Middle East or the Subcontinent, though examples can be
found, for instance in Aleppo in 1751, when women occupied the minaret of the
Great Mosque;7 and in 1804 in Egypt, when women stoned soldiers from the top

50
 NINETEENTH-CENTURY IRAN

of barricades.8 It was not particularly a feature of the politics of Europe, though

there are examples during the French Revolution.9 Foreign observers in Iran
commented that demonstrations in which women played a prominent part were
characteristic of Iran.10 There is therefore a question as to why these demonstra-
tions occurred in Iran, and where and how they originated. After some introduc-
tory remarks on women in the nineteenth century, this chapter will set out and
examine the evidence on the demonstrations, bearing in mind that it is scanty, as
with so much at the popular level in Iran before the twentieth century.11
In Qajar Iran women were at a definite disadvantage compared to men. In a
study of society in Tehran in 1269/1852–3, Ettehadieh notes that 1 per cent of
women at most owned houses, and the percentage who owned shops was even
smaller.12 Daughters received half their brother’s share of inheritance, and a woman
without children a quarter of her husband’s estate, whilst one with children
inherited an eighth.
The Islamic concept of hijab, decorum in dress, was strictly observed in the
urban areas. In the street Iranian women were wrapped in dull looking veils, and
though elite women were richly dressed indoors, out of doors they were attired
similarly to those of other social groups.13 Women’s outdoor costume consisted of
a dark blue mantle covering the head and shoulders, falling to their knees, and a
white veil sewn onto the mantle at the forehead, but loose below. They wore very
wide trousers (also dark blue), socks and slippers.14 One of the principal ways of
punishing women was to turn them outside of private space uncovered, as hap-
pened to the wives of the servants of the karguzar (Foreign Agent) of Bushire,
when he failed to pay the arrears of customs dues.15 The seclusion of women cre-
ated problems in the treating of illness, and for example, impeded vaccination. In
Bushire in 1884 it was proposed to overcome this problem by training Iranian
women to carry out the vaccinations.16
Yet, despite the veiling to all but close relations, in marriage the groom was
often allowed a glimpse first.17 The women of parts of the country, especially
Gilan, had more freedom of dress, as they rarely veiled their faces, and often
tucked their garments thigh high when weeding and cutting the rice.18 The tribal
women of Fars were unveiled.19
In marriage women gained in respect if they had children, but if childless were
looked upon as a burden.20 According to Mounsey, looks alone kept the husband’s
affection, but Binning states that, contrary to European impressions of non-European
men, husbands often consulted their wives and took their advice on all kinds of
matters, and were not infrequently ruled by their wives.21 Much of their lives was
spent on the demanding Persian cuisine, fostered by the Shi‘i tendency towards the
seclusion of women, combined with the new ingredients brought by international
trade.22 Many women, however, complained of unfair treatment as women, for
example, being less well-treated than a second wife, of being thrown out of the
house, but refused divorce; on the other hand, divorced men complained that their
wives had taken their property.23 Of course, it would depend on the family and to
some extent also on the social milieu.

51
 VANESSA MARTIN

Women could use the legal system to their advantage and exercise agency in
the process, not unusually winning cases. In the courts of law the mujtahid might
well interpret the law in a way which worked for women.24 Women were also
determined in exercising agency, and in standing up for their rights. Magistrates’
courts, which were held publicily as a means of ensuring a check on thier pro-
ceedings, were sometimes tumultuous. The women who attended could be the
most vociferous, and the minor officials who were present to preserve order were
not permitted to quell them with the blows they inflicted on the men.25
Although the shari‘a was followed with regard to women’s personal status,
so was customary practice, particularly that of ensuring that a woman did not
dishonour her family. Generally, officials took little notice of the ill-treatment or
murder of a woman found in adultery, and her own family could connive in her
demise.26 In one incident a man and a woman were brought before a local so-called
‘dervish prince’ and tried for fornication. The man was killed and the woman put
in a sack and beaten, but saved by a passer by.27 In 1859 a pregnant woman was
put to death for poisoning her husband, though the execution was considered
contrary to the shari‘a, which ordains that not only must a pregnant woman give
birth, but also feed her child to the appropriate time of weaning.28 Punishment
for prostitution could be equally barbarous. In Rasht a woman suspected of pros-
titution with a Russian, was seized and taken to the local mujtahid, who inflicted
100 blows on her with his own hands.29 As was not uncommon at that time,
the mujtahid then used the incident of female sexual transgression to incite the
population against the foreign presence in Iran, in effect using her as a pawn in
the politics of religion and state.30
Few people in Iran in the nineteenth century were educated, the literacy rate
being about 5 per cent, and the rate among women was lower, though possibly
not as low as is sometimes suggested. The women of the poorer social groups,
that is to say the majority, were uneducated. With regard to the better off,
Mounsey emphasizes that women were mostly uneducated and had to rely on
their looks to keep their husbands affections, whereas Wills speaks of their
being educated even in the middle classes (presumably among merchants and
some members of the guilds). According to Watson girls, presumably from the
middle social groups, were allowed to attend a mullah’s class up to the age of
seven, after which their education became the responsibility of a learned
woman. They could read, write, including compose poems, play music, and
sew, but their education was necessarily narrow. Women of the families of the
senior ‘ulama were often educated to some extent, Bibi ‘Alam Khurasani, for
example, learning the Islamic sciences from her father, and fiqh, usul and
hadith from her husband. Otherwise, children of the well-off were taught at
home by tutors.31
Many women worked and could gain some property through engagement in
small trades, such as that of pawnbroker.32 A Jewish woman, called Muravarid
(the Pearl) was a vendor of jewels and shawls to women of the elite and thus had
a certain influence in high places, which she was at one time able to exercise on

52
 NINETEENTH-CENTURY IRAN

behalf of the Jewish community of Hamadan.33 Women were involved in the slave
trade and one named Mulla Mariam assisted in landing slaves in Bushire in
1877.34 It is possible she had contacts with the local harems. Much of the slave
trade in Mohammareh in 1853 was managed by a female in the harem of the
Shaikh, who had his entire confidence.35 Sometimes a woman could keep
a school for younger children, as in the example mentioned by Eastwick of two
elderly Muslim women managing a school in Tehran.36 Women could also be used
as emissaries in a dispute, as when Saham al-Mulk, Governor of the Baharlu, and
some of the Arab tribes, put down a rebellion headed by Reza Khan, and the
latter’s brother sent a woman to the Saham imploring that a pardon be granted for
the tribal rebels.37 Employed in the carpet trade, in companies such as Ziegler’s,
where there were four women to a loom, they were paid very low wages, but
could also be quite enterprising. Since they worked at home where the foreign
merchants in particular could not enter without prior notice, they stole the designs,
kept them hidden, and sold them to Iranian merchants.38
In the early part of the nineteenth century exceptionally high taxes were paid by
female dancers and by ‘votaries of pleasure’ (presumably prostitutes).39 They
followed their professions under the immediate supervision of the governor, and
their names and ages were carefully registered. If one died or married, another took
her place. They were also divided into groups according to their merits and the regard
in which they were held by their clients. Each group lived in a separate street, and
their prices descended from 2 tomans to small change (pul-i siah). Most women in
work, however, were servants, and in the late nineteenth century received the lowly
wage of 3 tomans a year, although the more senior ones were paid more.40
Wives usually went into service, unless they had children, or else they under-
took the making, mending, and washing of clothes.41 Other jobs included teacher
of small children, midwife, and bathhouse attendant,42 as well as spinning, carpet
weaving, textile weaving and embroidery.43 There is some evidence that women,
but not necessarily those who worked, had increased wealth by the end of the
nineteenth century.44
The existing evidence does not permit us to say wheather there was much
change as between the eighteenth and early nineteenth century in terms of opport-
nities for women to come out of the house. Generally, women’s movements were
very much watched and controlled, and for security reasons they did not go out
after dark.45 Many religious ceremonies, for example rauzeh khani and Umar
kushi, took place in the house. However, trips to the bazaar, attendance at the
mosque, and visits to family provided them with the chance to go into public
space.46 One observer noted that old women of the lower social groups were the
only ones seen in the city.47 However in 1807, another remarked that how the
curiosity of the women in the house adjoining the one he lived in allowed him to
see and talk to them, which their husbands did not mind.48 In the mid-century,
women were depicted as coming into public space regularly. Mounsey describes
the bazaars as crowded with men, women and beasts, and also does not specify
that the woman were old.49 Binning noted that the women of the urban lower

53
 VANESSA MARTIN

social groups and the villages had little scruple in talking to a stranger, and many
of the middle levels were not as shy as might be supposed.50 The mother and sister
of his landlord in Shiraz often came to his quarters to talk to him, and put aside
their veils. When he walked on the roof of the house the women in the neigh-
bouring house came to stare at him, and were not particular about hiding their
faces when no one else was observing (though, of course, they were still in their
own homes). In his observation women were free to go to friends, family, bath-
house, mosque and bazaar, and to receive visitors. He contrasts their behaviour
with that of women of rank, who were always closely veiled and guarded by
attendants.51 Indeed, the behaviour of women in a notable household could, at
least in theory be rigidly controlled. Gurney has drawn attention to one notable’s
attempt to ensure his household retained its good reputation during a period of his
absence,52 but it cannot be certain how far he was successful, and given some of
the evidence above, it seems likely that the reality did not match his ideal. There
were other pubic occasions when women came out of the house. For example in
Rasht, at least, during a marriage procession, a dense crowd of female friends and
relations lined the left side of the street.53 Finally, we must bear in mind that there
were difference as to time and place.
In the engagement of women in politics, which we are to study, there was an
element of drama, and this extended not only to urban women. When Husain
Khan Galidar was killed in an ambush, his widow sent her veil through the Dashti
district calling on his tribe to avenge his death, which immediately attracted
2,000–3,000 volunteers.54 In 1908 Sartip Muhammad ‘Ali, former chief of the
Kalkhur tribe was abducted by a rival in Kermanshah on his way back from the
mosque. The Sartip’s womenfolk went at once to the mosque, and, throwing dust
on their heads and rendering their garments, appealed to the Governor and all the
chief mujtahids to have him restored.55 The people of the town then generated a
frenzy of religious outrage, and brought pressure on the mujtahids to complain,
so that the Governor had to take action. In reporting on women’s petitions
submitted to the Shah in the 1880s, Schneider points out that they showed a
considerable self-confidence, and that they constituted a surprisingly high
proportion of the whole.56
Women were primarily responsible for managing food and sustenance, so they
became most notably militant at the time of bread shortages. Political demonstrations
by women in the urban areas were often ostensibly bread riots, and therefore so
termed. However, they usually represented a deeper malaise resulting mostly from
wider economic difficulties affecting the community as a whole. Sometimes the lat-
ter resulted from plague or famine, sometimes from a downturn in the local econ-
omy, and sometimes from mismanagement by the authorities, who could well
exacerbate existing problems by hoarding grain. Thus revolts by the wider commu-
nity would not unusually start with a women’s protest or bread riot, and then spread
to involve the whole bazaar network, including the merchants providing the wealth,
the ‘ulama the moral leadership and intercession with the state, the men from the
poorer quarters the military might, and the guilds organisation and facilitation.

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The earliest references to women’s bread riots date from the mid-nineteenth
century, but the British diplomatic sources which provide the most detailed
evidence are comparatively scarce before that time, so we cannot be sure that such
women’s bread riots did not take place in the earlier part of the nineteenth century,
though they may not have been as frequent.
An early recorded example of women’s riots took place in Tehran in 1849. At
the hour of prayer a number of women from Isfahan created a disturbance in the
main mosque of the city, and demanded that the Imam Jum’a intervene to prevent
the sacking of Isfahan where there had been turbulence.57 The women, having
initiated the demonstration, were then joined by men, and the crowd grew to 2,000.
They pulled the Imam Jum’a out of the pulpit with the intention of obliging him
to go to the Shah’s palace to demand justice. The Imam Jum’a, who had no control
over the situation, eventually escaped to his house and the crowd dispersed. This
demonstration, not specifically related to bread, would seem to have been part of
broader objections to government policy, and was clearly, like most of the other
demonstrations, organized and premeditated.
Tehran was again the scene of a riot in 1861, when the Shah returned from the
hunt to be greeted by a large crowd, which included many women, and some men,
amongst them members of the ‘ulama.58 Ostensibly, the crowd was not hostile to
the Shah personally, and whilst the women pleaded for assistance, members of the
‘ulama reminded him of the precepts which enjoined beneficence. Another
demonstration the next day included men, who criticized the Shah in person. The
demonstration led to the execution of the kalantar (mayor), Muhammad Khan,
accompanied by orders that the price of bread be dropped.
A major demonstration involving women took place in Shiraz in 1865, when a
crowd of tribal and city women went to the arsenal at the foot of the telegraph
wire and complained that the Governor, Qavam al-Dauleh, cared nothing for the
people, except to take their gifts. They cited the insecurity of the city and the
dearness of bread as the principal evidence of his inadequacies.59 The Governor
sent an official with some farashes to drive away the women, at which the bazaars
closed, evidently in support, and the area round the Maidan-i Vakil (Vakil Square)
became filled with women, men, lutis and country people. A senior government
official went to the Maidan of the Arsenal to try and subdue the people, but they
pelted him with stones and he fled. The people were only eventually quietened by
the dismissal of the Governor.
At the time of the famine of 1871, when bread was scarce and provisions
expensive, the women of Tehran became so aggressive that the troops in the royal
camp were put under arms.60 Indeed the women who took part in all these
demonstrations were notably assertive. Women were thus equally determined in
Shiraz in 1878, when a crowd of them, again protesting at the price of bread,
pulled the Beglerbegi from off his horse.61 Indeed one of the advantages women
had was that, when protesting against powerful officials, their veils protected
them from individual recognition, so that they could be more intimidating.62 The
Mayor of Shiraz, Qavam al-Mulk, was the recipient of invective on the subject of

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bread, when in 1885, two women suddenly positioned themselves in front of his
horse complaining of high prices. When they cursed him, they were removed
to prison, at which the bazaars promptly closed and a demonstration of women,
children and men followed. Lutis also involved were arrested but there followed
two or three days when bread was plentiful.63
In 1893 the Governor of Shiraz, Sa‘d al-Mulk, tried to abolish the right of taking
sanctuary in holy places. A preacher in the Jami’ Mosque was to announce the
changes, but when he rose to speak, so did a group of women and other objectors,
who abused the Imam Jum’a saying that first some arrangement should be made
about the price of bread.64 This would appear to have been the role of the women
in expressing popular discontent at the abolition of sanctuary, particularly under
an arbitrary regime. The meeting broke up to prevent a riot, but none of the other
‘ulama accepted the new regulations.
There were also demonstrations in Isfahan over the price of bread in 1893. The
people, chiefly women, crowded into the Shah Mosque and would not allow
the prayer leader, Aqa Najafi, to say prayers, on the grounds that he was one of
the causes of the raised prices. They prevented him from going to his own house,
and obliged him to accompany them to see the Governor, Zill al-Sultan, of whom
he then demanded a deduction in the price in no uncertain terms.65 The price of
bread again became high in Isfahan in April 1894, and there was grumbling
among the women of the city at the cost of sugar, bread, mutton and lamp oil.66
The Governor, Zill al-Sultan felt unable to punish the women for their agitation
(no doubt because it would provoke further disorders). However, a few women,
who carried off a small amount of sugar from the confectioners were punished by
being obliged to pay compensation. Later, on 24 April, about 40 women and
200 children went to the mosque of Shaikh Muhammad ‘Ali and verbally abused
him. They then proceeded to the bazaars and began to remove items from the
shops, at which they had to be driven away by the authorities. Fuel, as well as
bread, could be the cause of an organized women’s demonstration, as in Shiraz
in 1894, when about 40 women took sanctuary in the prince Governor’s stables
complaining of the lack of fuel.67
Another type of disaster which could bring on a demonstration was disease,
and the hardship it caused. In Astarabad in 1895, at the time of a cholera epi-
demic, the blame fell on the Russians and the sale of wine in the town itself
associated with foreigners. Women took bast in the Russian consulate as a means
of protest, and the shops of Russian subjects were attacked.68 This demonstration
was said, with some reason, to have been specifically incited by the ‘ulama, but
it would be a mistake to see other women’s actions as having been specifically
instigated, rather than part of a communal response, or representing the preoccu-
pation of the women themselves, as some sources tend to do. Similarly, in a
period of grain shortage and government weakness in Ardebil, a group of women
encouraged by mujtahid, came out with stones carried in chadurs tied round their
waists, and attacked the castle where the governor was residing. He had to order
his forces to fire on the crowd to disperse them.69 However, it would be a mistake

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to see other women’s actions, as having been specifically instigated, rather than
as part of a communal response, or as representing the preoccupations of the
women themselves.
Even in Bushire, where riots were rare because of the British preoccuption with
order, and the Iranian government’s anxieties over the British presence, women’s
demonstrations occurred. In March 1897 the house of the Head of the (British
run) Post Office in Bushire was stoned by a crowd of women, who had to be
removed from the town, imprisoned or severely punished before the matter
would settle.70 No doubt there was an anti foreign element in the women’s protest.
Two demonstrations, however, stand out as being exceptionally unusual for their
sophistication in terms of expression and organization, which at certain points
carry an element of choreography. One of them is the earliest nineteenth-century
example so far to come to light. A woman’s demonstration formed part of a popu-
lar uprising in Isfahan in 1840 so serious that it brought the Shah in person to the
city. At this time Isfahan was dominated by lutis, which is perhaps a testimony to
economic problems and unemployment. Certainly, there seems to have been strug-
gles between different social groups with merchants being subjected to constant
robbery by lutis, who were then protected by some of the principal mujtahids,
especially Haj Sayyid Muhammad Baqir, and his son.71 The disorder became so
great that the Shah marched to Isfahan with a force of thirty guns and fourteen
corps of infantry, a most unusual event which was to remain for some time in the
popular memory. On his arrival on 27 February 1840, he and his court were for
twelve days the guests of Sayyid Muhammad Baqir, which in reality constituted
punishment by major fine. Four hundred lutis were seized, executed or otherwise
punished, and the mujtahid’s son was sent to Kerbala.72 The Shah, however, had
some difficulty in persuading Muhammad Baqir and another mujtahid, Sayyid
Ibrahim Karbasi, to go to Kerbala as well.73 When Muhammad Baghir finally
announced he was going to Kerbala, a crowd of 7–8,000 came to his house and
begged him not to leave, declaring themselves ready for martyrdom.74 Two to three
thousand women, having gathered together, went to the artillery quarters in the
Maidan-i Shah, where they began to weep and wail. The Shah came onto the bal-
cony of the Ali Qapu, where he was residing, and asked what they wanted. They
answered that as their husbands had not the courage to wait upon His Majesty, they
had done so, and their prayer was that he would put all of them to death rather than
permit the head of their religion to leave the city.75 The Shah replied that he could
not possible prevent the Sayyid fulfilling a religious duty, namely a pilgrimage to
the tomb of his ancestors. A crowd of both men and women then went to the
Sayyid’s house and would not allow him to leave it. The Shah did not punish them.
In the event the mujtahid prevailed and remained in Isfahan. After the Shah left,
to the annoyance of the more propertied section of the populace, he protected a
well-known luti and vagabond, who had taken refuge in his quarter, and when
the latter was finally arrested, the mujtahid had him released on the grounds of
repentance.76 The Shah had evidently curbed the worst of the disorder, but he could
not eradicate it without resolving the underlying economic problems.

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The second demonstration, a major event, took place in May 1893 in Shiraz. It
brought about the fall of Qavam al-Mulk, kalantar (mayor) of Shiraz, about whom
the people of the city went to the telegraph office to complain to the Shah.77
The people showed unanimity in refusing to accept Qavam’s promises of better
living conditions, and in demanding that he be sent away from Shiraz. This
solidarity continued even under attack on the orders of the Shah, and they were
supported by the ‘ulama who refused to go and advise the people to disperse,
when asked to do so by the Governor of Shiraz. Although the people were armed,
and had been joined by riflemen, they showed no sign of violent hostility and did
not use their arms.78 During the demonstration the people occupied the telegraph
office of Shiraz and telegrammed the Shah concerning the price of bread, but
nothing was touched.79 But most remarkable of all was the role of the women in
this demonstration. They led a procession, comprised of an immense crowd, to the
telegraph office to make the initial complaint.80 On 15 May a band of women also
collected all the Jews in Shiraz, and making them bring their copies of the
Talmud, induced them to join the crowd, by whom they were cordially welcomed.
On 15 May, the crowd now numbering 15,000–20,000 men and women brought
their holiest objects, the banner of Husain and the hand of ‘Abbas and remained
beating their breasts and weeping, and crying ‘Ya Husain’.
While it is difficult to produce any direct proof it would seem possible that
these demonstrations are in some way linked to ta‘ziyya plays. These re-enact the
drama of the seventh-century battle of Kerbala when the Prophet’s grandson,
Husain, the third Imam of the Shi‘a, was martyred in a struggle for justice against
the army of the ‘Ummayad Caliph Mu‘awiyya who had usurped his position.
During the struggle a number of the Prophet’s family were killed. Present at the
scene of battle were his granddaughter, Zainab – the aunt of Husain, and Fatima,
his daughter and the wife of his nephew, Qasim. Thus, in this passion play, women
had a role in the actual field of struggle, although they did not themselves fight.
They supported the men who went into battle, tried to prevent them from going
to certain death, and wept at their departure, but accepted in the end that they must
make any sacrifice necessary for the cause. Although women in the urban demon-
strations were more assertive than the women at Kerbala, and were occasionally
beaten, death and brutality were suffered by the men to whom they acted mainly
as a support. There are therefore distinct parallels between the demonstrations and
the ta‘ziyya plays. This is not to argue that the demonstrations derive from the
ta‘ziyya, plays but rather that they emerge from a common culture and are also
a reflection of social, political and cultural trends in the nineteenth-century and
perhaps even earlier.
To understand this background further it is necessary to consider very briefly
the history of the ta‘ziyya plays.
Ta‘ziyya emerges from a sense of community and collaboration being an
expression of unity. It strengthens the feeling of community.81 Ta‘ziyya was also
a means for the people of finding a common solace in the face of a political
system that was arbitrary and oppressive. It enabled them to endure the often

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intolerable hardships of arbitrary government, and to find, from the examples of

the tribulations of the Imams, the inner strength to withstand them and struggle
against them as a community. Ta‘ziyya emerged in the Qajar period when many
takiyyas were built and people attended in their thousands.82 Historians have
dated the beginnings of ta‘ziyya to the Safavid period, but at that time they were
not what could properly be called plays, as references from the Safavid period
speak of processions but not of play performances.83 In the first decades of
the seventeenth-century Muharram ceremonial ritual developed in most urban
centres, and by the mid-century there was some semblance of enactment, but
without any spoken role.84 Chelkowski argues that ta‘ziyya as ritual theatre arose
from a fusion in the mid-eighteenth century of two traditions of performance of
the rites of ‘Ashura, the one peripatetic and the other local.85 As between the Zand
period and the time of Fath ‘Ali Shah there was a significant rise in both the
number of performances of ta‘ziyya and in the versions used, subsidiary stories
being developed from the main narrative.86 By the nineteenth-century ta‘ziyyas
had acquired special structures for their enactment, called takiyyas and later also
Husainiyyas.87 The earliest permanent building was recorded by Masse in
Astarabad in 1786.88 From the late eighteenth century, foreign travellers such as
Franklin, 1787, and Drouville, travelling 1812–1813, provide descriptions of
actual ta‘ziyya plays, Drouville mentioning that parts were given in the battle of
Kerbala, and that 4,000 people became involved, but astonishingly none of them
were wounded.89 By 1840 ta‘ziyyas were being written in poetry, and in the
mid-1830s Kuzov saw a complete recreation of the death of Imam Husain in
which all the details of the events were faithfully re-enacted.90
Certainly by the early nineteenth-century ta‘ziyyas had female roles, although
the female parts were always played by men or boys. The male actors were dressed
in baggy black garments covering them from head to foot, with veils to hide their
faces.91 Thus Franklin mentions the tragically fated marriage of the son of Imam
Hasan with the daughter of Imam Husain, who was surrounded by the women of
the family. When her husband goes into the field of battle, the young wife most
eloquently expresses her unhappiness.92 At a performance in Zanjan in 1862 the
brothers and sisters of ‘Ali Akbar were killed by Yazid.93 When ‘Ali Akbar decided
to go into battle, his mother fainted, but on recovering expressed the wish that her
son be lion-hearted and prayed for his well-being.94 Ta‘ziyya was significant in
demonstrating the heroism and courage of women, who expressed their feelings as
mothers sisters and wives, and their willingness to struggle in the service of their
religion. In one ta‘ziyya the mother of Qasim goes with great emotion to the Imam
and asks if he would give permission for her son to partake in jihad.95
Ta‘ziyya, however, underwent its most pronounced development as a result of
royal patronage, and that of the notables. It seems partly to have been a form of
religious entertainment and partly a means of creating a bond of identification
with the common people.96 This movement developed from the time of Aqa
Muhammad Qajar, and gradually encouraged the ‘ulama to accept it, despite their
doubts about its religious validity.97 Early in the reign of Fath ‘Ali Shah, one of

59
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the greatest mujtahids of the time, Mirza Abu’l Qasim known as Fazil Qumi
(d.1231/1815) issued a fatva declaring that playing a part (shabiyya khani) was
not forbidden but permissible.98
Ouseley describes a ta‘ziyya in the square of the Shah’s palace, and remarks
that it had more valuable decoration than probably ever graced a European theatre
performance, for the Shah had lent a large quantity of his jewels for the produc-
tion. When Husain resolved to go and rescue ‘Abbas, his sister Zainab and daugh-
ter Sakina tried with their tears and entreaties and foreboding to dissuade him.99
Ta‘ziyya spread further during the reign of Muhammad Shah. Hajji Mirza
Aqasi, his powerful Prime Minister, had his own takiyya.100 A farman of
Muhammad Shah’s reign, later confirmed by Nasir al-Din Shah, commands that
all of the landowners of Kushak village near Shiraz must pay for the village
ta‘ziyya as part of the village tax responsibilities.101 By 1843 numerous ta‘ziyyas
with different scripts were performed in Tehran.102
The greatest patron of ta‘ziyya was Nasir al-Din Shah, who inaugurated an
official takiyya, known as the Takiyya-yi Daulat, in 1856, there having been,
however, performances under court patronage earlier in his reign.103 Following a
visit to Europe in 1873, during which he attended a performance at the Albert
Hall, London, he constructed a new government takiyya, an immense, circular
building, with space for 20–30,000 persons.104 Women had a prominent role as,
for example, during one ta‘ziyya there was a dialogue between Zainab and Husain
in which they spoke of their sad destiny, and Zainab flung herself to the floor and
poured dust on her head.105 There were more than fifty takiyyas in Tehran alone
in the reign of Nasir al-Din Shah, and takiyyas became a major feature of Iranian
towns and villages.106 Their founders were not only notables, but members of
guilds, for example the goldsmiths, or communities from the provinces, for exam-
ple Azerbaijan. The interior was sometimes gorgeous. The patron of each takiyya
ensured, for the sake of his own reputation, that the interior be suitably main-
tained. The royal takiyya was financed by the Shah but he bestowed upon the
leading merchants in Tehran the honour of keeping up its decoration.
In Nasir al-Din Shah’s reign, under the influence of the European theatrical
tradition, ta‘ziyyas in the royal takiyya divided between those of which the purport
was mainly religious, and those from ancillary or other stories of religious origin
which had an element of popular entertainment. I‘timad al-Saltana mentions that
when he went to the ta‘ziyya of Bilqais and Sulaiman, the bride of Sulaiman,
Zainat, was riding an elephant, and when they wanted to bring her down, the
elephant shied away, and then bolted, still carrying the bride, to the merriment of
the observers.107
Sometimes ta‘ziyyas were performed just for women, for example in the house
of Qamar al-Saltana, the daughter of Fath ‘Ali Shah, the audience, and exceptionally
in ta‘ziyyas, all the players were women.108 Women’s ta‘ziyyas were closed to men,
and those who held them gained the title of mulla (person of pious learning).109
Religious or not particularly so, ta‘ziyyas provided new opportunities for
women to go out and about, to contact other people and to witness different forms

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of expression. They were thus important in drawing women out of their limited
existence in the home and enlarging their experience. Ta‘ziyyas thus had an
enthusiastic female audience. Ouseley describes how the walls of the takiyya
square in the palace in Tehran were covered in hundreds of women wearing white
chadurs.110 At one performance in Zanjan, women sat on the right and men
opposite.111 In the government takiyya in Tehran the major part of the audience
were women, who sat cross-legged on the floor in the centre, which was allocated
as their particular space.112 By the latter part of the nineteenth century the female
characters had acquired their own ta‘ziyyas, there being for example, the story of
the death of Fatima Zahra, and the martyrdom of the wife of Shimr (who become
an adherent of the family of Husain).113

Conclusion
The women’s popular demonstrations described above varied in their purpose, but
were mostly political by implication, specifically in being critical of government
economic policy. They were not, on the whole, spontaneous or chance eruptions,
but demonstrations that were organized by a community in which women were
given a specific role.
The political culture of these demonstrations is peculiarly Iranian. With the more
sophisticated demonstrations the women’s role appears almost choreographed, and
even with the simpler ones there is evidence of organization, and I would not argue
that this feature of Iranian culture would necessarily be new. The role of women in
the ta‘ziyya plays places them unusually on the battlefield of the political struggle
itself, by contrast with depiction of women as peaceful and resigned in the Christian
tradition. The Shi’i women do not actually fight and die but have strong role in
support and communal empathy. Yet it cannot be said that these demonstrations are
an extension of the ta‘ziyya, but rather that the more premeditated ones are part of
a development that gives political expression a new form.
The major demonstrations of 1840 and 1893, in particular, show that ordinary
women had a valued role in politics as part of the community in the nineteenth
century, yet they have come to light through largely chance mention in the more
obscure contemporary documents of the British archives. As far as I have been
able to investigate Persian documents describing the same events from a later
perspective fail to mention them. This is an example to support the case that
women’s role in history can easily be overlooked.
That there were such demonstrations in the earlier part of the nineteenth
century demonstrates a more traditional element, yet the slight evidence also
raises the possibility, which needs further investigation that women were becoming
better educated, better off and better organized by the final two decades of the
period. That raises the so far unanswerable question of the degree of influence of
modern organiszation, and Western forms of expression, on traditional Iranian
culture. Further it demonstrates that there were older roots to the role of women
in both the constitutional and the Islamic revolutions.

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Notes
1 I am most grateful for Dr ‘Ali Bulookbashi, Dr Ziba Mir-Hosseini and Dr Sarah
Ansari for the contribution their comments have made to this chapter.
2 Nazim al-Islam Kirmani, Mirza Muhammad, Tarikh-i bidari-yi Iranian, Tehran
1357/1978–1979, I, p. 361.
3 See, for example, A. Kasravi, Tarikh-i mashruta-yi Iran, Tehran 2536/1977–1988,
pp. 53, 57, 66, 101; J. Afary, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, Columbia 1996,
pp. 177–208.
4 A photograph taken during the disturbances of 1906 shows women participating in
the political action as an organised group. M. Haqani, ‘Nahzat-i mashrutiyyat bih
ravaiyat-i tasvir’, Tarikh-i Mu’asir-i Iran, No. 18, p. 266.
5 Afary, Revolution, p. 177. She quotes Morgan Shuster saying, in The Strangling of
Persia: ‘The veiled women of Iran, who with little or no experience had overnight
become teachers, newspaper writers, founders of women’s clubs, (and) speakers on
political subjects.’
6 There is at least one example from the Safavid period. Interview with Dr M. Sefatgol,
professor of Safavid History, Tehran University, 19.11.2002.
7 A. Marcus, The Middle East on the Eve of Modernity, New York 1989, p. 100.
8 J.E. Tucker, Women in Nineteenth-Century Egypt, Cambridge 1985, pp. 141–2.
9 See D.G. Levy, H.B. Applewhite and M.D. Johnson, Women in Revolutionary Paris,
Illinois 1980, p. 15; D. Godineau, The Women of Paris and the French Revolution,
trans. K. Streip, Berkeley, CA,1988, pp. 98–9.
10 No.18, 20 December 1849, FO 60/146.
11 This chapter concentrates on women in urban society. However, they also appear to
have had a role in conflict in country society, as happened at the slaughter of a
government army, sent to suppress a revolt in Neriz. The Neriz women clambered
onto surrounding rocks, and clapping their mouths with their hands, gave out cries of
exultation. More government troops followed, this time with success. The men were
killed and the women brought to Shiraz, where some were distributed to the soldiery
and others were left to beg on the streets. Enclosure in No. 350 18 November 1853,
and No. 381 15 December 1853, FO 248/150. In the villages likewise, the women
joined the men in battle. On his way to Hamadan, Alcock found that, due to the harsh
conduct of Iranian officials, his party encountered villagers instantly armed, with the
women being active in providing stakes and weapons for the men. T. Alcock, Travels
in Russia, Persia, Turkey and Greece in 1828–9, London, 1831, p. 77.
12 M. Ettehadieh, Inja Tehran ast, Tehran, 1377, p. 261.
13 Enclosure in No. 17, 5 February 1862, FO 60/266.
14 A. Mounsey, Journey through the Caucasus and the Interior of Persia, London
1872.
15 Encl. in No. 135, 7 December 1887, FO 248/448.
16 Annual Medical Report, Bushire, p. 8, 17 April 1884, FO 248/300.
17 C.J. Wills, Persia as It Is, London,1886, p. 55.
18 Encl. p. 195, No. 16, 10 April 1860, FO 248/191.
19 Encl. p. 195, No. 18, 25 January 1982, FO 60/444. Women were not necessarily as
decorous and modest as some sources would suggest. Wills describes being in the
house of a notable when two young ladies entered in ‘becoming if slightly indelicate
dress’ with feet and legs bare, and skirts such as were seen in ballets. They asked him
to examine their tongues and throat, and the eunuch could not control them. Then,
together with the eunuch and a young black female servant, they partook of tea with
shrieks of laughter, but all three women immediately rushed to cover their faces when
the master of the house appeared. C.J. Wills, In the Land of the Lion and the Sun,

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London, 1883, p. 40. He further describes them as giving an occasional glimpse of

their ‘charms’ to passers-by, Wills, Persia, p. 14. According to Mounsey, they were
sometimes willing ‘to gratify the curiosity of a European by lifting their veils’, and
further, on visits to the Shrine of Shah ‘Abd al-’Azim to the south of Tehran, the road
thither became a promenade, with the women keeping their attendants at a distance
and uncovering ‘charms’ elsewhere kept hidden. Mounsey, Journey, p. 159. ‘Aim
al-Saltana, making the same journey, does not report being the recipient of such
favours, but he noted on a rail journey to Shah ‘Abd al-’Azim that the carriage was
very crowded and that women out-numbered men two to one. Ruznama-yi khatirat-i
‘Ain al-Saltana, ed. I. Afshar and M. Salur, Tehran, 1373, I, p. 351.
20 Mounsey, Journey, p. 160.
21 R.B. Binning, A Journal of Two Years’Travel in Persia, Ceylon etc., London 1857; see
also K. Mo’tazed and N. Kasra, Siyasat va haramsara - zan dar ‘asr-i Qajar, Tehran
1379, p. 220 for marriage amongst the elite.
22 See S. Mahdavi, ‘Women, Shi’ism and Cuisine in Iran’ in Women, Religion and
Culture in Iran, ed. S. Ansari and V. Martin, London, 2001, pp. 10–26.
23 Ettehadieh, Tehran, p. 260.
24 I. Schneider, ‘Muhammad Baqir Shafti (1180–1260/1766–1844) und die Isfahaner
Gerichtsbarkeit’, Der Islam, 79, 2002, pp. 240–273 for discussion of an example.
I am grateful for Dr Schneider for providing me with an abstract of this article in
English.
25 J. Malcolm, Persia, II, p. 393.
26 Wills, Land, p. 276.
27 Robertson to Sheil, 20 August 1842, FO 248/101.
28 No. 35, 17 March 1859, FO 248/179.
29 Enclosure in No. 76, 7 July 1861, FO 60/257. For another example of the punishment
of a prostitute see K. Bayani, Panjeh sal-i tarikh-i Nasiri, V, Tehran, 1375, p. 367.
30 The ‘ulama were, however, periodically vigilant about prostitution in any case. In
Shiraz in 1894 Sayyid ‘Ali Akbar at the head of about 200 students and roughs
entered a brothel by force in order to have the inmates arrested, but without success
as the women had been tipped off with the connivance of the police. No. 792,
16 October 1994, FO 248/602. In 1892 Sayyid Abu Talib of Isfahan stopped a
woman in the street and asked why she was wearing galoshes, calling her all sorts of
names. She answered that she was not what he imagined and called for assistance.
A number of people appeared and he had to take flight. No. 3007, 3 October 1992,
FO 248/553.
31 R.G. Watson, A History of Persia, London 1866, p. 19. Mounsey, Journey, p. 160;
Wills, Persia, p. 67, M.H. Rajabi, Mashashir-i zanan-i Irani va Parsigu, Tehran,
1374, p. 36. Rajabi mentions Rababa Mara‘shi, the wife of Sayyid ‘Ali Shams
al-Ma‘ali, Nasir al-Din Shah’s doctor, who started classes for girls in her house in
1852–1853 (1270) and taught for thirteen years, despite some popular pressure to
close, Zanan, p. 104. Afary points out that from the 1870s Muslim girls attended
the American Presbyterian School in Tehran, but it did not attract girls from the
community at large because of the religious implications, Revolution, p. 182. The
question of the effect that such educated women would have had on the general
community of women is a subject lacking evidence, and yet much in need of further
research.
32 Enclosure in 4 January 1845, FO 248/113.
33 No. 17, 31 January 1866, FO 60/296.
34 No. 37, 23 March 1877, FO 248/329. The title of mulla, meaning learned, was
accorded occasionally not only to women, but to members of the religious minorities,
for example, to a Jew.

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 VANESSA MARTIN

35 Enclosure in No. 131, 23 May 1853, FO 248/150.

36 E.B. Eastwick, Journal of a Diplomat’s Three Years’ Residence in Persia, London,
1864, p. 231. He also lived near the bathhouse and reports that, ‘Swarms of muffled
figures pass to a nearby bathhouse and ever and anon an unveiled face looks over into
the Faringi’s garden, and a girlish titter, or, maybe a word or two of not the most
complimentary nature, is addressed to the walker in the garden’, p. 232.
37 No. 575, 6 September 1993, Shiraz Agent FO 248/577.
38 No. 46, 23 February 1981, FO 60/522.
39 E. Scott Waring, A Tour to Sheeraz, London 1807, p. 80.
40 A. Mustaufi, Sharh-i zindigani-yi man ya tarikh-i ijtima‘i-yi Iran, Tehran 1324, I,
pp. 210–2 gives an indication of the lives of female servants. Ettehadieh found the
female servants’ wages to be 1 toman in cash per month and four sets of clothing each
year, see Tehran, p. 262.
41 Watson, History, p. 27.
42 Ettehadieh, Tehran, p. 262.
43 Mu‘tazed and Kasra, Zan, pp. 226–7.
44 Ettehadieh, Tehran, p. 263.
45 Mu‘tazed and Kasra, Zan, pp. 218–19.
46 According to Picot, up to the time of Aqa Muhammad Qajar, in the late eighteenth
century, women of all ranks were permitted to follow the army, but in the nineteenth
century only women of the elite could do so. H. Picot, ‘Report on the Persian army’,
FO 881/7364, p. 25. Of course, the women of lower ranks would have been largely
tribal.
47 M. Tancoigne, A Narrative of a Journey into Persia and Residence in Tehran, London,
1820, p. 207.
48 Scott Waring, Sheeraz, p. 61. There are no more particulars as to the circumstances,
and we most note that there would have been variations as between individual families.
49 Mounsey, Journey, p. 158.
50 Binning, Persia, p. 393.
51 Ibid., p. 393.
52 J. Gurney, ‘A Qajar Household and Its Estates’, Iranian Studies, XVI, 1983, Nos. 3–4,
pp. 137–76.
53 No. 46, 27 June 1861, FO 248/199.
54 Hennell to Sheil, No. 436, 9 September 1844, FO 248/113.
55 No. 46, 15 November 1908, FO 248/935.
56 Schneider, Religion and State Jurisdiction during Naser al-Din Shah’s Reign’, in R.M.
Gleane, ed., Religion and Society in Qajar Iran, London 2005, p. 7.
57 No. 18, 20 December 1849, FO 60/146.
58 MAE, Ambassade/Teheran/55, No. 5, 5 March 1861.
59 Encl. in No. 83, 11 August 1865, FO 60/290.
60 No. 108, 16 August 1871, FO 60/335.
61 From 26 Zhi al-Hujja 1295/21 12.1878, Sirjani, Vaqayi‘, p. 103.
62 W. Sparroy, Persian Children of the Royal Family, London 1902, p. 238.
63 21st Shavval 1302/3 August 1885, Sirjani, Vaqayi‘, p. 243.
64 No. 555, 24 July 1993, FO 248/547. Inflation caused by fluctuations in the exchange
rate between silver and copper, the debasement of the coinage and a fall in the world
price of silver affected the price of bread in the 1890s, causing much popular discontent.
In September 1894 notices, placarded around Shiraz, threatened the Governor with a
further riot over the economic situation. No. 778, 20 September 1994, FO 248/602.
65 Decypher No. 16, 26 October 1893, FO 248/572.
66 Zill al-Sultan to Nasir al-Din Shah, No. 3403 and No. 3404, 26 April 1894,
FO 248/599.

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 NINETEENTH-CENTURY IRAN

67 No. 808, 16 November 1894, FO 248/602.

68 Encl. in No. 25, 19 March 1895, FO 60/565.
69 R. Tapper, Frontier Nomads of Iran, Cambridge, 1997, pp. 248–9.
70 MFA 16 Shaval 1314/ 20 March 1897, 1314 B29 F9 No. 102.
71 No. 42, 24 August 1840, FO 60/74.
72 Hennell to Sheil, No. 15, 20 April 1840, 11 May 1840, and 19 June 1840 FO 248/99.
73 Hennell to Sheil, 25 May 1840, FO 248/99.
74 Hennell to Sheil, 18 June 1840, and 19 June 1840, FO 248/99.
75 If the role of women here seems unusually assertive as compared to men, it should be
remembered that they were staying the Shah’s wrath in an attempt to avoid bloodshed.
From that point of view it would fit with the ta‘ziyya role for women in attempting to
prevent the loss of life.
76 No. 42, 24 August 1840, FO 60/74.
77 No. 513, 19 May 1893, Shiraz Agent, FO 248/576.
78 No. 513, 19 May 1893, Shiraz Agent, FO 248/576.
79 No. 71, 13 May 1993, FO 248/578.
80 Sykes to Lascelles, 31 May 1993, FO 248/578.
81 E. Shahidi and A. Bulookbashi, Pajhuhishi dar ta‘ziyya va ta‘ziyya khani az aghaz ta
payan-i daura-yi Qajar dar Tehran, Tehran, 1379, p. 45.
82 S. Humayuni, Ta‘ziyya dar Iran, Shiraz, 1380, p. 70.
83 S.R. Peterson, ‘The Ta’ziyeh and Related Arts’ in P.J. Chelkowski (ed.), Ta’ziyeh,
Ritual and Drama in Iran, New York, 1979, pp. 65–7; Humayuni, Ta‘ziyya, p. 71.
84 J. Calmard, ‘Le patronage des ta’ziyeh: elements pour une etude globale’, in Ta’ziyeh,
ed. Chelkowsi, p. 123. See also J. Calmard, ‘Shi’i Rituals and Power II. The
Consolidation of Safavid Shi’ism: Folklore and Popular Religion’ in C. Melville (ed.),
Safavid Persia, London and New York, 1996, especially pp. 156–60.
85 P. Chelkowski, ‘Ta‘ziyya’, Encyclopedia of Islam, second edition, Leiden, 2000, X,
pp. 406–8.
86 Shahidi and Bulookbashi, Ta‘ziyya, p. 106.
87 Chelkowski, ‘Ta‘ziyya’, p. 406.
88 Peterson, ‘Ta’ziyeh’ , p. 65. There are suggestions of Russian influence in the devel-
opment of ta‘ziyya as theatre. Peterson notes that the earliest examples of theatres
specifically developed for ta‘ziyyas date from the first two decades of the nineteenth
century in the Russian provinces (ibid., p. 67). M. Mahjub considers that the change
from processions to plays derived from Europe. He points out the early influence in
north Iran, and sees a possible derivation in the Transcaucasus and other Muslim
provinces of Russia. See ‘The Effect of European Theatre and the Influence of Its
Theatrical Methods upon Ta’ziyeh’ in Ta’ziyeh, Chelkowski, ed. pp. 138–43. It is
worth noting that European theatre had an influence on India at this time, financed by
the Rajahs, R.K. Yajnik, The Indian Theatre, London 1933, pp. 84 ff.
89 Humayuni, Ta‘ziyya, pp. 76–7.
90 Ibid., p. 77.
91 Chelkowski, ‘Ta‘ziyya’, p. 407.
92 Shahidi and Bulookbashi, Ta‘ziyya, pp. 78–80.
93 Humayuni, Ta‘ziyya, pp. 79–80.
94 Ibid., p. 80.
95 Ibid., p. 923.
96 Shahidi and Bulookbashi, Ta‘ziyya, p. 106.
97 Ibid., p. 160.
98 Humayuni, Ta‘ziyya, pp. 61–2.
99 W. Ouseley, Travels in Various Countries of the East More Particularly Persia,
London, 1823, III, pp. 165, 167.

65
 VANESSA MARTIN

100 Calmard, ‘Ta’ziyeh’, p. 124.

101 Rajab 1259/July-August 1843 SAM No. 240023275 location 1AB2Ch716.
102 Shahidi and Bulookbashi, Ta‘ziyya, p. 168.
103 Calmard, ‘Patronage’, p. 124. There is some indication that court ta‘ziyyas had an
element of entertainment apart from the religious content of the play. In 1855 Murray
reported to Clarendon that he had attended ‘a dramatic representation partly historical
resembling the mysteries’. The play had ‘certain ridiculous adjuncts including the
appearance on the stage of a Frank ambassador (a standard character in ta‘ziyyas)
dressed up in an old cocked hat borrowed or bought from some of the foreign
missions, and such other European clothes as can be found in Tehran. This ambassador,
who is supposed to be interceding with Yezid for the family of Husain is armed with
a telescope with which he scans the spectators and the surrounding scene, and he is
accompanied by his wife and a vast train bearing presents to the Musulman chief.’
He goes on that the Iranian Government had thought to try and exclude the foreign
missions from what the Sadr-i ‘Azam has the effrontery to term ‘the highest occasion
of public worship in the Shi’ite creed, although he well knows that the dresses, the
scenery, the music, the disguising of boys as women, the smoking, drinking sherbets
in the building before and after the acts, together with other accessories are all so
repugnant to the dogma and religious practices of Islam that none of the chief mullahs
or ulemas will countenance the representations by their presence.’ Murray to Clarendon,
No. 52, 17 September 1855, FO 60/203.
Murray’s observations on the foreign emissary in the play may be compared to
those of Kuzov attending a ta‘ziyya in Tabriz in the time of ‘Abbas Mirza. He wrote
that the foreign ambassador appeared in a representation that was exceptionally
laughable, particularly with regard to dress, and was riding a black horse, although
Iranians as a whole did not like black horses. Cited in Humayuni, Ta‘ziyya, pp. 77–8.
104 Humayuni, Ta‘ziyya, pp. 82–3; Peterson, ‘Ta’ziyeh’ , p. 69.
105 Humayuni, Ta‘ziyya , p. 113.
106 Chelkowski, ‘Ta‘ziyya’, p. 407; www. Oracle/Transfer/Serjik/ahmadi/salehi135.doc,
p. 4. I am grateful to Mr Mehran Afshari for this reference; A. Amin, ‘Iran dar sal-i
1311 hijri qamari’, trans. M. Gharavi, Majala-yi barisi-ha-yi tarikhi, year 9, No. 4,
1353, pp. 90–1.
107 ‘Itimad al-Saltaneh, Ruznameh, p. 517.
108 Shahidi and Bulookbashi, Ta‘ziyya, pp. 109–10.
109 Ibid., p. 110.
110 Ouseley, Travels, III, pp. 165–6.
111 Humayuni, Ta‘ziyya, pp. 78–9.
112 Humayuni, Ta‘ziyya, p. 106.
113 Shahidi and Bulookbashi, Ta‘ziyya, pp. 186, 289.

66
 Part II

POOR PEOPLE’S POLITICS

 3
POPULAR PROTEST, THE
MARKET AND THE STATE IN
NINETEENTH- AND EARLY
TWENTIETH-CENTURY EGYPT

John Chalcraft

Introduction
Orientalism, modernization theory and elite nationalist historiography have not
shed a great deal of light on popular struggles for social, economic and political
rights by subaltern groups in nineteenth and early twentieth-century Egypt. Such
historiography remains vulnerable to the original charge made by subaltern
studies in the late 1970s: it has largely ignored or distorted what Ranajit Guha
called ‘the contribution made by the people on their own, that is, independently
of the elite’.1 The dominant attitude in this domain is precisely that of Eric
Hobsbawm in his acclaimed work, Age of Extremes: ‘the history of the makers of
the Third World transformations . . . is the history of elite minorities.’2 Thus the
reforming projects of Jacob Landau’s benevolent Egyptian state, for example,
were hindered by the ‘appalling apathy of the people’.3 In this literature, urban
workers have been largely ignored, and the peasantry are often seen as passive
and tradition-bound, rebelling certainly, but not, in Vatikiotis’ words, for ‘liberty’
or ‘freedom’.4
Marxist historiography pioneered the study of workers’ struggle in the context
of growing capitalism, and a considerable body of work emerged tracing the
growth of a working-class in Egypt, as elsewhere in the Middle East.5 But this
work has been rightly faulted for having a narrow, Eurocentric conception of
genuine struggle, and a deterministic, teleological and materialist framework
for understanding it.6 Yet, historians persuaded by these criticisms and influenced
by post-structuralism have often turned more to discourse analysis and cultural
politics than to a more broad-based and nuanced study of popular protest.7 Those
exploring ‘weapons of the weak’ have said very little about struggles for rights,
and arguably only traverse an inevitable mismatch between official prescription
and everyday avoidance, the latter being just as adeptly deployed by elite groups
as by the weak.8

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Drawing on primary sources and published work, this chapter aims to illustrate
the possibility of an alternative story about popular contention in late nineteenth
and early twentieth-century Egypt. Workers were not a backward or an oriental
mass passively waiting for salvation from a modernizing elite, congenitally
incapable of autonomous action, representation or speech. Nor were they a ‘cloth-
cap proletariat’ in the making, or a unified, revolutionary subject.9 Instead,
numerous workers inhabiting diverse subject positions facing various forms of
social exploitation intensified by commodification and complex economic
restructuring engaged in movements for ‘self-protection’, attempting to engage
the state in a search for social and political rights. Such movements nested within
the so-called traditional sector as well as in the ‘modern’ sector, and were to be
found in town and country alike, being heavily related, as I will argue, to complex
new forms of commodification and social exploitation. To draw up this illustration,
I will examine forms of contestation and elite responses to them from diverse
settings: the coal-heavers of Port Said, the porters of Alexandria, the weighers and
measurers of Cairo, and the small cultivators of Lower Egypt. I will then pursue
the related question of how subaltern groups attempted to secure electoral rights,
and the fate of those electoral rights under the British.

Coal-heavers
Strikes for higher wages by coal-heavers in Port Said have been seen by most
as resulting from a distinctively new form of Marxian capitalist exploitation,
where workers stripped of their means of subsistence sell only their labour power
for wages to capitalists. I showed in a previous article that coal-heavers’ grievances
were also inspired in part by the political opportunities attendant on state-building.
I want to revisit the coal-heavers here to explore three points. First, to further
emphasize that the forms of social exploitation faced by coal-heavers were more
complex than the Marxian narrative allows. Second to emphasize that the coal-
heavers’ contestation aimed to draw in the state to arbitrate – to grant higher
wages and better regulations. And third, to show how the colonial state failed to
respond to coal-heavers’ attempts to secure improved regulation of their work and
social rights.
Coal-heavers in Port Said were migrants who probably owned some means of
subsistence at home in Upper Egypt, or were hoping to secure the wherewithal to
purchase such means through gaining higher rewards for their labour-power
through intense labour in the dockyards of Port Sa‘id, after the opening of the
Suez Canal in 1869.10 Migrants found temporary accommodation in wooden
shacks built by their own hands with ‘borrowed’ materials in the ‘Arab village’
on the western outskirts of the ‘European’ town.11 Clothing, shelter and food
were at a subsistence minimum.12 Like other migrants to the new town, such
as bakers, bird-hunters, boatmen, carpenters, construction workers, fishermen,
garbage-collectors, tailors, tinsmiths, shoemakers and so on, the coal-heavers were
organized into guilds (ta’ifa/ tawa’if ).13 In practice, it is likely that in a new town,

70
 NINETEENTH- AND EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY EGYPT

in a multiplying profession, where guild members were temporary and mostly

recent arrivals from rural upper Egypt, there was little attachment to or knowledge
of trade customs, sense of corporate identity or strongly felt guild solidarity.14
Guilds authorized and regulated work, and acted as units of tax and administration
for the government. Where shipping companies squeezed down coaling wages
as much as possible, where work was intensive, and where guild heads and
contractors were largely unregulated – whether by the state or guild custom and
ties of neighbourhood, kin and so on – and where labour supplies were abundant,
exploitation, friction and struggle ensued. In a sense, the dockyards of Port Said,
as elsewhere, were a microcosm of the operation of disembedded market relations
acting to commodify labour.15 As the coal-heavers themselves put it in a report to
the government during the First World War, ‘the misfortunes which have for a
long time afflicted our guild have been considerable, and have made it easy for
its shaykhs to give free reign to their ambition which has carried them to divide
the salary of the workers.’16 The cash nexus became a key principle of social
(dys)function in Port Said.
As early as 1871, workers raised petitions complaining that the heads of teams,
into which the coalers had been subdivided, were bringing in outsiders and leaving
guild members without work. In 1873, complaints by workers and team-heads
against the shaykh of the guild were offered to the Governor of Port Said. The
shaykh was allegedly paying less than he should per unit weight of coal shifted,
leaving some members without work, advancing usurious loans and docking pay
without reason. The Governor transferred the complaints to the Council (majlis)
in Damietta, which found the shaykh innocent and allowed him to continue in his
post with a pledge (ta‘ahhud ) of good practice – a long-standing Ottoman device,
but inadequate in the new context, as complaints rumbled on during the 1870s.17
The cash nexus and the commodification of labour was positively constituted
by culture and power – it was not merely the result of narrowly economic,
purely negative de-regulation. Human labour bought and sold, used and unused,
shoved around, deployed and dismissed as a commodity was easier thought
worthy of such a lowly status. Certainly, the manager of the Port Said and Suez
Coal Company tried to justify to the English Consul the wages paid in the
following manner:

It is hardly necessary to point out to you that there is a vast difference

between the requirements of an Arab as compared with those of
an English labourer. Thanks to a genial Climate and a low order of
civilization, the wants of an Arab are comparatively almost Nil. He has
no School Boards to pay, hardly the necessity of clothing himself at all,
his firing he steals from us, no wear and tear of shoe-leather or any of
the expenses entailed by decency and civilization . . . [Hence] the Arab
paid at the rate of 1 Franc a ton is well off. [And] . . . the Employers
instead of being the oppressors as the Arab Commission would have it
are really the oppressed.18

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 JOHN CHALCRAFT

In short, the company manager declared, coal-heavers, who were without the
needs and wants of the civilized and the decent, could rightly do with ‘almost
Nil’, anything more constituted oppression for the coal companies. Of course, the
ability to put forward such ideas with a straight face had much to do, not just with
entrenched notions of racial and civilizational hierarchy, but with power relations.
It was easy, for example, for the Governor of Port Said to intervene in response
to complaints by the porters of goods that the coal-heavers were muscling in on
their turf by carrying lime, stone, sand and seeds, and to solve the problem, by
prohibiting the coal-heavers from this profession.19 It was not so easy to contra-
vene the firmly stated wishes of the coaling companies, particularly as they
threatened to bring in labour from Malta rather than raise wages, something to
which the British were opposed because it would have meant a loss of tax
revenue. Hence, although there was a regulatory void in Port Said, which allowed
the cash nexus to rage, there was also a positively constituted discursive and
political universe, which confirmed high rates of what should therefore be seen
as social exploitation. The commodification of labour was not just a matter of
de-regulation, but a cultural and political project.
Various commissions were sent out to Port Said to investigate the situation,
and detailed regulations were drawn up as a result for the first time in 1893, but
the regulations had no teeth, Governorate officials were bribed off, and abuses
and strikes continued for decades. A detailed petition from numerous coal
heavers was sent in 1896 to Lord Cromer. Over eight pages credibly detailed
abuses over pay, conditions, dismissal, usury and monopolistic trading by the
contractors in the dock. A correspondence ensued between Cromer and Mr Royle
of the Port Said and Suez Coal Company. The latter, along with the heads of
the other coaling companies, insisted that the petition must have been ‘induced
by fraud and misrepresentation’, because ‘we are certain that our men are
contented and have no grievances.’ ‘The movement is caused’ Royle went on, ‘by
certain notorious Arabs – dismissed Sheikhs of coal labourers who are intriguing
to get back into Power’. Royle and the others went so far as to seek to obtain
the petition in order to demonstrate its falsity and so that the ‘fabricators may
be brought to light and punishment.’20 Cromer did not send them the petition,
but otherwise his response to the grievances which he himself had considered
‘real’ in a previous letter,21 was a disaster for the social rights of coal-heavers.
He responded:

I understand from your letter that the principal employers of labour are
satisfied with the existing condition of affairs, and do not consider that
anything need be done in the way of removal of alleged grievances.
I daresay you are quite right. In any case, I am not in a position to
gainsay your opinion . . . Under the circumstances, I scarcely think it
necessary to send the petition to Port Sa‘id. So far as I am concerned, the
matter may be dropped.22

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 NINETEENTH- AND EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY EGYPT

Thus the colonial state remained distant from the docks, the companies and the
contractors were left to rule, and the coal-heavers remained in conditions of
grinding exploitation. In spite of ongoing strike action and violence against
strikers and scab labour, further petitions, and detailed representations from the
coal-heavers as to what regulations should be drawn up and enforced, nothing was
done for decades, and coal-heavers’ social rights remained unprotected, and the
exploitative labour regime continued.

Porters
A brief examination of the case of the porters at weigh-stations in the docks of
Alexandria can also grant some insight into new and complex forms of exploitation
associated with the growth of market relations, which were broadly continuous
between the so-called ‘traditional’ sector and the so-called modern sector, the
struggle for social rights joined by those adversely affected, and the reasons for
and more conservative forms of subsequent state intervention.23
The Ottoman guilds were supposed to safeguard the livelihoods of their
members by preventing too many from practicing the trade, which would lead to
glut, falling prices, cut-throat competition and loss of livelihoods.24 Regulation of
trade entry was therefore an important principle of guild-functioning, as was
the right of members to have their work protected. Rapid social and economic
change during the nineteenth century, and the restructuring of the crafts and
service economy put significant pressure on livelihoods: many were lost, some
were re-organized, others were re-built in new social forms, some migrated, others
muscled in on new territory and others were burdened with the competition of
unregulated labour. The porters at the weigh-stations in Alexandria port appear to
have suffered on this last point, as the weighers in the port, cutting costs, started
employing cheap and unregulated labour from outside the porters’ guild, leaving
porters out of work. It was said that ‘some are not able to subsist because
the weighers are bringing whoever they need from outside, and not bringing
individuals from this guild.’25
Rather than submit to ‘market forces’, the porters took a radical step: they
petitioned the authorities to carry out a communal division of wealth (al-rukiyya)
within their own guild to compensate those who had lost out. As the police
explained to the Governorate, ‘the communal division of income (al-tarwik)
required the division of all [guild] income among the rank and file of the workers
(‘ala ‘umum al-anfar’).26 The porters were inspired not by European socialism,
but by an old egalitarian custom that occasionally crops up in the Ottoman
sources, and still existed in some guilds, even in the 1870s.27 As the police
reported, ‘in some of the guilds the workers equalize with each other (yatasawi
al-anfar ma‘ ba‘daha) outside of government intervention (barraniyan) and it is
known officially by the police that the guild of brokers and agents agreed on this
communal division of income.’28 It would appear that the porters’ guild was

73
 JOHN CHALCRAFT

incapable of enforcing this old custom on their own, possibly owing to the
pressures of economic restructuring, and hence the appeal to state intervention.
Unfortunately for the porters’ social rights, the police stressed the importance
of individual effort and productive work against notions of communal obligation
and welfare, and decided against official recognition and implementation of
redistribution. Instead they resorted to the more familiar and conservative practice
of extracting a pledge from the weighers that they continue to employ only guild-
organized porters in their trade. The right of guild members (rather than outsiders)
to work was re-affirmed, but a more radical possibility, that of social redistribution,
was excluded. The case of the porters illustrates the processes in which I am
interested in this chapter, involving new forms of social exploitation, movements
for self-protection claiming social or political rights, a state thereby drawn into
trade affairs, but ultimately failing to provide, or only partially providing for the
social and or political rights claimed by subaltern groups.

Weighers and measurers

The 1897 census recorded almost ten thousand measurers in Egypt, with over one
thousand in Cairo, the majority at the grain ports in Bulaq and Old Cairo.29
Measurers were principally involved in measuring cloth in markets and depots,
and grains (maize, wheat, barley, rice, cotton seeds, full beans, lentils and sesame)
in major ports and minor landing stations up and down the country.30 Weighers
were also an important presence in a variety of trades, weighing coal, coffee,
precious metals, soap, spices, meat and vegetables in ports, weigh-stations, ware-
houses and town and country markets the length of Egypt. The 1897 census lists
almost two thousand weighers in Egypt, 275 of whom worked in numerous
locations in Cairo.31 The interest of these trades for my purposes here is that they
occupied a key location in the interstices of Egypt’s growing market. Weighers
and measurers had long ‘facilitate[d] commercial transactions by bringing to
them guarantees of impartiality and good faith’.32 Commodification, ‘traffic’,
exchange, monetization all had a direct impact on trades usually problematically
considered to be located somewhere in a stagnant, traditional sector. Here I want
to give a brief illustration of how changing economic relations gave rise to friction
and exploitation, new chances for those with wealth or status to exploit their
position, processes which in turn activated movements for self-protection
by weighers, measurers and traders, movements which then operated to push
forward standardization as well as to drag the bureaucratic, centralizing state into
trade affairs.
Consider the following case of fraud among the Bulaq measurers in 1852, a
case sufficiently important to be summarized in a catalogue of major regulations
in weighing and measuring from 1830 to 1875 as follows:

A judgement from the High Court (majlis al-ahkam) on 8 Safar 1269 [21
November 1852] verified by the Ketkhuda’s office on 9 Safar 1269,

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 NINETEENTH- AND EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY EGYPT

[contained] a letter to the police comprising the complaints of two

persons about the just practice (haqq) of Muhammad Abu Shanab, a
foreman in Bulaq port. These two [persons] are Hasan ‘Abd and Hasan
‘Usfur. It was judged by the court that the defendant be totally prevented
from taking and giving and measuring in cereals and similar [goods].
And the aforementioned Muhammad Abu Shanab is to be prevented and
completely removed from the post of foreman. The police are to try to
find out about the measurers in grain-selling shops and about whoever
is found using measures more than those fixed and take the necessary
action with him by means of the police. The surveillance is [carried
out] by means of those responsible for regulating prices and weights
in the streets.33

It appears that Abu Shanab, a foremen of the measurers in Bulaq port, had been
found guilty by the High Court of using, or of tolerating the use by those under his
supervision of adulterated measures. Only the measures fixed by the government,
as usual since the time of Mehmet Ali, were to be allowed. The profession of
those who brought the complaint against adulteration – Hasan ‘Abd and Hasan
‘Usfur – is not disclosed, but they may well have been grain merchants who either
sold or bought through the defendant, and had thus lost out by his fraudulent
practice. Perhaps the extension of the market was provoking conflicts between
those linked to the measuring trade. The matter was serious enough to get to the
High Court probably because it took place in Cairo’s main grain port and involved
a foreman, responsible for a dozen or more measurers. Abu Shanab not only lost
his post as foreman, but was also ejected from the trade altogether by court order.
State regulations were to be implemented not by guild officials, who are not
mentioned, and may have been seen as part of the problem, but by the more
centrally controlled police. The ruling, further, ordered the police to proactively
implement surveillance on measurers in the grain shops. We do not know if Abu
Shanab made some unofficial, later return to the trade, and/or if malpractice
continued, perhaps through the corruption of the police. The evidence here does
indicate that those involved in struggles over measuring, under conditions of
trade expansion and reorganization, made appeals to the centralizing state, its
secular courts and its codes and principles to secure their rights, and thus, whether
intentionally or not, brought bureaucratic practice more intensively to bear on
trade practice.34
The same pattern can be seen vividly in the case of complaints about measuring
foremen in Giza and the subsequent launching of a major regulatory project. In
1867, after a decision by the Privy Council, a country-wide project was launched to
subject measures to a sound regulation. According to the powerful all-Egypt
Inspector, in his instructions to Upper and Lower Egypt which set up the
project, the initiative was launched as a result of the discovery of corruption among
the measurers of Giza, which was found out in turn because of the complaints
of a number of lowly measurers themselves about their exploitative foremen.

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As he wrote, ‘the mudir of Giza had discovered what was going on because of
complaints from the measurers about their foremen.’35 We learn from the mudir
of Giza himself, in a later letter to the Upper Egypt Inspectorate, that the problem
was that the Giza measurers were not under ‘sound regulations’ (rawabit
mustaqima), the problem being that:

[the measurers] were not under the supervision of anyone, and therefore
complaints and grievances were lodged by the measures in Giza about
the presence of a shaykh and a group of foremen, who take a share of
the measuring fees. So the current fee that they take is not fixed but
independently determined, and so the situation is not free of treachery
against the cereals owners or the merchants in collecting the fee, and the
measures are not accurate because they are not from the government.

It would appear that shaykhs and foremen were ripping off both measurers as well
as the merchants who had to pay inflated fees to have their grains measured. The
mudir continued:

And for the sake of removing these troubles and [for the sake of] lack of
treachery to anyone . . . we approved that measures used by the measurers
be made by the government, [that they be] metal-covered and stamped
and that they are from the government. And that the measurers in the
town have just one foreman according to the consent of the guild and are
thereby under the supervision of the government for no thieving of their
fee by a group of foremen or treachery to the buyers and sellers. And the
rate is assessed at 1 piastre per ardab collected from the seller, half to
the measurers and the foreman and half to the government in return for
government action on behalf of order and regulation (al-dabt wa-l-rabt)
and distributing the measures on its account.36

The regulatory project which followed involved the entire country and generated
hundreds of documents. Measurers seeking social rights and self-protection in the
face of the treachery of their foremen attendant on growing market relations and
the reorganization of the measuring trade, drew the eyes and ears of the central
state closer to the everyday life of the trade. They also worked to drive forward
the standardization of such measures, a process central to the logic of both the
bureaucracy and, even more surprisingly, perhaps, the ramification of the market.

Cultivators
Although ‘the peasantry’ is often studied in isolation, and hence sometimes
appears to have existed in a completely separate world, arguably similar market
processes, popular movements for self-protection against new forms of social
exploitation and inadequate state responses were at work in respect of subaltern
groups in the countryside. Peasants are often seen as timeless, backward, passive,

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personalistic, obsequious, congenitally turbulent, fickle, incapable of recognizing

benevolent government or unable to represent themselves. On the other hand,
‘the peasantry’ has been seen as an authentic, revolutionary class struggling for
national independence and socialism. My reading of petitions and protests
emanating from the countryside and responses to them suggests that peasants
struggled to apply their own developing moral economy in the face of new
forms of social exploitation, often associated with the spread of market relations,
and to do so they occasionally made appeals to the state and its regulations and
codes in petitions. These struggles for justice resulted in part in the encroachment
of the central state on village affairs, but they just as often met with indifference
by the powers-that-be, particularly because of the political economy of labour-
repressive agriculture, but most of all after 1882 because of the repressive,
conservative orientation of the colonial state.
A glimpse of this is caught in the following brief example. In what must have
been a fairly typical case at a time of the large estate formation, usury, eviction
and landlessness associated with commercialization, thirty-four now landless
cultivators, from the village of Kafr Akhsha, near the town of Tala, Minufiyya
province, protested in three petitions during the summer of 1880 to the Interior
Ministry against their village headman – ‘Abd al-Qadir Hashim – who they
accused of dispossessing them from their small-holdings and forcing them to
work in ‘captivity and slavery’ on the very land they used to own.37 To add
dishonour to injury, the petitioners also spoke of ‘the capture of our women’.38
They asserted their own collective rights by arguing that ‘it will not be possible
to destroy all of us for the satisfaction of one person.’39 Although the outcome of
this case is unfortunately not known, these petitions allows a glimpse of lowly
cultivators seeking state intervention following new forms of social exploitation
associated with commercialization.

Elections pursued
As historians have now recognized, elections for village shaykhs in the countryside
and for guild heads and deputies in the towns were introduced in the late 1860s.
These new forms of limited local democracy, which were rather glossed over by
earlier historians, formed the electoral basis for the Consultative Assembly of
Representatives, established in 1866, and were part of the khedive Isma‘il’s
attempts to boost tax revenues by rooting out corruption.40 I want to visit this
question here first in order to emphasize the intensity and widespread nature of
popular participation in these new forms of limited grassroots democracy.
Second, I intend to put these elections in their economic context – that is, to show
how subaltern electoral participation was part of the more general movement for
self-protection against the social exploitation arising from the commodification
of relations of production and exchange. This is particularly evident when one
draws attention to a hitherto rather unnoticed fact: that these were not local
elections for state officials, narrowly defined, but for village shaykhs and guild

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heads and deputies, who although discharging state-like functions, were also very
much practicing members of trades, and who made their living through cultivation
or trade, as well as through other economic activities – such as contracting –
attendant on their position. In other words, the elections represented at least the
hesitant beginnings of something more radical than one might first assume, that
is, they represented a kind of partial democratization of the local structures of
economic life. The third point is to underline how popular actions drew in the central
state and its bureaucratic forms. Finally, I aim to show how labour-repressive
agriculture and the colonial state rolled back these popular forms and then
blocked their reintroduction.
Elections for the shaykhs and deputies of guilds, involving ballot counting
by the police, were widespread and keenly contested. Not only did numerous
elections among a great variety of crafts, services and retail trades take place in
Cairo and Alexandria,41 but also in towns across Upper and Lower Egypt. To pick
just the example of Port Said, the fishermen and fish-salters elected a shaykh in
1869, the tailors likewise, the coal-heavers elected a shaykh in 1870 and even the
heads of their work teams as the 1870s wore on, the brokers chose a shaykh
in 1871, as did the traders in green vegetables; the construction workers held
elections in 1875, the metalworkers in 1875, the upholsterers in the same year and
in 1876 the dyers chose their guild head. This example, the pattern of which was
repeated in weaker or stronger forms in Egypt’s towns, as guilds subdivided, or as
old heads passed away or became incompetent or criminal, or as new guilds were
created, points to the fact that during the 1870s guild-head selection by election
became a standard feature of the urban landscape.42 As research by Cole and
myself has shown these elections were fiercely contested affairs, complete with
ballot-rigging and bribery, and surrounded by petitions. My point is not to suggest
that the urban trades had entered a golden age of shop democracy. The process
had multiple flaws. The idea instead is to argue that the evidence indicates that
popular elements seized on electoral rights and tried to use them to exercise some
measure of control over their local leaders. Whether they were genuinely successful
or not is another matter, although there are some cases, such as that of the carters
of Bulaq, where electoral principles appear to have won out against unpopularity
and vested interests.43
Where did enthusiasm for elections come from? First, the principle of selection
by guild members of their leaders was not radically new. Against older views,
wedded to clichés about ‘Oriental despotism’, scholars have shown over and over
again that appointments of guild leaders across the Ottoman empire tended to be
merely a ratification of the wishes of senior members of the guild. In Egypt, for
example, Ghazaleh has detailed a number of cases wherein senior members
gathered in front of the qadi to select their leader. The difference after 1869
was that first the police (a now more centralized arm of the state), not the semi-
autonomous qadi, ratified the appointment, and second, ballots were counted
more formally than before, and were cast, apparently, by a larger proportion of
guild members. In other words, members of the crafts and trades were not entering

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some alien universe when they engaged in a selection process for their leadership;
1869 represented instead mere modification to long-standing Ottoman practice –
although selection before the qadi may have been interrupted during the middle
decades of the century, when Mehmet Ali’s tax offices seem to have taken over
responsibility for appointment ratification.
If elections made some sense culturally to guild members, they also had urgent
reasons to engage in them, as local leaders divided a heavier tax burden, and as
commodification put into their hands new means of exploitation, associated
with wages, contracts, conditions at work and so on, which the interpersonal,
flexible codes of customary law and kinship ties do not seem to have been able
to adequately regulate. The measurers of Bulaq port, for example, confronted
the entrenched power of a shaykh, one Hasan Abdullah, who was involved in a
contracting scam which short-changed the guild rank and file. The shaykh had
been officially dismissed from his post because of a court finding against him, but
escaped confinement by launching an appeal. Meanwhile, he reinstated himself,
garnered police support somehow and installed various cronies as deputies, who
proceeded to monopolize measuring contracts and rent out measurers in an
exploitative way. Previously the measurers simply took the fee directly from the
seller of grain, whereas now the deputies took the fee and distributed it later,
taking their own unfair cut in the process.
As some 134 measurers put it in a long petition submitted in December 1876:
‘it is not permitted to dispossess the guild of about three hundred persons of work
and of all the orders of the government.’ In fact, Hasan Abdullah, it was asserted,
‘takes us as slaves, even though slavery and monopoly are forbidden, and yet his
intention is to take us by a type of slavery just as when he was guild head’.44
Faced with this situation, the first recourse of the measurers, given that Hasan
Abdullah was legally not entitled to hold the post of shaykh any longer because
of his conviction, was to elect a new shaykh and three new deputies who enjoyed
their support. They had to mobilize further petitions in order to make their choice
stick, but the point here is that faced with new forms of exploitation, participation
in guild elections represented a way for guild members to protect themselves and
to maintain some control over those who held considerable economic power over
their lives. In other words, elections did not just represent a top-down political
principle superimposed as window-dressing on an otherwise ‘traditional’ and
passive society, but embodied political rights which guild members seized on in
order to soften exploitative economic structures. They may or may not have
represented a full-blown shop democracy by the early 1880s, but that many guild
members sought to use them for such a purpose seems undeniable. Moreover, in
this particular case, the popular choices were respected. It should also be clear
that guild members’ enthusiastic participation in elections up and down the
country, elections which were now supervised by the police, worked to draw in,
entrench and legitimate the bureaucratic functioning of the centralizing state.
Urban struggles for electoral rights had a more embattled analogue in the
countryside. Rural movements to ensure democratic selection of local leaders

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have mostly gone unnoticed in the scholarly literature, but such activism did exist,
as new research is beginning to show.45 The petitions and reports of the fallahin of
Nashil district in Gharbiyya Province, submitted during 1873; related government
correspondence allow a glimpse of this.46 The small cultivators in question
were complaining about various exploitative practices in cultivation and taxation
associated with their shaykhs, Dawud al-‘Asi, Muhammad al-‘Asi and Ibrahim
‘Abd al-Jawwad. They started demanding an election (targhib) at some point
in late 1872 or early 1873. At length, the Inspector of Kufr al-Shaykh mounted an
investigation and the Provincial Offices finally agreed to hold an election (targhib
al-ahali), which was duly conducted in the presence of all the necessary officials.
A certain Badawi al-Dalu’ was elected as shaykh, and the offending shaykhs were
removed from their posts. The petitioners announced that ‘the people felt justice
and their condition was good.’ Interestingly, Badawi al-Dalu‘, following his
accession, initiated a limited land redistribution, which worked in favour of his
supporters. The election, which was partly inspired by cultivators seeking social
rights in the face of economic exploitation, also had economic consequences.
However, after much fierce politiking by the shaykhs who lost out in this election,
and several more elections only reaffirming the original result, the peasants of
Nashil were to lose their battle when the Inspector for Lower Egypt made the
conservative ruling that as it was harvest time and peasant labour was required in
the fields no more elections should be held and everything should return to the
status quo ante.47 This was a defeat for the fallahin of Nashil and for fragile
attempts to claim social and political rights in the face of ‘tyranny’, injustice and
the political economy of labour repressive agriculture.

Elections abolished
Electoral rights were therefore pursued after 1869 both in town and country
by subaltern groups aiming to protect themselves against new pressures, often
associated with the market, by acquiring some control over locally exploitative
leaderships. As we have seen, labour-repressive agriculture hardly provided a
propitious environment for such struggles, but the coming of the colonial state,
conservatively oriented to holding a territory strategically astride the Suez Canal,
stymied them altogether by abolishing these elections and the fragile political
rights and social rights which they had implied. In spite of claims that the British
sought to extend the principle of representative and democratic government to their
‘subject races’, in fact British rule abolished existing rights, and then, in alliance
with the palace and major landowners, set itself against their reintroduction, against
mounting political opposition.
It was not so much that the British said one thing and did another. Ruling
discourse was not a matter of simple mystification, but elaborated a more
hegemonic case, to which the honest and supposedly well-intentioned could sign
up. The British authorities in Egypt and commentators in England argued that in
principle British rule stood for representative self-government, the development

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of ‘free institutions’ and honest, sound administration. They very rarely claimed,
incidentally, that they stood for popular social and democratic rights, notions
smacking of dangerous radicalism. The basic idea was that the ‘subject races’ in
general, and ‘Orientals’ in particular, were incapable of exercising self-government
‘with advantage’ and therefore the only responsible and benign course of action
was to train them to do so. The alternative in the nineteenth century, as far as
educated opinion was concerned, was not to withdraw from Empire and hand over
independence, but instead to regard the Oriental as a lost cause, and to rule over
inferior peoples while ignoring the burden and responsibility of the imperial race.
In fact both Lord Dufferin and Lord Cromer, respectively the architect and
ruler of Egypt’s shallow constitutional regime after 1882, fell more into the latter
camp of opinion than the former, believing the ‘Oriental’ to be incapable of
learning honest self-government. Hence Cromer believed, and claimed that Dufferin
did also, that the British only gestured towards constitutionalism in Egypt as a
sop to public opinion in England. Dufferin suggested, in Cromer’s words, ‘in
deference, to a great extent, to British public opinion a certain development of
free institutions’, but did not believe that they would work, because of local
defects. As he wrote ‘in the East, even the germs of constitutional freedom are
non-existent . . . A long-enslaved nation instinctively craves for the strong hand of
a master, rather than for a lax constitutional regime. A mild ruler is more likely
to provoke contempt and insubordination than to inspire gratitude.’48 Order had
to come before liberty. Only a dreamy theorist could reverse this ‘natural order’
of things and grant liberty ‘to the poor ignorant representatives of the Egyptian
people’. Egypt had to be morally healed before being politically regenerated.49
With these attitudes at the centre, it is hardly surprising that the environment for
meaningful elections became exceedingly harsh. Dufferin’s idea was that the last
Assembly had been ‘excitable and childish’, was nothing but a ‘Fellahin [peasant]
parliament’ and served as a field of intrigue for the Porte, France and Italy.50 He
therefore suggested institutions for ‘criticism, discussion and suggestion’ rather
than bodies that might ‘legislate or . . . control the executive’.51 His key idea,
according to Cromer, was ‘to give the Egyptian people an opportunity of making
their voices heard, but at the same time not to bind the executive Government by
parliamentary fetters, which would have been out of place in a country whose
political education was so little advanced as that of Egypt.’52
The Consultative Assembly of Representatives, which by 1882 had become the
centre of a serious constitutional movement led by the ‘Urabiyyin,53 was therefore
abolished and in May 1883 an Organic Law (al-qanun al-nizami) established a
new system. The Khedive and the Council of Ministers was retained. The Assembly
was effectively divided into two: a Consultative Assembly (majlis shura al-qawanin)
of 30 members on the one side, with a purely consultative role, and a General
Assembly (al-jama‘iyya al-‘umumiyya) of 46 members on the other.54 New
provincial councils were created. The Election Law (qanun al-intikhab) of
May 1883 provided an indirect electoral system: all adult males were to elect for
every bandar or village (balad), elector-delegates, who in turn were to elect the

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non-appointed members of the Consultative Assembly, the General Assembly

and the Provincial Councils.55 This truncated system of indirect elections and
threadbare consultation was hailed by its English champions as ‘the highest form
of constitutional experiment’.56
The new system spelt the demise of elections for village shaykhs. The new
local elections involved casting ballots not for local leaders who had significant
social power in the locality, but for elector-delegates, ‘the successors of the lately
elected sheiks’,57 whose sole official purpose was to elect the members of distant
and toothless institutions. Small wonder that peasants showed little interest in
participating in such a meaningless exercise, inaction that was regarded as proof
of racial docility by Britons such as Lord Milner.58 The new situation was
formalized in a decree of March 1895, which stipulated that village shaykhs
(as well as ‘umdas) were appointed by a commission headed by the mudir (or
his deputy) and including a representative of the Interior Ministry, the local
prosecutor and four notables or ‘umdas appointed to the commission by the
mudir. The commission’s decision was based on a list of candidates drawn up
by the Provincial Authorities and was approved by the Interior Ministry.59 In
this tightly controlled system, village headmen were now to be chosen not by
the people, but by the government. Such state control not only undermined the
representative form of the office, but its legal independence too. For over the
following decades and throughout the inter-war period successive governments
now dismissed ‘umdas and shaykhs for political reasons.60 Furthermore, the
government – in the shape of the Interior Ministry – now decided how many
‘umdas and shaykhs were to preside over the villages.61 This was an important
derogation from the rights of the villagers, who prior to the British invasion had
been able through popular mobilization to determine the number of local shaykhs.
A further blow to the poor was the fact that the law of 1895 established a minimum
property qualification for the posts of ‘umda and shaykh, to ensure that only the
relatively well-off elements in the village could hold a measure of local political
power. Hence the law ‘required every candidate for the office of ‘umda to be the
owner of at least ten feddans and every shaykh to own at least five feddans’. In
other cases, selection was to be from ‘those who paid the highest taxes’.62 In the
early 1890s, moreover, with crime seen as one as Egypt’s key problems in rural
areas, the British gave ‘umdas the power to settle minor civil and criminal cases
(subject to appeal) in the early 1890s, a move ‘supported by the full weight of
Indian practice’.63 The measure was supposedly to make justice more accessible
to the mass of the population. In fact, it was aimed at consolidating the local
status quo, tying justice very firmly to local forms of patronage, kin and property,
and diminishing differentiation between social and political power. By 1906
British officials were arguing that ‘[t]he Omdeh has come to need protection.
He is the servant of all and master of none.’64 By 1911, village guards under
the ‘umda’s control were armed and given ‘military training’.65
The new rural order, in which the political and social rights of peasants were
set back, and where state-controlled local leaders were strengthened vis-à-vis

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their underlings, suited Cromer’s vision of the countryside, where the mass of
the fallahin were regarded as illogical, apathetic, ignorant, emotional, credulous,
fickle and ‘easily led away by lying agitators and intriguers’.66 Village shaykhs,
on the other hand, as pillars of this conservative order, were seen more positively.
‘Many of them’, wrote Cromer, ‘are sturdy, honest yeomen who are well deserving
of respect. Others are inclined to cringe before the Pashas and to bully the fella-
heen. I should add that these latter tendencies, which were especially marked in
the pre-reforming days, are rapidly disappearing.’67 What was decisive, though,
was a colonial politics which sought to retard the political development of the
countryside – to secure ‘order’ and ‘tranquility’ through the power of local
notables, the experience of India being uppermost. Berque may not have been
exaggerating too much when he wrote that Cromer was ‘terrified by the vision
of the communes awakening to political life’.68 Certainly the British proved
incapable of pursuing even Lord Dufferin’s limited vision for the development of
‘local self-government’,69 or Lord Granville’s pious hopes for the ‘the prudent
development of popular institutions’.70
On the contrary, the British, long after Cromer had left, set their face against
all proposals to further local democracy by bringing back elections for village
shaykhs, or introducing them for ‘umdas. Such proposals revived after 1907,71
and motions demanding that the ‘umda be elected by the villages were ‘frequently
submitted to the General and Legislative Assemblies in the years 1912 to 1914’,
and by the Wafd during the 1920s and 1930s.72 All such proposals – a ‘constant
aim’ of elements in the Wafd73 – were rebuffed or derailed. Sa‘d Zaghlul himself,
had championed ‘daring schemes’ to ensure the independence of the ‘umda and
subject the office to elections. As Berque notes ‘[s]ignificantly, the King himself
took alarm at them, for such projects were of a sort to shake up the power of the
throne, and the British ambassador himself took up the cause of the mudir’s
authority. Such an alliance is highly revealing.’74 It was not only the British who
adopted a conservative position, of course. In addition to the monarchy, parlia-
mentary deputies tied to the Palace or to landed power spoke on the ‘errors that
may result from the election rather than the appointment of members’.75 By the
1940s there was still no ‘prospect of communal electoral organization’.76
Small wonder that during these years the negative reputation of ‘umdas was
firmly fixed in Egyptian public consciousness: ‘[p]etty local potentates, accomplices
of the tyranny of landlords and of electoral deception’.77 Under the British, small
cultivators had lost any electoral means of exerting control over their local
leadership, and thus the forms of ‘captivity’, ‘slavery’, usury, forced prole-
tarianization and eviction that came with commodification and the cultural
and political circumstances of the time. ‘Feudalism’, in the sense meant by
the villagers studied by Reem Saad raged on,78 while the mass market remained
weak, labour super-exploited, and productivity-raising mechanization a distant
and unlikely prospect.
To return to the city in closing, elections for guild leaders were also abolished
when the ‘freedom of the trades’ was announced in 1890. The strength of the

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export economy, the resistance of guild members to taxation, the poverty of the
small-scale craft, retail and service economy meant that the British abolished
what were known as ‘vexatious’ taxes on the urban guilds in 1890. With this
measure the official functions of guild shaykhs, who in the eyes of the state had
become little more than decentralized and difficult to control tax-collectors,
largely disappeared, and anyone was permitted to practice a trade following the
acquisition of a licence from the relevant government office. No longer were
crafts, retailers and service workers able to try to hold their leadership to account
by electoral means, or seek to use the state to enforce the principle of consent in
regard to the affairs of the trade. Property relations, forms of contracting, racket-
eering, informal arrangements and eventually, following strikes and demonstrations,
new organizations such as syndicates and unions would start to become more and
more important in trade life. Struggles against new and old forms of social
exploitation had to find new ways to assert social and political rights. Traders
from far away Aswan still hoped to elect their shaykh as late as 1911, only to
discover that this institution had been abolished.79

Conclusion
This chapter has drawn together a number of episodes of contention from settings
usually thought of as radically diverse – town and country, ‘traditional’ and
‘modern’, ‘working class’ as well as ‘guild’. The idea is to show that among
diverse subaltern groups, from the coal-heavers in the dockyards of Port Said,
to peasants in Lower Egypt, to weighers and measurers in Cairo, a number of
similar kinds of processes, associated with world economic integration and
state-building, were at work.
At the heart of these changes, I argue here, were forms of economic restructuring
and the spread of market relations. These were always more complex than
primitive accumulation followed by proletarianization, but they nonetheless
created friction and social exploitation through the reorganization of relationships
and re-allocation of resources, often between those owning some kind of capital
or status, such as company managers, contractors, guild heads, or village shaykhs,
and those subordinated to them, such as coal-heavers, weighers, porters, small
cultivators and so on. The spread of market relations itself was not a narrowly
economic or objective process, but involved distributions of power and culture:
the cash nexus was brought to bear on coal-heavers, for example, not by nature or
by the market alone, but by the relative power of the shipping companies and
contractors, and by cultural attitudes by power-holders and contestants alike. The
application of the cash nexus itself was a social product, involving culture and
power, and exploitation was always social exploitation, in its origin, apprehension
and contestation. It should therefore be no surprise that commodification could
accompany significant degrees of violence, as in the countryside for example,
where forced or unpaid labour accompanied by coercion was not uncommon,
or where the shipping companies in Port Said brought in British troops to

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smash strike action. Egypt’s changing economy, and changing labour regimes
within it, therefore, can hardly be adequately thought of in terms of ‘Oriental’
and ‘Western’, ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’, pre-capitalist and capitalist. Nor was
economic change dissolved into a play of poststructuralist signification. In
Polanyi’s terms, these years witnessed an always embedded commodification, a
work in progress, accompanying a shifting array of exploitative labour regimes.
The second point illustrated above is that this unfinished work of always-
embedded commodification and new forms of social exploitation gave rise, in
town and country alike, to collective movements of self-protection by subaltern
groups, in the form of petitions, protests, strikes, and attempts to seize electoral
rights. Protestors objected to injustice, tyranny, treachery, captivity, slavery, loss
of livelihoods, land seizure, monopoly and low wages, among other things. The
struggle for justice involved the claim to a variety of social and political rights,
ranging from the submission to ruling practice of norms – drawn from moral
economy, guild custom, Ottoman codes or new regulations, to electoral rights, to
the redistribution of wealth. I have emphasized in this regard that elections did
have a presence in town and country during the 1870s, and that subaltern groups
sought to make their electoral rights meaningful through participation in them,
rights which had a bearing not just on politics and the state, narrowly defined, but
on local structures of social exploitation. Subaltern groups were neither passive
nor fatally hobbled by the ‘dye of traditional culture’. Indeed old norms relating
to the right to work, the selection of leaders, or to the communal division of
wealth informed subaltern activism, and worked to make sense of harsh new
conditions. Protest was not somehow ‘Oriental’, but bore family resemblances
to protest movements elsewhere in the colonized world, and indeed in Europe,
where movements of self-protection against the market were engaged. Moreover,
where protest was joined from a diverse set of subject positions, and various
conditions of exploitation, there was no inevitable high road towards the
emergence of a conscious, organized, working class fighting for socialism.
The third conclusion that one can draw from the foregoing relates to relations
between subaltern and elite groups. Modernizing elites did not have a monopoly on
change or on progressive change. Indeed, in the examples I have related above,
concentrations of power associated with the state, the economy and the empire,
typically worked to oppose and repress subaltern social and political rights.
Attempts to bring new social rights over wages or redistribution or rule-bound
ruling practice pushed power-holders reluctantly into action, or were opposed and
broken down. The right to hold elections, and to have the results stick had to be
fought for from below. In Nashil, as we saw, the Inspector for Lower Egypt
eventually cancelled the results of legitimately convened elections as he was
worried about the harvest. The British abolished electoral rights and left exploitation
to rage unchecked in the dockyards of Port Said. Social legislation, even into the
inter-war period, was virtually non-existent, and largely toothless where it did appear.
Overall, this chapter aims to provide a glimpse of an alternative story about
popular contention in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Egypt. Against

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Orientalism and modernization theory, this story asserts that positive change
could come from below, and that instead of being the sole authors of modernity
and progress, elite groups could play a major role in stifling positive change.
Against Marxism, this research recognizes a more diverse forms of economic
change, social exploitation and popular struggle. And against post-structuralism,
I aim to emphasize the importance and actuality of material practice, social
exploitation and the subaltern assertion of social rights.

Notes
1 Ranajit Guha, ‘On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India’, in ed.
Vinayak Chaturvedi, Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial (London:
Verso, 2000), 2.
2 Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914–1991
(London: Abacus Books, 1994), 202.
3 Jacob M. Landau, Parliaments and Parties in Egypt (Tel Aviv: Israel Publishing House,
1953), 50.
4 Robert Tignor’s modernizing colonial state was confronted with peasants congenitally
incapable of recognizing the benefits of central government. Robert L. Tignor,
Modernization and British Colonial Rule in Egypt, 1882–1914 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1966), 142. Vatikiotis’ Egyptian peasants are tradition-bound in that
although they suffer tyranny, they are faulted for being incapable of constructing a
political response based on modern political notions. Vatikiotis wrote: ‘That all
peasants suffered . . . is . . . certain. But whether their resentment was couched in the
political conception of national rebellion is another matter. As one Egyptian writer
suggested, they rebelled frequently against oppression, tyranny, injustice (zulm); not
for liberty or freedom.’ P.J. Vatikiotis, The Modern History of Egypt (London:
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969), 160. See Nathan Brown’s discussion of the enduring
strength of such characterizations of the peasantry in ‘The Ignorance and Inscrutability
of the Egyptian Peasantry’, in Peasant and Politics in the Modern Middle East, ed.
Farhad Kazemi and John Waterbury (Miami, FL: Florida International University
Press, 1991), 203–21. But Brown himself saw Egyptian peasants as obsequious
(p. 173) and as suffering from a personalistic view of politics (p. 166). Nathan J.
Brown, Peasant Politics in Modern Egypt: The Struggle Against the State (New Haven,
CT and London: Yale University Press, 1990). Beyond the Middle East, Teodor Shanin
even incorporates the notion of a ‘traditional culture’ into his very definition of the
peasant in ed. Teodor Shanin, Peasants and Peasant Societies: Selected Readings
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971), 15.
5 For example, Joel Beinin and Zachary Lockman, Workers on the Nile: Nationalism,
Communism, Islam, and the Egyptian Working Class, 1882–1954 (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1987); Donald Quataert and Eric van Zurcher (eds),
Workers and the Working Class in the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic,
1839–1950 (London: I.B. Tauris, 1995).
6 See, for example, Zachary Lockman’s autocritique in Workers and Working Classes in
the Middle East: Struggles, Histories, Historiographies, ed. Zachary Lockman
(Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994). Or, see Chandavarkar’s
persuasive criticisms (directed above all at Dipesh Chakrabarty) of an Orientalist
tendency to see India’s capitalist and working-class development as a kind of exception
to a ‘normal’ pattern (established by Europe and European Marxism), and then to treat
‘culture’ in India as the variable that accounts for the deviation from the norm.

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 NINETEENTH- AND EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY EGYPT

Rajnarayan Chandavarkar, Imperial Power and Popular Politics (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1998), 1 ff. The peasants of colonial India, as depicted by
Guha himself, were naïve, immature, and to some degree mired in traditional culture.
Ranajit Guha, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (New
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983), 10–11, 28, 50, 170.
7 Timothy Mitchell’s brilliant Colonising Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1988) has little to say about popular struggles for rights.
8 James C. Scott defined ‘weapons of the weak’ as ‘foot dragging, dissimulation,
desertion, false compliance, pilfering, feigned ignorance, slander, arson, sabotage, and
so on’ in Weapons of the Weak: Everyday forms of peasant resistance (New Haven,
CT and London: Yale University Press, 1985), xvi.
9 As in the authentic, revolutionary, and nationalist ‘people’, who appear in a rather
abstract fashion in some of Egypt’s nationalist social history. For example, Latifa
Muhammad Salim important work, Al-Quwa al-Ijtima’iyya fi al-Thawra al-‘Urabiyya
(Cairo: General Egyptian Book Organization, 1981).
10 Although often seen as deviant from the Marxian model of primitive accumulation and
proletarianization, the phenomenon of the ‘peasant-worker’ should rather be seen as a
standard pattern under uneven economic change, especially in the colonial world.
11 Zayn al-‘Abidin Shams al-Din Najm, Bur Sa‘id: Ta’rikhuha wa tatawwaruha mundhu
nasha’tiha 1859 hatta ‘am 1882 (Cairo: al-Hay’a Al-Misriyya Al-‘amma li-l-Kitab,
1987), 36–8.
12 For a brief description of coal-heavers’ social conditions, and allegations of their
pilfering from the companies, see Royle/Malet, 12 (17 May 1882), PRO FO141/160
13 Najm, Bur Sa‘id, 77–86.
14 John Chalcraft, ‘The Coal Heavers of Port Sa‘id: State-Making and Worker Protest,
1869–1914’, International Labor and Working-Class History, No. 60 (Fall 2001):
110–24, 112.
15 I mean disembedded in the sense meant by Karl Polanyi in The Great Transformation:
The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time with a new introduction by
Fred Block (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2001 [first published 1944]). Fred Block’s
introduction has a very useful discussion of embeddedness, xviii–xxxix.
16 Chalcraft, ‘Coal-heavers’, 115.
17 Najm, Bur Sa‘id, 79–80.
18 Royle/Malet, pp. 13–14.
19 Najm, Bur Sa‘id, 156–7.
20 Royle/Cromer (25 May 1896), PRO FO141/322.
21 Cromer wrote ‘I have received a very numerously signed Petition from the coal-
heavers at Port Said, complaining of the treatment they receive at the hands of their
Sheikhs. They seem to have some real grievances, notably in connection with the truck
system.’ Cromer/Royle (21 May 1896), PRO FO633/8.
22 Cromer/Royle (27 May 1896), PRO FO633/8.
23 I took up this case in some detail in my book The Striking Cabbies of Cairo and Other
Stories (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2004), 97–100.
24 See Abraham Marcus’ particularly clear discussion in The Middle East on the Eve of
Modernity: Aleppo in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Columbia University Press,
1989), 178–9.
25 This was the Governor of Alexandria’s summary of the porters’ claim Dar al-Watha’iq
al-Qawmiyya (The Egyptian National Archives, hereafter DWQ), Nizarat al-Dakhiliyya
(Ministry of Interior, hereafter ND), Mukatibat ‘Arabi (Arabic correspondence, here-
after MA), Mahfaza (i.e. box, hereafter M) 8, Alexandria Governor/ Interior Minister
11 January 1872/29 Shawwal 1288.
26 DWQ ND MA M8 Police/Alexandria Governor: 2 October 1871/17 Rajab 1288.

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27 Raymond does not mention the rukiyya and found little evidence for mutual assistance
in the previous century. André Raymond, Artisans et commerçants au Caire au XVIIIe
siècle, 2 Vols (Damas: Institut Français d’Etudes Arabes, 1973), 2: 567. Pascale Ghazaleh
reported no mention of the term rukiyya, but documented a case where the porters of
sugar implemented a communal division of income in 1720, in Pascale Ghazaleh,
Masters of the Trade: Crafts and Craftspeople in Cairo, 1750–1850, Cairo papers in
social science Vol. 22, No. 3 (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1999), 63.
Juan R. I. Cole discovered a number of references to al-rukiyya in the 1870s related to
porters, weighers and measurers in Alexandria – essentially the same set of disputes
and practices to which I am referring here, in Colonialism and Revolution in the
Middle East (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 71–5. The rukiyya
existed in seventeenth-century Aleppo, Bruce Masters, The Origins of Western
Economic Dominance in the Middle East: Mercantilism and the Islamic economy in
Aleppo, 1600–1750 (New York: New York University Press, 1988), 54.
28 DWQ ND MA M8 Police/Alexandria Governor: 2 October 1871/17 Rajab 1288.
29 Egypt Census of 1897: 9,661 measurers of cereals, 1,077 measurers and sifters in
Cairo. The Cairo census of 1868 recorded 740 measurers and what were probably deck-
hands (kayyalin wa lawwahin). DWQ Muhafizat Misr, Ta‘dad Nufus 1285. ‘Ali Mubarak
listed 497 measurers in Alexandria in 1877 – cited in ‘Abd Al-Salam ‘Abd Al-Halim
‘Amir, Tawa’if Al-Hiraf fi Misr, 1805–1914 (Cairo: Al-Hay’a al-‘amma li-l-Kitab,
1993). Dhira’ is a length measure highly variable depending on products concerned;
Edwin Lane has the following: dhira’ baladiyya (57.57 cm) for Egyptian cloth; dhira‘
al-hindasa (63.5 cm) for Indian cloth, and dhira‘ istanbuliyya (67.3 cm) for European
cloth, in Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (London: East-West
Publications, 1978 [first published 1836]).
30 According to Lane, the dry measure of volume, ardab, was equivalent to about 182 litres
in the and divided into 6 waiba and/or 24 rub‘a. in ardab. Manners and Customs.
31 Egypt census 1897 lists 1,996 weighers in Egypt (practically all classed as Egyptian),
and 275 weighers in Cairo, spread all over city, although 75 in Bulaq. The Cairo Census
of 1868 lists 7 weighers of silver and gold, 511 guild of weighers (ta’ifat al-qabbaniyya),
all but 9 of whom are ‘from the capital’, 6 from provinces, and 3 ‘Turks’. Twelve
verifiers or makers of weights/measurers (ma‘ayrji) are also listed. DWQ Muhafizat
Misr, Ta‘dad Nufus 1285. The principal unit of weight in 1800 was qantar – 44.35 KG –
divided in 36 uqqa and/or 100 ratl (0.443 KG). Each Ratl is divided into 12 wuqiyya
and/or 144 dirham of 3.08 grams.
32 Raymond, Artisans et commerçants, 275.
33 Summary of Regulations DWQ Majlis al-Khususi (hereafter MK) Wizarat (hereafter W)
M1, No. 1.
34 A similar story stretches throughout the century. See John Chalcraft ‘Counterhegemonic
Effects: Weighing, Measuring, Petitions, and Bureaucracy in Nineteenth Century Egypt’
in Counterhegemony in the Colony and Postcolony, ed. John Chalcraft and Yaseen
Noorani (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
35 DWQ MK W M1, Mufattish ‘Umum al-Aqalim / Wakil Taftish Bahri, Muharram
1284/May 1867, No. 4.
36 DWQ MK W M1, Mudir Giza/ Taftish Aqalim Qibli, 23 Safar 1284/26 June 1867, No. 18.
37 DWQ ND MA M35, ‘Amir Zayyid and 33 companions/Interior Minister, Sha'ban
1297/ July 1880; DWQ ND MA M35, ‘Amir Zayyid and 32 companions/Interior
Minister, Sha’ban 1297/ July 1880; DWQ ND MA M35, ‘Amir Zayyid and 32
companions/Interior Minister, Sha’ban 1297/July 1880. NB. These cultivators sent
three petitions in fairly close succession.
38 ‘Amir Zayyid and 32 companions/Interior.
39 ‘Amir Zayyid and 33 companions/Interior.

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 NINETEENTH- AND EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY EGYPT

40 Juan Cole, Colonialism and Revolution, 164–89. John Chalcraft, Striking Cabbies.
76–80. See also John Chalcraft, ‘Engaging the State: Peasants and Petitions in Egypt
on the Eve of Colonial Rule’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 37
(Summer 2005): 303–25, especially 313–18.
41 Ibid.
42 Najm, Bur Sa‘id, 78–90.
43 Chalcraft, Striking Cabbies, 89–95.
44 DWQ ND MA (Mukatibat ‘Arabi) M20, 134 Bulaq measurers/ Interior Minister, Dhu
al-Qa’ada 1293/ December 1876.
45 John Chalcraft, ‘Engaging the State’, 313–18.
46 DWQ ND MA M10, Report from 58 Fallahin of hissat Badawi al-Dalu‘, Safar 1290/
April 1873. Hereafter Report from Fallahin. DWQ ND MA M10, Yusuf al-Ma‘dawi
and 47 companions/ Khedive, Safar 1290/April 1873; DWQ ND MA M10, Ibrahim
Radi and 15 companions/ Khedive, Safar 1290/April 1873; DWQ ND MA M10,
Fallahin/ Khedive, 6 Safar 1290/4 April 1873.
47 DWQ ND MA M10, Inspector for Lower Egypt/ Interior Minister, 29 Safar 1290/27
April 1873.
48 Lord Cromer, Modern Egypt, 2 Vols (New York: Macmillan, 1908), 342–3.
49 Cromer, Modern Egypt, 343. Cromer firmly opposed the ‘extension of representative
institutions’ in Egypt until the end of his rule. He wrote in 1907 that he was ‘very
strongly of the opinion that any attempt to confer full parliamentary powers on the
Council, would, for a long time to come, be the extreme of folly’. It would injure
the ‘true interests of Egyptians’. Any parliament would demand debt reduction and
increased public expenditure which would lead to ‘financial embarrassment’. The
Council’s members had also not yet ‘acquired all those qualities necessary to give them
the moral courage to assert their true opinions fearlessly’ – they are ‘terrorised by the
local press’. Cromer, Modern Egypt, 277–8.
50 Landau, Parliaments and Parties, 41–2.
51 Sidney Low, Egypt in Transition (London: Smith Elder, 1914), 241. Low’s words here
are supposed to be admiring.
52 Cromer, Modern Egypt, Vol. 2, 274.
53 See Alexander Schölch, ‘Constitutional Development in Nineteenth Century Egypt –
A Reconsideration’, Middle Eastern Studies 10 (January 1974): 3–14.
54 Rafi‘i, ‘Abd al-Rahman al-, Misr wa al-Sudan fi Awa’il ‘Ahd al-Ihtilal, 1882–1892
[first published 1942] (Cairo: Dar al-Ma’arif, 1983), 52.
55 Al-Rafi‘i, ‘Ahd al-Ihtilal, 47–54.
56 Sheldon Amos, ‘The New Egyptian Constitution’ in The Contemporary Review 43
(January–June, 1883): 909–22, 921. Few historians have seen it this way. For Landau,
the advance of parliamentarianism had been ‘halted’. Landau, Parliaments, 69. For
Jacques Berque the new regime constituted a ‘retrogression’. Jacques Berque,
Imperialism and Revolution 1st published 1967, Jean Stewart (trans.) (London: Faber &
Faber, 1972), 251.
57 Amos, ‘Egyptian Constitution’, 913.
58 The British saw peasant apathy over voting as proof of racial docility and deviant
character with regard to the exercise of power: as Lord Milner noted in 1892 speaking
of ‘the docile disposition of the race’, ‘There is nothing in the character of the people
to check the abuse of power, nothing to guide its exercise.’ Cited in Nathan J. Brown,
Peasant Politics in Modern Egypt: The Struggle Against the State (New Haven, CT and
London: Yale University Press, 1990), 149. As Brown wrote, ‘Peasants were left only
with the choice of which notable would represent them,’ p. 153.
59 Gabriel Baer, Studies in the Social History of Modern Egypt (Chicago, IL: University
of Chicago Press, 1969), 32. Baer took a positive view of this development, speaking

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of the government as having ‘won back its authority’ in selection procedures as against
outsize local power and autonomy.
60 Baer, Social History, 33 and 59.
61 Ibid., 33.
62 Ibid., 36.
63 Tignor, Modernization, 135–6.
64 Baer, Social History, 58.
65 Tignor, Modernization, 207. Further powers followed. In 1923 ‘umdas became judici-
ary police officers, Berque, Imperialism, 378, and in the 1920s they were granted a tax
exemption on five acres of their land. Tignor, Modernization, 210.
66 Cromer, Modern Egypt, 192–6.
67 Ibid., 186.
68 Berque, Imperialism, 252.
69 Lord Dufferin had argued that the development of self-government should begin at
the local level. ‘Local self-government is the fittest preparation and most convenient
stepping-stone for anything approaching to a constitutional régime.’ This is a quotation
from Dufferin’s report. Cited in Cromer, Modern Egypt, Vol 2, 275. Cromer claimed that
much had been done in this area. He meant the extension of the powers of Municipalities
and Local Commissions, but not the extension of forms of local democracy. Cromer,
Modern Egypt, Vol. 2, 276.
70 D. Mackenzie Wallace, Egypt and the Egyptian Question (London: Macmillan,
1883), 207.
71 Berque, Imperialism, 253.
72 Baer, Social History, 33–5.
73 Berque, Imperialism, 530–1.
74 Ibid., 378.
75 Ibid., Imperialism, 644–5.
76 Ibid., 644. As is so often attested ‘the Western powers, without exception, failed to
accept that freedom and equality which the reformers had so hopefully anticipated’.
This, surprisingly perhaps, is Bernard Lewis writing in the Foreword to Landau,
Parliaments and Parties.
77 Berque, Imperialism, 644.
78 Reem Saad, ‘State, Landlord, Parliament and Peasant: The Story of the 1992 Tenancy
Law in Egypt’, in Agriculture in Egypt: From Pharaonic to Modern Times, ed. Alan K.
Bowman and Eugene Rogan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 387–404.
79 Gabriel Baer, Egyptian Guilds in Modern Times (Jerusalem: Hebrew University
Press, 1964).

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 4
WORKLESS REVOLUTIONARIES
The unemployed movement in revolutionary Iran

Asef Bayat

Introduction: the revolution

On February 11, 1979 Tehran radio announced the victory of the Iranian revolution
with feverish jubilation. This report marked the end of the 2,500-year-old monarchy.
In a wave of ecstasy, the populace rushed into the streets en masse. Women milled
through the crowd handing out candies and sharbat (sweet drinks). Drivers sounded
their horns in unison, flashing their lights as they drove down the main streets that
had been the scene of bloody clashes between the protesters and the army only days
before. These same streets were now being patrolled by the revolutionary militias
( pasdaran). For those present, this scene signified an unprecedented victory.
The victory day was the culmination of over eighteen months of mass
demonstrations, bloody confrontations, large-scale industrial actions, a general
strike, and many political maneuvers.1 The revolution’s roots lay in the structural
changes arising from the gradual modernization that had been under way in Iran
since the 1930s. In 1953, the process accelerated dramatically after the coup
engineered by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), overthrowing nationalist
Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq and reinstating the Shah.
The modernization policy and economic change, initiated by the state under both
Reza Shah (1925–1946) and his son, Mohammad Reza Shah, resulted in the growth
of new social forces to the dismay of the traditional social groups. By the 1970s,
the large and well-to-do modern middle class, modern youth, and women who
participated in public life and an industrial working class – in addition to a new poor
comprising slum and squatter dwellers – dominated the social scene. With the excep-
tion of the group living in abject poverty, these crowds represented the beneficiaries
of the economic progress and enjoyed an increase in status and commensurate eco-
nomic rewards. The persistence of the Shah’s age-old autocracy, however, prevented
these thriving social layers from participating in the political process. This exclusion
angered the new elite. At the same time, the old social groups – a segment of the
traditional bazaaris or merchants, the old urban middle strata, the declining clergy,
and the adherents of Islamic institutions – were also frustrated by the modernization
strategy, which undermined their economic interests and power bases.

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The repressive closure of all the institutional channels to any expression of

discontent increasingly alienated the populace from the state. In the meantime,
corruption, inefficiency, a sense of injustice, and a feeling of cultural outrage
marked the social psychology of many Iranians. During the tense 1970s, at the
height of the Shah’s authoritarian rule and the remarkable economic growth,
many people (with the possible exception of the upper class and landed peasantry)
were therefore dissatisfied, albeit for different reasons. All blamed the Shah and
his Western allies, especially the United States, for such state of affairs. Little
surprise, then, that the language of dissent and protests was largely anti-monarchy,
anti-imperialist, Third Worldist, and even nationalist, and turned into a religious
discourse in the end.
The opportunity for popular mobilization arrived with what we used to call the
“Carterite breeze” (nasseem-e Carteri). In the 1970s, President Carter’s human
rights policy forced the Shah to offer limited freedom of political expression. This
expression gradually mounted and swept aside the monarchy in less than two
years. It began with a limited relaxation of censorship, allowing some literary and
intellectual activities (at the Goethe Institute and the universities in Tehran) and
public gatherings by the Islamists (in Quba Mosque). The next step concerned the
distribution by the intellectuals and liberal politicians of letters of open criticism to
high-ranking officials. During this stage, an article in the daily Ettilaat insulting
Ayatollah Khomeini triggered a manifestation in the shrine city of Qum in
which some of the demonstrators were killed. To commemorate the tragedy, a
large-scale demonstration took place in the Azeri city of Tabriz in the north. This
gathering marked the beginning of a chain of events that formed a nationwide
revolutionary movement with mass participation from diverse segments of the
population (modern and traditional, religious and secular, men and women) which
was led by the ulama (the Shi’i clergy).
Since the coup of 1953, over twenty-five years of the Shah’s autocracy had
removed or destroyed almost all effective secular independent political associations
and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The coup crushed both the nation-
alist and the communist movements; the secret police (SAVAK) infiltrated trade
unions; publications were strictly censored; and hardly any effective NGOs remained
in existence.2 The main organized political dissent came from the underground
guerrilla organizations, Marxist Fedaian and radical Islamic Mujahedin, whose
activities were limited to isolated armed operations.3 Likewise, student activism
was confined to campus politics inside the country and to efforts by Iranian
students abroad. In short, the organizational means of the severely dissatisfied
secular groupings were decapitated.
Unlike the secular forces, however, the clergy had the comparative advantage
of possessing invaluable institutional capacity, including its own hierarchical
order, over 10,000 mosques, husseiniehs, huwzehs, and associations maintaining
vital links of communication among the revolutionary contenders. Young Islamists –
both girls and boys along with young clergymen – linked the institution of the

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ulama to the people. A hierarchical order facilitated unified decision-making

and a systematic flow of orders and information; and in mosques higher-level
decisions were disseminated among both the activists and the general public.
In short, this institutional capacity in addition to the remarkable ambiguity in the
clergy’s message secured the ulama’s leadership.
In the final phase of the revolution (December 1978–February 1979), under
Prime Minister Shahpour Bakhtiar, a host of leftists, labor activists, students,
women, and ethnic groups took advantage of the dual power situation and
began to mobilize. Yet they hardly influenced the leadership’s religious
composition. Their political impact was to come during the first two years
after the revolution. Thus, the “Islamization” progressed largely from above
by the Islamic state after the victory of the Islamic revolution. The process
entailed the establishment of the velayat-i faqih (rule of the clergy), the Islamic
legal system, restrictive policies toward women, “Islamic” cultural practices,
and social demeanor.
In the weeks and months following the day of victory, the joy and jubilation
made way for a widespread sense of uncertainty about the future. The women
who had previously appeared without veils felt betrayed by those who imposed
mandatory veiling. In response, the women staged remarkable street demonstrations
in Tehran on March 8–12, 1979. Ethnic groups (Kurds, Azeris, Baluchis, and
Iranian Arabs) – by now widely mobilized – soon felt the new regime’s iron grip
when Ayatollah Khomeini ordered the suppression of identity politics in the
summer of 1979. Secular leftists and liberals quickly experienced the intolerance
of the Islamic regime.
The Tudeh Communist Party resumed work after years in exile. Marxist Fedaii
guerrillas and the radical Islamic Mujahedin emerged from the underground and
began overt political activity. Dozens of new splinter groups – Maoist, Trotskyite,
Libertarian, and Marxist – were added to the existing Marxist– Leninist organi-
zations. While the Tudeh was more conciliatory toward the new ruling clergy, its
general relationship with the radical left (i.e. the Fedaian and Maoist groups)
remained hostile. Indeed, immediately after the revolution, the clergy and the left
competed fiercely in mobilizing the populace. Thus the universities, urban neigh-
borhoods, factories, farms, and street corners turned into sites of contention
between the supporters of the left and the Mujahedin versus the pro-regime
groupings such as the pasdaran (informal volunteer militias that were later insti-
tutionalized), Islamic associations, and many dozens of well-organized street
thugs known as the hizbullahis. The seizure of the US Embassy by Muslim
students (November 4, 1979) and the outbreak of war with Iraq (September 22,
1980) undoubtedly undermined the leftist and liberal dissent for the cause of
national unity against external threat. Nevertheless, their activities continued until
the summer of 1981, when the bloody street battles between the government
forces and the Mujahedin (June 20, 1981) led to widespread suppression of all
kinds of opposition.4

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The unemployed were among those whose revolutionary romanticism was

dashed before long by the harsh realities of daily need. This chapter chronicles the
story of this subaltern group and the effort of its members to secure work and
social protection in 1979, the most turbulent period in postrevolutionary Iran.

The revolution and the unemployed

The victory of the revolution gave rise to unprecedented urban unemployment in
Iran.5 Hundreds of companies, businesses, and factories suspended operations.
The owners and managers of these ventures, foreign and Iranian alike, had left the
country months before the insurrections of February 10–11, 1979. Those who
remained in the country shut down their enterprises in the midst of chaos pending
the economic policy of the new revolutionary government. Labor strikes, which
escalated after October 1978, had almost crippled industry, public services, and
government offices. Hardest hit was the construction sector, where hundreds
of projects were abandoned mid-way. Cranes and tools lay idle on the lots of
half-finished building complexes, and work sites remained deserted. In the end,
thousands of laborers who had withdrawn their labor for the victory of the
revolution found themselves without jobs on its morrow.
These jobless were joined by a new army of unemployed: those working in
ideologically unfit occupations. Western-style restaurants, cafeterias, cabarets,
liquor stores, red-light district theaters, and brothels were all closed down, not
only because they were incompatible with the Islamic revolution but also because
they were deemed symbolic of the decadence of the ancien regime. In Tehran
alone, an estimated 3,000 employees of such establishments lost their jobs.6 The
lottery ticket company was shut down entirely, laying off 200,000 low-income
street ticket sellers. The arrival of about 150,000 high school graduates
(diplomehs) gradually swelled the ranks of the unemployed. In the very first year
after the revolution, therefore, some 2.5 million Iranians, equal to 21 percent of
the workforce, were out of work.7 According to an official survey of Tehran
unemployed, well over one half of the jobless were laid off owing to closures. Ten
percent consisted of casual laborers who left their jobs because of low income
and hardship. The rest of the unemployed comprised migrants and high school
graduates seeking work for the first time.8 In short, between 1.5 and 2 million
people lost their jobs within a few months of the revolutionary events.
The jobless were a heterogeneous group. While factory workers and high
school graduates led the protests, the articulation of interests and discontent with
an extraordinary condition drew many poor unemployed, casual laborers, and
rural migrants into an audible and collective street politics.
In developing countries, organized struggle by the unemployed for jobs and
protection is extremely rare, notwithstanding high rates of open and invisible
joblessness. Family, kinship, patron–client relationships, and especially the
informal sector provide essential mechanisms for protection and survival; lack of
organization generally prevents the development of sustained protest movements.9

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In this chapter, I argue that the conjuncture-based articulation of resources and

political opportunity underlying the movement set the Iranian case apart. The
resources included the postrevolutionary massive and sudden loss of jobs along with
the emergence of a revolutionary ideology among the jobless. The simultaneous
sudden decline in the standard of living and general expectations caused a moral
outrage. The movement was perceived as the continuation of a broader revolu-
tionary struggle. Optimism had surged among the poor and the unemployed; the
intense competition between the ruling clergy and the leftist opposition to recruit
the support of the poor raised hopes still further. This ideological dimension was
the driving force behind the huge pool of jobless who utilized both the existing
relative political freedom and the mobilization skills they had acquired during
the revolution.

The onset
Some three months prior to the victory of the revolution, over 13,000 seasonal or
project workers in the city of Abadan, a large oil port city in the south, became
redundant when their companies discontinued operations. The workers had lost
their jobs but considered their unemployment insignificant compared to the
revolutionary struggles around them. Even those who still held their jobs were on
strike. Yet, for these workers, the extraordinary days of unity and sacrifice were
coming to an end. The revolution was entering a new stage in which groups and
individuals would reveal their true colors. The factionalism and struggle for
power among the new leaders grew as the clerical leadership started exhibiting
intolerance toward dissenting political voices.
As the days passed, these workers began thinking about their precarious present
and uncertain future. During the unstable premiership of Shahpour Bakhtiar (the
last prime minister appointed by the Shah), a small number of these workers
gathered frequently in local tea houses to discuss their plight and to decide on a
course of action. Out of these and subsequent meetings emerged the Syndicate
of the Unemployed Project Workers of Abadan (SUPW). This solidarity marked
the start of collective actions taken by the unemployed. Within five months, the
campaigns successfully secured jobs and unemployment benefits.10 Several
demonstrations, all repressed by the pasdaran, were organized in pursuit of these
objectives. Two months later, on April 13, 1979, as social struggles intensified,
some 400 laborers resorted to a sit-in in the syndicate headquarters and threatened
to go on a hunger strike.11
The protest movement of the unemployed was well under way in several big
cities including Tehran, Isfahan, Tabriz, Ghazvin, Gachsaran, and the province of
Kurdistan. In Tehran, the leftist organizations had initially mobilized several
redundant and expelled worker groups (kargaran-i bikaar-shudeh). Before long
they joined forces in a loosely knit Organization of Unemployed and Seasonal
Workers, which included laborers laid off from manufacturing, construction, and
other industries.

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Campaigns in Tehran
On March 2, 1979, a small group of laid-off workers gathered in the Ministry of
Labor to publicize their plight. Labor Minister Dariush Foruhar – a liberal
follower of Mosaddeq – addressed the gathering. Disappointed in the minister,
the workers concluded their protest by reading a resolution which called for job
creation, a meeting place for a syndicate organization, a 40-hour work week, and
unemployment benefits. Soon the group returned better prepared and with over
2,000 members. Over the next two weeks, they visited the ministry more than five
times. During the subsequent meetings they also demanded recognition for their
organization and national radio and television coverage of their grievances.12
Facing mounting pressure in its first few weeks in office, the Ministry of Labor
decided to establish an “unemployed loan fund.”
The plan envisioned loans of between Rls 7,500 and Rls 9,000 per month for a
maximum of six months. Workers aged 26–60 who had paid social security for
at least one year would be eligible.13 This requirement effectively excluded
casual laborers and recent high school graduates. In the debate that followed, the
unemployed turned down this concession, demanding that the age and social
security contribution requirements be eliminated. They further insisted that the
payments be based on family size, and that representatives of the unemployed
supervise the program. Most importantly, they demanded that the loan concept
(vaam-i bikaari) be changed to a benefit plan (haqq-i bikaari). In the meeting, a
worker who had been laid off from the Tehran bus services, Sherkat-i Vahid
echoed the concern of those who considered the loan idea a sellout for the
working-class struggle as a whole:

We represent all the suffering Iranian workers. Our demand is not an

individual claim. Unfortunately, it was announced today that everybody
will receive one thousand tumans and abandon the cause [. . .]14 Is it
really fair to let these few pennies spoil the spirit of workers’ struggle?
How can they call themselves workers, those whose character is worth
only one thousand tumans? [. . .] One hundred thousand were killed [for
the revolution], and still our demands are not met!15

A representative of the unemployed offered his support in rejecting the plan.

Addressing the laborers, he said:

you are the source of our power. We will act according to your decisions.
I am glad that the group has consciously expressed its criticism and
unwillingness to accept the offer. This decision proves that hunger is not
our only concern [. . .] Rationality must prevail. Faith, conviction, and
consciousness give us power.16

The loan versus benefits issue became the fundamental source of confrontation
between the unemployed and the Provisional Government. Undoubtedly, the left

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was instrumental in articulating and radicalizing the workers’ demands. As people

who had supported and endured hardships during the revolution, this group of
unemployed felt entitled to impose demands on the new leadership. The influence
of the left on their movement did not affect their conviction that their demands
were legitimate.
The Provisional Government, however, considered their demands unacceptable.
Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan associated this movement with communist
currents attempting to undermine his government, especially since the left had
characterized the government as liberal and pro-capitalist.17 Moreover, the
government did not want to assume the huge responsibility of permanently
feeding the unemployed.18 The Labor Minister insisted that the term “loan” could
not be changed. On March 12, 1979 he told the workers’ representatives: “I do not
want to suggest that this is a grant without any repayment due. Workers’ honor is
above charity. I want this plan to be understood merely as a loan.”19 Following a
meeting on March 17, therefore, over 3,000 jobless laborers began a sit-in in the
labor ministry compound. When subsequent negotiations with the ministry
proved futile, some 700 participants went on a hunger strike in the afternoon in
their frustration and anguish.20 Three days later, in an effort to mobilize support
from other citizens, they issued a statement that was distributed in Tehran:

We are the unemployed workers who have staged a sit-in at the Ministry
of Labor. Since the authorities have not responded to our demands, we
have been on a hunger strike since March 17 (1:00 a.m.) and will pursue
our strike to the point of our death, unless our grievances are considered.
We request that our laboring brothers distribute this note and publicize our
situation among the working people, so that they may all join us. As we
finish this writing, [the authorities] have come to us shooting their guns.21

Immediately after the hunger strike started, the Labor Minister met with the
workers’ representatives at 1.00 a.m. An hour of negotiations failed to bring an
agreement. A spokesperson for the strikers indicated that the minister had insisted
on the loan issue, which was unacceptable to the strikers.22 An additional attempt
was made to appease the strikers, this time by a clergyman who tried to impose
his religious authority. His appeals, however, fell upon deaf ears, and the workers
continued their sit-in.23 On the first night, hizbullahis (pro-regime street thugs)
marched into the ministry to attack the strikers.
Outside the compound, leftist students joined groups of unemployed workers
to express their solidarity with the strikers despite repeated clashes with the
pro-regime thugs.24 Inside, however, frustration and determination to continue
the struggle characterized the protesters. Workers felt betrayed and cheated by
the new politicians whom they had trusted. They sensed a kind of moral outrage
and suspected their leaders of violating the tacit social contract that had evolved
in the course of the revolution. They expected respect as well as material rewards,

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but felt they had obtained neither.25 Zahra Dorostkar, one of the women strikers,
angrily vented this feeling at the compound:

I want to know why radio and television do not broadcast our grievances
to inform the world of our sufferings and to make them appreciate how
little [the authorities] are offering us. If they broadcast this injustice, the
people will no longer be misinformed [by the government] that pretends
to give us our due. We have gathered here and are on a hunger strike
because we want unemployment benefits [haqq-i bikaari]. We do not
expect charity. If there are jobs, we are prepared to work. Otherwise,
our living expenses must be insured. We all cried out that we wanted
Mr Khomeini; we supported the religious leaders. Now we expect them
to address our problems. I have two children; my husband has worked
for the last six months but has not been paid; they say, “we don’t have
any money!” I used to work in the Vitana [a biscuit factory in Tehran].
I was forced to resign because they did not accept my children in their
nursery. Now, [the Labor Ministry] tells us “take one thousand tumans
for the time being!” I have not paid my rent for the last six months; we
hardly have any food at home; my children are without clothes [. . .]
What can I do with these one thousand tumans? I am telling you, I will
not leave this place unless [the authorities] consider my living conditions.26

While the laborers carried on their hunger strike, the negotiations with the
authorities continued. The strike leaders had sensed that the Provisional
Government was not prepared to back down. Some pro-government elements
had begun to pursue a divide-and-conquer strategy. The loan offer undoubtedly
exacerbated the differences between the laborers adhering to a political ideology
and their counterparts driven by economic and social considerations. To make
matters worse, sustaining a hunger strike against a government which had just
emerged as the victor in the revolution, was not easy. On New Year’s Day, the
pasdaran broke into the compound, attacking the strikers and spreading terror by
continuously shooting their guns in the air.27 A number of hunger strikers passed
out and were taken to hospitals; others were given glucose.28 The strike leaders
relented and eventually agreed to the loan principle. The remaining differences
revolved only around the provisions of the loan. The parties finally reached a
compromise on March 22, 1979. According to the agreement, each unemployed
person was to be granted a monthly payment of Rls 9,000–12,000, with an advance
payment of some Rls 10,000. The conditions for the payment were substantially
modified. In addition, the unemployed succeeded in having the Khane-ye Kargar
(House of Labor) recognized as their organizational headquarters in Tehran.29

The escalation of collective actions

The government hoped that the compromise would end the protest among the
unemployed. Peace, however, did not return under the Provisional Government.

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 POST-REVOLUTIONARY IRAN

Both the government and the unemployed knew that loans would not solve the
misery of joblessness. The government’s concession was primarily intended to
pacify the jobless crowd. While the authorities privately assumed that the workers
would not pay back the loans, they hoped the measure would defuse the protests
from the unemployed. Similarly, the unemployed and their leftist leaders did not
regard the payment as a loan but as a mere piecemeal monetary gain. In addition,
the Tehran agreement had omitted a large number of casual laborers and recent
high school graduates from its provisions.30 The agreement ended the hunger
strike in Tehran but failed to halt the protest actions of the unemployed in general.
The campaign continued.
During the following three months the protest movement of the jobless
escalated in different parts of the country. The organizations of the jobless in
some regions flatly rejected the Tehran compromise; others continued their
protests notwithstanding their desire to obtain the “loan.” In the meantime, the
migrant poor and the school leavers not covered by the “loan” became even
more aggressive.
On April 1, 1979, less than two weeks after the initial agreement, over 3,000
jobless convened an open meeting in the Labor House. Outdoor loudspeakers
broadcast the debates in the streets. The meeting condemned the “loan” plan once
again and resolved to continue the campaign. An unemployed speaker angrily
echoed the crowd’s mood:

I would never have accepted the [Labor] minister’s promise and would
never have agreed to appear on television even to the point of death, had
I sensed that [ending] our hunger strike would lead to this hopeless
situation. I would rather die than face this situation. [. . .] We want
neither a free ride nor charity. Give us work.31

The crowd subsequently staged a five-day sit-in within the Ministry of Justice.
It ended only with liberal Justice Minister Asadullahi’s promise to take the issue
to the cabinet. He also helped the unemployed publicize their grievances on
national radio and television.32
The SUPWA focused its campaigns on consolidating its position and struggled
to dislodge the rival Union of Workers and High School Graduates created by the
local authorities to undermine the SUPWA. Meanwhile, the syndicate continued
negotiating with local and national officials to win concessions from the
government. Some three weeks after the Tehran agreement, in the same region,
the Unemployed Workers of Ahwaz and Vicinity rejected the Labor Ministry’s
plan and demanded unemployment benefits instead.33
Only a few days after the Tehran agreement, in the southeastern city of
Khorramabad, hundreds of jobless laborers occupied the governorate’s offices
demanding jobs, an unemployment fund and headquarters for their assemblies.
The protesters were attacked by pro-government forces, especially the pasdaran
of Komite-ye Imam, violently assaulted and fired upon.34 The unemployed crowd

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in the industrial city of Gazvin initiated collective action by electing representatives

to negotiate with city authorities. Demoralized by the ensuing request that they
“wait two more months,” they went on protest marches and organized gatherings
in local mosques to discuss their strategy.35
On March 28 in the northwestern Azeri city of Tabriz, hundreds of unemployed
and laid-off workers staged a sit-in lasting several days on the premises of
bashgah-i kargaran, the Workers’ Club.36 Another group marched into Tabriz’s
radio and television station to force the authorities to publicize their grievances.
Some two weeks earlier, the jobless had already been mobilized by left-wing
activists and had voiced their grievances in a number of gatherings. One of
the meetings culminated in a resolution calling for an immediate return to work,
the establishment of a benefit fund for the unemployed and the assignment of
a permanent headquarter.37 Similar sit-ins and protest marches took place in
Shahr-i Kord and Sari in April and May.38
In each city, the frequent rejection of the demands or delayed response by the
authorities prolonged such protest actions. The violent reaction of the security
forces further escalated the protests. The Union of the Unemployed Workers of
Isfahan and Vicinity (UUWIV), established in March 1979, had also rejected
the minister’s loan provisions and made a number of other demands, giving the
officials two weeks to respond. When a favorable response was not forthcoming,
some 7,000 unemployed and their supporters organized a protest demonstration
on March 26, 1979. They carried banners reading “the toiling masses assumed the
burden of the revolution, but others have reaped the benefits.” They called for
government recognition of the Council of Unemployed Workers and their right to
assemble.39 The demonstrators were blocked by the pasdaran and by hizbullahis
wielding clubs and knives. The governor rebuffed the demonstrators, and the
pasdaran arrested a number of organizers. In an effort to pressurize the authori-
ties further, another protest march of some 10,000 marchers gathered in front of
Isfahan’s House of Labor less than two weeks later to demand direct talks with
the governor. The negotiations yielded no tangible results, and the marches
continued. According to a rumor, the demonstrators intended to attack the police
station. In the ensuing violent confrontations with the security forces, one
demonstrator (Naser Tawfiqian) was killed, 8 others injured and nearly
300 detained.40
These collective protests were not always in vain: at times, desirable outcomes
resulted. In the Kurdish towns, for example, where the left and the Kurdish
nationalist organizations enjoyed mass support, the protests were fiercer and
consequently more successful. In Mahabad, the capital city of Kurdistan province,
the employees of the power and water supply who had been laid off during
the revolution managed to regain their jobs following a bitter struggle. The
Fedaii Organization appears to have been crucial in this success and launched
appeals to the jobless in other areas.41 In Sanandaj, following intense negotiations
with various municipal authorities, temporary measures served to assist the

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jobless population of nearly 7,000 and included immediate employment of 500,

payment of benefits to those laid off and loans for others until reemployment.42
In late May 1979, the unemployed of Kermanshah were mobilized by young
socialist activists. Recent high school graduates, the unemployed poor, some
groups of parents, and other sympathizers joined forces in street demonstrations
and sit-ins. They organized some of the largest protest marches in the city, with
the number of participants in one demonstration reaching 5,000.43
In one incident that month, the demonstrators intended to launch a sit-in in the
governorate headquarters. Despite opposition from the guards, the demonstrators
broke the gate and seized the building for a few hours. This action forced the
governor, who had already fled the building, to return and listen to the crowd.
The protesters agreed to end their sit-in only following the governor’s assurances
that he would seriously consider their demands. Before long, joint planning by the
governor and the Union of the Unemployed (an elected body) resulted in the
reopening of a house-building factory which was able to employ some hundred
people. The plan also provided jobs at Kashmir Factory to another group of
unemployed. The remaining jobless were to be compensated between Rls 7,000
and 15,000 per month until they found work.44
Although the unemployed were mobilized in almost every town where workers
had been laid off, the movement remained dispersed and isolated for the most
part. Nonetheless, the protest actions of the unemployed culminated in a massive
show of unity and force on May Day 1979. Some 500,000 people marched through
Tehran and many more took to the streets in other provincial cities. The rally, organ-
ized by the May Day Coordination Council (a committee composed of various
socialist and labor organizations), was the biggest independent gathering of the
working class in years. Groups of men and women, parents and children marched
hand in hand through the city’s main streets chanting slogans. May Day showed
the strength of the working class and especially the left. The massive numbers
mobilized were “their” forces. Young male activists held hands along both sides of
the march, thereby creating a human chain to shield the demonstrators from the
occasional assaults by organized thugs (the informal groupings under the protection
of some powerful mullahs). A number of state organizations, such as the Sepah-i
pasdaran, the Jihad-i Sazandegui (the Construction Crusade), and the Islamic
Republican Party, issued statements about May Day; some took part in the marches
as well. The focus of these groups, however, lay on the “danger of Communism,” the
“agents of the United States” (referring to socialist activists), and Wahdat-i Kalameh
(the unity of the Islamic Ummah) rather than on specifically labor-related issues.45
The unemployed accounted for a substantial portion of the demonstrators. The
slogans reflected the strategy of the organizers: “The struggle of the unemployed
is not separate from that of the employed workers.” The march ended with the
reading of a resolution praising Ayatollah Khomeini and calling for, among other
things, the nationalization of industry and banking, changes in labor legislation,
and the expulsion of foreign experts.46

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The variety of street protests

Not surprisingly, jobs were the main concern of the jobless. During the first five
months after the revolution, eighty-six major collective actions by workers
protested lockouts and layoffs and campaigned for their return to work. This
series of efforts was the largest group (some 20 percent of all campaigns) among
the industrial actions waged by the working people.47 Yet the variety of demands
reflected the unemployed movement leadership’s strategy of relating the struggle
for jobs to other political and social concerns of the working class. Socialist
leaders highlighted well-known demands, such as the 40-hour work week, better
working conditions, equal pay for men and women, and the right to strike.
Whether the demands were intended simply to radicalize the movement or had
received careful consideration as to their possible implications remains unclear.
Certainly, the insistence in almost every campaign on headquarters indicates
the value placed on organizational work. Some demands (such as expulsion of
foreign experts) contradicted the central concern for saving jobs; the withdrawal
of foreign companies was partly responsible for many closures and layoffs.
The protest actions mainly took the form of demonstrations, sit-ins and the
issuing of resolutions. The demonstrations voiced the plight of the jobless both to
fellow citizens and to the authorities. Some groups forced the local radio and
television stations to publicize their grievances. Demonstrations were also staged
as a means of collective action and protest. In the postrevolutionary conditions,
however, where street marching had become commonplace, their immediate
impact was less than satisfactory. Sit-ins (tahassun and ishghal ), or temporary
occupation of a public premise and disruptive conduct, prevailed as a pressure
tactic. The buildings of the Labor Ministry, local labor offices, the governorates
and the Ministry of Justice were the main targets. The occasional practice of
combining sit-ins with hunger strikes resulted in some immediate gains.
Although tahassun seems to be an established custom in Iran, the practices
of the unemployed are unlikely to have drawn on this history. Traditionally, in
bast-nishini, the actors seek refuge in holy places, such as shrines or mosques,
in an attempt to seek forgiveness, stage a protest, and pursue justice. The act
represents a defensive cry for clemency and justice, normally by one suffering
under arbitrary rule.48 Thus, a perpetrator of a crime would seek refuge in a shrine
where he would enjoy immunity as long as he remained in asylum.
The connotations of the contemporary repertoire are essentially different. The
unemployed referred to their acts not by the traditional term (bast-nishini) but in
terms of tahassun (sit-in) and ishghal (occupation, squatting). For the unemployed,
the terms had a different meaning and signified a form of collective action through
which the actors sought either publicity for a cause or, more often, a method of
disruption to bring public pressure to bear on the authorities.49 Nevertheless,
some symbolic elements of the traditional concepts remain. For instance, the
unemployed did organize sit-ins in places such as the headquarters of Workers’
Syndicates or the House of Labor without any disruptive intent. Similarly, staging

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a sit-in in front of the Ministry of Justice was a cry for justice in a more
traditional sense.
In spite of the large number of sit-ins, no evidence is available from Iran of
direct actions such as mob looting or rent riots. Historically, these measures
result from a sudden drop in income and a lack of alternative means of survival.
Rapid, massive, and unexpected unemployment may produce such phenomena,
as evidenced during the depression in the United States.50 In Iran, though, as in
most developing countries, people are better prepared to adopt survival strategies
relatively quickly. Kinship, friendship, patronage, and especially informal
economic activities are the most convenient mechanisms. In Iran those who
had already been unemployed were equipped with coping techniques, and those
recently laid off could rely in part on the support of their kin members in searching
for alternative employment.
The unemployed also launched a fund-raising campaign, albeit on a limited
scale. The contributions came largely from working people who still held their
jobs. Significantly, the bazaar – a major source of funds during the revolution –
was of no assistance.51 “Unemployment loans,” however meager, provided immediate
relief. As long as the jobless believed they could gain ground through collective
resistance, they refrained from limiting their actions to individualist operations
and survival strategies. As long as the unemployed poor lacked any institutional
setting in which they could take direct action, such as the workplace, they needed
to resort to collective protest. This interest in collective activity – encouraged
by the leftist groups – paved the way toward some degree of association-type
activities among the jobless.

Getting organized
The struggle of the jobless was somewhat disorganized. For one thing, the
unemployed were not a homogeneous group. Their varied backgrounds meant
that their capacities for mobilization and collective action differed. As indicated
earlier, the jobless population comprised three main groups: laid-off and
suspended workers, recent graduates, and already jobless and casual laborers. No
organizational link between them was conceivable. The laid-off workers had
largely been employed in factories or on construction sites. Whereas a common
workplace gave this group some basis for communication, the other two groups
tended to be scattered, lacking even a physical location to gather. Within these
categories, individuals met briefly and accidentally. Leaders of the groups
were often chosen spontaneously following little deliberation or competition. At
times excitement prevailed over rational decisions and calculated actions. As
one participant commented, “[w]e had not decided to occupy the Labor Ministry;
it just happened. We were only demonstrating in the streets; chanting slogans;
people got very excited; all of a sudden we were jumping over the fences.”52
Nevertheless, some degree of organization and coordination could be observed.
Two factors underlay this development: simple necessity and the role of mobilizers.

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Organizational necessity
Above all, before demonstrations and sit-ins, and instead of looting or rioting, the
unemployed relied on the disposition of the new authorities. Negotiating was their
initial strategy of preference. This approach required appointing representatives (as
in the cities of Ghazvin, Tehran, Isfahan, Tabriz, and Kermanshah). If negotiations
did not bring results, the unemployed made sure to maintain some kind of
communication and network to continue their campaign. To this end, they needed,
first, a place to assemble and, second, recognition of their representatives by
the authorities. They believed that such recognition would protect them from
the arbitrary assaults by the pasdaran and others. These formal groupings of
unemployed workers received different labels depending on the perception of
the leaders. Among the most common names were shura (council), sandika
(syndicate), and kaanun (center).
Some groups went beyond merely appointing representatives and attempted to
form a more durable structure for their organizations. When the jobless in Isfahan
realized that securing jobs was more complicated than they had imagined, they
began to consolidate their organization by involving unemployed workers from
the entire city and its environs in the UUWIV. In Tehran, when the initial negoti-
ations with the Ministry of Labor failed, jobless leaders gathered in the House of
Labor to plan a more structured organization on March 5, 1979. This meeting
was followed by the formation of a Steering Committee of Casual/Seasonal
Workers and by official recognition of the House of Labor as their permanent
headquarters on March 22, 1979. The House of Labor became a significant
institution for the laboring poor.
The House of Labor had originally been taken over by the unemployed under
strong influence from the Paykar Organization, a Maoist group. Its early meetings,
which were open to all, covered various topics. These general meetings were often
both dynamic and chaotic, drawing crowds of 300 to 400, and to remedy this
problem separate workshops were sometimes held. As political groups became more
involved, some disciplinary standards were introduced: discussions became
more organized, speakers more articulate and, simultaneously, ideological divisions
more pronounced. Speakers espousing a specific line of politics were heckled by
opponents and cheered by sympathizers. The ambitiously formulated slogans
hanging on the background wall (“The Only Solution for the Toiling Masses is
Unity and Organization” and “Workers’ Democracy Is Limitless”) seemed to
have lost their resonance. The debates initiated by militants tended to center on
issues such as “democratic vs socialist revolution” and “economic vs political
struggles,” which appeared less relevant to the daily concerns of the unemployed.53
Notwithstanding the subjects of the debates, official recognition of the House of
Labor signified both a practical and a symbolic victory for the laboring poor: it
legitimized their organizational activities and their capacity for independent
collective action. Many used the House of Labor as a personal shelter: “Some
would spend nights there; others would bring food and share with fellow laborers.

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Some individuals came to the House for their lunch breaks and discussed topics
of interest. In this way, many simple-minded lads experienced class solidarity.
The House had practically turned into a school for collective action [. . .].”54
The organized activities of the jobless extended beyond the House of Labor. A
number of associations for the unemployed were founded as well. Unemployed
workers in the oil and port city of Abadan in southern Iran formed a more elaborate
organization known as the Syndicate of Project/Seasonal Workers of Abadan
(SPWA). As mentioned earlier, the foundations of the syndicate were laid in
the casual gatherings of laborers at the local tea houses (Bushehri-ha), where
preparatory registration and campaigning began weeks before the insurrection.
The next step involved the assembly of a group of workers in the Oil Industry
College that resulted in a steering committee (shura-ye muassess). The committee
began recruiting members by using tea houses as their meeting points. At this
stage, obtaining a permanent headquarters topped the agenda. Following intense
negotiations and confrontations with city officials, the members secured the state-
owned premises of the former Workers Union as their headquarters.55 They also
registered the SPWA with the Komite-ye Imam, the local pasdaran and the office
of the Governorate.56 The SPWA managed to organize over 13,000 unemployed
workers from twenty different trades, representing various skills and income
levels.57 The steering committee produced a set of by-laws based on the union
experiences in newly independent Algeria, postrevolutionary Nicaragua and Iran
during the 1940s. The most pressing tasks concerned negotiations with employers
over the reemployment of the laid-off workers. They also included finding jobs
for the rest of the unemployed members and securing unemployment benefits.58
In the long run, the SPWA aimed to found unions of unemployed workers in other
provinces and to establish a unified national union.
During its lifetime, the SPWA won a number of concessions through negotiations
with the Provisional Government, including reemployment of groups of workers
and unemployment loans.59 A conflict arose between the SPWA and the authori-
ties regarding the allocation of the unemployment loans. While the Ministry of
Labor recognized the role of the SPWA in this process, the local clergy and the
pasdaran dissented and insisted that the loans be distributed through the local
mosques. The SPWA, however, did not relent. As a compromise, both sides
agreed on schools instead of mosques as the place of loan disbursement.60

The role of the mobilizers

Young activists (mainly students) with radical Islamic and socialist orientations
played a major part in mobilizing and organizing the unemployed. Initially,
activists often targeted recent high school graduates (diplomeha-ye bikaar), who
were more suitable for mobilization purposes: the revolution had given students
extensive experience in group efforts. The activists then linked the concerns of
these young job-seekers to those of the general mass of unemployed. The social
skills, literacy, and mobility of the high school graduates made them potential

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mobilizers in their own right. A socialist organizer described this tactic’s

effectiveness in creating an unemployed organization in Kermanshah, a city in
the east of Iran:

We gathered the others [diplomehs] and asked them to express their

views [on protest actions]. We concluded that each of us present should
assume an area of responsibility. We should, for instance, inform our
friends, relatives, neighbors, and classmates of such an action. We
should also prepare flyers for distribution throughout the city.61

At first, the diplomehs in Kermanshah insisted on an exclusive organization of

their own. Later, however, they became convinced that they shared a common cause
with other jobless people.62 Thus their recruitment campaign began among the
unemployed poor and the construction and casual laborers in working-class neigh-
borhoods. In their first collective effort, they managed to bring 1,000 unemployed
workers together. At this assembly, the speakers stressed the importance of setting
up an association of the unemployed and uniting all jobless masses. Following a
street march, the organizers convened a sit-in on the premises of the governorate.
On this occasion the crowd appointed seven representatives, including four diplomehs
(two men and two women), two unemployed laborers, and one representative
from the parents of the diplomehs. A few days later, the representatives met in a
public park with a group of fifty participants to decide on an official name for the
organization and to propose by-laws for discussion and adoption. The Union of
Unemployed People of Kermanshah was thus established.63
Although widespread, the organizational activities of the unemployed remained
largely localized and isolated in different parts of the country. Most were so
involved in the daily struggle for survival that they paid very little attention to the
outside world. The vital tasks of recruitment, confrontations with the pasdaran,
and sustenance of morale consumed much of their energies. The idea of founding
a national coordinating association came by and large from left-wing activists.64
One crucial attempt was made to link these individual campaigns in a national
framework. On April 23, 1979, delegates from over twenty cities and towns gathered
in the House of Labor in Tehran. They aimed to unify their stands and strategies
with a view to founding a nationwide organization of unemployed. Delegates also
discussed the conditions of the jobless in different parts of the country, especially
the ramifications of accepting the “unemployment loan.”65 The meeting, which
lasted three days, was closed to reporters. A concluding statement instructed all
unemployed masses in the country to stage demonstrations on May Day 1979 and
to direct their demands toward the government. The resolution warned that if the
authorities did not respond positively, the national organizers would “take harsher
and more resolute measures to ensure that the Iranian working people achieved
their just objectives.”66
Indeed, these organizational efforts were carried out with extraordinary speed.
The Tehran Meeting on April 23 – the climax of the organizational activity – came

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only two months after the revolution. Setting up a structured association is often the
final stage in a campaign. If mass action, spontaneous protests, and unstructured
mobilization do not yield the desired results, a structured organization is required
to ensure continuity. In Iran, the line between mass action and organizational
work seemed blurred. First, people had just emerged from a successful revolution
and were ready to be mobilized. Second, the mobilizers greatly valued association-
building and viewed this practice as a measure of success. The left adamantly
insisted on organizational work, viewing institution-building as essential for creating
a sustained working-class base for its own purposes. Mostly, however, these
associations retained a loose structure, often serving only as ad hoc coordinating
committees to mobilize the campaigns. They rarely used any elaborate organi-
zational procedures, advocated electoral campaigns, or competed to appoint
representatives. Despite these intensive efforts, lack of time prevented these
organizations from evolving and confronting the test of efficacy. The unemployed
movement was soon stopped in its tracks.

The demise
The unemployed movement withered away as quickly as it had sprung to life.
May Day marked the climax of the collective action of the workless. Afterward,
interest gradually waned until the movement’s virtual demise by mid-autumn of
1979. In the summer of 1979, the war in Kurdistan undermined the campaign’s
activities and the government used its repression of Kurdish nationalists as an
opportunity to quell other dissent. Although a number of jobless protest marches
took place, their scope remained limited. On October 1, a crowd of 1,500 workless,
the second such march organized within a week, demonstrated outside the prime
minister’s office. The pasdaran fired over their heads and the government threat-
ened to deal with the protesters severely.67 In the dramatic ambience associated
with the seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran in November 1979, the concerns of
the unemployed were lost amid the noisy campaign of “Islam against the Great
Satan.” Indeed, on the very same day that the Muslim students climbed over the
embassy walls, a large group of unemployed marched in the streets of the capital.
The desperate appeals of these marchers were stifled by the nationalist outcry of
the mass demonstrations that emerged from the embassy compound.
Why did the movement disappear so rapidly? First, political pressure intensified.
Pro-government paramilitary organizations stepped up psychological and physical
attacks, raiding and ransacking the headquarters of the jobless. The movement’s
leaders were branded as “infidel communists” or munafiqs (hypocrites), referring
to the Mujahedin-i Khalq, a leftist Islamic group. Armed pasdaran members
violently attacked almost any sit-in by the unemployed, especially when they were
convinced that the radical left and the Mujahedin were scheming to undermine
the revolution. Various attacks were reported in Tehran, Isfahan, Abadan, Ahwaz,
Gachsaran, and Khorramabad, most within the two months following the victory
of the revolution. In addition, employers formed “worker gangs” to harass laid-off

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workers who voiced their protests, especially those calling on the government to
take over industry.68 Friday prayer leaders would often denounce the unemployed
activists as agents of a counter-revolution, inciting the praying crowd – often from
working-class backgrounds themselves – to attack and disrupt gatherings of the
jobless. The Islamic leaders were able to mobilize the poor against the poor.
Notwithstanding their differences, the various factions within the ruling elite all
favored ending the unemployed protest. Radicals and conservatives, liberals and
Islamists, all considered the activists impatient opportunists who aimed to harvest
the fruits of the revolution before they were ripe.69
Second, an internal battle among the leaders, especially those with strong
political convictions, further weakened the movement. Whereas Muslim activists
and workers motivated by economic and social concerns tended to compromise
to achieve immediate gains, radical leftist leaders, and workers adhering to a
political ideology insisted on prolonging the campaign and incorporating it in the
general struggle to undermine the Provisional Government.70 In addition, despite
the efforts by the mobilizers to unite jobless graduates and unemployed laborers,
the rift between the two persisted.
While the left strove to publicize the plight of the jobless masses, it was
particularly adamant that the movement be radicalized and politicized. Most leftist
publications,71 especially those of the Maoist groups known as khatt-i sevvum
(Third Road),72 carried diverse reports on the struggles of the unemployed. They
analyzed the causes of lay-offs, while often relating them to the “crisis of capitalism”
and offering recommendations for combating joblessness. The weekly Alaihe-i
Bikaari (Against Unemployment) of the Razmandegan Organization was well-
known for raising these issues.73 A number of militant workers, such as Ali
Adalatfam, Hassan Lur, Asad, and others – mainly with a Maoist outlook –
led the campaign in Tehran; their counterparts mobilized job-seekers in the
provincial cities.74
While the leftist activists were primarily motivated by their desire to help the
poor, they nevertheless utilized the campaign for their own political ends: first,
to undermine the “liberal bourgeois” Provisional Government and, second, to
obtain popular support for their own organizations. In practice, this strategy
meant sacrificing the movement’s interests to further the political strategy of the
individual socialist groups.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the exceptional conjuncture and conditions
(i.e. the sudden and massive loss of work during the revolution) that had given
rise to the movement were gradually transformed. A number of factories resumed
operations, reemploying some of their labor force. Within the first six months
of the revolution, some 50 percent of industries and small plants were once
again operational.75 The labor-intensive construction sector, which had
previously employed some 1 million laborers, still needed to be revived. To this
end, the Provisional Government extended Rls 12 billion in credit to contractors
to enable them to pay back wages and to revitalize the sector as a whole.76 In
the second half of the Iranian year 1358 (1979), construction slowly revived by

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building small and inexpensive housing units.77 By May 1979, some 21,000 jobs
had been created in this sector.78
Occasionally, laid-off workers took over their workplaces, appointing a shura,
or workers’ council, to run the operations. At times they requested that the
government appoint professional managers to resume work.79 On May 6, 1979,
for instance, ten workers from the Metusak factory attempted to regain their
jobs by staging a sit-in at the factory. They continued to occupy the premises for
twenty-five days, after which they issued a statement: “Twenty-five days sit-in
including four days of a hunger strike! The result? [. . .] Nothing!” “What could
we do?” they went on. “No choice remained but to take over the workshop, oper-
ating it by ourselves.” “So, on Sunday 9 Ordibehesht [May 1, 1979], we entered
the workshop and, after repairing the machines and assigning responsibilities, we
began to produce and sell the products.”80 Similarly, laid-off workers in Plastou
Masourehkar reopened their plant and went back to work.81 While these tactics
were effective ways of regaining jobs in some cases, they were not universally
successful. Former employees of un-Islamic operations, such as cabarets, night
clubs and the lottery business, for example, stood no chance of reemployment.
Under intense pressure from the movement, the Ministry of Labor attempted to
create some temporary jobs, including public works such as road construction and
planting trees in public places. Although Bazargan’s government officially banned
any further state-sector employment, a number of new revolutionary institutions
(nahadha-ye inqilabi), such as pasdaran Komitehs (Revolutionary Guards), Jihad-i
Sazandegui (Construction Crusade), Nihzat-i Savad Aamuzi (Movement for
Literacy), and Bonyad-i Maskan (Housing Foundation) nevertheless absorbed a
considerable share of the jobless population. For instance, the Construction
Crusade, which was established in June 1979, maintained 327 centers throughout
the country and employed 14,800 paid workers and 4,700 volunteers in 1979.82 A
small percentage of the 200,000 lottery ticket sellers were hired by the local
pasdaran Komitehs to sell cigarettes in the streets as a measure against hoarding.83
In December 1979, a job-creation project was ratified for high school graduates
that provided for production cooperatives throughout the country.84
In the end, the unemployment loan offered by the government, however
meager, proved a temporary solution for some poor unemployed. The offer
undoubtedly divided the ranks of the jobless. By July 6, 1979, within three
months of its institution, about 182,000 unemployed workers had received an
average monthly loan of Rls 9,500.85 By the end of the summer of 1979, after six
months of operation, however, the entire scheme was discontinued on the grounds
that “industrial investment has started, and workers are gradually returning to
their jobs.”86 As for the unemployed diplomehs, the government planned to extend
an “honorary loan” (vaam-i sharafati) from a fund comprising 1 percent of the
monthly salaries of any citizens wishing to contribute. The contributions were to
be repaid by the state in five years’ time.87
In the meantime, institutions of family, kinship, and traditional networks
continued to protect the jobless. Young unemployed depended on their

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immediate families, while older ones counted on friends and relatives to secure
some type of work, loan, and assistance. In the end, the traditional method of
relying on informal networks as opposed to politically oriented associations,
combined with the force of political pressure and economic change, led to the
movement’s demise. Traditional institutions made the unemployed less desperate;
economic changes eroded the movement’s constituency; and political repression
deprived it of its leadership. The beginning of the war in Kurdistan inflicted a
heavy blow on the vulnerable movement, while the wave of euphoria following
the US Embassy seizure drowned out its presence.

Conclusion
Despite organizational weaknesses, the movement of the jobless in Iran made
some important inroads. It forced the provisional government to grant loans and
aid to over 180,000 unemployed workers for six months and to create a number
of temporary jobs. In some provinces, the campaigns of the unemployed forced
the authorities to reopen factories that had shut down. Eventually, groups of
laid-off workers began reopening their workplaces without the consent of their
employers. Most importantly, the movement prompted the Provisional
Government to rush economic recovery, especially in the crippled industries
where the most jobs had been lost. These achievements undermined the move-
ment itself. The laid-off factory workers who led the organizations and campaigns
of the unemployed began to return to work. Others either found jobs, resumed
their old occupations or sought alternative means of survival. In short, the decline
of the unemployed movement was primarily attributable to its limited success.
However, many of the people without work remained jobless, especially as new
groups of job-seekers entered the labor market. The concessions neither reduced
unemployment significantly nor relieved the plight of many of the jobless. The
movement failed to win the unemployment benefits it had originally demanded
and accepted an unemployment loan instead. The loan, which the government
never truly expected to be repaid, covered only about 10 percent of the unem-
ployed and was discontinued after six months.88 Job creation schemes remained
limited. Not only did thousands of the remaining jobless fail to find work, but a
new wave of rural–urban migration inflated the size of the jobless population
even further in the years that followed. In short, the exceptional circumstances
(massive and sudden unemployment and an ideological element) facilitating the
formation of the unemployed movement changed while unemployment persisted.
The jobless needed to adjust their activities to the new political and economic
reality. The Islamic regime stabilized and seized control of popular struggles. The
critical masses of unemployed (i.e. the laid-off factory workers) largely regained
their jobs and exited the movement. For the remaining jobless, activities in the
informal sector, petty trade, and street vending served as the most common
recourse.

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 POST-REVOLUTIONARY IRAN

While involved in their movement, many jobless revolutionaries continuously

searched for alternative sources of personal income. There were probably many
like Ahmad Mirzaii, a diplomeh, who described his position as “owing to
unemployment, I take care of the electrical problems of my neighbors and receive
payment; sometimes, I drive my brother’s taxi.”89 Some were convinced that they
could secure work only through concerted efforts. Ali Golestani, a diplomeh
who was on the job market for six months, believed that “a bit of resourcefulness
will provide thousands of opportunities; people can sell fruits in the streets,
peddle wares, work as salespersons, or do part-time or casual work.”90 Indeed,
thousands of the jobless resorted to street subsistence work, occupying spots
on the sidewalks, public parks, and busy thoroughfares of the big cities to set
up kiosks and stands. While the jobless were previously the main agents of
the street politics, street subsistence workers – such as the street vendors – now
assumed that role.91
Beyond the immediate concern for day-to-day survival, the unemployed
movement achieved a broader political impact. As a form of early popular
radicalism, the movement challenged the revolutionary regime’s legitimacy. It
demonstrated that contrary to the prevailing assumptions, the new revolutionary
regime lacked established hegemony over the popular classes. It faced dissent
from many of those in whose name the Islamic revolution and the new state were
legitimized: the mustaz’afin (the downtrodden).
Some attribute such popular protests to the political manipulations of the radical
left. While leftist groups admittedly influenced much of the postrevolutionary
popular opposition including the movement of the jobless, the jobless poor were
not merely a tool in the hands of socialists. The unemployed poor, once they
became aware of their position as a critical constituency, learned to use the left as
well as the government to further their own interests. They were driven more by
pragmatism than by ideological (Islamic or socialist) inclinations. The unemployed
took advantage of the intense competition between the leftist opposition and
the Islamic government over mobilizing and leading the mass movements. In
this way, the poor and the workless revolutionaries both benefitted from and
contributed to the radicalization, or populism, of the ruling clergy.

Notes
1 This background section on the Iranian Revolution is based upon Asef Bayat,
“Revolution without Movement, Movement without Revolution: Comparing Islamist
Activism in Iran and Egypt,” Comparative Studies in Society and History (1998), 40,
No. 1, January 1998, pp. 136–69. For a historical background to the Iranian revolution
see Ervand Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions (Princeton, NJ, 1982); and
Homa Katouzian, The Political Economy of Modern Iran (London, 1982). For literature
on the Islamic revolution reflecting different perspectives, see Abrahamian, Iran
Between Two Revolutions; Said Amir Arjomand, The Turban for the Crown (Oxford,
1988); Mansoor Moaddel, Class, State and Ideology in the Iranian Revolution
(New York, 1993); Mohsen Milani, The Making of the Islamic Revolution in Iran

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(Boulder, CO, 1988). The best account may be found in Misagh Parsa, The Social
Origins of the Iranian Revolution (New Brunswick, NJ, 1989).
2 On the anti-democratic nature of the Shah’s regime and its political implications
see Fred Halliday, Iran: Dictatorship and Development (London, 1977) (on SAVAK
activities); Habib Lajevardi, Labor Unions and Autocracy in Iran (Syracuse, NJ, 1985).
3 On guerrilla activities in Iran see Halliday, Iran: Dictatorship and Development;
Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions.
4 Useful accounts of postrevolutionary events may be found in Shaul Bakhash, The
Reign of the Ayatollahs: Iran and the Islamic Revolution (New York, 1984); and Ali
Rahnema and Farhad Nomani, The Secular Miracle: Religion, Politics and Economic
Policy in Iran (London, 1990).
5 Bank Markazi Iran, Annual Economic Report, 1358 (Tehran, 1979), p. 7.
6 See Paykar, 13, Mordad 1, 1358/1979, p. 6.
7 Estimate from the Budget and Plan Organization based on the generalization of a
survey of unemployed in Tehran in 1979; see Statistical Yearbook 1358 (Tehran, 1979),
p. 102, Table 30. On Farvardin 24, 1358/1979, The Tehran Musavvar, a Tehran weekly,
reported that “according to an official figure, three million workers are unemployed;
most are casual and construction laborers;” see Tehran Musavvar, 1, No. 12, Farvardin
1358/1979, p. 12. The Council of Unemployed Diplomehs submitted a similar figure;
see Pirouzi, 3, Azar 1359/1980, p. 31. In 1976, there were some 900,000 unemployed
(10.2 percent of the labor force). Assuming that their number had reached 1 million
by the advent of the revolution, some 2 million lost their jobs as a result of the revolu-
tionary events. See Farjadi, “Barrasi-ye Bazaar-i Kar, Ishtighal va Bikaari dar Iran”
[A Survey of Labor Market, Employment and Unemployment in Iran], Barnameh va
Tawse‘eh, 2, No. 3 (Fall 1992), p. 69. By 1980, however, we know that fewer than
500,000 jobless had actually registered with the Ministry of Labor. On this subject and
on an early discussion of the composition of the unemployed in postrevolutionary Iran,
see “Jang, Kar va Bikari” [The War, Work, and Unemployment], Pirouzi, 3 (Azar
1359/1980), pp. 30–5.
8 See Plan and Budget Organization, Barrasi-ye Bikaari dar Tehran, Tabistan 1358
[An Overview of Unemployment in Tehran: Summer 1979] (Tehran, 1979).
9 See Asef Bayat, “Why Don’t the Unemployed Rebel? Or Do They?” mimeograph (The
American University in Cairo, 1996).
10 Interviews with Mustafa, an unemployed workers’ organizer in the oil city of Abadan,
conducted in Los Angeles, May 1986; also see Organization of People’s Guerrilla
Fedaian of Iran (OPGFI), Gozarishi az Tashkil-i Sandika-ye Kargaran-i Prozheii
(Fasli) Abadan [A Report on the Formation of the Seasonal Workers’ Union in
Abadan] (Tehran, 1979).
11 See Ayandegan, Farvardin 25, 1357/1978.
12 See OPGFI, Gozareshi az Mubarizat-i Kargaran-i Bikaar-Shudeh.
13 Ibid.
14 One tuman equals Rls 10. In 1979, US$1 ⫽ about Rls 70.
15 See Paygham-i 1mrouz, Farvardin 11, 1358/1979.
16 Ibid.
17 See, for example, Kargar beh Pish, the journal of the Paykar Organization, No. 5,
Khordad 8, 1358/1979, p. 4.
18 See Mehdi Bazargan, Masa’el va Mushkilat-i Sal-i Avval-i Inqilab [The Problems and
Difficulties of the First Year of the Revolution] (Tehran, 1983).
19 OPGFI, Gozareshi az Karagaran-i Bikaar-Shudeh, p. 30.
20 See Tehran Musavvar, “Bar Bikaaran-i Mutahassen dar Nowrooz Che Gozasht?”
[What Happened to the Unemployed in Sit-In in Nowrooz?], Farvardin 10, 1358/1979.
See also Ayandegan, Farvardin 9, 1358/1979, p. 3; also interviews with Naser (who
participated in the operations), December 1994, Germany.

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 POST-REVOLUTIONARY IRAN

21 A copy of the flyer is in the author’s possession.

22 See Ayandegan, Esfand 29, 1357/1979.
23 Ibid.
24 See Tehran Musavvar, 10, Farvardin 10, 1358/1979, p. 19.
25 Based upon an interview with Naser (a leading participant in the hunger strike),
December 1994. This sense of disappointment and expectation can be detected in the
following angry statement from a laid-off worker: “We have now been out of work for
the last seven months. Is this really the result of our Revolution – that we get left out
in the cold and are penniless and unemployed? At the beginning of the revolution,
during our strikes, the managers would threaten us by calling the police. Now, they do
the same thing, by calling the pasdaran!” See Ayandegan, Khordad 13, 1358/1979, p. 4.
26 Ayandegan, Esfand 29, 1357/1978.
27 See Tehran Musavvar, 10, Farvardin 10, 1358/1979, p. 20.
28 Interview with Naser (who participated in the hunger strike), December 1994.
29 OPFGI, Gozareshi az Mubarizat-i Kargaran-i Bikaar-Shudeh [A Report on the
Struggles of the Laid-off Workers] (Tehran, 1979). Also based on my interviews with
Ghasem, an exiled worker who was active among the unemployed workers of the city
of Abadan, and Mehrdad, a left-wing mobilizer.
30 See Ayandegan, Khordad 9, 1358/1979.
31 See ibid., Farvardin 15, 1358/1979, p. 3.
32 See ibid., Farvardin 27, 1358/1979, p. 3.
33 Kargar Beh Pish, Khordad 5, 8, 1358/1979, p. 7.
34 See Kar, 5 Farvardin 1358/1979.
35 See ibid., 7 Farvardin 30, 1358/1979.
36 See ibid., 6 Farvardin 1358/1979.
37 A copy of the resolution is in the author’s possession.
38 See Kar, 9 Ordibehesht 13, 1359/1980, p. 8.
39 See ibid., 7 Farvardin 30, 1358/1979, p. 5.
40 Ibid.
41 The leaflet of the Fedaii Organization, dated 21 Esfand 1357/1978), is in the author’s
possession.
42 Kar, 9 Ordibehesht 13, 1358/1979.
43 Interview with Reza, who organized the unemployed in the city of Kermanshah
(Bakhtaran), conducted on February 10, 1993.
44 Ibid.
45 See the statements made by those organizations on May Day 1358/1979. See also
Ervand Abrahamian, Khomeinism (Berkeley, CA, 1993), the chapter on “May Day in
the Islamic Republic.”
46 For a detailed report on May Day 1979 see Farhang-i Novin, 4, Ordibehesht
1358/1979, special May Day issue.
47 See Asef Bayat, Workers and Revolution in Iran (London, 1987), p. 104, Table 7.1.
48 See Abbas Khalesi, Tarikhcheh-ye Bast va Bastnishini [A Short History of Bastnishini]
(Tehran, 1987).
49 Khalesi, in Tarikhche-ye Bast, sees a continuity, from ancient to contemporary times,
in the usage of the concept bast-nishini (pp. 59–70). In addition, the term tahassun is
described in the major encyclopedias of both Dehkhoda and Mo’in as a synonym for
bastnishastan. While some elements of traditional ideology (such as recourse to the
Royal Court, or tahassun at the Ministry of Justice), persist, the term’s meanings have
largely changed over time. Traditionally, tahassun meant the efforts by individuals or
groups to seek refuge at a holy site as a means of escaping punishment or voicing a
protest. It was a mechanism of justice in the absence of laws by means of resorting to
divine protection. The concept changed slightly at the beginning of modern times. In
Iran, since the Qajar dynasty (1797–1921), the places of refuge included not only the

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holy sites but also the royal courts, stables of aristocrats, public telegraph offices, and
especially foreign embassies (Ibid., pp. 19–20). During this period, concepts evolved
such as political asylum, diplomatic immunity, and the like. In this altered sense, the
actors resort not so much to divine protection as to political authority. Finally,
the term’s contemporary connotations are entirely different. Today, it is understood
essentially as a collective action by a group of people who either pursue publicity for
a particular belief or cause disruption to pressure the authorities to satisfy certain
demands. The concept is almost mixed with the modem practice of “temporary
occupation,” where the actors resort neither to God nor to political authority but rather
to public pressure.
50 See Frances Piven and Richard Cloward, Poor Peoples’ Movements: Why They Succeed,
How They Fail (New York, 1979).
51 Interview with Mehrdad, a left-wing activist involved in the unemployed movement,
July 1993.
52 Interview, conducted in October 1993, with Roham, a reporter on labor issues for the
Tehran daily, Paygham-i lmrouz. The newspaper was published after the revolution of
1979 but banned in the summer of that year.
53 Interview with Roham, October 1993.
54 Interview with Naser, a worker activist in the House of Labor, December 1994.
55 OPGFI, Gozareshi az Tashkil-i Sandika-ye Kargaran-i Bikaar-Shudeh.
56 See Kargar Beh Pish, 5, 1358/1979, p. 11.
57 Interviews with Mustafa (one of the leaders of the SPWA) conducted in Los Angeles,
May 1985.
58 Ibid.
59 Ibid.
60 Ibid.
61 Interview with Reza, a labor activist, May 1993.
62 Ibid.
63 Ibid.
64 Ibid.
65 Ayandegan, Ordibehesht 4, 1358/1979, p. 3; see also Tehran Musavvar, “Gozareshi az
Khane-ye Kargar va Sokhanan-i Kargaran-i Bikaar,” 2, Khordad 18, 1358/1979,
pp. 24–5.
66 The Resolution of the Central Constituent Council of the Unions of the Unemployed
Project and Laid-off Workers of Iran. The original text is in the author’s possession.
67 See Middle East Economic Digest, October 5, 1979, p. 2.
68 Interview with Roham, a labor reporter, October 1993.
69 The statements by many officials immediately after the revolution substantiate this
argument.
70 Interview with leftist activists involved in the movement confirm this point.
71 Such as Kar, Paykar, Khahar-i Kargar, Khahar Nameh, Kargar-i Komonist, Mujahed.
72 The Tudeh (Communist Party) was considered the “first road” and the various Marxist
guerrilla Fedaii organizations the “second road.”
73 A Marxist-Leninist organization with a Maoist orientation.
74 Interview with Darvishpour (who participated in unemployed workers campaigns),
conducted in November 1993.
75 See Bazargan, Masa’el va Mushkilat-i Inqilab, p. 122.
76 Ibid.
77 See Bank Markazi Iran, Annual Economic Report (Tehran, 1982), p. 8.
78 This information was released by the Labor Ministry in Ayandegan, Ordibehesht 2,
1358/ 1979, p. 1. In addition, the Ministry of Roads and Supply announced that it
employed some 5,000 skilled and unskilled laborers for road construction; see
Ayandegan, Khordad 16, 1358/1979, p. 4.

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79 For the details, see Bayat, Workers and Revolution in Iran.

80 An original copy of the flyer issued after the workers began their sit-in is in the author’s
possession; see also Kar, 9, Ordibehesht 13, 1358/1979, p. 10.
81 See Ayandegan, Mordad 27, 1358/1979, p. 5.
82 See Bank Markazi Iran, Annual Economic Report, 1982, p. 50.
83 See Ayandegan, Farvardin 21, 1358/1979.
84 See Ettilaat, Shahrivar 2, 1364/1985.
85 Ayandegan, Tir 17, 1358/1979.
86 Ibid.
87 See Bazergan, Masa’el va Mushkilat-i Inqilab, p. 125.
88 Ayandegan, Khordad 9, 1358/1979.
89 Ibid., Khordad 22, 1358/1979.
90 Ibid.
91 For a discussion of these issues and events, see Asef Bayat, Street Politics: Poor
People’s Movements in Iran (New York, 1998).

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 5
TRANSFORMING THE CITY
FROM BELOW
Shantytown dwellers and the fight for
electricity in Casablanca

Lamia Zaki

The continuous rural exodus which Morocco has experienced for more than fifty
years has transformed the country from a rural to an urban one: in 1950 city-dwellers
represented less than 25 per cent of the whole population, while by the year 2000
the level of urbanization reached nearly 57 per cent. The rapid urbanization of
the country reinforced a phenomenon that had first appeared in the 1920s: the
development of shantytowns. These shantytowns constitute an important
Moroccan social reality, as they house more than 8 per cent of the urban population.
First relegated to the outside of the urban perimeter, these illegal settlements were
later incorporated within the growing cities, new settlements constantly appearing
on the expanding urban edges.
If public policy towards the shantytowns evolved through time, a constant can
be found: namely, the ambiguity which characterizes the institutional attitude (made
up of both tolerance and prohibition) towards these areas. The very existence of
the shantytowns, which stand as a direct violation of property rights and urban
rules, is considered as a symbol of deviance inside the official urban structure.
Shantytowns can be tolerated as temporary and transitory forms of settlement in
order to preserve the social peace, but they must, paradoxically, retain the attributes
of uncertainty in order to be accepted by the authorities and to remain. If their
inhabitants are to be allowed to stay, these illegitimate spaces must show through
material and symbolic signs that they do not belong to the ‘real’, to the legitimate
town. This is why the questions of space planning and infrastructures are of
such importance. They are viewed as highly political, and give rise to constant
bargaining between the inhabitants, their elected representatives and the
representatives of the State at the local level.
We will focus here on a specific aspect of this bargaining process, that of the
struggle of the shantytown dwellers (karianis)1 for electricity. The electrification
of the shantytowns was initiated in Casablanca after the State-controlled company

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in charge of the town electric management was replaced by a private enterprise

called Lydec in 1997.2 The shantytowns’ electrification started with the setting-up
of a pilot site at Ben M’sik3 in 1998, in the context of a project funded by USAID.
We shall not discuss here that first experiment as such, but rather the circum-
stances that allowed the effective generalization of the project over the whole
built-up area. Indeed, the shantytowns’ integration to the town electric network
did not go smoothly, as the legal connection of the shantytown dwellers was
considered by the authorities to constitute a form of recognition of their settlement.
It seems that in 1999 the governor of Greater Casablanca gave an agreement in
principle for the electrification of the Casablanca shantytowns, provided that the
final authorizations for connection were granted by the prefectures on a case-by-
case basis, depending on the arguments of the elected representatives and the
population, but also on the characteristics of each shantytown.
According to Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin,4 the privatization of systems
of infrastructure promotes their ‘unbundling’ and thus leads, if not always, at least
most of the time, to the fragmentation (the ‘splintering’) of the social fabric in
metropolitan areas. We intend throughout this case study to question the theory
of ‘splintering urbanism’. Contrary to this thesis, the search for profitability is not
always to the poor’s disadvantage.5 Indeed in Casablanca, the concession of
public services to a private enterprise did not lead to the shantytown dwellers’
exclusion, but rather to their integration into the electric network from which they
had always been excluded. The paradigm of ‘the modern infrastructural ideal’
developed by Graham and Marvin,6 referring to a golden period of integrated and
unified public networks, has never applied to Morocco (nor to Africa in general).7
It thus cannot be considered as a starting point for assessing the contemporary
condition of the infrastructure networks, which have in reality always been
heterogenous and fragmented.

Legitimization rhetoric and conflicting contexts

of interpretation

The State between acceptance of electricity piracy and

resistance to formal electrification
By definition, the shantytown develops in opposition to the law of the land and to
the regular urban fabric. Its inhabitants challenge the State authority on a day-to-day
basis because of their illegal and irregular settlement. Their presence is tolerated by
the public powers as long as it appears as a transitory and temporary phenomenon.
In order to ensure its hold on this informal territory, the State uses a form of
administration which we may describe as ‘management by absence’. The objective
of this strategy is to fix the shantytown dweller in an infra-legal situation, a
‘pseudo-clandestineness’,8 never formally recognizing his (her) rights as a city-
dweller (there is no legal text formalizing the shantytown’s public management),
even though his (her) civic rights are recognized:9 urban and political integration

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are here disjoined. By maintaining the inhabitants on the legal margin, the State
creates a latent insecurity which sustains the shantytown dwellers’ fragility and
limits the assertion of collective demands.
The concern of the public authorities to avoid actions likely to be interpreted
as a formal recognition of the shantytowns did not always prevent them from
closing their eyes to practices enabling the inhabitants to enjoy certain minimum
conditions of comfort and hygiene. Public authorities thus operate a constant shift
between prohibition and indulgence. The building of brick shacks or the installation
of sewage disposal networks are part of these tolerated practices, but their accept-
ance is not automatic. It depends on the inhabitants’ ability to use some essential
resources, such as political capital in the form of the intervention of the local
elected representatives.
As shown by Nadia Khouri-Dagher in the Egyptian case, in a context where the
State is disengaged from the economy, the public authorities can knowingly make
concessions to the oppressed by granting them a small amount of power in return
for social peace. ‘[B]y favouring ‘muddling through’, namely solutions at individual
level, the State limits . . . citizens’ attempts to find solutions at community level,
which could end up calling its power into question’.10 Therefore, the ‘tricks of the
weak’ used by individuals do not always deceive the authorities.11 Illegal practices
(including the piracy of electricity) do not always happen entirely without the State’s
knowledge. But the latter tolerates these tricks provided that they remain at the
level of isolated individual action and do not take on a collective dimension.
In the Moroccan context, the State has been tacitly tolerating electricity fraud
in certain Casablanca shantytowns, particularly since the early 1990s. This electricity
piracy was accepted partly to preserve social peace, but also to keep the shanty-
town dwellers out of the town proper. It also allowed the State to preserve an
important means of pressure on the populations. However, the authorities were
reluctant to agree to the launch of a pilot electrification site at Ben M’sik. The
eventual spread of the principle to all the shantytowns in Casablanca was even
more reluctantly conceded, and took place under the combined pressure of Lydec
and the shantytown dwellers. Certain formulae used by the governors of the
various prefectures of Casablanca show this clearly. In a letter dated 2 April 1998
(before the launch of the first shantytown electrification) the governor of the
prefecture of Sidi Bernoussi Zenata, the representative of the central authority,
wrote to the local Lydec manager as follows: ‘I would like to remind you that the
dwellings in the camps and shantytowns are in contravention of the town-planning
and building regulations; electrification would undoubtedly encourage them to
grow and proliferate.’ He asked the company to reject private applications for
connecting the shantytowns to the electricity grid. The symbolic and material
consequences of electrification were clear to the public authorities: by generating
a clear improvement in the quality of life, the process of electrification reduced
the inhabitants’ incentive to leave the shantytown.
A year later the same official, in a letter dated 28 June 1999, accepted that
technical feasibility studies should be carried out for the provisional supply of

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electricity to the shantytowns. Even when the authorities accepted the principle of
the electrification of the shantytowns, they were concerned to ‘point out’ that for
the public authorities it was ‘not an end in itself, but simply an operation to
improve the living standards of this category of the population while awaiting
the implementation of a rehousing programme’ (letter from the governor of Anfa
to Lydec’s Chief Executive dated 13 November 2001). The State was prepared to
tolerate electrification provided that it was conceived and presented by Lydec as
a temporary short-term operation. The authorities were concerned to ensure that
connection did not – with the passage of time – take on the seal of a legitimate
connection, and to stress that the legality that accompanied the electrification
process was a second-rate legality.
Electrification could not in principle be permitted in shantytowns involved in
a rehousing or relocation project. This ban, however, proved to be difficult for
the authorities to justify when certain projects were planned but had been held
up for several years or even decades. This was the case for Carrières Centrales,
where projects had been successively carried out since right after Independence
although without much effect on the numbers of people living in this shantytown.
Even though a new project of the kind had recently been launched, we shall see
how the mobilization by the inhabitants finally resulted in a legal connection to
the city’s electricity grid.
The authorities thus manage order in the kariens by maintaining those spaces
physically and symbolically out of town, while tolerating certain forms of urban
integration.12 This strategy for preserving social peace in shantytowns by keeping
the inhabitants on the fringes of the law, alternatively playing the cards of permis-
siveness and prohibition, is comparable to the State’s authoritarian strategies of
regulation and cooptation of the elites.13

Lydec: market forces and the right to profit

The rhetoric Lydec used to convince the State of the need to connect the shanty-
towns to the electricity grid centered around three main themes. First, it stressed
the dysfunction caused by illegal connections. Second, it highlighted the danger
of piracy, not only for shantytown dwellers but also for Lydec agents. Third, it
underlined the importance of the financial losses registered by the company.
Besides causing power cuts, piracy can also provoke wide variations in current
that often damage the electrical equipment of regular Lydec consumers. The
customers sent numerous letters of protest to the firm, who systematically
forwarded them to the governors. By doing so, Lydec attempted not only to
communicate its clients’ discontent to the public authorities, but also to make
the latter feel responsible for finding a solution, as it was their duty to ensure
respect for private property.14
Lydec also underscored the danger of piracy, especially when bare wires were
used to divert the electricity. On the old type of connection boards, with four bare
copper wires, it was possible to obtain a 220 volt supply by attaching two clamps

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to two of these four wires, which in those days were easily identifiable because
they were always fitted in the same order. The early forms of theft thus consisted
of clamping two wires, which were then stretched over to the shack; there was a
grave danger of the wires contacting the metal cladding of the shack and causing
accidents. However, it is impossible to get even an estimate of the number of
victims: Lydec itself is not officially informed if anyone dies of electrocution in
a shantytown. One can simply assume that there were many accidents, as the
accounts of the karianis seem to confirm: tales of women being electrocuted
while using water for household chores, children being electrocuted by a piece of
metal cladding coming into contact with a bare wire, pirates being killed while
trying to connect or reconnect the supply, and so on.
Since the mid-1990s, the boards fitted with four bare copper wires have
gradually been replaced by a public electricity supply over twisted wires
protected by a rubber sheathing. The wires are less easy to identify (they are
marked by the company, but not all shantytown dwellers are able to decipher
the coding), and have to be spliced to make a connection. The work is more
dangerous, as the fraudsters are now directly in contact with the wires. According
to reports by Lydec staff, the updating of piracy techniques prompted by the
company’s new methods may have paradoxically reduced the risk of accidents:
electricity theft has now become a business for the initiated that is carried out in
a more organized and more rational way.
Besides the technical risks linked to the dismantling and repair work made
necessary by piracy, the employees of the private company also had to face the
shantytown dwellers’ violent reactions. For instance, in May 1998, five attacks
were recorded in the prefecture of Sidi Bernoussi Zenata (with knives, insults,
threats, damage to a vehicle, and throwing of stones) while officials were making
repairs in the districts bordering on three shantytowns following incidents
provoked by illegal connections (letter of 1 June 1998 to the governor).
Before the concession to Lydec, the public utility company minimized the scale
of piracy by presenting the shantytowns’ electricity consumption as insignificant.
Electricity theft in itself was regarded as a marginal phenomenon in shantytowns.
According to the statements collected, the prevailing impression was that theft
was a kind of ‘folklore’ practised by a few harmless pilferers, or at least assumed
not to be any real nuisance. Lydec very quickly tried to assess the losses caused by
electricity piracy. The loss estimates were much more important than expected,
reaching around 12 million dirhams (1.2 million euros) in 1998 in Casablanca,
according to the activity report of the company’s ‘less-favoured districts’ section
for the period September 1998–September 1999. The work carried out in 1998 to
repair the malfunctions caused by piracy was estimated at nearly 1.2 million
dirhams. One Lydec manager estimated that the company’s losses amounted to
20 million dirhams in 2003, counting the cost of repairs and the loss of earnings
associated with the regular customers’ consumption being interrupted during
power cuts.

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It was a shock to discover the extent of the losses. As one official interviewed
explained:

We thought they were poor, in poverty; we never thought that they had
not only radios, but also televisions, fridges, and there were even some
with washing machines; some had freezers, irons and many other things.

The fact that at Carrières Centrales the electrification of the shantytown required
5 transformer substations to be installed to supply the 4,500 households15 shows
that the previously available infrastructure was totally inadequate for supplying
the shantytown dwellers (as well as the district’s regular customers) and that their
electricity consumption was far from marginal.

The shantytown dwellers’ discourse on rights

We shall see how the use of a discourse on rights borrowed from the political
arena – whose linguistic resources had been reorganized by the imposition from
above of a process of political liberalization – made a substantial contribution
to transforming the shantytown dwellers’ perceptions regarding the issue of
electricity, and encouraged them to take a radical stance in relation to Lydec’s
action to cut them off. The existence of a common corpus of requirements and
claims helped to crystallize the mobilization,16 which evolved from basic piracy
techniques to more complex and sophisticated (sometimes overtly violent) forms
of electricity fraud as a response to Lydec’s policy of piracy repression.
The rationalization of piracy through language is an essential dimension of the
mobilization for electricity. By sharing the same ‘injustice frame’, the shantytown
dwellers actually legitimize the illegal connections while at the same time
discrediting the system of authority. As these accounts show, by abandoning one
definition of the situation and adopting a new one, they find justification for
non-conformist, unauthorized acts.17 Motives for supporting and taking part in
the piracy are expressed in uniform frames overall, linked on the one hand to
the material progress that makes electrification possible and on the other to the
symbolic dimension of the struggle for light.

Before, we were treated like animals, like dogs, if you’ll pardon the
expression (hachâk), we weren’t considered human. We walked in the
mud, we ate out of the dustbins and we lived in the dark ( f-ddlâm).
So? Are we not human? Are we not citizens too? What about human
rights? Now, we’ve at least learnt a thing or two (ouâ‘în), and if we
aren’t given our rights we’ll take them. Everyone has the right to light.
They’ve even got light bulbs in the countryside ( f-l-‘roubiya).
(Zahra, p. 38, El Qabla)

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We didn’t have light before because we didn’t know how, we didn’t dare.
But people have developed (t-tawwroû), they’ve educated themselves. They
have claimed their rights, they’ve fought for them and taken them.
(Miloud, p. 60, El Qabla)

These accounts clearly show that one of the functions of the mobilization for
electricity, especially at the beginning, was to provide an alternative frame to what
previously seemed to be the result of bad luck or fate, by transforming it into
social injustice or moral transgression that called for action. It is thus striking in
the extracts from the transcribed interviews how the level of awareness plays such
a crucial role in the establishment of piracy. Awareness of the unbearable nature
of a condition, of its unique dimension; awareness also that that condition could
be remedied and that there was a common interest in acting together. While they
previously seemed to accept it as natural, the shantydwellers appear to have grad-
ually thrown off the stigma imposed upon them. The interviewees also made
increasing use of animal imagery, coming to reject it violently and to refuse to
associate with it: they cast off their marginality18 and rejected the ‘lower human
value’ to which the electricity ban reduced them.19 The stigma was even turned
against other groups (country dwellers, for example), who deserved electrification
less than the shantytown dwellers.
Shantytown dwellers were able to adopt these interpretations all the more
effectively because they ‘resonated’ with the dominant belief systems of the
time.20 The karianis were mobilizing legitimization repertoires that were embedded
in the political context. Indeed, with the development since the late 1980s and
early 1990s of discourses of openness, democratic transition and respect for
human rights, the interviewees were able to make use of a lexicon that pervaded
the political field to legitimize their claims.
This is not the place to discuss whether or not there has in fact been a ‘transition’
in Morocco, to assess its aspects or limits, nor to analyse developments in the
national political field over the past fifteen years. We aim to show only that the
issue of rights (houqoûq) widely disseminated in the national political field was
picked up by the shantytown dwellers: the right to electricity was likened to a
human right, and any initiative designed to ensure respect for or dignity of the
shantytown dwellers, or to allow them to assert a form of equality with the other
city dwellers, became a human right. By appropriating a lexical field that was
a vector of political credibility, the shantytown dwellers demonstrated their
capacity to use the (scant) resources placed at their disposal. They were quick
to demonstrate how well they understood the dominant system, their capacity to
discern its faults and to exploit its potential weaknesses, and their aptitude
to decipher what could be profitable to them within that system:

We’re told that Morocco is the country of human rights. But for us, there
is no equality, no respect or dignity. And yet I am a citizen just like
the owners of villas and big cars. I’m a Moroccan too, and I take

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my rights: I have a right to electricity, and I take it, because I’m a human
being (bachar), and not an animal.
(Hassan, p. 60)

Electricity fraud was not therefore perceived as the negation of the existing order:
on the contrary, the shantytown dwellers did not set themselves up in opposition
to the system of power. If they resisted, it was to enforce its essential principles.
They saw themselves as ‘dissidents’ because their aim was to see principles
triumph over the rules.21
To give more weight to their arguments and to obtain the authorities’ seal of
approval for the shantytown’s practices, the interviewees made reference to royal
speeches or more generally mentioned words attributed to the sovereign. For
instance, the speech given by Mohamed VI on 21 August 2001 on the anniversary
of ‘the Revolution of the King and the People’ had an important impact on the
shantytown, in that the interviewees often quoted it to justify the inhabitants’
initiatives when these were opposed by the local authorities (the shantytown
dwellers referred to it as ‘the speech on the shantytowns’ or by using expressions
such as ‘when the king talked about the shantytowns’). When commenting on the
king’s speech, and interpreting it, reconstructing its meaning, the karianis showed
that they not only knew the speech but could also appreciate, explain (and potentially
criticize) its content. While the speech aimed essentially to make accountable the
bodies responsible for combating insalubrious housing, and to announce a
national project to ‘eradicate’ non-compliant and anarchic building, the shanty-
town dwellers saw it as an encouragement to improve living conditions in the
shantytowns: the ‘perceived reality’ was fashioned collectively; less by persuasion
on the part of the leader than by communal self-persuasion, all the more important
in that it was a key element governing participation in action:22

We do what sidna would want for us. He wants us to live, he wants what
is good for us, because he knows that we are citizens (mouwâtinîn), and
that as citizens we have rights like everyone else. He said so in his
speech on the kariens, you know. If the Government did what sidna
wants, we’d all be living in dignity and tranquillity, with water, electricity
and real houses. But the moqaddmîn and the big-shots and the police,
and all the makhzen in general, they don’t try to understand. So we’re
obliged to take what is our due.
Our king is the king of the poor. He loves and understands us; and he
wants to help us. That’s how we managed to get electricity.

The shantytown dwellers demonstrated an ability to produce integrated arguments,

embellishing their personal experience of problems with elements of understanding
drawn not only from media-speak, but also directly from the highest level of
political discourse that they appropriated for their own purposes (reading it in a
way that was favourable to them, that is excluding the concept of servility).23

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Mounia Bennani-Chraïbi and Olivier Fillieule note that ‘the dissolution of fear, the
integration through official discourse of international human rights references, and
the recognition of the legitimacy of a number of claims have helped to increase
the number of “pacified” organized movements prepared to act “within the
system”.’24 In the shantytowns, it seems that this emancipation of speech has also
enabled action ‘outside the system’ to become tougher, alongside the development
of more conventional forms of mobilization (sit-ins, petitions, etc.). Electricity
theft was characterized not only by its being illegal, but also by a form of (some-
times violent) resistance to the imposed order. Deviance was assumed to be
necessary and effective for conserving and even expanding a legitimate gain:
access to electricity.
But it was only with the introduction of the private operator that piracy took on
hitherto unknown proportions, and took a radical turn. ‘Lydec’s arrival changed
people’s behaviour. While it was unthinkable to oppose the public utility company
officials [before the arrival of Lydec in 1997], a considerable increase was
reported in verbal or even physical violence against Lydec staff during their field
work. This even reached the point where it was no longer possible to operate in
certain districts’ (Lydec activity report 1998–1999, ‘less-favoured districts’
section). The battle was directed against the private company and its staff, who
were maintaining an intolerable ‘liberal bourgeois system’ (as an interviewee
reported) and preventing a fair redistribution of wealth and opportunity within
Moroccan society.
While in the end it was the government policy of limiting communal facilities
in shantytowns that was called into question, the uprising against Lydec (at least
in the first stage) enabled the mobilization to be depoliticized, or rather its meaning
to be redefined and displaced in order to attenuate the offensive nature of
‘electricity dissidence’ in relation to the State. The insubordination appeared less
subversive and became more effective. Electricity theft was aimed at the State; the
challenge was to the State; but the private operator played the part of screen actor
and made possible the rise of the mobilization.

The radicalization of piracy: theft as an effective means

of achieving integration into the electricity grid

Disconnection campaigns . . .
To combat electricity piracy, Lydec set up ‘disconnection campaigns’ consisting
of dismantling illegal installations by shantytown dwellers and making them
inoperative, at least temporarily. The ‘electricity disconnection and anti-fraud
campaigns’ became widespread in 200125 and were organized in cooperation with
the authorities: the operations took place in the presence of members of the police
and auxiliary forces. Their participation in these operations implemented by the
private operator had a clear practical and functional scope: it enabled the inhabitants’
discontent to be channelled, and to prevent the worst full-on resistance; but it also

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had an important symbolic meaning, in that it showed how the State was cooperating
and involved in the fight against electricity theft.
In the beginning, the Lydec staff simply disconnected the wires installed by
the shantytown dwellers. Since the inhabitants systematically and immediately
reconnected them, the company was forced to adopt more radical methods: the
cables were not only disconnected, but also cut into short lengths to make them
completely unusable. Aware that twisted cables were particularly expensive, and
that transporting several dozen (or sometimes several hundred) metres of cable
required a vehicle, the company tried not only to impose on the shantytown dwellers
the symbolic violence of its reaffirmed presence – perceived as an intrusion – but
also to increase their costs as much as possible.
While the disconnection campaigns were not effective in that they did not
prevent illegal electrification, they aimed to minimize its attraction by getting
the shantytown dwellers and public authorities interested in ‘legal electrification’:
the aim was to get the inhabitants used to the idea that it was more worthwhile to
pay to get a regular, good-quality supply of electricity than to continue with a
piracy practice that was getting disproportionately costly. Lydec’s managers also
thought that the existence of a strong mobilization among the inhabitants in
favour of electrification would help to pressure the authorities into agreeing to
connect the shantytown to the city’s grid.

. . . that proved counterproductive: organized resistance in

the shantytowns and the cycle of reprisals
The disconnection campaigns organized by the private operator prompted a radical
mobilization for electricity in the shantytowns. The 1998–1999 Lydec activity
report acknowledged that ‘the consequence of these campaigns was: increasingly
ingenious take-offs which made fault-finding very difficult – Lydec agents now
being unable to go to certain districts’. The 2001 activity report also admitted that
‘the effectiveness [of the disconnection campaigns] remains very limited in terms
of impact on efficiency, owing to the speed with which the inhabitants reconnect’.
The scale of some disconnection operations reveals (or at least allows one to
guess) the extent of the phenomenon of electricity piracy in many shantytowns:
in Carrières Centrales on 16 December 2000, Lydec staff intervened in 10 cases
of fraud; in Chihane shantytown, on 17 January 2001, 600 metres of cable were
removed; in Thomas shantytown, on 22 March 2001, 2 tonnes of cable and 7 posts
were taken down (bimonthly report February–March 2001, ‘less-favoured
districts’ section).
The hostility of the inhabitants to intervention by Lydec in the shantytown
grew with the development of the disconnection operations, and continued even
after the principle of electrifying the shantytowns had been accepted. It was
during the intermediate phase, during which the shantytowns were awaiting legal
electrification, but were subject to the surveillance of the private utility staff, that
violence against employees of the private utility reached a peak. Several incidents

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illustrate the hardening of relations between the different actors and the logic of
reprisals taken by certain karianis.
On 29 June 1998, a complaint from the inhabitants of the Bradâa district in
Mohammedia was registered following an electricity cut caused by clandestine
connections to a shantytown. Following repairs to the damaged high-voltage
station, an operation to dismantle the ‘pirate’ connections was organized on 30 June.
During that operation, Lydec staff were threatened by the inhabitants (verbal
intimidation, threats with knives and stone throwing). Late in the afternoon of the
same day, a steel cable was intentionally thrown onto the electricity line serving
the district’s supply station, causing a power cut in the eastern part of the city: the
law faculty and surroundings, the technical college and surroundings, Monica
plage and surroundings, the Koudia and Oued el Makhazine housing estate, the
whole municipality of El Mansouria as far as Bouznika, the service stations on
the Casablanca-Rabat motorway and the Neffifikh–Ben Nabet junction (emer-
gency supply to the Bouznika royal palace). At 22.00 hours the supply came on
again. The next day, a 4-metre concrete reinforcement bar was again intentionally
thrown onto the Bradâa high-voltage junction at the same place ‘by way of
reprisal’. The high-voltage feeder finally had to be isolated from the grid. As one
of the staff of Lydec’s ‘less-favoured districts’ team pointed out: ‘we then entered
a guerrilla phase. It was a real declaration of war; there was a clear intent to
damage the company’s interests and an attempt to intimidate the staff.’
A letter from Lydec’s representative for the Anfa prefecture addressed to the
Governor of Greater Casablanca on 14 December 1999 made reference to incidents
occurring over the previous months and linked to electricity piracy in the shanty-
town of Bachkou. In particular, the letter recounts the difficulties faced by the
Lydec staff in repairing an electricity substation located near the shantytown: the
shantytown dwellers had in fact fixed their own padlock on the substation.
Following two consecutive fires at the public lighting switchboard (not designed
to handle the consumption of the shantytown dwellers), the shanty-town dwellers
gained access to the substation by forcing an entry and connected their cables
directly to the distribution board, part of which had already been completely
destroyed. The danger involved made the shanty-town dwellers’ action seem like
a commando operation: entry to these substations (where voltages up to 22,000
volts are present) is allowed only to staff equipped with special protective clothing
and who have received appropriate training. Following a renewed outbreak of
problems at several substations near Bachkou in 2001, Lydec organized round-
the-clock guarding of the shantytown supply points by paid police officers: eight
officers were employed, from 14 June 2001 to 10 July 2001, at the cost of
118,990 dirhams.
It seems that the disconnection campaigns helped to improve the circulation of
information between the various shantytowns in the city area, and thus gave rise
to myths that, according to their own statements, had a significant impact on the
actors’ plans.26 The shantytown dwellers were increasingly unwilling to accept
Lydec’s disconnections since they were aware of precedents showing that the

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private utility, even when assisted by the police, could be foiled by the inhabitants’
initiatives. Often, the interviewees had not actually taken part in the confrontations
with Lydec staff. They reported them rather as if they had taken place at an inde-
terminate time and place. The accounts of the conflicts with the private utility’s
representatives were also often punctuated with incredible episodes of chases,
and embellished with dramatic details, without any apparent need to prove the
accuracy of the reported facts.
The dismantling operations were also regarded as illegitimate, especially as
other shantytowns were allowed a connection to the city electricity grid. While the
interviewees often based their statements on concrete facts, more vague and more
approximate knowledge also played a part: hearsay and rumour contributed to
the formation of shantytown legends which also helped to develop the karianis’
expectations and urge them to consider new forms of action, solutions and outcomes:

My sister lives with her husband at Hay Hassani, at the Sidi Hajjaj camp,
and they have electricity over there: they have to pay for it but they have
light. They’re OK. Whereas here we pay, but Lydec comes and cuts us
off and we have to pay again. Here, the wires are always going up or
coming down. I don’t know why we have to suffer when everything’s
fine and civilised in other places.
(Hassna, El Qabla)
One of these days there’ll be a bust-up, because I know that in other
places where the people are pretty fearsome (wa‘rîn) and brazen (dasrîn),
around Sidi Moumen for example, the Lydec people don’t go there, and
if they’re sent they shake in their shoes.
(Abdellah, El Qabla)

The ongoing electrification process seems to have had the effect of authenticating
and certifying the effectiveness of the shantytown dwellers’ mobilization. In the
minds of the shantytown dwellers it helped to make their campaign more visible,
even if it was in fact an independent phenomenon. Indeed, it is true that the
disconnection campaigns started after the public authorities had given their agree-
ment in principle to the electrification of the Casablanca shantytowns and the
electrification had already begun. It is nonetheless also true that the violence of
the shantytown dwellers’ reaction to the disconnection campaigns gave the private
utility an additional argument to use with the administration to justify connecting
a particular shantytown to the electricity grid, in the context of a case-by-case
negotiation of each electrification.

Piracy turns professional

Several Lydec employees said that they were convinced that the organizers of the
electricity piracy intentionally kept alive the myth of the dangers of piracy by
dramatizing their action and exaggerating its risks, in order to preserve their

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monopoly and to consolidate mobilization in the shantytown. They nevertheless

acknowledged the pirates’ skill and spoke of them to their managers as true
professionals. The organizers of the piracy ‘know perfectly well what they’re
doing’, and ‘in any case are real electricians’ who ‘whatever you do, will always
get to [Lydec’s] wires somehow’. It was a far cry from makeshift splices carried
out with whatever was at hand, and the pirates’ head electricians did a professional
job, and sometimes even connected via underground branching networks (Lydec
activity report, ‘less-favoured districts’ section, September 1998–September 1999).
Thus the pirates’ organization was structured in a way that was unheard of in the
early days of electricity fraud in the shantytowns.
It is particularly difficult to date accurately the appearance of electricity theft
in any particular shantytown, and to find out who first ‘dared’ to do it: the inter-
viewees have confused memories of the beginnings of the phenomenon, and
proved unable to assess clearly the first time they had access to electricity;
surveys of the same family sometimes produced dates as far as ten years apart.
The vagueness of their memories is all the more remarkable since electricity theft
led to a very clear transformation of every-day life, and all the interviewees made
a very clear distinction between ‘before’ and ‘after’ the light:

When we took the electricity, it was a kind of relief (rtâhîna). We no longer

lived in fear of fires, or drug addicts and alcoholics with candles. I felt
mentally more rested and calm. The night was no longer an enemy, you see.
(Karim, El Qabla)
It wasn’t just light that came in with the [electricity] wires. We also got
television [TV], then a fridge, soaps, parties, laughing, relaxation, and
the kids could also do their homework. We started to live a little at least,
although we still have a very simple life.
(Hmed, El Khlifa)

The surveys recorded a memory of the days ‘without light’ as intolerable. If the
origins of the piracy seem to be indeterminate or hazy, it is because it began at an
uncertain time, made up of aborted advances, blocked initiatives, new starts and
was consolidated slowly and gradually, ‘silently’ according to Asef Bayat27
Piracy gradually became a part of the inhabitants’ strategies of getting by, and
ended up being endemic.
Looking at the architects of electricity theft, one realizes that those who
boasted of having instigated the phenomenon in the early 1990s – and they are
fairly numerous – were not the same as those who were directing and coordinating
the piracy just before Lydec’s electrification, and did not always move in the same
circles. In the early days of the piracy, the pioneers recount that they set up their
wires at night, and took them down at dawn so as to avoid attracting the authorities’
attention: their connections were perfunctory, and the quality of the supply often
very poor. Permanent and more sophisticated connections by the leaders of the

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professional piracy followed (according to the statements, around 1994–1995).

The ideological inspiration for electricity fraud and its rational development
across the whole shantytown were due to two different categories of actors.
Those who inspired the piracy were generally individuals who had a greater than
normal familiarity with political matters, and were known for their protesting
skills; agitators, ‘tough nuts’, used to expressing themselves in the language of
leadership and to confronting the authorities, at least verbally. The ‘doers’ were
technicians interested in the day-to-day full-scale application of piracy (which
was their main activity).
Theft developed first of all by imitation of the pioneers: it then spread by
capillary action under the influence of the ‘ideologues of the light’. At this stage,
it was not so much a collective mobilization as the sum of individual or inter-
individual initiatives (a group of neighbours connected the wires, a wire was
‘given’ to a friend or relation whose shack was not too far away). The shantytown
dwellers were looking for an immediate gain – access to electricity. But their
initiative also took on a political aspect, in that it also represented an act of
resistance to the rules imposed. However, it was in reaction to Lydec’s intransi-
gent procedures that the individual fraud operations began to aggregate together
in a coherent way, giving rise to a collective mobilization.
In the case of electricity piracy, the concept of the free ride does not exist, or
at least not in the same way as in the classic cases of fighting for a common good,
where the individual can seek to benefit from the positive spin-off of the
mobilization without taking part in it. Since the coveted good could be enjoyed
immediately after diversion, the shantytown dwellers had a specific, individual
and direct interest in the theft.
The more the shantytown’s sky seemed criss-crossed with wires, the more the
roofs of the shacks sported dish aerials, the less the pirates ran the risk of individual
penalties (collective sanctions generally being limited to disconnection campaigns,
as we have seen above). It is true that the proliferation of cables, in contrast to a
gathering crowd, was no guarantee of anonymity: the fixed installation was
always the pirates’Achilles’ heel. But the more this ‘evidence’ of the wires existed
on a large scale, the more those who connected were likely to get away with it.
With piracy, pressure of numbers comes into play and the case was perceived
differently from more conventional protest actions, such as demonstrations,
marches, or even riots: it was neither the individuals who were present in person, nor
the bodies or the voices that occupied the space to demonstrate the force of numbers,
but rather the cables that marked the perimeter within which the inhabitants
exerted and asserted their power. In contrast to the ‘street strategies’ analysed by
Olivier Fillieule in the French context, where the point is to make oneself seen
and heard to assert one’s legitimacy and show evidence of effectiveness,28 piracy
in the Moroccan shantytowns sneaked silently in.
It is true that the development of piracy can be regarded as counterproductive
as soon as consumption in the shantytowns reached such a level that it put undue

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pressure on an underpowered electricity grid. This counterproductivity and

the increasing number of incidents on the grid were nevertheless an essential
argument in the test of strength with the public authorities to obtain permission to
electrify the shantytowns (as the authorities’ agreement was needed for each
shantytown individually).
But let us return to the organization of the human resources involved in
electricity piracy. Just before Lydec’s electrification of the Carrières Centrales
began, the piracy was orchestrated by a community that the company’s staff
openly described as a real mafia. In each of the six districts of Carrières
Centrales, there was at least one full-time electrician. He generally had one or two
assistants or apprentices under his supervision. Every evening, even at weekends,
the pirate technicians organized a standby service, with at least one technician
available somewhere in the shantytown. If their ‘pirate electrician’ was absent, the
inhabitants of a district could therefore call upon the skills of those responsible
for other districts.
Several of those interviewed linked the introduction of this well-organized
system to the arrival of a young generation of electricians at Carrières Centrales.
Thus, in one district, it was after the first chief electrician (aged around 50 and
qualified at a vocational training centre) took his ‘retirement’ following a serious
accident – a potentially fatal electrical discharge – that his successors changed the
methods he had introduced. Until then, he had worked only with an apprentice in
his thirties that he had trained himself. The apprentice, when taking over the
district’s electrical affairs, adopted a new intervention policy: he passed on his
experience to not one but five or six young people (I was unable to ascertain
the exact number) so as to cover a larger area in a more systematic way.
Other shantytown dwellers, the treasurers, were made responsible for collecting
the funds. In this way I met Youssef who, for eighteen months, kept the accounts
of his district’s electrician, just before Lydec introduced electricity. His status as
a student of his superior, his position as a ‘child of the district’ (ould ed-derb), and
the friendship between his mother and the specialist’s mother made him an ideal
funds collector. The prominent role of emotional ties and acquaintances in the
formation of the networks of professional pirates shows that the mobilization
work was not merely a matter of logistics, as some simplified versions of the
mobilization of resources would have us believe, but that the mobilizations also
relied on social networks. If relationships of trust were established and the system
worked, it was also because it was made up of insiders, members of the shanty-
town who lived there, whom the consumers knew and met every day.
According to Youssef, the inhabitants had to pay a monthly price that was
basically fixed (between 40 and 100 dirhams on average in the various districts of
Carrières Centrales) plus an initial connection fee: this charge covered the
expenses of maintaining the pirate network but the shantytown dwellers often had
to bear substantial additional costs when Lydec staff removed or destroyed a large
amount of equipment, or if part of the equipment became unusable in the event
of a short circuit. The money might be collected every week or every month,

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depending on the shantytown dwellers’ ability to pay. Youssef stressed that there
was real mutual help between households, underlining the fraternal and generous
mentality of the karianis: although, for Françoise Navez-Bouchanine, it was rather
the particularly attractive cost–benefit ratio that created the solidarity between
households.29 According to Youssef, only the electricians received money in the
days of the piracy. He estimated their monthly wages at least 3,000 dirhams
(substantially above the guaranteed minimum wage of less than 1,900 dirhams).
We have seen that by participating in the electricity fraud, the shantytown
dwellers had immediate access to electricity, but that they were also subject to
effective management and collection mechanisms that underpinned the develop-
ment of an informal electrification process. As the piracy became more radical,
(electrical) power was concentrated in the hands of a small minority of participants
in the organization who held decisive resources that the other shantytown
dwellers did not.

The conversion of the pirates: legalization of status, economic

crisis and loss of prestige
Once the electrification process began, the leaders of the piracy were not totally
deprived of their specific status: some of them were indeed able to convert their
authority in the area of piracy into an institutionalized power. Given the illegal
occupancy of the land, it was impossible to establish ordinary individual contracts
with the shantytown dwellers. The exceptional nature of the electrification of the
kariens was dealt with by installing communal meters by block (comprising
between 20 and 50 shacks). The subscription contracts were signed only with
the ‘representative’ (amîn, plural oumanâ’) of each block, who was solely respon-
sible for paying the communal bill. The choice of such a system overcame the
difficulties arising from the exceptional nature of the shantytown dwellers’ right
to electricity, and dramatized the problematic character of that right. By refusing
the karianis the status of full customers with the right to an individuated treatment,
the firm and the public authorities highlighted the material and symbolic
marginality of the shantytowns. It is clear that the group payment option also
facilitated, from the practical point of view, Lydec’s money collection operation,
as the representatives were responsible for collecting the amount owed to the
company from the various households on the block, each with its own meter. As
payment for their collection work, they received a commission based on the
inhabitants’ consumption.
In theory, it was for the karianis to designate the oumanâ’. In practice, since
consultations were complicated to implement, the representatives were appointed
by the commune, based on the recommendations of the elected representative of
the local district. The oumanâ’ did not have to satisfy any technical requirement:
this enabled some illiterate people, incapable of reading the figures on the meters
but enjoying a reputation for honesty and rectitude in the community, to be
appointed. Very often, however, the choice was based not so much on the integrity

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of the individuals but rather on their past involvement in the piracy organization.
According to the private utility’s staff, the local elected representatives often
(if not systematically) recommended the former leaders of the illegal electrification.
The conversion of the pirates, whose status changed from orchestrators of the
electricity fraud to collaborators with Lydec, was no secret, either to the public
authorities or to the staff of the private utility. And yet they did not try to oppose a
development perceived by the inhabitants as a natural progression: the authority
and prominence of these people in the shantytown’s electrical affairs was already
assured. There was also the risk that they might become significant elements of
resistance to the normalization of the situation owing to the loss of earnings that
the process of legal electrification would otherwise have meant for them.
The electrification of the shantytown also brought the amateur pirates of the first
generation back into the limelight. After being excluded from the organization of
the mobilization by the piracy technicians, the ideologues of electricity diversion
made a comeback, heading the protest movement that grew up in Carrières
Centrales in the summer of 2003 among the oumanâ’ (although it did not enlist
much support from the population). With no status other than customers of the
company (the subscription contracts were signed with them alone), earning not a
fixed wage but a limited commission on electricity consumption,30 some repre-
sentatives refused for several months to pay Lydec the money that they had
collected from the inhabitants. It was the first generation of pirates, the politicized
kind, who led the protest movement whose progress we shall not analyse here, but
which revealed both the pirates’ aspirations and their inability to integrate into the
formal system in a way that was satisfactory to them, as the balance of power was
in fact so unfavourable.

The role of the local elected representatives

The local elected representatives (especially the presidents of the communes) played
a decisive role in the struggle to persuade the public authorities to accept the princi-
ple of the official electrification of the shantytowns. As intermediaries between the
authorities, the private utility and the shantytown dwellers, they endeavoured to
reconcile the divergent interests, trying to appear as good representatives in the eyes
of their electorate while maintaining good relations with government. Nevertheless,
the essential nature of the struggle for electricity in the shantytowns often forced the
councillors of the communes into direct opposition to the public authorities, in this
way making a substantial contribution to the evolution of the situation.
The struggle for electrification took place in a specific political context: the
opening-up – certainly relative but not without practical effects – of the field of
electoral competition in the 1990s. The organization of ballots where the voters’
choice was less dependent on government control helped to stimulate real
competition between candidates, and to change their tactics for canvassing the
voters. Voting became less automatically associated in the shantytowns with an

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emergency financial transaction and was increasingly subject to concrete action

by politicians, who had to defend the shantytown dwellers’ interests and demonstrate
their ability to improve their living standards, even if they had to defy the
authorities and act on the fringes of the law.
It will be remembered that in order to ensure that the disconnection campaigns
ran smoothly, the private utility had requested and obtained (in a more systematic
way from late 2000) the support of the police forces. Thus each week Lydec
notified the prefecture (and also the commune concerned) of the programme of
operations planned for the following seven days, so that the police or auxiliary
forces could be mobilized on the basis of a pre-established timetable. The
disconnection operations were organized very early in the morning (between
05.00 and 07.00), in order to avoid the risk of protest from too many inhabitants:
the aim was to be effective by acting as discreetly as possible, and to ‘strike’ while
the shantytown and its inhabitants were still asleep.
And yet, despite these precautions, it seems that fairly often (and almost
systematically in certain shantytowns) Lydec was unable to get near to the illegal
connections: when the officials arrived, shantytown dwellers had already met at the
site where it was planned to disconnect the wires and it was impossible to carry out
the work. The increasing number of aborted operations led the company to suspect
‘leaks’, mainly from the communes. The local elected representatives, notified of
the timetable of disconnection operations (faxed to the office of the president of the
commune) were tempted to pass on the information to their voters in order to gain
an obvious political advantage. This hypothesis rings all the truer since, in many
cases, these elected representative themselves lived in the shantytown and were
directly affected by Lydec’s action: there was a personal material motive as well as
the political advantage. Thereafter, the disconnection programmes were faxed only
to the office of the governor of the prefectures concerned.
It also seems that some commune presidents went so far as to organize the illegal
connection of their electorate, getting commune electricians to make illegal
connections. In a letter addressed by Lydec’s prefectoral official in Sidi Bernoussi-
Zenata to the president of a commune in that prefecture, dated 28 January 2002,
the prefectoral official accused the commune’s staff of entering a distribution
station where access was strictly reserved to authorized staff of the private utility.
In another shantytown attached to the same prefecture (but not the same commune),
after a disconnection operation in the presence of the local authorities and a
reinforced police brigade at 22.00 hours one evening in March 2001, the Lydec
staff found that the shantytown dwellers were reconnected the next day by a team
from the commune using a lift truck, in the presence of the elected representative
of the shantytown who claimed to have the governor’s permission.
Acceptance of the principle of electrification of the Casablanca shantytowns
substantially altered the margins for manoeuvre and the strategies of the local
elected representatives: indeed, they were placed at the centre of the procedure that
forbade Lydec from electrifying a shantytown until the commune president made

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an application on behalf of the inhabitants. This monopoly of initiative was of special

political importance in that there was high public demand for electrification.
It was, therefore, used by the local elected representatives or candidates during
their campaigns to attract and pressure their electorate and strengthen patronage
links, especially since it allowed them to repay collective electoral allegiance by
supplying a single service, rather than by allocating individual services.
The Lydec employees openly described electrification as being used as a tool
during elections, and the shantytown dwellers were perfectly well aware of this.
According to the statements of certain employees, the permits granted by the
outgoing presidents increased noticeably during campaign periods: a ‘grant’ of
light was liable to ensure re-election or access to a seat at national level.
Conversely, a delay in the electrification of a shantytown district could be a
punishment to electors who were insufficiently obedient. However, a shantytown
cannot be electrified without the written agreement of the governor of the
prefecture to which it is attached. Thus, the issue of connecting kariens to
the city’s electricity grid could also be used by the public authorities to favour the
re-election of a commune president or to promote him to a parliamentary post, or
on the other hand to challenge his legitimacy and damage his political career.

Conclusion
In conclusion, the shantytown dwellers, aware of the conflicting goals of the
actors they faced, took advantage of the situation and managed to retain their
progressively acquired benefits, transforming some of them into permanent gains.
The conviction that they were fighting for their legitimate right to electricity,
incited the inhabitants to evolve from rather quiet and basic piracy practices to
more organized, but also more violent, guerrilla-like forms of struggle.
The connection of the Casablanca shantytown dwellers to the city electric
network resulted from an objective alliance between Lydec and the karianis: it
was the localized consequence of an encounter between a logic of privatization
and that of a collective claim on infrastructure. Economic liberalization does not
only produce ‘premium networked spaces’:31 it also enables a differentiated
integration to the network from below. However, such an integration does not
automatically lead to a better assimilation in the city and its social fabric. It is true
that the electrification process contributed to a better recognition of the shanty-
town dwellers as city-dwellers (even if, as we saw, the technical solution chosen
for the electrification of kariens emphasized their symbolic disqualification).
Indeed, it may be considered as a new factor of exclusion: if it allows a better
quality of current, legal electrification is costlier than piracy. It transformed the
karianis from citizens to consumers by replacing the notion of absolute (human)
rights with that of a right to services. Thus the logic of privatization tended to
atomize the original mobilization by creating conflicting interests between those
who were able to afford the price of light and those who were poorer and who
would eventually be excluded from the network.

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Notes
1 ‘Karien’ is a common Moroccan dialect word for shantytown. It is a corruption of the
French word ‘carrières’ (quarries), from the name of the first large shantytown in
Casablanca, the ‘Carrières Centrales’. This shantytown – moved several times since –
thus keeps the name of the Roches Noires power station where the building’s
construction workers set up camp. They erected their temporary housing in an old
disused quarry near to the power station ‘centrale’. Hence the name ‘Karien Central’
(power station quarries). By extension, a ‘kariani’ is an inhabitant of the shantytowns,
a shanty-town dweller. See for example André Adam, Casablanca, essai sur la
transformation de la société marocaine au contact de l’Occident (Paris: éditions du
CNRS, 1972), 86.
2 In a 1997 decision of the Council of the Urban Community of Casablanca, Lydec was
designated as the manager of electricity and drinking water distribution and liquid
waste disposal for Casablanca and Mohammadia. Large international groups have shares
in its capital: the company is owned 35 per cent by Suez Environnement, 24 per cent
by Elyo, 18 per cent by Endesa Europe, 18 per cent by EDF International, and 5 per cent
by Agbarex.
3 Ben M’sik is one of the oldest and most important Casablanca shantytowns.
4 Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin, Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures,
Technological Mobilities and the Urban Condition (London and New York:
Routledge, 2001).
5 See Sylvy Jaglin, Services d’eau en Afrique subsaharienne, La fragmentation
urbain en question (Paris: CNRS Editions, 2005). See also Sarah Botton, ‘Les
“débranchés” des réseaux urbains d’eau et d’électricité à Buenos Aires: opportunité
commerciale ou risque pour les opérateurs’, Flux, n⬚ 56–7 (April– September, 2004).
6 Simon and Marvin, Splintering Urbanism, chapter 2.
7 Sylby Jaglin, Services d’eau, 62.
8 Abdelmajid Arrif, ‘Les compétences citadines à l’épreuve de l’exclusion : l’exemple
du bidonville de Ben M’Sik’, in L’urbain dans le monde arabe : politiques, instruments
et acteurs, ed. Pierre Signoles (Paris: CNRS, 1999), 300.
9 Shantytowns have long been considered by the public authorities as ‘vote-tanks’: their
inhabitants amenable to vote-buying as well as easily submitting to the ‘recommenda-
tions’ of the State agents. However, this characteristic tends to disappear as the
shantytown dwellers get used to voting, and as the traditional political patronage gives
way to a competitive one with the liberalization of the political sphere: see Lamia Zaki,
Pratiques politiques au bidonville, Casablanca (2000–2005), Thèse de Science
Politique (IEP de Paris, 2005).
10 Nadia Khouri-Dagher, ‘Crise de l’Etat-providence et ordre social au Caire’, Annuaire
de l’Afrique du Nord (1991), 35.
11 Michel De Certeau, L’invention du quotidien (Paris: Gallimard, 1990).
12 The administration repeatedly adopted an ambivalent stance in its policy relating to the
shantytowns; it seems that Lydec was never able to establish whether the government
electrification permits needed to undertake work had to be signed by the governor of
the prefecture or whether the signature of the commune president was a sufficient legal
guarantee. ‘When in doubt’ (as a manager in the ‘less-favoured districts’ section put it),
the company always endeavoured to obtain both signatures before starting on the
electrification of a shantytown.
13 See for example Myriam Catusse, ‘L’entrée en politique des entrepreneurs au Maroc:
libéralisation économique et réforme de l’ordre politique’, thesis defended at the
University of Aix-Marseille (2000); Béatrice Hibou and Mohammed Tozy, ‘Une
lecture d’anthropologie politique de la corruption au Maroc: fondement historique

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d’une prise de liberté avec le droit’, Tiers-Monde, Vol. 41, No. 161 (January–March
2000); Guilain Denoeux, ‘Understanding Morocco’s ‘sanitation campaign’, Journal of
North African Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Spring 1998). In their analysis of the Moroccan
sanitization campaign, the authors show how the increasing prominence of a socio-
economic group (that of the entrepreneurs), which was acquiring a threatening political
weight, constituted one of the reasons that induced the Government to act. Tolerance,
or even encouragement, of illicit practices had until then been one of the authorities’
means of co-opting economic elites, and most of these were reintroduced after
the campaign.
14 The company owns the power until it reaches the customer, as well as the electrical
distribution equipment.
15 One shantytown district, El Qabla, was not included in the electrification process
because its inhabitants were expected very soon to be moved to a new lot of social
housing nearing completion.
16 Here we keep in mind the warning by Michel Dobry, who denounces ‘the old scheme
explaining, in a superbly circular way, the emergence of collective action, mobilization
or protest by the miracle of prior knowledge of the action’. See Michel Dobry, ‘Les
causalités de l’improbable et du probable: notes à propos des manifestations de 1989
en Europe centrale et orientale’, Cultures et conflits, 17 (Spring 1995): 116. One
should not restrict oneself to trying to identify determining factors upstream of the
phenomena to be explained. Neither is electricity theft regarded as a ‘transparent’,
immediately intelligible and natural form of mobilization: electricity theft is viewed as
a process resulting from the interaction of many factors and action by actors of several
types. Nonetheless, the awareness of the unbearable nature of ‘life in the shadows’
(l-hayât f-dlâm), as one interviewee put it, is one of the factors behind the mobiliza-
tion, and is also explained, as we shall see, by a specific political context.
17 William A. Gamson, Bruce Firemna and Steven Rytina, Encounters with Unjust
Authority (Homewood, IL: The Dorsey Press, 1982), 7.
18 Serge Paugam, La disqualification sociale : essai sur la nouvelle pauvreté (Paris: PUF,
1997), 147.
19 Norbert Elias shows that outsiders are viewed as a lower quality of human: ‘as long as
the power differential remains large and submission inevitable, groups of intruders
experience their power inferiority emotionally as a sign of human inferiority.’
See Norbert Elias and John L. Scotson, Logiques de l’exclusion : enquête sociologique
au cœur des problèmes d’une communauté (Paris: Fayard, 1997), 29, 42.
20 David Snow and Robert Benford, ‘Ideology, frame resonance, and participant
mobilization’, in From Structure to Action: Comparing Social Movement Research
across Cultures, ed. B. Klandermans, H. Kriesi , S. Tarrow (Greenwich, CT: JAI, 1988).
21 Maryvonne David-Jougneau, Le dissident et l’institution, ou Alice au pays des normes
(Paris: L’Harmattan, 1989), 94.
22 Olivier Fillieule and Cécile Péchu, Lutter ensemble : les théories de l’action collective
(Paris: L’Harmattan, 1993), 163–4.
23 This accords with what William Gamson showed in his analysis on the political
proficiency of ordinary Americans (Encounters with Unjust Authority).
24 Mounia Bennani-Chraïbi and Olivier Fillieule, ‘Exit, voice, loyalty et bien d’autres
choses encore . . .’, in Résistances et protestations dans les sociétés musulmanes,
ed. Mounia Bennani Chraïbi and Olivier Fillieule (Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 2003), 90.
25 The procedure to combat fraud became systematic under the ‘tough action’ policy adopted
after the meeting of the Directorate-General in March 2001. The first dismantling opera-
tions took place in 1998. They became more frequent from the end of 2000. In 2001,
220 illegal connections were cut off, or more than double the number carried out
the previous year. It was in the prefecture of Aïn Sebaâ-Hay Mohammadi that the
disconnection programmes were busiest (ten operations planned from 2 October to

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1 November 2001; seven from 8 to 15 November; fifteen from 26 December 2001 to

31 January 2002).
26 Thus information plays an important role in the unfolding of the action, in that the ‘fate
of local mobilization seems to depend to a large extent on information on what is
happening (or could happen) at other similar sites.’ See Dobry, ‘Les causalités de
l’improbable et du probable’, 120.
27 Asef Bayat, Street Politics: Poor People’s Movements in Iran (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1997).
28 Olivier Fillieule, Stratégies de la rue : les manifestations en France (Paris: Presses de
Sciences Po, 1997).
29 Françoise Navez-Bouchanine (ed.), Bilan empirique, étude des attitudes des populations
face aux interventions sur les bidonvilles (Rabat: ANHI, June 2001), 88.
30 The representatives are entitled to a margin between the price per kilowatt-hour that
they have to pay Lydec and the rate they charge the consumers. At Carrières Centrales,
the representatives pay 0.87 dirhams per kilowatt-hour consumed, but charge the
shanty-town dwellers 1 dirham per kilowatt-hour. Each meter at the head of the street
(a communal meter for each block of inhabitants) records consumption of between
600 and 1,500 kilowatt-hours per month: therefore, representatives earn between
100 and 200 dirhams (10–20 euros) per block that they are responsible for, over half of
them being responsible for more than one block.
31 Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin, Splintering Urbanism.

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 Part III

PEASANTS AND NOMADS

 6
RESISTING THE NEW STATE
The rural poor, land and modernity in Iran,
1921–1941

Stephanie Cronin

In the two decades between his arrival in power in 1921 via a coup d’état and
his abdication in 1941, Riza Shah presided over a period of profound political,
economic and social change in Iran, unprecedented in its scope and in its pace.
Throughout the country the rural poor, both the settled peasants and the pastoral
nomads, were deeply affected by the upheavals unleashed by the regime’s choice
of authoritarian state-building and modernization based on European models.
Both nomads and peasants suffered materially as a consequence of the general
development policies implemented by the new state and by the khans’ and the
landowners’ adoption of the new state’s ideological outlook, especially its attitude
towards private property, and the resulting efforts by rural elites to assert their
personal and absolute ownership over resources hitherto held collectively or contin-
gently. However, contrary to the conventional assumptions of rural passivity,
held by both Western scholarship and Iranian nationalism, peasant and nomad
communities in fact generated a variety of active responses to the regime’s initiatives,
both on their own account and in combination with other social forces, aimed at
defending themselves and resisting unfavourable changes in their relations with
landlords and state officials. These responses varied in both character and dura-
tion. Sharecroppers formed committees and made collective bids to improve the
terms of their contracts with landowners, in at least one case generating a move-
ment which affected a number of villages and lasted over several years. Peasants
and nomads presented petitions to the Majlis and the shah outlining their grievances
and asking for redress, took their complaints to the press, and occasionally
managed to launch actions against their landlords in court. In the late 1920s, as
the regime entered a radical phase of rapid centralization and Westernization,
sections of the still armed and mobile nomadic tribes, supported by a groundswell
of peasant resentment, launched uprisings directed against both the new authorities
and their own aristocracies. During the 1930s, as the weight of the new state
became heavier, those to whom the option was available developed a strategy of

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avoidance based on an almost institutionalized system of bribery, while the most

pauperized sections of particularly the nomadic poor, as economic conditions in
the countryside deteriorated, resorted to banditry and smuggling as strategies
of resistance and survival. The rural poor appear to have been influenced in
formulating these responses by the changes in their own circumstances, by their
experiences as migrant workers, and by new ideas transmitted both by members
of their own communities who had been drawn into the urban milieu and by
dissident elements of their own ruling elites. These processes appear to have been
particularly advanced in the south of the country and to have had a marked impact
on southern tribal confederations such as the Bakhtiyari, perhaps as a result of
these groups’ extensive involvement as labourers in the oil industry and the
advanced integration of their khans into the political and economic elite.1

Methods and theory

Efforts to excavate the experience of the rural poor in Iran have been beset both
by methodological difficulties and by theoretical and ideological obstacles.
Although it has been argued recently that a critical re-reading of traditional texts
may yield material with which to reconstruct the history of non-elite groups, both
in Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East,2 yet it remains clear that the sparsity of
sources constitutes a serious problem. Archival research in Iran, itself a recent
phenomenon, has so far failed to locate significant documentation in which the
rural poor have themselves directly recorded and articulated their history.3
Theoretical and ideological assumptions have also hindered and distorted research
into the responses of the rural poor in Iran to the ‘top-down modernization’ which
characterized the early Pahlavi period. Western scholarship has been largely
uninterested in the conditions of the rural poor in Iran and its indifference was
reinforced by the inclinations of the nationalist elite in power in Iran till 1979.4
The Pahlavi elite, overwhelmingly urban with its economic base remaining in
absentee landlordism until the land reform of the early 1960s, was eager to
embrace, in this respect if in no other, Marx’s characterization of the peasantry as
so many sacks of potatoes.5 The inclinations of both scholarship and politics have,
therefore, tended to combine to resist any notion of peasants and nomads as active
agents in the broad historical processes of which they were central components
but have rather preferred to see the rural poor purely as so much fodder for the
execution of the state’s fiscal and military policies.
The account which follows, although based on fragmentary sources, attempts
to begin to piece together a picture of the impact of the changes of the early
Pahlavi period on various categories of the rural poor. It will focus in particular
on the range of actual responses generated by the peasants and nomads them-
selves to the changes of these years and such efforts as they were able to make
to defend their own conditions and advance their own interests, vis-à-vis both
landlord and khan and the new state.

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Rural discontent and unrest has traditionally been conceptualized purely in

terms of actual peasant rebellion, usually prolonged and fairly large-scale,
typically accompanied by a campaign of violence against landlords and the
slaughter of their agents. In Iran, with the partial exception of the Caspian
provinces, this dramatic dimension of rural protest has been largely absent.6 The
lack of widespread and violent peasant uprisings in Iran, in the twentieth century
and earlier, has encouraged an assumption that the peasantry was most inclined
to resort to a strategy of passive endurance, ‘a certain technique of fatalism’,7 a
strategy mitigated by occasional flight, either to more remote regions or, later,
away from the land altogether, and, until this option was closed down in the late
1920s, partial or complete renomadization.
Regarding the inter-war decades in particular, although a time when profound
changes were affecting rural Iran, scholarly research has, in general, been largely
content to see the countryside and its population through the eyes of urban
nationalism, as a vast hinterland primitive in outlook and mired in stagnation.
Even sympathetic accounts of the hardships and privations of peasant life in this
period have largely depicted the peasantry as passive, apathetic and apolitical
or conservative.
Recent scholarship, however, has challenged both this general historical
assumption of peasant passivity in Iran and the notion that peasant resistance only
or most importantly manifests itself through sustained and violent rebellion.8 In
an early attempt to explain the general absence of peasant rebellion in Iran,
Farhad Kazemi and Ervand Abrahamian emphasized that such an absence should
not be taken to imply an acceptance of the established order. On the contrary,
they drew attention to evidence of the intense hatred for the landlord which the
peasant only dared express privately and obliquely and the prevalence of village
riots and local protests, and the utilization of ‘weapons of the weak’, including
concealment of the crop, tax evasion, withholding rents, the protection of outlaws
and even the taking of sanctuary in town mosques.9 In her recent study of the
constitutional period, Janet Afary has uncovered significant rural dimensions to
the radical activism of the period. These included peasant protests and strikes,
petitions and letters by and on behalf of the peasants to newspapers and Majlis
delegates, the formation of rural anjumans (assemblies), and actual rebellions in
the more prosperous areas of Gilan and Azarbayjan.10 In an account of the land
reform of the early 1960s, Mohammad Gholi Majd has documented extraordinary
levels of anti-landlord violence and peasant seizure and occupation of landowners’
estates and Ahmad Ashraf and Shaul Bakhash have both discussed the struggles
which broke out over land in the years immediately after the 1979 revolution.11
Interest in early Pahlavi Iran, however, has tended to remain focused on state
policy and very little research has been carried out into the actual impact of the
legislative, political and economic changes of the period on the rural population
in general.12 Nonetheless, despite the still primitive state of research it is still
clear that, as Afary and Majd have observed in relation to the upheavals of the

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constitutional and ‘White’ revolutions,13 so too the rapid changes of the early
Pahlavi period evoked a range of active responses from the rural poor themselves,
both settled peasants and pastoral nomads. There is considerable evidence that
they both acutely perceived the significance of the changes in their circumstances,
and attempted to intervene to defend themselves and modify the terms of their
relationship with landlord and state. They resented the enhancements of private
property rights and even occasionally rejected in principle the very foundation of
landlord power.

The agrarian structure

The early Pahlavi period was a time of profound change in the Iranian countryside.
During these years, although there was substantial overall population growth and
a degree of shift to the urban and industrial sectors, the vast majority of the
Iranian people continued to live in the rural areas. The rural population was made
up of an elite of tribal khans and landlords and a mass of tribally organized
pastoral nomads, semi-settled cultivators and, the largest group, settled peasant
cultivators, both tribal and non-tribal.14 Landlords of any size were almost always
absentee and urban-based, and even the khans were increasingly divorced from
their pastoral followers, successfully integrating themselves into the urban elite. The
settled peasantry was, in particular, also highly stratified internally, and consisted
of a small number of peasant proprietors, sharecroppers who had a customary
right (nasaq) to cultivate a subsistence plot of land, and a growing number of
landless agricultural labourers who had no such right. The distinction between
those who possessed a nasaq and those who did not was acute.15 Set against the
growing stratification were mechanisms which tended to promote solidarity such
as the bunah, a peasant work team organized to carry out agricultural tasks.16
Sometimes, too, tribal ties persisted among the settled peasantry. The rural
population faced dramatically varying economic and social conditions, ranging
from the increasing penetration of capitalist relations to the persistence of slave
raiding and trafficking on areas abutting the Gulf coast.17
Although the nationalist elite, itself an almost exclusively urban phenomenon,
was little interested in agricultural development or the needs of the countryside,
yet the rural population was profoundly affected by the legal, economic, political
and social changes of the period. The legislation concerning land ownership
transformed the context within which landlords and peasants, and khans and
nomads, conducted their relations. These legal changes, combined with the
economic policies adopted by the regime, especially the decision to raise internal
resources for development through indirect taxes, namely monopolies on tea and
sugar, drove down living standards and resulted in widespread pauperization. The
state’s rapid modernization drive, including measures such as conscription, which
fell most heavily on the settled peasantry, and nomadic settlement, with its
devastating effect on the pastoral economy, complicated and made vastly more
burdensome the rural poor’s relationship with urban and official Iran.18

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 IRAN 1921–1941

The new regime of Riza Shah, in accordance with its broad modernist
approach, adopted étatiste economic policies and concentrated its efforts on the
development of modern industry and the construction of nationwide systems of
communication, roads, ports and, most grandiosely, the Trans-Iranian railway. Its
concerns regarding the rural areas were largely focused on the establishment of
security and the enforcement of political compliance. The landowning classes,
however, had become, since the previous century, increasingly preoccupied with
the need to clarify and consolidate their rights over their property, especially their
landed property. During the 1920s and 1930s this older landed elite was rein-
forced by groups and individuals associated with the new regime, including the
upper echelons of army officers and Riza Shah himself, who rapidly translated
their new political power into landed wealth. Together these groups embarked on
a process of solidifying and enhancing landlordism throughout Iran. Riza Shah,
personally becoming the largest landowner in the country, constructed a regime
which was solidly pro-landlord and the Majlis, dominated by landlords, passed
legislation consolidating their rights.
Since the nineteenth century, an overall trend had emerged towards the clearer
recognition of absolute private property in land, a trend which was accompanied
by the inexorable commercialization of land.19 These developments were driven
by Iran’s increasing involvement with the international economy, the resulting
shift to cash crops and the increasing profitability of agriculture. The Constitution
of 1906 explicitly recognized the inviolability of private property and, after 1921,
the new Pahlavi state passed legislation which deepened and enhanced these
processes. Beginning in 1922, and then in a cluster between 1928 and 1932, the
Majlis passed laws providing for the legal registration of property and title-deeds
while the new Civil Code reinforced concepts and notions of absolute ownership
of land. Landlordism also prospered on the basis of other legislation during these
years. After 1924 the richer landlords were able to benefit from the sale of
state lands, and the abolition of the land tax in 1934, and its replacement by a
tax on products of the land, shifted the burden of taxation from the landowner to
the peasant.20
In tandem with its overall failure at renovation, the Iranian state had, in the
nineteenth century, formulated no land legislation to address the existing chaos in
land tenure, despite the example of the Ottoman Empire which had, in 1858,
passed a comprehensive Land Law.21 By the early twentieth century, property
rights in Iran remained often contingent, unclear, complicated and disputed.22 The
establishment and enforcement by the state of new legal concepts governing
private property was not a straightforward matter and it appears to have been
precisely as a consequence of the regime’s efforts to clarify property rights
through legislation that many disputes over land ownership came to a head. The
battles over land ownership between the shah himself and members of the old
elite have recently received attention,23 but the consequence of the legislation in
producing and aggravating conflict between landlords and peasants and between
khans and nomads, is less well-known.

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 STEPHANIE CRONIN

Struggles over property rights

One of the major issues animating rural activism has been, in all historical
circumstances, peasant land-hunger. Since the early Pahlavi years in Iran
were a period in which attitudes towards private property, and actual patterns
of landownership, were transformed, questions naturally arise concerning the
peasantry’s attitude to the land legislation of the time. Indeed, the best docu-
mented example that has survived of peasant activism in this period details their
rejection of landlord claims of ownership. The nomadic pastoralists too rejected,
overtly and sometimes violently, their khans’ assertion of their absolute and
personal ownership of tribal pastures. In fact the entire Riza Shah period may
be seen as one characterized by struggles over land, sometimes covert and sub-
terranean, sometimes open, struggles into which many disparate and conflicting
elements entered, sometimes on their own behalf and sometimes in uneasy alliance.
These struggles not only took place within the elite, principally between the shah
and other landowners, but also between the elite and various subaltern rural groups,
including peasants and pastoral nomads, both sides utilizing a wide range of
legal and extra-legal methods: the courts; petitions and appeals to the authorities;
collective disobedience; arbitrary state and landlord violence and peasant resistance;
and armed nomadic uprising.
Rural protest in the early Pahlavi period did not, however, centre only on control
and ownership of land. There is evidence also of resistance to the growing financial,
military and cultural impositions of the new state from peasants and the semi-
settled, as well as in the better-known form of armed nomadic rebellion. The
land registration legislation was perceived as threatening by both peasants and
nomads. Similarly, the new policies of conscription, disarmament and the intro-
duction of state monopolies on cash crops such as opium and tobacco provoked
intense hostility among peasants and nomads alike, sometimes separately but
occasionally, in defiance of conventions speaking of their essential conflict, in
cooperation. Furthermore, although peasant hatred of their landlords may be
assumed as elemental, it also appears that the changes of the period resulted in an
accelerated development of class consciousness among the tribal nomads. As
tribal cohesion disintegrated in face of the assertion of the power of the new state,
the vertical ties of patronage linking khan and nomad gave way to a sense of
disillusion and betrayal on the part of the nomadic population and occasionally
to a sense of real class hatred towards their khans. Finally, as conditions in the
countryside deteriorated, the most marginal and pauperized among the rural poor
abandoned collective action altogether and increasingly resorted to banditry as an
individual or small-scale strategy of avoidance and resistance.

Landlords, tenants and nomads

Although ideas of land reform had circulated during the constitutional period,
such notions were rejected by the post-1921 regime.24 Indeed, early Pahlavi Iran

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experienced rather the reverse of a land reform, seeing an acceleration of the

concentration of ownership in fewer and fewer hands. The land registration
legislation inaugurated a concerted land grab by the elite in general and, most
spectacularly, by the shah himself, who possessed sufficient political and military
resources to make himself by far the largest individual landowner in the country.
Although the shah’s personal mania for land acquisition was often at the expense
of individual elite families, his regime was clearly a landlord regime and both
landlordism and the landowning class as a whole emerged from these years with
their position strengthened and placed on solid legal foundations.
In general, the changes which enhanced the position of the landlords were,
directly or indirectly, at the expense of the peasants and pastoralists and their
assertion of their new rights had a deep impact on the relations of landlords with
their peasants and of khans with their nomadic followers. Although superficially
appearing only to confirm and legalize existing arrangements, in fact the legislation
allowed landlords to establish outright and absolute ownership, where previously
ownership had been vague, contingent and theoretically temporary, of landed
estates to which their title was doubtful or even non-existent. The rich and
influential were successful in registering land in their own names even where the
peasants claimed to have titles to the land in question, and in converting posses-
sion acquired by force into an absolute title,25 the rural poor, whether settled
cultivators, semi-nomadic or nomadic pastoralists, losing whatever customary
rights they may have believed themselves to have possessed in relation to the land
they worked. The peasantry also appears to have lost a variety of broader customary
rights, for example, concerning remission of obligation to the landowner in times
of natural disaster.
The consolidation and enhancement of landlordism under Riza Shah was not,
however, accomplished without a struggle and these years provide examples,
fragmentary but tantalizing, of resistance from both the settled and the nomadic
rural poor. Of course the evidence for peasant activism is sparse and regionally
uneven. Such data as exists is largely drawn from British diplomatic archives and
reflects the British interest in southern Iran.26 However it is likely that neither the
sparseness of the evidence nor its regional concentration reflects the true incidence of
peasant activism but rather the particular character of the available source material.
That the only trace of a movement as extensive and of such duration as that
among the settled Bakhtiyari of Chahar Mahal may now be found in a single
report by a British consul and a brief Persian account indicates that the absence
of sources does not necessarily indicate an absence of movements.27 Nonetheless
on the basis of such fragmentary evidence as has been located to date, it is possi-
ble to begin to reconstruct an account of a case of a peasant resistance movement
of considerable local significance which was able to maintain itself over a period
of several years. It is reasonable to assume that the reactions of the Bakhtiyari
peasants were not unique. Although their movement is the only well-documented
and sustained one to have come to light so far, it has a parallel in a similar episode

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which occurred in the southern province of Kirman at around the same time, and
of which traces may be found in the diaries of the British consul.28
The only sustained peasant movement of the Riza Shah period of which a picture
of any detail exists is that which arose in the mid-1920s among the settled peasantry
of Chahar Mahal, a rich agricultural region on the fringes of the Bakhtiyari
summer pastures.29 The peasants were themselves of Bakhtiyari origin, and their
landlords were the great khans of the Bakhtiyari confederation. A process of
sedentarization had been underway since the late nineteenth century among
pastoral nomads throughout Iran, including the Bakhtiyari, and these recently
settled clans, although they had given up their nomadic way of life, still retained
their tribal networks. Such tribal settlements seem to have possessed a readier
solidarity than non-tribal peasant communities, and this may have facilitated a
higher level of communal action. In fact most of the extant examples of peasant
resistance from this period, including that of the settled Khamsah in 1929 and
the semi-settled Surkhi between 1926 and 1929, as well as the Bakhtiyari, arose
from such communities of tribally organized cultivators. It may be that such recently
settled tribal societies remained attached to the older communal traditions typical
of nomadic pastoralism, and brought with them to their settlements an idealized
memory of more democratic tribal customs. They may have been less accustomed to
the relations prevailing between landlord and peasant, typically harsher and more
distant than those between khan and nomad, and less inclined to tolerate the
assertion of private property over communal ownership. Indeed the very strength of
existing horizontal ties and communal solidarity, persisting in changing conditions,
seems to have encouraged collective action and an anti-landlord consciousness,
and even to have grown in importance as the social and economic distance
between themselves and their khan-landlords increased.

The Chahar Mahal movement

Open discontent and anti-landlord action began among the Bakhtiyari peasantry
in one or two villages in Chahar Mahal in 1924. In 1928 it became an open
revolt when the peasants in a large number of the khans’ villages rejected the
khans’ authority, claimed that the land and the water belonged to God, and that the
produce of the land belonged to those who worked the land, namely, themselves.30
They refused to pay anything to the khans or to give them the share of the
produce customarily due to them. As the action spread, a committee of peasants
was formed which began to direct the movement. This committee adopted a
programme of a rather radical complexion31 and from this point on the peasants
began to demonstrate an openly hostile attitude towards their landlords, the
Bakhtiyari khans. Nonetheless the movement remained peaceful and defensive,
only threatening violence when it was itself threatened.
The peasant committee was composed chiefly of ex-servants of the khans, who
had been dismissed by the khans for various reasons in the past and who had
visited Isfahan and Tehran and ‘imbibed new ideas of freedom and equality, which

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they proceeded to impart to the villagers’.32 The committee was particularly active
in helping the peasants launch actions against the khans in the newly established
adliyyah (secular) courts.33
At this stage the peasant movement appears to have been deriving some impetus
from its receipt of definite official encouragement, this encouragement being
offered in the context of the political struggle then going on between the khans
and the government. The khans in fact had the unusual experience of finding
themselves, temporarily at least, powerless against their peasants, who received a
consistently sympathetic hearing from the authorities. During the early summer
of 1928 some members of the committee went to Tehran and were actually
received by the prime minister. At this point, however, the government, reflecting
on the possible implications of its stance, began to retreat and sent a commission to
Chahar Mahal to investigate the conflict. This commission examined the peasants’
grievances and the khans’ title to the land in dispute, and in July submitted their
report which, in regard to almost all the villages, was in favour of the khans. The
peasants nevertheless refused to accept the decisions of the commission, with the
result that Tehran replaced the civil governor of Chahar Mahal with a military
officer, who was authorized to use force if necessary to oblige the peasants to
abide by the decisions of the commission and to pay the landlords what they
claimed. The military governor was determined to carry out his instructions, and
with his help the khans again began to receive from their peasants the payments
in kind and cash to which they believed themselves entitled as landowners.34
Although the government had initially supported the peasants as a tactic to
weaken the Bakhtiyari khans, an awareness appears quickly to have spread
through the landowning elite at large and to Riza Shah himself of the danger
of any permanent peasant success against the khans, especially in stimulating
peasants elsewhere to try to emulate their actions. It was probably only this
danger that induced the shah finally to uphold the khans’ rights as landowners.
The context for the emergence of a peasant movement on this scale, one which
was able to leave an archival record, was provided by the ongoing struggle between
the Bakhtiyari khans, the landowners in this case, and the new state.35 This conflict
within the elite, and particularly the encouragement which the state initially gave
to the peasants against the khans, opened up a gap which allowed the movement to
grow and take shape. Briefly flourishing before the shah took fright at its implica-
tions, this movement allows a glimpse of what was perhaps the real attitude
commonly held by peasants towards their landlords, an attitude typically concealed
by the customary deference imposed by their usual powerlessness.
It may be argued that the Chahar Mahal movement was simply another chapter
in an endemic struggle between sharecroppers and landowners over their respective
shares of the crop, perhaps representing an assertion, in a favourable political
conjuncture, of persistent subaltern notions of legitimacy and rights. It appears
that such struggles had been intensifying since the late nineteenth century, in
tandem with the growing commercialization and profitability of agriculture, with
landlords exerting growing pressure on their peasants in the effort to extract

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a greater surplus in the form of an increased share of the crop. It may also be
argued, however, that this movement demonstrated certain novel features stimulated
by the rapidly growing salience of modern concepts of private property in land.
The Chahar Mahal movement did not express itself in modern ideological
terms. Its categorical rejection of the landlord’s claim to a share of the produce of
the peasants’ labour is striking but this rejection was neither random nor arbitrary
but rather appears to have been based on the peasants’ interpretation of their
rights under customary sharecropping contracts. Typically such contracts took
notional account of five elements in dividing the crop: land, water, draught
animals, seed and labour. The produce, at least in theory, was divided according
to one share per provider of each element.36 Themselves providing the animals,
seed and labour, the peasants refused to accept the landlord as provider of the
remaining two, land and water, preferring to view these as bestowed by God, and
therefore denied the landlord any share of the crop. This may well have been a
view about legitimate claims traditionally held by sharecropping peasants which
they had previously never possessed the power to articulate, or it may have been a
new interpretation, provoked by the novel and menacing assertion, by landowners
and the state, of their own absolute rights to private property. Although the
Chahar Mahal movement may have begun as simply a routine struggle between
landlords and sharecroppers, yet the coincidence of the spread and radicalization
of this movement in 1928, exactly as the new land legislation was passed by the
Majlis, is striking.
Although the movement among the Bakhtiyari peasants of Chahar Mahal was
the most prolonged and well organized of the period, it was neither isolated
nor unique. Coterminous with the beginning of the Chahar Mahal movement a
similar, though more obscure struggle broke out between sharecroppers and
landlords in the southern province of Kirman.37 In Kirman town the peasants
had established a council of their own called the anjuman-i ranjbar (council of
toilers).38 As in the case of the agreements in Chahar Mahal, so, according to the
practice in force at Kirman, the produce was divided between landowner and
peasant according to a fixed division. A peasant who worked on land owned by a
landlord received 30 per cent of the produce for himself in exchange for the
labour and animals necessary for cultivation while the remaining 70 per cent went
to the landowner who provided seed and water and claimed ownership of the land
From the beginning of the cultivation year, 21 September 1924, the sharecroppers
represented in the anjuman-i ranjbar made a concerted attempt to increase the
share of the crop they were able to retain. In this case, however, the political
context was different and the option of exploiting local power struggles was not
available. The peasants’ effort failed, their movement collapsed and they were
obliged to resume working according to the old agreements. Nonetheless their
agitation galvanized another dimension of rural conflict. A rural stratum even
lower and more impoverished than the peasants, the khushnishin, agricultural
labourers who lacked the sharecroppers’ cultivation rights and who were

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employed casually and seasonally by them, appear to have been stimulated to

make demands for higher wages, in cash and kind, and refused to work for the
peasants when their demands were rejected.39

Rural ideology and consciousness

During the 1920s the world of the rural poor was being profoundly shaken both
by the rapid political and economic changes of the period and by the ideological
innovations which accompanied them. The isolation of the rural areas was
breaking down, new ideas were circulating more widely and reaching even small
provincial towns and villages, and penetrating ever more subaltern social levels.
Broad economic forces were beginning to transform the position of the peasantry
and, together with the new policies of the regime such as military and labour
conscription, were leading to much greater contact between the countryside and
the town. The commercialization of land continued apace, further worsening
the condition of the small peasantry who increasingly lost, through apparently
impersonal economic forces, any small parcels of land they may have actually
owned, reducing them to struggling for sharecropping rights or even to complete
landlessness. The sharecropping peasant was also deeply affected by the dramatic
shift taking place towards the production for export of cash crops such as opium,
cotton, tobacco and silk, and the development of market and monetary relationships
in the countryside, and their own frequent transformation into wage-labourers. In
some parts of the country, direct monetary exchange between merchants and
peasants was becoming common, and there was an increase in pre-harvest sales
of crops, whereby merchants made cash advances to producers. All these devel-
opments were invariably accompanied by a rise in rural indebtedness, increasing
stratification within rural communities and a growth in landlessness and immis-
erization. These processes, however, were uneven and traditional subsistence
share-cropping, with payment in kind, persisted alongside the intrusion of the
market economy.40 In general, however, rural areas were being drawn inexorably
into the political, economic and ideological orbit of the provincial urban centres.
An especially significant development was the growing pattern of labour migration,
especially in the inter-war decades, for southern Iran. The developing crisis in
the countryside, among the peasantry but in a sharper form among the pastoral
nomads, producing the beginning of a flight from the land, encouraged where
employment could be found in the new industrial enterprises, particularly the oil
fields and the Trans-Iranian railway.
In the midst of these upheavals, the rural poor were increasingly exposed to
new ideas. Frequently these new ideas emanated from the modern state itself
and from elements among the nationalist elite. The land legislation of the 1920s
and early 1930s was accompanied by rapid and profound changes in ideas about
the nature of ownership and the rights attached to private property. Not only the
landed elite, but the peasantry too seems to have been affected by these new ideas

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and to have been stimulated to consider and perhaps reassess their own position.
As well as promoting sharpened concepts of private property, these years also saw
the greater diffusion of discussions, which had begun during the constitutional
period, about the beneficial effects of ameliorating the lot of the peasantry and of
land reform. One striking example of the widening circulation of such ideas,
again drawn from the Bakhtiyari, comes with the appearance of the Sitarah-i
Bakhtiyari (the Bakhtiyari Star), an organization established at the beginning of
the 1920s by the younger generation of khans.41
The Sitarah-i Bakhtiyari formulated a comprehensive programme of political
and social change, including proposals about land reform and the welfare and
rights of peasants and workers, published the programme in pamphlet form and
distributed it openly.42 These ideas had their immediate source among elite
reforming circles in Isfahan and Tehran, and their origins in the ideas of the old
Democrat Party. By the 1920s such ideas were reaching wider, non-elite circles
through a number of channels. They reached the Bakhtiyari sharecroppers and
nomads as a result of direct transmission by dissident members of the tribal elite,
the junior khans. Another important route for the diffusion of new ideas was the
growing contact between villages and towns. There had always been some degree
of contact between all but the most remote villages and provincial towns and
between nomads and urban marketplaces. Now, however, not only was the level
of contact increasing and changing, but the small market towns and provincial
cities were themselves undergoing a transformation. Easier and quicker commu-
nications and travel within the provinces, between provincial capitals like Isfahan
and Shiraz and Tehran, and even with the world beyond Iran, reproduced in
provincial life and at deeper subaltern levels, the intellectual ferment which had
gripped the elite intelligentsia since the constitutional period.
In the context of this growing national integration, the national and provincial
press were of particular significance for the spread of new ideas, at least until the
mid-1920s when harsher censorship began to take effect. By the early 1920s, the
press was playing a role of central importance in shaping an emergent public
opinion and in giving expression to popular political attitudes. The circulation of
press reports and opinions was not, of course, limited to those able to read and
with the means to purchase a newspaper. Free reading rooms had been established
in many provincial cities and newspapers were often distributed free, even among
the tribespeople.43 Articles might be read aloud in bazars and marketplaces
for the benefit of the illiterate, providing a focus for popular discussions. Peasants
and nomads coming to town to sell produce, to buy commodities, or for any other
social or religious purpose, would thus be readily exposed to the contents of the
newspapers and able to transmit by word of mouth their contents, or versions
thereof, further throughout the rural areas, the tradition of oral communication
through extended family and tribal networks still remaining strong. An even more
significant medium for the poorer classes were the anonymous broadsheets
(shabnamahs, literally night-letters) which frequently appeared posted on city
walls or circulated in bazars. These publications, freed by their anonymity from

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legal constraints or the fear of retribution, articulated directly and sometimes

menacingly the grievances and demands of the oppressed. The expression of both
specific and general threats was a noteworthy feature of a typical shabnamah.44
Both the ‘respectable’ press and the shabnamahs shaped and expressed, in different
ways and to different degrees, the attitudes of the poor. A further potent ingredient
contributing to the emerging subaltern discourse was the prevalence of rumour.
Although often distorted and even fantastical, rumours often expressed in a distilled
and essential way the concerns of the powerless, and had, furthermore, the capacity
to spread like wildfire, often being instrumental in sparking off local protests,
both in the towns and in the countryside.45
The impact of the increased contact between the urban and rural areas can be
seen clearly in the case of the Bakhtiyari peasants of Chahar Mahal. Although
they expressed their opposition to their landlords by reference to an apparently
traditional worldview, yet their movement, and especially its leadership, actually
derived a great deal of its impetus from the changing political context, from the
availability of greater personal independence and mobility and from improved
access to a range of radical ideas circulating in southern Iran in these years.
This is strikingly illustrated by the role played by the ex-servants of the khans,
who formed the committee which provided leadership for the movement and
formulated a programme. These individuals constituted a factor which was of
crucial importance in the emergence of this movement. Having visited the cities
of Isfahan and Tehran, they provided a conduit through which new ideas were
able to reach the peasants in the villages and they had acquainted themselves
sufficiently with the institutions of the new state to help the peasants in taking
their cases to the adliyyah courts.

Migration and proletarianization

Another key influence on the rural poor of southern Iran, both the nomadic
pastoralists and the settled peasantry, was labour migration, and especially their
increasing proletarianization in relatively large numbers in the oil industry.
The hired, unskilled labour in the oil industry in the south, a nascent ‘Iranian
proletariat’, was mainly drawn from the pauperized and landless rural poor, both
peasants and nomads.46 Other, urban, sources, which have typically provided
recruits for newly developing industries, such as artisans in the collapsing
handicrafts industry and the mass of the city poor, seem to have contributed very
little to the development of this working class. A crucial characteristic of these
new workers in the southern oil fields was that a majority preserved their ties with
their village or their tribe, where their families remained and continued to engage
in agriculture or pastoralism.
The southern oil industry was a major crucible for the formation of an indigenous
Iranian working class. In 1925 Iran possessed fewer than twenty modern industrial
plants, of which only five employed more than fifty workers.47 The Anglo-Persian
Oil Company, however, employed large and growing numbers of labourers,

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who worked collectively in modern industrial conditions. In 1919, the Company

employed nearly 4,000 Iranian workers. By the next year, this had doubled to
nearly 8,500, and by 1922 had reached 18,500.48
The 1920s saw an acceleration of the process by which the rural poor in southern
Iran began to be transformed from pastoralists and agricultural cultivators,
dominated by their khans and landlords, into wage-labourers in the industrial
conditions of the oil-fields, semi-organized into unions and exposed to modern
political ideas. The labour migration to the oil-fields may be identified as a
specific factor of crucial significance in the transmission of radical ideologies to
both the rural and urban lower classes of the south. The Bakhtiyari, settled and
nomadic, appear to have been affected particularly intensely by this process. The
number of Bakhtiyari employed in the oil fields was particularly large. According
to the Oil Company itself, by the 1920s most of its labourers were Bakhtiyaris.49
The new confidence of the former nomads and peasants, now transformed into
industrial workers employed directly by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company and freed
from dependence on the patronage of their khans or the power of their landlords,
had its effect on hierarchical relationships within the Bakhtiyari confederation
and across southern Iran in general, and specifically on the stimulation of class
antagonisms. New ideas of equality and political emancipation emanating from
the emigrants to the oil-fields appear to have provided an impetus both for
the development and rapid spread of the anti-landlord movement among the
Bakhtiyari peasants and for the crystallization of an emerging, albeit still
unsophisticated, class consciousness among the nomads.
There are clear comparisons between the processes at work in southern Iran in
the 1920s and those operative in Azarbayjan two decades earlier when large
numbers of impoverished peasants migrated to Baku to become workers in the oil
fields.50 Many of these Azarbayjani migrants maintained continuous contacts
with their own communities in Iran and these peasants-turned-workers became
typical transmitters of urban unrest and political ideas,51 playing a pivotal role in
the introduction of social-democratic ideas into northern Iran, their influence
traceable to the small towns and even the villages.52

Pastoral nomads against khans

The existence of a substantial measure of hostility and resentment on the part of
peasants towards their landlords may be assumed as a given, whatever the degree
of its concealment and submergence beneath a customary and politic deference.
In the case of the attitude of the nomads towards their khans, however, a view has
tended to prevail which has emphasized the pre-eminence of vertical ties, binding
subordinate layers to the tribal leadership through a hierarchical arrangement of
patronage and dependence, characterized by mutual, though unequal, responsi-
bilities and obligations. For much of the tribal population in the 1920s, however,
such a description of the khan–nomad relationship seems to have constituted an

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idealized norm or an historical myth, against which the reality was increasingly
found to be lacking. Again the contours of these resentments may be traced
particularly clearly in the case of the Bakhtiyari, although similar processes
producing a similar disillusionment may be discerned among a wide range of
tribal groups throughout Iran.
By the early 1920s the hostility felt by the Bakhtiyari tribal rank and file
towards the great khans of the confederation was both increasing and increasingly
openly expressed. The migratory Bakhtiyari, like their settled kin among the
sharecroppers of Chahar Mahal, manifested a vivid resentment at the actions and
behaviour of their khans. Since the late nineteenth century, the khans’ wealth and
power had grown exponentially as a result of their links to the British diplomatic
establishment, their participation in the operations of the Anglo-Iranian Oil
Company and their presence within the central government at Tehran.53 The
gulf which had opened up between the khans and their nomadic followers, and
the distance separating them, in cultural, political, economic and even purely
geographical terms had continued to widen.
The nomads keenly resented all these developments. Like the Bakhtiyari
peasants, they formulated their grievances in terms of an older, idealized version
of rights and legitimacy. They repeatedly complained of the injustice of the
senior khans. They felt cheated by the growing disparity between themselves and
their khans, who now lived in grand houses, sent their children to Europe and
governed provinces; they considered the reciprocal basis of tribal life to have been
violated. They had long ago abandoned any qualms they might once have had
about openly criticizing and denouncing the khans, and made persistent efforts,
albeit tentative and inchoate, to have themselves recognized, particularly by the
British, as a factor in Bakhtiyari, and to make their voices heard when the British
negotiated with the khans.54
By the early 1920s, the Bakhtiyari nomads’ feelings of resentment and
injustice were being sharpened by the interrelated issues of land ownership
and the khans’ monopoly of dealings with the Oil Company. The changes
taking place as a result of the land legislation were again, as with the peasants,
a crucial issue. Throughout Iran the tribal khans and aghas, no less than other
members of the elite, exploited the new legislation to register as their personal
private property land which had hitherto been treated as a collective tribal
resource. In the case of the Bakhtiyari, the resentments thus generated were
aggravated to an acute degree by the opportunities for quick profits offered to
the khans by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company’s need to buy and rent land for its
drilling operations.
The senior khans’ arrogation to themselves of the full ownership of tribal lands
caused outrage within the confederation. The nomads followed with great
attention the course of the khans’ dispute with the Chahar Mahal peasants, and
anger at their own dispossession by the senior khans contributed materially to
the outbreak of tribal rebellion in 1929.

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The 1929 tribal rebellion

In 1928 the movement among the Bakhtiyari sharecroppers of Chahar Mahal was
finally suppressed. The following year, however, saw southern Iran convulsed by a
series of peasant and nomad uprisings in what became the most serious rural crisis
faced by the regime in the two decades of its existence. Even in the late 1920s, after
several years of attempted disarmament, the nomads still retained an option that the
peasantry did not possess, that of armed rebellion. Yet, although the uprisings of
1929 in the south were indeed largely predicated upon the involvement of the armed
and mobile nomadic populations, in certain areas, notably Kirman province, they
also provided the context for renewed manifestations of peasant resistance.
In the spring of 1929, following prolonged episodes of urban protest in a series
of provincial towns, a succession of nomadic and peasant revolts broke out.55 One
by one, the rural areas of western, southern, south-central and southeastern Iran
erupted into rebellion. The most prolonged and serious of these rebellions were
those in Fars, Kirman and Isfahan, among the confederations of the Qashqai, the
Khamsah and the Bakhtiyari, and at their height, over the summer months, much
of rural southern Iran slipped out of government control altogether.
The epicentre of the southern tribal uprisings was located in the province of
Fars.56 In the spring of 1929 first the Qashqai and then the Khamsah rose against
the central government. Some of the smaller tribal groups of the province,
especially the Kuhgiluyyah, as well as independent brigand chiefs and their
bands joined in the movement, and the whole of Fars quickly became engulfed
in conflict.57 At the beginning of June the movement spread northwards, to the
province of Isfahan, where sections of the Bakhtiyari also broke out into rebellion.58
Although each of these tribal groups had its own specific concerns, they shared
certain major underlying grievances with each other and with the settled peasants.
They were angry at the new state’s far-reaching fiscal and military impositions
and alienated by its cultural policies, they resented the land legislation, and, in
many cases, they were also ready to grasp an opportunity to rid themselves of
their own tribal/landlord aristocracies.
Yet the context of the 1929 crisis was not one of an eternal conflict between
tribal chaos and state-imposed order. Tribal rebellions, in this and other periods
of Iranian history, have often been seen as simple efforts to resist the imposition
of the control and authority of the central state. The 1929 risings, however, were
not manifestations of an unchanging hostility on the part of nomads towards
central government. On the contrary, during the 1920s both the khans and the
nomadic rank-and-file, the latter especially weary of the hardship caused by
the anarchy of the previous two decades, had evinced a willingness to embrace
the opportunity for security and peaceful change offered by the establishment
of a strong central government. Indeed the nomads seemed eager to grasp the
opportunity, offered by the extension of Tehran’s authority, to rid themselves
completely of their great khans. Rather than expressing their dissatisfaction with
their leaders simply by shifting allegiance from one khan to another, as in the past,

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the nomads now, with the encouragement of the new state and nationalist opinion,
began to reject altogether the rule of the khans.
Far from being hostile to the extension of the new state, during most of the
1920s the great tribal confederations had been inclined to welcome the gradual
establishment of greater stability. This changed, however, after 1927–1928, when
the regime launched a radical programme of modernization and centralization.
Unlike the intra-elite political and constitutional struggles of the earlier years,
these measures, including conscription, dress laws, nomadic settlement, land
registration and the establishment of government monopolies on opium and
tobacco, represented a direct social and economic assault on the rural poor, both
settled and nomadic.
The rural risings of 1929 were provoked by the sudden introduction of these
radical measures, and were directed both at resisting the measures themselves and
at removing those deemed responsible for them. The risings were nowhere led by
the most senior tribal khans, now linked to and dependent upon Riza Shah and the
new state, but by junior, subordinate and minor khans and kalantars.59 The risings
were often, indeed, directed at least as much against their own khan/landlord
aristocracies, seen as beneficiaries of the new order, as against the state.
There was some degree of coordination between the Bakhtiyari and the
Qashqai tribes, and both groups, and the Khamsah, put forward similar demands:
that the conscription and the dress laws not be applied to them, and for the
abolition of the Census Department, the Department for the Registration of Title
Deeds and the government monopolies.60 These demands were defensive, aimed
at protecting the tribes from the novel impositions of the government which were
popularly perceived as unjust. The tribes explained their resistance in terms of
their desire for fair treatment and for a cessation of the violations of their rights.
They strongly rejected the notion of themselves as rebels against duly constituted
authority, seeing themselves, on the contrary, as the victims of illegitimate
oppression. Their outlook found typical expression in a petition which a group of
Qashqai kalantars arranged to be handed in to the British consulate in Shiraz on
7 June. In their petition the kalantars stressed their loyalty to the government and
their past readiness to assist the army in its campaigns and specifically singled out
the oppressiveness and greed of the military governors as the cause of their
discontent. They complained that they had been asking for justice for three
months but had been ignored. Although the main body of their petition was
conventional enough, the kalantars concluded with a request of unusual ideological
audacity. In a vivid illustration of the speed at which their world was opening up,
they requested that the British consul communicate their petition to the League of
Nations.61 Even General Shaybani, charged by the shah with the restoration
of order in the south, seemed, in the wording of his offer of amnesty and pardon,
to accept that the kalantars and the tribespeople had certain legitimate grievances
and acknowledged their appeal for justice.62
By the late summer-autumn of 1929, the rural uprisings in the south had largely
exhausted themselves, and the government, through a combination of military

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force and broad but temporary concession and compromise, was beginning to
re-establish its authority.63 These uprisings in fact constituted the last significant
collective rural opposition of the Riza Shah period, their failure to delay, divert
or moderate the regime’s determination to impose its agenda ushering in a
decade of extreme hardship throughout the countryside. The rural poor, both
peasants and pastoralists, found themselves disarmed, heavily taxed in order to
provide revenue for the regime’s prestige projects, the Trans-Iranian Railway
and the army, and increasingly vulnerable to labour and military conscription.
Nonetheless, during the 1930s the rural poor, although avoiding confrontation
with the authorities, continued to employ a range of strategies in efforts to
ameliorate their circumstances.

Banditry as resistance
One major rural strategy of survival and resistance adopted by the rural, especially
the nomadic, poor was banditry. By the 1920s, banditry in Iran was generally
perceived as a survival from the past, from a period characterized by the weakness
and disintegration of state authority, the backwardness and isolation of the
countryside, and the uncontrolled power of the tribal khans and their armed
followers. According to this view, with modernization and national integration,
banditry, already an anachronism, would easily be suppressed. In fact, however,
the Riza Shah decades saw not the gradual disappearance of banditry, but rather
a change in its character. The successful advance of the new state in the first half
of the 1920s did indeed produce a decline in rural disorder of all kinds. But from
mid-decade on, especially in the face of the worsening conditions in the country-
side from the late 1920s, banditry underwent a widespread recrudescence. The rural
pauperization resulting from the regime’s development policies, the disruption
and disintegration of tribal organization by state centralization, the fear of the
new military authorities placed over the tribes, and enforced settlement and the
collapse of the pastoral economy, all tended to force the fringes of tribal society
into permanent banditry. Despite the preoccupation of the authorities with
security and control in the countryside, banditry persisted throughout the 1930s,
constituting a strategy whereby pauperized rural, especially nomadic, elements,
sometimes allied to other marginal figures such as army deserters, continued
to evade and defy the new state. Such banditry was neither a survival from the
pre-modern era nor an anachronism, but was rather itself created by, and consti-
tuted a response to, conditions of rapid and authoritarian modernization and rural
social disintegration.
Such banditry was quite distinct from the customs of raiding and sheep-lifting,
customarily limited and contained and endemic to pastoral environments. It
signified, rather, the consolidation of relatively stable and permanent bandit
groups, deemed outlaws by the authorities, divorced from their tribal contexts and
hierarchies but remaining in varying degrees of contact with local populations.
This contact might be very close and supportive, especially where ties of kin existed,

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but might also be deeply antagonistic and exploitative. Both settled and nomadic
communities often gave succour to bandits, but where succour was refused, the
bandits’ treatment of ‘hostile’ villages might be extremely brutal. Everywhere,
however, the popular discourse contrasted the power of the bandit with the weakness
and cowardice of the gendarmerie, probably reflecting the resentment of the rural
poor at the corruption and oppressiveness of the authorities.64
The re-emergence of banditry as a consequence of tighter state control and the
regime’s political and economic policies may be seen in the case of the Qashqai
tribes. In 1925, the Qashqai had apparently welcomed the removal of their ilkhani
and had anticipated a period of increased order and security. However, they found
that the establishment of direct military control produced no improvement in their
conditions. On the contrary, the simultaneous arrival of a rapacious and corrupt
military governor and the insatiable officials of the Finance Department who now
everywhere accompanied the army, became a turning point in the pacification
of Fars. Within a year conditions in Fars had begun to deteriorate rapidly. The
imposition of the new financial and military order began to lead to a disintegra-
tion of tribal cohesion and the appearance of banditry among pauperized and
marginalized tribal groups. Numbers of tents deserted their tribal units, families
hiding themselves in various parts of the province, more or less as outlaws.65
A significant feature of the rural crises of 1929 was the extent and character of
the participation of substantial groups of bandits. Even before these risings in
southern Iran, the social, political and economic chaos produced by the regime’s
authoritarian version of modernity in the rural areas, among pastoralists and
cultivators alike, had already led to a retreat by fringes of these societies into
permanent brigandry. One example of these processes is provided by Mahdi
Surkhi, who headed what became a substantial group of bandits. Mahdi Surkhi
was a small landowner and khan of the Surkhi, a small tribe, allied but not actually
belonging to the Qashqai, semi-sedentarized and heavily engaged in opium
cultivation. With the generalized reappearance of banditry in the mid-1920s as a
strategy of rural resistance, Mahdi was driven into becoming an outlaw by the
injustice of the local authorities who, having already imprisoned him for some
misdemeanours of his tribe, then also allowed his tents to be plundered. From
1926 onwards, Mahdi collected around him numbers of the disaffected, both
Surkhis and from many of the smaller Qashqai clans.66 The imposition of the
opium monopoly in 1928 turned Mahdi from an outlaw into the leader of a peasant
movement, as widespread resistance to the monopoly broke out among the settled
cultivators across Fars, and he and his tribe actively involved themselves in
the Qashqai rebellion.67 Again the Bakhtiyari rebellion clearly shows the links
between the peasant cultivators, the nomadic tribes and the fringes of bandits.
For example, in July 1929 the leader, named Khaybar, of one of the largest brig-
and bands, together with 200 Bakhtiyari, captured the village of Taghun, on the
Isfahan–Shiraz road. He then broke open the government opium store, took
out the government percentage of 10 per cent, and returned the remainder to
the peasants, taking receipts.68 This type of rather sophisticated subversion of

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the new state opium monopoly had also been widely in evidence during the
Khamsah insurgency.
In pre-modern Iran, banditry had possessed a symbiotic relationship with such
rudimentary forces of law and order as existed on a local level. Amniyyah (rural
gendarmerie) or road-guards, for example, employed by local governors or tribal
khans, and recruited from among the nomads, might often moonlight as the very
bandits they were supposed to apprehend, and governors might be in league
with bandits, whose plunder they would share. With the arrival of modernity and
the new state in the 1920s, however, this relationship, and the social framework
which supported it, collapsed. The consolidation of a state bureaucracy and the
establishment of a modern army, with officials and officers arriving in provincial
postings from far afield and without local connections, and the introduction of
defined and fixed legal codes, meant an end to the easy permeability of the border
between the forces of law and the outlaw.
The introduction of conscription in 1925, and its inexorable enforcement
throughout the countryside, added a new character to the panoply of rural
outlaws, that of the army deserter. Although familiar from Ottoman history, the
deserter, a quintessentially modern figure quite distinct from the local off-duty
road-guard, was not a traditional feature of Iranian banditry, owing to the absence
of forced enlistment and a regular army. Yet, by the late 1920s the fugitive from
the army, with some military experience, had become a specific and serious threat
to rural security. Examples include the ex-gendarme Sayyid Farhad, active in
Kashan in the late 1920s, and the army deserter Colonel Gigu. The case of Gigu
is particularly interesting. An Armenian, Gigu held a command in the Armenian
squadron, a self-contained unit within the new army, composed exclusively at
all levels of Armenians. This squadron was one of the crack units of the new
army and saw a great deal of active service. It was particularly important in the
pacification campaigns in Luristan, where it acquired a reputation for brutality.
Gigu was a close associate of the senior military commander in the area, General
Amirahmadi, and fell victim to a plot hatched by Amirahmadi’s enemies. He was
accused of trying to smuggle opium and sentenced to imprisonment but deserted.
He thereupon became leader of a group of bandits which began to operate in
tandem with the tribal rebels among the Lur nomads whom he had formerly been
charged with suppressing.
The bandit has often been depicted, both in popular discourse and in scholarship,
as a representative and a champion of the rural oppressed.69 Certainly banditry of
the types described above constituted a strategy of rural survival and occasionally
resistance, but it was essentially defensive, manifesting little overt political direc-
tion. The phenomenon of ‘social banditry’, of banditry articulating a programme
of political and social reform, is much more rare in Iran.70 Social banditry has
been particularly associated with areas which possessed a strong tradition of
peasant rebellion. Although Iran has in general lacked such rebellions, they have
been found to some extent in the Caspian provinces of Gilan and Mazandaran,
and here they indeed produced repeated instances of social banditry in the 1920s.71

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In 1922, for example, two former followers of Kuchik Khan’s Jangali movement,
Sayyid Jalal and Karbalai Ibrahim, separately became active as bandit-rebels in
the Jangal of Gilan.72 Each collected small numbers of adherents and appear to
have attempted to resurrect the Jangali movement among the local peasantry.
Karbalai Ibrahim’s band reached about 300 and they managed to take control of
Kasma, Kuchik Khan’s former base, and two neighbouring villages before the
band was suppressed by the army and Karbalai Ibrahim publicly hanged in Rasht.
Sayyid Jalal also collected about 200 armed men, including some deserters from
the army, and began establishing his control over Gilani villages. Many villagers
began to offer him their support as a result of the reprisals on non-combatants to
which the army frequently resorted. Within a few months, however, Sayyid Jalal
too was captured and executed. In 1925 another bandit-rebel, Haydar Khan,
emerged in Gilan, and by 1926 several bands of brigands were active in the
Jangal. One of these bands was led by an officer-deserter from the army, Ibrahim
Khan, and contained a number of officer and soldier deserters. Ibrahim Khan had
ambitions of becoming a second Kuchik Khan, and issued orders to villages in
the area in which he was operating that taxes were to be paid to him, claiming in
a manifesto that his organization was directed against those traitors who were
assisting the British to gain control of Iran. However his band was suppressed by
the army in October.
During the 1930s banditry continued to threaten rural security, tribal fragments
being driven to this resort by political oppression, social disintegration and economic
hardship. In the 1930s banditry itself underwent a mutation into smuggling which
developed on a massive scale in response to the new state monopolies on foreign
trade and on cash crops such as opium and tobacco, and especially the massive
domestic taxes, about 600 per cent ad valorem, imposed on staples such as tea and
sugar. The prevalence of smuggling and the seriousness with which it was viewed
by the state is demonstrated by the draconian penalties which were introduced in
the 1930s, including long terms of imprisonment, the death penalty and the use
of military courts.73 As with banditry, smuggling depended on and flourished
with the support of local communities. In the summer of 1935, for example,
the government decided to crack down on the immense amount of smuggling
which was going on in Kirmanshah. After the arrest of one of the biggest local
smugglers, some fifty local traders were also arrested on charges of complicity. By
the end of the investigation, the chief of police, the governor and the commander
of the garrison were all implicated.74

Law and petitions as resistance

The rural poor also continued to try to exploit such opportunities as they were
able to find to persuade and put pressure on the authorities. One strategy involved
the use of the new modern courts of law. The Chahar Mahal peasant movement
had displayed both a readiness and an ability to take its grievances against the
landlords to the new adliyyah courts. Little is known about the extent and scope

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of peasant efforts to use the courts in this way, and it is certainly correct that the
peasant had in practice ‘less easy access to the courts and less ability to put his
case’ than had the landowners.75 Nonetheless there is fragmentary evidence to
suggest that the peasant resort to this option may have been more common than
is usually supposed.76
Peasants and tribespeople also continued to make extensive use of a strategy
common to urban protests: the presentation of petitions outlining their grievances
and asking for redress to powerful figures and institutions, especially the Majlis
and the shah. These petitions suggest a strong sense on the part of the rural poor
of natural justice, of the recognition of conditions for the exercise of legitimate
authority and of their own rights. Such petitions habitually couched their appeals
in the language of legitimacy and justice and protested against their violation by
a usurping power.
With the regeneration of the institution of the monarchy after 1925–1926, and
the decline in significance of the Majis, the shah became increasingly the focus
of petitions and appeals. This also reflected a belief widespread among the poorer
classes, and even among some of the elite, that the shah was not aware of the true
situation of the peasantry but that their suffering was the fault of incompetent
or unjust officials. A corollary of this belief was the hope that, if only these
injustices might be brought to the notice of the shah, he would ensure that they
would be rectified. As a result of these notions, very large numbers of petitions
were submitted to the shah. When the shah visited Kirmanshah in 1930, for
example, 600 petitions were received asking for his help or for the righting of
various wrongs.77 Sometimes, however, in line with an older tradition, petitioners
would make desperate efforts to approach the shah in person and appeal to him
directly.78
With its radical phase over by the early 1930s, the regime entered a period of
demoralization and, with its attention on political security, a strategy of avoidance
became possible in the rural areas. Some of the harshest effects of the policy of
nomadic settlement, in particular, were mitigated by the extensive use of bribery.
During 1936–1937, for example, the governor-general of Fars, Abulfath
Dawlatshahi, in collusion with the local senior military commander, General
Zandiyyah, took 700 riyals per family from the nomads of Fars, who were then
allowed to migrate as usual, while reports were sent to Tehran that they had all
been settled in houses. Both were dismissed and arrested. Following this, in
September 1937 three officials responsible for the administration and settlement of
the Qashqai and Khamsah tribes in Fars were also dismissed. They had apparently
sent reports to Tehran stating that a large number of houses had been built for the
tribes. A senior army officer sent from Tehran to inspect the district found that
their reports were untrue and that no account could be given of a sum of 1 million
riyals which had been allotted to Fars for tribal settlement.79
Nonetheless, where avoidance was impossible, isolated acts of violent resistance
also continued to occur. Although by the 1930s the official policy of disarmament
had been comprehensively imposed on the Bakhtiyari, many rifles had been

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hidden rather than surrendered. In the summer of 1937 news surfaced of an attack
by some Bakhtiyari on a party of census officials. The tribesmen beat the officials
badly with the big sticks that they had begun to carry since disarmament, and the
officials had to be rescued by a detachment of fifty gendarmes. Thereupon
the tribesmen appear to have retrieved their rifles and the local village was
besieged by the authorities, with Bakhtiyari snipers blocking off all access and the
village isolated.80

Conclusion
Early Pahlavi Iran has conventionally been seen through the prism of its
state-building effort. Attention has been focused almost exclusively on the agenda
of the nationalist elite and positive or negative balance-sheets drawn up accord-
ing to assessments of this elite’s success in transforming Iran into a modern,
politically independent, nation state. This widespread acceptance, within Iran and
beyond, of a nationalist discourse has obscured both the nature of the impact on
the rural poor of the upheavals of the period, and the persistent realities of rural
conflict.
After 1921, and particularly after the consolidation of the military–monarchical
dictatorship in 1926–1927, Riza Shah and his supporters grasped the opportunity
to begin the construction of a strong, independent state and introduced, to that
end, many of the reforms long advocated by the reforming and constitutionalist
intelligentsia. In an ideological context conditioned by a secular nationalism
deriving from European models, and within increasingly authoritarian state
structures, Riza Shah moved against foreign influence, began to establish Iran as
a regional power, and introduced a raft of domestic policies aimed at remodelling
Iran along Western lines.
Land reform had been one of the measures advocated by constitutionalist
opinion, although usually not out of concern for the peasantry but rather as a
state-building measure. Although Riza Shah had appropriated in certain respects
the agenda of Iranian nationalism and constitutionalism, nonetheless he absolutely
rejected the notion of land reform as a crucial element in national progress. In
fact his policies were rather the opposite of a land reform, in that they clarified
and consolidated the private property rights of landlords and, together with
the regime’s general economic policies, led to an ever-greater concentration
of ownership.81
Overall, the Riza Shah decades were a period of defeat for the rural poor.
Unable to link up with urban opposition, and unable to generate on their own
account a political challenge to the regime which transcended their own sectional
interests, the settled and nomadic poor bore the full brunt of modernization. The
context within which peasants and nomads negotiated their relations with their
khans and landlords was directly affected by the property registration legislation;
their living standards were driven down by the resulting commercialization of land,
which encouraged landowners to extract ever more surplus value from their tenants,

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as well as by the general development policies adopted by the regime, and their
social and cultural values undermined by the nationalist elite’s reform agenda.
The state’s decision to concentrate financial resources on prestige projects such
as the Trans-Iranian railway meant a failure to extend services such as health and
education into the countryside, peasants and nomads receiving little or nothing in
return for their enormously increased taxation. Yet the rural poor were also
affected in other, more positive, ways by the changes of the period. The growing
national integration increased contact between rural and urban areas, the reach of
the press grew, and the ideological context was transformed by both national and
international developments.
Not only has the impact of the regime’s policies on the countryside been under-
estimated but it is also equally clear, contrary to the conventions of scholarship,
that the rural poor did not remain passive in the face of this onslaught on their
standard of living and way of life. Rather than resigning themselves to hardship
and oppression, various categories of the rural poor, both settled peasants and
nomads, actively devised strategies of resistance. Such strategies were directed
against their own khans and landlords and against the new state, and often against
the combined power of both the traditional and the new authorities. The activism
of the rural poor, however, was often fundamentally defensive, aimed not at
transforming material conditions but rather at deflecting change which, owing to
the choices of the regime, was perceived as damaging and unjust.
The mobilization of the Bakhtiyari sharecroppers in Chahar Mahal, for example,
was directed, in the first instance, against their khan landlords, and appears to
have been provoked by the novel and aggressive assertion by the khans of their
own absolute ownership of the land. However, the khans’ action in making these
assertions was a result of the new state’s own legislation, and the example of the
shah himself. Although Riza Shah lent the sharecroppers some initial support,
albeit temporary and tactical, it was his own policies that were encouraging land-
lord action, and the sharecroppers’ movement finally found itself confronting both
the khans and the state and was eventually suppressed by the army. Although radical
in its rejection of the landlords’ authority and claims of ownership, the Chahar
Mahal sharecroppers’ movement seems to have been nonetheless essentially
defensive. Another, similar, sharecroppers’ movement, in Kirman, also shows that
such peasants were as eager to safeguard their own, relatively privileged position,
as holders of nasaq rights, against the landless khushnishin, as they were to chal-
lenge the landlords. The case of Kirman suggests again that such sharecropper
movements tended to be primarily concerned with the protection of their own
position, and vulnerable to collapse when confronted with demands for improved
conditions from a rural stratum even more impoverished than themselves.
Again, the nomadic uprisings also appear to have been primarily defensive,
designed to ward off the attentions of the new state, and were directed against the
khans insofar as the khans had identified themselves with, and acted as agents of,
that state. The nomads typically combined resentment both at the actions of
the khans in asserting land rights, and at the new state as the guarantor of those

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assertions and as the bearer of wholly new social and economic obligations.
Although nowhere led by the senior khans, these uprisings also often indicated a
bid for leadership by junior elite elements, either younger khans, in the case of
the Bakhtiyari, kalantars in the case of the Qashqai, and middle-ranking leaders
of tribal sub-sections in the case of the Khamsah. As with the Chahar Mahal
sharecroppers, the nomads too justified their defiance by appeals to natural
justice and by demands for the restoration of the status quo ante.
The key development in rural Iran during the Riza Shah period was the
consolidation and growth of large absentee-owned estates, a trend exemplified
by the shah’s own land acquisitions. Reactionary rather than conservative in its
impact on the countryside, Riza Shah’s rejection of land reform was heavy with
consequences for the future, bequeathing to his son, Muhammad Riza Shah, the
tasks of confronting the political power of the class of large landowners and
attempting to secure a stable social base for the regime in the countryside.
Two decades after his father’s forced abdication, Muhammad Riza Shah, under
pressure from the Kennedy administration in Washington, from the revival of
domestic political opposition, and from his own desire to destroy the political
obstacles represented by the class of big landowners and to acquire support
among a grateful peasantry, adopted the idea of land reform. Between 1962 and
1971 a major redistribution of land ownership took place in Iran. The state’s
decision to intervene in the structure of land ownership again provoked, as it had
in the 1920s, outbreaks of peasant activism, now unleashing a dynamic producing
a number of cases of land seizures and eviction of landlords.
The land reform, however, failed in its political objective of securing a stable
social base in the countryside for the shah’s regime.82 The great estates were broken
up and a class of peasant proprietors emerged but more than a million agricultural
labourers received no land at all and, of those who received land, over 70 per cent
obtained too little for basic subsistence.83 As the power of the monarchy began to
crumble in 1978 under the pressure of an urban-based mass protest movement, the
villages, especially those in close proximity to towns and cities, became drawn into
the revolutionary upheavals. In March 1979, only one month after the revolution
itself, peasant and khushnishin groups began a new round of land expropriations and
seizures occurred in virtually every major province and in villages and districts
throughout the country. The impetus for these expropriations was sometimes pro-
vided by outside political activists, sometimes by young village activists politicized
by their experiences in urban centres, but the overwhelming majority of participants
in seizures and in demands for the distribution of land were landless and land-poor
peasants themselves.84 In these revolutionary years, this renewed activism of the
rural poor provided an echo of the peasant and nomad movements of the 1920s.

Notes
1 An earlier version of this chapter appeared in The Journal of Peasant Studies. Vol. 32,
No. 1, January 2005. The author would like to thank the journal editor, Tom Brass, for
his comments and for permission to republish.

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 STEPHANIE CRONIN

2 See, for example, Afsaneh Najmabadi, The Story of the Daughters of Quchan: Gender
and National Memory in Iranian History (Syracuse, 1998).
3 For a discussion of some of the resulting difficulties see Richard Tapper, ‘Writing tribal
history’, Frontier Nomads of Iran (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 1–33.
4 A small number of older works paid some attention to the condition of the peasantry,
including the major work dealing with land tenure in Iran, Ann K. S. Lambton,
Landlord and Peasant in Persia (London, 1953), and also Nikki Keddie, Historical
Obstacles to Agrarian Change in Iran (Claremont Asian Studies, No. 8, Claremont,
1960), but these shared the general tendency to define the peasantry as essentially
passive. The 1979 revolution, however, produced a shift in perspective, partly as a
result of new discourses generated by the revolution itself, and partly due to the
maturing of Iranian Studies as an academic discipline and its move away from tradi-
tional ‘Orientalist’ narratives. Efforts to understand the impact of the land reform of
the 1960s, although they often remained focused on state policy, were particularly
important in redirecting attention towards the countryside. See, inter alia, Eric Hooglund,
Land and Revolution in Iran, 1960–1980 (Austin, TX, 1982); Afsaneh Najmabadi, Land
Reform and Social Change in Iran (Salt Lake City, 1987); Fatemeh E. Moghadam,
From Land Reform to Revolution: The Political Economy of Agricultural Development
in Iran, 1962–1979 (London, 1996); Mohammad Gholi Majd, Resistance to the Shah:
Landowners and Ulama in Iran (Florida, 2000). There have also been a small number
of studies attempting to restore historical agency to the rural poor, see Farhad Kazemi
and Ervand Abrahamian, ‘The Nonrevolutionary Peasantry of Modern Iran’, Iranian
Studies, Vol. XI, 1978; James J. Reid, ‘Rebellion and Social Change in Astarabad,
1537–1744’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 13, No. 1, 1981; Shaul
Bakhash, The Reign of the Ayatollahs (London, 1985), Chapter 4; Janet Afary, The
Iranian Constitutional Revolution, 1906–1911: Grassroots Democracy, Social
Democracy and the origins of Feminism (New York, 1996), pp. 145–76; Ahmad Ashraf,
‘Dihqanan, Zamin va Inqilab’, Kitab-i Agah (special issue), Masa’il-i Arzi va Dihqani
(Tehran, 1361). For a discussion of the impact on Iranian historiography of the 1979
revolution see Stephanie Cronin, ‘Writing the History of Modern Iran: a Comment on
Approaches and Sources’, Iran, Vol. XXXVI, 1998.
5 Karl Marx, ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’, Surveys from Exile, edited
and introduced by David Fernbach (London, 1973), p. 239. Although Marx recognized
the existence of peasant agency per se, he saw it as necessarily limited in its scope
and political object, and unable to be anything other than local. Furthermore, since the
political objective of many peasant movements was anti-feudal and for the restitution
of small property in one form or another, rather than for collective ownership, Marx
and Marxists have tended to regard them as in the main conservative. Nonetheless
conservatism in such cases should not be conflated with passivity.
6 For a discussion of the reasons for this absence see Farhad Kazemi and Ervand
Abrahamian, ‘The Nonrevolutionary Peasantry’. For a critique of the ‘middle peasant
thesis’ see Tom Brass, ‘Moral Economists, Subalterns, New Social Movements and the
(Re-) Emergence of a (Post-) Modernized (Middle) Peasant’, in Vinayak Chaturvedi
(ed.), Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial (London, 2000). Eric Hooglund,
in an extremely sophisticated study of the impact of the land reform of the 1960s on
the peasantry, has also emphasized the almost total dependence and powerlessness of
the Iranian peasant within the prevailing system of land tenure. Hooglund, Land and
Revolution, pp. 34–5.
7 Lambton, Landlord and Peasant, p. 392.
8 This shift in perspective owes much to the work of James C. Scott, The Moral Economy
of the Peasant (New Haven, CT, 1976); Weapons of the Weak: everyday forms of
peasant resistance (New Haven, CT, 1985). For the application of this approach to Iran
see, especially, Fereydoun Safizadeh, ‘Peasant Protest and Resistance in Rural Iranian

166
 IRAN 1921–1941

Azerbaijan’, in Farhad Kazemi and John Waterbury (eds), Peasants and Politics in the
Modern Middle East (Florida, 1991).
9 Kazemi and Abrahamian, ‘The Nonrevolutionary Peasantry’.
10 Afary, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, pp. 145–76.
11 Majd, Resistance to the Shah, pp. 186–7; Ahmad Ashraf, ‘State and Agrarian Relations
Before and After the Iranian Revolution, 1960–1990’, in Kazemi and Waterbury (eds),
Peasants and Politics; Shaul Bakhash, The Reign of the Ayatollahs, chapter 4.
12 For some attempt to shift the focus away from the state see Stephanie Cronin (ed.), The
Making of Modern Iran: State and Society under Riza Shah, 1921–1941 (London and
New York, 2003).
13 The constitutional revolution took place in 1905–1906 with the grant under popular
pressure by Muzaffar al-Din Shah of a constitution and the establishment of representa-
tive government through a national assembly. The constitutional period ended in 1911
with the closure of the national assembly under the threat of invasion by Russia. The
‘White’ revolution is a collective term for the reforms, especially land reform and female
enfranchisement, implemented by Muhammad Riza Shah between 1961 and 1963.
14 The best description of agrarian society in twentieth-century Iran may be found in
Hooglund, Land and Revolution.
15 Ibid., pp. 22–8.
16 For the bunah see Hooglund, Land and Revolution, pp. 23–8; Janet Afary has also
drawn attention to the strong collective tradition represented by the bunah, Afary, The
Iranian Constitutional Revolution, p. 150.
17 For the persistence of slave-raiding even in the 1920s, see the depositions of runaway
slaves originally captured on Iranian territory and shipped across the Gulf.
FO248/1387.
18 For a description of the new burdens placed on the peasants by the arrival of the
modern state, see, for example, Biscoe to Parr, Meshed, 23 May 1928, FO371/
13064/E3551/1209/34.
19 Moghadam, From Land Reform to Revolution, p. 44.
20 Lambton, Landlord and Peasant, p. 184; Ervand Abrahamian, Iran Between Two
Revolutions (Princeton, NJ, 1982), p. 149.
21 For relations between the Ottoman State and the peasantry, see Halil Berktay and
Suraiya Faroqhi (eds), New Approaches to the State and Peasant in Ottoman History,
a special issue of The Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol. 18, Nos 3 and 4, 1991.
22 For a full discussion of the complexities of land tenure in Iran, see Lambton, Landlord
and Peasant.
23 Majd, Resistance to the Shah.
24 See Hooglund, Land and Revolution, pp. 36–41. The constitutional period had witnessed
the flourishing and wide dissemination of liberal, democratic and socialist ideas, their
incorporation into the platforms of political parties such as the Democrat Party and the
Moderate Party, and their reflection, to some degree, in government programmes.
25 Lambton, Landlord and Peasant, p. 189.
26 Such material naturally reflects the evolving agenda of the British diplomatic and
commercial establishment in Iran and must be assessed within this context. In particular,
it illustrates the growing desire of the British to divest themselves of their long-standing
commitments to the traditional tribal authorities in southern Iran in favour of a closer
and more harmonious relationship with the new regime of Riza Shah. This desire led
British officials to stress increasingly the deleterious and outmoded nature of the
rule of the khans and to highlight any attempts by peasants and nomads to rid them-
selves of this incubus.
27 Report on the Situation in Bakhtiari, 22 September 1928, R. G. Monypenny, Consul,
Ahwaz, FO416/83 pp. 141–6; Amir Husayn Karim Nikzad, Shinakht-i Sarzamin-i
Chahar Mahal, Isfahan: n.p., 1357.

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 STEPHANIE CRONIN

28 Kerman Diary No. 27, 16–30 September 1924, FO371/10156/E10384/6329/34.

29 The Bakhtiyari inhabit a mountainous region of southwestern Iran. Their winter
pastures are in northeastern Khuzistan, their summer pastures on the central Iranian
plateau side of the Zagros mountains which they cross on their spring and autumn
migrations. Chahar Mahal is on the eastern boundary of Bakhtiyari, and comprises a
region broken by lower mountain ranges which provided both summer pastures and the
habitat of a permanent sedentary village population.
30 Report on the Situation in Bakhtiari, 22 September 1928, R. G. Monypenny, Consul,
Ahwaz, FO416/83, p. 143.
31 Unfortunately we have no record of the precise provisions of this programme.
32 Report on the Situation in Bakhtiari, 22 September 1928, R. G. Monypenny, Consul,
Ahwaz, FO416/83, p. 143.
33 The modern secular courts established through the reorganization of the judicial
system by Ali Akbar Davar, Minister of Justice, in 1927.
34 Report on the Situation in Bakhtiari, 22 September 1928, R. G. Monypenny, Consul,
Ahwaz, FO416/83, p. 143.
35 See Stephanie Cronin, Tribal Politics in Iran: Rural Conflict and the New State,
1921–1941 (London and New York, 2007), chapter 2.
36 Lambton, Landlord and Peasant, p. 306.
37 Kerman Diary, No. 27, 16–30 September 1924, FO371/10156/E10384/6329/34.
38 Kirman appears to have been full of anjumans representing every social group and
political interest. See, for example, the Kerman Diaries for 1924, FO371/10156.
39 Kerman Diary, No. 27, 16–30 September 1924, FO371/10156/E10384/6329/34.
40 Moghadam, From Land Reform to Revolution, p. 48.
41 For a fuller discussion of the Sitarah-i Bakhtiyari, see Cronin, Tribal Politics in Iran,
chapter 3.
42 The programme may be found in Bridgeman to Curzon, 5 October 1921,
FO371/6407/E13435/2/34. A very slightly amended version of this programme, pro-
duced in response to the severe criticism from the senior khans which had greeted its
first appearance, may be found in Consul-General, Isfahan, to Loraine, 17 February
1922, FO371/7805/E4742/6/34. The programme is also reproduced in Bakhtiyar.
43 Intelligence Summary No. 28, 12 July 1924, FO371/10132/E6706/255/34.
44 On the general significance of anonymous threats, and the seriousness with which they
were viewed by the authorities, see E. P. Thompson, ‘The Crime of Anonymity’, in
D. Hay, P. Linebaugh, John G. Rule, E. P. Thompson and Cal Winslow (eds), Albion’s
Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth Century England (London, 1975).
45 There is considerable literature on the role of rumour in popular politics. For some
recent discussions, see, for example, Ethan H. Shagan, ‘Rumours and Popular Politics
in the Reign of Henry VIII’, in Tim Harris (ed.), The Politics of the Excluded,
c.1500–1850 (Basingstoke, 2001); A. Fox, ‘Rumour, News and Popular Political
Opinion in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England’, Historical Journal, Vol. xl, (1997).
For some discussion of the non-European world see R. Guha, Elementary Aspects of
Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (Delhi, 1982); A. A. Yang, ‘A Conversation of
Rumours: The Language of Popular Mentalites in Late Nineteenth Century Colonial
India’, Journal of Social History, Vol. xx, 1987. See also L. White, ‘Between Gluckman
and Foucault: Historicizing Rumour and Gossip’, Social Dynamics, Vol. xx (1994). The
impact and significance in the Iranian context of the twin phenomena of the circulation of
shabnamahs and the persistence and tenacity of rumour still await research.
46 Z. Z. Abdullaev quotes several Soviet documents to this effect. Z. Z. Abdullaev,
‘Promyshlennost i zarozhdenie rabochego klasse Irana v kontse xix-nachale xx vv’
(Baku, 1963); extracts reproduced in Charles Issawi (ed.), The Economic History of
Iran, 1800–1914 (Chicago, IL, 1971), pp. 48–52.

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47 Ervand Abrahamian, ‘The Strengths and Weaknesses of the Labor Movement in Iran’,
in Michael E. Bonine and Nikki Keddie (eds), 1981, Continuity and Change in Modern
Iran (Albany, NY, 1981), p. 183.
48 R. W. Ferrier, The History of the British Petroleum Company, Vol. 1, The Developing
Years (Cambridge, 1982), p. 401. The accumulation of a working class in the oil fields
continued throughout the inter-war period. By 1938 the Company employed the huge
number of 45,978 Iranian workers. J. H. Bamberg, The History of the British Petroleum
Company, Vol. 2, the Anglo-Iranian years, 1928–1954 (Cambridge, 1994), p. 81. For
analyses of more recent agriculture/oil linkages in Iran, see Hassan Hakimian, ‘The
Impact of the 1970s Oil Boom on Iranian Agriculture’, The Journal of Peasant Studies,
Vol. 15, No. 2, 1988; Massoud Karshenas, ‘Oil Income, Industrialization Bias, and
the Agricultural Squeeze Hypothesis: New Evidence on the Experience of Iran’, The
Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol. 17, No. 2, 1990.
49 A. T. Wilson, Resident Director, Resident, Bushire to Minister, Tehran, 13 May 1923,
BP 71724.
50 For this migration see Hassan Hakimian, ‘Wage Labour and Migration: Persian Workers
in Southern Russia, 1880–1914’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 17,
No. 4, 1985; Touraj Atabaki, ‘Disgruntled Guests: Iranian Subaltern on the Margins of
the Tsarist Empire’, International Review of Social History, Vol. 48, No. 3, 2003.
51 Eric Wolf, ‘Peasant Rebellion and Revolution’, in Jack A. Goldstone (ed.), Revolutions:
Theoretical, Comparative and Historical Studies (San Diego, CA, 1986), p. 175.
52 Afary, The Iranian Constitutional Revolution, p. 22.
53 For the benefits accruing to the khans as a result of their connection to the Anglo-
Persian Oil Company see Cronin, Tribal Politics, chapter 6; for their acquisition of a
role in central government see ibid., chapter 2; Gene R. Garthwaite, Khans and Shahs:
A Documentary Analysis of the Bakhtiyari in Iran (Cambridge, 1983).
54 Major Noel’s report, Isfahan, 12 May 1921, FO371/6405/E9256/2/34.
55 For a full discussion of the context for both the urban and rural opposition, see
Stephanie Cronin, ‘Modernity, Change and Dictatorship in Iran: The New Order and
its Opponents, 1927–1929’, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 39, No. 2, 2003.
56 Kavih Bayat, 1365, Shurish-i ‘Asha’ir-i Fars (Tehran, 1365).
57 The major confederations of the Qashqai and the Khamsah both inhabited the province
of Fars in southwestern Iran, the Qashqai to the southwest of the province, the
Khamsah to the southeast. Both confederations found their political and economic life
focused on the provincial city of Shiraz. The smaller and less important tribal groups
of the Kuhgiluyyah and the Buyir Ahmadi were located in northern Fars.
58 Smaller risings also broke out among the Kurds in western Iran and among the Lurs in
Pusht-i Kuh in the south–west.
59 Middle-ranking tribal leaders, heads of tribal sub-groups.
60 Clive to Henderson, 27 July 1929, FO371/13782/E3918/95/34.
61 Petition from Certain Kashgai [sic] Chiefs to His Majesty’s Consulate, Shiraz (undated),
Davis, Shiraz, to Clive, 10 June, 1929, FO371/13781/E3350/95/34, petition in original
Persian in FO248/1389/591/22.
62 Copy in translation of General Shaibani’s Proclamation, Clive to Henderson, 12 July,
1929, FO371/13781/E3668/95/34.
63 For an account of the course of the uprisings and their suppression see Cronin, Tribal
Politics, chapter 5.
64 Notes on a Tour in Khorasan and Gurgan (Astarabad) Province, V. A. L. Mallet,
18 October, 1935, Knatchbull-Hugessesn to Hoare, 24 October 1935, FO371/
18992?E6776/608/34.
65 Chick to Nicolson, 12 July, 1926, FO371/11502/E4812/4323/34.
66 Chick to Nicolson, 12 July, 1926, FO371/11502/E4812/4323/34.

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 STEPHANIE CRONIN

67 Bayat, Shurish-i ‘Asha’ir-i Fars, pp. 125–6.

68 Clive to Henderson, 27 July, 1929, FO371/13782/E3918/95/34.
69 Most famously by Eric Hobsbawm, Bandits (London 1969; 2000). For a different view
see Karen Barkey, Bandits and Bureaucrats: the Ottoma Route to State Centralization,
(Ithaca, NY, 1994). For a literary representation of Hobsbawm’s view of bandits in the
Turkish context, see the novels of Yashar Kemal, especially Memed, My Hawk,
(London, 1961); Anatolian Tales (London, 1968). Hobsbawm’s inclination to romanti-
cize banditry has been criticized by Blok and others, who have pointed out that bandits
have often acted not as challengers to, but as enforcers of, landlord power in the
countryside. Bandits might, for example, threaten recalcitrant tenants or labourers on
behalf of a landlord who would, in return, ensure that they were able to keep their loot
and remain out of reach of the police. Anton Blok, ‘The Peasant and the Brigand:
Social Banditry Reconsidered’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 14,
No. 4, 1972.
70 For the concept of ‘social banditry’ see Hobsbawm, Bandits.
71 For peasant rebellions in the Caspian provinces see Afary, The Iranian Constitutional
Revolution, pp. 145–76; Kazemi and Abrahamian, ‘The Nonrevolutionary Peasantry’.
72 For the politically and socially radical Jangali movement, which operated in Gilan
between the constitutional revolution and the establishment of the new regime in
Iran in 1921, see Kazemi and Abrahamian, ‘The Nonrevolutionary Peasantry’; Cosroe
Chaqueri, The Soviet Socialist Republic of Iran, 1920–1921: Birth of the Trauma
(Pittsburgh, 1995).
73 See, for example, Butler to Eden, 1 October 1936, FO371/20053/E6589/6589/34.
74 Memorandum on the Political and Economic Situation in Kermanshah, July 1935,
Acting Consul Gault to Knatchbull-Hugessen, 2 August 1935, FO37118997/
E5144/5144/34.
75 Lambton, Landlord and Peasant, p. 189.
76 The complaints of the great Hamadani land-owning family of Qaraguzlu, for example,
although obviously greatly exaggerated, seem to substantiate this notion. In 1933 these
landowners told a British official that their peasants were ‘completely out of hand, and
appeal to the police and the law courts at every turn whenever the landlord attempts to
assert his rights or declines to sanction some extravagant improvement’. Hoare to
Simon, 17 March 1933, FO371/16953/E1869/1101/34.
77 Consul Hoyland to Dodd, Kermanshah, 30 September 1931, FO371/15341/E5391/146/34.
78 Consul, Sistan and Kain, to Tehran, 8 December 1930, FO371/15341/E606/146/34;
Vice-Consul Summerhayes to Dodd, 28 September 1931, FO371/15341/E5391/146/34.
79 Seymour to Eden, 4 December 1937, FO371/20835/E7454/909/34.
80 Mr R. F. G. Sarell, Acting Vice-Consul, to Watkinson, Consul, Shiraz, 26 July 1937,
FO371/20835/E6271/904/34.
81 John Foran, 1993, Fragile Resistance: Social Transformation in Iran from 1500 to the
Revolution (Boulder, CO, 1993), p. 229.
82 The best analysis of the shah’s land reform may be found in Hooglund, Land and
Revolution.
83 Bakhash, The Reign of the Ayatollahs, p. 196.
84 Ibid., p. 197.

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 Part IV

MARGINALS AND OUTCASTS

 7
PROBING THE MARGINS
Gypsies (Roma) in
Ottoman society, c.1450–1600

Faika Çelik

Introduction
In the year 1564, an imperial decree was issued from Istanbul to all Ottoman
provincial and sub-provincial governors and judges, informing and commanding
them as follows:

Currently, in your dominions some groups of wanderers and Gypsies

(kurbet ve çingan taifesi) have emerged and have been engaging in
various unlawful activities (enva-ı muharremat ve esnaf-ı münkerat) and
behaving immorally ( fısk [u] fücur). They have been wandering in cities,
towns and villages. With their prostitutes and their entertainment and
musical instruments, they have been going to social gatherings and
bazaars where there are huge crowds, misleading whomever they meet
and disturbing public peace. While passing through neighboring cities, in
the scarcely populated areas, they have been murdering and plundering
those upon whom they can prevail as well as travelers, and they have been
constantly causing disorder and pursuing such abominable acts (dayima
fesad ü venaatden hali olmayub). Since the removal of the harms that they
have caused is necessary and indispensable, I have ordered that . . .1

This decree is but one example of many that can be found in the mühimme
registers (the copies of the Imperial decrees) from 1558 to 1569 pertaining
to the Gypsies (Roma) and other vagabonds wandering with them.2 According to
the registers, vagrancy, murder, theft, prostitution – as illustrated in the above
document – were the most common manifestations of the Gypsies’ marginality.3
Another illegal activity often associated with the Gypsies in the registers
was counterfeiting coin. For instance, according to a story recorded in 1565, a
counterfeiter named Çilingir Sinan (Sinan the key maker) was caught by the

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Ottoman authorities. During his interrogation, Sinan revealed the names of his
partners. One of these was a Gypsy named Elsüz Çingene (Gypsy without a
hand). Nor was Elsüz Çingene alone; his sons were deeply implicated as well.4 As
state-generated documents, the registers delineate perceptions of Gypsy margin-
ality by the Ottoman ruling elite. Yet were these views also shared by Ottoman
society at large? In other words, did Ottoman society also see the Gypsies as a
group that engaged in various unlawful activities and that was constantly causing
disorder? Or were these texts just a construction of Gypsies’ marginality by
Ottoman officials and elements of the ruling elite? This study attempts to answer
questions such as these. More specifically, it aims to explore the attitudes of the
Ottoman state and of the society toward the Gypsies in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries. I propose that Gypsies were socially marginalized in Ottoman society
and that on occasion this manifested itself through spatial exclusion. Their
marginalization stemmed from a variety of factors, but particularly from their
hybrid lifestyle, their indulgence in some of the “degrading” professions, as well
as their non-conformity to the accepted social and moral codes. Yet their marginal
condition was by no means absolute. That is to say, while they were outside the
social, cultural, and religious norms of Ottoman society, they were nonetheless
inside the social sphere and participated in it by fulfilling various essential roles.
Some of these roles were despised yet in demand. As for the Ottoman state, despite
prejudices displayed in the parlance of documents and various discriminatory
policies reflected in some of their practices, Ottoman bureaucrats of the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries accommodated the Gypsies and saw no harm in negotiating
with them for the benefit of the state. Zoltan Barany suggests that marginality is
explicated only with respect to centrality.5 In any given society it is the dominant
groups that define the marginal through the lenses of accepted social, cultural, and
religious norms.6 Therefore, the study of marginal groups is not only important for
its own sake but also for what it reveals about the mainstream or dominant groups
of society.7 In this respect, the present study not only offers glimpses into the
lives and survival strategies of Gypsies but also seeks to provide a better under-
standing of socioeconomic realities as well as the social and moral values of
mainstream Ottoman society.
The time frame of this study spans the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It is
often argued that marginality and social exclusion are most prevalent in societies
experiencing transformation, mutation, and turmoil.8 Thus, the study of Gypsies’
marginality in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is particularly instructive
because it is in this period that the Empire experienced not only powerful
centralized government and a flourishing economy but also political turmoil and
economic distress. The period stretching from 1300–1600 is often characterized as
the “classical” period in modern Ottoman historiography. It is in this period that
we observe the gradual emergence of the Ottoman government structure, the
foundation of the Empire’s fundamental institutions and the proclamation of
major laws related to the governing of these institutions and nearly all segments
of Ottoman society, including the Gypsies. However, toward the end of the

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“classical” period the Empire saw, in the words of Linda Darling “climate change
and population growth, an influx of silver and debasement of coinage, high prices
and lagging wages, commercialization, moneterization, and urban growth, military
‘revolution’, youth movements and rebellions . . .”9 The Ottoman bureaucrats of
the period responded to these challenges and introduced new regulations including
social control measures that led to the marginalization of some segments of society,
especially those without a fixed abode. As the mühimme registers of the period
demonstrate, they were particularly concerned with the movements of populations.
The Celali Revolts, caused by unemployed mercenary soldiers, brought about
massive migration from rural to urban areas which in turn hindered not only
agricultural production but also the collection of taxes. Thus, faced with an
economic downturn and the dissolution of the existing social order, the ruling
elite of the period took extra measures to control the movements of the Empire’s
subjects. It appears in the sources that Gypsies, with their hybrid lifestyle, became
one of the primary targets of the Ottoman regime of the period.

Literature review
Historians of the Ottoman Empire have hitherto written extensively not only on
the polyethnic and multireligious nature of the Ottoman Empire, but also on the
specific ethnic and religious groups that made up this plurality. Yet, although the
Gypsies were a part of this society, they have not received critical attention from
Ottomanists whether in Turkey or abroad. Recently, however, a few important
studies have been devoted to the Ottoman Gypsies. Elena Marushiakova and
Vesselin Popov’s Gypsies in the Ottoman Empire is among these few.10 This study
presents not only the primary source material on the Gypsies living in the
Ottoman Balkans but also makes some crucial observations on their legal and
social status. For Marushiakova and Popov, the Gypsies had a distinct legal status
in the Empire, different from that of Muslims and non-Muslims. In fact, I follow
this view but attempt to go further through an investigation of why the Ottoman
state treated the Gypsies differently from other groups.
Zoltan Barany’s The East European Gypsies is another contribution to the
study of the Gypsies in general and Ottoman Gypsies in particular. Elucidating
the status of eastern European Gypsies under different types of regimes – imperial,
authoritarian, state-socialist, and democratic political systems – over a period
of seven centuries, Barany discusses the Ottoman state’s policies toward the
Gypsies and their socioeconomic status. On this point he argues that
“the Ottoman Empire, with the marked absence of systematically repressive
policies and legislation characteristic of the rest of Europe, was a haven for the
Roma. The state accepted or, put differently, did not care about their customs
and religious identities.”11 This argument does not entirely convey the intricate
relationship between the Ottoman state and its Gypsy subjects. Nevertheless,
Barany’s book is still important for the study of Ottoman Gypsies not because
of its conclusions but for its methodology. Barany deploys the concept of

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“marginality” to analyze the status of Gypsies in eastern European societies. He

maintains that “marginality – the condition of being subordinated to or excluded
by others – is the central theme in Romani experience” and as such provides the
best theoretical handle for understanding the status of Gypsies in eastern Europe
and elsewhere.12 The present study follows the methodological framework of
Zoltan Barany in that it also uses “marginality” as a methodological tool to
understand the status of Gypsies in the Ottoman Empire. However, “marginality”
as employed here refers to “individuals’ [or groups’] non-conformity to social and
legal norms.”13 “Marginal,” as I use the term, denotes someone who lives in the
society, yet insufficiently conforms to its norms. The utility of this definition
is twofold:

It recognizes the strong interrelationship between law and society. Laws

are an emanation and reflection of the society. However, customary
practices often play just as important a role as formal law in setting the
boundaries between what is acceptable and what is marginal.
This definition also avoids treating marginality in static terms.
Societies change, as do the laws that govern them. So too do notions of
marginality, as what were once vices become habits and new taboos take
the place of old prohibitions.14

More recently, Eyal Ginio has probed the status of Gypsies in the Ottoman
Empire in his “Neither Muslims nor Zimmis: The Gypsies (Roma) in the
Ottoman Empire.”15 Looking through the eighteenth-century court records of
Salonica, Ginio argues that the Gypsies of the Ottoman Balkans are a salient
example of a group that was marginalized through stigmatization, segregation,
and exclusion. According to Ginio, the Ottoman state also took part in their
marginalization. For him, the most obvious evidence for Gypsies’ marginalization
by the Ottoman authorities is the fact that, “whether Muslim or Christian, they
were categorized as one distinct group that shared some common features – and
that had to pay a special poll tax that was earmarked only for them.”16 But the
Gypsies utilized an array of strategies to empower themselves, for as Ginio noted
“on occasion, they were even able to win cases in court or to receive a favourable
sultanic edict that supported their claims. Furthermore, they endeavoured to
improve their status when the possibility arose.”17 The present article substanti-
ates some of Ginio’s findings, especially on marginal agency, but during an earlier
period, that is in the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries. Marginality is, as we
know, not a natural entity; it is a construction and it fluctuates with time and
context. Thus, what was defined as marginal in eighteenth-century Ottoman
society might not have been considered marginal in the sixteenth century or vice
versa. Thus, an exploration of the status of Gypsies in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries through sources such as the kanun (sultanic law) and the mühimme
registers and travel accounts will give us an opportunity to see the versatility of
the marginal condition.

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Sources
While it takes into consideration the limited secondary source literature on the
subject, this article relies for the most part on published Ottoman archival docu-
ments, narrative sources and Turkish oral traditions. The four major kanuns that
specifically concern the Gypsies represent one of the main primary sources used
in this study. They are as follows: (1) Rumeli Etrakinün Koyun Adeti Hükmi
(Decree on the Number of the Sheep of the Turks in Rumelia), promulgated
during the reign of Mehmed II (1451–1481); (2) Kanunname-i Cizye-i Cingenehan
(The Law of the Poll-Tax for the Gypsies), issued in 1497 during the time of
Bayezid II (1481–1512); (3) Kanunname-i Kıptiyan-i Vilayet-i Rumeli (The Law
of the Gypsies of Rumelia), enacted in 1530; and (4) Cingane Yazmak ⁄çün Tayin
Olunan Emine ve Katibine Hüküm (An Order to the Steward and his Scribe
Appointed to Inscribe the Gypsies), endorsed in 1537 during the reign of
Süleyman I (1520–1566).18
The most important question to be addressed in this paper in relation to the
kanuns, however, is how they can help us reconstruct the history of the Gypsies
in the Ottoman Empire. As state-generated documents, kanuns primarily delineate
the intentions and the practical and fiscal concerns of the Ottoman state. In this
particular case, they address the following issues: how to control the movements
of the Gypsies, how to collect taxes from them, how to benefit from the Gypsies
through their professions, how to integrate the nomadic Gypsies into settled
society, and how to punish them for misconduct against the state as well as against
settled society. However, when viewed with a critical eye, the kanuns also offer
glimpses into the Gypsies’ resistance to these regulations and their strategies
to ameliorate their position. Therefore, the kanuns are especially useful in
evaluating how the Gypsies were referred to and categorized in state documents,
how these definitions of the Ottoman bureaucracy imposed certain duties and
restrictions upon the Gypsies, and how the Gypsies contested these restrictions.
In addition to collections of laws, this study also relies upon the mühimme
registers of the second half of the sixteenth century, which include drafts and
copies of the decrees decided upon in the Imperial Assembly.19 The registers
contain summaries of petitions submitted to the sultan by several of his subjects
and the orders given by the sultan in response to them. Overall, they deal with
many issues, including, but not limited to, law and order, revenues of the state,
organization of the military, and relations with foreign powers. These registers
include not only records relating to extraordinary circumstances but also general
imperial orders. As such “they help [us] define the expected norms.”20
Furthermore, unlike the kanuns, these texts more often than not reflect the socio-
economic and moral concerns of the petitioners and the central government’s
responses to their complaints. In this study, the mühimme registers have been used
to evaluate how Gypsy marginality was perceived and defined by the Ottoman
authorities and by settled society. They are also extremely valuable to my analysis
of the state’s actions in response to problems that were caused by the Gypsies.

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Yet “the difficulty lies in discovering to what extent these orders were implemented.
No follow up orders were made on the copy of the original order, but subsequent
fermans may indicate where a chronic problem exists.”21 In the case of Gypsies,
the chronic problem seems to have been their habit of itinerancy, because there
are many decrees issued one after another in the second half of the sixteenth
century forbidding Gypsies from riding horses or carrying weapons.
In addition to state documents, narrative sources such as travel accounts
and oral traditions in the form of metaphors and proverbs are invaluable for
examining the image of the Gypsies in Ottoman–Turkish popular culture.
Moreover, despite their limitations as historical sources, the plays of Karagöz or
Turkish Shadow Theatre also provide information regarding Ottoman–Turkish
stereotyping of the Gypsies.22 Therefore, this article will draw upon legal texts
and imperial edicts as well as narrative sources and oral traditions to reconstruct
a social history of the Gypsies in the Ottoman Empire in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. Even though these sources largely speak from the point of
view of the governing elite and mainstream society, they nevertheless offer us as
well a glimpse at the Gypsies’ responses to Ottoman bureaucracy and society.

Social marginality of Gypsies in

Ottoman–Turkish society
Gypsies were socially marginalized in Ottoman society and on occasion this
marginalization manifested itself through spatial exclusion, although it should be
underlined that this marginality was only relative and not absolute. That is to
say, while Gypsies were marginalized through stereotyping and on occasion
spatial exclusion, they were nevertheless within the society – though far from the
center – and occupied certain niches. Contacts between them and those who
conformed to society’s norms always existed. Bronislaw Geremek, working on
the broader question of medieval marginality, suggests that “what led to social
marginalization [in medieval society] was the transgression of juridical and
ethical norms, customs and models or fundamental values.”23 Furthermore, he
notes that certain professions and trades also imposed marginality upon their
practitioners.24 Similarly, Gypsy marginalization in Ottoman society stemmed
from various factors, but particularly from a socially and economically hybrid
lifestyle which made them hardly suitable for legal–normative control. Evidence
suggests that Gypsies were living settled and nomadic lifestyles in the fifteenth-
and sixteenth-century Balkans. Furthermore, they more often than not engaged in
menial and “degrading” professions, possibly of a temporary nature. As such they
were often seen as falling outside social and legal norms.
Among the most revealing sources on this point are the mühimme registers. As
noted earlier, these registers include petitions and complaints submitted to the
sultan for his consideration, among them many submitted by ordinary Ottoman
subjects. Even though these petitions more often than not were written down and
dispatched to the sultan by a local kadı or a state agent, they nevertheless allow

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us to hear the voices of the petitioners and, in rare instances, those whom the
petitions concerned. For instance, in 1567 the sultan issued a decree to the
governor of Beyvehri in response to the latter’s report on the depredations of
Gypsies in this region. It appears that the governor of Beyvehri had dispatched
this report to the sultan after resolving a problem caused by Gypsies and other
wanderers. The governor states that he had received a petition from the villagers of
Kirili in Beyvehri complaining about Gypsies. In the petition he describes how
the villagers complained about “some gypsies and wanderers, who come to our vil-
lages, wander on the roads and rob some travelers so we are not able to go from
one village to another. We cannot protect our clothes, food and animals from their
harm. They plunder all our belongings in our fields. They even steal our sickles
and the carpets from the mosques. And so they do not respect the veriat at all.”25
On the basis of this complaint, the governor sent some of his men to investigate
the case and invite the Gypsies and wanderers to behave according to the veriat.
Apparently, this led to a violent confrontation, and a few people died on each side.
So, after this, the governor wrote a report and informed the sultan that the
situation had been brought under control by sending some of these “people of
corruption” (ehl-i fesad) to prison.26 Yet it appears from the sultan’s decree that
the case was not really closed. After this confrontation, two people from the region
went to the sultan’s court and objected to the attitudes of the state’s agents in han-
dling the case. These two, in the words of the sultan, belonged to the same ehl-i
fesad. This decree is important for at least three reasons. First, it shows how
Gypsies were seen by settled society. It appears that, due to a tendency toward
vagrancy and theft, Gypsies were simply despised. Second, it demonstrates how the
state dealt with them. Again, due to vagrancy and involvement in illicit activities
(in this case theft), the bureaucrats were suspicious of them and stigmatized
them as ehl-i fesad in the registers. Third, it shows how Gypsies responded to
local state agents. Rather than submit to the agents easily, they confronted them.
In protest against the abuses of the agents, they were prepared to take their case
to the sultan and petition against the governor and his entourage.
As very aptly suggested by Eyal Ginio, the corpus of plays known as Karagöz
(Turkish Shadow Theater) offers another source of information on the stereotypes
attributed to the Gypsies by Ottoman society.27 In Karagöz, one of the stock
Gypsy characters is a nasty witch called Bok Ana (lit “shit mother”).28 However,
since Karagöz was performed in order to make people laugh, character traits
were certainly exaggerated. Furthermore, in the Karagöz tradition, not only the
Gypsies, but also other religious and ethnic groups living in Ottoman territory
(Turks, Kurds, Arabs, Jews, Armenians, and others), were stereotyped in terms of
their supposed ethnic and religious traits as well as in terms of their professions.29
I suggest that the marginality of Gypsies and the motives behind their relative
exclusion from Ottoman–Turkish society are also reflected in Ottoman–Turkish
oral tradition. It would be useful to begin with the term Çingene itself, the
word still most often used to designate a Gypsy in Turkish. The origin of the term
is still debated. The common belief is that it derives from the Byzantine Greek

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word Atsínganoi, which denotes itinerant wanderers and soothsayers.30 However,

according to a recent book published on the Turkish Gypsies by Rafet Özkan, it
may well come from a combination of two words: Çengi-gan or Çengi-gane.
Çengi has two meanings: a dancing girl or a harp (çenk) player. In Persian, gan
is a suffix that designates the plural of rational beings. Thus, çengi-gan would
refer to either dancing girls or harp players. Since these professions have been
commonly attributed to the Gypsies, according to Özkan this is the likely
origin of the term Çingene.31 However, there is one more popular explanation.
According to this story,

When the Gypsies, driven out of their own country, arrived at Mekran, a
wonderful machine was made, the wheel of which refused to turn until
an evil spirit disguised as a sage, informed the chief of the Gypsies, who
was named Chen, that it would do so only if he married his own sister
Guin. This advice was followed and the wheel turned, but from this
incestuous marriage the people earned not only the name of Chenguin
but also the curse, which was put upon them by the Moslem saints, that
they should be wanderers excluded from among the races of mankind.32

The metaphorical usage of Çingene, or Gypsy, in Turkish has also, of course, a

derogatory meaning. It implies being shameless, impudent, ill-mannered, dishonest,
and miserly.33 It is indeed “one of the worst insults that you can hurl at a Turk.”34
In Turkish idioms, Gypsies are associated with theft and labeled as being shameless
and dishonest.35 In proverbs, they are portrayed as corrupt and unreliable.36 The
social contempt and prejudice toward the Gypsies in Ottoman–Turkish society are
perhaps best seen in the popular saying: “In Turkey, there are seventy-two and a
half nations.”37 This half nation is usually taken to denote the Gypsies.

Religious beliefs and stereotyping

The given names of the Gypsies in the Rumelian tax register of 1522–1523 were
examined by Marushiakova and Popov in order to cast some light upon their
religious beliefs. They noticed that Gypsies who were registered as Muslims often
had Christian names while those who were registered as Christians often had
Muslim names. Consequently, they argue that the way Gypsies were recorded in
the registers might suggest “the syncretic character of their beliefs, often changing
with circumstances.”38 Other genres of evidence such as travelers’ accounts also
uphold this assumption, that is, that the Gypsies’ attachment to any religion
was nominal.39 It appears that their lack of a well-defined religious creed was
an important element in discussions about the Gypsies by both state officials
and commoners. In other words their indifference to institutionalized religion,
particularly Islam, is cited to reinforce state and society’s suspicion of the Gypsies.
In this regard, the accounts of the celebrated seventeenth-century traveler
Evliya Çelebi (1611–1679) are illustrative. In his account of the Gypsies living

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in Gümülcine, Evliya gives the following description of their promiscuous

ritual life:

The Rumelian Gypsies celebrated Easter with the Christians, the festival
of Sacrifice with the Muslims and Passover with the Jews. They did not
accept any one religion and therefore our Imams refused to conduct
funeral services for them but gave them a special cemetery outside Egri
Qapu. It is because they are such renegades that they were ordered to pay
an additional tax for non-Muslims (xarac). That is why a double xarac is
exacted from the Gypsies. In fact, according to Sultan Mehmet’s census
stipulation (tahrir) xarac is even exacted from the dead souls of the
Gypsies, until the live ones are found to replace them.40

An incident reported by Alexander G. Paspati from a later period also highlights

Ottoman attitudes toward Gypsies as influenced by popular perceptions of their
religious beliefs.

In a small village near Tchorlu, between Constantinople and Adrinople,

called Deghirmen Kioy (village of the Mill), encamped in 1866 a party
of wandering Tchinghianés with their bears. They had all Musulman
names, and were considered Musulman Bohemians.
One night one of them, called Mustapha, in passing a river with his
bear, got imbedded within the mud up to his waist. His cries were heard
by some workmen at a neighboring farm, but, thinking that highwaymen
were at their work, they left the poor fellow to his fate. In the morning
he was still found in the mud – dead.
His companions went to the Greek Priest in the village to have him
buried, but the priest, knowing that up to that day he had been called
Mustapha, was unwilling to bury him. His companions alleged that his
name was Theodore. Finally the Turks, finding no vestige of circumcision,
gave him up as a Christian, and he was buried according to the rites of
the Christian church.41

Professions and social marginalization

As in many other societies, so in Ottoman society, a person’s occupation was one
of the distinguishing signs of social status. While some professions were highly
regarded, others were held in contempt and their practitioners subjected to social
exclusion. To provide a hierarchical schema of all of the professions performed in
Ottoman society is well beyond the scope of this study. However, we can present
some of the most common professions practiced by Gypsies and offer glimpses
into how those professions were dealt with by the state and considered by the
rest of society. This will shed light not only on how the Gypsies – both men
and women, settled and nomadic – earned their living, but also the extent to

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which their professions contributed to their social marginalization in Ottoman

society. Furthermore, an examination of professions held by Gypsies will also
offer some insight into strategies employed by the marginalized to improve their
living conditions.
The sources reveal that the most common professions held by Gypsies were in
the entertainment sector. As “entertainers” they formed a quite heterogeneous
category in which they functioned as musicians, boy and girl dancers, and animal
trainers, among other things.42 In the mühimme registers, they were often portrayed
as itinerant entertainers serving the public by organizing parties either in front of
their tents or in wedding processions. The registers reveal that, during these parties,
they were involved in singing, dancing, and prostitution. Due to engagement in
such “vice trades,” others often despised the Gypsies, and brought complaints
before the authorities, asking for their expulsion from their communities.43 Apart
from itinerant Gypsy entertainers in Anatolia and Rumelia, our sources indicate
that in Istanbul there were professional Gypsy musicians, as well as girl and boy
dancers, who belonged to entertainment guilds.44 According to Evliya Çelebi,
these professional entertainers’ companies (kols) numbered almost three hundred
during his time and were an indispensable part of wedding processions held by
the palace and the governing elite, as well as a fixture at public festivals.45
Another well-known category of Gypsy entertainers was that of bear-trainers.
According to Evliya Çelebi, they also formed a guild in Istanbul.46 Gypsies with
their dancing bears were, in fact, a common sight in the most populated areas of
the imperial capital, and watching dancing bears was one of the most common
entertainments for ordinary people.47 Though Gypsies exercised this profession
until recently in Turkey, their involvement with it caused tension. For instance, an
imperial decree, sent to the judge of Istanbul in 1761, informs us that Gypsies had
begun to live among the Muslim residents of the Hoca Ali quarter of Edirne Kap␫,
and that the residents were concerned about the Gypsies’ insanitary animals, their
possession of flammable materials (which they used to make brooms), and their
engagement in many varieties of sinful activities (enva-i fuhviyyat). Consequently,
they petitioned the authorities to expel these Gypsies, and as a result the sultan
ordered the judge of Istanbul to remove Gypsies from the said quarter, which had
been historically a Muslim neighborhood.48 It should be noted however that these
spatial exclusions were not systematic. They usually happened only when there
was a public complaint against the Gypsies, and when excluded from one neigh-
borhood they seemed to find a niche in another. In a decree issued in 1763, for
instance, we see them living even in the Fatih district, which was known for its
educational, religious, and commercial importance.49
Gypsies were also identified with prostitution. Marushiakova and Popov note
that in the tax registers of sixteenth-century Rumelia “there were even whole tax
communities registered for fiscal purposes as gaining their income from this trade
[prostitution].”50 Prostitution is considered a zina (crime) in Islamic law. Hence,
depending upon the civil status of the prostitute – that is, unmarried or married – the

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punishment would be either flogging or stoning to death. However, scholars who

have examined court records have disclosed that prostitutes were rarely subject to
corporal punishment in the application of the law in the Ottoman Empire. Instead,
prostitutes were more often penalized by other forms of punishment such as fines
or banishment.51 The wording of The Law of the Gypsies of Rumelia, promulgated
in 1530, is worth noting in this regard. In it, the sultan commands that “the Gypsies
of Rumelia, Istanbul, Edirne, Filibe and Sofya pay one hundred akçes as a fixed
tax (kesim) in every month for their wives who are involved in an unlawful act (na
mevru fiile mübaveret iden).”52 The mühimme registers also provide information
on the state’s attitude toward prostitution in some Gypsy communities. For
instance, in a decree issued in 1570, Gypsies are accused of using their wives and
daughters for prostitution and retaining the profits this generated without giving
the state its due.53 The question that this raises is: Why were the prostitutes not
punished with what was prescribed in the letter of law? I suggest that this was due
to a consideration of the social consequences of the situation. Not everybody
could afford to marry or buy concubines in Ottoman society. Therefore, prostitution
functioned as a safety valve in the controlling of male sexual desire and as such
filled a niche in Ottoman society. Furthermore, it seems that it was a lucrative
source of revenue for the state, when properly managed. In short, due to these
considerations prostitution was accommodated by the state and tolerated by
the legal authorities. Gypsies’ involvement in this trade has demonstrated to us
how the Ottoman authorities dealt with prostitution. Yet from the subaltern
perspective, their engagement in this trade also offers us a glimpse into one of the
survival strategies available to paupers in Ottoman society.
Metalsmithing was another trade in which Gypsies commonly engaged. Their
expertise in this field proved to be a boon for them; not only were Gypsies much
sought after by military officials for their skill in the manufacturing of weapons, but
they also drew on this expertise to counterfeit coins, thus drawing the attention of
another branch of the state. At the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of
the seventeenth, unstable market conditions unleashed a flood of various
substandard coins onto the Ottoman market which in turn created ideal conditions
for counterfeiting.54 It appears that some Gypsies used this market instability to
their own advantage and indulged in this illicit trade.55 For instance, according
to an imperial decree sent to the chief judge of Aydın in 1596, the sultan noted
that most of the Gypsies living in this sub-province practiced counterfeiting as a
profession. Therefore, he ordered that the wrongdoers be sent to the sultan’s court
(südde-i saâdet) with their instruments of counterfeiting.56 What happened to
these culprits in the sultan’s court remains unknown as the sources fall silent at
this point. However, as Suraiya Faroqhi suggests, we can guess what might have
happened to them by referring to the Ottoman criminal law codified in the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries.57 According to the law issued during the reign of Sultan
Mehmed II, the counterfeiters would have faced execution.58 However, according
to the penal kanunname of Sultan Süleyman the Lawgiver, the punishments to be

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meted out to the counterfeiters ranged from death (siyaset) to stigmatizing corporal
punishment, or penal servitude in the galleys (kürek).59 These punishments might
vary according to the number of offences and the status of the criminal. For
instance, out of respect for their position, members of the ulema could not be
sentenced to death even if they were guilty of counterfeiting. Instead, they were
more likely to face stigmatizing corporal punishments such as amputation of
the hand. The counterfeiters of Aydın were probably not so fortunate.
Some Gypsies, however, were valued by the Ottoman state and granted certain
privileges because of their expertise in metalsmithing. According to a law
promulgated during the reign of Mehmed II, some Gypsies were exempted from
the poll-tax in return for their service in iron-making for the army. The sultan’s
command is worth quoting

And do not take the poll tax (haraç)60 from those Gypsies who were
assigned to work on matters connected to the fortresses or for iron-making,
provided they either have my decree or a letter from the governor. If any-
one joins those Gypsies claiming to be a smith or sifter in order to escape
the poll tax he should be made aware that he will be reprimanded.61

The law is quite explicit, and yet it also hints at strategies resorted to by subaltern
groups to evade taxation. Apparently, Gypsies and other subaltern groups often
attempted to use this route in order to avoid the poll-tax and improve their position
in society. Another opportunity afforded to the Gypsies can be seen from the fact
that, starting from the beginning of the sixteenth century, some of them served in
the army as müsellems (lit. “(those who are) exempt”).62 In return for their services
to the military, such as casting cannon balls, carrying and repairing guns, and
building roads, they were not only granted lands to cultivate but also gained tax-
free status.63 Since their services were valuable to the Ottoman army müsellems
were ranked between the ruling and the subject class.64
Some Gypsies also served the sultans as executioners. As in many areas of state
and government administration, the Ottomans institutionalized this “undesirable”
profession. Starting from the seventeenth century, executioners recruited from the
Gypsy and the Croatian peoples formed the bulk of the corps of executioners
(cellad ocaæı) and functioned under the authority of the Corps of the Imperial
Guards (bostancı ocaæı). Hence, this “undesirable” occupation was legitimized
by the Ottoman state. Nevertheless, its practitioners remained socially despised
on religious and moral grounds.65 They were so despised that, even after death,
they were segregated from other souls through burial in the cellad mezarlıæı
of Istanbul, the state cemetery reserved exclusively for the burial of the state’s
executioners.66 Yet another “undesirable” occupation pursued by the Gypsies
was that of fortune-telling.67 Apparently, Istanbul’s famed fortune-tellers of the
second half of the nineteenth century were all Muslim Gypsy women.68
Gypsies were socially marginalized in Ottoman society through stereotyping
and, on occasion, spatial exclusion. Their hybrid lifestyles and indulgence in certain

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degrading professions, as well as their nonconformity to accepted social and

moral codes, are considered to have been the source of their marginalization.
It should be underlined, however, that their marginal condition was only relative.
That is to say, while they were marginalized, they were nevertheless active within
society and met a variety of its needs. While some of their vocations, such as
horse and cattle dealing, were also practiced by other Ottoman subjects, other
activities, such as dancing and prostitution, were condemned by Islamic law and
forbidden to Muslims and yet no less popular for all that. Due to their engaging in
these vices, Gypsies were considered immoral and harmful to the well-being of
communities. The petitions presented to the Ottoman authorities demanding their
expulsion from certain neighborhoods serve as evidence of this attitude. However,
these spatial exclusions seem only relative as their relations with those who
conformed to society’s norms continued on various occasions such as festivals
and wedding ceremonies. Furthermore, Gypsies were not powerless against the
misconduct of state agents. As we have seen, they even went to the sultan to
petition against unfair practices. Furthermore, they attempted to ameliorate their
position in society by resorting to different strategies.

The Ottoman state’s policy toward the Gypsies

The legal status of the Gypsies in Ottoman society is atypical considering the
principles on which the Ottoman social structure was based.69 The sources that
nurtured the development of this structure were diverse and varied; nevertheless,
the basic ideology that shaped social organization was derived to a large extent
from Islamic principles. The state identified itself as Islamic and devoted itself
to the promotion of the faith and application of the veriat. The kanuns or sultanic
legislations and local practices of the conquered territories also incorporated
these ideals. However, in practical terms, the concept of “religious community”
was increasingly promoted as the basic unit of administrative organization with
the inclusion of large non-Turkic and non-Muslim populations.70 Already by the
second half of the fifteenth century, the sultan’s subjects were organized along
confessional lines. Membership in a given confessional community or millet was
one of the crucial factors in determining a subject’s rights and obligations. From
the Ottoman point of view, rather than ethnic or linguistic solidarity, religion was
the basis of communal identity.71
By contrast, however, the administration of the Gypsies was based on ethnicity
rather than religious affiliation.72 For the Gypsies of Rumelia in the sixteenth
century, this arrangement can be seen through an examination of the administrative
unit called the liva-i çingane. In the Ottoman provincial administration, the liva or
sancak was used to designate “a district encompassing, at rough estimate, an area
of several thousand square miles and a population perhaps a hundred thousand on
the average.”73 On the other hand – despite their fragmentary nature – the sources
suggest that the liva-i çingane or çingane sancaæı (sub-province of Gypsies) was
not a geographical entity. Rather, it was a political and administrative division

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that was formed for the organization of the Gypsies in Edirne, Istanbul, and
the rest of Rumelia probably at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the
sixteenth century.74 Sources on the historical geography of the Ottoman Empire
also provide further evidence that the liva-i çingane or çingane sancaæı was not
a geographical district constituting part of the province of Rumelia.75 As the Law
of the Gypsies of Rumelia (Kanunname-i Kiptiyan-i Vilayet-i Rumeli) indicates,
Muslim and non-Muslim Gypsies, whether settled or nomadic, were attached to
this administrative sub-province based upon their ethnicity.76 The head of the
sub-province, called the mir-i kibtiyan, çingene sancaæı beæi, or çingene beæi, like
a confessional community leader, was made responsible for collecting the taxes
from his Gypsy community and the organization of its relations with the state.77
A second indication that the Ottoman state classified Gypsies according to
their ethnicity comes from census documents. According to Kemal Karpat, in the
population registers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Ottomans classi-
fied their subjects as Muslims and non-Muslims. The latter were further classified
as Christian, Armenian, or Jewish. Then he adds, “oddly enough, [there is] a
separate classification for Kıpti, i.e., Gypsies.”78 The term Kıpti deserves further
explanation for the purposes of this study. In Arabic as well as in Ottoman
Turkish, Kıpti means “Copt” or “native Egyptian.” As is the case with the English
“Gypsy,” Spanish “Gitano” and French “Gitane,” the Ottoman usage of Kıpti
results from the common belief during the period that the Roma originated in
Egypt.79 According to Stanford Shaw, because of this terminology the Gypsies
were mistakenly attached to the Armenian millet.80 In discussing the Armenian
millet, Selahi Sonyel also states that:

He [the Armenian Patriarch] also ruled over all the Christians who
did not belong to the Greek Orthodox Church. These included the
Monophysitic churches of Asia Minor, and later Africa such as the
Jacobites, Syrians, Ethiopians, Georgians, Chaldeans, Copts and all
the Gypsies of the Empire, in matters of civil law.81

However, according to the imperial decree that was bestowed upon the Armenian
Patriarch of Jerusalem in 1517 by Selim I, only Copts were attached to the
Armenian millet along with Ethiopians and Syriac Christians. There is no
indication in this decree that the Gypsies were also included in the above-
mentioned confessional community.82 Furthermore, according to ⁄smail Havim
Altınöz, “the Gypsies living in the Ottoman Empire were never granted millet status
and were never attached to any Muslim or Christian confessional community.
Indeed, they were treated as guests waiting in the hall.”83 Thus, whether the
Gypsies were officially attached to any millet is a question that requires further
investigation.
The above discussion suggests that Ottoman bureaucrats classified Gypsies
according to their ethnicity and created a category distinctive to them. But how

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can we explain this phenomenon? What was the rationale behind the creation
of the liva-i çingane? Was it to marginalize the Gypsies or to accommodate
them within the system? I am inclined to see this phenomenon more as an act of
accommodation than of marginalization.84 The Liva-i çingane was a parallel
millet category, that is, it was an administrative rather than a spatial or geographical
unit and was based on ethnic as opposed to religious affiliation. As noted, Gypsy
beliefs were syncretic in nature, making it difficult for Ottoman bureaucrats to
categorize them along confessional lines. Thus, it seems as though the ruling elite
of the period came up with an alternative category parallel to the millet structure
in order to accommodate the Gypsies. It should be added, however, that this
arrangement was also convenient for the fiscal needs of the state. Instead of out-
lawing Gypsies as social and moral misfits, the state gave them an extra-millet
status, outside the regular arrangement, and adapted its system to include them
within the Empire’s social and administrative framework (thereby ensuring that taxes
due to the state were paid). In addition to these efforts, there is other evidence of
the state’s willingness to adapt to the Gypsies. One kanun issued in the time of
Mehmed II states:

When the poll tax of the said Gypsies is collected, the judges of every
administrative unit should appoint a trustworthy person who is useful to
them [the Gypsies]. Migrating with [the Gypsies], he should collect their
poll tax and provide proof of this; should the Gypsies dispute it later on,
they should have a title deed. He should take the poll tax of each Gypsy,
record this in the annals and remove their names from the register after
they pay their poll tax.85

This suggests that the state adapted to the differences in the Gypsies’ lifestyle.
Instead of ordering them to settle, the state invented a mobile tax collector. This
policy seemed to continue with some modifications into the sixteenth century as
well. As reflected in the other kanuns of the period, the state sent tax collectors to
the Gypsies, but made Gypsy leaders and community members responsible for
finding defaulting Gypsies on penalty of themselves having to pay the poll-tax in
their place. The accommodation of the Gypsies by the state even extended to those
Gypsies who engaged in prostitution. As noted, according to the veriat, prostitution
is a zina crime, the punishment for which is 100 lashes for an unmarried culprit and
stoning to death for a married offender.86 However, evidence suggests that those
Gypsies who engaged in prostitution were rarely sentenced to corporal punishment
in the Ottoman Empire. Rather, other forms of punishment, such as banishment,
fines, or jail sentences, were applied in most cases. However, all this is not to
suggest that the Ottoman bureaucrats were innocent of any discriminatory attitudes
toward the Gypsies. In fact, they most certainly were and this was reflected in
several of their policies. The military institution is a case in point.

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Exclusion of Gypsies: the military institution

In Ottoman society, the status of each individual or group was fixed in order to
control and manage the subaltern classes. However, there were some avenues of
upward social mobility as far as the subject class was concerned. The devvirme
system, or periodic levy of (mainly) Christian boys, is often regarded as one of
them. However, this prospect was not open to all subjects of the sultan.
Romanians, Wallachians, and Moldavians were not levied because they were
vassals and not actual subjects of the sultan. Jews and Gypsies were left out as
well. According to Goodwin, author of The Janissaries, the former were spared
because they were professionals who served the great pashas and whose faith was
as firm as that of any Muslim, while the latter were exempt because they were
clearly detested.87 Thus, Gypsies were not permitted to exploit this “window
of opportunity.”
Some Gypsies, however, came to be valued by the Ottoman state and were
granted certain privileges because of their expertise in metalworking. We noted
earlier how, according to the law promulgated during the reign of Mehmed II,
some Gypsies were exempted from the poll-tax (haraç) in return for the auxiliary
services they provided to the army. The law also suggests that despite the state’s
precautions, Gypsies often attempted to use this route in order to avoid the poll-tax
and improve their position in society.88 Starting from the beginning of the sixteenth
century, we see some Gypsies serving in the army as müsellems (lit., exempt),
granted lands and a tax-free status in return for their services to the military.89
Those Gypsies who were identified as müsellems were attached to the liva-i
müselleman-i çingane (the sub-province of the tax-exempted Gypsies). As in the
case of liva-i çingane, the term liva or sub-province here was not used in the sense
of a geographically defined administrative unit, but rather refers to a group of
tax-exempted Gypsies dwelling in the province of Rumelia.90 The existence of this
administrative unit suggests that Ottoman ruling elite had varying views of the
Gypsies. On the one hand they despised the Gypsies and this was reflected in the
parlance of the documents and some of their institutional policies. Yet on the other
hand, they did not see any harm in negotiating with them as long as they served
the interests of the state by performing essential and useful services.91

Taxation and resistance

As stated earlier, all Rumelian Gypsies, Muslim and non-Muslim, settled and
nomadic, were attached in the sixteenth century to the same administrative unit,
that is, the Gypsy sancak. Yet as the kanuns suggest, their obligations to the state –
the most important being that of paying taxes – differed. The Law of the Gypsies
of Rumelia spells this out in detail:

Muslim Gypsies (müslüman çinganeler) of Istanbul, Edirne and other

places in Rumeli must pay twenty-two akçes tax (resm) for each house-
hold and for each bachelor. Infidel Gypsies (kafir çingeneler) will pay

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twenty-five akçes poll tax (ispenç) for each household and for each
bachelor. As for their widows, they are to pay six akçes tax (resm).92

However, Muslim Gypsies could only benefit from the lower rate of taxation
so long as they did not intermingle with or move from place to place with
non-Muslim Gypsies. Otherwise, they were required to pay the higher poll tax
and were subject to punishment as well.93 Indeed, the basis of this regulation can
be found in The Decree on the Number of Sheep of the Turks in Rumelia of
Mehmed the Conqueror, which commands that:

[A] Gypsy who is a Muslim (müslüman olan çingene) should not reside
with an infidel [Gypsy], but should intermingle with the Muslim [Gypsies].
However, if he continues to reside [with infidel Gypsies] and does not
intermingle with the Muslims, then detain him and collect his poll tax.94

As illustrated in the above passage, the kanuns always make a distinction between
Muslim and non-Muslim Gypsies when regulating their taxation. While the amount
paid by the non-Muslims was called haraç, cizye or ispençe, the amount paid by
the Muslims was invariably called kesm or resm.95 Nevertheless, notwithstanding
different designations, there seemed to exist little difference between the amount
of tax paid respectively by Muslim and non-Muslim Gypsies. How can we explain
this situation? Were the Ottoman authorities discriminating against Muslim
Gypsies by taxing them excessively? And why did the Ottoman state insist that
Muslim Gypsies not migrate internally with their non-Muslim fellows? Relying
mainly upon the sicills or the veriat court records of eighteenth-century Ottoman
Salonica, Eyal Ginio argues that Muslim Gypsies were even subject to poll-tax
(cizye) in the Ottoman Balkans. Nevertheless, the amount of the poll-tax that Muslim
Gypsies paid was less than that of non-Muslim Gypsies. Ginio acknowledges that
“the scribes named the tax imposed upon the Muslim Gypsies as bedel-i mektu’ –
that is to say, ‘the equivalent of the fixed tax’.”96 However, he contends that this
was in fact a poll-tax and that bedel-i mektu’ was just a semantic device used to
legitimize imposing the poll-tax upon a Muslim group.97 To Ginio, the root cause
of this discriminatory policy is to be sought not in Gypsies’ otherness – the
dominant explanation in the field – but in the local customs that prevailed in
the area before the Ottomans.98 Evidence suggests the poll-tax was levied on
Gypsies in the region before the arrival of the Ottomans.99 Furthermore, Machiel
Kiel, working on the Ottoman Balkans, demonstrates that “the Ottomans continued
to levy pre-Ottoman and local poll-taxes by renaming them cizye’ in the region.100
Following Kiel, Ginio argues that “the Gypsy poll tax supplied the state with
significant revenues . . . It is quite clear, then, why the state was inclined to
maintain this tax and continue its collection. The authorities circumvented the
legal problem of levying a poll tax from Muslims by designating a different term
that was devoid of the original religious meaning. Its essence, however, remained
the same.”101 At the present stage of my research and in light of my sources,

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I believe it would be misleading and essentialist to suggest that Ottoman bureaucrats

levied cizye on the Muslim Gypsies in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. I
think the etymology of these terms – kesm and resm – should be analyzed before
concluding that the Ottomans imposed cizye upon a Muslim group. However, I
will leave this pertinent question for future research.
Notwithstanding these minor differences between the taxes imposed on
Muslim and non-Muslim Gypsies, the kanuns interestingly suggest that some
Gypsies converted to Islam to avoid the poll-tax.102 Consequently, the state
expected them to “normalize” into sedentary Muslim subjects following Islamic
rules. Yet it appears that even though some Gypsies claimed to have become
Muslims, they did not obey the veriat in the eyes of the ruling elite because they
“migrated with their women” and “did not desist from relations with infidel
Gypsies.”103 Even the hint of apostasy was a serious matter in a society ruled by
Islamic law, and yet instead of a punishment for those who reverted away from
Islam, the state only asked for a fine – in this case the poll-tax – from the Gypsies
who were nominally Muslim but continued to be “infidels” in the eyes of the
Ottoman government. As in the case of those Gypsies who indulged in prostitution,
the state here seemed to be more accommodating than might have been expected.
Eyal Ginio very appropriately states that “while their [the Gypsies’] nomadic
lifestyle was the source of their social marginalization, it also gave them a way to
resist the local state agents.”104 He illustrates, on the basis of the Salonica sicills,
that Gypsies were not powerless against the abuses of local state agents and
resisted corrupt state agents through various strategies such as “abandoning the
dwellings, running away or pretending to having paid the tax elsewhere.”105 The
kanuns and the mühimme registers of the sixteenth century also corroborate this
picture. In these documents we see that Gypsies developed certain strategies to
deal with state agents in general and tax collectors in particular. Pretending to be
a smith or a sifter working for the sultan,106 deserting their communities, hiding in
the fields, migrating at night, and posing as shepherds or sipahis were just some
of the strategies that Gypsies employed in order to get away with misdemeanors
and avoid paying taxes.107
While Gypsies exercised such ingenuity to escape their fiscal responsibilities,
the Ottoman state – as discussed above – adapted to some aspects of their
residential mobility, production activities, and lifestyle, developing certain
techniques to take advantage of these unruly subjects. In the fifteenth century, we
find tax collectors moving with the Gypsies. In the sixteenth century, the sultan
again sent his tax agents to the Gypsies. However, this second time it was not the
tax collector but rather the leaders of the Gypsy communities who were made
responsible for tracing defaulters. If the missing Gypsies were not found, the
leaders were required to pay the taxes in their place.108 Nevertheless, it appears
from the mühimme registers that the Ottomans were not fond of their vagrant
subjects, including the Gypsies. Therefore, attempts were always being made to
restrict their movements or to settle them.

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Punishments
Partly due to the stigma attached to Gypsies, and partly due to the Ottomans’
desire for a settled society with predictable revenues, attempts were always being
made to control the movements of the Gypsies.109 For instance, according to an
imperial decree issued in 1572, they were forbidden to cross back and forth from
the Rumelian to the Anatolian side of Istanbul by way of the straits. If they did so,
they were to be imprisoned.110 At some point in the sixteenth century, they were
not even allowed to work as dealers (cambaz) in the horse market of Istanbul.111
They were furthermore strictly forbidden to ride a horse or to carry a weapon.
Gypsies with their horses and weapons were identified as sources of social
discontent and as a cause of civil and moral disorder.112 As noted, in the formu-
laic language of the registers, Gypsies and other groups wandering with them
(gurbet ve cingan taifesi) were labeled as ehl-i fesad by the authorities.113 How
did the Ottomans deal with these “people of corruption”? What was their attitude
toward the Gypsies and other groups wandering with them in the second half of
the sixteenth century?
The mühimme registers reveal that when Gypsies posed a threat to public
peace and security, they were either put into prison or sent to the galleys.114 Yet
more often than not they experienced an older form of marginalization, that of
banishment. In Istanbul, Gypsies were originally settled in the quarter of Edirne
Kapısı.115 In a decree issued in 1763, for example, we are informed that the Gypsies
had begun to live in the Fatih district, which was known for its educational,
religious, and commercial importance.116 According to the verdict, since the
Gypsies had been partaking in various sinful activities, they were to be expelled
and returned to Edirne Kapisi where they had been living in the past.117 However,
as the criminal kanunname of Sultan Süleyman I indicates, the expulsion of the
Gypsies from cities (as well as from the countryside) due to their nonconformity
to legal and social norms had a long precedent. According to the decree,

Some gypsies are not settled in small towns or villages and do not go
peaceably about [their] business, but arm themselves, mount on horse-
back and roam the villages and countryside, oppressing and wronging
the peasants. These [offenders] have since ancient times been called (?).
As an old kanun prescribes, such mischief makers shall be expelled and
driven from the country.118

It should be underlined however that the Ottomans employed banishment more

often than not only when there was a public complaint against the Gypsies.
Furthermore, even when the Gypsies were banished from one neighborhood or
city, they seemed to find niches in others. The fact that they came and settled
in the Fatih district suggests the versatility of their marginal condition. Even
though they were stereotyped and disliked in Ottoman society, they were able to

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find a niche in one of the most central sections of the city. Furthermore, in the
eighteenth-century Ahkâm registers of Istanbul, one encounters references to
Gypsies living in Muslim neighborhoods.119 Eventually, they were expelled
from these neighborhoods due to their engagement in illicit trades or immoral
activities. However, what is striking about this is that they were able to establish
themselves in these neighborhoods in the first place.

Conclusion
Drawing mainly upon the kanuns issued in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the
mühimme registers of the second half of the sixteenth century, and Ottoman–Turkish
oral traditions, this study has attempted to demonstrate that the marginality of the
Gypsies in the Ottoman Empire in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was neither
absolute and unchanging nor inflexible and complete. The interaction of the Gypsies
both with the state and with Ottoman society at large was both hostile and symbiotic.
While the Gypsies occupied a space far from the center of power, they always had a
place in society and in the state’s administrative apparatus.
Gypsies engaged in various professional activities and played a necessary role
in Ottoman society. While some of their vocations, such as horse and cattle
dealing, were also practiced by Ottoman subjects,120 some others such as dancing
and prostitution were condemned by Islamic law and forbidden to Muslims. Due
to their engagement in these activities, they were considered to be immoral and
harmful to the well-being of Muslim communities. The petitions submitted to
the Ottoman authorities for their expulsion serve as evidence of this attitude. On
the other hand, these spatial exclusions were only relative. That is to say, while
Gypsies were excluded from certain neighborhoods, they seemed to find a
niche in others. Furthermore, there is no indication in the sources that they were
used as slaves, which was the practice in Moldavia and Wallachia during the same
period. Nor, as was the case in Europe, were they actively persecuted for their
non-conformity to accepted legal and social norms.121
The Ottoman ruling elite of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had prejudices
against the Gypsies. This is reflected in the language of the contemporary
Ottoman documents and some of their policies. In the state documents, specifically
in the mühimme registers, the Gypsies were stigmatized as ehl-i fesad. Furthermore,
they were not allowed to hold privileged positions in Ottoman society as they
were not admitted to the military class. In addition, whenever they were perceived
as a threat to public order, they were expelled from villages and neighborhoods.
Moreover, as their hybrid lifestyle was seen as a threat to public security and the
well-being of the state, attempts were always made to control their movements.
And yet, notwithstanding their stigmatization in the parlance of documents and in
discriminatory policies, the Ottoman bureaucrats of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries also accommodated the Gypsies within the Empire. This was accom-
plished through an administrative unit called the liva-i çingane (the sub-province
of the Gypsies). Although it was called a sub-province, it was not a geographical

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entity: the Gypsies of Istanbul and Rumelia alike were attached to this province
for organizational purposes. As such the liva-i çingane was created as a category
similar to a millet. All Gypsies, both Muslim and non-Muslim, settled and nomadic,
were attached to this “province” based not on their religion but rather on their
ethnicity. The evidence even suggests that the Gypsies’ belief system was more
syncretic in nature than either Muslim or Christian. Due to this fact, the Ottoman
bureaucrats must have been forced to categorize the Gypsies ethnically as the
basic unit of the society (religion) did not fit the Gypsies. Thus, despite the diffi-
culty of accommodating the Gypsies within the millet system, the state, instead
of outlawing the Gypsies as social and moral misfits, gave them an extra-special
status outside its normal administrative apparatus. In short, through the formation
of the liva-i çingane, the state actually adapted its system to accommodate these
unruly subjects, if only for its own fiscal advantage.
As for the taxation of the Gypsies, this study offers nothing new but does point
out avenues for further research. Modern discourse on the Ottoman Gypsies
suggests that the Ottomans discriminated against Muslim Gypsies by taxing them
illegally, as there existed only a minor difference between the taxes paid by Muslim
and non-Muslim Gypsies. Eyal Ginio takes this idea further and argues that the
Ottomans levied cizye on Muslim Gypsies in the Ottoman Balkans. Even though
little separated the taxes assessed on Muslim and non-Muslim Gypsies in the
fifteenth and the sixteenth century kanuns, at the present stage of my research I
believe it would be misleading to conclude that the Ottomans levied cizye on Muslim
Gypsies in these centuries. Interestingly, despite the minimal advantage to be
gained, some non-Muslim Gypsies converted to Islam to avoid the poll-tax. Indeed,
evidence suggests that Gypsies resorted to many other strategies to avoid paying
their taxes. Furthermore, they contested the misconduct of the state agents, even
when this meant going to the sultan’s court and petitioning against the transgres-
sions of the officials. Moreover, they were aware of the opportunities available to
them in Ottoman society and attempted to use them to improve their status – a fact
attested by their willingness to apply their talents in the service of the sultan’s army.
The study of marginality in general, and of the Gypsies in particular, has not
been a major concern in modern Ottoman historiography. However, the study of
Gypsies and other marginalized groups like them provides an insight into the
society in which they lived. Thus, I hope this research has not only shed light
upon the history of the Gypsies but that has also made a contribution to the active
debate in Ottoman historiography about the functioning of the “plural society” of
the Ottoman Empire.

Notes
This study is based on my MA thesis, which I wrote under the supervision of A. Üner
Turgay, to whom I am deeply indebted. I would like also to express my gratitude to
the friends and teachers whose comments on various versions of this study have
been invaluble: Rula Abisaab, Stephanie Cronin, Wael Hallaq, Michelle Hartman,
Donald P. Little, Hasher Majoka and Stefan Winter. Finally, I owe very special thanks

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to Dana Sajdi for her most perceptive criticisms and for her much valued support
throughout this project. Needless to say, all shortcomings are my own responsibility.
1 To a large extent, this study relies on the Mühimme registers of the second half of the
sixteenth century. These include: 3 Numaralı Mühimme Defteri (966–968/
1558–1560), 2 vols (Vol. 1: Özet ve Transkripsiyon; Vol. 2: Tıpkıbasım), ed. ⁄smet
Binark, Necati Aktav, and Necati Gültepe (Ankara: T. C. Bavbakanlık, Devlet
Arvivleri Genel Müdürlüæü, 1993); 5 Numaralı Mühimme Defteri (973/1565–1566),
2 vols (Vol. 1: Özet ve ⁄ndex; Vol. 2: Tıpkıbasım), ed. ⁄smet Binark, Necati Aktav, and
Necati Gültepe (Ankara: T. C. Bavbakanlık, Devlet Arvivleri Genel Müdürlüæü,
1994); 6 Numaralı Mühimme Defteri (972/1564–1565), 3 vols (Vol. 1–2: Özet,
Transkripsiyon ve ⁄ndex; Vol. 3: Tıpkıbasım), ed. ⁄smet Binark, Necati Aktav, and
Necati Gültepe (Ankara: T. C. Bavbakanlık, Devlet Arvivleri Genel Müdürlüæü,
1995); 7 Numaralı Mühimme Defteri (975–976/1567–1569), 6 vols (Vols 1–4: T Özet,
Transkripsiyon ve ⁄ndex; Vols 5–6: Tıpkıbasım), ed. Murat Vener, Nurullah ⁄vler, and
H. Osman Yıldırım (Ankara: T. C. Bavbakanlık, Devlet Arvivleri Genel Müdürlüæü,
1997); 12 Numaralı Mühimme Defteri (978–979/1570–1572), 3 vols (Vols 1–2: Özet,
Transkripsiyon ve ⁄ndex; Vol. 3: Tıpkıbasım), ed. ⁄smet Binark, Necati Aktav, and
Necati Gültepe (Ankara: T. C. Bavbakanlık, Devlet Arvivleri Genel Müdürlüæü, 1996).
In subsequent citations, they will be referred to as “MD.” The numbers following
represent the volume of the Mühimme Defteri, the volume of its transliterated version
(in parentheses), then the page and series numbers. Thus, the reference for this first
decree is MD 6 (I), 114.206.
2 Since the term “Gypsy” (a derivative of “Egyptian”) and its derivatives have derogatory
connotations, Gypsies generally prefer to be identified as Roma, which means “men”
in the Romani language. The singular of the word is Rom and the adjective is Romani.
However, there are some who would rather be called “Gypsies” in the official language
of their country of residence. See Zoltan Barany, The East European Gypsies: Regime
Change, Marginality, Ethnopolitics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 1;
David M. Crowe, “Roma: The Gypsies,” in Encyclopedia of European Social History
from 1350–2000, ed. Peter N. Stearns, 6 vols (New York: Scribner, 2000), 1:449. In
modern Turkey, most Gypsies identify themselves as Roma because Çingene, the
most common word used to designate them, has pejorative implications. However,
some would rather be identified as Çingene. See for instance Nazım Alpman, Bavka
Dünyanın ⁄nsanları Çingeneler (Istanbul: Ozan Yayıncılık, 1997), 53–6; Ali Arayıcı,
Ülkesiz Bir Halk: Çingeneler (Istanbul: Ceylan Yayınları, 1999), 172–4. In the Ottoman
texts, they are referred to as Çingene (Gypsy) or Kıpti (“Copt,” or native Egyptian).
Thus, in accordance with my sources, both primary and secondary, I generally use
“Gypsies” rather than “Roma.”
3 See for instance MD 5 (I), 35.186; MD 5 (I), 58.311; MD 5 (I), 231.1438; MD 7 (I),
110.216; MD 12 (I), 228.344.
4 MD 6 (II), 213.1196. Suraiya Faroqhi presents a similar case in which a Gypsy was
accused of being a counterfeiter in her “Counterfeiting in Ankara,” in Coping with the
State: Political Conflict and Crime in the Ottoman Empire 1550–1720 (Istanbul: The
Isis Press, 1995), 133–43.
5 Barany, The East European Gypsies, 58.
6 Ibid.
7 Robert Forster and Orest Ranum, “Introduction,” in Deviants and the Abandoned in
French Society: Selections from the Annales, Vol. IV, ed. R. Forster and O. Ranum
(Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978, 7–12), 8.
8 Danielle Laberge and Shirley Roy, “Marginalité et exclusion sociales: des lieux et des
formes,” Cahiers de Recherche sociologique, 22(1994): 5.
9 Linda Darling, “Ottoman Fiscal Administration: Decline or Adaptation?” Journal of
European Economic History, 26(1997): 167.

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10 Elena Marushiakova and Vesselin Popov, Gypsies in the Ottoman Empire: A Contribution
to the History of the Balkans, ed. Donald Kenrick, trans. Olga Apostolova (Hatfield,
Hertfordshire: University of Hertfordshire Press; Paris: Centre de recherches
tsiganes, 2000).
11 Barany, The East European Gypsies, 92.
12 Barany, The East European Gypsies, 2, 62.
13 “Marginally” is a contested concept. It does not have a single definition and uniform
usage. For the problematics of “marginality” and “marginal” see, for instance,
Ferguson, Russell (ed.), Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures
(New Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990); Mehretu. A., Pigozzi, B., Sommers, L.
“Concepts in Social and Spatial Marginality.” Human Geography 82.2 (2000):
89–101; Rutledge, Dennis M. (ed.), Marginality, Power and Social Structure: Issues
in Race, Class, and Gender Analysis (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2005). This study adopts
flexible working definition of “marginality” offered by Eugene Rogan,
“Introduction,” in Outside In: On the Margins of the Modern Middle East, ed. Eugene
Rogan (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2002), 3.
14 Ibid.
15 Eyal Ginio, “Neither Muslims nor Zimmis: The Gypsies (Roma) in the Ottoman
Empire,” Romani Studies, 5, 14.2.2004: 117–44.
16 Ibid., 141.
17 Ibid., 141–2.
18 For facsimiles, transliterations, and concise interpretations of these regulations, see –
in the following order – Ahmed Akgündüz, Osmanlı Kanunnameleri ve Hukuki
Tahlilleri, 8 vols (Istanbul: Fey Vakfı Yayınları, 1990), Vol. 1, 397–400; 2, 383–6;
6(2), 511–14 and 520–3; for the transliteration of Rumeli Etrakinun Koyun Adeti
Hukmi (The Decree on the Number of Sheep of the Turks in Rumelia), see also Robert
Anhegger and Halil ⁄nalcık, Kanunname-i Sultan-i Ber Muceb-i Örf-i Osmani II.
Mehmed ve II. Bayezıd Devirlerine Ait Yasakname ve Kanunnameler (Ankara: Türk
Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1956), 39–40; for the transliteration of Kanunname-i
Kiptiyan-i Vilayet-i Rumeli (The Law of the Gypsies of Rumelia), see, for example,
Ömer Lütfi Barkan, XV. ve XVI. Asırlarda Osmanlı ⁄mparatorluæunda Zirai
Ekonominin Hukuki ve Mali Esasları: Kanunlar, Vol. 1 (Istanbul: ⁄stanbul Üniversitesi
Edebiyat Fakültesi Yayınları, 1945), 249–50. English translations of these regulations
with their facsimiles and transliterations are also available in Faika Çelik, “Gypsies in
the Orbit of Islam: The Ottoman Experience (1450–1600)” (MA Thesis, McGill
University, 2003), 94–120. In subsequent citations of these laws, I will quote only
from Akgündüz.
19 For further detail on the Mühimme Registers, see Uriel Heyd, Ottoman Documents on
Palestine, 1552–1615: A Study of Firman According to the Mühimme Defteri (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1960); Halil ⁄nalcık, “Ottoman archival materials on Millets,” in
Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire, Vol. II (New York and London: Holmes
and Meier Publishers, 1982), 438–49.
20 Amy Singer, Palestinian Peasants and Ottoman Officials: Rural Administration
around Sixteenth-century Jerusalem (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1994), 22.
21 Ibid.
22 Most of them were recorded by a court shadow master, Nazif Efendi, at the end of the
nineteenth century. Metin And, Karagöz: Turkish Shadow Theater (Ankara: Dost
Yayınları, 1979), 61 and Necmi Erdoæan, “Devleti ‘idare etmek’: Maduniyet ve
düzenbazlık,” Toplum ve Bilim, 83(1999–2000): 22.
23 Bronislaw Geremek, “The Marginal Man,” in Medieval Callings ed. Jacques Le Goff,
trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 352.
24 Ibid., 360–2.

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 FAIKA ÇELIK

25 MD 7 (I), 30.66. For a similar complaint see also MD 7 (I), 52.100.

26 This expression was used frequently in the Ottoman documents to denote repeated
criminals and known mischievous makers. For further information on the usage of
term see, for instance, Rudolph Peters, Crime and Punishment in Islamic Law: Theory
and Practice from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005).
27 Ginio, “Neither Zimmis, nor Muslims,” 129.
28 Ibid. Ginio is here citing Metin And, Karagöz, 69.
29 Ibid.
30 David M. Crowe, “Roma: The Gypsies,” V449.
31 A. Rafet Özkan, Türkiye Çingeneleri (Ankara: Kültür Bakanlıæı Yayınları, 2000), 8–9.
32 R. W. Halliday, “Some notes upon the Gypsies of Turkey,” Journal of the Gypsy Lore
Society, 1(1922): 174. For a different version of this story, see Nazım Alpman, Bavka
Dünyanın ⁄nsanları Çingeneler, 53.
33 For metaphors, idioms, and proverbs, I have mainly relied upon: Örnekleriyle Türkçe
Sözlük (Ankara: Milli Eæitim Bakanlıæı, 1995–1996); Ömer Asım Aksoy, Atasözleri
ve Deyimler Sözlügü, 2 vols (Istanbul: ⁄nkilap Kitabevi, 1989); M. Tayyib Gökbilgin,
“Çingeneler,” ⁄slam Ansiklopedisi, Vol. III, 426; and Koçu, “Çingeneler,” in ⁄stanbul
Ansiklopedisi, Vol. VII, 3999–4000.
34 Bart McDowell, Gypsies: Wanderers of the World (Washington: National Geographic
Society, 1970), 145.
35 Examples would be “Gypsy shalwar” (Çingene valvarı) and “Gypsy fight” (Çingene
kavgası).
36 Examples would be “a Gypsy cannot be a shepherd” (Çingenden çoban olmaz) and
“a Gypsy who boasts of his courage is talking about his theft” (Vecaat arz ederken
merd-i kıpti sirkatin söyler).
37 This saying is also rendered as follows: “In Turkey, there are sixty-six and a half
nations.” See for instance Ingwar Svanberg, “Marginal Groups and Itinerants,” in
Ethnic Groups in the Republic of Turkey, 2 vols, ed. Peter Alford Andrews (Wiesbaden:
Dr. Ludwig Reichert, 1989), 1602.
38 Marushiakova and Popov, Gypsies in the Ottoman Empire, 29.
39 G. L. Lewis and Ch. Quelquejay, “#ingane,” in The Encyclopaedia of Islam,
2, 40–1.
40 Robert Dankoff and Victor A. Friedman, “The earliest known text in Balkan
(Rumelian) Romani: A passage from Evliya Celebi’s Seyahat-name,” Journal of the
Gypsy Lore Society, Series V, 1(1991)1: 4.
41 Alexander G. Paspati, “Turkish Gypsies,” Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, Old
Series 1, (1888)1: 3.
42 As Marushiakova and Popov demonstrate based on the tax register of 1522–3, the
most common occupations of the Gypsies of Rumelia pertained to music and they
were often recorded as sazende, Gypsies in the Ottoman Empire, 41.
43 See for instance MD 7 (I), 52.100; MD 5 (I), 35.186. See also Mustafa Akdaæ,
Türk Halkının Dirlik ve Düzenlik Kavgası: Celali ⁄syanları (Ankara: Bilgi Yayınevi,
1977), 150.
44 Evliya Çelebi, Seyahatname, Vol. 1 (Istanbul: ⁄kdam Matbaası, 1314/1896–1897),
646–9. Revat Ekrem Koçu, Tarihte ⁄stanbul Esnafı (Istanbul: Doæan Kitap, 2002),
39–46.
45 Evliya Çelebi, Seyahatname, Vol. 1, 645.
46 Evliya Çelebi, Seyahatname, Vol. 1, 561.
47 Robert Mantran, La vie quotidienne á Istanbul au siècle de Soliman le Magnifique
(Paris: Hachette, 1990), 283.
48 Ahmed Kal’a (ed.), ⁄stanbul Ahkâm Defterleri: ⁄stanbul’da Sosyal Hayat, Vol. 2
(Istanbul: ⁄stanbul Aravtırmaları Merkezi, 1997), 238–9.

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49 For the decree see Ahmet Refik, Hicri On ⁄kinci Asırda ⁄stanbul Hayatı (1100–1200)
(Istanbul: Enderun Kitabevi, 1988), 198–9. For further information on the Fatih
district see Halil ⁄nalcık, “Istanbul,” in The Encyclopedia of Islam, 4: 229.
50 Marushiakova and Popov, Gypsies in the Ottoman Empire, 45.
51 See for instance Haim Gerber, “Position of women in an Ottoman City, Bursa,
1600–1700,” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 12(1980): 53–114;
Ronald Jennings, “Women in early 17th century Ottoman judicial records: The
Shari’a court of Anatolian Kayseri,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of
the Orient, 18.1(1986): 165–83; and Elyse Semerdjian, “Sinful professions: Illegal
occupations of women in Ottoman Aleppo, Syria,” Hawwa, I(2003): 59–85.
52 Akgündüz, Osmanlı Kanunnameleri ve Hukuki Tahlilleri, Vol. 2, 512.
53 MD 12 (I), 228.344.
54 Faroqhi, “Counterfeiting in Ankara,” 135–7.
55 See for instance MD 5 (I), 40.208; MD 5 (I), 58.311; MD 5 (I), 127.715; MD 7 (I),
111.216.
56 BOA, MD 74. 73.229. I am grateful to Ismail Havim Altinöz for providing me with
this document.
57 Faroqhi, “Counterfeiting in Ankara,” 135–7.
58 Quoted in Faroqhi, “Counterfeiting in Ankara,” 142.
59 Uriel Heyd, Studies in Old Ottoman Criminal Law, ed. V.L. Menage (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1973), 261, 270, 305.
60 In Ottoman usage the haraç refers to: (1) cizye or poll tax levied upon non-Muslim
subjects of the Empire; (2) a combined land–peasant tax imposed upon non-Muslim
subjects farming the state-owned agricultural land; (3) tribute in general; (4) a tribute
paid by a non-Muslim state to an Islamic state. Halil ⁄nalcık and Donald Quataert (eds),
An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1994), Vol. I, xivii; Cengiz Orhonlu, “Kharadj,” in The Encyclopedia of
Islam, 4, 1053–5. This term (haraç) was usually employed instead of cizye until the
sixteenth century. In later documents, however, “cizye or cizye-i ver‘i” was the most com-
mon word for poll tax. Halil ⁄nalcık, “Djizya,” in The Encyclopedia of Islam, 2: 562–6.
61 Akgündüz, Osmanlı Kanunnameleri ve Hukuki Tahlilleri, Vol. 1, 397.
62 E.M. Verifgil, “XVI. Yüzyılda Rumeli Eyaletindeki Çingeneler,” Türk Dünyasi
Aravtırmaları Dergisi, 15(1981): 129–35. For further information on Müsellems see
Fatma Müge Göçek, “Müsellem,” in The Encyclopedia of Islam, 7: 665.
63 Verifgil, “XVI. Yüzyılda Rumeli Eyaletindeki Çingeneler,” 15(1981): 129–35.
64 Halil ⁄nalcık, “The nature of traditional society,” in The Ottoman Empire: Conquest,
Organization and Economy, ed. Halil ⁄nalcık (Variorum Reprints: London, 1978), 44.
65 R.W. Halliday, “Some notes upon the Gypsies of Turkey,” Journal of the Gypsy Lore
Society, 1(1922): 168.
66 Önder Kaya, “Cellat Mezarlıæının Cellatı Olmak,” in VIII. Eyüp Sultan Sempozyumu
Tebliæler, Vol. III (Mayıs 7–9, 2004) (Istanbul: Eyüp Belediyesi, 2004), 328–33.
67 G. Alexander Paspati, “Memoir on the Language of the Gypsies, As Now Used in the
Turkish Empire,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 7(1862): 146.
68 Abdülaziz Bey and Osmanlı Adet, Merasim ve Tabirleri: ⁄nsanlar, ⁄nanıvlar, Eælence,
Dil, Vol. 2, ed. Kazım Arısan and Duygu Arısan Günay (Istanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt
Yayınları, 1995), 368.
69 For this view see Marushiakova and Popov, Gypsies (Roma) in Bulgaria (New York:
P. Lang, 1997), 22; idem, Gypsies in the Ottoman Empire, 33–4; Ginio, “Neither
Muslims nor Zimmis,” 119–20.
70 Kemal Karpat, “The Ottoman Ethnic and Confessional Legacy in the Middle East,”
in Ethnicity, Pluralism and the State in the Middle East, ed. Milton J. Esman and
Itamar Rabinovich (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1988), 39–40.
71 Ibid., 37.

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72 Marushiakova and Popov, Gypsies (Roma) in Bulgaria, 22; idem, Gypsies in the
Ottoman Empire, 47.
73 Metin Kunt, The Sultan’s Servants: The Transformation of Ottoman Provincial
Government 1550–1650 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 14.
74 On this question compare for instance M. Tayyib Gökbilgin, “Çingeneler,” ⁄slam
Ansiklopedisi, Vol. III, 423; Mithat Sertoælu, Resimli Osmanli Ansiklopedisi
(Istanbul: ⁄stanbul Matbaasi, 1958), 68–9; Verifgil, “XVI. Yüzyılda Rumeli
Eyaletindeki Çingeneler,” 15(1981): 129–35; ⁄smail Havim Altınöz, “Osmanlı
Toplumunda Çingeneler,” Tarih ve Toplum, 137(May 1995): 27; idem, “Osmanlı
Toplum Yapısı ⁄çinde Çingeneler,” Türkler, Vol. X (Ankara: Yeni Türkiye Yayınları,
2002), 429–30; Marushiakova and Popov, Gypsies in the Ottoman Empire, 35.
75 Donald Edgar Pitcher, An Historical Geography of the Ottoman Empire (Leiden:
Brill, 1972), pp. 136–8 and map XXVII; Metin Kunt, Sancaktan Eyalete: 1550–1650
Arasında Osmanlı Ümerası ve ⁄l ⁄daresi (Istanbul: Boæaziçi Üniversitesi Yayınları,
1978), pp. 16, 18.
76 Akgündüz, Osmanlı Kanunnameleri ve Hukuki Tahlilleri, Vol. 2, 512–13.
77 Ibid. See also Sertoælu, Resimli Osmanli Ansiklopedisi, 68–9.
78 Karpat, 45.
79 Gökbilgin, 421; Verifgil, 128; Lewis and Quelquejay, 40.
80 Stanford Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, Vol. 1, Empire of
the Gazis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 152. Shaw does not
explain when the Gypsies were attached to the Armenian millet nor does he cite any
source.
81 Selahi Sonyel, Minorities and the Destruction of the Ottoman Empire (Ankara:
Turkish Historical Society Printing House, 1993), 45.
82 Yavuz Ercan, Kudüs Ermeni Patrikhanesi (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi,
1988), 15–17.
83 ⁄smail Havim Altınöz, “Osmanlı Toplumunda Çingeneler,” 27.
84 In my previous studies I have evaluated this phenomenon as an administrative segre-
gation. I owe my deepest gratitude to Dana Sajdi for discussing this issue repeatedly
and directing me toward this analysis. For my previous views on the subject see Faika
Çelik, “Limits of Tolerance: The Status of Gypsies in the Ottoman Empire,” Studies
in Contemporary Islam, 5.1–2(2003): 161–82; idem, “Exploring Marginality in
the Ottoman Empire: Gypsies or People of Malice (ehl-i fesad ) as viewed by the
Ottomans,” European University Institute Working Papers. No. 2004/39.
85 Akgündüz, Osmanlı Kanunnameleri ve Hukuki Tahlilleri, Vol. 1, 398.
86 Semerdjian, “Sinful professions,” 70.
87 Godfrey Goodwin, The Janissaries (London: Saqi, 1999), 34.
88 Akgündüz, Osmanlı Kanunnameleri ve Hukuki Tahlilleri, Vol. 1, 397.
89 MD 6 (II), 1426, 338–9. For further information on müsellems see Göçek,
“Müsellem,” 665.
90 Verifgil, “XVI. Yüzyılda Rumeli Eyaletindeki Çingeneler,” 135–6.
91 I am thankful to Virginia Aksan for suggesting, as the external reader of my MA
thesis, that I incorporate this point into my analysis.
92 Akgündüz, Osmanlı Kanunnameleri ve Hukuki Tahlilleri, Vol. 6 (2), 512.
93 Ibid., 513. The kanun reads “Ve müslüman çingeneleri kafir çingeneleri ile göçüb
konıcak ve ihtilat edicek kınanub tedib olundukdan sonra kafir çingeneleri resmin
eda ederler.”
94 Akgündüz, Osmanlı Kanunnameleri ve Hukuki Tahlilleri, Vol. 1, p. 398.
95 For haraç see 59ff. The term ispençe refers to a customary tax imposed upon adult
non-Muslim subjects. The Ottoman bureaucracy considered it a poll tax paid to the
timariot. The origin of the term goes back to pre-Ottoman Serbia where it was levied

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as a poll tax paid to a feudal lord. Thus, the Ottomans maintained this practice and
included it in timar for revenue. Halil ⁄nacık, “Ispendje,” in The Encyclopedia of
Islam, 4: 211. Kesm or kesim refers to: (1) a fixed or agreed price; (2) a kind of tax
paid instead of övür (tithe). The term resm here refers to due taxes. Mehmet Zeki
Pakalın, Osmanlı Tarih Deyimleri ve Terimleri Sözlüæü (Istanbul: Millî Eæitim
Basımevi, 1946–1956), Vol. 2, 248–9; Vol. 3, 28–9.
96 Ginio, “Neither Muslims nor Zimmis,” 130.
97 Ibid.
98 Ibid., 130–1.
99 George Soulis, who works on Balkan Gypsies during the period of Byzantine and
Venetian rule, demonstrates that Gypsies were obliged to pay a special poll tax under
the Venetians. Quoted in ibid., 131.
100 Quoted in ibid.
101 Ibid.
102 See for instance Akgündüz, Osmanlı Kanunnameleri ve Hukuki Tahlilleri, Vol. 6 (2),
520–3.
103 Ibid. See especially articles 1, 3 and 4.
104 Ginio, “Neither Muslims nor Zimmis,” 134.
105 Ibid.
106 In Turkish, kalburcu, someone who makes and sells sieves or screens.
107 See the kanuns referred to in this study and MD 7 (I), 111.216 and MD 12 (I), 372.599.
108 Akgündüz, Osmanlı Kanunnameleri ve Hukuki Tahlilleri, Vol. 2, 384; Vol. 6 (2), 513.
109 Indeed, not only the movements of the Gypsies, but also the movements of other
nomadic groups were restricted as a result of the same considerations. See for
instance Paul Lidner’s Nomads and Ottomans in Medieval Anatolia (Bloomington,
IN: Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies, Indiana University, 1983).
110 MD 6 (I), 108.903.
111 MD 7 (I), 481.1010.
112 See for instance MD 7 (I), 110.215; MD 7 (I), 110.216; MD 7 (I), 402.836;
MD 7 (III), 185.2344.
113 See for instance MD 5 (I), 58.311; MD 5 (I), 256.1596; MD 6 (I), 312.569;
MD 7 (I), 30.66.
114 See for instance MD 5 (I), 35.186; MD 5 (I), 256.1596; MD 6 (I), 108.903;
MD 7 (I), 30.66.
115 Tayyib Gökbilgin, “Çingeneler,” 425.
116 ⁄nalcık, “Istanbul,” 4: 229.
117 Ahmet Refik, 198–9.
118 Heyd, 120.
119 Kal’a (ed.), Vol. 1, 332–3; Vol. 2, 238–9, 273–4, 392–3.
120 See for instance MD 5 (1), 178.1088; MD 7 (1), 481.1010.
121 For a comparison of the attitudes toward the Gypsies in the Ottoman Empire and
Europe see, for instance, Angus Fraser, The Gypsies (Oxford and Cambridge:
Blackwell, 1992), 173–8; Barany, The East European Gypsies, 83–95.

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 8
EMANCIPATED FEMALE SLAVES
IN ALGIERS
Marriage, property and social advancement in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

Fatiha Loualich

Talking about women is a way of challenging society, of dissecting its foundations

with a view to understanding better how it works, its mechanisms and connections,
and the process of analysing a corpus of archives offers a concrete approach to
the issues being studied. Of course, the data available for any specific group of
women depends on their class, wealth and status. While quantities of data exist
for elite women, whose menfolk were in the senior official, military and ulama
classes, and some material may be found for middle-ranking women belonging to
the class of craft guilds and merchants, data for subaltern women is scarce and
brief. Nonetheless, despite the scarcity of the sources, by talking about these
women it is possible to bring a fairly large proportion of them out of anonymity.
In trying to classify women in general, significant differentiations emerge, for
example, the category of slave women and the category or subcategory of emanci-
pated women. The latter is a small group and the archive records are few and far
between. Yet, this sub-category of women is especially interesting on account of its
status. Indeed, such women are neither slaves nor free but occupy an equivocal and
ambiguous position.
Our investigation will focus on this group of emancipated slave women. We
will examine how they took their place in history, as they provide us with a
version of society that is different, discrete and complex. Moreover, by tackling
the issue of emancipated women and their relationship to property, we will
immediately enter the history of detail and the particular by analysing remarkable
information about individual lives and personal experience. The scale of obser-
vation is the smallest possible, enabling us to make out individual strategies and
personal paths. This small-scale analysis makes it possible to reconstitute lives. In
this way, furthermore, fragments of experience may provide access to the social
and symbolic logic appertaining to the group, or to wider society.1

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Sources and approaches

Our corpus of documents consists of the notarial deeds of Algiers in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. Such documents exist from the sixteenth to the early
nineteenth centuries but the period selected for this study is the richest in terms
of the quantity and diversity of the material. We have constructed our account
using a sample of notarial deeds that we assembled from the archives of the
Mahakim Shar‘iyya of Algiers.2 Our sample contains nearly a thousand deeds
relating to slaves and emancipations: deeds of purchase and sale of slaves, deeds of
emancipation, of marriage and repudiation, deeds recording property, declarations
of ownership, acknowledgements of debts and so forth.3
Our sources are records of everyday life for which there is no substitute.
Notaries’ archives, for instance, recount key moments in people’s lives, recording
events, fragments and snippets of people’s lives as they happened. The documents
mark the various phases of a person’s life, dating and preserving significant
moments for posterity. However, finding out about emancipated slave women
through notaries’ archives is a difficult task for two reasons. First, these archives
are very fragmented and second they only rarely concern themselves with this
social category. Nonetheless, they are indispensable as they can be interpreted to
reveal relational, emotional, economic and social material, providing both an
overview of society and also the fine detail of everyday life.

Slavery in Algiers
In general, the emancipated slave followed a path which consisted of several
distinct stages: slave, emancipated slave, servant. These were people in search of
an identity, of a free status. Where did they come from, what were their origins
and how did they arrive at their condition? To answer these questions we will
first attempt a brief historical overview of this population.
The numbers of slaves in the Regency of Algiers grew or dwindled according
to time and circumstance.4 Slaves were identified as either white or black, and a
clear distinction was made between the two categories. Although slaves were the
property of their masters in the most absolute sense of the word, in Algiers they
lived in physically less miserable conditions than most Muslims, as slavery was
patriarchal in nature.5 After being bought, slaves became the private property of
the buyer, who could sell, use, or donate them,6 or include them in his assets. In
this way, slaves were part of the inheritance to be bequeathed to a person’s heirs,
sometimes over several generations. We found several cases where slaves
appeared in probate inventories.7 The sharing of slaves was a source of many
complex disputes.8
Most of the black slaves arrived in Algiers with the regular caravans that
crossed the Sahara and which connected the main African cities including Algiers
to the south Saharan trading centres. This traffic was considerable in the sixteenth
century, dwindling somewhat by the eighteenth century, and only ending in the

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late nineteenth century. Thousands of black slaves arrived in the countries of the
Maghreb every year, perhaps amounting to about 2 million each century.9 The
Saharan towns of Ouargla and Touggourt10 served as staging posts for this traffic
and the Saharan caravan trade was in the hands of great merchants specializing
solely in slaves.11 It seems that certain tribes from the south of Algeria, unable to
pay their tribute in cash, paid it in men; thus some of the black slaves arrived in
Algiers as, for example, the annual tribute under an agreement of 1552 between
the government and the Shaykhs of Ouargla and Touggourt.12
All the sources are unanimous on the domestic nature of black slavery in the
main cities of the pre-colonial Maghreb.13 Indeed, the black slave played almost
the same role all round the Mediterranean.14 Having a slave was not indicative of
luxury; even reasonably well-off families had slaves and their number was deter-
mined by the owner’s rank and social status. The Dey might have up to 40 slaves,15
a Bey up to 17, a head of a guild might have 6 slaves, a craftsman or merchant up
to 4.16 In these specific cases, the slave was associated with the function or rank
rather than the business acumen of his master.
White slaves had different origins. In the Ottoman period, Algiers was the
capital of privateering and, as well as the hub of the traditional traffic in black
slaves from the south, was home to a large number of white slaves. In the mid-
sixteenth century there were some 30,000 white slaves of all nationalities,17
though most were Spanish and Italian.18 White slaves might be both men and
women, children as well as adults. Obtained by privateering, white slaves, generally
Christians, stayed in the three prisons in Algiers before moving on to the Badistan or
slave market.19 Slaves were auctioned in public, their good qualities and professions
being called out aloud, along with the prices offered. The Government took one
eighth of the price and had the right of pre-emption in the sale. Buying a white
slave was a kind of speculative investment. Ransoms were an important source of
income for both the Treasury20 and private investors. For example ‘Ali Pitchin,
head of the guild of corsairs in the mid-seventeenth century, had his own prison
that could hold 800 slaves.21
Algiers soaked up a large number of white slaves. This category of slaves
has acquired a mythical dimension and its significance has commonly been
misunderstood. Apart from certain singular and exceptional individuals, the vast
majority were galley slaves, ordinary building workers or domestic servants, such
as the water carrier who spent his days plying his trade among the fountains and
streets of Algiers.22 Yet, as it grew in number, the white slave population came
to include not only many nationalities but also many with technical skills. The
technical skills of white slaves, as of renegades and converts, contributed to
making them an irreplaceable labour force.
The prices of white and black slaves reflected their different potential; our data
enabled us to chart both the market rates and their fluctuations. One example
concerns an estate belonging to an important sixteenth-century merchant. In
September 1596 the estate had to be divided up between the heirs, but first debts had
to be deducted, and the documents quote prices for both white and black slaves.

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The estate’s debts included: the purchase of a white slave at the price of 700
dinars for the merchant’s eldest son, following a promise made when the son’s
marriage contract was signed; two black slaves, part of the arrears of his wife’s
dowry, at the price of 350 dinars; one white slave stipulated in the marriage contract
of his second son at the price of 700 dinars.23 A century later, the price of black
slaves had dropped considerably. Marriage contracts drafted in the late eighteenth
century set the prices of black Sudanese slaves in the dowries of wives at between
30 and 40 dinars.24 In contrast to white slaves, blacks were not ransomed or
repatriated; the vast majority were used as servants for domestic chores, or as
objects of luxury, especially concubines.
The slave had no essential indicators of belonging or identity, such as kinship,
lineage, surname or indication of ancestry: ‘son of’. They were denied these
identity markers.25 The slave had no name, and lacked this symbolic emblem that
is still the main marker in our social makeup. For a slave it was difficult to fill in
the resulting gaps since parenthood was not merely biological, but also political
and economic, as well as social and cultural.26 Once emancipated, the slave could
achieve a certain level of social advancement and improve his financial position;
in people’s minds, however, he would always be part of his master’s property,
his skin colour being the only vague indication of his origin. When calling him
by name, reference would always be made to his former owners; the prefix
‘emancipated by’ becoming a part of his identity.
Through our data we observed in Algiers a high proportion of women slaves.27
This noticeable presence was the result of the high demand for female labour; in
the cities, black women were particularly sought after as domestic servants, to be
given as a dowry for a newly married woman, or as concubines.28 In general,
women were needed in the home more as domestic workers than as concubines.
This is confirmed by all the deeds of purchase of slaves which contain the
following stipulation: that the female slave be fit for service, to work as a servant
(hence for a specific function).

The emancipated slave woman

Black slaves had no right to be ransomed or repatriated but they could be
emancipated; we now turn to examining the stages of the emancipation process.
How did the change from one status to another work? What were the stages or
transitions, and what were the efforts required to obtain this new status? Or,
simply, what were the conditions for acquiring or building an identity, one of
humanity’s innate aspirations (the social self )?
In Islam, emancipation is a pious act and believers are strongly encouraged to
free their slaves. As their lives neared their end, masters sometimes emancipated
all their slaves. We found, for example, the case of a Bey who emancipated his
seventeen slaves.29 Others preferred to put their affairs in order before a journey or
pilgrimage by emancipating all their slaves. This was so since, quite aside from its
duration, any pilgrimage was an adventure (shipwreck, accident, sickness, etc.),

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 FATIHA LOUALICH

from which there was no guarantee of return, and slaves left in limbo while their
masters were absent were often the subject of disputes. Many slaves were thus
able to regain their freedom during the lifetime of their masters. Furthermore,
concerned to carry out a devout act that would be rewarded in the next world,
masters often emancipated their slaves in their wills.
There were also specific Islamic injunctions regarding female slaves. A concubine
with children had to be emancipated upon the death of her master. In fact, in
accordance with the Quran and Sunna, she was no longer a slave as soon as her
pregnancy was confirmed. Her children were also emancipated and, as soon as
their paternity was established, the children of slave women acquired the same
rights as the father’s heirs from marriages with free women.
Converts and non-Muslims also emancipated slaves; our inventory contains
several deeds of this kind.30 We came across several emancipation deeds drawn
up by renegades (‘alâj-s’) and by Jews.31 The same applies to certain emancipated
slaves; they themselves had slaves and emancipated them in turn.32 They repeated
almost the same acts and deeds as their masters.33
The emancipated slaves in the city of Algiers formed themselves into a separate
community, a closed community: the emancipated slaves bore witness, and
provided guarantees and support for one another; they acted as guardians for
marriages of emancipated women, relying on each other as a form of solidarity.
There was also a clear tendency for them to marry within their group. In order to
measure the scale of this endogamy, we can refer to the extant deeds of marriage
and repudiation. We have also observed, furthermore, that emancipated slaves of
the same master married one another and bore witness for one another, indicating
that they had formed a kind of solidarity among themselves. Traditions grew up
within the group and solidarity in everyday life developed into bonds of various
kinds.34 In terms of space, emancipated slaves were dispersed and continued to
refer to the spatial constructs of their former masters. The community’s affairs
were run by a head of guild known as qa ’id al- ‘abid, or shaykh al- jama‘a; who
might also play the role of mediator between the community and wider society.
The emancipated slave often reincarnated his former servile status, especially as
in everyday life he carried out the same roles and tasks as the slave. Emancipated
women were domestic servants or masseuses in the public baths, while the men
worked as whitewashers of houses (c.f. the epithet ‘Algiers the White’), labourers
or basket weavers. There were other privations: the emancipated slave had no
relationship to space, no link to the city. The deeds drawn up for or concerning
emancipated slaves never contained any spatial references. This absence of a
spatial relationship with the city identified emancipated slaves as being under
the protection of their former masters, the relationship between master and
emancipated slave reproducing the old relationship between master and slave. The
emancipated slave often became a servant of his former master.35 This population
had no fixed abode; many lived in the Moorish cafés and fondouks.36 As for the
women, several female emancipated slaves did not leave their masters’ homes. In
some cases, even if freed women married, a clause was inserted in the marriage

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contract stating that: the husband should not oblige her to leave the home of her
mistress or master without her consent.37 This clause demonstrates that there really
was a bond of guardianship between the master and the emancipated woman and
for most emancipated slaves this served as their social and economic identity.

Social integration, financial advancement

Our survey enabled us to make the following observations: the demand for female
slaves was higher than for male ones and many more women were emancipated
than men. In our body of documents, out of 161 emancipation deeds, 31 referred
to men and 130 to women.38 We also noted several deeds in which owners
declared that they had male and female slaves and that the emancipation
concerned the women only.39
Women also appeared to have had certain advantages in terms of social
advancement; emancipated women who had as slaves belonged to the wealthier
social classes married emancipated men of their own station. This rule was
strictly observed.40 Several emancipated women whose masters were senior offi-
cials or wealthy people married freeborn men.41 Freed women were able to break
through the restrictions of the closed community of emancipated slaves and gain
access to the wider world. It was rarely so for freed men.42

Emancipated slaves and their relationship to property

As a general observation, we may say that emancipated women were relatively
better off than their male counterparts.43 The question is: what means did they use
to gain access to property? According to the few deeds we found about property
belonging to emancipated women, it seems they acquired it as gifts from their
former masters, and often from bequests where the master or mistress set aside
one-third of their property in their wills for their emancipated slaves.44
Concubines were sometimes undeclared legal wives and when the inheritance
was being divided up, would appear, accompanied by witnesses of a marriage that
had taken place but had not been registered. In such a case the qadi would often
grant a dowry for the wife. In particular, a large number of emancipated women
acquired property by means of a waqf (charitable endowment). In certain cases
the property was quite considerable.45 Of gifts, bequests in wills, and property
endowed under a waqf the latter was the most common.46
We found several cases of emancipated women acquiring property by means of
the institution of the waqf. Protectionist masters opted for this form.47 They
endowed their property, which might include houses, shops, orchards and so forth
as a waqf, giving their emancipated slaves and their descendants the right to
benefit.48 Sometimes emancipated women who married free men, often rich in
cash, acquired property and endowed it as a waqf, stipulating the couple as the
first beneficiaries.49 For example, one emancipated woman who owned an
orchard, possibly acquired through a gift, endowed her property to designated

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beneficiaries under a waqf according to the Hanafi rite: her husband and her
adopted son and their descendants in equal shares.50 Although acquisitions
obtained by purchase on the market were rare, we found two noteworthy cases:
one emancipated woman who bought a bread oven and one who bought a house.51
The samples from our research reveal a clear difference between the fortunes
of women and men.52 We observed that the women were in a stronger position.
They owned not only real estate and movable property but also handled a lot of
cash.53 Emancipated women were much wealthier than their male counterparts, in
both cash and real-estate. We found more women who registered property under
a waqf after acquiring it; moreover, a relatively high proportion of husbands made
declarations that the couple’s property belonged to their wives.
Although fortunes were rare, a few emancipated women became wealthy and
were registered as owners of several properties; these were not only donations and
bequests, but also included property bought on the open market. In July 1693, for
example, an emancipated woman bought a house in an auction by the bayt al-mâl
[public treasury] for the price of 2,800 dinars; the purchase took place in the
presence of her husband who declared that the house was his wife’s property, and
that he had no entitlement to it. In November 1698, she endowed the property
under a waqf in accordance with the Hanafi rite, designating the couple as the
first beneficiaries.54 Emancipated women figure quite prominently in the regis-
ters of the bayt al- mâl; we noted several probate inventories for women.55
In conclusion, our research has enabled us to describe life-paths for emancipated
women, which were contrary to the usual assumption of continued servility,
destitution or prostitution. We found emancipated women searched for integration
by social advancement: marriages outside their own community to men well
placed in the social hierarchy. Also available to some women was an accumula-
tion of wealth through access to property. Emancipated women did in fact enjoy
a certain degree of social mobility and advancement facilitated by Islamic law.

Notes
1 J. Revel, L’histoire au ras du sol [preface], in G. Levi, Le Pouvoir au village: histoire
d’un exorciste dans le Piémont du XVIIe siècle, Paris, 1989, p. 12.
2 Archives of the Mahakim Shar‘iyya of Algiers. This is part of the Ottoman collection,
comprising three series: the Beylik records (property archives), the Bayt al-Mâl
records (public treasury) and the Mahakim Shar‘iyya (Shar‘iyya courts) deeds. The
latter is composed of the various deeds registered and authenticated before the qadis of
Algiers, who sat in the two mahkama: the Maliki mahkama and the Hanafi mahkama.
In the event of a major dispute, these two authorities appealed to the council (al-majlis
al-‘ilmi) of the Great Mosque of Algiers, which acted as a court of appeal. Disputes
and issues not resolved by the two mahkama were referred to this authority which sat
every thursday in the Great Mosque of Algiers. The three legal institutions worked in
close cooperation with one another. The deeds produced by these three authorities
were marriage and repudiation contracts, deeds of inheritance and succession, wills,
donations, acknowledgements of debts, waqf endowment deeds, purchase and sale
agreements, deeds for emancipating slaves and so forth. Probate inventories were

206
 FEMALE SLAVES IN ALGIERS

registered with the Bayt al-Mâl. To avoid repetition, we shall use the following
abbreviations: National Archives of Algiers (N A Algiers), Ottoman Collection (O C),
Mahakim Shar‘iyya (M Sh).
3 The Mahakim Shar‘iyya deeds are drafted in Arabic in a restrained and learned style,
and reading them requires a good mastery of the legal concepts concerned. The docu-
ments relating to emancipations contain a wealth of data, although they are fragmented
and scattered among the various boxes of the collection. Browsing through the
collection and making a systematic inventory of the deeds in our category involved a
considerable amount of work. We were able to draw up an exhaustive and representative
inventory and the data we gathered amounted to a sample of deeds that we judged to
be sufficient to establish out hypotheses. The initial result of our work was the
production of this inventory as a research tool.
The corpus of archives used in this study was put together from the following boxes:
B.3, 110 deeds of emancipation. B.14/1, deeds of emancipation. B.19/1, deeds of
marriage and divorce. B.37/1, deeds of emancipation. B.45/2 deeds of emancipation.
B.46/2, deeds of marriage. B.53, dossier No. 5, 94 deeds of emancipation in records
1731–1848. B.58, deeds 147 to 172, deeds of emancipation. B.59, 1 to 83, deeds of
emancipation. B.65, 66, 67, dossiers of deeds of sale and purchase of slaves and of
emancipation. B.74/75, deeds [103–40]: purchase and sale of slaves. B.80/81, dossiers
of deeds of emancipation, plus deeds of marriage and repudiation. B.83 wills of
emancipation, deeds of marriage and repudiation. B.89, dossier No. 2, deeds
of emancipation. B.114/115, deeds of marriage and repudiation.
A large number of deeds regarding slaves: emancipation, marriage and repudiation,
are scattered among the various boxes, notably the following: 17, 37, 78, 84/85/ 86,
146/147. Probate inventories are kept in the records of the Bayt al-Mâl [public treasury].
4 The Regency of Algiers (1671–1847) was ruled by the Dey. Initially under the
suzerainty of the Ottoman sultan, by the nineteenth century the Deys had become
virtually independent.
5 A. E. H. Ben Mansour, Algiers, 16th and 17th century – Journal of Jean-Baptiste
Gramaye, évêque d’Afrique, Paris, CERF, 1998, p. 125.
6 N A Algiers, O C, M Sh, 17, deed No. 93.
7 N A Algiers, O C, M Sh, B/53, dossier No. 2, deeds Nos. 28, 33, 34.
8 N A Algiers, O C, M Sh, box 53, dossier No. 5, deed No. 8.
9 M. Ennaji, Serving the Master: Slavery and Society in Nineteenth-Century Morocco
(Basingstoke), 1999, p. 107.
10 M. Emerit, Les liaisons terrestres entre le Soudan et l’Afrique du Nord au 18ème siècle
et début du 19ème siècle, Extract from the work of the Institut de Recherches
Sahariennes, [IRS], T.XI, 1954, [pp. 29–47], p. 39.
11 N A Algiers, M Sh, box 74/75, deeds [103–40], purchase and sale of slaves.
12 A. E. H. Ben Mansour, Algiers, 16th and 17th century – Journal of Jean-Baptiste
Gramaye, évêque d’Afrique, Paris, CERF, 1998, p. 120.
13 M. Ennaji, Serving the Master, p. 9.
14 A. Stella, ‘L’esclavage en Andalousie à l’époque moderne’, in Annales ESC,
No. 1, January–February, 1992, [pp. 35–65], p. 46.
15 V. De. Paradis, Tunis et Alger au 18ème siècle, Tunis, Bouslama, 1980, p. 114.
16 N A Algiers, O C, M Sh, box 80/81, dossier No. 10, deed No. 8.
17 See the famous text of Diego De Haedo in which he lists the nationalities making
up the ‘incredible people of Algiers’: renegade Muscovites, Vlachs, Bulgars, Poles,
Hungarians, Czechs, Germans, Danes, Norwegians, Scots, English, Irish, Flemish,
Burgundians, French, Navarese, Aragonese, Catalans, Majorcans, Sardinians,
Corsicans, Sicilians, Calabrians, Neapolitans, Romans, Tuscans, Genoese, Venetians,
Greeks, Cretans, and so forth. see B. Bennassar, Les chrétiens d’Allah : l’histoire
extraordinaire des renégats, XVIe– XVIIe siècle, Paris, 1989, p. 147.

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18 H. D. De. Grammont, Histoire d’Alger sous la domination Turque (1515–1830), Paris,

Bouchène, 2002, p. 124.
19 V. De. Paradis, Tunis et Alger au 18ème siècle, Sindbad, 1983, p. 153.
20 A. Devoulx, Registre des prises maritimes, Algiers, Bastide, 1872.
21 P. Boyer, Alger en 1645 d’après les notes du R. P. Hérault. Introduction to these notes
in Revue de l’Occident musulman et de la Méditerranée, 17, 1974, pp. 19–41, 29.
22 Lesieur de Rocqueville, Relations des mœurs et du gouvernement des Turcs d’Alger,
Paris, Olivier de Varennes, 1675.
23 N A Algiers, F O, M Sh, box 88, deed No. 9, 1596.
24 N A Algiers, F O, M Sh, box 17, deed No. 57, in 1786, box 59, deed No. 117, in 1795,
box 78, deed No. 90, in 1778.
25 F. Héritier, ‘Articulations et substances’, in l’Homme, No. 154/155, April–September
2000, pp. 21–38, p. 34.
26 L. Dumont, Introduction à deux théories d’anthropologie sociale. Groupe de filiation
et alliance de marriage, La Haye, Mouton, 1971, p. 31.
27 T. Shuval, La ville d’Alger vers la fin du XVIIIe siècle, Paris, CNRS, 2002, p. 130.
28 V. De. Paradis, Tunis et Alger au 18ème siècle, p. 250.
29 N A Algiers,O C, M Sh box 80/81, Dossier No. 10, deed No. 8.
30 N A Algiers, O C, M Sh, box 82, deed No. 76.
31 N A Algiers, O C, M Sh, box 58, deed No. 161.
32 N A Algiers, O C, M Sh, box 53, dossier No. 5, deed No. 50.
33 F. Loualich, ‘Les affranchies dans la ville of Algiers, fin du 18ème – début du 19ème
siècle d’après les archives des Mahakim Shar‘iyya’, in L’AHROS, No. 25, 2002,
(pp. 181–96), p. 191.
34 G Levi, Le pouvoir au village, p. 211.
35 F Loualich, ‘Les esclaves noirs à Alger {fin du 18ème- début du 19ème siècle]. De
l’esclave à l’affranchi, vers une relation d’allégeance’, in MEFRM – 115–2003, 1,
pp. 513–22, 521.
36 P. Boyer, La vie quotidienne à Alger à la veille de l’intervention Française, Hachette,
1963, p. 182.
37 N A Algiers, O C, M Sh, box 59, deed No. 46.
38 F Loualich, ‘Les affranchies de la ville of Algiers fin du 18ème– début du 19ème siècle,
à partir des archives des des Mahakim Shar’yya’, in L’AHROS, No. 25–2002,
(pp. 181–96), p. 182.
39 N A Algiers, O C, M Sh, box 2, deeds No. 9.
40 F. Loualich, ‘Les affranchies de la ville of Algiers fin du 18ème– début du 19ème siècle,
à partir des archives des des Mahakim Shar’yya’, p. 188.
41 N A Algiers, O C, M Sh, box 89, dossier No. 4, deed No. 2.
42 N A Algiers, O C, M Sh, box 80/81, deed No. 136.
43 Some white slave converts [‘alâj-s], both men and women, made their fortunes
quickly; their access to property is attested by deeds registered with Algiers notaries
from the latter half of the sixteenth century. In the case of women, we observe that
several owned considerable property, for example, one woman was the owner of a baths.
44 N A Algiers, O C, M Sh, box 59 dossiers No. 5, deed No. 50.
45 N A Algiers, O C, M Sh, box 39, deed No. 53, in 1709.
46 N A Algiers, O C, M Sh, box 121, deed No. 25, in 1652, a house was endowed to an
emancipated slave. N A Algiers, O C, M Sh, box 88, deed No. 21, in 1767, a woman
owning a large two-storey house and a maisonnette, endowed her property in favour of
these slaves: the maisonnette to her emancipated slave woman Rûqaya and her descen-
dants, the large house to her three emancipated slaves: Muhammad, Rûqaya and Fatima
but not to their descendants. N A Algiers, O C, M Sh, box 39, deed No. 14, in 1783, a
woman endowed her house to her husband and emancipated slave.

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47 N A Algiers, O C, M Sh, box 19/1, deed No. 25.

48 N A Algiers, O C, M Sh, box 9/2, deed No. 34, in 1038.
49 N A Algiers, O C, M Sh, box 19/1, deed No. 22, in 1693.
50 N A Algiers, O C, M Sh, box 6/2, deed No. 34.
51 N A Algiers, O C, M Sh, box 74/75, deed No. 64, and box 19/1, deed No. 22.
52 T. Shuval, La ville d’Alger vers la fin du XVIIIe siècle, p. 130.
53 F. Loualich, ‘Alger fin du XVIIIe début du XIXe siècle, les affranchies dans les deeds
notariales’, in L’AHROS, No 25, 2002, pp. 181–96.
54 N A Algiers, O C, M Sh, box 19/1, deed No. 22.
55 N A Algiers, O C, M Sh, box 83, deed No. 14.

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 Part V

EUROPEAN SUBALTERNS
 9
“MAKING IT” IN PRE-COLONIAL
TUNIS
Migration, work, and poverty in a Mediterranean
port-city, c.1815–1870

Julia Clancy-Smith

Introduction
During the early morning hours of Ramadan 1248/1833, the sixty Christian
Neapolitan servants (mustakhadimin) in the Tunisian bey’s inner palace service
slumbered soundly – too soundly – after a busy night of preparing food and
serving their masters, the mamluks. Heedless of the nawba (military band)
announcing the final meal before dawn, the hapless servants only awoke when
the day’s fast was announced.1 Infuriated by this dereliction of duty, the head
mamluk ordered the Neapolitans be punished with the bastinado. While those
who were fast-footed enough managed to escape, taking refuge at their consulate,
others were less fortunate; they received a brutal beating resulting in severe
injuries. Incensed, the Neapolitan consul immediately sought out the ruler,
Husayn Bey (reigned 1824–1835), to demand justice. A diplomatic crisis was in
the making.
The affair of the sleeping Neapolitans offers a window, albeit a narrow one,
into the culture of servants and household service which in turn raises a larger set
of questions about making a living in precolonial Tunisia. These particular
Italians had originally arrived in the Regency as young captives. Freed in 1816,
they had remained with their masters, the beys and mamluks, probably for want
of other options. Indeed the servants were characterized at court and in the Arabic
sources as children (al-mushashuat from the Spanish, muchachos) and therefore
had been integrated into their palace households as fictive kin, although admittedly
at an inferior rank. At the time of the incident, their status was that of salaried
workers; but they were also Neapolitan subjects, and as such, under the diplomatic
protection of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. After the ensuing diplomatic crisis
was resolved, many of the Neapolitans left the palace to find work elsewhere.
What kinds of employment possibilities awaited them?

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 JULIA CLANCY-SMITH

The incident raises intriguing questions about what kinds of work could be
found in a preindustrial and precolonial port-city that was just on the cusp of a
migratory surge. In 1800 some 2,000 “Europeans” resided permanently in Tunis,
although who and what was a European remained somewhat fluid for much of the
century. As the Neapolitans went out in search of new positions, the ranks of
the Mediterranean immigrants in Tunisia expanded precipitously, in part the
consequence of settler colonialism in French Algeria. It is difficult to obtain
population figures for precolonial Tunisia since the first census was only
conducted in 1906. A credible 1847 report put the total number of “Christians” at
9,400 of whom the Maltese numbered 6,000.2 In 1848, the English vice-consul
counted 5,800 British subjects in Tunisia; the vast majority were Maltese, less
than 200 were Greeks, and no more than 35 men, women, and children were
natives of England. At mid-eighteenth century about sixty families were under
French protection; some were French nationals while others were not. Estimates
of the Italo-Sicilian population also vary widely; figures from 1870 claimed that
at least 9,000 Italians resided permanently in the beylik to which another 2,000
seasonal workers – fishermen and sailors – should be added.3 By the 1870s the
percentage of resident Europeans had doubled from 7–8 percent in 1839 to
15 percent or more of the capital city’s population. Most were concentrated in the
Tunis region because it held – or was believed to hold – more employment
promise than elsewhere.
Making a living is at the core of the migratory experience – as both an incentive
to leave home and calculation in relocating to one place and not another.
However, labor migration to a preindustrial state challenges us to think about
what kinds of work existed, how people found a job, and how employment
recruitment operated. Work is never solely about wages, services, or gaining
one’s daily bread but instead ensnares individuals and families in social webs. In
precolonial Tunisia, work constituted a major mechanism for social insertion and
was shaped by gender, class, religious affiliation, patron–client relations, and
other elements.4 In recreating the process of “making a living,” I have chosen to
consider “service sector” activities, particularly domestic service, because this
form of work implicated Tunisians, other city-dwellers, and recent immigrant into
reciprocal relationships. Nevertheless, the record for the precolonial era is
extremely fragmented, particularly for the subsistence migrants; thus it is difficult
to fully reconstruct the recruitment of labor and the organization of work whether
in the service sector or not.
In terms of conceptualization, this essay draws upon network theory to
understand how various kinds of work insinuated immigrants into the Tunisian
economy and society, while also gradually undermining those structures.5 Some
networks were quite local and confined to a city quarter where inhabitants lived
or worked together and thus shared common information circuits. Other social
filaments, such as lineage networks, reached across the short span of water
separating western Sicily and Malta from the Cap Bon; others forged by
diplomatic or commercial exchanges stretched beyond the central Mediterranean

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to Algiers, Marseilles, Istanbul, or Paris. Finally, if “making it in Tunis” was the

product of patronage, social networks, and serendipitous circumstances, failure to
earn a livelihood and poverty – “down and out” – must also enter into the
discussion. Of course, poverty is a relational concept whose cultural meanings
and manifestations changed in the course of the nineteenth century and varied
from community to community.6 Calamity inevitably befell families at the bottom
of the social pecking order when breadwinners fell ill, fell afoul of the law,
or employers died. Thus we conclude with a consideration of various kinds of
adversity – unleashed by bad luck, the wrong decision or larger forces, such as
epidemics – and its social consequences.

The structure of work in precolonial Tunisia, c.1830

Until the growth of state concessions to European investors during the 1870s,
Tunisia’s economy did not afford many opportunities for large numbers of
“outsiders” or even familiar strangers, such as the Maltese, Sicilians, and other
island folk. Tunis counted at least seventy-five sina‘at (corporations or guilds)
that remained fairly intact, although external economic pressures were building
during the period. As was true elsewhere in North Africa and the Middle East,
the guilds were close-knit; their members chose heads (amins), charged with
ensuring quality by supervising producers as well as products.7 For example,
shashiya (a red brimless cap worn by Muslim males) production, centered in
Tunis and its satellite villages, represented a proto-capitalist industry that generated
considerable revenues. A special suq in Tunis sold caps to retailers for distribution
in the rest of the country, the Maghreb, and Ottoman empire – until cheaper,
European shashiyas competed with the superior, but pricier, Tunisian headgear
after 1850. However, the shashiya industry, like most artisanal enterprises, offered
little or no work for outsiders. Other professions were dominated by specific
religious or ethnic groups. Tunisian Jews monopolized tailoring and money
lending, while porters and stevedores were recruited from the southern oases; the
bakkals or retail grocers in Tunis were run by Djerbans which is still the case today
in Tunisia – and in French cities, such as Paris. Women worked in a number of
capacities, particularly in textile preparation or production, either at home or in
village workshops tied to the manufacture of caps, carpets, and a wide array of
woven items for household use. They also served feminine society as healers,
midwives (qabla), beauticians, singers, dancers, and prostitutes. Among the more
than fifteen hammams or bathhouses in Tunis, several were reserved exclusively
for women which also provided work for female bathhouse attendants. Those
particularly skilled in needlework held the respected status of mu`allima and
taught household arts and handicrafts to girls.8 However, the guild system as well
as the organization of work generally offered meager opportunities for unskilled
immigrant women or men in many sectors of the urban economy.
As importantly, owning property outright was, theoretically, not an option,
although working land owned by Tunisian subjects was a possibility. Until the 1863

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Anglo-Tunisian convention, followed by the 1868 Italian–Tunisian treaty, both

of which conferred property rights upon foreigners, Europeans theoretically
could not acquire full title to land, buildings, or businesses. As was true in Izmir
and Alexandria, however, Tunisian subjects and foreigners resorted to clever
subterfuges to thwart restrictions on property-holding or transfers.9 In the 1870s,
the demand for labor in the capital region soared due to European-directed infra-
structural projects, such as telegraphs and railroads, which ironically worked to
encourage Italian labor settlement in Tunisia.10 Only after 1885 did large numbers
of immigrant European families acquire small plots of privately owned land,
although by 1874 some 500 Maltese had acquired property of one sort or another.11
Nevertheless, some of these property-owners “got their start,” acquiring a bit of
capital or securing patronage with the “right person” through earlier labors in the
“service sector” which grew from mainly household employment to tavern or
hotel work by the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

From domestic slaves to domestic servants: palace

and elite household service
In today’s global labor market, the study of domestic service is situated at the
crossroads of several fields such as labor, family, and migration history and raises
issues of class, race, ethnicity, and gender.12 As with other types of transnational
labor, domestic service workers find employment abroad through networks and,
once employed, construct new sets of networks while, at times, gradually losing
contact with home-based links as prolonged absence and sheer distance take their
toll.13 When gender is factored into the labor market in the contemporary Middle
East, purely economic calculations are often tempered by other factors, such as
job status which “weighed even more in influencing a woman’s choice of
employment than it did a man’s.” For example, while Cairene maids tend to earn
much more than teachers, domestic service is regarded as lower in status and thus
less desirable.14 But do these patterns hold true for a preindustrial North African
state in the era before colonialism? Did employment as servants in elite house-
holds bring some measure of empowerment for individuals and families? How
did the service sector operate in general, and in what ways did it offer both
employment and social positioning for newly arrived Mediterranean folk of
humble status? Was this practice of employing Christian domestics unusual?
Did it represent an older system in decline or the continuation of a certain culture
of service among Tunisian elites? What does the service sector tell us about
patronage and networks?
Virtually ignored in studies of nineteenth-century Tunisia, domestic service
was a form of labor extraction that juxtaposed individuals of different social ranks
and sexes – and sometimes of different religions, races, and national origins –
under the same roof. In her study of nineteenth-century Tunisian family life, Leila
Temime Blili, observed that precolonial sources for reconstructing the social
world of servants and domestic service are scanty at best, although wedding

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contracts from a later period provide some evidence. As was true elsewhere in
the Ottoman Empire, Tunisian marriage contracts might stipulate that the bride
be provided with servants. Often recruited from impoverished families in the
countryside, young girls were placed with socially superior households where they
remained for years. Within extended kinship groups families that had fallen on
bad times might place their young girls with wealthier relatives who, in exchange
for household labor, would raise them, find suitable husbands, provide dowries,
and eventually marry them off. Most of these arrangements were oral, although
at times they assumed the form of written contracts registered with the qadi.15
While the preference for engaging indigenous girls from rural areas, or impecunious
kin may have limited opportunities, still the sources suggest that domestic
service represented one way of making a living for Mediterranean immigrants,
although it was not without sexual dangers for women.16
We initiate our discussion of work with the beylical state which, if not the “only
game in town,” was at least the “biggest game” for much of the precolonial
period. The Husaynid dynasty (c.1705–1956) sat at the confluence of numerous
intricate networks forged by kinship, patronage, revenue collection, public works,
trade monopolies, and diplomacy, to name only a few. As a result, the single
largest employer was the Tunisian state, court, and Husaynid family followed by
Ottoman, European, or other merchants and traders whose ranks also included the
consuls. Moreover, the various consulates functioned as employment bureaus in
the double sense of the term since they furnished work to Tunisian translators,
dragomen, and servants as well as operating as job placement agencies for
proteges and nationals. It is quite possible that some of the wayward Neapolitan
servants were subsequently hired by various European consulates since their
training and experience acquired from years of serving the Husaynid elite would
have made them particularly valuable. Not surprisingly, the Husaynid family and
court directly employed hundreds of people and provided work to thousands
more through their consumption of food stuffs, textiles, household goods, and
so forth. Thus our consideration of the service sector begins here.
The palace complex, known as the Bardo, was situated 5 kilometers outside the
walls of Tunis in a stretch of land surrounded by gardens and fields.17 With each
bey’s ascension to the throne, a new palace was constructed so that by the 1830s
the Bardo assumed the character of a small enclosed town with a number of
separate palaces as well as lodgings for slaves, servants, and mamluks, military
barracks, vast kitchens, and the mahkama or tribunal. In addition to serving as
home to a “vast array of people serving the needs of the ruling dynasty,” numerous
guests and visitors from around the country were lodged there sometimes for
extended periods of time. Around 1829, the Sardinian consul, Count Filippi,
estimated that the complex contained about 800 people, although he could not
have known with any certainty about the women’s quarters which were quite
extensive. “The Bardo is occupied by the ruling family which owns a number of
beautiful residential quarters, the rest of the area is occupied by the Mamluks
and servants; the former number about 200, half of whom serve the princes by

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assuming different offices and responsibilities of the court, the remainder are
divided into four companies and serve as the interior guards of the Bardo.”18 In
addition, there were smaller, summer palaces and residences scattered along the
coast from La Marsa to Hammam Lif which were tended by servants, retainers of
diverse backgrounds, and slaves. Until 1816, when Lord Exmouth’s expedition to
Tunis manumitted Christian slaves and ended the trade in Christian captives, the
distinction between slave and servant at the Bardo was somewhat blurred.
Christian slavery has been thoroughly treated by Valensi and Panzac, among
others, and thus the intent here is not to revisit that subject but rather to consider
earlier forms of coerced or forced labor cum domestic service to determine
if long-term patterns endured.19 For the period just prior to 1816, the English
traveler, Feise, provides tantalizing evidence on Christian slaves serving the
Regency’s ruling class. In 1812 Feise calculated the number of Christian slaves in
Tunis at around 2,000, a figure obtained from long-time European residents:
“Christian slaves are very few in number at present owing to the English having
lately ransomed the Sicilians and Greeks of the Ionian islands. Those in the
situation of slavery are now Neapolitans and Sardinians because the Tunisians
are now only at war with Sardinia and Naples.”20 While his calculations seem a
bit high – Panzac’s careful study estimates the number at around 1,200 – Feise’s
narrative sheds light upon possible cultural meanings attached to Christian slaves in
household service. For the beys or the great mamluk households, they represented
important social status markers: “As Christian slaves constitute a great part of
Moorish grandeur, those who can afford to purchase the greatest number and keep
them the best clothed are considered as the first among the grandees of the
Principality.” According to Feise, Christian slaves cum servants were generally
well treated since they were not only well nourished but also lavishly dressed in
the Ottoman or “eastern style,” minus, of course, turbans reserved for Muslims.
The clothing worn by the beys’ Christian servants continued to draw comment
from Europeans; in the 1830s, a visitor at court declared that “the Christian
domestics [in the bey’s service] wear the most ridiculous costume that one could
imagine” – which suggests that the servants had retained their “eastern dress” and
perhaps some of their significance as status indicators.21
What tasks did they fulfill in the earlier period? Again, Feise tells us that:
“Many Christian slaves fill places of trust and those who labor seldom have
heavier duties than watering and attending to a garden . . . Nor must we forget the
poor obsequious Christian slave who stands with humble reverence behind his
lordly master, holding his coffee cup and presenting him with Tobacco according
as it may be required.”22 Outside the capital, Christians were employed in a
number of occupations. For example, the secretary to the kahiya (governor) of
the port of La Goulette was a Christian slave, probably due in part to linguistic
abilities, while the Prime Minister had a number of slaves in service on his
country estate near Utique twenty-two miles outside of Tunis.23
We do not know with any degree of certainty the immediate consequences of
Exmouth’s expedition to Tunis upon the labor market, although the demise

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of raiding, which had transferred unfree labor from Mediterranean islands or

southern Europe to North Africa, must have had repercussions in certain labor
sectors in the Tunis region. In 1816, the Tunisian state lost some 900 captives –
300 Sardinians and 500 Neapolitans – most of whom were repatriated to Europe;
among whom, presumably, there were not only individuals doing hard, forced
labor in galleys, arsenals, or shipyards but also in household service.24 A few
liberated slaves remained in Tunisia for want of other opportunities, the case of
the remiss Neapolitan servants punished so cruelly in 1833. Moreover, several
families residing in Tunis at mid-century were descended from freed Christian
slaves manumitted over thirty years prior.25
In August 1841, Ahmad Bey abolished African slavery with the closing of the
slave market in the Suq al-Birka in Tunis; several years later, the trade in enslaved
persons was outlawed. As was true elsewhere, abolition did not mean that slavery
disappeared – far from it. The traffic in female slaves for harem service persisted,
although clandestinely and on a reduced scale; Greek, Georgian, or Circassian
women slaves were often transported in Austrian vessels.26 As late as 1880, there are
reports of enslaved African women in Tunis still being used in household service.27
On the other hand, Tunisian beys and notables had routinely manumitted slaves in
large numbers to celebrate religious festivals, important family celebrations, such
as marriages, or dynastic events. When the Baya Lalla Fatima died in 1827,
“deeply regretted by all classes of people in the Regency, and above all, by
the poor upon whom she showered gifts. Her last moments on earth were marked
by an act of goodness which will honor her memory forever, the freeing of
500 black slaves.”28 At Husayn Bey’s death in 1835, 600 female and 200 male slaves
were liberated; when Mustafa Bey died in 1837, hundreds of his African slaves were
freed as well.29 Therefore, manumitted African slaves were constantly fed into
the labor market.
In Tunis, manumission often meant that Africans or those of African origins
stayed with their masters, continuing to perform menial labor in households,
workshops, or gardens. According to Temime, until 1846 domestic service was
almost exclusively the domain of black slaves bought in the Suq al-Birka; wealthy
families employed both black men and women to perform household tasks with-
out apparently a sharply gendered allocation of work.30 In later notarial records,
the category, ‘atiq (freed persons) was employed to designate domestics who
were probably the children of emancipated slaves remaining with the family.31 As
A. Largueche noted for the period after the 1840s, “freed [black] slaves swelled
the lowest ranks of Tunisian society” probably increasing the pool of casual or
unskilled labor.32 Enslaved or recently manumitted African slaves frequently
showed up at the British consulate seeking refuge or work or both; in part this was
due to the fact that the building was conveniently located for job-seekers near the
“Sea Gate” (Bab al-Bahar) on one of the main squares in the capital, although
surely information about Britain’s anti-slavery stance had entered into the local
networks in this part of Tunis. In any case, the transformations discussed above
raise questions about supplies of labor needed to run large, multigenerational

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households whose elite status was partially calibrated by the number of slaves
or retainers.
Finally, the 1833 affair of Neapolitans, as recorded by Ahmad Ibn Abi al-Diyaf,
the bey’s secretary, sheds some light upon the cultural norms of the time governing
the treatment of servants and slaves as well as the existence of contracts. In a
conversation with Husayn Bey, the Neapolitan consul reminded the ruler that
when the servants “were freed from slavery, they elected to remain in the country
where they had been raised as paid workers; and an employer does not have
the right to beat his employees . . . they could be fired before the expiration of
the contract [nazila].” To which Husayn Bey testily responded: “The custom in our
country permits beating servants.” A lively discussion ensued among the beys’
closest advisors over the permissibility of inflicting corporal punishment upon
servants; opinion was divided. The bey’s secretary took the position that domestics
such as the Neapolitans should not be ill-treated since they were ahrar (free).33
By the 1830s, the Neapolitans did not hold any monopoly over palace service. A
source with precise knowledge of Tunisian society noted in 1835 that “the domestics
and people in service are Neapolitans, Sardinians and Italians, most of them of
modest social origins. They are all subordinate to the Bash-Kasak [i.e., master of
the wardrobe] who is the Bey’s favorite.”34 This refers to Joseph Marie Raffo
(1795–1862) who was appointed to the important position of bash kasak in 1825
by Husayn Bey. Raffo subsequently served as first interpreter to Husayn Bey and
became Ahmad Bey’s (1837–1855) minister of foreign affairs. Raffo, like so many
of his fellow “Europeans” originally hailed from modest origins but climbed the
social ladder through connections to the palace with its multifarious networks. He
was born in Tunis, the eleventh child of a Genoese artisan, Gian-Battista, who had
been captured by corsairs in 1771. Raffo père was attached to the Husaynid court
in his capacity as a watchmaker – which is not surprising given how inordinately
fond the ruling elite was of clocks and watches. This connection would then
explain son Joseph’s engagement while still young in palace service. Two other
important ties were created by wet-nursing and marriage: Raffo was Ahmad Bey’s
“milk brother” since Raffo’ mother had nursed the young prince; at the same time,
one of Raffo’s sisters, Elena-Grazia, converted to Islam and was married to
Mustafa Bey (1835–1837).
A Sardinian subject, Raffo remained a Christian as he served five Muslim
rulers. His residence at the Bardo was adorned with Catholic images and he
served as the patron for the Church in Tunisia; in the 1830s he used his influence
with the bey to have a new church constructed on the site of an ancient Trinitarian
hospital.35 In turn, Raffo also employed Europeans of modest social origins as his
servants. Among Raffo’s subordinates was a Maltese couple who, while unnamed
in the sources, became the object of intense political interest, due to the wife’s
alleged sexual misbehavior. In 1856, the English consul, Richard Wood, wrote
to Raffo requesting his direct intervention: “I feel that I can ask you to handle
this affair since it appears that wife and husband were previously in your
service.”36 Thus is seen how ties of patronage centered upon the palace radiated

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out to subalterns who in turn forged their own patronage networks with those
“below them.”
British diplomatic sources demonstrate that not insignificant numbers of
Maltese immigrants, who were British proteges, were employed as domestics in
the bey’s palace.37 In 1838, the English vice-consul contacted Ahmad Bey, to
plead in favor of “Giorgio Battista Bartolo, an English [i.e., Maltese] subject
living in Tunis; he and his wife have rendered a certain number of services for the
Bardo palace for years; he is asking for remuneration from the bey [Ahmad].”38
Taken together these clues suggest that newly arrived Mediterranean people were
able to secure work as servants due to the persistence of the older practice of
employing favored Christian captives in palace and other elite service.39 Moreover,
the patronage ties created by serving, for example, as one of the bey’s male cooks,
could ultimately lead to more glorious opportunities, particularly after Europeans
were allowed to hold property.
Philippe Béranger (1813–?) was one such individual. Originally from the Var,
he arrived in Tunis around 1840 where he won an appointment as head chef to
Ahmad Bey at the Bardo. Leaving the bey’s service, perhaps after Ahmad’s death
in 1855, Béranger subsequently went into business in 1858. In association with
François Pascal, his brother-in-law, he became the owner of the Hotel de Provence
located in Tunis.40 Pascal, a French subject, who had also once served as chef to
Ahmad Bey, served as the maitre d’hôtel. Pascal eventually went into business
with a Neapolitan subject; together they invested in property near Sfax where they
had planted olive and fruit trees. Eugène Bertrand, who had served the bey as a
civil engineer, took over the management of the Hotel de Paris in 1864 which he
later acquired as property.41

Domestic service and harem visits, 1835 and 1844

Thus far we have mainly discussed palace service with regard to male servants,
slaves or retainers. What can be learned about the social universe of female
servants or, prior to 1841, slaves? Due to the paucity of Arabic sources, we must
rely upon European accounts. In 1835 and again in 1844, European women
resident in Tunisia paid official calls upon the wives of the beys both at the Bardo
and the summer palace in La Marsa. Their narratives reveal a world largely off
limits to other Europeans (and to the historian due to the nature of the beylical
sources). Mrs Berner, the widow of the Danish consul, had resided in Tunis for
years; therefore, the 1835 account of her visit to the Bardo accompanied by
female friends, is particularly valuable.42 She noted that a minister of Husayn Bey
conducted the ladies as far as the second interior court of his harem where he took
leave of his visitors:

[A]t the double gate of the harem, two Moors kept watch; and after one
of them had retired, a few minutes to announce us, he returned with
the interpreter, an Italian lady, who invited us to follow her . . . from the

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place were we were seated, we could see into several other rooms where
on the ground sat a great number of black and white female slaves, some
gossiping, others engaged in various occupations. The numbers which
I saw, from time to time, certainly exceeded a thousand.43

Lady Temple, the wife of Sir Grenville Temple, also visited the Bardo that same
year, in 1835. Once again, she was consigned to the same Italian woman who
acted as an interpreter and presented Lady Temple to “her Highness the Lillah
Kabira [sic; Husayn Bey’s first wife] in a patio, adorned in the usual oriental style
with fountains.” Moreover, she added some information regarding slave women’s
duties in providing entertainment:

We must not omit the mention of the indecent dance prevalent in female
society through all Barbary. Many hours are passed by the women
witnessing this dance performed by their slaves in the solitude of the
harem. Christian ladies are never pressed to witness it as the Mooresses
know it would give them a very, justly, great offence. It is performed
openly at Jewish marriages, and such is the force of habits, however
immoral, that European women of the lower sort, sometimes perform
this dance with great zest.44

The two 1835 visits were followed in 1844 with another social call made by the
womenfolk in the English consul’s family, including a Miss Smith, who provided
the written account. This particular occasion was much more than a casual social
event since, as Miss Smith noted, “we promised to give them [i.e., English
consular officials] a faithful report of all that we saw and heard.” This time,
however, the European ladies went to the summer palace in La Marsa whose
harem appears to have been guarded by Black eunuchs, probably supplied to
Tunisia from Egypt. “The black and white [female] attendants of whom there
were many, placed napkins on our laps and handed us the refreshments.” On this
occasion, the European and Tunisian women ventured together outside the palace
where tents had been pitched near the beach so that the harem women could
promenade in the company of their visitors. “Their black female attendants on
such occasions are allowed to walk; I have counted more than fifty of them
dressed in the gayest colours, attended with the Kaed el-dar, [i.e. the qa’id al-dar,
a eunuch] passing through the olive groves and vineyards to the sea-side.”45
These accounts offer ethnographic details about the interior of the beys’ harems
and the various persons in service. The first is that the English women appear
to have been charged with counting the number of African slaves in the beys’
service – perhaps as part of Great Britain’s anti-slavery campaign, then directed
at Tunisia. In addition, the mention of female slaves serving as entertainers for
the harem women expands our understanding of the tasks assigned to slaves. The
claim that “European women of the lower sort” performed dances deemed erotic
at weddings or in public is equally intriguing and indicates that Lady Temple had

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either witnessed this spectacle herself, or more likely had heard about it from
other upper-crust Europeans resident in Tunis. Finally, the “Italian woman” in the
bey’s household who acted as an interpreter for guests suggests that there must
have been a regular parade of European female visitors – otherwise a staff person
would not have been necessary. We have no knowledge of who the Italian harem
guide was but her presence was probably due to the fact that a fair number of
Italians, particularly physicians – in addition to the mamluks of Italian origins –
served in high-level capacities to the beys.
Household employment sometimes resulted in disputes over wages or length of
service. While more research is needed, it appears that some Christian women
worked as wet-nurses for Muslim notables. In one case, serving as a wet-nurse
entailed residing for months in the intimacy of one of the great families connected
to the bey’s court. In this particular instance, reported in 1829 by the English
consul, a Maltese woman “having suckled the child of a Mamluk [member of
the court] according to agreement for 7 months, and the time being expired, but
the Mamluk would not suffer her to quit the house, her husband applied at the
[English] Consulate.” The husband wanted the consul to compel the notable to
release his wife from employment as a wet-nurse so that she could rejoin her own
family.46 After weeks of diplomatic exchanges, including appeals to the bey, the
woman was allowed to return home; her back wages were paid to her husband.
Wet-nursing in Tunisian culture established ties of fictive kinship and complex
networks between families. Therefore, this incident raises larger questions regarding
inter-confessional social relationships that demand further investigation.47 Was
this practice widespread? And, if so, did it also create patron–client bonds
between Mediterranean women of ordinary rank and Muslim dignitaries which
might be negotiated to advantage when the need arose? On the other hand, the fact
that the Maltese woman and her reproductive labor were subject to three layers of
male custodial oversight – the mamluk, the British consul, and her husband –
indicates that migration, and the securing of employment did not necessarily
enhance female agency.

The service sector outside of the Tunisian court

As scholarship on other Ottoman port-cities has demonstrated, the consulates
represented microcosms of the wider Mediterranean world. The availability of
labor in Mediterranean port-cities like Tunis was influenced by a number of
factors, including legal changes regarding employment and worker mobility
on the other side of the Sea. As Planel points out, the regulations of the Chambre
de Commerce de Marseille were amended in 1835 so that French “artisans and
servants were no longer subject to Chamber authorizations to leave and work
abroad nor to the duty to deposit a caution [security deposit] prior to departure.”
Nevertheless, employment in Tunisia, or elsewhere outside of France, was
dependent upon “regional networks of patronage” that were still subject to legal
limitations. For example, Barnabé Fouques (1781–1867), by profession a wool

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worker, was hired as a cook in 1829 for Mr Ventre, a resident merchant in Tunisia;
however, Fouques’ passport for Tunis expressly stipulated that he return to France
as soon as his employment ended.48 Despite these limitations, the expanding
presence of middle-class Europeans in Tunisia created new labor demands
beyond that normally supplied by kin as did the establishment of hotels and places
of sociability, such as taverns or restaurants, which had not previously existed in
large numbers in the capital.
The consular missions directly employed members of local Tunisian society,
Muslim and Jewish, as well as hiring retainers from among their fellow nationals
or the heterogeneous community in the capital. We know from a 1826 document
concerning the cost of reparations to the French funduq and the consular residence
that “Moorish servants worked at the establishment” as well as Tunisian Janissaries
who lodged there apparently in separate quarters.49 Janissaries in Tunisia differed
from their counterparts in the Ottoman heartlands since they appeared to have
served principally as guards, sentries, and escorts. In c.1856 the British consulate
received an employment request from “Tayeb ben Mohamed El Medeni [sic], a
native and resident of La Goulette, who seeks a position as an English janissary
in the port.”50
In the countryside, Europeans employed Tunisians or North Africans as servants,
guards, and shepherds. The English merchant, John Gibson, who resided in La
Marsa in the early 1830s, owned oxen and horses which he had confided to the
watchful care of bedouins from Tripolitania. As compensation for work, Gibson
had paid the bedouins two years advance wages. Sometimes the needs of the
Tunisian state for labor, particularly for military purposes, clashed with those of
employers. In April 1834, Gibson’s bedouin guard was forcibly conscripted by the
bey’s press gang; his coachman suffered a similar fate. It took the shaykh al-medina’s
intervention to liberate the coachman, at least temporarily from state service.
These incidents and others prompted resident Europeans to formally request that
the bey issue teskeres [permits] exempting servants or employees from compulsory
employment by the state.51
From the 1830s on, a veritable flood of cooks and servants brought from Europe
appear on the passenger rolls of ships docking in port. That year the French
consul engaged a French cook to assist his wife. A few years later, the servant of
a Monsieur Falbe, carrying a Danish passport, and a Sardinian subject, the servant
of a Monsieur D’Ambroise.52 In 1839 a cook brought in to work for the resident
French family, the Monges, sailed from Marseille on the French brik L’Excellent,
arriving in Tunis in five days. Three years later, a Sardinian ship transported in
four days De Lagau’s cook, Alexis, as well as “a woman who is going to Mr Solal’s
household.”53 But the current also went in the reverse direction as servants returned
to Europe with the expiration of contracts or for other reasons.
Some servants never made it back home, the case of the Maltese, Angelo
Saliba, who died in Tunis in 1850 after a long period of employment at the British
residence. Saliba had served the British consul general, Sir Edward Baynes, as his

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personal valet. The probate proceedings, completed in January, 1851, revealed

that the Maltese steward possessed the following items: 436 piasters; one silver
watch; one gold chain; a box of shirt studs; and other personal belongings. As a
valet to a high-ranking European official, Saliba’s position in the hierarchy of
service placed him near the top which is reflected in his possessions. However,
Saliba left behind debts; he owed one hundred piasters to the Maltese Catholic
priest, Father Stanilaus. A Tunisian woman named Mabruka also came forward
during the probate inquiry to lay claims to his estate since she had lent him money
which had not been reimbursed.54 Here we have suggestions that – in addition to
serving masters for specified wages – servants also engaged in business deals or
investments on the side.
After mid-century, the number of hotel, cafes, restaurants, taverns, and inns in
the capital city greatly expanded. These establishments, which tended to cater to
Europeans, although of different social ranks, provided work for men and women,
particularly widows, and functioned as mechanisms of social betterment for
newcomers of ordinary means, many of whom first got their start in service of
one kind or another.55 Joseph Tournier, who died in Tunis in 1870, took over the
Hotel de France, first as manager, then as owner. Tournier presents just such a case
of social mobility since he arrived in Tunis around 1844 as a “valet de chambre,”
subsequently becoming an inn-keeper. The same held true for his common-law
wife, Lazarine, who came to Tunisia in 1848 as a chambermaid. A European guest
described their establishment in 1867 as a “Moorish house” on the edge of
the madina that had been transformed into hotel, “one of the most comfortable
in Tunis.”56 The hotel population reflected the increasing cosmopolitanism of
Tunis after the mid-nineteenth century as travelers, investors, and the well-heeled
from all over the Mediterranean arrived in greater numbers due to improved
transportation.
Needless to say, servants were suspected of, or accused of, stealing by their
employers. Monsieur Guemos, a French subject residing near the stone quarries
of Jabal Caroub, claimed that he had been the victim of a string of thefts and other
violent acts. During the night of February 16, 1860, his home was broken into;
the guilty party had entered through a window secured with a metal rod and stolen
numerous possessions. Missing were a sack full of copper coins; hundreds of
silver and gold piasters; towels, a silk cravat, a pair of grey pants, a kitchen knife,
and ten pounds of mining powder. Guemos accused one of his Tunisian servants,
Salah, in his employment for five months but whom he had fired – after paying
Salah his wages – several days prior to the break-in.57
We opened the section on domestic service with the Neapolitan servants
provoking a serious diplomatic imbroglio in 1833. Servants either Tunisian, North
African, or imported from various parts of Europe and the Mediterranean world,
gave rise to endless disputes involving not only the various nationalities residing
in Tunis but also Tunisians. In 1868 the French consulate received a complaint
from the Italian consulate regarding a French couple, the Messiers living in

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La Goulette, who refused to allow an unmarried Sicilian woman, Mlle. Passalaqua,

to leave their service. Stated the French vice consul:

I ordered Messier and his wife to give back the Sicilian woman, who is
a domestic in their household, based upon the explicit demand of the
Italian consulate. The Menier couple has refused to allow Mlle.
Passalaqua to go to see her consular officer. Just as my janissary was
leaving the Messier house, after Mr. Messier had refused to hand her
over without an order to take her away, Mme. Messier boarded a coach
with Mlle. Passalaqua and left for Tunis.58

In January, 1869 the affair of the Sicilian servant was still not resolved. Mlle
Passalaqua’s relatives, who also apparently resided in the capital, demanded that
her belongings returned as well as nine months of outstanding wages, calculated
at fifteen copper piasters per month of service. The partial list of Mlle
Passalaqua’s personal effects remaining in her previous employers’ possession is
somewhat surprising: four camisoles and an equal number of pantalets; a cap
known as “garibaldina” and a pair of gloves; two dresses; various clothing of
wool, Indian cotton, and linen, and one dress of muslin; fives pairs of hosiery and
so forth.59 One wonders if she filled a role other than servant since her personal
belongings suggest a relatively middle-class status. That very same year witnessed
another conflict over an Italian female servant’s wages which probably reflected
the surge during this period of Italian immigration by women and men looking
for work. What is interesting in this story is the layering of domestic service
within the household of one of the most powerful of the Tunisian court notables,
Mustafa Khaznadar. In this instance, the Italian consul general complained to the
French consul in Tunis in May 1869, regarding an Italian woman, Anna Errera
Vedova, who worked for a French national, Madame Meunier. The latter was
employed in the Manuba palace of the Khaznadar as a “giardiniera” (gardener)
and Meunier in turn had hired Anna as a servant but kept her in a “miserable
state” by forcing her to work without pay; Madame, it was alleged, owed the
abused Anna twenty piasters in back pay.60
English governesses appear to have been in demand among the European
expatriate community in Tunis. Miss Peacopp, “an English woman living in Tunis,”
was hired by a French national, Monsieur de Serre as a “tutress” for his daughter
in 1869 but the child proved intractable since she “refused to learn anything but
music,” at least according to the governess. The manner in which de Serre hired
the unhappy Miss Peacopp and the nature of her work contract are significant. De
Serre ran across the English governess while he was traveling through Italy and
engaged her then as a governess for his recalcitrant child. Committed to writing,
the agreement stipulated that Miss Peacopp would be reimbursed for the cost of
her travel to Tunis from Italy and receive fifty francs per month – which her
employer reneged upon, giving rise to long drawn out negotiations.61 In 1861 the
summer residence of the British consul, Richard Wood, located in La Goulette,

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also boasted an English governess – and a piano – for Wood’s numerous offspring.
As Wood’s wife, Christina, observed: “The servants are getting on all right, with
slips and fights now and then. If you could get hold of Zahran and bring him
along as cook it would be a good dodge and [good] thing. I believe Mohamed
intends to leaving when his time is up. Don’t forget to bring me some of the
painted handkerchiefs of the gaudiest colors” (as gifts for the servants).62
Finally, as ten of thousands of Mediterranean migrants poured into French
Algeria after 1830, thousands of Algerian refugees flooded Tunisia. Most chose
to relocate to the Tunis region where chances for employment appeared greater; a
number were hired as servants either by Europeans or by Tunisians. Hassan ibn
Ahmad al-Jaziri, 26 years old, arrived in Tunis sometime in 1874 to work for a
Tunisian as a domestic. Described as “medium height, small moustache rather
blond, squints slightly and speaks French,” Hassan did not prove the ideal servant
since only twenty days after his arrival he was fired by his employer for reasons
unknown. Out of work and apparently out of luck, one evening the hapless
Hassan, “being drunk on wine, entered without permission a European house
near the Bab al-Bahr in order to ask for work. His state of drunkenness . . . so scared
the house’s inhabitants that they ran to the Zabtia [i.e. police] who arrested him and
brought him to the civil prison in Driba where he remained nearly 31⁄2 months.”
Questioned by the French consul about papers verifying his Algerian status,
Hassan stated that “at the moment that he was arrested, he had his passport in his
tarboush which was taken away from him by the agents of the police before he
was imprisoned.”63 Hassan’s story is plausible since taverns dispensing wine had
sprung up all over the madina by this period; and Europeans of all social ranks
resided in the area of Bab al-Bahr. Once sprung from prison, Hassan disappears from
the record, but we can speculate that he belonged to the mass of the “floating
population” of the capital city, which grew rapidly as the century wore on.

Down and out in Tunis: charity, poverty, and plague

Poverty among resident Europeans or Mediterranean folk in precolonial Tunisia
has not yet been studied in depth, mainly because of the false notion that – as
Europeans – they naturally occupied high places in the social hierarchy. However,
misfortune was never too far away and often followed the illness or death of a
productive family member. From the 1820s on, impoverished Maltese immigrants
subsisted through petty street peddling, arousing the wrath of Tunisian and
European shopkeepers with whom they competed for customers; some engaged in
begging on city streets. Clearly Tunisian authorities were concerned about vagrants
and the unemployed since in 1836 Mustafa Bey declared that “the laws of the
kingdom demand that any [foreign] individual without means of subsistence are
subject to expulsion from the country.”64 Moreover, until late in the century, Tunisia
suffered recurrent epidemics which plunged surviving family members into extreme
want, if kinship and other social welfare networks defaulted. The Fassy family
represents one of the best documented cases of Europeans falling into misery.

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Dominique Fassy (1754–1818), a master sailmaker from Marseille, had been

recruited from Tripoli to work in Tunisia in 1815 by the French vice-consul at the
port who was also a relative.65 Employed by the bey in the naval yards,
Dominique Fassy managed to eke out a living made increasingly precarious by his
numerous offspring. Regarded with opprobrium by their European neighbors, the
Fassys, with their six children, lived one step away from poverty and were often
forced to borrow just to purchase food. “Mr. Fassy . . . does not have a cent to his
name and owes money to everyone in La Goulette because of which the family is
often tormented.”66 During Mahmud Bey’s reign (1814–1824), a terrible plague
erupted in 1817 that persisted until 1820 and carried off a good proportion of
Tunisia’s population. By November 1818 three members of the Fassy family – the
father, mother, and one of the children – had succumbed to the disease, leaving
five orphans ranging in age from 3 to 16 years and enormous debts.67
For the next months, they were kept alive through the charity of neighbors in
the port, including several “Turks” who furnished basic provisions to the children.
The French vice consul also periodically sent his servant with bread, meat, and oil
but the plague had destroyed Tunisian agriculture so wheat was scarce. Moreover,
finding a ship to take the orphans back to Marseille proved impossible at first
because of the danger of plague as well as the orphans’ lack of resources. To make
matters worse, some malevolent persons broke into their dwelling at the port and
made off with all of their possessions. While the bey owed back wages to the
deceased sailmaker, the presence of plague meant that connections between
the port and the city of Tunis were interrupted, making it difficult to pursue the
matter of the unpaid salary. In any case, the sum owed by the Tunisian state was
less than the family’s cumulative obligations. Finally in April 1819, a Swedish
vessel took the children to Marseille much to the relief of French consular and
Tunisian officials, and the European community in general. They left behind a
string of debts which took years to settle. One of the many significant dimensions
of this case is that Tunisian Muslims (either designated as “Moors” or “Turks” in
the sources) often provided assistance to the orphaned children in their capacity
as neighbors in La Goulette. This suggests that religion or social background
posed no obstacles to the kinds of charitable activities that might be forged out of
residential or neighborhood associations and networks.68
What is also interesting is that, unlike so many other “down-and-out” tales
without closure due to lack of sources, the story’s sequel is found on the other
side of the Mediterranean in the archives of the Chambre de Commerce de Marseille.
Application had been made from Tunis for the care of the Fassy orphans to the
“Hôpital de la Charité and to the Société de Bienfaisance in Marseille. One of
the younger girls was placed in a “école d’industrie” supervised by Catholic
sisters; the two older girls were temporarily taken in by the Société until they
could be placed as boarders with another Catholic order. But there is a final
intriguing element to the Fassy affair which brings us back to the problem of labor,
migration, and recruitment as well as the workings of networks and patronage
spanning the Mediterranean. In June 1819 soon after the orphans had arrived

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in France, the nephew of their deceased father, Pierre Fassy, also a master
sailmaker in Marseille, contacted the French consul in Tunis. What Pierre desired
was to replace his deceased uncle in the service of the Tunisian state; he requested
the consul’s intercession with the bey for employment.69
Thus, compassion, often combined with a desire to guarantee the collective
honor of a particular national expatriate group, motivated the consuls to provide
poor relief. Perhaps due to the burdens – a communal embarrassment – imposed
by poverty-stricken families, like the Fassys, many of the consulates had ‘caisse
de secours’ by the 1820s in case of dire need. For example, in 1825, the French
consulate in Tunis had a fund of 2,000 francs “for any Europeans and for indigent
French families.”70 Not surprisingly, widows often applied to the consulates and
even to the beys for succor, although it should be noted that widows were viewed
with particular suspicion by both European and Tunisian male authorities since
they were “women without men,” yet, at the same time, often semi-independent.
In 1830 Emanuelle Skiano, a Maltese widow, sought the assistance of the English
consul some two years after her husband’s death which had left her alone with a
child to support. While at first she had been able to find employment at the bey’s
palace, probably as a servant, “her employer had no further occasion for her
services, and [she] could not obtain other employ.” Skiano begged for financial
assistance to pay for her passage back to Malta which was eventually arranged
through the consul’s intervention.71 The recourse to Tunisian and consular poor
relief was common before female Catholic missionaries settled in Tunis in the
1840s to organize social welfare activities and guarantee female morality among
the subsistence migrants by keeping “Christian girls in the fear of God and
working to rescue those who had given in to the attraction of vice.”72
Not infrequently, consuls and consulates had to repatriate individuals or rescue
entire families in distress as they arrived in port or left Tunisia. In 1816 a “miserable”
young man from Naples, “a shoe-maker without a dime,” who had come to Tunis
in a fruitless search for family members, found himself stranded without funds to
return home.73 In the 1830s, the Fiorintinis were supported by the French vice-
consul, Gaspary, and another unfortunate family, the Romanis, resided with him
as the mother and child had taken ill just as they were about to board ship. In 1847
Captain Bitirac, commander of a French vessel was paid fifty francs for the
passage and sustenance “from Tunis to Marseille of the Widow Tarbourich and
her three small children.”74 Finally, because Tunis was a busy Mediterranean port,
ships of all nations put in there which meant that after accidents or intemperate
weather crews might find themselves in distress. In 1828 the head of the French
traders in Tunis contacted the Chambre de Commerce de Marseille regarding the
plight of sailors: “it often happens that the sailors of a sunken ship, for lack of
anywhere else to stay, if the only inn in the city is full, are forced to camp out in
the courtyard of the consular building or in its upstairs galleries where they are
exposed to the elements; often the sick are refused shelter at the inn or only
admitted into the inn with great reluctance; the inn serves as a shelter for all the
captains, sailors, and voyagers of all nations.”75

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Thus far we have seen how ties of one sort or another with the beys, their
households, or the consulates might lead to job opportunities. However, a conflict
from 1848 demonstrates how those without insufficient access to the right kinds
of patronage might fall into poverty. Sometime before 1846, a French baker,
Astoin, rented a part of a building on the edge of the madina. On the ground-level
he baked and sold bread; upstairs he lodged with his large family. Being adjacent
to the Sea Gate, the bakery attracted a huge clientele and his business flourished,
for a while. But in October 1846, Ahmad Bey gave Astoin twenty-four hours
to quit the locale, owned by the municipality, since the government desired to
establish a guard post in the very spot where the bakery was situated. In his
haste to quit the premises, Astoin left behind furnishings and equipment worth
125 piasters, a considerable sum.
Burdened with dependent children, he next took refuge in a building occupied,
but not owned, by Ghiggino, a Sardinian subject, who put at Astoin’s disposition,
an oven, a store, and lodging for his family. Misfortune, generated by urban
renewal projects, seemed to dog Astoin no matter where he set up shop. Soon
after, the bey ordered the demolition of houses, shops, and a portion of the
ramparts situated near the Bab al-Bahr, which also abutted onto Astoin’s new
residence, since these were state properties. The demolitions not only lasted a
year but also blocked his bakery and home from his customers so the hapless
Astoin often ceased baking bread since he was unable to sell it.76 Worse still he
and his family were forced to reside for an entire year next to the open city sewage
drains in a partially demolished building. After even these unappealing lodgings
were destroyed in the next phase of city modernization, Astoin found himself
again in the streets with his family. Unlike the beys’ former cooks and chefs, who
made good for themselves later on in the hotel business, Astoin could claim no
direct ties to the palace, although French diplomats intervened on his behalf
repeatedly. As importantly, property owning in this period was still prohibited for
non-Tunisian subjects; his nomadic existence in the heart of densely populated
Tunis, vainly attempting to “making a living” was largely the result of this fact.
In the period prior to the granting of property rights to foreigners, service,
particularly domestic service with the “right” patrons, integrated outsiders into
the local economy and conferred status in the way that later property-holding
“tied people to communities.”77 Deprived of both of these fundamental mechanisms
for social positioning, people like Astoin, as other similar cases demonstrate,
had difficulty “making it” in a preindustrial urban economy in the decades
before colonialism.

Conclusions
In considering work in a preindustrial, precolonial state, our methodology
has been to unravel the skeins of interconnections from the inside out, in ever
expanding circles, to ultimately consider the central Mediterranean corridor and
the world beyond. Bourgeois newcomers with skills and knowledge to peddle

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to the Tunisian state could forge various kinds of relationships – patron–client,

business partnerships, and so forth – not only with the resident consular clans and
merchants but also with Tunisian notables and members of the beys’ huge courts.
However, newly arrived immigrants of humble status most commonly worked as
unskilled or semiskilled laborers in carpentry, carting, or masonry, in small family-
operated business, such as taverns or bakeries, or as servants. The poorest might
street-peddle their humble wares, such as sweets, crudely manufactured in makeshift
stoves in one of the city’s bachelor hostels, much to the neighbors’ dismay. People
of ordinary means relied mainly on their own labor, their wits, on kin, if they had
a kinship network, and on the benevolence of neighbors or strangers to survive.
Maltese, Greeks, and Sicilians were employed as cooks, domestics, and valets –
and even wet-nurses – by the Husaynid state as well as by elite Tunisian and
resident European families. Domestic service in the households of either Tunisian
notable families or resident European consuls and traders might implicate the
“down-and-out” in favorable patron–client relations at times leading to upward
social mobility. Household employment meant more than cleaning, cooking, or
nursing children for middle-class Europeans or Tunisian notables since it serves,
kinship groups and potentially the wider community in strands of exchange,
obligation, patronage – and potentially any conflict.
When social supports unraveled or community welfare mechanisms failed,
impoverishment ensued with the result that unfortunate individuals or entire
families were sometimes forcibly repatriated to country of origin. At the same
time, poverty, combined with the need to salvage collective honor, motivated
the consuls to provide poor relief. At the deepest level of analysis, this story is
about the workings of a nineteenth-century Mediterranean port-city and how it
progressively became enmeshed in ever wider circuits and circulations not only
due to substantial in-migration but also due to the very process of searching for a
daily living, of “making it” in Tunis.

Notes
1 Ahmad Ibn Abi al-Diyaf, Ithaf ahl al-zaman bi-akhbar muluk tunis wa ‘ahd al-zaman,
8 vols (Tunis: al-dar al-tunisiyya lil-nashr, 1989), Vol. 3/4: 233–7; for the English
consul’s version of the events, see Public Record Office, London, Foreign Office,
Tunisia (hereafter PRO/FO] 77/24 Reade to London, February 3, 1833.
2 Prax, 1847, “ ‘Le commerce de Tunis avec l’intérieur de l’Afrique’, in Centre des
Archives d’Outre-Mer,” Aix-en-Provence, Algérie (hereafter CAOM), F80 1697.
3 PRO/FO 102/32, No. 7, Vice-consul Ferrier, “General Survey of Tunisia,” March 31,
1848. On the unreliability of Italian estimates, Romain H. Rainier, Les Italiens dans la
Tunisie Contemporaine (Aix-en-Provence: Publisud, 2002), 23. The 1870 estimates
come from a contemporary observer, G. B. Machiavella; cited in Dalenda Larguèche,
Territoire sans frontières: La contrebande et ses réseaux dans la Régence de Tunis au
XIXe siècle (Tunis: Centre de Publication Universitaire, 2001), 134–5. On the numbers
of French nationals (and for pre-colonial Tunisia in general), see Anne-Marie Planel’s
invaluable study, “De la nation à la colonie: La communauté Française de Tunisie au
XIXè siècle d’aprés les archives civiles et notariées du consulat générale de France à
Tunis” (doctoral dissertation, 3 vols, Paris, EHESS, 2000) 1: 92–4.

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4 On gender and displacements, see Julia Clancy-Smith, “Women, Gender and

Migration along a Mediterranean Frontier: Pre-Colonial Tunisia, c.1815–c.1870,”
Gender and History, 17, 1(April 2005): 62–92.
5 Susan Cotts Watkins, “Social Networks and Social Science History,” Social Science
History, 19, 3(Fall 1995): 295–311, emphasizes the importance of face-to-face or
conversational networks as crucial to social patterning.
6 On poverty in indigenous pre-colonial Tunisian society, especially among Jewish and
African minorities, Abdelhamid Larguèche, Les Ombres de la ville: Pauvres, marginaux
et minoritaires à Tunis (XVIIIè et XIXè siècles) (Tunis, Centre de Publication
Universitaire, 1999); and Fanny Colonna (ed.), Etre Marginal au Maghreb (Tunis: Alif,
1993); see also Mine Ener, “Getting into the Shelter of Takiyat Tulun,” in Outside In:
On the Margins of the Modern Middle East, ed. Eugene Rogan (London: I. B. Tauris,
2002), 53–76; Michael E. Bonine (ed.), Population, Poverty, and Politics in Middle East
Cities (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1997); and Rachel G. Fuchs, Poor
and Pregnant in Paris: Strategies for Survival in the Nineteenth Century (New Brunswick:
Rutgers University Press, 1992), 1–19, for definitions of poor and poverty.
7 Lucette Valensi, “Islam et capitalisme: production et commerce des chéchias en Tunisie
et en France aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles,” in Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine,
16(1969): 376–400; Mohamed El Aziz Ben Achour, Catégories de la Société Tunisoise
dans la deuxième moitié du XIXème siècle (Tunis: Institut National d’Archéologie et
d’Art, 1989), 374–8; Mustapha Kraïem, La Tunisie Précoloniale, 2 vols (Tunis:
Société Tunisienne de Diffusion, 1973), 2: 37–40; and Julia Clancy-Smith, “A Woman
Without Her Distaff: Gender, Work, and Handicraft Production in Colonial North
Africa,” in A Social History of Women and the Family in the Middle East, ed. Margaret
Meriwether and Judith Tucker (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999), 25–62.
8 Dalenda Largueche (ed.), Histoire des femmes au Maghreb: Culture matérielle et vie
quotidienne (Tunis: Centre de Publication Universitaire, 2000); Dalenda and
Abdelhamid Largueche, Marginales en terre d’Islam (Tunis: Cérès Productions,
1992); Julia Clancy-Smith, “Envisioning Knowledge: Educating the Muslim Woman in
Colonial North Africa, 1900–1918,” in Iran and Beyond: Essays in Middle Eastern
History in Honor of Nikki Keddie, ed. Beth Baron and Rudi Matthee (Los Angeles,
CA: Mazda Press, 2,000), 99–118; and Jamila al-‘Arabi, “rihlati ma’ al-fann darb
min harir,” in Nisa’ wa dhakira, ed. Habib Kazdahgli (Tunis: Edition Média Com,
1993), 201–2.
9 The text of the 1863 convention is found in J. C. Hurewitz (ed.), The Middle East and
North Africa in World Politics: A Documentary Record, 2nd edn, 2 vols (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1975), 1: 352–5.
10 Charles Monchicourt, “Les Italiens de Tunisie et l’Accord Laval-Mussolini de 1935,”
in Bibliothèque des Questions Nord-Africaines, 2(1938): 3.
11 Marc Donato, L’Émigration des Maltais en Algérie au XIXème siècle (Montpellier:
Collection Africa Nostra, 1985), 108; and Jean Ganiage, “Les Européens en Tunisie au
milieu du XIXe siècle.” Cahiers de Tunisie, 3, 9(1955): 389–421, especially 405.
12 My approach to the question of work and migration has drawn upon the following works:
Jacqueline Knorr and Barbara Meier (eds), Women and Migration: Anthropological
Perspectives (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000); Akram Khater, Inventing Home:
Emigration, Gender, and the Middle Class in Lebanon, 1870–1920 (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 2001); Sarah Gualtieri, “Feminizing the Chain Migration
Thesis: Woman and Syrian Transatlantic Migration, 1878–1924”, Comparative Studies
of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 24, 1(Spring 2004): 67–87, Donna R. Gabaccia,
From the Other Side: Women, Gender, and Immigrant Life in the U.S., 1820–1990
(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994); Kathie Friedman-Kasaba,
Memories of Migration: Gender, Ethnicity, and Work in the Lives of Jewish and Italian

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Women in New York, 1870–1924 (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press,
1996); and Leslie Page Moch, Paths to the City: Regional migrations in France
(Beverly Hill, CA: Sage Publications, 1983) and her Moving Europeans: Migration in
Western Europe since 1650 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2003).
13 Elsbeth Locher-Scholten, “So Close and Yet So Far: The Ambivalence of Dutch Colonial
Rhetoric on Javanese Servants in Indonesia, 1900–1942,” in Domesticating the Empire:
Race, Gender, and Family Life in French and Dutch Colonialism, ed. Julia Clancy-Smith
and Frances Gouda (Charlottesville, VA: The University Press of Virginia, 1998), 131–53.
14 Homa Hoodfar, Between Marriage and the Market: Intimate Politics and Survival in
Cairo (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997), 113–14.
15 Leila Blili Temime, Histoire de Familles: Mariages, répudiations et vie quotidienne
à Tunis, 1875–1930 (Tunis: Editions Script, 1999), 167–9; Suraiya Faroqhi, Subjects of the
Sultan: Culture and Daily Life in the Ottoman Empire (London: I. B. Tauris, 2000),
112–13.
16 In Samt al-Qusur (Les Silences du Palais, 1994), The Tunisian film-maker, Moufida
Tlatli, explored the milieu of female servants, and the sexual favors expected of them,
in the beys’ household during the late colonial period.
17 Mohamed-Hédi Cherif, Pouvoir et société dans la Tunisie de H’usayn bin ‘Ali
(1705–1740) 2 vols (Tunis: Publications de l’Université de Tunis, 1984) 1: 188–9.
18 Charles Monchicourt, Documents historiques sur la Tunisie: Relations inédites de Nyssen,
Filippi et Calligaris (1788, 1829, 1834) (Paris: Société d’éditions géographiques,
maritime et coloniales, 1929), 92–5.
19 Lucette Valensi, “Esclaves chrétiens et esclaves noirs à Tunis au XVIII siècle,”
Annales, Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations, 4(November–December, 1967): 1267–88;
and Daniel Panzac, Les corsairs barbaresques: La fin d’une épopée, 1800–1820 (Paris:
CNRS Éditions, 1999).
20 Godfrey Feise, “Observations on the Regency of Tunis, 1812, 1813,” mss, No. 15.417
(The British Library, London [hereafter Feise, mss]), 92–4 and drawing No. 9 of
lavishly dressed Christian slaves serving as domestics in elite households.
21 CAOM, Aix, Algérie, F 80 1697, carton “Confins Algéro-Tunisiens,” anonymous mss,
c.1835.
22 Feise, mss, 6, 92–4.
23 Of course, most of the slaves performed heavy manual labor under dreadful conditions,
although those with skills might have a better lot in an otherwise bleak existence;
Christian slaves as well as French nationals engaged in shipbuilding in Porto Farina
until the rapid sanding up decreased demands for labor as shipyards and trade
languished. Feise, mss, 5, 23, and 30–1.
24 Panzac, Les corsaires barbaresques, 98–9; and Abdelhamid Larguèche, L’Abolition de
l’Esclavage en Tunisie à travers les archives, 1841–1846 (Tunis: Alif, 1990), 18.
25 Jean Ganiage, Les Origines du Protectorat Français en Tunisie (1861–1881) (Tunis:
Maison Tunisienne de l’Édition, 1968), 18.
26 For example: PRO/ FO 77/22, Reade to London, September 17, 1831, reported that
“an Austrian vessel arrived in this port on the 12th last [of September] from
Constantinople, having on board a Turkish ‘chouse’ [vavuv in modern Turkish; roughly
a military officer in the Ottoman army holding the rank of sergeant], charged to deliver
to the Bey of Tunis the new military uniforms which the Sultan had directed should be
worn in the future by the Bey and his Troops, and with which HH will be invested as
soon as the Ship is admitted to pratique . . . I understand that this vessel has brought
three Georgian women whom, it is suspected, are slaves, belonging to the suite of the
Chouse, brought hither [to Tunis] for sale. Formerly great numbers of Georgian women
were brought here. This however seldom happens now; but such as are sent are
generally imported by Austrian vessels.”

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27 In 1880, the British Consul in Tunis brought a complaint to the Tunisian Prime Minister
regarding “three black female slaves named respectively Anisa bint ‘Abdallah
al-Barnawy, Fatima Barnawy and Aisha bint al-Barnawy who had escaped from their
late master and at the instance of this agency and consulate general obtained letters of
emancipation from the local authorities have since been restored to their former
proprietors by Sidi Hamid Bin Ayyad, the Khalifa of the qaid of the negroes. Another
black woman named Maimuna, it would appear, had shared the same fate and although
the said Khalifa assured me some days ago that she had been married in accordance
with her own wishes, and promised to produce her at this office in company with her
husband, I have not either seen or heard of them since . . . I should demand that the
above mentioned negresses be set at liberty forthwith, and that such an example by
made of the offending Khalifa as shall deter others from interfering as he has done with
the liberty of free subjects . . .” ANT, carton 228, dossier 414, Thomas Reade to Sidi
Mustafa, the Tunisian Prime Minister, October 12, 1880.
On race and racism in northern Africa, see Eve Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of
Colonialism: Egypt, Great Britain, and the Mastery of the Sudan (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 2003).
28 Al-Diyaf, Ithaf, Vol. 3/4: 202–3; the information on the slaves is found in the
anonymous mss, CAOM-Aix F 80 1697, c.1835, which may have been composed by
one of the court physicians at the Bardo.
29 Valensi, “Esclaves chrétiens,” 1279; al-Diyaf, Ithaf, Vol. 3/4: 286.
30 Temime, Histoire de familles, 167–9.
31 Ibid., 168–9; in aristocratic urban families, household service did not always mean
dismal servitude. Frequently young girls taken in as domestics were raised along
with the family’s children; their designation in Arabic rabiba or mrubbiyya (foster or
step-daughter) signifies kin membership.
32 Abdelhamid Largueche, Abolition de l’esclavage en Tunisie à travers les archives,
1841–1846 (Tunis: Alif, 1990), 35; also Les Ombres de la ville. The most comprehen-
sive study of slavery in Morocco is Mohammed Ennaji’s Soldats, domestiques et
concubines: L’esclavage au Maroc au XIXe siècle (Tunis: Cérès Editions, 1994).
33 Al-Diyaf, Ithaf, Vol. 3/4: 233–7; quote 235.
34 CAOM, Aix, Algérie, F 80 1697, “Confins Algéro-Tunisiens,” 85.
35 Planel, “De la nation à la colonie, Vol. 1: 28; Ganiage, Les Origines du Protectorat
Français en Tunisie, p. 597; Christian Windler, La Diplomatie comme expérience de
l’autre: Consuls Français au maghreb (1700–1840) (Geneva: Droz, 2002), 425–6; and
André Raymond, introduction and translation, 2 vols, Commentaire historique of Ibn
Abi l-Diyaf. Present aux hommes de notre temps. Chronique des rois de Tunis et du
pacte fondamental. Chapitres IV et V (Tunis: Alif, 1994), chapter 2, 160.
36 Archives Nationales de Tunisie (hereafter ANT), série historique (hereafter H) carton
227, dossier 411, Wood to Count Raffo, October 17, 1856.
37 PRO/FO 77/30, Reade to London, April 18, 1837.
38 ANT, H carton 226, dossier 409, Ancram to Bey, January 3, 1838.
39 Ganiage, Les Origines du Protectorat Français en Tunisie, 11; Ahmad By’s newly
constructed, lavish residence at Muhammadiya, inspired by Versailles, required a large
pool of skilled labor for building, some of it unavailable in Tunisia at the time, as well
as servants to staff it.
40 Planel, “De la nation à la colonie,” Vol. 3: 734.
41 ANT, H carton 207, dossier 96, Roches to Bey, January 10, 1860.
42 PRO/FO 102/29, 1845, “An Account of the Present State of Tunis,” by James
Richardson, Public Record Office, Kew, 1845, which contains an insertion entitled
“Addendum on the Tunisian Harem.” Madame Berner’s account has only survived, as
far as we know, in an abbreviated verbatim form inserted into Richardson’s Addendum.

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Richardson states that he is including the material on the harem for the following
reason: “I shall now copy a few passages from two other visits to the ladies of the royal
family of Tunis, in order to present a proper idea of Tunisian female aristocracy to
the reader.”
43 Ibid., account of Mme. Berner.
44 Ibid., Lady Temple’s account, also inserted into Richardson’s Addendum, is apparently
verbatim.
45 Ibid., account of Miss Smith.
46 PRO/ FO 77/20, April 3, 1829.
47 The most work on wet-nursing in Muslim societies during the medieval periods has
been done by Avner Giladi, Breast-feeding in medieval Islamic Thought: A Preliminary
Study of Legal and Medical Writings (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1999) but we can not assume
that this applies to nineteenth-century Tunisia. Dino Cinel, “The seasonal emigrations
of Italians in the nineteenth century: From internal to international destinations,” in
Journal of Ethnic Studies, X, 1(Spring, 1982): 43–68, reports that Italian women from
Lucca engaged in seasonal migrations to Marseilles to work as wet-nurses in the 1850s.
See also Dalenda Larguèche, “Les femmes, le savoir-faire médical et la maîtrise du
corps dans la Tunisie traditionnelle,” in Histoire des femmes au Maghreb: Culture
matérielle et vie quotidienne, ed. Dalenda Larguèche (Tunis: Centre de Publication
Universitaire, 2000), 209–35.
48 Planel, “De la nation à la colonie,” Vol. 1: 81–3.
49 Chambre de Commerce et d’Industrie Marseille (hereafter CCM]: série MQ 52, carton
78, August 21, 1826.
50 ANT, H carton 224, dossier 403, 1856.
51 PRO/FO 77/25, Gibson to Reade, April 1834.
52 Archives Diplomatiques-Nantes (hereafter AD-N], Tunisie, premier versement, carton
406b, Gaspary to the consul general, October 24, 1820 and May 25, 1822.
53 AD-N, carton 409b, Gaspary, June 30, 1839; and carton 410b, Gaspary to de Lagau,
December 21, 1842.
54 PRO/FO 335/99/8, probate proceedings for Angelo Saliba, died Tunis July 5, 1850;
probate settled January 16, 1851.
55 The issue of widowhood among the expatriate Mediterranean population in North
Africa deserves further study; Muslim and Jewish societies strongly encouraged
remarriage as soon as possible. Important theoretical work on widows and widowhood
has been done by Kenda Mutongi, “ ‘Worries of the heart’: Widowed mothers, daughters
and masculinities in Maragoli, Western Kenya, 1940–60,” Journal of African History,
40(1999): 67–86.
56 Planel, “De la nation à la colonie,” Vol. 3: 585–6; 733–4; and AD-N, carton 413,
Cubisol to Botmiliau, August 25, 1872.
57 ANT, H carton 207, dossier 96, February 18, 1860.
58 AD-N, carton 413, Cubisol to Botmiliau, December 29, 1868.
59 AD-N, carton 413, “Notes des effets Réclamés,” Goletta, December 28, 1868.
60 AD-N, Carton 381, correspondence between the French consulate in Tunisia and
the Italian consulate, letter in Italian from the Italian consul-general to Botmiliau,
May 14, 1869.
61 AD-N, carton 382, correspondence between the French and British consulates in
Tunisia, July 14, 1869–November 2, 1869.
62 St Antony’s College, Oxford University, Richard Wood, Personal Papers, Box 1,
“Personal Correspondence, 1855–1898,” Letter WD269-271, written by Christina
Wood to her husband.
63 AD-N, carton 413, Cubisol to De Billing, September 24, 1874.
64 Al-Diyaf, Ithaf, Vol. 3/4: 267.

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 JULIA CLANCY-SMITH

65 Planel, “De la nation,” 1: 49 and Vol. 3: 751.

66 AD-Nantes, carton 406b, Gaspary, La Goulette, November 9, 1818.
67 On the plague, see al-Diyaf, Ithaf, Vol. 3/4: 3: 165, reign of Mahmud Bey
[1814–1824]; and Nancy Gallagher, Medicine and Power in Tunisia, 1780–1900
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 33–9.
68 CCM, MQ 52, carton 77, Fassy file, 1815–1827.
69 CCM, MQ 52, carton 77, letter from French consul, Tunis, to CCM, June 6, 1819.
70 CCM, MQ 52, carton 78, letter of April 13, 1828 from the head (deputé) of the French
trading community in Tunis to the Chambre de Commerce, Marseilles.
71 PRO/FO 77/21, 1830.
72 Quote from ANT, H carton 64, dossier 755, letter from French consul, Béclard, to the
Ahmad Bey, October 19, 1854, referring to the work of the Sisters of St Joseph, a
French Catholic missionary Order. On the Order in Tunisia, see Julia Clancy-Smith,
“Migrations, legal pluralism, and identities: Algerian ‘expatriates’ in pre-colonial
Tunisia,” in Identity, Memory and Nostalgia: France and Algeria, 1800–2000, ed.
Patricia Lorcin (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2006), 3–17 and Pierre Soumille,
“Les Activités et les oeuvres des congrégations religieuses catholiques en Tunisie à
l’Époque du protectorat français,” in La Tunisie mosaïque ed. Jacques Alexandropoulos
and Patrick Cabanel (Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 2000), 319–24.
73 AD-N, vice-consulate, La Goulette, carton 406b, 1815.
74 AD-N, vice-consulate, La Goulette, cartons 409b, 410a, 411a, which cover the period
1839–48.
75 CCM, MQ 52, carton 78: April 13, 1828.
76 ANT H, carton 206, dossier 88, French consul, Rousseau, to Ahmad Bey, September 1848.
77 Rachel Sturman, “Property and attachments: Defining autonomy and the claims of
family in nineteenth-century western India,” Comparative Studies in Society and
History, 47, 3(July 2005): 611–37.

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 10
FOREIGN WORKERS IN EGYPT
1882–1914
Subaltern or labour elite?

Anthony Gorman

In the hegemonic discourse of modern Egyptian historiography that rests on the

dichotomy of the Egyptian and the foreign, the worker has not been exempt.
Foreign workers have regularly been portrayed as separate from the Egyptian
worker on the basis of their legal, economic and political status and cast as a labour
elite whose presence was testimony to the penetration of international capitalism
and whose greater prosperity was due to the benefits of colonialism. This picture
needs substantial revision. Foreign workers in Egypt, however defined, were not a
homogeneous group in economic status, social class or political attitudes. While
they may have enjoyed a relatively privileged position according to various
‘objective’ criteria, the historical record indicates an internationalist trend among
workers that grew out of locally based anarchist elements and practical shop floor
politics that sought to defend the rights of both foreign and Egyptian workers
against the predations of capital and oppressive state authority. Through organi-
zation, industrial militancy and propagation of ideas, this voice of resistance
constructed a multiethnic, class self-identity that opposed affiliations based
on nationality and religion and emphasized an independent voice in dealing with
contemporary economic and social issues that presents an important case of
subaltern agency that counters the prevailing national–imperial polarity.
From the 1980s an increasing body of Western scholarship has been dedicated
to an analysis of the historical development of the working class in the Middle
East.1 Often building on earlier local studies,2 this literature has generally focused
on the economic and political aspects of the phenomenon. The emergence of a
local industrial proletariat was viewed as part of the process fostered by colonialism
of the economic incorporation of the region into the international capitalist
system or, alternatively, the role of the native workers and working class and its
contribution to the nationalist movement was emphasized.3 In this latter context,
the foreign worker, framed by the Manichean struggle between imperialism and
nationalism has at best occupied an ambiguous position in studies on the

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Egyptian labour movement. Although given some recognition for introducing

new models of labour organization and militant industrial tactics adopted by their
Egyptian counterparts, foreign workers have been regarded as beneficiaries of the
colonial order and subsequently casualties of its dismantlement. Any basis for
solidarity between foreign and Egyptian workers has been seen as undercut by the
different conditions under which the two groups worked, particularly differential
wage rates, the ethnic character of certain trades, distinct social standing and the
legal advantages available to those of foreign nationality. Thus, while recognizing
their common status as workers Goldberg went to some pains to distinguish
between these two working classes, characterizing foreign workers as some sort
of labour elite,4 a distinction suggestive of the concept of a labour aristocracy.5
Beinin and Lockman’s study which is principally concerned with the relationship
of organized Egyptian labour with the Egyptian national movement, took a more
ambivalent view towards foreign labour. While noting cases of cooperation
between foreign and Egyptian workers they regularly qualified these by reference
to differences that served as the basis of conflict between the two groups.6 Finally,
in analysing the foreign presence in Egypt, a large number of studies – not only
those on the labour movement – have suffered from a tendency to reduce all of its
manifestations to the economic and political project of colonialism. In this equa-
tion foreign workers are linked economically with comprador and international
capitalism and politically with imperialism. Foreign workers themselves are not
given a voice.
A more accurate understanding of the position of foreign workers in Egypt
requires consideration of the full range of the political, economic and social
circumstances and the reconstruction of their subjective reality and discursive
practice. Material for such a study is not lacking. In the period before 1914
individual workers and organizations in Egypt were responsible for a rich
periodical and pamphlet literature. The first avowed workers newspaper was the
short-lived il Lavoratore published by Italian internationalists in Alexandria in
February 1877. Four years later the Greek Labour Society in Alexandria began
issuing a monthly bulletin and an Italian language daily L’Operaio (‘The Worker’)
appeared in the same city in early 1889. With the new century a whole series of
labour and mainstream newspapers that expressed themselves sympathetic to the
interest of workers testified to the new importance of the working class. These
publications were not all of a kind. They ranged from the organs of workers’
organizations of a strong ethnic character with aims confined to the needs of the
membership to radical publications championing a fervent international anarcho-
syndicalism. Pamphlets written by labour activists discussed ideas and issues as
they affected the life of the working man. Despite this richness, there has been an
almost total neglect of these sources with most scholarship relying on official
sources (both Egyptian and foreign) and selective use of the Arabic language
press. The result has been considerable distortion of a complex issue.
This article will first problematize the basis of the distinction made between
the foreign and indigenous worker and then focus on the ideological aspects and

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practical manifestations of the broad internationalist–anarchist trend amidst

the competing ideological and social streams of thought within and outside the
emerging labour movement. It will examine the rise of new militant labour organ-
izations, the development of industrial tactics and the articulation of strategies of
resistance based on cooperation and collaboration between foreign and Egyptian
workers. Drawing on a range of neglected sources and a rereading of other
materials ‘against the grain’ it will seek to reconstruct the voice of a group that
was subaltern in relation to both foreign residents and the Egyptian elites. Not
always ideologically coherent but often effective in practice, the internationalist
current sought to articulate an idiom of solidarity between all workers that placed
it in conflict politically with nationalist and colonial elites and economically with
the emerging capitalist system.

Definitional difficulties
Before discussing their position in Egypt it is first necessary to define the term
‘foreign workers’. It has been standard practice in the literature to assume if not
openly assert that the foreign working class by definition held foreign, usually
European, nationality and that they were thus protected under the Capitulations
and not subject to Egyptian law. It is certainly true that some foreigners, among
them Italians, Russians, Montenegrins, Serbians, Maltese and Cypriots (the last
not formally until 1914) enjoyed this status. Further, as the territory of the new
Greek state expanded during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, increasing
numbers of Greeks, probably the largest group in the foreign working class,
benefited from the same protection. However, this was not true of all Greeks. In
the 1917 census, slightly more than a quarter of those listed as of ‘Greek race’
were local subjects or held Ottoman nationality and therefore not protected under
the Capitulations (the percentage is likely to be even higher in the 1907 census).
In addition, Armenians and Syrians, also Ottoman or Egyptian subjects, had no
privileged legal status. Moreover, while foreign nationality afforded the holder
certain privileges these were dependent on the willingness of the relevant consulate
to provide them. In the context of labour struggles and radical political activities
the evidence suggests that the legal rights of foreign nationals were at times
ignored by the authorities when it stood in the way of other political priorities.
A less legalistic definition of the foreign worker that uses ethnicity, or ‘race’
(to use the official term from the Egyptian census), namely those that were not
‘ethnically Egyptian’, also presents difficulties. Egypt was historically an ethnically
pluralist society and the concept of Egyptian ethnicity belies the diversity within
its population, not just the presence of Muslims, Copts and Jews (since these
religious affiliations had ethnic undertones) but also Bedouin, Nubian and
Sudanese. Beyond Egypt, Greeks, Armenians and Syrians were long established
peoples of the Ottoman Empire. Ethnicity was an important part of social identity
but, however constructed, it did not equate to foreignness or nationality. Of those
listed as holding Italian nationality in the 1917 census just under 20 per cent were

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 ANTHONY GORMAN

not ethnically Italian and over 6 per cent were Egyptian. Finally, in discussing
foreign workers in Egypt, some have drawn attention to the temporary nature of
their employment with the implication that foreign workers were little concerned
with matters beyond short-term economic gain.7 In the context of the labour
movement this seems misplaced since many foreign workers played a strong and
determined part in labour struggles. Moreover, the case of the itinerant foreign
worker, a genuine phenomenon, should be tempered with the many examples of
foreign families that were born and resident in Egypt sometimes for generations.
In addition to these ‘objective’ markers, the employment culture and the structure
of the labour force have been invoked as the basis for differences between the
foreign and Egyptian worker. Thus it is argued that there was a marked tendency
to ethnic divisions amongst workers across a whole range of trades.8 Thus Lord
Cromer’s 1905 Report on Egypt notes, ‘Boot-mending, as well as boot-making,
is almost entirely in the hands of Greeks and Armenians. The drapery trade is
controlled by Jews, Syrians and Europeans, the tailoring trade by Jews.’9 There
may be some force to these generalizations but the ethnic character of various
trades depended on a range of matters and we should not accept them uncritically.
Even in traditional occupations the record is not at all unequivocal. Cromer
notwithstanding, the shoemakers at the beginning of the twentieth century seem
to be ethnically a very mixed group. In dealing with the occupations of the new
industrial class, such as cigarette makers, we should be even more circumspect.
Further, the well-attested phenomenon of a wage differential between European
and foreign workers, also claimed to be a serious point of differentiation between
the two groups, clearly did not per se exclude collaboration. Indeed, the phenom-
enon of the international unions suggests we need to examine more closely the
record of the interethnic relations within the working class rather than rely on
generalized statements.
The fuzziness of the definition of foreign worker is not to deny that there were
differences between foreign and Egyptian workers. Accordingly, I will employ the
term ‘foreign worker’ in a pragmatic way to refer to the diverse mix of
Armenians, Greeks, Levantines, Italians, Maltese and various other European
workers as opposed to the Arabophone Egyptian workers. However, we should be
careful in ascribing characteristics and drawing conclusions about these two
groups in a general way. There were ethnic Greeks who held Egyptian national-
ity; ethnic Egyptians who held Italian citizenship and Egyptian subjects that were
Muslim, Christian and Jewish. Indeed, the heterogeneous nature of the working
class in Egypt suggests that one would expect a vigorous debate regarding the
social, cultural and political identity of foreign workers that revolved around
issues of nationality, ethnicity, religion and class.

Historical background
With the coming to power of Muhammad ‘Ali at the beginning of the nineteenth-
century Egypt began a process of significant economic, technological and social

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transformation. An extensive program of reform of military organization, education,

industry and the system of land tenure maintained under his successors sought
to consolidate the institutions and economic stability of an emerging modern
Egyptian state. During the reign of Isma‘il, this ambitious program of modern-
ization resulted in mounting indebtedness which facilitated increasing economic
control of the country by a diverse array of French, Belgian, British and other
commercial interests. In 1882 this encroachment culminated in the occupation
of the country by the British who consolidated their control of Egypt while its
inexorable incorporation into the international economy continued. However,
the foreign presence in Egypt was not confined to the colonial administration
and the activities of the haute bourgeoisie but included increasing numbers of
workers coming to the country, among them the Italian, Greek and Dalmatian
workers that had arrived to assist Egyptian and Syrian labourers in the construc-
tion of the Suez Canal in the 1860s.10 After 1882 these foreign workers would
come to play a key role in the development of working-class organizations,
political radicalism and a militant labour movement.
The growing numbers and sophistication of the foreign working class during
the second half of the nineteenth century was evident in the formation of the first
modern workers’ associations. As early as 1862 a group of Italian workers had set
up the Italian Workers Society (Società Operaia Italiana). Other organizations
followed: the Brotherhood of Workers (I Adelphotis ton Ergaton) formed by
Greek workers from Corfu in 1872, the Greek Labour Society (I Elliniki Ergatiki
Etairia) established in 1881 and Italian craftsmen who set up the Italian Artisans
Brotherhood (Fratellanza Artigiana Italiana) in 1883, all of them in Alexandria.
The aims of these bodies were initially quite limited, being primarily dedicated
to the welfare of their members and providing of a forum for social activities. In
this way they shared some functions with the guilds, the craft associations that
were part of the traditional Ottoman order. However, their establishment testifies
to a growing awareness of the changing conditions under which workers operated
and the need for more activist organizations.11

The anarchist movement

The main ideological force behind the new labour militancy that would emerge in
Egypt by the end of the nineteenth century was an internationalist anarchist
current.12 Anarchism, internationalism or anti-authoritarian socialism,13 had first
developed in Egypt among radical circles of the local Italian community early in
the second half of the nineteenth century. Two visits by Amilcare Cipriani to
Alexandria during the 1860s testify to an already nascent internationalist group.14
In 1871 the Paris Commune uprising energized radical politics in Europe and
beyond. In Egypt these revolutionary currents began to find fertile ground
amongst some Italian workers of the Italian Workers Society. In the 1870s this
offshoot evolved into a more radical political organization, Pensiero ed Azione
(‘Thought and Action’), a republican group with a Mazzinian charter that attracted

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veterans from the campaigns of Garibaldi and other elements.15 In April 1876
radical dissidents from Pensiero ed Azione were joined by Italian refugees
fleeing political repression to form an official section of the International in
Alexandria.16 By early the following year, additional sections (including a
separate women’s section) were established in Cairo, Port Said, with a smaller
cell operating in Ismailia.17
Strongly influenced by Bakunin’s thought, anarchists in Egypt opposed institu-
tional hierarchies as being inherently authoritarian and regarded the state,
capitalism, religion and private property as instruments of repression and the
root of exploitation. Accordingly they sought their abolition and the emancipation
of the individual, and particularly of working men and women, through education.
Within the anarchist movement, there were differing views on the role of labour
organizations. Anarcho-individualists or libertarians saw even these as hierarchi-
cal structures and favoured spontaneous, collective action. Anarcho-syndicalists,
on the other hand, believed that organized labour was a necessary instrument for
the liberation of the working class. The tension and often struggle between these
two wings of anarchism would hamper the effectiveness of the movement. In
Egypt the individualists were the dominant current until the end of the nineteenth
century when anarcho-syndicalism became increasingly influential, in part
because of the changing nature of the working class. In its earliest phase the
majority of anarchists were skilled artisans, though some were professional
people or owned small, commercial businesses. By the beginning of the twentieth
century the increasing numbers of the new industrial proletariat of skilled factory
workers and those employed in large utilities meant there was a greater importance
given to maximizing the influence of large workforces.

International unions
The international or mixed union (Arabic niqaba mukhtalifa; Greek diethnis
enosis) was the natural vehicle for anarcho-syndicalists and the clearest and most
concrete expression of common organization between foreign and Egyptian
workers. Made up of members regardless of nationality, these unions became
prominent at the beginning of the twentieth century when they were formed by
cigarette workers, tobacco workers, bakers, tailors, shoemakers, shop workers
and printers. Some of these unions adopted evocative names that reflected their
progressive character and quasi-spiritual aspirations such as Concord (tailors),
Progress (tobacco workers) and Reform (shoemakers).18 While usually made up
of a single trade or occupation, international unions could bring together workers
on a broader basis. The International Union of Workers and Employees was
formed in Cairo in 1909 with the aim of championing the interests of workers
against exploitation by capital. At a meeting attended by more than 2,000 people
at which its constitution was approved, speakers addressed the audience in Arabic,
French, Greek, Italian and German on the advantages of common action of
workers and international solidarity.19 Among proposals accepted was the

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establishment of a mutual aid treasury, the foundation of clubs and commercial

establishments for common use and the acceptance of the bosses as members of
the association.
International unions, like earlier labour organizations, were able to provide
assistance for members, including medical treatment, provision of medicines and
financial support with funeral expenses. In addition, they were a vehicle for artic-
ulating the demands and maximizing the influence of workers in negotiating their
conditions of work. Their principal and most potent weapon was the strike but
workers might also employ other tactics during an industrial dispute, such as
sabotage as occurred during the tram strike of 1908 and boycotting. The campaign
conducted by the cigarette union to insist on the accurate labelling of machine-made
cigarettes signified an awareness of the discretionary power of the consumer.20 In
industrial disputes, the special nature of the Egyptian situation meant that workers
were able to appeal to a number of authorities, not only the Egyptian government
and the British representative (Lord Cromer for much of this period), but also the
governments of Greece and Italy, whose nationals were prominent in the workforce.
This strategy need not be regarded as simply an expression of national allegiance
but part of the practical pursuit of advantage. The deportation of ringleaders, such
as occurred with cigarette workers in January 1902, and the use of divisive tactics
by consuls can have put workers under few illusions about the political priorities
of their national representatives.
These international unions should be seen as spheres of anarchist influence
rather than their creatures. More dedicated anarchist elements within some of
these international unions set up resistance leagues (leghe di resistenza) that then
joined to form a broader federation of similar bodies. In Alexandria individual
resistance leagues were organized in 1902 among the printers, tailors and cigarette
rollers who shared a common seat.21 In Cairo an International Resistance Federation
was established in 1909 by a number of organizations – the Printers Union, the
Workers and Employees Association, the Atheists’ Circle, the Circle of Free
Thinkers and the Association of Cigarette Makers.22 This provided a centre for
meetings, a forum for the discussion of anarcho-syndicalist ideas and the
planning of industrial strategy.

Union leadership
The president or spokesman of many of these international unions was often a
Greek doctor, presumably chosen as an educated and respectable figure who could
articulate the demands of the workers and negotiate for them with employers during
disputes.23 Some of these men, however, were of genuinely progressive, if not
radical, views who could take an enthusiastic and proactive role during strike
action. In Alexandria, Dr Polis Modinos, for example, was accused of displaying
‘an intensity or ardour in his excessive advocacy of a strike’.24 However, it is
the leadership on the factory floor that provides a more interesting insight into the
character of the international unions. Workers themselves, these leaders were

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drawn from Jewish and Greek anarchist elements involved not only in labour
activism but also in other radical forms of association.25 Perhaps one of the best-
known militants in Cairo was Solomon Goldenburg (sometimes Goldemburg).26
A cigarette worker, Goldenburg first appears in the historical record during the
cigarette workers’ strike in Cairo in December 1899. From then until the First
World War he was a prominent labour activist playing a particularly important
role in the revitalization of the cigarette workers union in 1908. Goldenburg
was also a central figure within anarchist circles. In 1901 he served on the
provisional committee of the Free Popular University in Cairo and played a
prominent part at meetings of the International Federation of Resistance and the
International Association of Cooperation for the Improvement of the Working
Classes (l’Association internationale de coopération pour l’amélioration des
classes ouvrières) (henceforth IAC) in 1909. Another prominent Jewish labour
leader and cigarette worker was Samuele Freundlich. One of the ringleaders of
the December 1903 strike, Freundlich was blackballed by the main cigarette
manufacturers following their victory in the dispute and had great difficulty in
finding work afterwards. Like Goldenburg he was a committed anarchist, taking
part in the attempt to set up the Free Popular University in Cairo and continuing
to be active in anarchist circles until 1914. It is unknown whether Goldenberg and
Freundlich were born in Egypt or had migrated there but they were both Egyptian
subjects which suggests, given the German origin of their family names, a
conscious identification with their country of residence.
The considerable Greek presence in the labour movement was also well repre-
sented in the ranks of union leadership. One notable figure was a woodturner,
Panos Macheras (or Yiannopoulos), who had been involved in anarcho-syndicalist
activities on Pyrgos during the 1890s where he had been associated with an
anarchist paper. Following government repression Macheras fled to Egypt where
he arrived in April 1901 and quickly joined a small group of Greek anarchists in
Cairo. A member of the provisional committee of the Free Popular University in
1901, Macheras remained active in anarchist and labour circles until his departure
for America in April 1903. Another Greek, Nicolas Doumas, played a more lasting
role on the labour scene.27 A shoemaker by trade, Doumas first appeared in Egypt
during the cigarette workers’ strike of December 1903 when he addressed a
meeting held in solidarity with the striking workers. Over the next decade he was
a prominent participant in labour and anarchist circles in Cairo speaking at many
meetings including those called to set up an International Reading Room (1907),
the International Federation of Resistance, the IAC and the Atheists’ Club. In
1908 he managed the anarchist newspaper, O Ergatis (‘The Worker’), which
described itself as an organ for the ‘emancipation of women and the worker’, and
also wrote pamphlets on workers and capitalism. Under pressure from authorities
he was forced to leave Egypt for Greece in November 1912 where in the following
year he founded the Shoemakers’ Union in Athens and later became a member of
the central committee of the Greek Socialist Party.

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The prominence of Jews, Greeks and, to a lesser extent, Italians in the leadership
of international unions probably reflects the greater industrial experience and
level of education of these workers. Nevertheless, some Egyptians were also
involved, such as Muhammad Sidqi, a leader in the cigarette strike of 1899,
though generally native names are difficult to come by in the record. In part, the
nature of the sources may explain this absence. Egyptian workers were clearly an
important element in the formation of international unions. In 1901 the inaugural
meeting of the International Mutual Aid Association of Shoemakers elected a
committee of fourteen councillors made up of five Greeks, five Egyptians,
two Syrians, one Italian and one Armenian, ratios that presumably reflected the
composition of the union.28 Ministry of Interior documents of this time also
mention the attendance of Egyptian workers at anarcho-syndicalist meetings on a
number of occasions without identifying them.29 Nevertheless, it seems likely
that foreign workers were represented in greater proportion to their numbers than
Egyptian workers amongst the ranks of the leadership of these associations.30

Cigarette workers and the international union

The cigarette rollers, it has often been noted, were one of the most significant
groups of the new industrial working class and key players in the development of
the labour movement in Egypt. Cigarettes had been a growing industry during
the second half of the nineteenth century and had begun to expand particularly
after 1882 with correspondingly increased employment opportunities. The first
cigarette workers’ association appears to have been formed by exclusively Greek
cigarette rollers in Cairo in 1894 in the course of an early strike. A similar
organization, the Greek Association of Cigarette Makers (Ellinikos Sindesmos ton
Sigaropion) was established in Alexandria two years later.31
The dispute of 1894 which had resulted in an agreement between the cigarette
makers and employers was the prelude to the larger, more significant strike of
1899 regarded by many scholars as the beginning of the modern labour movement
in Egypt.32 Prior to the calling of the strike the cigarette makers’ association, now
calling itself I Enosis (The Union), had begun accepting as members all cigarette
rollers, irrespective of nationality. In practical terms the membership may have
remained predominantly Greek but its expansion showed that Greek workers rec-
ognized their common interest with other workers and that a more inclusive union
would be a more effective force in bargaining with the employers. The change was
also reflected in the leadership. While the president of the Union, Dr Elias
Apostolou Kyriazis, and much of the leadership was Greek, there were also
Jewish and Egyptian elements involved in organising the strike action.33
The 1899 strike, which began in December and involved some 1,600 workers,
had its origin in concrete grievances. Workers complained that the agreement of
1894 regarding the classification and pay rates of rollers had not been honoured
by the manufacturers, that arrangements regarding the assessment of rolling

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were unsatisfactory, and that the company was making excessive profits from
sales of coffee, cognac and mastic in the company buffet.34 However, the dispute
revolved as much around the character of the new union. The workers argued that
it was a benevolent society and demanded the right of collective bargaining and
action. The manufacturers held the Union to be of ‘a revolutionary nature’ and its
delegates to be a kind of ‘comité de surveillance’, a view which given the
anarchist elements in the workers’ leadership had some foundation. Further, they
insisted that any complaints from workmen should be forwarded individually to
the Manufacturers Federation, the group of employers that had been established
in 1894.35
In the ensuing weeks, both parties manoeuvred and developed tactics that
would become stock in trade over the following decade. Led by Nestor Gianaclis,
the manufacturers sought to exploit divisions amongst the workers by offering to
take back workers who agreed not to smoke in the workroom. A number who
accepted this offer reported for work though most were persuaded by picketers
to withdraw. In January employers instituted a lockout then sought to break the
strikers by importing labour. A report that twenty Egyptian workers were hidden
at the Vafiadis factory provoked a picket there while workers brought in from
Port Said by Kyriazi Brothers were unable to cross the picket lines. Rumours
circulated that a 1,000 German women were being imported to replace those on
strike.36 Meanwhile, the union was seeking to shore up the strike financially by
arranging for a loan of 600 pounds to serve as the basis for a support fund to assist
less well-off workers, setting up a lottery and planning a public meeting to solicit
additional support. The industrial action dragged into February until, after one
draft agreement was repudiated by the workers, an understanding granting wage
increases and recognizing the standing of the new association was reached
and signed on 22 February with copies forwarded to the Egyptian, Italian and
Greek governments.37
The cigarette workers’ strike of 1899–1900 was seen as a great victory for
collective action and proof of the advantages of a workers’ organization in
their struggle against predatory factory owners. The Union was now set up on a
sound financial basis bringing in a monthly income of almost LE10 which
allowed the maintenance of an office, the provision of medical expenses and
other forms of assistance for members in addition to a healthy surplus.38 Along
with the tailors’ union, which had also conducted a successful strike at the
same time, the cigarette workers union became an inspiration and model for
other international workers’ associations. Vasilios Kalliarekos extolled them at
a shoemakers’ meeting:

The cigarette makers are the first in Egypt to have shaken off the yoke of
slavery and having achieved freedom are happy already in the organiza-
tion; we should consider ourselves fortunate because in our time they
found the love of one other as a basis for the happiness of the members
of each profession.39

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The 1899 strike had been settled relatively peacefully with little need for interference
from the police. Events in Cairo at the end of 1901 took on a different character
and witnessed perhaps the first sustained violent clashes between striking workmen
and authorities that set a pattern of confrontation over the succeeding years. The
dispute began when about 150 workers at Soussa, a new factory and unregistered
with the union, went on strike. The action spread to other factories and the Union
was soon drawn in. Over the next month street battles raged between strikers,
characterized by the authorities as ‘aggressors attacking the liberty of work of
their comrades and the security of commerce’, and the police armed with canes
and fire hoses for control of the streets.40 K. Asterides, editor of Ergasia and
labour correspondent for the Greek language Tilegraphos in Alexandria, wrote
vivid reports of the clashes, at one point receiving an eye injury from a police
cane for his trouble. The general consul of Norway and Sweden was also injured
in a fracas. Cafés were raided. Reports circulated that the strike was spreading to
Alexandria. Certainly the confrontations made clear the need for organization
amongst other workers. On 15 December, a meeting was called at the Café Shisha
attended by about 500 workers with the aim of establishing an International
Union of Tobacco Workers, that is, the less-skilled cigarette workers.41
The strike continued into the new year when Gryparis, the Greek diplomatic
agent, stepped in and authorized the deportation of four Greek workers. The
action raised widespread protest in the Greek community not only because of the
dangerous precedent it set for dealing with labour disputes but because, since at
least one of the deportees held Ottoman nationality, the action was strictly illegal.
A protest meeting was organized by anarchists in Cairo at which Greeks, Italians,
a French journalist and an Ottoman Jew spoke on the workers’ right to strike.42
The deportees were subsequently allowed back into Egypt after having signed an
undertaking that they would give the authorities no further cause for complaint
but the strike had been broken. The defeat seems to have precipitated something
of a crisis within the union with the press reporting considerable internal turmoil
amongst members in the summer of 1902.43
If the strike of 1899 had been a victory for the workers and that of 1901 had
seen the employers successfully fight back with the backing of the police, the
strike in Cairo at the end of 1903 was a more cataclysmic struggle. Again the
dispute began in December when cigarette workers called a strike in response to
a lowering of rates by a number of the leading manufacturers. Initially opposing
the action declaring it had no funds to support the workers, the union pledged its
support when Apostolou resumed the presidency. Over the next two months a
protracted and often violent struggle ensued between workers and employers in
which both local and foreign authorities were involved. One of the demands of the
workers, that a contract between the employers and the international association
should be drafted and deposited in the Office of the Mixed Court, sought to
consolidate the standing of the union. Though the government claimed to be
taking a neutral position, police played a critical role guarding the cigarette
factories and escorting those not observing the strike to work.

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 ANTHONY GORMAN

Despite some cracks in a united front of cigarette workers, the strike witnessed
displays of solidarity from other workers. Following an initiative of the shoemakers’
and tailors’ international unions, a meeting attended by 1,500 people was held at
the Birreria dell’Albero in support of the strikers. Speaking first in Greek,
Nicolas Doumas exhorted cigarette workers to put aside peaceful means and,
given the contemptuous behaviour of the authorities, respond with violent action.
His comments were reinforced by Ugo Parrini, the leading Italian anarchist in
Cairo, and an Arab cigarette worker ‘who did not speak as an anarchist but spoke
with energy in his expression’. Doumas concluded with a rallying call to a
demonstration which was broken up by the police on foot and horse.44
While the tactic was not new,45 the struggle of 1903 witnessed a determined
and ultimately successful attempt on the part of the factory owners to exploit
ethnic differences between workers and split their united front.46 They did this in
two ways. First, they brought in unskilled, cheaper Egyptian and Syrian workers
to act as strike breakers and second, they wooed certain Greek workers, some of
them veterans of the 1899 strike, to set up a Union of Greek Workers as a rival to
the International Union. In pursuing this latter tactic they propagated a crude
nationalist line, stating effectively that ‘all Greek workers who stayed faithful to the
strike would be considered as not belonging to the Greek nation because Greeks . . .
were members of the Greek Association only.’47 By February 1904 after continued
pressure, the strike collapsed. The Union was broken and those workers that
returned to work did so on the employers’ terms. Some years of weakness
followed this crushing defeat, due not only to the lack of unity and organization
amongst the workers but also the deleterious effects of the introduction of
cigarette machines into Egypt.
It was not until 1908 that the fortunes of cigarette workers revived. In August
of that year the International Union of the Workers of the Matossian Factory was
founded followed two months later by the International Union of Cigarette
Workers (Ligue Internationale des Ouvriers Cigarettiers et Papetiers du Caire).
Announcements in the press appeared asking prospective members to enrol at a
number of Greek cafés in different areas of Cairo. As in 1899, the union was open
to all nationalities but unlike the union of the 1899 strike, these two international
unions were open to all tobacco workers. This was particularly important as
developments in the industry had seen an increasing specialization in the skills of
cigarette workers, probably in part the result of the employers’ attempt to weaken
the importance of individual workers, so that now gluers, cigarette makers,
blenders, rollers, cutters and others were part of the manufacturing process.
Greeks were still prominent among these workers, though less so than in earlier
years,48 and there was again a significant Jewish presence within the leadership.49
With the union at Matossian and the International Union, cigarette workers now
represented a united front of about 1,700 workmen.50
Employers had successfully played the ethnic card in 1903, dividing and
co-opting cigarette workers to break the International Union, but more than five
years later the coincidence of two meetings called on the same day presented a

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different picture. On Sunday 21 March 1909, a combined meeting of the

International Union of Cigarette Workers and the Matossian Union was convened
in Cairo, and another in Alexandria was scheduled by the Greek Association
of Cigarette Workers, which was closely associated with the official Greek
Community. At the Egyptian Theatre in Cairo, between 1,000 and 1,500 workers
(reports vary) gathered to discuss the question of the introduction of cigarette
machines. The issue was debated by a number of speakers and a committee of
fourteen was set up to study the problem in detail. In Alexandria, the general
assembly of the Greek Association failed for lack of a quorum.51 Since the
establishment of the first Greek cigarette rollers association in Cairo fifteen years
before, cigarette workers had come to realize that their greatest strength lay in
organization and collective action that included members of all nationalities and
from all sections of the cigarette manufacturing process.52 By the end of the first
decade of the twentieth century the international union had become the leading
association among cigarette workers in Cairo. Although the livelihood of cigarette
worker would be drastically affected in the years after 1918 by the widespread use
of cigarette machines, the recognition of common interest amongst foreign and
Egyptian workers before 1914 is indicative of the internationalist perspective
amongst the working class at this time.

The labour press

It was not only in their syndicalist activities that the agency of internationalists
was manifest. Mainstream newspapers had begun to reflect increasing concern
with workers issues from the 1870s but the emerging labour and anarchist press
provided a direct, public voice of workers, by workers and for workers. While
there had been short-lived efforts before 1900, the bilingual (Italian/French)
La Tribuna Libera-Le Tribune Libre published in Alexandria and whose chief
editor was Joseph Rosenthal represents the first ongoing anarchist newspaper.53
A declared organ for the emancipation of the proletariat La Tribuna Libera
presented discussions of anarchist principles and provided reports on the local
and international workers’ movement. Stressing their credentials as workers, its
editors pledged themselves to the ‘complete emancipation of moral–political–
economic and social slavery’ of the workers of the world.54 Although the paper
folded by the end of 1901 because of financial difficulties and the lack of support
from Italian (though not Jewish and Greek) anarchists in Cairo, its role was taken
up in the middle of 1902 by a more avowedly workers’ newspaper. L’Operaio, was
an Italian language Alexandrian weekly which appeared over a period of nine
months, reporting on international developments in the labour movement as well
as addressing local issues affecting both foreign and Egyptian workers. It gave
considerable coverage to the cabdrivers’ strike of 1903 which it hailed as ‘a great
act of rebellion’ on the part of Egyptian workers.55 It also prided itself on being
a forum for the contribution of workers themselves. Anarcho-syndicalist news-
papers, mostly in Italian but also in French and Greek, continued to appear right

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up until 1914, perhaps reaching their most inclusive and mature form with
L’Unione, a weekly published in both Cairo and Alexandria in 1913–1914.
Although this press regularly referred to the interests and concerns of the
Egyptian worker, it does not seem to have carried Arabic language material and
therefore could not speak directly even to the literate Egyptian worker.56
Nevertheless, the mainstream Arabic language newspapers and periodicals did
feature regular items on anarchist thought, the development of anarchism in
Europe and reports on the local industrial scene so that such information and
ideas were being circulated amongst a wider public. In addition, an active
pamphlet literature, mostly in Greek, addressed workers’ issues and demonstrated
a sustained commitment to publication. Asterides had published an important
pamphlet in 1900 titled Capital – Work or Property – Money that dealt with the
situation of labour in Egypt in the aftermath of the cigarette strike of 1899.57 In a
series of dialogues published by the Labour Library (Ethniki Vivliothiki) in 1910
and 1911, Doumas discussed the relationship between the capitalist system and
the workers whom he characterized as ‘the tortured’.58 Under the Mask a radical
pamphlet written by another worker, Stavros Kouchtsoglou, appeared soon after
under the imprint of the Anarchist Club and criticized private property and the
exploitation of the workers.59

The Free Popular University

A central plank of the anarchist program was that the emancipation of the
individual lay with the education of the masses. One of the most ambitious
expressions of this strategy was the establishment of the Free Popular University
(Università Popolare Libera) (henceforth UPL) which opened its doors in Alexandria
at the end of May 1901.60 Some months in the planning, the UPL was organized
by a small group of anarchists inspired by institutions of the same name estab-
lished in Italy. In Egypt, however, it took on its own particular character that
reflected its libertarian and internationalist origins. Its constitution committed the
UPL to being an independent institution free from any ‘interference, competition
or patronage of any authority’. Characterized by ‘fraternity and mutual tolerance’
it was open to all with no restrictions on nationality, language, religion, gender, or
political, literary or scientific opinions. This staunchly secularist, internationalist
and anti-authoritarian position contrasted with the majority of educational insti-
tutions in Egypt that were under the formal control of the Egyptian government,
foreign states, community bodies or religious authorities.
The UPL was open to all but its principal target audience was the popular classes.
It sought to provide working men and women with an opportunity to become
familiar with literature and the new scientific ideas by holding free classes in the
evenings six times a week when workers could attend. Most of the classes were
delivered in Italian or French language but, at least during the first year, regular
classes on language and literature were also given in Arabic. As well as a wide range
of courses on science, arts and literature, the UPL offered subjects relevant to the

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work situation and the specific needs of workers. Lectures were given on topics
such as ‘Workmen’s Organizations in Modern Law’, ‘Hygiene at Work’ and ‘Strikes
and the Labour Movement’. Here, too, the Egyptian worker was not neglected with
‘Abduh Badran, editor of al-Sabah, speaking in Arabic on ‘The Worker’.
Initially the UPL attracted support from a wide range of liberals and progressives
from across the full spectrum of ethnic and religious communities, and a significant
section of the European and Arabic language press. However, it failed to fulfil the
expectations of its founders. Soon after its opening the UPL became embroiled in
a scandal about remarks made by a lecturer, Curti-Garzoni, regarded as supporting
the assassination of King Umberto of Italy. He and another anarchist were subse-
quently prosecuted by the Italian consular court and the UPL was publicly branded
a subversive institution. In the following months, the anarchist element on the
governing committee was increasingly marginalized and more respectable sober
members of the local bourgeoisie took control changing the tone and direction of
the institution. A similar enterprise to establish a UPL in Cairo was even less
successful. A provisional founding committee was set up around an anarchist
nucleus in coalition with a number of liberals but this time the opposition, which
again included the Italian authorities and, it was alleged, a member of the royal
family, was more organized and a campaign against the UPL forced the
abandonment of the project.
Following this reverse, anarchist groups preferred a series of more modest
study and discussion groups as a forum for the dissemination of radical secularist
and libertarian ideas. In Cairo an International Reading Room (Sala di Lettura
Internazionale) was established which made collections of radical literature,
periodicals and newspapers available to readers in June 1902. Other similar,
ventures were pursued both in Alexandria and Cairo throughout the decade.61 In
the summer of 1907, a series of meetings convened in Cairo by a group calling
itself Gli Operai (‘The Workers’) was attended by Greek, Italian, Jewish and
Egyptian workers. Its program called for the establishment of an International
Reading Room where scientific, philosophical, political and social publications
would be collected in every language and made available to readers. A commit-
tee of Greek, Jewish and native workers was formed and a course of instructive
lectures for workers was planned.62

An internationalist discourse
The diverse pattern of industrial militancy, press activity and educational endeavours
give us a good idea of the values and discursive practice of the internationalist
labour movement. These centred around a number of interrelated themes:
solidarity among all workers and the need to unite and organize, brotherly love,
defence of the rights of workers, the predatory nature of the capitalist, the freedom
and independence of the worker, and resistance to political authority.
Above all, the resounding call to workers was to unite as the most effective
way to defend their rights and livelihood. Following the cigarette workers’

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victory of February 1900, a pamphleteer called for a grander unity among

cigarette workers.

See to the amalgamation of the remaining cigarette workers, if possible

from Alexandria to Sudan, for the empowerment of the organization,
bearing in mind that if the contract be modified, if the factory owners
should yield their neck to your demands, if and if, all these ifs, are due
to your strength in the International Union and the existence of the
organization.63

In the pages of the labour newspaper Ergasia, Asterides further extolled the
importance of organization and unity as the basis for ‘happiness’ and the pros-
perity of workers.64 For Vasilios Kalliarekos professional love was at the centre of
workers’ organization,

The aim of the organization of the working classes, indeed formerly and
today is as sacred as it is great, and a means to the attainment of the ‘Love
of the Members of each profession’. Through Love we will be able to
successfully confront the misfortune with which Capital oppresses us.65

‘Gli Operai’ called for the creation of ‘harmony and goodness for the working
class’ but went further, ‘We want all workers and all friends to come and work
with us for the freedom of labour . . . We want the worker to know his rights.
We want to lift bad and brutish ideas from the worker. We want the worker to be
free.’66 This emphasis on the rights of the worker was not only common to the
educational efforts of anarchists at the UPL but was employed during industrial
disputes when workers’ rights and ‘just demands’ were regularly invoked.67
During a strike at the Matossian cigarette factory which had been prompted by
the dismissal of eight workers, a journalist from a Greek newspaper interviewed
a Greek worker, asking in perhaps a suggestively narrow communal tone how
many Greeks had been dismissed. The worker replied that only one had been but
that ‘we have to uphold their rights.’68
The evil nature of capitalism features as a consistent theme in this literature.
While Kalliarekos waxed over the virtues of brotherly love he also spoke of
‘the war of labour against capital’.69 Asteridis likened the employers to savage
animals, ‘Wild beasts are tamed, gentlemen, but the factory owners will never
be tamed . . . only power originating from the organisation can tame the factory
owners . . . ’.70 In the pages of Phos, employers were accused of being ‘the best
apostles of anarchy and socialism through their . . . improper behaviour towards
their workers’ because they used the ‘law of hunger’ to cow the workers in a way
that ‘stands wholly contrary to the laws of the great and all-powerful Lawmaker
of Nature’. The paper predicted that the aggressive and inhuman tactics of the
employers would lead to the development of a labour movement that would defend
the rights of labour as it had done in Europe. It noted with some assurance,

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‘Happily in Cairo some years ago a movement of fraternisation of the working

classes began to be observed and after not many years the city of the Caliphs will
be one of the first socialist centres on account of its international character.’71
The founding principles of the UPL had stressed the importance of independence
from other forms of political, economic and religious authority. Attempts to set
up a united labour federation and a work exchange were part of this strategy to
establish a relative economic autonomy. In the brutal confrontations between
strikers and the representatives of the state, particularly the police, the anarchist
view of the state as a repressive institution seem to be confirmed. This need to
resist authority was regularly raised at workers’ meetings, no more so than in
December 1903, where a violent response was urged to counter the violence
employed by the authorities.72 Confrontation with political authority remained a
favoured theme. In January 1911 at a meeting of cigarette workers Carlo Affé
sought to rouse the audience: ‘Cigarette workers, do not fear the police, authority,
governments or the king. When you fight for your rights, if the police react, you
also should react.’73
In the pages of L’Unione, the critical importance of the common struggle of all
workers regardless of religion, ethnicity or nationality in the struggle against
capital reached its clearest expression with the editors stressing the common
interest, common enemy and common welfare of all workers. Divisions, particu-
larly between European and Egyptian workers, could only benefit the capitalist.

Let us not forget that . . . capital is our common enemy, both of the
European worker and the native worker. Neglected by us the native
element can become an unconscious collaborator of the capitalist, an
obstacle that would break our efforts, rendering futile our future struggles.
Labour has no frontiers or language. Therefore we make no issue of
nationality, of religion, of race. All feel the same needs, all suffer the same
grief; all have one sole aspiration: their own well-being, which cannot be
other than the result of the common well-being.74

These sentiments recognized the challenge not only from capitalism but from
other political forces that were seeking to attract the loyalty and support of the
working class. The two main rivals were Egyptian nationalists who attempted
to rally Egyptian workers to their cause and the bourgeois leadership of local
ethnic-national communities who aimed to keep ‘their’ working class within the
bosom of the community. (The British and their local allies also had a more
diffuse interest in keeping the European and Egyptian workers separate.) In the
late nineteenth-century nationalists like Muhammad Farid had initially labelled
the phenomenon of labour militancy in Egypt as a European disease. By the first
decade of the twentieth century nationalists had come to realize the political
potential of the workers and sought to co-opt them to the national struggle.75 The
support of the National Party for the formation of the Manual Trade Workers’
Union in 1909, a union with an underlying nationalist outlook that included

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a wide spectrum of workers, including cigarette workers, was a clear challenge to

the international unions.76 Though the National Party could speak in positive
terms of the unity between Egyptian and European workers at times, as it did
during the Cairo tram strikes in 1908 and 1911,77 the construction of bourgeois
nationalism by the effendiyya saw a steady process of ‘indigenization’ of the
Egyptian working class during this period.78
The other main challenge to the internationalists for the allegiance of the
foreign worker was the local national communities. Some organizations of foreign
workers were dominated by their ethnic identity and found organizational support
under the auspices of local community institutions or the legal protection of
foreign nationality. The clearest example of this was the Greek community
where the power, wealth and influence of the Egyptian Greek bourgeoisie made
the strategy of co-opting the Greek working class to its interests most plausible.
This was most successfully done in Alexandria where the institutional Greek
Community (Kinotita) was controlled by a wealthy middle class with extensive
financial investment in the cotton and other industries. Employing substantial
largesse the Kinotita sponsored the establishment of a whole range of economic
and cultural bodies in an attempt to keep all Greeks under one roof and within its
sphere of influence. Chief amongst these was the Greek Chamber of Commerce
established in 1901 with cotton grandee Emmanuel Benakis as its president.
More significantly it sponsored a number of workers associations, such as the
‘Holy Trinity’ Association of Greek Employees (established 1902), the Society of
Greek Artisans (1907), the Association of Greek Cigarette Makers (1896 or 1899)
and the Greek Association of Tobacco Cutters (1907). The patron–client relation-
ship between these associations was clear: they were a means for the ruling
oligarchy of the community to patronize and control the working class. It is no
accident that in 1909 the president of the two Greek workers’ organizations
connected with the cigarette industry, Demosthenes Tamvakopoulos, was also the
Secretary of the Greek Chamber of Commerce and sat on the committee of the
Kinotita in Alexandria.79 As we have seen, in the period before 1914 the Greek
bourgeoisie was only partially successful in this endeavour and the tension
between communal and class affiliation continued to be a factor amongst Greek
workers right up until the late 1950s.80 Amongst other communities such as the
Italians, Armenians and Maltese, where the institutional community was less well
developed there was likely similar if less structured forces operating.

Conclusion
The internationalist trend among workers in Egypt before 1914 has an important
record of militant agitation on the factory floor and political expression in the
press. Influenced by a core of anarcho-syndicalist ideas it was also inspired by a
commitment to internationalism, brotherhood and self-help as a way to defend the
collective interests and rights of the worker, to combat the predations of capitalism
and to oppose the malevolent authority of the state. These strategies of resistance,

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 FOREIGN WORKERS IN EGYPT 1882–1914

organization and industrial action were perhaps most influential in the new industries
of cigarette making and printing but they were also found in occupations that
were not new but were modernizing, such as the shoemaking. Far from being a
labour elite or members of privileged and insular communities more concerned
with their own affairs and developments abroad, many foreign workers in Egypt
sought to organize on the basis of class affiliation and were committed to the
improvement in the conditions of all workers, both foreign and Egyptian.
Workers of international outlook were challenged by competing political forces
and ideologies that sought to organize, control and contain emergent labour.
Aware of the dangers posed by a multinational labour movement, employers and
state authorities moved to repress it during industrial action by using wedge
tactics, deporting ringleaders and more abstractly by promoting one or another
nationalist discourse. Within the cigarette industry alone, these different tendencies
competed with one another though the dominant tendency in Cairo before the
First World War was the internationalist current. During the First World War
the development of the labour movement was stifled and by 1919 the political
landscape had shifted significantly but not wholly in favour of the nationalist
movement. Anarcho-syndicalism in Egypt and elsewhere went into decline but
radical labour activism was channelled into the communist movement where
foreigners and foreign workers would again play an important part. Indeed, right
up into the Nasser period, foreign workers in specialized sectors in Egypt continued
to be active within progressive labour politics.
The phenomenon of the international union and anarcho-syndicalism in Egypt
interrogates the standard foreign–nationalist dichotomy and illuminates the political
contest for the allegiance of the worker. In a consideration of the subaltern and
the dynamics of social protest, the cooperation between foreign and Egyptian
workers constitutes a case of subaltern agency with class resistance employing a
non-national, internationalist discourse. In this framework, the world of the
foreign worker was defined not as separate from that of the native worker but
as a common part of the same Egyptian reality.

Notes
1 A comprehensive listing of this literature is not possible here but among the more
important works are Ellis Goldberg, Tinker, Tailor and Textile Worker, Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 1986; Joel Beinin and Zachary Lockman, Workers on
the Nile: Nationalism, Communism, Islam, and the Egyptian Working Class,
1882–1954. London: I.B. Tauris, 1988; Zachary Lockman (ed.), Workers and Working
Classes in the Middle East, Struggles, Histories, Historiographies, Albany, NY: State
University of New York Press, 1994; D. Quataert and E. Zürcher (eds), Workers and the
Working Class in the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey, 1839–1950, London:
I.B. Tauris Press, 1995 and Ellis Goldberg (ed.), The Social History of Labor in the
Middle East, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996.
2 Among Egyptian works, for example, are Amin Izz al-Din, Tarikh al-tabaqa al-‘amila
al-misriyya mundhu nashatahaa hatta thawrat 1919, Cairo, 1967 and Ra’uf ‘Abbas,
al-Haraka al-‘ummaliyya al-misriyya fi misr, 1899–1952, Cairo, 1967.

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 ANTHONY GORMAN

3 The exception to this latter generalization is work on the labour movement in Palestine
in the mandatory period that has sought to explore interrelations between Jewish and
Arab workers such as Zachary Lockman, Comrades and Enemies, Arab and Jewish
Workers in Palestine 1906–1948, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996,
but see Deborah S. Bernstein, Constructing Boundaries, Jewish and Arab Workers in
Mandatory Palestine, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2000 which
emphasizes the split nature of the labour market. More recent work has examined
specific sites of workers’ experience and less organized and dramatic phenomena than
unions and strikes, see Quataert and Zürcher, Workers and the Working Class in the
Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey, 1839–1950, 1995.
4 ‘Some male dwellers who got their hands dirty were not Egyptian. Most of them were
Greeks or Italians, and a few were of other nationalities. Although these men were part
of the working class in the classical Marxist framework, they were not usually consid-
ered workers by Egyptians. Their wages were usually higher and they often had more
responsible positions; as long as foreigners could claim extraterritorial privileges, these
men were subject, not to Egyptian law, but to the law of their home country. They may,
in one sense, have shared the class situation of Egyptians, but they were of a different
social status . . . [and] were not routinely thought of as an organic part of the Egyptian
proletariat.’ Goldberg, Tinker, Tailor and Textile Worker, 190 n.1.
5 The concept of a labour aristocracy was first applied to that class of worker in mid-
nineteenth-century England, usually identified with artisans (as opposed to labourers),
who enjoyed better wages and working conditions, greater job security and prospects
for promotion, in short, a better standard of living. A rather conservative force co-opted
by the bourgeoisie, they lost status with the introduction of machines and changing
management practices and merged towards the end of the century with the working
class and gravitated towards the Labour Party. See Eric Hobsbawm, Labouring Men,
London: Wiedenfeld and Nicolson, 1964, 272–315, 318–28.
6 See, for example, Beinin and Lockman, Workers on the Nile, esp. 36–7, 41. The authors’
repeated use of the word ‘emulate’ (37, 49, 56) to characterize the response of Egyptian
workers to the activities of foreign workers suggests admiration as well as rivalry. At
times their explanations for the motives of foreign workers seems contradictory: at one
point they explain the unionization of foreign workers as part of a strategy to exclude
cheaper Egyptian labour [55] but elsewhere suggest the inclusion of Egyptian workers
in a union was motivated by a desire to deprive the employer of a pool of cheaper
indigenous workers [107]. Since the publication of Workers on the Nile, Beinin and
Lockman (separately) have modified their views of the constitution and conceptual-
ization of the Egyptian working class and how it might be understood although there
has been little reconsideration of the foreign worker, see Zachary Lockman (ed.),
Workers and Working Classes in the Middle East, Struggles, Histories, Historiographies,
Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994.
7 Beinin and Lockman, Workers on the Nile, 36.
8 The locus classicus of this view applied to the late Ottoman period is A. J. Sussnitzki’s
study (translated in Charles Issawi (ed.), The Economic History of the Middle East
1800–1914, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1966, 115–25) some of whose
categorizations border on racial stereotypes.
9 Quoted in Issawi, Economic History, 114.
10 Athanase G. Politis, L’Hellénisme et L’Egypte Moderne, Paris: Félix Alcan, 1930,
Vol. 2, 82–5.
11 The relationship between the guilds and the new labour associations cannot be dealt
with here save to note that there appears to be a scholarly consensus that guilds signif-
icantly declined if not disappeared over the following two decades. Cole’s discussion
of the shoemakers’ guild in Cairo in 1879 indicates that foreign and Egyptian workers
could be members of the same guild but his interpretation that the split between the

256
 FOREIGN WORKERS IN EGYPT 1882–1914

two was an expression of the religious nature of the guild and suggests a struggle
between local and foreign shoemakers should be treated cautiously since an international
union of shoemakers was established in 1901; Juan Cole, Colonialism and Revolution
in the Middle East, Princeton, NJ, 1993, 185–6; Gabriel Baer, Egyptian Guilds in
Modern Times, Jerusalem: Israel Oriental Society, 1964.
12 The anarchist movement in Egypt has received little attention in the scholarly literature but
see Leonardo Bettini, Bibliografia dell’anarchismo, Florence: Editrice, 1976, Vol. 2, 281–8.
13 The terms anarchism and anarchist will be used here although in the 1860s and
1870s (the period of the First International) these activists were usually referred to
as internationalists. The term anti-authoritarian socialist is used to distinguish the
anarchist trend led by Bakunin from those that supported Marx and Engels, the
so-called authoritarian socialists. For a fuller discussion of the anarchist movement in
Egypt, see my forthcoming paper, ‘Anarchism in Egypt before the First World War’, in
Steven Hirsch and Lucien van der Walt (eds), Anarchism and Syndicalism in the
Colonial and Post-Colonial World, 1880–1940, 2008.
14 Pier C. Masini, Storia degli anarchici italiana, da Bakunin a Malatesta, Milan:
Rizzoli, 1969, 196–7. Amilcare Cipriani (1844–1918) was one of the key figures of
revolutionary politics in the second half of the nineteenth century and represented Italy
at the foundation of the International in September 1864.
15 Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872) was an Italian politician of democratic, republican and
at least early on in his public life, quite radical views. Although associated with the
First International, the religious element in his politics clashed with classical Marxism.
16 The International Working Men’s Association (or First International) was set up by
workers in London and Paris in 1864 with Marx and Engels played a leading role in its
organization and activities.
17 Bettini, Bibliografia, 282n.
18 These names are given in Greek sources, respectively I Omonoia, O Proodos and
O Anamorphosis.
19 Phos, 7 July, 14 July 1909; al-Muqattam, 12 July 1909.
20 Phos, 23 March 1909.
21 Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Ambasciata d’Italia in Egitto (henceforth MAE AIE)
No. 88, corres., 29 May 1902.
22 MAE AIE No. 126, corres., 8 August 1910.
23 Beinin and Lockman, Workers on the Nile, 54. See, for example, the listing of union
leaders in al-Ahram, 24 December 1901.
24 Egyptian Gazette, 26 March 1902.
25 Despite the considerable scholarship on the Jewish community in Egypt, almost
nothing has appeared dealing with Jewish workers or anarchists. The view that Jews in
Egypt had little to do with anarchism (Jacob Landan, Jews in Nineteenth-Century
Egypt, London, 1969, 115) needs to be rethought.
26 For the following see various correspondence in MAE AIE No. 107.
27 For the following see Yannis Kordatos, Istoria tou Ellinikou Ergatikou Kinimatos,
Athens, 1972, 175–6; and various corres. in MAE AIE No. 107.
28 Tilegraphos, 26 December 1901. In 1922 the shoemakers were represented by a Greek
and (probably) an Egyptian, FO 141/779/9321.
29 See, for example, MAE AIE No. 107, corres., 28 May, 6 June 1907.
30 In his study of workers in large industry in Egypt before the First World war, Jean
Vallet gives the ratio of local and Ottoman workers to foreign workers of all national-
ities as 10:5:1 though he makes clear that the former category includes Greeks and
Armenians from Asia Minor, Contribution a l’étude de la condition des ouvriers au
Caire, Valence: Valentinoise, 1911, 5–7.
31 Panagiotis Noutsos, I Sosialistiki Skepsi stin Ellada apo to 1875 os to 1974, Vol. 1,
Athens: Gnosi, 1990, 98; Pandelis Michalis Glavanis, ‘Aspects of the Economic and

257
 ANTHONY GORMAN

Social History of the Greek Community in Alexandria during the Nineteenth Century’,
PhD Thesis, University of Hull, 1989, 408.
32 See for example Beinin and Lockman, Workers on the Nile, 50ff. For contemporary
sources on this dispute see the Egyptian Gazette.
33 These included respectively Solomon Goldenberg and Muhammad Sidqi, Kordatos,
Istoria tou Ellinikou Ergatikou Kinimatos, 174n. This, along with the fact that a
number of anarchists were leading the strike, make it clear that the dispute was not
simply ‘an instance of class conflict within the Greek community in Egypt’ (the view
of Beinin and Lockman, Workers on the Nile, 51).
34 Egyptian Gazette, 27 January 1900.
35 Egyptian Gazette, 16 January 1900.
36 Egyptian Gazette, 24 January 1900.
37 Egyptian Gazette, 22 February 1900.
38 For a statement of accounts, see Tilegraphos, 3 December 1901. If the monthly
subscription per member was 5pt these figures suggest a membership of 2000. Beinin
and Lockman’s assertion (Workers of the Nile, 51) that after the strike the Union
‘played no effective role and was apparently defunct by 1902’ should therefore be
rejected out of hand.
39 Tilegraphos, 26 December 1901.
40 MAE AIE No. 88 corres, Machell to Manzoni, 16 December 1901.
41 Tilegraphos, 20 December 1901, al-Ahram 20 December 1901.
42 MAE AIE No. 88 corres, 6 January 1902.
43 See various reports in Tachydromos July 1902.
44 il Libertario, ‘Dall’Egitto’, 31 December 1903.
45 See, for example, the description of the conflict as ‘a racial industrial war’ (Egyptian
Gazette 14 December 1901) and the editorial ‘A Word of Warning’, Egyptian Gazette,
21 December 1901 which portrays the strike at Soussa as a sign of the dangerous
divisions between European and Egyptian workers.
46 Of many newspaper accounts, ‘I Apergia ton Sigaropoion’, Ethniki 24 January 1904
quoting an article from Journal du Caire provides the clearest statement of this tactic.
See also Kordatos, Istoria tou Ellinikou Ergatikou Kinimatos, 175n.
47 Phos, 1 April 1909.
48 During the strike at Matossian in March 1909 Greeks numbered fifty of a total work-
force of more than a 100 and probably 200, the rest being made up of ‘Syrians, Arabs
and Armenians’, Phos, 12 March 1909 (The figure of 200 comes from Vallet,
Contribution, 143.)
49 These included Solomon Goldenburg and Joseph Daniel, owner-manager of the
Bosphoros Hotel in Matariyya, ‘Ergatika’, Phos, 30 October 1908. The assertion by
Lockman (‘ “Worker” and “Working Class” in pre-1914 Egypt: A Rereading’, 94) that
the international union was ‘dominated by, and intended primarily to defend the inter-
ests of, the largely Greek rollers’ should therefore be rejected on two counts.
50 By 1911 the Matossian union had 200 members and the Ligue 1500, Vallet,
Contribution, 143.
51 O Neilos, 25 March 1909.
52 A similar trajectory which lies outside our period was followed by the union repre-
senting the workers of the Suez Canal. First known as Phoenix when it was formed by
only Greek workers of the Suez Canal Company, it later expanded its membership to
include other company workers and then more generally a whole range of canal work-
ers and changed its name to the International Workers Union of the Isthmus of Suez,
achieving significant success for its members in the years after the First World War, see
Beinin and Lockman, Workers on the Nile, 106–10.
53 Rosenthal was at the beginning of a long commitment to radical politics and is perhaps
best known for his central role in the establishment of the Egyptian Socialist Party in 1921.

258
 FOREIGN WORKERS IN EGYPT 1882–1914

54 La Tribuna Libera, 20 October 1901.

55 ‘La Coscienza Indigena’, L’Operaio, 11 April 1903.
56 However, it is not impossible that some issues carried contributions from Egyptians
since such articles appeared in the pages of an Italian anarchist newspaper, il Libertario
(La Spezia).
57 Kephalio – Ergasia i Ktima – Chrima, Cairo, 1900.
58 Nicholas Doumas, I Morphosis ton Vasanismenon, Dialogos metaxi Ergaton, Ergatiki
Vivliothiki, Cairo, 1911.
59 Stavros Kouchtsoglou, Kato I Maska, Omilos Anarchikon [Anarchists’ Club], Cairo,
1912.
60 For the following, see my paper, ‘Anarchists in Education: The Free Popular University
in Egypt (1901)’, Middle Eastern Studies, 41(3) (2005): 303–20.
61 MAE AIE No. 86, ‘Circolo libertario anarchico in Cairo’.
62 MAE AIE No. 107, corres. 28 May, 6 June, 3 September 1907.
63 Quoted in Kordatos, Istoria tou Ellinikou Ergatikou Kinimatos, 175n.
64 Published in Tilegraphos, 28 December 1901.
65 Tilegraphos, 26 December 1901 quoting Ergasia.
66 MAE AIE No. 107, corres., 6 June 1907.
67 See for example the cigarette workers’ dispute in Alexandria in March 1902, Egyptian
Gazette, 21–26 March 1902.
68 Phos, 12 March 1909.
69 Tilegraphos, 26 December 1901, quoting from Ergasia.
70 Quoted in Kordatos, Istoria tou Ellinikou Ergatikou Kinimatos, 175n.
71 Phos, 11 March 1909.
72 il Libertario ‘Dall’Egitto’, 31 December 1903.
73 MAE AIE No. 120, corres., 14 May 1911.
74 L’Unione, 13 July 1913.
75 For a good discussion of this process, see Lockman, ‘Imagining the Working Class:
Culture, Nationalism, and Class Formation in Egypt, 1899–1914’, Poetics Today,
15(1994): 157–90.
76 On this see Beinin and Lockman, Workers on the Nile, 66–72.
77 Beinin and Lockman, Workers on the Nile, 177.
78 Lockman, ‘Imagining the Working Class’, 184.
79 For a listing of these organizations in K. Kapralos, Imerologia, 1909, 278–88.
80 For the record of the post-war Greek left in Egypt, see Anthony Gorman, ‘Egypt’s
Forgotten Communists: the Postwar Greek Left’, Journal of Modern Greek Studies,
20(2002): 1–27.

259
 Part VI

SUBALTERNS AND NATIONAL

MOVEMENTS
 11
FROM NATIONAL HEROES TO
NATIONAL VILLAINS
Bandits, pirates and the formation of
modern Greece

Gerassimos Karabelias

If crime and criminals constitute a useful tool for a society to distinguish proper
and socially acceptable conduct from that which is improper and unacceptable,1
the presence of Greek bandits in the Ottoman Empire and modern Greece can
serve as a compass for understanding the country’s initial formation and subsequent
evolution. Products of a rugged terrain where sheep breeding and stealing as well
as a martial ethos coexisted for centuries, these bandit groups constituted the
backbone of the Greek nation in sustaining a revolutionary war against the
occupying Ottoman forces. However, the attitude of Greek political and military
leaders and that of the representatives of foreign powers towards these bandits
was not as honest as official history books often claim. Although the former did
not hesitate to employ or even exploit the services of bandit leaders and their
followers for a variety of assignments, especially for satisfying the irredentist
dream of people both inside and outside the borders of the Greek state, they were
equally quick to paint a dark picture of these groups, presenting them as common
robbers and criminals and seeking their exemplary punishment. By contrast, the
shepherds and peasants, who had suffered considerably from the depredations of
these bands, could not hide their admiration for the latter’s accomplishments
against the unjust and oppressive local government and central administration. An
indisputable witness of the peasants’ warm feelings towards these bandits is the
corpus of magnificent songs and poems glorifying their actions that exists in
the oral and written tradition of modern Greece.

Banditry in Ottoman-occupied Greek lands

Despite the influence of the Classical Greek and Roman world on the development
of the modern Greek society and state, it was the breakdown of the Byzantine

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 GERASSIMOS KARABELIAS

Empire and the establishment of Ottoman rule over Greek lands lasting almost
400 years which had the greatest effect. Nowhere was this more visible than in the
political arena. Although a number of surviving members of the Byzantine
Emperor’s family and the remnants of the aristocracy were forced to seek refuge
in Western Europe, the rest of the elite were, willingly or not, incorporated into the
socio-political structure of the Ottoman Empire. As a result, the people were left
without legitimate political leaders, be they individuals or groups, who could assist
them in their attempts to preserve traditional politics and who might even lead their
war for liberation. Furthermore, with the implementation of the Ottoman religious–
communal, socio-political millet system,2 the fragmentation of the Greek community
was aggravated as this system favoured the emergence of a large number of strong
local military and political leaders to the detriment of Greek unity.
Two were the institutions with the potential of performing adequately the role
of national leadership: the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople,3 the head
of all Christian Orthodox subjects of the Empire, and the class of wealthy Greek
merchants. The location of the Ecumenical Patriarch in the capital, however, facil-
itated the Ottomans in their task of controlling his religious, social, economic and
political activities. In addition, the Patriarch’s strong anti-Catholic orientation
guaranteed to the central authority that the Ottoman polity would be highly
respected among Greek subjects in contrast to attitudes among Christians in
Western Europe.4 As for the wealthy merchant class, it equally failed to produce a
national political leader. Although it played a positive role in the Ottoman Empire’s
later disintegration, it could not succeed in establishing an underground political
structure capable of preserving the political unity of the Greek community. The
traders had no real experience in warfare and considered war either too costly or
too dangerous a technique to master. Their main interest was the accumulation of
profits.5 As a result, they had felt comfortable with the Ottoman political system,
especially as holders of foreign passports. When the central government and the
political system finally became an obstacle to their financial and political ambi-
tions, then the dissolution of the Empire became part of their greater concern.
Under the circumstances, the idea of forming a Greek state seemed an illusionary
adventure. However, the seeds for a limited guerrilla warfare against the repre-
sentatives of the central authority had already been planted. During the lengthy
decades of Ottoman occupation, a large number of local armed units had been
formed among different communities including among the Greeks.6 A ‘product
of insecurity of life and property, conquest and foreign rule, and a terrain and
economy that favoured lawlessness in general and brigandage in particular’,7
these armed groups, whose members were motivated to fight the Ottoman authorities
more by personal gain than national aspirations,8 constituted the foundation
for the Greek national liberation forces. They have been classified as klepht,
armatoloi and kapoi.
The klepht, Koliopoulos argues, ‘were mainly fugitives, debtors, outlaws,
misfits, adventurers, victims of oppression, men not attached to the land by

264
 BANDITS AND MODERN GREECE

property or other obligations, who’ unable to cope with the evolution of events in
their local community, ‘took to the hills and became brigands’.9 They greatly
esteemed the skilful use of arms and the open or veiled defiance of established
authority. Their ethos stressed personal honour, bravery, resistance to hunger and
torture, unusual physical prowess and generosity towards the weak.10 The leader
of the band (kapetanios) and his assistants (protopalikara) were highly respected,
admired and even feared by their fellow members.11 Although professional
military characteristics such as discipline were weak, it was the ability of the
kapetonios to protect the well-being of his followers that determined the size of
the band and the level of obedience to his commands. As their reputation as klephts
and their chance for receiving an amnesty offer from the Ottomans depended
upon their ability to spread fear in local state authorities and populations, they
were driven to their physical and mental limits in order to reach the highest level
of a respected–feared outlaw.12
As for armatoloi, they were the only non-Muslim group of people in the
Ottoman Empire who were officially allowed to bear arms. More often than not,
they were former klepht amnestied by the central authorities on the condition that
they would protect the state by leading a group of armed men against all bandits,
misfits and outlaws in a certain region. The leader was expected to display the same
characteristics as the leader of a klephtic band but to be more strict on the issue
of discipline. As the practice of sending a thief to catch a thief13 while keeping the
standing army fresh and ready for battle seemed quite practical and financially
appropriate to the Ottoman authorities, the armatoloi became the state’s only
Christian militia, although limited to a local level. But ‘unlike klephtism’, as
Petropulos remarks, ‘armatolism included communities of people, not just bands
and individual leaders. The region policed by a group of armatoloi was known
as an armatolik . . . enjoy[ed] complete autonomy, which meant being spared any
resident Ottoman officials or Turkish settlers. The leader . . . ruled as well as
protected his village or group of villagers’ from the activities of the outlaws and
the jealous eye of other armatoloi.14 Some of these leaders became directly
involved in the collection of taxes from the local population and even engaged in
other professional, legal or illegal, activities in the areas of farming and commerce.15
As their civil–military position became gradually hereditary, powerful regional
dynasties emerged, especially in the lands of central Greece.16
Famous ex-klephts were not employed only by the Ottomans as armatoloi, but by
wealthy, local Christian primates as bodyguards, known as kapoi. They differed from
the armatoloi regarding their employers and their duties as well as the extent of their
power. As Petropulos points out, the kapoi ‘policed the lands of the primate and
asserted the primate’s authority . . . [Although] sometimes [they] took on the chief
duty of an armatolos, namely pursuit of brigands . . . [their] chief [unlike the arma-
tolos chieftain] was in no sense a ruler.’17 Well-known kapoi who later on became
leading figures of the Greek war of liberation were Theodoros Kolokotronis,
Demetrios Koliopoulos, Niketas Stamatellopoulos and Vassilis Petimezas.

265
 GERASSIMOS KARABELIAS

Even though this account has separated these armed guerrilla-groups into three
different categories, their boundaries were not as strict as this division implies.
‘The distinction between klepht and armatoloi’, Koliopoulos points out, ‘was
blurred by the frequent exchange of roles . . . in a security system which essentially
aimed at relative, not absolute, security . . . Accusations that captains of armatoloi
were slow in suppressing the predators in order to render their services indispen-
sable and stay in power were seldom without foundation . . . the existence and
operation of klepthic bands were necessary for the existence and operation of the
armatolic bands.’18 At the same time, the presence of these armed guerrilla groups
was regarded as an indispensable device for the implementation of the Sultan’s
rule in the periphery. By favouring socio-political stability, the central govern-
ment had permitted the presence of these groups in order to counterbalance the
abuses of power by local religious dignitaries, both Muslim and Christian. But,
whenever the military power of these bands exceeded the limits of the system of
relative security, the central government would not hesitate to move against and
punish them severely.19
Whether as klephts, armatoloi or kapoi, the military leaders were extremely
sensitive to two issues: the size of the group of armed men under their command
and the degree of the men’s loyalty. Aware of the impact of size on the attitudes
of political, financial and military circles at local as well as at regional level, these
leaders (the Kapetanioi) usually built their group around a nucleus of kinsmen or
people whom they considered absolutely trustworthy.20 The expansion of the
size and power of each group depended upon the leader’s capacity to protect and
enhance the well-being of his military subordinates as well as his civilian
clients.21 In a world dominated by insecurity and peril, the development of strong
patron–client relations seemed the only socio-political mechanism left for
survival.22 Hence, despite their shortcomings as far as the maltreatment of the
Greek peasants is concerned,23 men who bore arms in such difficult times were
highly respected by the agrarian population.24 A clear example of the admiration
that the simple people had for the bandits and their groups can be found in the
huge corpus of klephtic ballads that has been passed orally from generation to
generation as part of Greek culture.25

Piracy in the Ottoman-occupied Greek lands

The strong dislike of the Ottomans towards the sea and sea-related professions
and their defeat by the naval forces of western Europe in 1571 offered a unique
opportunity for conquered Greek seamen to maintain their skills in commercial
and military naval activities. Products of either barren or pirate-stricken islands,
the Greeks had naturally turned to the sea as the only means of survival. Their
traditional fame as seamen helped them find a place in various naval and
commercial forces that were active around the Mediterranean and especially
in the Aegean Sea. For instance, the Greeks constituted one of the largest
groups in the Ottoman commercial and battle fleets.26 Some of them, like the

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Barbaros brothers, even succeeded in reaching the highest position, that of the
leader (Admiral) of the Ottoman fleet. In addition, Greek seamen offered their
services to the Venetian, Austrian, French, British and Russian naval forces.27
The collaboration with the Austrians, British and Russians helped Greek seamen
in various ways. It helped them to accumulate some capital through seizing cargoes
and providing much needed supplies to blockaded areas. Since the Greeks, with the
possible exception of Maniates,28 were not professional pirates but seamen and
merchants, their income, large or small, was always invested in ships, trade and
smuggling. The nature of their profession and the insecurity of the sea-trade made
the majority of them aware of the evolution of events in the international arena and
capable of interpreting treaties in a manner favourable to themselves. Furthermore,
the raids of Greek pirates and corsairs provided valuable general experience at sea
as well as in naval warfare activities. Their raids against the Ottomans, under the
protection of the Russian flag although still subjects of the Sultan, increased the
Greek seamen’s confidence in their abilities and helped them to believe that they
could play a major role in the country’s liberation struggle.29
Following the tradition of klepht and armatoloi, discipline among Greek
pirates and corsairs was weak. The level of obedience to a captain’s commands
and the size of his crew were determined by the captain’s skills in naval warfare,
his ability to increase the income of his crew and to gain the protection of foreign
powers. The nature of piracy had forced most captains to employ as sailors their
immediate relatives and extended family or people from their native island. The
well-being of a large number of families was thus in the hands of a single man,
the captain, the latter acting as the political and financial patron of all.30 The
development of strong patron–client relations between the captain and his sailors
not only assisted the formation of a powerful mercantile aristocracy both within
and beyond the Ottoman lands, but it also became a serious obstacle to the
creation of a unified leadership in the Greek naval forces.

The role of bandits and pirates in the war for

liberation (1821–1827)
The presence of a large number of regionally powerful military groups and
leaders in the Greek lands, their high degree of heterogeneity and lack of discipline
in conjunction with the absence of a nationally accepted military leader, was
bound to raise issues of unity, hierarchical order and direction in a community
in revolt. Certainly, few doubted the willingness of the military and regional
leaders to participate in a war for liberation against the Ottoman forces, as they
had done in several instances before 1821.31 However, equally few believed that
these leaders would look sympathetically on the idea of relinquishing military
and political power in their area to another man or institution. These leaders
had fought hard against both the Ottomans and against rival armed groups to
reach their position. What they expected from their participation in the war for
liberation against the Ottomans was, among other things, the augmentation of

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their own political, financial and military power as well as that of their clients
to the detriment of rival military and political groups and leaders.32
This self-centred attitude of military leaders ought not to come as a surprise. The
lengthy occupation of Greek lands by the Ottomans had had an enormous effect
upon the native political culture. The Greeks had succeeded in incorporating into
their own culture the central role of the state as illustrated by the Empire’s social,
political and financial evolution.33 In a country where the administration formed
during the war for liberation was too primitive to prevent illicit profiteering and the
government appeared unwilling to allow the presence of independent, profitable
economic enterprises, the direct integration of military leaders into the socio-
political formation of the new state was viewed as a viable and extremely prof-
itable economic activity for them and their clients.34 But, as control of the state
was interpreted as a ‘zero-sum’ game, being excluded appeared fatal for a
military leader and his followers. Hence, these leaders felt that they had to fight
hard, against both the Ottomans and their Greek antagonists, for a place in the
new political formation. Furthermore, given their traditional hostility towards
the Ottoman government and its representatives, it seems rather natural to expect
these military leaders to welcome the creation of a new and strong state only for
as long as it remained under their own direction.35
The absence of a nationally accepted, all-powerful military leader, the inability
of the newly formed revolutionary government to enforce its decisions upon
civilian and military leaders at a local level, and the increasing demand for fighters
in the ongoing war with the Ottoman forces, offered a unique opportunity for
military personnel to augment their own authority and value in the eyes of the
people. These military figures, taking advantage of the power vacuum created by
the temporary withdrawal of the Ottomans from the Greek lands, involved them-
selves, in the middle of the war for liberation, in a process of settling old scores
with local primates and rival regional military groups.36 The eruption of civil
strife only a year after the outbreak of the revolution weakened considerably the
firepower of the revolutionary forces and caused irreversible harm to the political
power of the military leaders. Their failure to liberate the country from the
Ottoman yoke was to make them and their followers easy prey for both native
politico-economic leaders and the representatives of foreign powers.
Indeed, the process by which the military leaders were subordinated to the
political will of non-military personnel had begun because of the former’s inability
to finance successful military campaigns against the Ottomans.37 Since the
possession of financial resources was a prerequisite for both the political and
military power of military leaders,38 a lack of such resources made the latter
extremely vulnerable to pressures exercised by a variety of non-military leaders
as well as representatives of foreign powers.39 Hence, wealthy ship owners from
the Greek islands (especially Hydra and Spetses), powerful local primates from the
Peloponnesus, and members of the Greek diaspora felt that they were in a position
to demand a leading role in the war for liberation as well as in the formation of
the revolutionary national government.40 Moreover, their level of education, their

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experience in government as well as in making business transactions in a hostile

and rather dangerous environment, had naturally given them better qualifications
for entering into and acquiring control over the new state apparatus as compared
to the uneducated, less diplomatic military leaders and fighters.41 As a result, a
number of Phanariot Greeks,42 such as Demetrios Ypsilantis, John Mavrokordatos,
Theodore Negris and Constantine Karatzas succeeded in establishing themselves
as the central government’s military and political representatives in Peloponnesos,
Western and Eastern Rumeli,43 while leading figures from the islands of Hydra
such as George and Lazaros Kountorgiotes occupied prominent positions in
the government.44
The inability of the Philike Etaireia (Society of Friends),45 military leaders,
primates and Greeks of the diaspora to overcome their internal problems, gain
the approval of the nation and head a successful war of liberation against the
Ottomans to led to a national disaster. Between 1821 and 1825 civil strife broke
out between military and civilian leaders over control of the new state under
formation and its political direction. A great number of military leaders lost their
lives while others were forced to serve lengthy and humiliating prison terms.46
Although some were to be called back to duty after the successful landing
and advance of Egyptian forces in Peloponnesus and Ottoman forces in Rumeli
in 1825, they lacked both numbers of Western-trained fighters and technical
resources. Since it was the military forces of foreign powers rather than the
Greeks themselves which succeeded in liberating the first territories from
Ottoman rule, the growth of the political power of civilian over military leaders
seemed a natural development. In addition, it inaugurated the bold and continuous
involvement of the European states in Greek political life which would last for
years to come. The geographically small Greek state was also too militarily and
financially weak to support its highly ambitious policy of the liberation of the
unredeemed Greeks.47 To realize this, it would be forced to rely on the goodwill
of its protecting powers, Great Britain, France and Russia. As for political and
military leaders alike, they would compete against each other as to who would
better satisfy the wishes of the powerful European states.

Banditry and piracy during the rule of

Kapodistrias (1827–1831)
With the appointment of Ioannis Kapodistrias, a well-known member of the
Greek diaspora, as the first ‘Provisional Governor of [modern] Greece’, the Great
Powers and the group of modernists within the Greek community revealed their
intention regarding the type of leadership they expected to run the country.48 As
for the new Governor, the task of attempting to throw the Ottoman and Egyptian
forces out of Greek lands and eliminating the dominant Ottoman features of the
social, economic, political and military structures of the liberated lands was not
an easy one. His ability to create both a strong, disciplined and loyal national
army and an efficient, centralized bureaucracy would be a key factor in the

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success of his plans.49 Several irregular bands from the war of independence were
still menacing the country and their leaders as well as local primates did not seem
happy with the idea of giving up their traditional sources of financial, political
and military power for an unfamiliar national government beyond their control.
Kapodistrias tried to use all his diplomatic skills to avoid provoking a strong
reaction from local primates and powerful military leaders to his initiatives. He felt
that if he succeeded in building a strong, disciplined, state-oriented regular army,
those local leaders’ influence in military and political circles would be decreased
considerably, if not completely eliminated.50 Furthermore, he believed that the
success of his administration lay in finding the necessary resources to compen-
sate the majority of irregulars for their services with titles of land and the means
to cultivate it. Under such conditions, these undisciplined warriors would become
good citizens, respectful of private and state property. Most of all, their depend-
ence on patron–client relationships with local military–civilian leaders would
diminish.51
Even though Kapodistrias made no official attempt to disband the existing
irregular military forces, he used a variety of indirect methods to incorporate
these groups into semi-regular units. Aware of the influence that money had had
upon both irregular fighters and their military leaders, he used his position as the
ultimate holder and distributor of the state’s financial resources to lure them into
joining his plan.52 He created new military formations – Gendarmerie battalions,
first the chiliarchies and later the tagmata, which divided the armed men into two
camps.53 On the one side, there were the people who followed his plans, entered
the battalion formations and appeared willing to accept the training and values of
regular European military institutions (discipline, respect for hierarchical order,
modern fighting procedures). On the other, there were all those who either felt
uncomfortable with the discipline-oriented new military institutions or were left
out of them deliberately. For instance, Kapodistrias avoided handing over important
command posts to traditionally powerful military leaders such as Varnakioits, Iskos,
Rangos, Gouras, Mamouris and Kontogiannis but passed them to refugee fighters
from the unliberated lands.54 In other cases, he appointed military chieftains such as
Veris, Vlachopoulos, Gardikiotis, Grivas and Pharmakis who were less dangerous
to his authority and more manageable.55 Finally, in order to create a new breed
of military officers ready to assume leadership positions in the regular army,
he established the first Greek Military Academy (Schole Evelpidon) in 1828
and invited French and Bavarian officers to teach the secrets of modern army
organization and fighting techniques to the cadets.56
His approach towards the pirates, however, was more direct. Under pressure
from both external (foreign powers) and internal (Greek shipowners) forces,57
Kapodistrias made clear his determination to eliminate piracy from Greek
territories and to form a strong, unified national naval force. By employing
the military services of Captain Andreas Miaoulis, a leading figure in the war
against the Ottomans and former pirate, the diplomatic services of Alexander
Mavrokordatos, and the legal services of the reformed Sea-Court, the Governor

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made certain that his message for the elimination of piracy and the creation of a
strong, centralized naval force reached everyone.58 Aware that the majority of sea-
men turned to piracy due to high unemployment rates and the country’s financial
instability, Kapodistrias made an attempt to have them enlist in the newly formed
Greek Navy.59 His policy, however, divided former pirates and sailors into two
groups: those who had found a position in the government and supported his work
and those who either could not or were not willing to leave their old profession
and who accordingly joined the political opposition forces.
But the desire of Kapodistrias to decrease the political and military power of local
primates and traditional military leaders was not without risk. All those who were
disappointed with their treatment by the Governor sought ways to overcome their
differences and join forces against his rule.60 As the French and British patrons
of Greek political parties also became discontented with the policies of Kapodistrias
towards them and their clients,61 his political future seemed bleak. In fact, he was
killed by two members of a powerful Peloponnesian clan, the Mavromichalis, in
October 1831 for showing contempt towards their family.62 With his death, the state
fell into complete anarchy as both the national army and the tagmata were disbanded
and unpaid armed men joined the irregular groups that were left to plunder at will
the agrarian population.63 The evolution of events revealed that the ‘paternalistic and
authoritarian style’ of government by Kapodistrias was really a facade for foreign
powers and local primates to redirect the organization of the new state.64 As for the
military leaders and their followers, they were forced to play a secondary political
role by choosing either the road towards legitimization by subordinating themselves
to party leaders and foreign powers or the illegal route, becoming the hunted targets
of state security and regular army forces.
It is also worth noting that whereas a number of women made their presence
felt as members of irregular bandit groups, mostly as mothers, daughters or wives
of bandit leaders, they appeared to fail in elevating themselves into leadership
positions. Certainly it would have been extremely difficult to do this in such a
male-dominated mainland society. However, the same does not hold true for the
activities of irregular groups in the Aegean Sea, the naval warriors and the pirates.
Manto Mavrogenous and Laskarina Bouboulina are two well-known female
figures of the Greek war for liberation at sea. They not only dedicated their entire
property to the war but also themselves led their own ships and crews into the
battlefields. With the creation of the new Greek state, however, the former pirates
and naval warriors followed a different path from that of the bandits in the main-
land. The majority became an integral part of the growing Greek merchant marine
while the rest offered their valuable services to the developing Greek Navy.65

Banditry and piracy during King Otto’s

rule (1833–1862)
The creation of a strong, highly centralized state machinery that would be loyal
to the government (the throne) was also the goal of the Bavarian-born first King

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of Greece, Otto I. Aware of the fatal mistakes committed by former Governor

Ioannis Kapodistrias and the untamed socio-political power of local primates
and military leaders, the new regime decided to trust the leadership positions in
the civil bureaucracy, security and military services to the men with whom it felt
most comfortable, the Bavarians. As Maurer pointed out, ‘only foreigners can
teach civilization in its fullest . . . Just as the Greeks in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries brought Greek wisdom to the rest of Europe, so now Europeans, espe-
cially the Germans, must return the light to its homeland from which it has long
since vanished . . . The very threatening position of the parties had rendered
necessary the presence of a mediating foreign factor.’66 To reach the ultimate
goal, that of creating a modern state in the image of those of western Europe,
the new regime seemed determined to cut completely the relationship between the
state apparatus and the traditional world of klephts, armatoloi and kapoi.67 The
beginning of the end for the war of liberation era was in sight.
One of the first acts of the new regime was to issue a special decree in March
1833 which ordered all irregular groups to disband and their fighters to return
home.68 It followed this with the dissolution of the remnants of the Kapodistrian
regular army and the creation of brand new military and security forces around
experienced and trusted leading officers.69 The new regular land forces consisted
of infantry, cavalry, artillery and engineering units and their personnel were to be
trained in secret by Bavarian and French officers.70 To prevent a strong reaction
from those military leaders who were excluded from the new arrangement, the
throne compensated a number of them with titles of landed property and com-
memorative medals. Of course, an attempt was made to incorporate about 2,000
irregulars into light infantry units (Akrovolistes).71 But, as the regular pay for the
enlisted men was surprisingly low and the organization and functioning of these
units followed the same norms of military discipline as those of the regular forces,
the majority of irregulars showed no interest.72
The regime did not delay in the reorganization of the armed forces but
proceeded with plans for establishing new security forces, the Gendarmerie
(Chorofylake), the Royal Phalanx (Vassilike Phalanga) and the National Guard
(Ethnofylake). The Gendarmerie, created at the end of May 1833 and based on the
rules and functions of its French prototype, had two goals: one was the protection
of the people from bandits and robbers who plundered the countryside, the other
was to perform the important role of military police.73 The Gendarmerie’s forma-
tion and direct attachment to the throne was deemed necessary due to the regime’s
distrust of the type of security work performed by local police forces that, by law,
functioned under the control of elected local governments. To make service in the
Gendarmerie attractive, the regime offered such incentives as increased monthly
pay, uniform, retirement benefits and arable land, incentives better than those
offered to regular army officers.74 With the establishment of the Royal Phalanx
in September 1835, the throne attempted to appease those members of the
irregular groups that could become dangerous to the state and the people if left
without any type of reward from the government.75 The Phalanx was activated

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only in periods of internal disturbance or in war situations and the men serving in
its ranks were permitted to wear their traditional uniform ( phoustanella)76 as well
as use their own weapons. Souliotes and people from the unliberated lands were
quick to join that force, since its function was closer to their world. Finally, the
National Guard, which was officially created in October 1843, had as its goal to
assist the work of the Gendarmerie at a local level. Armed peasants would
be called up occasionally by municipal authorities to assist in the hunting of
outlaws.77 The throne viewed the existence of this force as necessary due to its
lack of faith in the regular army after the September 1843 revolt.
After the establishment of new military and security forces, the regime passed
two extremely important laws. The first declared illegal the traditional habit of
carrying arms by people who did not belong to either the military or security
apparatuses. The second defined the various types of brigandage and set out in
detail a suitable punishment for each of them.78 The Bavarians claimed that the
intention behind the new legal framework was the containment of lawlessness.
However, as the throne, the local primates, the wealthy Greeks of the diaspora and
the Great Powers revealed no interest in the economic development of the Greek
state,79 opportunities for alternative employment in non-state sectors was either
limited or non-existent for the uneducated but rough warriors of the irregular
bands. Furthermore, the unwillingness of the regime to implement a much needed
land distribution policy left a large number of fighters from freed as well as from
unliberated territories landless and thus easy prey for political, military and
economic leaders.80 King Otto’s active role in building a sound legal system as
well as effective security and military forces in the image of western European
states coupled with his indifference towards economic development and land
distribution contributed to the development of brigandage. By demanding total
submission to the throne, he forced the members of former irregular groups who
did not feel comfortable with the Bavarian style of governance to the life of an
outlaw. Hence, a large number of former irregular bands were to make their
reappearance in the Greek polity as bandits.81
Some of these bandit groups, composed mostly of members coming from the
unliberated lands, decided to cross the border and offer their services to local
representatives of Ottoman state authority, mostly Albanian dervenagas, in Thessaly,
Macedonia and Epiros. As their activity sometimes worked in favour of the Greek
irredentist dream, a few of them were able to receive amnesty, return to Greece
and be appointed as heads of local security units.82 Others chose to remain inside
the geographical borders of the country and continue their traditional life as
outlaws. Their wrath because of their treatment by the Bavarian officers and
civil bureaucrats of the monarchy were such that in 1835 and 1836 they headed
serious social disturbances in Rumeli, forcing the government to offer them some
concessions. As Koliopoulos points out, ‘the bands of irregulars . . . were not
dissolved after the collapse of the [1835–1836] uprising, but were allowed to
exist . . . as an alternative and legitimate refuge for outlaws who might otherwise
have taken up outright brigandage again . . . The frontier guards [established in

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1838 with the aim] of attracting the war veterans . . . became the corps identified
with the traditional military element of continental Greece.’83
In fact, there appears to have been a considerable increase in the irregular
groups’ strength in the post-1843 coup period and equally a decrease in that of the
regular army. The reasons for this development are various. Certainly, King Otto’s
disappointment at the behaviour of his officers and their followers in leading the
coup of 1843 and humiliating his regime and his new lack of faith in them dimin-
ished his interest in their training and strength.84 As for the realization of his
dream to liberate the unredeemed lands, he certainly knew that he could not rely
on such a small military force. As the conscription system had raised some oppo-
sition, King Otto felt that the people would not react bitterly towards his loss of
interest in the regular army. The appointment of the so-called patron of the
Rumeliot irregular groups, Ioannis Kolettis, as prime minister from 1844 to 1847
encouraged even further King Otto’s predisposition. As the irregular groups kept
alive both the spirit of the revolution and, with their frequent incursions into
Thessaly, Epirus and Macedonia, the hope of liberating these lands from the
Ottoman yoke, the throne seemed to favour their presence and activities outside
Greece’s borders. Thus, from the year 1844 on, when the government offered a
general amnesty to bandit leaders, there was a considerable movement of outlaws
to the region of the country’s northern borders.85 Their direct participation in the
uprisings in Epirus and Thessaly, without any coordination of movements and
objectives or even a similar logistics system, at a time when the country’s regular
army was concerned with internal security issues,86 made these outlaws look
like heroes in the eyes of many Greeks or even as ‘the army of the nation’.87 But,
when these bandits appeared to forget their irredentist mission and attempted to
spread terror in the Greek countryside, the regime did not hesitate to implement
all necessary institutional adjustments to reach its goal, that of punishing them
severely.88
In addition to banditry, King Otto did not overlook the issue of piracy. By issuing
royal decrees, he promised severe punishment (death) to the captain and long
prison terms to crew members of those practising piracy in Greek territorial
waters. As seamen could now easily find work in either the fast-growing Greek
merchant marine or in the Greek Navy, piracy became a rather ‘unhealthy’
profession for them all. With the entrance of steam boats into the picture, even the
few remaining romantic pirates were forced to change their profession.89
Whereas King Otto survived the first military revolt against his rule in 1843,
he was not so fortunate after the coup of 1862. The involvement of protecting
powers, especially the British and the French, in Greece’s social,90 political and
military affairs, left no room for him to react without their consent. King Otto left
the country on board a British ship, although without abdicating the throne, and
was soon replaced by Prince George Glyxbourg from the Danish royal family.
Ironically, it was regular army officers in cooperation with other social groups
(university students, political leaders) that had staged his fall. The members of
irregular bands that his administration had initially tried hard to punish, showed

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a greater degree of trust and faith in his rule. If King Otto and his advisors had
paid attention to such important issues as land distribution policy and develop-
ment of the Greek economy, the future of his regime as well as that of members
of the irregular bands might have been different. However, by deciding to give the
irregular bands a more active military–security role in the country’s northern
borders, the throne had contributed to turning them into an important mechanism
for the realization of Greek foreign policy objectives.91 Most importantly, the lack
of institutional and ideological continuity between the warriors from the war for
liberation and the new breed of officers heading the regular army units and the
Gendarmerie, forced the members of irregular bands to choose between submis-
sion to the new rulers or the life of an outlaw.92 Only temporarily would irregular
bands be permitted to operate with the consent of the civilian government in
specific geographical areas.

The role of irregular groups from 1863 to the

early twentieth century
The year-long socio-political upheaval, caused by the forced exodus of King Otto
in 1862 and lasting to the arrival of his replacement, King George I, in 1863,
served as a breeding ground for brigandage. Large bands, formed around prison-
ers who were set free during the troubled interregnum, crossed the country unhin-
dered by the security forces and terrorized the defenceless peasants.93 Only this
time, the brigands would not limit their activities to peasants but would make
attempts to accomplish feats that would increase the respect and fear of both
friends and enemies. Hence, in November 1865, three British citizens were
captured while in the prefecture of Acarnania where they had gone to hunt deer.
In August 1866, the Deputy Sotiris Sotiropoulos was captured on his estate in
Triphyllia and only freed after paying a ransom. But in April 1870, a number of
well-connected British people visiting Marathon were captured by outlaws and
murdered when their captors attempt to escape Gendarmerie units. These notori-
ous murders shocked western European circles and increased their criticism
of the government and the people for the country’s state of lawlessness.94
Subsequent attempts to reduce brigandage through the carrot and stick approach
brought only limited results as the regime continued to be indifferent to processes
that might improve the country’s undeveloped economy.95 The close relation
between members of the political world and the irregular groups was obviously
hindering the elimination of brigandage.96 Hence, a number of people began to
point out that the country did not need additional irregular groups to capture these
outlaws but a strong, disciplined and efficient regular army.97
The conservative approach of King George to both internal and external issues
kept the manpower of the military to the level of King Otto’s time, that of 8,000 men.
But the formation of modern regular armies by Balkan states expecting to take the
lion’s share after the anticipated breakdown of Ottoman rule in its European lands,
alerted the Greek government and royal family to the need for military reform.

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Charilaos Trikoupis tried to modernize the military institution by increasing the

number of cadets entering the Military Academy, inviting a French military mission
to supervise the reorganization of military education, sending a large number of offi-
cers abroad to learn the secrets of military warfare at their source, and by purchas-
ing new weapons and equipment for both the army and the navy.98 Although his
policies did not bring immediate gains as the Greek army was heavily defeated by
the Ottomans in the 1897 war, nonetheless his initiative to reform the military insti-
tution gave birth to a new class of professional officers.99 As the military institution
went through a process of radical transformation, the irregular groups were forced to
follow or meet the consequences of their failure. If they were formed around a
deserting military officer and fought for the liberation of unredeemed Greeks, their
legitimacy was not questioned. In contrast, both the people and the government
looked on them as national heroes.100 The rest were viewed as simple criminals and
the security apparatus was ordered to carry out their punishment.

Epilogue
In a trial of those charged with collaborating with a group of bandits under the
leadership of Arvanitakis, an army officer pointed out that ‘there can be no brig-
and without a shepherd, and no shepherd without a brigand . . . A band of peasant
brigands is easy to destroy. In contrast, a band of migratory shepherd brigands is
impossible to destroy, because it is connected with migratory shepherds. They are
all kinsmen and a social class of their own . . . When one of them has two sons,
one turns brigand and the other becomes a shepherd, so that one should support
the other . . . They have no fatherland: for them, fatherland is wherever they go. In
Macedonia they become Macedonians, in Thebes they are Thebans, in the
Peloponnesus they are Peloponnesians; they are cosmopolitans.’101 A natural
product of the insecurity of life and property as well as of arbitrary rule by
representatives of either state or local government in the geo-political area in
which they were brought up, these men learned that family bonds and their skills
in the use or threat of arms were their only sources of livelihood.
The inability and unwillingness of the Greeks of the diaspora, the local primates,
the wealthy shipowners and the church to start the war for liberation against the
Ottomans transformed the groups of former land and sea outlaws into the backbone
of the entire liberation movement. However, their lack of unity and cohesion as
well as of education and administrative experience forced them to accept a second-
ary political role behind the Western-oriented, educated men of the diaspora who
occupied key positions in the newly formed government. Although the political
power of armed men increased considerably during the war, their internal divisions
and subsequent civil strife caused serious damage to their status as a military class
in the state-to-be. In fact, since the creation of modern Greece had been made pos-
sible by the direct intervention of the Great Powers, the men who had really fought
the Ottomans would have to ask the government, first Governor Ioannis Kapodistrias
and later on King Otto, for a place in the sun (i.e. employment by the state).

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Since old habits die hard, irregular groups of armed men would not disappear
so easily. In fact, the Greek state continued to ask for their services on the country’s
borders with the Ottoman Empire. The small, ill-equipped and ill-trained regular
Greek army had no chance against the powerful Ottoman forces. But the irregular
bands and their military skills of guerrilla warfare were extremely useful in keeping
the dream of liberation alive inside the Greek community that was still under
Ottoman rule.102 Thus, the state and its military–civilian representatives appeared
willing to tolerate the behaviour of the irregular groups inside the Greek borders.
Only when the breakdown of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans appeared imminent
and the need to construct a powerful, modern regular army became urgent, did the
Greek state put an end to its support of the bandits. It started by painting a dark
picture of all of them both in the local and the state media, presenting their activities
as identical to that of common criminals. The holders of power apparently succeeded
in eliminating the pirates and the majority of bandits and irregular bands, but they
failed to erase people’s admiration for the latter’s physical accomplishments or
respect for their invaluable contribution to the formation of modern Greece which
continued to be expressed through popular songs and novels.

Notes
1 H. Zehr, Crime and Development of Modern Society (London, 1976), pp. 143–4.
2 K. Karpat, An Inquiry Into the Social Foundations of Nationalism in the Ottoman
State: From Social Estates to Classes, From Millets to Nations (Princeton University,
Research Monograph No. 39, 1973) and R. Clogg, ‘The Greek Millet in the Ottoman
Empire’, in B. Braude and B. Lewis (eds), Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire:
The Functioning of a Plural Society (New York, 1982), Vol. 2.
3 G. Arnakes, ‘The Greek Church of Constantinople and the Ottoman Empire’, Journal
of Modern History, Vol. 24 (1952); Th. Papadopoulos, Studies and Documents Relating
to the History of the Greek Church and People under Turkish Domination (Brussels,
1952) and P. Konortas, Othomanikes Theoriseis gia to Oikoumeniko Patriarcheio, 17–20
aionas [Ottoman Views on the Institution of Ecumenical Patriarch] (Athens, 1998).
4 In 1789, the Ecumenical Patriarch Gregory V published a document called Didaskalia
Patriki (Paternal Teaching). In it, the Greek Orthodox community was warned not to
fall for the Western trap called in the political world a ‘system of liberty’ because it
contradicts the Scriptures and leads the people away from Christian virtues. A few
years later, in 1807, the same Patriarch would lead a group of 1,000 Greek workers to
help the Ottoman authorities construct fortifications against Western invaders and pray
for the lengthy life of the Sultan. P. Sherrard, ‘Church, State and the Greek War of
Independence’, in R. Clogg (ed.), The Struggle for Greek Independence (London,
1973), p. 182.
5 Anonymous, Ellenike Nomarchia [Athens, 1957] p. 155, cited in Clogg, ‘The Greek
Mercantile Bourgeoisie: “Progressive” or “Reactionary” ’, in his (ed.) Balkan Society
in the Age of Greek Independence (London, 1981).
6 H. Inalcik, ‘Military and Fiscal Transformation in the Ottoman Empire, 1600–1700’,
Archivum Ottomanicum, Vol. 6 (1980); K. Barkey, Bandits and Bureaucrats: The
Ottoman Route to State Centralization (Ithaca, 1994).
7 J. Koliopoulos, Brigands with a Cause (Oxford, 1987), p. 26.
8 Ibid., p. 31, ft. 18. G. Vlachogiannes, Klephtes tou Moria [Bandits of Peloponnesos]
(Athens, 1935).

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 GERASSIMOS KARABELIAS

9 Ibid., p. 31.
10 R. Clogg, A Short History of Modern Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1986), p. 27.
11 The entrance or exit from a klephtic band was not limited or restricted. T. Vournas,
Armatoloi kai Klephtes (Athens, 1958).
12 Koliopoulos, Brigands with a Cause, p. 32.
13 W. McNeil, The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force and Society since AD 1000
(Chicago, 1982), p. 16.
14 J. Petropulos, Politics and Statecraft in the Kingdom of Greece (Princeton, 1968), p. 32.
15 They coerced peasants into cultivating their land, demanded fees for the return of
stolen animals or for mediating in disputes and levied tolls for crossing safely various
mountain passages. Koliopoulos, Brigands with a Cause, pp. 30–1.
16 Such well-known hereditary families were the Botsaris and Tzavelas in Souli, the
Varnakiotis, Iskos, Rangos, Kontogiannis, Grivas and Papakostas in western Rumeli
and Kriezotis, Mavrovouniotis, Gouras and Mamoures in eastern Rumeli.
17 Petropulos, Politics and Statecraft in the Kingdom of Greece, p. 34. See also,
N. Kotarides, Paradosiake Epanastase kai Eikosiena [Traditional Revolution and 1821]
(Athens, 1993), pp. 227–40
18 Koliopoulos, Brigands with a Cause, pp. 33–4. D. Skiotis, ‘From Bandit to Pasha: First
steps in the rise to power of Ali of Tepelen, 1750–1784’, International Journal of
Middle East Studies, Vol. 2, No. 3, (1971) p. 232.
19 Examples include the rise and fall of Katsantonis and Nikotsaras. G. Finley, History of
the Greek Revolution (London, 1971), Vol. 1, pp. 20–4.
20 Such examples are: (a) the Theodoros Grivas’s band in Vonitsa formed around his
brothers (Floros, Stavros and Alexis) and close friends and relatives, (b) the leading
armed bands of Souliotes, the Tzavelas and Botsaris, which were built around close
and distant relatives of each family and whose membership was restricted only
to Souliot’s kin, (c) the Theodoros Kolokotronis’s band in Peloponessos and the
Mavromichalis’s band in Mane were formed around sons, sons-in-law and close rela-
tives. In fact, the majority of armed groups were formed and functioned along these
lines. N. Kasomoulis, Enthymemata Stratiotika tes Epanastaseos ton Ellenon,
1821–1832 [Military Reminiscences from the Greek Revolution, 1821–1832] (Athens,
1939–1942) edited by G. Vlachogiannis, pp. 28–9, 188–9, 394–5]. As Petropulos
points out, ‘ “Family” was not synonymous with “household”.’ ‘Family denoted many
households, extending even to those of distant cousins, bound together by ties of blood . . .
Kinship and material interests bound as many as a hundred individuals or more into
an extensive group which regarded itself a family . . . [Through] institutionalized
ties . . . marriage, adoption, koumparia and fraternal friendship . . . the family expanded
considerably.’ Petropulos, Politics and Statecraft in the Kingdom of Greece, p. 57.
21 An example is the observation of the Briton, Leicester Stanhope, of Captain Stornaris’s
relationship with his armed men. ‘[Stornaris] possesses about one hundred and twenty
villages, and each of these contains, upon an average, about seventy families . . . The
inferior Capitani, under Stornaris, each receive the dues of three or four families, and
each command a certain number of men. The regular soldiers under Stornaris amount
400 . . . they are paid only during three months a year . . . they live well and eat twice a
day bread and meat . . . They are subjected to no military discipline or punishment, and
can quit their chief at pleasure.’ Quoted from Petropulos, Politics and Statecraft in the
Kingdom of Greece, p. 55.
22 An acute observer of modern Greece in the 1830s, the Bavarian scholar Friedrich
Thiersch points out that ‘as there was no central authority, capable of controlling and
defending the inhabitants, each was forced to look elsewhere for support and protection.
The most natural and surest support was found in the family, whose members and even

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relatives . . . [were] ready to aid each other . . . In the second place, the isolated man had
to take his position in the midst of others. According, as he felt himself weak or strong,
he made himself the partisan of some influential man or collected partisans about
himself. In this manner, each distinguished man has a more or less considerable
number of subordinate persons who associate with him, listen to him, ask his advice,
execute his wishes and defend his interests, always careful to merit his respect and win
his confidence.’ Quoted from Petropulos, Politics and Statecraft in the Kingdom of
Greece, p. 54.
23 Finlay, ‘Brigandage in Greece’, Saturday Review, 6 May 1871 and Koliopoulos,
Brigands with a Cause, pp. 30–1.
24 As Kontogeorgis argues, for the simple peasant it is not of great importance whether
the goal of the struggle of these armed groups is for freedom only for their own
members or as part of a greater scheme that included other socio-political groups as
well. In the struggles of the klephts and armatoloi, the people identified with them due
to their deep hatred for the timar owners, the primates and the Turkish or Albanian
tyrants. They also admired the heroic stance of the klepht against the powerful social,
religious and political mechanisms of the Ottoman status quo. G. Kontogeorgis,
‘Oi Elladikes Koinonikes kai Politikes Dynameis sten Ystere Tourkokratia’ [The Greek
Social and Political Forces in Late Turkish Rule], in G. Kontogeorgis (ed.), Koinonikes
kai Politikes Dynameis Sten Ellada [Social and Political Forces in Greece] (Athens,
1977), p. 31.
25 According to a famous song all klepht declare that ‘Ego ragias den ginomai/ Tourkous
na proskynao/ Den proskynao tous archondes kai tous kotsambasedes’ (I refuse to
become a rea’ya[subject]/I refuse to accept the rule of the Turks/ I will not obey to the
law of the primates and the political leaders). A. Politis, Demotika Tragoudia [Popular
Ballads] (Athens, 1991) Second Edition, p. 85; G. Tsoustas, Apanthisma Heroicon
Poiimaton [Selection of Heroic Poems] (Athens, 1893). St. Damianakos, Ethos kai
Politismos ton Epikindynon Taxeon sten Ellada [Ethos and Civilization of the
Dangerous Classes in Greece] (Athens, 2005), pp. 40–1.
26 V. Sfyroeras, The Greek Crews of the Ottoman Navy (Athens, 1968).
27 A. Krantonelli, Greek Piracy and Corsair (Athens: Estia, 1998), pp. 27–32 and
D. Zakynthinos, ‘Corsaires et pirates dans la mers greques au temps de la domination
turque’, L’Hellenisme Contemporain, Avril-Mai 1939, Paris, pp. 695–738.
28 K. Kome, ‘Oi Maniates Peirates’ [The Maniates Pirates] in Kathemerine (Epta
Emeres), 16 February 1997, pp. 20–1.
29 V. Sfyrorea, ‘Ta ‘koursarika tou Katsoni’ [The Corsair Boats of Katsonis] in
Kathemerine (Epte Emeres), 16 February 1997, pp. 10–1 and E. Yannakopoulou,
‘Quelques repaires de pirates en Grèce de l’Ouest, lieux de commerce illégal du
XVIè,e siècle’, Actes du Iie Colloque International d’Histoire: Economies méditer-
ranèenne, Equilibres et Inter-communications (Athens, 1985).
30 S. Howe, An Historical Sketch of the Greek Revolution (New York: 1828), p. 34.
31 J. C. Alexander, Brigandage and Public Order in the Morea, 1685–1806 (Athens, 1985).
32 For example, George Karaiskakis considered Agrapha, an area he claimed to have
liberated, as his own land and came into direct conflict with Giannakis Rangos, the
man whom the civilian government had appointed as military governor of that area.
Similar disputes broke out between Alexi Vlachopoulos and Ioanni Staiko over the area
of Vlochos, Kosta Siadema and Christo Makri over the area of Apokouro, George
Valtino and Demo Skaltsa over the district of Lidoriki and so forth. As Petropulos
points out, given that the idea of a nation had only then started to penetrate the minds
of military leaders, ‘their main political objective was simply that of expanding the
boundaries of their captanliks and consolidating their own power within them.’
Petropulos, Politics and Statecraft in the Kingdom of Greece, p. 33.

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 GERASSIMOS KARABELIAS

33 M. Heper, ‘Center and Periphery in the Ottoman Empire, with Special Reference to the
Nineteenth Century’, International Political Science Review, Vol. 1, (1980) and
S. Mardin, ‘Power, Civil Society and Culture in the Ottoman Empire’, Comparative
Studies in Society and History, Vol. 12, (1969).
34 As Nassau W. Senior observes, ‘in Greece all power is considered a source of profit.’
Petropulos also argues that ‘when the success of the Revolution made the state an
object of contention among Greeks . . . a specific post [in the state apparatus became] a
source of private profit to its holder rather than an instrument of public benefit to all.’
Petropulos, Politics and Statecraft in the Kingdom of Greece, p. 60.
35 As Diamandouros points out, in the minds of military leaders any attempt through
state documents to take away from their control the political, military and financial
supervision of a specific area was considered either as an act of conspiracy by their
rivals or as a cheap joke. In their world view, a ‘neutral’ state mechanism was impos-
sible. P. N. Diamandouros, Oi Aparches tes Sygrotises Synchronou Kratous sten Ellada,
1821–1828 [The Beginning of the Formation Process of a Modern State in Greece,
1821–1828] (Athens, 2002), pp. 96–7.
36 Thus, Stornaris and Likatas tried to settle old accounts with Iskos; Notis Botsaris with
Bakolas, Tsongas with Staikos, Rangos with Karaiskakis, Plapouta with Deligianne,
Kolokotronis with Zaime and Londo. For additional examples, D. Dontas, The Last
Phase of the War of Independence in Western Greece (Thessaloniki, 1966), pp. 54–6.
37 Two famous klepht who attempted to revolt against the Ottoman government without
expecting any type of assistance from foreign powers, Dionysios Skylosophos in
Epirus in 1611 and Ephthymios Vlakhavas in Thessaly in 1808, failed to see their
fellow military leaders joining in. In fact, they were left alone and were in the end
severely punished by the Ottoman authorities for their actions.
38 ‘Money is power,’ argued the American philhellene George Jarvis who made an attempt
to play the role of the captain in revolutionary Greece but with limited success due to
limited financial resources. ‘Without it, [even] the greatest man is not considered
[of any value] here.’ Quoted from Koliopoulos, Brigands with a Cause, p. 60.
39 On the role of Philehelenes see W. S. Clair, That Greece Might Still Be Free: The
Philhellenes in the War of Independence (London, 1972) and D. Dakin, British and
American Philhellenes during the War of Greek Independence (Thessaloniki, 1955). On the
role of foreign powers, see C. W. Crawley, The Question of Greek Independence: A Study
of British Policy in the Near East, 1821–1833 (Cambridge, 1930) and A. vo Prokesch-
Osten, Geschichte des Abfalls der Griechen vom Turkischen Reiche im Jahre 1821 und der
Grundung des Hellenischen Konigreiches aus diplomatischen Standpunkte (Graz, 1970).
40 Diamandouros, Oi Aparches tes Sygrotises Synchronou Kratous sten Ellada,
pp. 121–47; T. Stamatopoulos, O Esoterikos Agonas kata ten Epanastase tou 1821
[The Internal Struggle During the Revolution of 1821] (Athens, 1971) Vol. A, p. 202.
41 Kontogiorgis, ‘Oi Elladikes Koinonikes kai Politikes Dynameis sten Ystere
Tourkokratia’, p. 37.
42 C. Mango, ‘The Phanariots and the Byzantine Tradition’ in Clogg (ed.), The Struggle
for Greek Independence.
43 Petropulos, Politics and Statecraft in the Kingdom of Greece, pp. 77–82.
44 Diamandouros, Oi Aparches tes Sygrotises Synchronou Kratous sten Ellada,
pp. 98–101; G. Finley, History of the Greek Revolution (London, 1971), pp. 170–1.
45 G. D. Frangos, ‘The Philiki Etairia: A Premature National Coalition’ in Clogg (ed.),
1973, The Struggle for Greek Independence, p. 142.
46 Among those who served lengthy prison sentence was the Chief of Peloponnesian
Forces, Theodoros Kolokotrones.
47 At the time of its liberation, the borders of the Greek state extended from Peloponnesos
to Central Greece. Some coastal islands, Hydra, Spetses and Cyclades were also
included in the new state.

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48 On the ideological and practical differences between the modernists and the traditionalists
in Greek society and politics before, during and after the formation of the Greek state, See
Diamandouros, Oi Aparches tes Sygrotises Synchronou Kratous sten Ellada, pp. 108–47.
49 St Papageorgiou, E Stratiotike Politike tou Kapodistria [The Military Policy of
Kapodistrias] (Athens, 1986), p. 38.
50 St Papadopoulos, ‘E Organosis tou Stratou sten Dytike Roumeli kata ten Epoche tou
Kapodistria’ [The military organization in western Rumeli during the period of
Kapodistria] Ellenika, Vol. 8, (1964).
51 Th Veremis, Kapodistrias and the French: The Formation of a Regular Greek Army
(Athens, 1982), p. 16.
52 Koliopoulos, Brigands with a Cause, p. 67.
53 For a lengthy account on the formation, organization and function of Chiliarchies and
Tagmata, Papageorgiou, E Stratiotike Politike tou Kapodistria, pp. 49–175.
54 The Souliotes and fighters from the unredeemed lands of Thessaly, Epirus, Macedonia
and the islands were in greater need of funds than the rest. State funds appeared
extremely attractive to their leaders. Papageorgiou, E Stratiotike Politike tou
Kapodistria, pp. 16–17.
55 Petropulos, Politics and Statecraft in the Kingdom of Greece, pp. 59–161.
56 Papageorgiou, E Stratiotike Politike tou Kapodistria, pp. 179–95.
57 D. Themele-Katephore, The Struggle Against Piracy and the Sea Court during the first
Kapodistrian era, 1828–1829 (Athens, 1973), pp. 43–53.
58 Ibid., pp. 67–82.
59 Ibid., pp. 83–9.
60 Petropulos, Politics and Statecraft in the Kingdom of Greece, pp.120–4; Papageorgiou,
E Stratiotike Politike tou Kapodistria, pp. 166–74.
61 Veremis, Kapodistrias and the French, pp. 17; Petropulos, Politics and Statecraft in the
Kingdom of Greece, p. 127.
62 B. Kremmydas, ‘H Dolofonia tou Kapodistria’ [The assassination of Kapodistria],
Eranistes (1977), pp. 245–50, 262–70.
63 As the Bavarian scholar Georg Ludvig von Maurer pointed out in 1835 ‘plundered
fields and villages transformed into heaps of ruins are to this moment the eloquent
testimony of the achievement of those days [the anarchy of 1832]’. G. L. Maurer,
O Ellenikos Laos [The Greek Nation] (Athens,1976), p. 148 [O. Rombake (trans.)].
64 Clogg, (1986) A Short History of Modern Greece, p. 67. Although a number of Greek and
foreign scholars have painted with dark colours Kapodistrias’ authoritarian attitude,
they have overlooked the fact that even one of his assassins-to-be, Petrobeys
Mavromichalis, had warned Bishop Ignatios in October of 1827 that if Kapodistrias
did not bring with him at least 6,000 loyal armed men, his prestige in the eyes of the
people would diminish in a few months and he might lose his own life. Diavazo
[Reading], Vol. 275, (1991), p. 58.
65 M. C. Hatzeioannou, ‘Oi Emporokapetanaioi Meta ten Epanastase: Merikes
Paratereseis’ [The Merchant Marine Captains after the Revolution: Some
Observations] in E Epanastase tou 1821: Meletes ste Mneme tew Despoinas Themeli-
Katephore [The Revolution of 1821: Studies in Memory of Depoina Themeli-Katephore]
(Athens, 1994), pp. 157–64.
66 Maurer, O Ellenikos Laos, p. 162. As Strong points out, the new regime brought with
it to Greece 5,500 men recruited from German states. Fr Strong, Greece as a Kingdom
(London, 1842), pp. 280–1.
67 Although the process of disbanding the irregular groups has been seen by some scholars
as an unjust state measure towards the war of liberation veterans, it must be pointed out
that the majority of these men did not have a legitimate claim to such an identity. As
Koliopoulos argues, “only a fraction of the irregulars in liberated Greece were at this
time real war veterans, the rest being armed men of every possible description who

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joined the bands after the war . . . certificates of war service were never more easy to
acquire, as captains, wishing to increase and strengthen their military clienteles, were
always obliging to old or new clients”. Koliopoulos, Brigands with a Cause, pp. 76–7.
68 Government Gazette, 8 March 1833.
69 ‘The regency’, Petropulos claims, ‘wanted the royal government militarily strong,
strong enough to withstand the demands or to punish the abuses of any party. For
absolute loyalty, non-Greek troops, free from rival local and party allegiances, were
considered a better bet than the Greeks.’ Petropulos, Politics and Statecraft in the
Kingdom of Greece, p. 166.
70 Maurer claims that in a few months the regular infantry, artillery and cavalry units
learned how to fight and conduct themselves as well the forces that had been recruited
in Bavaria for the Greek government in 1833. Maurer, O Ellenikos Laos, p. 563.
71 Whereas Petropulos argues that the number of irregulars in the early 1830s was
5,000 men, Finlay argues that their number was close to 13,000. However, they both
agree on the number of men enlisted to serve in the unit of Akrovolistes.
72 Petropulos, Politics and Statecraft in the Kingdom of Greece, pp. 167–8.
73 Government Gazette, 3 June 1833.
74 Maurer, O Ellenikos Laos, p. 573.
75 Government Gazette, 18 September 1835 and 11 October 1835.
76 A traditional dress of Greek warriors similar to the Scottish Kilt.
77 Government Gazette, 16 October 1843.
78 The irregular groups were divided into brigands (listes), guerrillas (antartes),
brigand-guerrillas (listantartes), brigand-armatoloi (listarmatoloi), brigand-captains
(listokapetanioi) and Turkish captains (Tourkokapetanioi). I. Koliopoulos, ‘Listes kai
Listantartes sten kentrike Ellada to 1835–1836’ [Brigands and brigand-guerrillas in
Central Greece from 1835–1836], Mnemon, Vol. 7, (1979).
79 J. Levandis, The Greek Foreign Debt and the Great Powers, 1821–1898 (New York, 1944).
80 On the socio-political effect of the land issue in Greece, See W. McGrew, ‘The Greek
“National Estates” ’: Disposition of Former Turkish Properties during the War of
Independence”, Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Cincinnati, 1971.
81 Captain Roupakias, a well-known and popular brigand, in his letter to a Turkish
commander explains that he and his men do not see themselves as either ‘brigands’ or
‘rebels’. They were simply trying to earn their ‘day’s bread’. General State Archives
(Greece), F160.
82 The cases of Korkontzelos, Voulgaris, Velentzas and Giatagganas serve as examples.
83 Koliopoulos, Brigands with a Cause, pp. 102–3.
84 Although the aim of the military officers who led the coup d’etat was to limit King
Otto’s political power through a Constitution, one of the hidden goals was to take away
from his control the military and security forces. Soon after the September 1843 coup,
the cadets showed signs of lack of discipline and their instructors became indifferent
to the Academy’s progress or simply interested in accommodating the demands of their
extended family members and relatives. E. Stasinopoulos, E Istoria tes Scholes
Evekpidon [History of the Greek Military Academy] (Athens, 1954), p. 72.
85 On the issue of amnesty, See Government Gazette throughout the year 1844. On the
movement of outlaws to the northern borders and Kolettis’ behaviour, See G. Aspreas,
Politike Istoria tew Neoteras Ellados, 1821–1928 [Political Hisrory of Modern Greece,
1821–1928] (Athens, 1930), pp. 207–8.
86 Koliopoulos argues that Alexandros Rangavis, the Greek foreign minister, wrote in
1856 that ‘the Greek army had never been, nor was meant to be, anything but an
internal peace-keeping force, as Greece’s national boundaries and independence were
guaranteed by the Protecting powers’. A few years later, in 1868, Deligiorgis ‘stated in
[the Greek] Parliament that the army’s duties were limited to internal security and tax
collection’. Koliopoulos, (1987), Brigands with a Cause, p. 296.

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87 Ibid., pp. 135–55.

88 For instance, at the end of 1858 only a few outlaws, no more than fifty, existed in the
entire Rumeli. Famous brigand-chiefs such as Davelis, Zapheiris, Drelas, Beloulias,
Kainourios and Chortarias were killed in action whereas a score of other well-known
chiefs were arrested. General State Archives, F154.
89 K. Papathanasopoulos, Ellenike Emporike Naftilia, 1833–1856 [Greek Merchantile
Marine] (Athens, 2001), pp. 49–93.
90 The landing of British and French armed forces at the port of Piraeus and the block-
ade of all major ports by the British in 1854 due to their dissatisfaction with the close
relations which had developed between King Otto I and the Tsar was a ‘natural’ out-
come of the patron-client relationship between the Great Powers and the country.
When the garrison of Athens revolted against King Otto, the latter asked the advice
of the ambassadors of the Protecting Powers, did not attempt to suppress the revolt
but left the country without abdicating his throne.
91 J. Koliopoulos, ‘Brigandage and Irredentism in Nineteenth-Century Greece’, in
M. Blinkhorn and Th Veremis (eds), Modern Greece: Nationalism and Nationality
(Athens, 1990), pp. 79–81.
92 Petropulos, Politics and Statecraft in the Kingdom of Greece, p. 171 and K. Tsichli-
Aroni, Agrotikes Exegerseis sten Palaia Ellada, 1833–1881 [Peasantry Uprisings in
Old Greece] (Athens, 1989), p. 271.
93 E. Deligiorges, Rapport au roi sur la surete publique (Athens, 1870), pp. 12–13.
94 R. Jenkins, The Dilesi Murders (London, 1961).
95 Government Gazette, 5 March 1871.
96 As Clogg argues, ‘in the course of a trial of a deputy from Thessaly in 1894, it
emerged that the spoils of a band of Thessalian brigands had been divided three ways,
with one share for the brigands, one for the church and one for the local deputy and
his two brothers.’ R. Clogg, A Short History of Modern Greece, p. 85. On the close
relations and mutual interests between chiefs of bandit groups and politicians and
landowners, See Ch. Tuckerman, The Greeks of To-day (London, 1872), pp. 235–7.
97 A deputy described the appointment of volunteer irregular groups employed by the
government as frontier guards as ‘wolves’ called to protect people from the other
‘wolves’. Quoted from Koliopoulos (1987), Brigands with a Cause, p. 181.
98 Th Veremis, Oi Epemvaseis tou Stratou sten Ellenike Politike, 1916–1936 [Military
Interventions in Greek Politics, 1916–1936] (Athens: Odysseas, 1983), p. 16.
99 Ibid., pp. 15–16.
100 The case of Pavlos Melas’s group and their activities in Macedonia during the
early twentieth century constitutes such an example. N.P. Mela, Pavlos Melas
(Athens, 1964).
101 Quoted from Koliopoulos (1987), Brigands with a Cause, p. 291.
102 A. Batalas, ‘Send a Thief to Catch a Thief: State Building and the Employment of
Irregular Military Formations in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Greece’ in D. Davis and
A. Pereira (eds) Irregular armed forces and their role in politics and sate formation
(Cambridge, 2003) pp. 164–7.

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 12
SEIZING THE INITIATIVE,
REGAINING A VOICE
The Palestinian al-Aqsa intifada as a struggle
of the marginalized

Roger Heacock

Introduction
Karl Marx, in his Theses on Feuerbach, notes that previous materialist thinkers
had left out one essential socially explanatory element, the specific human subject.
This critique applies to many historical and political writings. The Subaltern
Studies Group (SSG) took the critique to heart, and attempted to write a different
kind of history, whose most important characteristic is a “shift in perspective,”
whereby “the agency of change is located in the insurgent or the ‘subaltern’.”1 Who
is meant by the subaltern may change in place and time, but Edward Said is right
to specify the centrality of the urban poor and the peasants (and there is no longer
the reification of a specific organized social class such as the “proletariat”),2
whose particular modes of resistance (referring to the Indian case, but, by impli-
cation, more generally) provide the key to understanding large-scale, prolonged
social upheavals, particularly in the third world.
This approach certainly represents an “epistemological break,” to use the
expression of Louis Althusser, one of the oft-cited models of the SSG, as
compared with previous thinking about revolutions. Frantz Fanon, for example,
while fearing a possible degeneration of the postcolonial state, had contrasted
colonial society, divided and inchoate, with the allegedly united postliberation
national society. As noted by Alexis Wick,

[w]hat is particularly hegemonic (and problematic) in the discourse

of anticipatory nationalism, is the categorical adoption of the national
framework (defined in terms taken from European history) as the supreme
political entity of modernity and progress. To quote the nonchalant terms
of Fanon himself: ‘national culture is the most elaborated form of
culture.’This position, it should be added, came as a reaction to the racist

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theses of Eurocentric humanism, but it is significant [to note] that Fanon

in no way questions the frame of reference of his political philosophy
(which is, once again, of European inspiration). So it is that Fanon,
abandoning his usual critical spirit, takes the existence of the Algerian
nation as a point of departure, which ‘logically’ implies its right to
self-determination. He contrasts the divided colonial situation with a
‘homogeneous’ national society. He postulates an essentialist vision of
the Algerian nation whose homogeneity is anchored in the Arabic
language. We know today, after so many miseries (notably in Kabylia),
that that position was false: worse, it was oppressive.3

Fanon, like many others before and after him, was confusing the ideology of a
state with the identity of its citizens. Whereas, in other words, the national ideology
may in its discourse be unitary, in every case the identity of its citizens is mixed,
shifting over time, hybrid, multilayered, and conflictual.
The critique addressed by the SSG to Indian historiography in particular
certainly applies just as much and perhaps more to the Palestinian case. This is
because we are dealing with the phenomenon of European colonial and Zionist
histories at the same time. Traditional European colonialism already favors a
focalization on institutional and discursive elements of the interaction between
colonizer and colonized, and therefore on its two protagonists. Both of these are
the elements that Western and Western-trained historians, in their frequent
ignorance of the host society, can best comprehend: in considering the dyad of
colonizer–colonized, there is no strong impulse to look into the depth of either
one singly. As for the history of Zionism, it is by definition premised on the power
of certain founding myths, such as the integral national dream of the Jewish
people and, with regard to the Palestinians, the idea of the people without a land
for a land without people. In both cases, the mission is to people or to civilize a
blank and therefore uniform space (geographically and socially speaking).
The reaction of the spokespeople of the colonized Palestinians has been equally
uniform, and so Palestinian historiography at first tried, in the face of denial
by the colonizer, to prove the existence of a Palestinian people as a historic,
unitary entity, one, moreover, which, since the 1960s at least, is guided by an
institutionalized and cohesive elite. This approach may well be understood as a
reaction to the absurd claim of the colonizers, but it has, as a result, failed simply
to take the Palestinian people as a point of departure if not a given, and more
closely to analyze its internal and external conflicts, notably class-based ones.
The result is to give the “other side” an epistemological lead, thus reinforcing
what is the very essence of colonialism. But rather than insisting on the need for
a new epistemology of the Palestinian question as I have done elsewhere,4 I will
try in these pages to illustrate the importance of the social dimension in general,
and the pressure of the poor and marginalized classes in particular, in modern and
contemporary Palestinian history, notably during the period of the al-Aqsa
intifada which broke out in September, 2000.

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Palestinian contemporary history: a working model

Of particular relevance to the present analysis is the way in which Partha
Chatterjee shows that in India, a reevaluation of previous historical works and
methods occurred in the 1970s, when liberal and Marxist orthodoxies regarding
Indian history were questioned, and a new approach adopted. “It was all very
well, these critics argued, to pick out the many undoubtedly modern elements
in the thought of the nineteenth-century social reformers and ideologues, but
what significance do these elements of modernity acquire when looked at in
the context of the evolving colonial economy of the same period, of massive
deindustrialization and destitution, of unbearable pressures on the land leading to
a virtually irreversible process of regressive rent-exploitation and stagnation in
levels of productivity, of the crushing of peasant resistance, of the growing social
gulf rather than bonds of alliance between a modernized, Western-educated, urban
elite, and the rest of the nation? In what sense can this modernity be reconciled
with any meaningful conception of the national-popular?”5
In attempting to find a way to break with these orthodoxies, Chatterjee designs
a model of colonial and postcolonial nationalism which it is useful for us to
understand here. For him, there is in the history of nationalism of colonial
formations, the moment of departure, which produces awareness of the superiority
of the West, along with the idea that one should combine the material superiority of
the West with the moral advantages of the eastern or indigenous culture. This is
when some indigenous people begin to seek ways out of their subjection, by
massively adopting colonially inspired strategies against the colonizer. These are
by definition the exclusive purview of the Western-trained elite. Then comes
the moment of maneuver, in which the historical consolidation of the national
movement is secured in the colony through decrying the modern even as a
protracted struggle has gotten underway. The moment of arrival occurs when
nationalist thought has attained its fullest development, through a discourse of
order, of the rational organization of power, at a time when the indigenous elites
have successfully taken over the state apparatus.6 The Subaltern Studies Group’s
mission was to probe beyond that third moment.
In the case of Palestine, these “moments” can be made to fit, but somewhat
awkwardly, because the type of colonization to which it was subjected was a dual
one, including the classic, European form, for the brief period 1918–1948 and,
simultaneously, Zionist settler colonization which was aimed at disempowering
the local population and replacing it to a great extent. Since the Palestinians
did not have the demographic and technological tools with which to fight off
both brands of colonialism, and certainly not both of them simultaneously, the
period of struggle has been both a much longer and a somewhat more convoluted
one. In particular, the relationship between Palestinian elites and masses was and
is always being blurred because of the precariousness of the social formation,
always threatened with obliteration. It is not as easy, therefore, to set the
Westernized elites and the locally nourished movement in as stark a contrast to

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one another. For this reason, one can usefully take into account the successive
phases proposed by Joseph Massad,7 in his attempt to adapt Chatterjee (and
indirectly, Gramsci) to the Jordanian historical case. Massad proposes four stages
in the development of the nation. They are: (1) the “colonial moment,” “when
colonialism establishes a state-framework on a colonized territory/country . . . ;”
(2) “the anticolonial moment,” when struggle is generalized; (3) the “expansion
and contraction of the nation,” when the now-independent territory is amended in
one sense or another, by winning or losing new territories; and (4) the moment of
internal implosion “generally characterized by civil war or revolution.” This
brings us closer to the Palestinian case, but there is a vital missing phase, during
which the colonial masters are challenged and before they have been replaced.
In Palestine this is still going on, whereas in Jordan it hardly occurred, since the
British were replaced when Glubb Pasha was dismissed by the king. Until the year
2000, Palestine was going through a combination of Chatterjee’s moments 2 and 3
on the one hand, and what one could call moment 1a in Massad, the protracted but
unsuccessful attempt to wrest control, and also moment 2, with the creation of
the PLO and Fateh, among other resistance organizations, and 3, as Palestine’s
geographic and demographic shape contracted with the acceptance of two states
in the 1970s and the Declaration of independence in Algiers in November, 1988.
Since September, 2000, it has been a continuation of Massad’s moment 3, with
the reoccupation by Israel of previously “autonomous” parts of Palestine, and
moment 4, the implosion. This implosion has been as significant as it has been
confidential, pitting the domesticated leadership and its middle and lower middle
class supporters against the broad masses of the people in the camps and villages.
Chatterjee and Massad together provide a key to the paradigmatic nature
of contemporary Palestinian history. The struggle between the elites and the
masses, between anti-colonial strategies, and indeed, between Palestinian political
groups, coincides to a great extent with a struggle between the last two moments
of maneuver and arrival. The PLO, having become the proto-state, has reached
the moment of arrival, or tried very hard to argue that that moment had been
reached, during the Oslo period and, much less convincingly, after the outbreak of
the al-Aqsa intifada, especially in 2003, with the nomination of new “governments,”
the appointment of successive “prime ministers,” the declaration of “states of
emergency,” and so on. One can likewise compare the situation in Palestine with
the Indian case, where according to Chatterjee, the moment of arrival had some
rather familiar characteristics.
And so the split between two domains of politics – one, a politics of the
elite, and the other, a politics of the subaltern classes – was replicated
in the sphere of mature nationalist thought by an explicit recognition of
the split between a domain of rationality and a domain of unreason, a
domain of science and a domain of faith, a domain of organization and
a domain of spontaneity. But it was a rational understanding which, by
the very act of its recognition of the Other, also effaced the Other.8

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Historical background
The Palestinian social pyramid was rapidly transformed in the twentieth century,
as a direct result of the conflict against the British, then the Zionists. Here is not
the place to undertake a social history of the Palestinian people but one must
begin at least with the 1936–1939 revolt against British rule, because it resulted
in the decimation of thousands of peasant activists, the backbone of the uprising.
It also discredited the existing landowning and coastal city elites and began
undermining their legitimacy.9 This process came to a conclusion in the 1947–1949
period, when during the Nakba and as its direct result, the restructuring of the
society got underway through the expulsion from their homes in the newly
created State of Israel of three-quarters of a million people. Preparation for a
protracted struggle began immediately around the new mass base of the social
formation that rapidly emerged, and that has, despite shifts, been the Palestinian
social skeleton ever since: refugee camp dwellers, workers, and petty bourgeois
intellectuals, virtually all of them of poor or modest, usually peasant, origins.10
In 1947–1949, then, half the population was driven out of their homes. In 1967
this fate befell several hundred thousands more. In 1991, Palestinians were driven
out of Kuwait by the hundreds of thousands. A considerable portion of these
returned to the occupied territories and beginning in 1994, 150,000 people moved
back into Palestine with the Palestinian Authority (PA). These mainly out- but also
in-migrations each time profoundly transformed the society and redistributed the
political and economic cards, creating new elites and new underprivileged classes.
The society was therefore transformed through several seismic shifts. Those of
1947–1949 and 1967 resulted in massive out-migrations, and in the stretching
of the society over huge geographical areas and several states, while the events of
1990–1991 and 1994–1995 consisted in involuntary or voluntary in-migrations.
The result of the out-migration accompanied each time with the installation of
Israeli military occupation over new portions of the country, was the restructuring
of the Palestinian social and economic pyramid. From the beginning, as noted by
Rosemary Sayigh,11 Palestinian post-Nakba society revealed a “greater readiness
for militancy amongst poor as against middle class Palestinians,” a trend that, all
the glorification of the role of the PLO bureaucracy and the patriotic merchants
to the contrary, continued to be true, and became ever more so, in the succeeding
decades of struggle. To quote the same author once again, these peasants (in the
case of the Lebanon-based Palestinians studied by Sayigh, camp-based ones)
were anxious “to end both their national and their class oppression. It was young
workers and students from the camps who became fedayeen, while middle class
Palestinians who joined the P.R.M. [Palestinian Revolutionary Movement] moved
mainly into ‘white collar’ forms of struggle: organization, diplomacy, information”
and did not display the same readiness to die. In the West Bank, the Hashemite
monarchy attempted to “Jordanianize” Palestinians, while practicing a discrimi-
natory policy against them and in favor of Transjordanians, even as they created
a more or less loyal elite.

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In the second instance, after 1967, the occupation, despite its best efforts,12
shattered the stability of the existing pro-Jordanian elite, and functioned in such
a way as unwittingly to empower a new one, whose members chose to identify with
the PLO in the quest for legitimacy. Interestingly, the military replaced Jordanian
rule, which had in many ways been just as authoritarian, and automatically under-
mined the pro-Jordanians despite the occupation’s best efforts to prop them up.
There resulted a vacuum of elite-level legitimacy, because Israel could of course
not be mistaken for an indigenous leadership (whereas the Jordanians had tried to
appear to be one). It was impossible for even the most moderate members of
the Palestinian social elites to identify with their new rulers in the way they had
sometimes been able to do, thanks to a combination of cooptation and intimidation,
in regard to the Hashemite regime.
During the precise period of time where the occupation was being established,
the PLO was going through a period of rapid consolidation under the hegemony
of the Fateh movement headed by Yasir Arafat. Fateh and its leadership, but also
other PLO member groups such as the PFLP were by definition exile organizations,
lacking a strong geographical or (at first) charisma-based relationship to Palestine.
In this respect they were comparable to other revolutionary movements, for example
the Bolshevik leadership prior to 1917. They had to work to win over the masses.
This was not easy at first, and they searched for mobilizing slogans from 1958 to
1965, as shown in their writings (notably in the journal Filistinuna). All the while
they were, therefore, a freewheeling bureaucracy, financed by diaspora Palestinians
and oil-rich Gulf states, and disposing of employees and troops. This situation
coincidentally relieved them of responsibility toward a stable constituency made
up in their majority, as noted above, of peasants and proletarianized camp-based
refugees. Thus were all kinds of adventurous decisions facilitated, some of which
proved positive and some negative, if not disastrous, with respect to the long-term
interests of their people as a whole. Fateh’s instinctive launching of a (largely
imaginary) armed struggle in 1965 (which it called the “revolution”) was a stroke
of genius which, because it was so far from any concrete relationship of forces
and potentials on the ground, could only have come from such a “disembodied”
leadership, driven, it is true, by the demands of thousands of would-be fedayeen
two years later, in the wake of the 1967 defeat, and even more so following the
battle of Karameh in 1968.
The “armed struggle” did indeed mobilize large portions of the masses, at first
in the refugee camps outside Palestine. The “Black September” disaster in Jordan,
1970–1971, resulting in the transfer of the PLO to Lebanon, was brought on by the
refusal on the part of the PLO to take the power relationships into consideration,
based on the voluntaristic notion that an act of will would create facts, and that
King Hussein would not dare to move too forcefully against the fedayeen for a
variety of considerations related to inter-Arab relations. Nor did the PLO possess
the kind of administrative structure in the Jordanian camps at that time, along
with the authority and knowledge of the capabilities of the refugee masses, to lead
a successful campaign against the Jordanian army, that is to say, to hold out long

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enough for the other Arab states (and notably the Egyptian president Gamal
Abdel-Nasser) to intervene in time and impose a truce.
In Lebanon where the PLO next installed its cadre, it was resolved that the
mistake (the absence of a power base) would not be made again. As a result, it
carved out an area in which it was in effective control (the Lebanese south) and
established a true form of governance within the refugee camps, in which it was
able in fact to maneuver like “fish in the sea.” The Lebanese period of Palestinian
history is one during which the leaders and the masses were most united, and
during which the PLO enjoyed an impressive degree of legitimacy among its
people in the camps, one which radiated out into other parts of the Arab world,
including the occupied territories. There was still a problem related to the only
partially embodied quality of PLO administration, and that was the continuous
degradation of relations with the Lebanese people and state, paving the way for
Israel’s expulsion of the PLO leadership from Lebanon in 1982.13
In the occupied Palestinian territories, meanwhile, the society was transforming
itself, with the creation of a dominant camp – but also village-based proletariat.14
Mobility was sharply restricted after the occupation of June, 1967, although
thousands of Palestinians were still able to go to the Gulf in the quest for
employment. Their remittances could only, in the eyes of the Israelis, increase
stability at home. The hundreds of thousands of people who spent some time as
day laborers in Israeli agriculture, construction, and tourist infrastructure made
up a real proletariat, albeit a special one, since they lived in one society and
worked in another. They received (relatively) high wages and were rapidly
exposed to the type of Western-oriented, capitalist society that was entirely
absent elsewhere in the Arab world, and notably in countries that played host to
the Palestinian refugees, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. During the twenty years
leading up to the first intifada, this Palestinian proletariat, based principally in
the Gaza Strip but also in the West Bank, developed for the first time a degree
of self-confidence combined with anger (because, despite the acceptable level
of remuneration, the workers were not given adequate social benefits, because
their hours were very long and difficult, and because the daily humiliations
of occupation left deep marks) which gradually empowered it. Rather than
searching “for leadership”15 among the rising local elites (the PLO-oriented,
petty bourgeois intellectuals working in the new Palestinian universities and
NGOs, in addition to the local merchant class, who even as their fortunes
improved, thirsted for broader horizons closed by the occupation), the
Palestinian masses slowly began to search for “a way out.” Their memories of
Jordanian repression and anger at a Hashemite regime which had not, prior to the
Israeli conquest of 1967, given them the means of defending themselves meant
that there was virtually no interest in going back. Anger rose steadily, and the
message from the PLO in Lebanon, to wait for their liberation from the outside,
no longer had the slightest appeal after the organization had been brushed aside
and sent to the far corners of the Arab world (with plush headquarters in Tunis)
in the summer of 1982.

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If the camp dwellers of Gaza and the West Bank were proletarians, so were,
although to a lesser extent, West Bank villagers. The latter were more mixed in
their social makeup, although many of their residents joined the same proletariat
of day-laborers. A large number of them, as noted by Husain Bargouti “depend
on family labor on their parcels of land as well [as on wage labor in Israel], and
therefore constitute a fraction of a specific transitional class, the semi-proletariat.
The power behind the transformation of peasants into wage workers and semi-wage
workers has been the development of capitalism in general and Israeli capitalism
in particular . . . Furthermore, some peasants . . . joined in the industrial–commercial
section of the petite bourgeoisie. All in all . . . the peasantry was polarizing into
either bourgeoisie or proletariat . . .”16 One might add that the vast majority found
itself on the proletarian end of that polarization.

The intifada of 1987 revisited

The relentless focus on political history and on official decisions, including those
of the PLO and its factions or enemies, has come at the expense of the capital
extra-political elements, such as health, economics, and social dynamics. This has
been particularly true of the literature on the first intifada and its causes. Even
where there is a title indicating that social interactions are going to be considered,
it turns out to be an essentially political analysis of the parties, as though they, and
the broader issues at hand, were monoliths. Farsoun and Landis title their book
chapter “The Sociology of an Uprising,” but it is nothing of the sort.17 Instead, it
is a description of occupation, oppression, colonization, and reaction thereto. This
kind of literature abounds, and reflects the fact that, at the time, but even today, it
is difficult to arouse interest in a more differentiated type of analysis stressing the
role of the marginalized.
A plethora of works was thus produced on the loyalty of the Palestinians to the
PLO, which was of course a fact, particularly when the alternatives offered were
those presented by the Israelis, the Jordanians, and the international community,
always anxious to find solutions they (and not necessarily the Palestinians) can
live with. But it would be much more important to know the reaction among the
people in Palestine to the polemics within the PLO itself, which were most
certainly resonated within the refugee camps in Lebanon. One should not forget
that at the eve of the intifada, criticism was mounting, with one prominent
member speaking of the “senility” of the top leadership. PLO maneuvering had
reached a dead end by the summer of 1987, as is well known. This fact was
not lost on the Palestinians living under occupation, and in particular the least
privileged among them. Meantime, Israeli measures to counter increasing acts of
resistance in the occupied territories, such as the expulsion and imprisonment
of many middle class Gazans and West Bankers who had been named to the
top positions within the PLO, had the unintended effect of leading to the ascent to
positions of responsibility of second-echelon people, who were more representative
of the marginalized groups within the society.18

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In the economic area too, a reexamination provides evidence of the role of

social factors. Macroeconomic indicators played a significant role in the outbreak
of the uprising, including the decline in oil remissions and employment in the
Gulf.19 But all borders to Israel from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip were
nearly always open at that time, and perhaps 150,000 workers were doing day
labor in Israel in December, 1987. The proletarianized camp dwellers in particular,
who never stopped going to their places of work until the struggle began to escalate
seriously, showed the way and provided much of the fighting power during the
first several months of the intifada.20 The Israeli repressive machine, for one, knew
where the resistance was coming from, since measures taken against camps and
villages, to which the fighting had rapidly spread, were systematically more
comprehensive, stricter, and longer lasting than in the cities.21
Remarkably, and despite the presence of various types of disparate social
analyses regarding causes and course of the 1987 intifada, the literature betrays
the absence of an overall vision of that process as a social as well as national one,
or in fact, of a convincing work that is descriptive of the “rupture” that was the
uprising as a whole, from beginning to end.22 This is certainly due to the familiar
strictures of grand narrative research on Palestine, but perhaps also because of the
difficulty of describing Palestinian society from the ground up for that period, and
its articulation as a changed social formation.
The first intifada still needs to be understood as one led by the proletariat,
followed rapidly by the national bourgeoisie, notably the intelligentsia but including
also local small-scale capitalist entrepreneurs. As far as the latter were concerned,
it never went as far as conventional accounts would have it. Nobody who lived
through the uprising, and certainly not those who fought and led it can agree with
the statement that “[w]ithin two weeks of the insurrection that marked the beginning
of the uprising in the refugee camps of Gaza, Nablus, and Bethlehem, the battle
lines shifted from street confrontations between youthful elements and border
police toward a general commercial strike in the urban centers.”23 True, the
national bourgeoisie and petite bourgeoisie had a predominant voice in the delib-
erations of the UNLU (United National Leadership of the Uprising) and spent
much time quarreling with the outside leadership over their decisions, even as the
struggle continued, largely self-managed, and centered in the villages and camps.
Most of the students and some of the staff of the schools and universities, which
were closed during most of the period of the uprising (1988–1993) had in fact
returned to their homes, whether urban or rural.
The social pyramid had been modified by the years of Israeli occupation.
Palestinian society had once again been decapitated with the demise of the
pro-Jordanian elites, but its social base had been powerfully solidified with
the development of a proletarian consciousness in the camps and cities, as well
as the material reinforcement of those who lived there, through their work in
Israel. The savings they made at the time would help them to surmount material
difficulties resulting from the years of struggle to come.

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The struggle against Israeli occupation and colonization was the primary
purpose of the intifada. A secondary purpose was to end forever what remained
of any Jordanian hold over the West Bank. This was accomplished de facto within
a few weeks of the revolt’s outbreak, and recognized de jure by king Hussein
within half a year.24 And when it appeared that the legitimate rulers were preparing
to “come home” in 1993–1994, the general appraisal of the uprising was positive,
and one can say that, although spearheaded by the camp and village-based
proletariat, it was conducted in tandem with the various elements of the local
bourgeoisie and the bureaucracy of the PLO in exile.
This is in no way to suggest that the Tunis-based PLO and its constituent
factions no longer played any role. On the contrary, they continued to command
the loyalty of inside activists at every level. But the loyalty was now mixed with
the overwhelming fact of agency on the part of insiders, and with the demand
for the translation of that agency into participation in decision making. Furthermore,
the leading groups with the organization, most notably the hegemonic Fateh
grouping, was increasingly subject to a power struggle based largely on genera-
tional criteria, which also coincided with significant class differences, the young
guard being still closely bound to their village and refugee camp roots, and not
having yet gone the way of long-term bureaucrats (which they did rapidly enough
during the Oslo period).

The Oslo negotiations and autonomy

The Palestinians in the occupied territories and their local PLO leadership, led in
the Gaza strip by Dr Haidar Abdel Shafi and in the West Bank by Faysal Husseini,
demanded a democratic transformation on the part of their Tunis leadership, as it
appeared first possible, then likely, that it would be coming “home.” And indeed,
the speed with which the secret Oslo negotiations were conducted, as well as
those which followed in seeking ways of implementing the first agreement
between Arafat and Rabin of September 13, 1993, was partly due to the frantic
efforts being made by the leadership to fend off the pressure from inside, which
was in turn responding to pressure from below. Even as the public negotiations
were continuing in Washington, DC, and the Oslo discussions were still being
carried out in secret, the most prominent among the Washington group, Abdel
Shafi, Husseini, and also Hanan Ashrawi and Sa’eb Erakat were threatening to
resign if the decision-making process were not made transparent and did not take
vital demands (concerning settlements, for example) into account.25
During his negotiations with Rabin and Peres on implementing the Oslo
accords, Arafat made it plain that he realized the enormous concessions he had
made. A cursory reading of the Oslo negotiating process shows both the extent to
which its agenda and various drafts were written by the Israelis of course, but also
the extent to which its implications were clear to Arafat (but apparently not to the
main Palestinian actors in the negotiations, Mahmud Abbas-Abu Mazen and

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Ahmed Qrei’-Abu Ala’, both of whom were nonetheless later to become prime
ministers, and in the former case, president). We can see the importance of the
absence of insiders at the talks (they were being excluded precisely because they
were insiders and not Tunis-based PLO members) in allowing them to reach an
agreement that could never meet the approval of the Palestinian masses. Having
once signed the September 13, 1993 “Oslo” accords, Arafat attempted to modify
them in the implementation stage as he negotiated over the upcoming interim
arrangements. First of all, he accepted during the negotiations to stop the intifada
and rescind parts of the Palestinian National charter (and not only those dealing
with the denial of Israel’s right to exist, but anything which seemed to contradict
the peace process), two of the various concessions that Arafat had in fact refused
until the idea of “mutual recognition” was added. This was a masterstroke of
Israeli diplomacy, an offer made on July 26, 1993 after six months of nonofficial
and two months of sterile official negotiations.26 The whole thing therefore
hinged on the abstract and symbolic fact of Israeli and international recognition
of the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people, without sovereignty,
and with no limit on the spread of settlements.
Then and only then did Arafat agree to an autonomy regime that must
inevitably be unpopular. His security chiefs, on the other hand, notably Muhammad
Dahlan and Jibril Rujoub, accustomed as they were to the language of violence,
thought that they could maintain control over their people in the face of what was
sure to be the unease and opposition which Oslo would provoke when its effects
on the ground, in the form of the Interim Accords would be felt to the full.27
Arafat thought otherwise. He told Peres from the beginning of the talks on imple-
menting the Oslo accords that he was being offered a set of “bantustans” and that
he would not be able to impose their acceptance on the people, arguing that “I rule
today not on the basis of a majority but by virtue of my personal credit.”28 This,
he made clear, was going to continue even after he arrived in the occupied
territories, as he immediately rejected the idea proposed to him by Dr Haidar
Abdel Shafi, that a grassroots democracy should begin to be put in place.29
As a result, he finally began to co-opt the personalities of the inside by including
them in the negotiations, thus bridging the gulf between them and the Tunis-based
cadre, and beginning his indirect approach in the direction of the people in the
occupied territories. This was short-lived however, since these “inside” elites
understood the deeply unpopular nature of the Interim Accords and maintained
their distance. And so his dilemma was apparent to him from the beginning. One
can only understand his willingness to accede to the conditions of the Israeli
side because of his confidence in the type of system that he was being offered,
and which resembled that put in place in Lebanon, with the addition of almost
unlimited financing by the international community. With this he could surely
deal with grassroots opposition.
What is even more difficult to understand is something that from the start
destabilized the agreement in the eyes of the Palestinian masses. This was his
willingness to continue with the negotiations for his return to Gaza even after the

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Hebron massacre carried out by Baruch Goldstein (January, 1994), and even
though Rabin had reneged on his initial commitment to remove the settlers from
the city. Perhaps he thought he was making a difficult political situation easier for
Rabin,30 which it turned out he was not, but at any rate, the weak negotiating
stance of Arafat and his advisers did not go unnoticed. A large question mark had
been placed over the whole question of autonomy and its finality, before it even
began, and contrary to the propaganda of the time, it is now clear that a confidence
gap existed between the leadership and the masses from the start. This is the case
even though subsequent public opinion polls consistently showed Arafat to be
personally popular, and the peace option to enjoy majority support. The correct
reading of these results is surely that peace is in general the preferred option,
despite the mistrust felt and always expressed with regard to the Interim Accords
(“Oslo” in popular parlance) and the nature of the PA. The distance from reality
was in any case considerable to begin with, and with time, after the in-migration
of the PLO leadership in 1994, it became even greater as these heroes became
parasites and thugs in the eyes of their own people, the disillusionment being as
great as the original illusion had been.
Social realities had been ignored for decades and were ignored and misunderstood
after the return of the PLO to Palestine and this new restructuring of the social
pyramid. For the leadership, supported in this vision by the international media,
the US and European governments, and Israeli policy-makers, autonomy begin-
ning in 1994 would lead smoothly into an era of statehood, however defined,
with the new entity neatly sandwiched between the economic and military giant
Israel and its willing partner, the frantically globalizing Hashemite Kingdom
of Jordan.
What did Palestinian society look like on the assumption of responsibilities by
the PA? Nothing had changed very much since the end of the 1980s. In the West
Bank, the overwhelming majority of people continued to be villagers, carrying
their produce to the urban markets which were equidistantly dispersed over the
area (Nablus, Hebron, Jerusalem, and so on), even as many of them drew or
supplemented their income with day work in Israel or the Jewish settlements in
the West Bank. In the Gaza strip, the overwhelming majority were refugees, that
is to say as we have seen, proletarians of a particular sort because their labor was
mainly carried out in Israel, far from the heavily populated urban camps in which
they lived. They and the West Bank villagers and refugees had spearheaded the
uprising that brought the PA back to Palestine. Thousands of people, notably in
Gaza, now came increasingly to rely on their modest wages as employees of the
PA, after the period of frequent military closures began in 1993. They depended
to a great extent on its handouts (which came in turn from the international
community) and those of UNRWA. Many Palestinians had thus become rentiers,
in the most subaltern sense of the term. Socially, both of these majority groups,
villagers and camp dwellers, continued to be doubly alienated. The camp dwellers
were separated by distance and culture from their places of work, while the
villagers were divided between local habitat and distant day labor.

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What is the political mood, what are the ideological predispositions of this vast
majority of the Palestinian people? Like the elites, including the middle class and
the new monopolistic ruling elite they seek political independence from Israel.
But unlike these privileged castes, they simultaneously yearn for political emanci-
pation and economic equality. In short, the Palestinian masses, like so many in
other parts of the third world, are the true and perhaps the only ones in the society
who are “democrats” through and through. They are democrats in their wish to
have an input into the political makeup of the society, as the failures of the autonomy
regime became patent by 2000, and they are “redistribution” democrats as well,
wanting to find concrete results to their plight.
The leaders of the Oslo process on the other hand, as well as the leaders of the
opposition to Oslo who willingly or unwillingly remained abroad, have nothing
much to gain from democracy in its full, “thick” sociopolitical sense. They have and
have had for decades the props and perks of privilege and the added prestige of
“representing” the Palestinian people or titles to go with their activities. The
question of titles has become very important, during the course of the past ten years.
There are countless “directors” and “director generals” in the various ministries
and NGOs, as well as “professors” at one or another West Bank university
(preferably Birzeit). These elites, and the intellectuals who represented them, had
almost without exception begun to comment and to write as though the way
had been opened for the creation of a modern democratic state, which was now
in the offing, thanks to the exceptional degree of diversity within the PLO and the
highly developed civil-society organizations that had been created in the shadows
of the occupation and the intifada. This general appraisal was not based on
Arafat’s pronouncements or actions, or on those of his assistants. It was more a
question of projection, and of the fact that the people decided to give the
new authorities the benefit of the doubt. After all, people, and most notably the
peasants and camp dwellers, were tired of years of struggle, and longed for
a peaceful outcome. That is why in the ensuing years, they remained committed
to a peaceful transition to independence.
Unfortunately, it was still possible for academic observers of contemporary
Palestine to speak of the “process of integrating (or disintegrating) these vibrant
social networks [which constitute the “extensive civil society” of the West Bank
and Gaza] with the apparatus of state formation that is being built in the areas
under the sway of the Palestinian National Authority.”31 It was not possible of
course to predict what would happen a mere three years after these lines were
written, but one did even at the time sense that state-building was not proceeding
as hoped for, because of the nature of the Palestinian regime, and that the civil
society in the making was not as vibrant as one had expected a few years before,
at the end of the 1987 intifada.
The reality, as many discovered within a short time, and most within a few
years, was very different. The PLO returned, with its leadership, cadre, and tens
of thousands of members of the base. The latter were rapidly absorbed into the
society, especially in Gaza, and despite the latter’s already-crowded conditions.

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They became modest employees of the PA, often in the security services. Their
needs and their status were not very different from those of local people of similar
social origins. The cadre and, especially, the high-ranking members of the PLO
fared differently. They quickly set up a new type of state-centered monopoly
capital, in which they held the key posts and from which they drew the essential
benefits. The local bourgeoisie, which had done its part in the previous intifada,
and was therefore co-responsible for bringing the new leadership back, were
brushed aside in the new order of things. Their material status did not suffer; their
social status, on the other hand, did, and very much so. To this rule there are of
course a few exceptions, among those “locals” who were able, because of the
advantages they offered, to enter the PA at a high level, or who benefited materially
from employment in the plethora of local, foreign or international NGOs or
UN organizations.32
In addition to their privileges, the new leadership rapidly and justifiably
became associated with corruption. The precise degree of that corruption is
difficult to establish (except for a few cases publicized over the years), but
its reality is undeniable.33 Authoritarianism became another of its hallmarks, as
journalists, political opponents, academic dissenters, union activists, and other
members of the society were intimidated, imprisoned, tortured, and sometimes
(although rarely) killed while in detention.34 Nonetheless, the Palestinian population
as a whole, in yet another leap of faith based largely on the relationship between
Arafat and the people, gave the PA its backing by and large. All public opinion polls
(although those who designed them could to an extent be taxed with a preference
for positive outcomes) noted that the peace option remained paramount until
the intifada actually broke out in September 2002. The suddenness with which
that option was abandoned thereafter does, it is true, reveal the willfulness and
superficiality of the support.
In February 1996, elections for the presidency of the PA, and for the Palestinian
Legislative Council (PLC) further reinforced the legitimacy of the autonomy,
despite the disappointment with its shape and ineffectiveness, where concrete
results were concerned. The elections witnessed a very high degree of participation,
and despite some irregularities, gave a clear majority to supporters of Fateh and
Arafat. True, the opposition, both secular and religious, called for a boycott. But
this was partly due to the fact that the writing was on the wall: neither Hamas nor
one of the (much smaller) PLO-aligned opposition parties could have elected
very many representatives to the PLC.35 This is demonstrated by the fact that
those parties, which tested the waters, fared miserably. These included the former
Communists, now renamed Palestinian People’s Party (PPP) and Fida, the group
which under its leader Yasir Abed-Rabbo broke away from the Democratic Front
for the Liberation of Palestine at the end of the cold war, and became one of the
strongest backers of Oslo.
In the case of Hamas, principle combined with pragmatism, and it chose to
boycott parliamentary, but not local or professional elections. Its slow rise had
been based, after its belated creation in December 1987 as an outgrowth of the

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Muslim Brotherhood, on combative tactics and a close identification with the

marginalized elements of Palestinian society, in both camp and urban settings.
Slowly, it was able to prove its effectiveness, particularly in contrast to the rather
sclerotic, bureaucratized and corrupt Fateh-connected organizations.
Much more interesting for the future than the political results of the elections,
which were, after all, universally expected, was the breakdown of votes and the
analysis of their results in terms of winners and losers, according to nonpolitical
criteria. These results are explained in the important work on the 1996 elections
by Jean-François Legrain, Les Palestines du Quotidien,36 to my knowledge the
only systematic attempt to find out what people were actually “saying” with their
votes. It emerges that the accepted truths about Palestinian society and its system
of allegiances are wrong. Overwhelmingly, and in a “quasi exclusive” manner,37
the electors voted for members of their “space of solidarity constituted by the
neighborhood or town, village or group of villages, or camp, whatever may
have been their political orientation, their own or that of the candidate . . . the
defense of the space of solidarity in the geographic sense also led to the
transcendence of the tight limits drawn by the circle made up of simply tribal and
family ties.” In this regard, villagers bound together and sometimes allied with
neighboring refugee camps as against the nearby city (this of course depended on
the type of city, some of them, according to Legrain, being historically more
prone to unite people than others).
The Oslo phase with its one outstanding exercise in democratic practice has
made it possible to understand what are the deep ties of solidarity and political
affinity that have kept Palestinian society together, and in fact kept it going in the
face of the nearly unbearable pressures of the occupation. The close analysis of the
results have made it possible to unlock the key to solidarity, struggle and resistance
in Palestine, something which Legrain calls “ethno-localism,” and which is familiar
to students of the Mediterranean region in general. Within the cities, the break-
down gives similar results: people voted, and thus showed their solidarity, on a
neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis.38 This demonstrates that contrary to
accepted wisdom, notables do not enjoy the confidence of the masses, nor do party
leaders. Solidarity passes through the local, that is to say, the locale. It means, on
the one hand, that class ties are important to the extent that neighborhoods, camps
and villages tend to be internally coherent. It means, on the other hand, that there is
a lingering polarization with other quarters, villages, and camps. What is remark-
able is that the system as it revealed itself through the 1996 elections, hearkens back
to a tradition, both in Gaza and in the West Bank, that is hundreds of years old, and
uncovers “the administrative and human geography of the Ottoman period.”39
On the political front, the two main movements were, as during the earlier
phase, Fateh and Hamas. Both became internally divided as a result of the
signature by Arafat of the Oslo accords. Fateh, for its part, never broke with
the Chairman. On the other hand, it held what were to have been the first of a
series of elections for its local leaders, in Ramallah in November 1994. A new
generation of populist leaders (under Marwan Barghouti) and grassroots militants

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ran against a list led by Jibril Rujoub, and close to Arafat. The dissidents won
each and every seat on the fifteen-seat executive. “The results also showed up
major sectoral divisions in the movement, with the majority of positions going to
ex-prisoners, refugees and villagers as opposed to Arafat’s preferred ‘notable’ and
‘resident’ appointees.”40 The Fateh populist victory led Arafat to cancel any
further internal elections. But the division had appeared, one based on class, age,
and democratic election. And the traditionally disenfranchised had demonstrated
that they, and not the elites, were most interested in effecting change through the
ballot box when the possibility presented itself.
Meanwhile, the principal opposition group, Hamas, found itself in a dilemma,
which Fateh and the PA in general were only too happy to accentuate. Hamas had
managed, slowly but surely, to pick up a mass following during the first intifada,
made up of a social base quite distinct from that of the PLO factions in general,
and Fateh in particular. Its members and supporters tended to come from the
disinherited popular sectors of the society, camp-based, rural or urban, on the
one hand, and the pious middle classes on the other.41 Some of its top leadership
were situated on the outside. When the Oslo accords were signed, it did not
support them, but it could not afford to appear to be fomenting violence at a time
when it seemed that Palestinians from various classes were deciding to give the
peace process a chance. As a result, it experienced a division, between radical and
moderate wings, the latter of which, located on the inside, was even prepared to
create a political party through which to participate in elections and in running
the PA.42 One of the advantages it had in relation to the PLO was in the financial
area. After the Gulf states cut off funds to the PLO, Hamas continued to receive
petrodollars in large quantities. Because of its popularity and its means, it managed
to win significant elections in professional unions and in the chambers of
commerce in 1992, whether in the West Bank or the Gaza strip. This must have
provided an additional incentive to Arafat to conclude a deal with Israel, which
he knew would reopen international funding. Divisions in Hamas were therefore
along class lines, with the younger but also lower class going into the military
wing, ‘Izzadin al-Qassam, the middle classes remaining in the political sphere,
and refusing to “know” what the other wing was doing.43 Hamas lost influence
when things were going smoothly, but gained in importance when relations
between the PLO (and then the PA) and Israel reached a crisis point. The question
was, for its members, how to pick up the struggle-minded, nationalist role that
the PLO appeared to be shedding. The radical faction wanted to maintain the
pressure on Israel at all costs, while the moderates, including, it would appear at
that time, the founder and leader of the movement, Sheikh Yasin, were anxious to
share in the benefits of government, even though they knew they could only do
so from a position of opposition. The broad public of Hamas supporters was
divided and fluctuating on the question of which wing to back. But when Arafat was
booed at the funeral of an Islamic Jihad leader in late 1994,44 he did not hesitate any
longer. He accelerated the process of agreeing on the terms of autonomy and jailed
thousands of Islamists. Even during this period, the ‘Izzedin al-Qassam Brigades,

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and more generally the military wing of the organization, maintained their autonomy,
which Giles Kepel interprets as the autonomy of the lower classes in relation to
their leaders, who represented the interests of the middle classes.45
The ingredients for the success, then the collapse of the Oslo process were
therefore present from the very start of the autonomy period in 1994. As long as
progress or the illusion of progress could be maintained, the PA and Arafat
remained sufficiently popular to push through harsh measures. The day when the
combination of internal disorganization and corruption, combined with external
oppression and colonization, had reached an invisible breaking point, the ingre-
dients for a resumption of struggle would be immediately present, in the form of
dissident grassroots Fateh members, Hamas militants, and the millions of poor
peasants and camp dwellers, thoroughly disillusioned by the incompetence and
corruption of the regime, who would give their support to those who were after
all their own children, even as they managed to resist the violent Israeli response
through their localist traditions of social and political solidarity.
Based on regular public opinion polls, Khalil Shikaki tracked this process
throughout the second half of the 1990s. In 1993, Palestinians “immediately”
supported the peace process by a two-thirds majority. After a dip in 1994, related
to the Hebron massacre, support peaked at 80 percent in 1996. At the time of the
elections, Fateh reached its highest level of support, 55 percent (as did Arafat with
65 percent). And during the entire Oslo period, which ended in September 2000,
the peace process (as a process) never dropped below 60 percent support. There
is no doubt, therefore, that the PA enjoyed real popular legitimacy for the first two
years. But the expectation that the process would produce results in the way of
political and economic benefits constantly dropped, so that during Ehud Barak’s
tenure as Israeli prime minister, and even before the Camp David meetings, only
24 percent had any expectation of success.
As support for Fateh likewise dropped steadily during the latter years of the
period, support for Hamas did not at first rise.46 This shows that the percentage of
people actively looking for another approach to political relations with Israel and
the outside world was limited. The Palestinian masses were not supporters of the
Islamists per se, rather, they were demanding a change in policy. Hamas, it has
been seen, decided not to oppose the process actively, and they did not have a
popular mandate to do so. When the intifada began, however, support for Hamas
rose dramatically, as the organization showed itself effective in struggle, but no
less effective and honest in its management of areas such as health and social
services wherever it had the requisite infrastructure.47

Intifada 2000
Not very many people – Edward Said was one of them – came to the rapid
conclusion that the Oslo process could not but fail, by deepening the dependence
and hopelessness of Palestinian life, under the terms of an unequal accord. “What
puzzles me is how so many Palestinian intellectuals, businessmen, academics,

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and officials persist in the illusion that the peace process is good for them and
their people . . . ” 48 The fact of the matter is that, except for a very few scholars
who carefully read the documents at hand most people thought the process would
bump along, forward and upward.49
One reason this was not to be is that the society now had an indigenous
leadership to blame for what went wrong. For a number of reasons, the leadership
had not previously been held accountable, in Jordan or even more importantly, in
Lebanon. This time things were different. The failure of the economy to take off,
the inability of people to reap material benefits from the years of autonomy, were
blamed on the PA.50 Nonetheless, in comparison with the first intifada, macro-
economic issues did not play a significant role in the end of the peace process.
Unemployment remained limited and wages were stable in the occupied territories
until the revolt began, and there was no global economic downturn either.51
As for the PLO, it was marginalized, forgotten as it were. Prior to Oslo, it had
served as a “parliament” in the original sense, where opposing viewpoints were
aired, even though it was controlled first to last by Fateh. Now, however, its
traditionally oppositional factions (that is to say, those among them which were
significant on the ground in the occupied territories) either became a part of
the PA (as with Fida and the PPP, which had ministers in the government) or
constituted a weak opposition (as with the Popular Front for the Liberation
of Palestine – PFLP) whose top leadership had moved to Ramallah. Although
their members and supporters did in general not defect, their support declined,
even as their political and intellectual elites lost all popular influence and came to
be considered weak followers of the group around Arafat which had effected the
Oslo breakthrough. True, there were elements both inside and outside (in Tunis or
Damascus) which, as in the case of the long-time leader Farouq Qaddoumi (Abu
Lutuf), made known their opposition to Oslo. But like Qaddoumi, these elements
were hampered by the fact that they could not or would not propose an alternative.
They did not therefore have any significant impact on the marginalized among the
Palestinian people, most notably the truly forgotten diaspora refugees.
Along with the virtually universal perception, among the Palestinian masses,
that the PA was inefficient and corrupt (this perception rose to 83 percent by the
year 2000), the willingness to use violence against Israel rose, from 20 percent
during the early years of the autonomy period, to 52 percent in July 2000, that is
to say, before even the Camp David fiasco; one year later, during the height of the
uprising, support for violence had reached the record level of 86 percent.52
Meantime support for Arafat and Fateh were dropping steadily, to respectively
33 percent and 21 percent in 2001. The juxtaposition of the figures shows the
intimate relationship between the political and the social conflict in the 2000
intifada, that is to say, the readiness to undertake a rupture once again and resort
to direct action, in reaction to the failing of Israel, the peace process, and the PA
itself. There was never any question of a civil war breaking out, but the message
was clear: the purpose of the intifada was to produce that which the years of
autonomy had failed to bring about, namely honest and effective government

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bereft of favoritism, turned toward the needs of the marginalized people in the
camps and villages.
There are three competing interpretations of the outbreak of the uprising: that
it was willed by Arafat; that it was caused by the Fateh young guard wishing to
seize the initiative and ultimately power from the old guard; and that it was initiated
by the disgruntled masses, who gave support to the initiatives of militants from
every side who went into battle. The evidence supports the third thesis. The first,
dear to the Israelis and some Palestinians (for opposite reasons: the former
because they demonized the man and wished to find a culprit, the latter because
they believed he was in charge at the time of the resumption of the uprising) does
not stand, if only because he tried at Camp David to come to an agreement along
the lines offered to him by Barak and Clinton, and was prevented from doing so by
pressure from the society (Palestinian in the case of the refugees, international–
Islamic, regarding the status of Jerusalem). The second theory is bureaucratic in
nature, and does not stand up to scrutiny either, because it assumes that people,
after years and decades of suffering, are willing, without being controlled by a
dictatorial regime, to offer support and to give their lives for a cause which is not
dear to their hearts. The third one may incorporate elements of the other two.
Arafat had to go along with the explosion once it had occurred, if he wished to
preserve his position; and the members of the populist young guard, representing
the Palestinian masses, led the revolt in the name of those who willed it: the
marginalized of Oslo, that is to say, the majority of the Palestinian people.
The young guard in Fateh drew strength from their alliance with the Islamist
opposition,53 because they were, as noted above, representing the same social
underclass, which had since the beginning of the process been in an adversarial
dialectic with their old guards, who represented the new middle classes, referred
to in the Palestinian literature as the new elites.
Social tension and in some cases social conflict resulted from the increasing
class stratification within the society, even as the occupation somewhat lowered
its profile, leaving these Palestinian elites as the visible adversary, the palpable
exploiter. By 1999 the tensions had given rise to clashes, particularly between
camp and city dwellers, notably in Ramallah and Nablus, where geographic
proximity made contrasts in living conditions all the more palpable. Labor union
leaders were jailed for leading strikes by teachers for an improvement in their
unacceptably low pay (particularly as compared to the thousands of ministry
directors and directors general, or higher officers in the dozen or so security
agencies), radio stations and TV channels were shut down for criticizing or even
publicizing the struggle and the plight of these people. The PA had a ministry
of information and a ministry of NGO affairs (or as it was officially called,
with unconscious irony, wizarat al-munadhamat al-ahliyyah – ministry of popular
organizations), neither of which should have existed in a government striving
for democracy.
In the summer of 2000 class tensions rose further, with the occasional use of
weapons in conflicts which were in their essence social, but which tended to

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appear in national or even criminal guise. At the same time, the Palestinian
masses played a key role in holding their leadership in check at the Camp David
talks, thus succeeding for the first time since 1988 in imposing their political will
on the PLO bureaucracy. But the system established under Oslo and developed by
the PA was indirectly responsible for the terrible breakdown of Camp David and
for making it possible to blame the PLO for it. Had the leaders had better channels
to their masses, they would have had a clearer idea of what their people thought,
and would not, despite Clinton’s and Barak’s desperate pressure, have consented
to going in the first place, based on what they knew they would and would not be
offered. They were not prepared, and the concessions they were prepared to make
were unacceptable (notably with regard to Jerusalem and the Jewish settlements) to
their people. In this regard, it is interesting to note that the so-called old guard got
the message more quickly than the new guard while at Camp David (Muhammad
Dahlan and Jibril Rujoub were slow to understand that they could not make all of
the required concessions). It had also sunk in after the Camp David failure that the
opportunity would not be available in the near future, through the polls, for the
people to express their will by electing their representatives, not at the municipal,
not at the parliamentary and not at the presidential level (the latter being the only
level where Arafat could be sure to win by a landslide).
When the intifada broke out in response to Sharon’s provocations and the
wanton killing of unarmed Palestinian demonstrators, especially in the Jerusalem
haram area, the escalation was rapid and, in contrast to 1987, both quantitative
and qualitative. There was no question for anyone witnessing the events as to who
was from the start at the forefront: the Palestinian masses, self-organized and led
by their organizations, Fateh’s Tanzim and al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades under
populist and opposition-minded people like Marwan Barghouti, as well as the
militias of Hamas – ‘Izzedin al-Qassam Brigades – and the Islamic Jihad – Saraya
al-Quds. The PA was marginalized from the beginning, and very rapidly it
dissolved de facto through its absence from the scene. This absence was noticed
by all, and when mass rallies could be held, which was not frequently possible
because of the violence of the Israeli response to crowds approaching their
positions, they were neither organized nor frequently addressed by PA members.
Of course the PA could never have gotten a mass gathering together, and it did not
in fact have a strategy. Mass meetings only occurred on the occasion of funerals
or during attempts to break through the Israeli siege, by forcing a roadblock.
Grassroots militants could garner a mass audience but certainly nobody from
the PA, contrary to conventional accounts, which continued to stress the role
of the leadership, and Arafat’s popularity.54
It is interesting to note that the contrasting perception of events, based on
whether they were viewed from above or from below, resulted in the telling of
accounts so different that they did not seem to describe the same occurrences.
There was no official plan for the intifada, and there were no official strategies or
even tactics for it either. The negotiators attempted fruitlessly to extract from it
better terms from the Israelis, which they briefly managed to do in December 2000

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and January 2001, but probably only because the participants knew it was a futile
effort, expressing what they felt Camp David should have yielded.
The society rapidly went back to its well-practiced reflex of self-organization.
Palestinians have for the most part self-managed their daily affairs since the
beginning of Israeli rule in 1967, and the society is so successful at it because, as
described above in relation to the meticulous quantitatively based research of
Jean-François Legrain, it has been doing it for centuries. Certainly it is difficult
to understand the ability of the Palestinians to persevere under the conditions
that have been imposed upon them by the occupation, by way of military and
economic measures, and especially through the closures policy that has resulted
in the creation of literally hundreds of separate enclaves. It is thanks to the
localism and traditional family economy of Palestinians that they have been able
to continue, and rendered inoperative the claims of the Israeli military and civilian
leaderships that they can and will crush every last vestige of resistance. Indeed,
the camp dwellers and the villagers have, just as much as the Israeli occupation,
held Arafat in check and made it impossible for him to carry through various
attempts at compromise, including that of the first prime minister, Mahmud
Abbas (Abu Mazen), elected president on the death of Yasir Arafat. The legitimacy
of the PA rests on the continuation of a coherent social praxis among the people,
rather than the conventional reverse, top-down conception whereby the society
was legitimated and held together by the cogency of its leadership, the PLO,
then the PA.
This was finally recognized as the intifada progressed, both by the PA and by
foreign circles, whose studies began to deal with the perceptions and needs of
the “poor,” a term intended to provide an aura of neutrality when designating the
masses. Examples of such studies abound, and include the report submitted in
2003 by Jean Ziegler, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food
(though he makes it abundantly clear that he is actually talking about the vast
majority of the people), the World Bank report for 2003, and the successive
reports financed by the Swiss Foreign Ministry during the years of the al-Aqsa
intifada.55 Each of these reports implicitly recognized (but with no attempt at
explanation) the paradox of spreading poverty and continued resistance. The
key to understanding the paradox lies in the approach of the present study. It is
an unusual approach, based simply on the fact that Palestinian history has been
written as an ultra-political process, and not linked to the history of Palestinian
society. This approach as yet shows no signs of penetrating the scholarly literature
(journalists have done much better in this regard), which continues to seek
elite-centered explanations.56
Paradoxically, it is a comprehensive study carried out by the PA itself, in
conjunction with the UNDP, that contains, in its hundreds of pages, the key to
the puzzle, and which deserves to be read and analyzed with great care, as an
explosive primary source. That is the Participatory Poverty Assessment of the
Palestinian Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation (MOPIC)
published in 2002.57 Because of its great length (hundreds of pages covering all

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of the regions in Gaza and the West Bank), and its reliance on qualitative research
methods rather than statistics, it is unlikely to attract a significant readership. It
shows a clear picture, based on interviews and surveys, whereby, if the PA wishes
to survive it must do more by way of addressing the needs of the “poor,” that is
to say the overwhelming majority of the population: the masses who reside in
villages and camps. This is because camp dwellers, and it would seem, even more
the villagers, have no trust in the PA at all. The various ministries, including
agriculture, health,58 education, social affairs, and local government, are consid-
ered unfair, nepotistic, inefficient, and corrupt. Through a reading of the
multivolume study, one realizes the extent to which people are in fact aware of
the function and detailed operation of public programs. UNRWA receives slightly
(but not decisively) better marks, as do NGOs. The Islamic charitable societies
are rated highest by far, in terms of efficiency, professionalism, and honesty.
These studies are revealing, and they contained an implicit and often an explicit
threat to the PA led by Fateh. That threat was taken seriously it would seem, but
only to the extent that some PA members began to call for the dissolution of the PA.
This would of course not have solved the problem then or later, nor would it very
much alter the situation on the ground, where the PA had little impact. Meantime,
the people maintained their confidence in their own popular organizations, whether
secular or religious. Elections were and remain a deeply felt need. But these
cannot be limited to the presidential level, where (as nearly everywhere in
the world) the inevitable choice is restricted to one person (in the West, to two
people arguing for the same policies). Palestinians for years clamored for local
and then parliamentary elections, in which they could bring about change based
on their proven priorities, and their rejection of policies adopted since 1994.
Throughout the period of the al-Aqsa intifada the primary conflict was with
Israel. But the internal, class-based contradictions likewise continued and were
accentuated, becoming critical in several areas. One example among many was
the city of Nablus, the only really urban society, where the level of violence
became particularly high, or at least highly reported. The massive military
assaults on Nablus concentrated on the Qasaba (old city) and Balata camp.59 This
was where resistance was entrenched, the bourgeoisie having long since deserted
their mansions in the Qasaba for the northern suburbs. Raids concentrated on the
Qaryoun, Ras al-Ein, and Yasmina quarters, “the poorest and most crowded
neighborhoods of the old city,” and on Balata. They were this particular time
searching for Tanzim and al-Aqsa brigades leaders, whom they were despite the
violence and the threats unable to locate. The PA was heavily criticized for its
passivity and its absence. At the funeral of three people killed by the Israeli
military, hostile chants were heard, to the effect that “we don’t want ministers of
a Legislative Council. We want an honorable national Palestinian leadership
comprised of all the factions.” Violence in Nablus was also to be placed in the
context of the corruption of the PA,60 and the suspicion existed that many of the
violent acts were actually carried out by the PA. This violence was also identified
in Gaza, where its underlying motives were said to be similar. Eyad El Sarraj

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noted in that regard that:61 “if you are an ordinary person who isn’t involved in
politics or clan feuds, you’re absolutely safe. There’s no anonymous or random
or chaotic violence here. That hasn’t changed. And you can’t say society is
disintegrating in that the tribal or clan structure is still very much intact.”
Amidst this internal strife, this deep split between the society’s elites and its
masses, what can be seen as having been the objectives of the popular intifada?
Perhaps Marwan Barghouti gave an accurate if very general answer.62 He was a
genuine and popularly-based leader, one whom as explained above, the PA from
Arafat down attempted unsuccessfully to keep in check. His arrest by the Israeli
military in 2002 solved the problem at least temporarily, but this was a misun-
derstanding of the roots of his popularity: it was based on his social and political
aims as perceived by the Palestinian people, and not on his alleged (and in fact,
contestable) charisma. For Barghouti, it was clear that the intifada destroyed
the Oslo agreement, which had simply in the end perpetuated the occupation by
reorganizing it. It not only destroyed Oslo as an agreement with Israel, but it also
challenged and continued to challenge the PA and all political organizations,
regarding their policies in all areas, economic, political, and military.
Negotiations, he argued, may proceed, but the popular uprising had to continue at
the same time. In this regard, his vision of the intifada was clearly a social one
and not merely a national one. Corruption, he argued, needed to be rooted out,
something, he noted, that the PA, for self-evident reasons, was reluctant to do.
Elections needed to be held, whatever may be the conditions on the ground. A
new political order needed to be created, democratic, transparent and based on
economic “steadfastness.” Remarkably, the prescriptions of Barghouti closely
matched those of the Palestinian “poor,” that is to say, the vast majority of
people, as carefully canvassed in MOPIC’s 2002 Participatory Poverty
Assessment analyzed above.
Martin Beck has shown how the authoritarian quality of the PA is strengthened
by international actors,63 who work to distend the relationship between the
political elites and the people, on the assumption that the peace process depends
on the existence of a Western-oriented and therefore socially autonomous (that is to
say, nonaccountable) regime. There is no doubt that the international community
played a significant role in events leading up to the explosion of September 2000.
In so doing, he states, the underclass was further marginalized. With this interna-
tional support, the executive was encouraged in its continued sidetracking of the
Palestinian Legislative Council,64 Arafat having refused to sign and thus enact
PLC-passed legislation even through the two intifada years, 2001 and 2002. The
autonomy of the PA, however, had shown itself to be as nothing in comparison
with the autonomy of the Palestinian camp dwellers and villagers.
The Oslo process had, as has been shown, altered the pinnacle of the
Palestinian pyramid. The public-cum-private monopolies in the economic field,
enjoyed by returnee political and business leaders, altered the balance within the
elites, marginalizing the traditional indigenous small capitalists and co-opting a
large new petty-bourgeois, highly Westernized intelligentsia. It continued to exclude

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the broad masses of proletarianized refugees and villagers, whose material

conditions deteriorated regularly, particularly with the upsurge in resistance in
September 2000. A self-managed society then reemerged, this time seeking not
only its means of self-expression, which to some extent it found, but also to
impose representative and fair practices on the leadership. The latter showed no
sign of responding to the pressure from below, and continued despite the terrible
damage inflicted by the Israeli military to seek salvation in traditional strategies
of rule, and in its relationships with the international community. Change in that
relationship became a part of the people’s agenda, but nothing showed that years
of renewed struggle had brought it any closer, on the contrary.
This is surely why, when parliamentary elections were finally held in January
2006, the longtime political and social underclass carried the day. What needs to
be noted is that the steady progression of Hamas (culminating in its victory,
which was ensured by a majority of electors who did not identify themselves as
Hamas members, including a majority of women, but who were opting for
change) came despite the progressive reduction in its international funding after
1994, coinciding with the prodigious increase in financial support for the PA,
much of which (aside from those portions which lined official pockets) was spent
on rewarding Fateh sympathizers with jobs in the security services and the
ministries. The Palestinian masses showed that they could not be bought: more,
that they rejected their intended co-optation, while rewarding those whom they
felt had served them best, in the social and economic fields,65 but also in terms
of strategies of liberation.66

Conclusion
Twentieth-century Palestinian history has, in the telling, emphasized political,
notably national, processes, with the bulk of attention going to the activities and
proclamations of the elites, as well as political projects and military activities.
This is not only true of the journalistic, but also and especially the scholarly
literature. Social cleavages, interactions and struggles have largely been over-
looked, and it is perhaps for this reason that decision-makers, whether Palestinian,
Israeli, or international, as well as commentators, have been surprised by events
on the ground, again and again. The attempt was made here to demonstrate that,
to a great extent, the Palestinian uprising that erupted on September 28, 2000 was
from the beginning endowed with a dual nature, national, and social. It was on the
one hand, as generally acknowledged, the continuation of a movement of national
resistance by the dispossessed against the Israeli occupation, after a seven-year
hiatus based on the Oslo accords. But it was also, significantly, a movement
imposed by these dispossessed on their own political, social and cultural elites,
deemed responsible for the general degradation of living conditions as well as
widespread corruption during the period in which they exercised limited autonomy
in relation to the occupation forces, as well as far-going administrative and
economic control over Palestinian society. The efforts and the sacrifices of the

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intifada were borne by the people of the refugee camps and villages, many of
them day laborers, some of them peasants, most of them unemployed (although its
eruption was associated with a Palestinian city – Jerusalem – unlike the uprising
of December 1987, which began in the refugee camps).
Members of the PA initially opposed the renewal of active resistance, largely
because they had much to lose from the annulment of the Oslo accords, which
had catapulted them and their allies among the intelligentsia and business
community to the material level of first world middle or upper middle classes. In
response to the seizing of the initiative on the part of these marginalized elements
and their spokespeople, the leadership of the PA, left intact by Israeli counter-
measures, split over the emerging social cleavage. Yasir Arafat, always attentive
to preserving his popular base, appeared to side with the dispossessed in their
social/national struggle. Mahmud Abbas (Abu Mazen) and others took the lead in
actively opposing the intifada. The Palestinian elites lined up behind one or another
of these two approaches. This time, the marginalized majority did not allow them-
selves to be guided by the best advice of the international community and sections
of their own leadership, to the effect that their sufferings would be ended by the
unconditional return to an agreement with Israel, even in the absence of favorable
developments on the ground and within the domestic political and social system.
Their class leadership, within organizations such as the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades,
Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, were heavily decimated by Israeli military strikes
and the imprisonment of thousands among them. It was not clear whether and for
how long the disenfranchised camp dwellers and villagers could continue to find
the means to express and impose themselves in the face of overwhelming pressure
by the international community, the occupier and large fractions of their own
political, economic, social and cultural elites. Whether or not they lose a particular
round, however, their determination could not be broken, because of the nature of
social networks of solidarity. And it is safe to infer from a quarter century (and
much more) of Palestinian history that the marginalized people of the Palestinian
patchwork of towns, camps and villages, will in the long run bring about social
and political transformations.
What Palestine, paradoxically, has in common with all other postcolonial
situations is its uniqueness. The particular form of universal exceptionalism we
are dealing with here is rooted in the length of the anticolonial struggle and its
asymmetrical quality. There is really no chance for that quality, despite the
projections of demography-bound futurologists, to be altered. Within the confines of
Palestinian exceptionalism, the models of Chatterjee and Massad, superimposed,
are particularly applicable. The endless struggle, with all of its ups and downs, as
well as the evident lack of a short-term solution (all Road Map and Geneva
Accord-type plans to the contrary) places Palestinian society within a combination
of the Chatterjee’s three moments simultaneously, those of departure, maneuver
and arrival, and Massad’s third and fourth, a combination of the expansion and
contraction of the nation, and internal implosion. The nearly unbearable pressures
that the simultaneous superposition of those moments places on the Palestinians

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are nonetheless being borne, and it would seem, can be projected into an indefinite
future. This is because of the key role played by Palestine’s apparently indomitable
subaltern classes. They not only bear the brunt of Israeli violence, but find it in
themselves, when consulted by their own leadership to elect those by whom they
are best represented in both social and political terms, despite the ferocious
response of the occupiers and the international community.

Notes
1 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography,” in
Ranajit Guha and Gayatry Chakravorty Spivak (eds), Selected Subaltern Studies
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 3.
2 Edward D. Said, “Foreword,” in Guha and Spivak (eds), Selected Subaltern Studies, VI.
3 Wicks, Alexis, Le spectre de la nation: Amilcar Cabral et le nationalisme, Paris:
Maîtrise thesis, Univesity of Paris VII – Denis Diderot, 2003, 26.
4 Roger Heacock, “Vers une nouvelle épistémologie de l’histoire palestinienne,” in
Confluences – Méditerranée, 43(Fall 2002): 13–21.
5 Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative
Discourse? (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), 23.
6 Ibid., 50–1.
7 Joseph A. Massad, Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 9–10.
8 Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought, 153.
9 Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity. The Construction of Modern National
Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 36–9.
10 Ibid., 47–9 and 179–80.
11 Rosemary Sayigh, Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries (London: Zed
Books, 1979), 153.
12 Martin Beck, Friedensprozess im Nahen Osten: Rationalität, Kooperation und politische
Rente im Vorderen Orient (Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag, 2002), 290.
13 Henry Laurens, Paix et guerre au Moyen-Orient – L’Orient arabe et le monde de 1945
à nos jours (Paris: Armand Colin, 1999), 312–13; Georges Corm, Le Proche-Orient
éclaté – 1956–2003, 3rd Edition (Paris: Folio/histoire, 2003), 430–1. Corm, a progressive
Lebanese researcher, is perhaps excessively careful not to appear too anti-Palestinian, and
blames the Palestinian “left,” wrongly in our opinion, for much of the tension, sparing
Fateh and Yasir Arafat.
14 Hiltermann claims that although West Bankers were “depeasantized” in the process,
they were never “proletarianized” because they continued to live in their villages
instead of moving to urban centers. This is only true in the most mechanistic of
senses, as their villages became their working-class commuter-style dormitories.
Cf. Joost Hiltermann, “Work and Action: The Role of the Working Class in the
Uprising,” in Jamal Nassar and Roger Heacock (eds), Intifada: Palestine at the
Crossroads (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1990), 145.
15 Emile Sahliyeh, In Search of Leadership: West Bank Politics since 1967 (Washington,
DC: Brookings Institution, 1988).
16 Bargouti, Husain Jameel, “Jeep Versus Bare Feet – The Villages in the Intifada,” in
Nassar and Heacock (eds), Intifada, 111.
17 Samih K. Farsoun and Jean M. Landis, “The Sociology of an Uprising: The Roots of
the Intifada,” in Nassar and Heacock (eds), Palestine at the Crossroads, 15–36.
18 Yazid Sayigh, Armed Struggle and the Search for State (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1997), 605–10.

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 ROGER HEACOCK

19 Samir Abdallah, “The Effects of Israeli Occupation on the Economy of the West Bank
and Gaza Strip,” in Nassar and Heacock (eds), Intifada, 45–50.
20 Adel Yahya, “The Role of the Refugees in the Uprising,” in Nassar and Heacock (eds),
Intifada, 95.
21 Roger Heacock, “From the Mediterranean to the Gulf and Back Again: The Palestinian
Intifada and the Gulf War,” Arab Studies Quarterly, 13(Winter/Spring 1991): 71.
22 Salim Tamari, “Social Science Research in Palestine: A Review of Trends and Issues,”
in Les Cahiers du Cermoc, 17(Amman: CERMOC – Centre de recherches sur le
Moyen-Orient contemporain, 1997), 31.
23 Salim Tamari, “The Revolt of the Petite Bourgeoisie – Urban Merchants and the
Palestinian Uprising,” in Nassar and Heacock (eds), Intifada, 163.
24 Massad, Colonial Effects, 14.
25 Roger Heacock, “Les Etats-Unis et l’accord du 13 septembre 1993,” in Confluences –
Méditerranée, 9(Winter 1994): 150.
26 Uri Savir, The Process. 110 Days that Changed the Middle East (New York: Random
House, 1998), 50.
27 Ibid., 102.
28 Ibid., 104.
29 Ibid., 95.
30 Ibid., 121–35.
31 Salim Tamari, “Social Science Research in Palestine,” 20.
32 Joseph A. Massad, “Political Realists or Comprador Intelligentsia: Palestinian
Intellectuals and the National Struggle,” Critique (Fall 1997): 21–35.
33 Roger Heacock, “Intifada: Das Erwachen der Palästinenser in Palästina,” in Fritz
Edlinger (ed.), Befreiungskampf in Palästina – Von der Madrid Konferenz zur al-Aqsa
intifada (Vienna: Promedia, 2001), 20; Gilles Kepel, Jihad: Expansion et déclin de
l’islamisme (Paris: Gallimard, 2000), 317–18; Roger Heacock, “Arafat, les Palestiniens
et l’Occident: Un malentendu triangulaire,” in Les Cahiers de l’Orient, 67(Third
Trimester, 2002): 16–17; Usher, Graham, Palestine in Crisis – The Struggle for Peace
and Political Independence after Oslo (London: Pluto Press, 1995), 62–5; Beck,
Friedensprozess, 274–9.
34 Usher, Palestine in Crisis, 65–77.
35 Jean-François Legrain, Les Palestines du Quotidien (Amman: CERMOC – Centre de
recherches sur le Moyen-Orient contemporain, 1999), 413.
36 Ibid., passim.
37 Ibid., 101.
38 Ibid., 102.
39 Ibid., 102–3.
40 Usher, Palestine in Crisis, 75.
41 Kepel, Jihad.
42 Ibid., 318.
43 Ibid., 320–2.
44 Ibid., 323–4.
45 Ibid., 417–18, 418 fn. 6.
46 Shikaki, Khalil, “Palestinians Divided,” in Foreign Affairs, 81(January–February 2002), 92.
47 Hélène Fuger, “Le mouvement islamique palestinien comme mouvement social,” in
Les Cahiers du Cermoc, 17 (Amman: CERMOC – Centre de recherches sur le Moyen-
Orient contemporain, 1997), 331.
48 Edward W. Said, The End of the Peace Process – Oslo and After, Second Edition
(London: Granta Books, 2002), 7.
49 Jean-François Legrain, “Palestine: Les bantoustans d’Allah,” in Les Cahiers du Cermoc,
17(Amman: CERMOC – Centre de recherches sur le Moyen-Orient contemporain,
1997), 85–101.

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 THE AL-AQSA INTIFADA

50 Ben Yishai, Ariel, “Palestinian Economy, Society, and the Second Intifada,” in Middle
East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Electronic Journal 6(3), September
2002 ([email protected]).
51 Cf. MAS – Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute, Social Monitor, 6(March
2003): 43.
52 Shikaki, “Palestinians divided,” 92.
53 Ibid., 95.
54 See for example Rema Hammami and Salim Tamari, “Anatomie einer anderen
Rebellion,” in Edlinger (ed.), Befreiungskampf in Palästina, 141–2; Georges Malbrunot,
Des pierres aux fusils: Les secrets de l’Intifada (Paris: Flammarion, 2002), passim.
55 Riccardo Bocco et al., Palestinian Public Perceptions of Their Living Conditions,
Reports I through VI (Geneva: Graduate Institute of Development Studies, 2000, 2001,
2002, 2003, 2004).
56 See for example Jamil Hilal, Takwin al-nukhba al-filistiniya mundhu nushu’ al-haraka
al-wataniya al-filistiniya ila ma ba’d qiam al-sulta al-wataniya (The Formation of the
Palestinian Elite, from the Rise of the Palestinan National Movement to the Period of
the Palestinian National Authority) (Ramallah: Muwatin, 2002); and Salim Tamari,
“Review Essay: Who Rules Palestine?,” Journal of Palestine Studies, 31(Summer
2002): 102–13.
57 Participatory Poverty Assessment (PPA) Project, Relationship between the Poor and
the Different Institutions: Learning from the Poor (Ramallah: Ministry of Planning and
International Cooperation and UNDP, 2002).
58 See also Michaela V. Pfeiffer, Vulnerability and the International Health Response in
the West Bank and Gaza Strip: An Analysis of Health and the Health Sector (Jerusalem:
World Health Organization, November 2001).
59 Atef Saad, “If Nablus Falls, What is Left?,” in Palestine Report (Jerusalem:
January 7, 2004).
60 Idem, “ ‘Lawless’ City Demands Action,” in Palestine Report (Jerusalem:
December 10, 2003).
61 Eyad El Sarraj, “Suicide Bombers: Dignity, Despair, and the Need for Hope,” Journal
of Palestine Studies, 4(Summer 2002): 76.
62 Marwan Barghouti, spoken contribution to a workshop organized by Birzeit
University’s Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Institute of International Studies (IALIIS),
Ramallah, January 2002.
63 Martin Beck, “The External Dimension of Authoritarian rule in Palestine,” Journal of
International Relations and Development 3/1(March 2000): 47–66.
64 MAS, 47–8.
65 The designation of Fateh as the “official” party and Hamas as the “popular” party has
now entered the academic mainstream, which does in itself (yet) mean that the
distinction is misplaced (Talal ‘Oukil, “Afaq al-talhawwal dakhil fateh fi al-marhala
al-jadida” [“The perspectives for change within Fateh during the present stage”], in
Majallat al-dirasat al-filistiniyya [Journal of Palestine Studies, Beirut], 62(Spring
2005): 58–65 (59).
66 This clearly emerges from the public opinion poll conducted by Dr Khalil Shikaki’s
Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (Ramallah: PSR, June, 2005) in the
West Bank and the Gaza Strip between June 9 and 11, 2005. It is an important poll,
because, while continuing to project a significant electoral advantage for Fateh (every-
body, including the victors, were surprised by the result) it clearly exposes people’s
primary concerns: fighting corruption and inequalities, while resisting occupation.

311
 INDEX

Abadan, unemployment 95 banditry 16–18; amnesty 274;

Abbas, Mahmud (Abu Mazen) 304, 308 depictions 160; during Greek
Abdullah, Hasan 79 interregnum 275; in Greek war for
Abrahamian, Ervand 143 liberation 267–9; under Kapodistrias
Abu’l-Dhahab, Muhammad Bey 28 269–71; under King Otto 271–5;
Afary, Janet 50, 143–4 in Ottoman-occupied Greece 263–6;
Ahmad Bey 219 as resistance 158–61; role of
al-‘Abd, Hasan Agha 39 women 271
al-‘Amara 31 banishment, Gypsies 191–2
al-‘Azm, As ‘ad Pasha 29, 43–4 Barany, Zoltan 175–6
al-Bakri, Khalil 38 Bardo, palace complex in Tunis 217–18,
al-Budayri, Ahmad 38, 39, 43–4 221–2
al-Dimashqi, Mustafa 35 Barghouti, Marwan 298, 303, 305
al-‘Imadi, Hamid 38 bast-nishini (refuge) 102
al-Mulk, Qavam 58 Bazargan, Mehdi 97
al-Rifa‘i, Hasan 35 Beik, William 42
al-Salihiyya (suburb of Damascus) 28, 36 Bennani-Chraïbi, Mounia 124
Alexandria, porters 73–4 Béranger, Philippe 221
Algiers, emancipated slave women Binning, Robert 51, 53–4
200–7 Black September 289
‘Ali Bey, rebellion 28 Blili, Leila Temime 216–17, 219
Althusser, Louis 284 bourgeoisie, Egypt 253
anarchist movement, Egypt 241–2 bread, shortages 32–3
Anglo-Persian Oil Company 153–4 bread riots 7–8, 39, 40, 41, 43–4, 54–6
Anglo-Tunisian convention, 1863 216 Bulaq 74–6, 79
Arafat, Yasir 289, 293–300, 301, Bushire 57
303, 308
Ardebil 56 Cairo 27, 74–6
armatoloi (militia) 265–6 Camp David 303
Astarabad, cholera 56 Carrières Centrales 119, 121, 130, 132
Asterides, K. 247, 250, 252 Carter, Jimmy 92
Astoin (case history) 230 “Carterite breeze” 92
Azarbayjan 154 Casablanca 117
cash nexus, Egypt 71, 72, 84
Bakhtiar, Shahpour 93 Celali Revolts 175
Bakhtiyari nomads 155 Çelebi, Evliya 180–1, 182
Bakhtiyari peasants (Chahar Mahal) Central Intelligence Agency
147–51, 153, 154, 164 (CIA) 91

313
 INDEX

Chahar Mahal movement (Bakhtiyari Doumas, Nicolas 244, 248

peasants) 147–51, 153, 154, 164 Dufferin, Lord (Frederick Hamilton-
Chatterjee, Partha 286–7, 308 Temple-Blackwood) 81
chiliarchies (military/gendarmerie) 270–1
Chorofylake (gendarmerie) 272 Ecumenical Patriarch 264
CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) 91 Egypt: anarchist movement 241–2;
cigarette workers 245–9 bourgeoisie 253; cigarette workers
Çingene, origin and use of term 179–80 245–9; cigarette workers’ strike
civil war, Damascus 38 1899 245–7; cigarette workers’
coal heavers 70–3 strike 1901 247; cigarette workers’
colonial rule, Egypt 80–4 strike 1903 247–8; definitions of
colonialism, European 285 foreign workers 239–40; ethnic
commodification, Egypt 84–5 workers’ groups 254; Free Popular
conscription, Pahlavi Iran 160 University 250–1; historical sources
consular missions, Tunisia 223–4 238; industrial action 243; international
Consultative Assembly of Representatives unions 242–3; internationalist discourse
77, 81–2 in labour movement 251–5; labour
contemporary accounts; ambivalence 43; press 249–50; modernization 240–1;
local knowledge 27; perspective 40; of National Party 253–4; nationalists
popular protests 26–7; of protests 253–4; resistance leagues 243; strike
during Mamluk period 32–5; of breakers 248; studies of foreign
protests during Ottoman period 35–40; workers 237–8; union leadership
terminology 31–2, 43 243–5; widening union participation
Council of the Unemployed Workers 100 248; workers’ publications 238
counterfeiting, Gypsies 183–4 Election Law, Egypt 1883, 81–2
courthouse, symbolism 39–40 elections, local 77–80
crime, amongst servants 225 electricity fraud 118, 127–31
Cromer, Lord (Evelyn Baring) 72, elites, relations with subaltern groups 85
81, 83 elitism, of historical records 26
crowds: cohesion 40; diffidence 41–2; employees of state, as focus of protest 33
discipline 40; diversity 27–32; employment, women in Iran 52–3
gathering for prayer 28; as historical entertainers, Gypsies 182
puzzle 25; longitudinal study 27; ethnicity 29, 185–7, 239–40, 254
during Mamluk period 32–5; Ethnofylake (National Guard) 272
during Ottoman period 35–40; Europeans 224, 227
Ottoman understanding 44; as executioners, Gypsies 184
politically useful 28; resources for Exmouth, Lord (Edward Pellew) 218–19
study 26; role in protests 5–8;
stereotypes 25 Fanon, Franz 284–5
Fassy family (case history) 228–9
Damascus: actions of Governors 28; bread Fateh 289, 298–300, 302, 305
riots 39; civil war 38; disorders, fatwa 41–2
1757–1758, 31; Mamluk period 30; Fedaii Organization 92, 93, 100–1
resources for study of crowds 26; fedayeen 288
transition to Ottoman rule 27 Feise, Godfrey 218
Darling, Linda 175 feminism, Iran 50
democracy, Palestine 296 feuds, ethnic 29
demonstrations 34, 40 Fida 297
deviance, for legitimate gain 124 Fillieule, Olivier 124
disarmament, Pahlavi Iran 162–3 food prices 38
discourse, internationalist 251–5 foreign workers 15–16
domestic service 216–17 fortune tellers, Gypsies 184
Dorostkar, Zahra 97 Foruhar, Dariush 96–7

314
 INDEX

France 42 counterfeiting 183–4; criminality

fraud 74–5, 118 173–4; as entertainers 182; ethnicity
Free Popular University (UPL) and state classification 185–7;
250–1, 252 exclusion from military 188;
Freundlich, Samuel 244 as executioners 184; as fortune tellers
184; historical sources 177–8; historical
gangs, Damascus 30 studies 175–6; judicial punishment
General Assembly, Egypt 81–2 191–2; legal status 185; liva-i çingane
George I, King of Greece (George (sub-province of the Gypsies) 185–7,
Glyxbourg) 274–5 192–3; marginalized professions 3,
Gerber, Haim 36 181–5; as metalsmiths 183; Muslim
Geremek, Bronislaw 178 and non-Muslim 189; prejudice against
Ghazvin, protest by unemployed 100 192; professions 181–5, 192;
Gianaclis, Nestor 246 prostitution 182–3, 187; relations with
Gigu, Colonel 160 Ottoman state 174–5, 183–4, 188, 192;
Ginio, Eyal 176, 179, 189–90, 193 relative marginality 178; religious
Giza, measurers 75–6 beliefs and practice 180–1; resistance
Gli Operai (The Workers) 251, 252 to state administration 190; spatial
Goldenburg, Solomon (also exclusion 178, 184; state administration
Goldemburg) 244 184–7; stereotyping 184–5; taxation
governesses, Tunis 226–7 187, 188–90, 193
Governors, Damascus 28, 30, 33, 36–7
Graham, Stephen 117 Hamas 297–8, 299–300, 307
Gramsci, Antonio 2, 3, 18, 19, 19n Hanafi legal tradition 35, 36, 206
Greece: amnesty for bandits 274; banditry Hasan Pasha, Abaza 30
and piracy under Kapodistrias 269–71; hijab 51
banditry and piracy under King Otto historians: problems of studying
271–5; banditry during Ottoman premodern cultures 26; view of crowds
occupation 263–6; breakdown of 25–6
Byzantine Empire 263–4; coup 1843 historical records, elitism 26
274; coup 1862 274; decline of piracy historiography 69, 285, 308
274; development of legal system 273; history from below 2, 4, 5
dissolution of irregular militias 272; hizbullahis 97, 100
establishment of security forces 272; Hobsbawm, Eric 1, 69
guerrillas 264–6; interregnum 274–5; House of Labor (Tehran) 104–5, 106
merchant class 264; military and hunger strike, Tehran 97–8
gendarmerie battalions 270–1; Husaynid dynasty 217–18
military reform 275–6; piracy during
Ottoman occupation 266–7; political Ibrahim, Karbalai 161
culture 268; role in sea-trade 266–7; income, communal division 73–4
social role of irregular forces 276–7; industrial action, Egypt 243
war for liberation 267–9 Interior Ministry, Egypt 82
Greek Association of Cigarette International Association of Cooperation
Makers 245 for the Improvement of the Working
Greek Association of Cigarette Classes (IAC) 244
Workers 249 International Federation of
Greek Chamber of Commerce 254 Resistance 244
guerrillas, Greece 264–6 International Mutual Aid Association of
Guha, Ranajit 2 Shoemakers 245
guilds 29, 71, 73–4, 78, 83–4, 215 International Reading Room (Cairo) 251
Gurney J. 54 International Resistance Federation 243
Gypsies 12, 14; banishment 191–2; International Union of Cigarette
complaints about 178–9, 182, 192; Workers 248–9

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 INDEX

International Union of the Workers of the Kalliarekos, Vasilios 252

Matossian Factory 248–9 Kannan, Ibn 43
International Union of Tobacco kanuns 177, 189–90
Workers 247 kapetanios (bandit leaders) 265
International Union of Workers and Kapodistrias, Ioannis 269–71
Employees 242–3 kapoi (bodyguards) 265–6
international unions, Egypt 242–3 Karagöz (Shadow Theatre) 178, 179
internationalist discourse, Egyptian kariani shantytown dweller 116, 120, 122,
labour movement 251–5 123, 126, 127, 131, 134
intifada, 1987 291–3 karien see shantytowns
intifada, 2000 (al-Aqsa) 18, 300–7 Karpat, Kemal 186
Iran: attacks on protesters 107–8; Kazemi, Farhad 143
Constitutional Revolution, 1906 50; Kermanshah 101, 106
demise of workers’ protests 107–10; Khamsah 1929 tribal rebellion 157
effects of protests 110–11; escalation of Khan, Haydar 161
collective action 98–102; fund-raising Khan al-Akrad 29
103; improved employment situation khans, relationship with nomads 154–5
108–9; Islamization 93; job-creation Khomeini, Ruhollah, Ayatollah 92
109; land seizures 165; literacy 52; Khorramabad 99
loans for unemployed 96–8, 109; Khouri-Dagher, Nadia 118
modernization 91; negotiations by khushnishin (agricultural labourers) 150–1
unemployed 104; organization of Kiel, Machiel 189
protest 103–7; pasdaran 91, 93, Kirili, complaints about Gypsies 179
95, 98, 99, 100, 104, 106, 107; Kirman, peasants’ protest 150–1, 164
political motives for protest 108; klephts (brigands) 264–6
position of women 51–3; protest Kurdistan 100, 107
mobilisers 105–7; Qajar 51;
Revolution, 1979 50; support networks La Marsa 222
109–10; traditional elements in protests La Tribuna Libera 249
102–3; variety of street protests 102–3; labour commodification 71
women’s role in politics 61; workers’ labour migration 214
take-overs 109; see also Iranian labour press 249–50
Revolution, 1979; Pahlavi Iran land reform 163, 165
Iranian Revolution, 1979: history and land seizures 165
process 91–4; radical left 93; landlords 146–8
unemployment 94–5; women’s law, as resistance 161–2, 176
demonstrations 50; see also Iran Le Bon, Gustave 25
Isfahan 56, 57, 100 Lebanon, Palestine Liberation
ishghal (occupation) 102 Organization (PLO) 289–90
Islam, and slavery 203–4 legitimacy: of crowd violence 40–1; of
Israel 288, 291 deviance 124; of electricity fraud
Istanbul, Gypsies 182, 191 121–5; of space 116
Italian Workers’ Society 241 Legrain, Jean-François 298
Italian–Tunisian treaty, 1868 216 liberalization, economic 134
liva-i çingane (sub-province of the
Jalal, Sayyid 161 Gypsies) 185–7, 192–3
janissaries 30–1, 42, 224 local elections 77–84
Jordan 287, 288–90 local knowledge 27
judges 35–7 L’Operaio 249
L’Unione 250, 253
Kafr Akhsha 77 lutis 57
kalantars, 1929 tribal rebellion 157 Lydec 118–21, 124–7

316
 INDEX

Macheros, Panos (also Yiannopoulos) 244 Ottoman Empire, classical period 174–5
Mahabad 100 Ottoman period, Damascus 27, 35–40
Majd, Mohammad Gholi 143–4 Ottomanization 44
Maltese immigrants 221
Mamluk period, protest 32–5 Pahlavi Iran 296; agrarian structure
Manual Trade Workers’ Union 253–4 144–5; archival research 142;
marginality 173–6, 181–5 Bakhtiyari peasant protest (Chahar
marketplace, role in protests 29, 32 Mahal) 147–51, 153, 154, 164; banditry
marriage 51 158–61; Chahar Mahal movement
Marushiakova, Elena 175, 180, 182–3 (Bakhtiyari peasants) 147–51, 153, 154,
Marvin, Simon 117 164; Civil Code 145; conscripton 160;
Marx, Karl 284 corruption 162; difficulty of rural
Massad, Joseph 287, 308 research 142; diffusion of ideas 152;
May Day, protest 101 disarmament 162–3; hostility to
May Day Coordination Council 101 modernization 146; khans’ relationship
measurers 76, 79 with nomads 154–5; khushnishin
metalsmithing, Gypsies 183 (agricultural labourers) 150–1; Kirman
migrant labour 14–15 protest 150–1; land reform 163, 165;
migration 153–4 land registration 146–7; law as
military, exclusion of Gypsies 188 resistance 161–2; Majlis 145; migration
millet (confessional community) 153–4; modernization 141–2, 145, 157,
185–7, 193 163; nature of rural protest 143;
mixed unions, Egypt 242–3 nomadic uprisings 164–5; opium
modernization 91, 240–1 monopoly 159; petitions 162; position
Morocco 3, 116 of landlords 146–8; proletarianization
Mounsey, Augustus 51, 52, 53, 62–3n 153–4; property rights 145, 146; role of
Mount Qasyun 28 press 152; rural ideology and
Muhammad Riza Shah 165 consciousness 151–2; rural population
mühimme registers 177, 182, 183 141–2, 147–8, 163–5; shabnamahs
muhtasib (market inspector) 36 (night letters) 152–3; sharecroppers
mujtahids 57 141, 144, 147–51, 164; Sitarah-i
Bakhtiyari (Bakhtiyari Star) 152;
Nablus 305 smuggling 161; tribal rebellion 1929,
nakba 288 156–8; see also Iran; Reza Shah Pahlavi
narrative sources 178 Palestine: 1987 intifada 291–3; 2000
Nashil district 80, 85 intifada (al-Aqsa) 300–7;
Nasir al-Din Shah 60 accountability of leadership 301;
National Party (Egypt) 253–4 background to al-Aqsa intifada
nationalism 4–5 288–91; class stratification 302;
nationalism, colonial 286 collaboration 3; colonialization 286;
nationalists, Egypt 253–4 corruption 296; day labourers 290–1,
network theory 214 292; democracy 296; elites 296;
nomads, attitude to khans 154–5 historiography 285; internal conflict
305; interpretations of 2000 intifada
offstage dissent 3 302; nakba 288; Oslo negotiations
opium monopoly 159 293–300; Participatory Poverty
oral tradition 178 Assessment 304–5; popular
Organization of Unemployed and Seasonal organizations 303, 308; popular
Workers 95 protest 307–8; proletariat 290–2;
orientalism 4 revolt, 1936–9 288; self-organization
Oslo negotiations 306 304, 307; society under Palestine
Otto I, King of Greece 271–5 Authority 295

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 INDEX

Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) qadi (chief judges) 35–7

287, 289; exile inTunis 293, 294; Qashqai 157, 159
Lebanon 289–90; marginalization 301; Qum, demonstration 92
relations with Hamas 299; return to
Palestine 295–7 Rabin, Yitzhak 293, 295
Palestinian Authority (PA) 288, 294–7, Raffo, Joseph Marie 220
299, 301, 303, 305, 306, 308 Raymond, André 30
Palestinian Legislative Council 297, 306 refugees 227
Palestinian Ministry of Planning and religion, as legitimation for authority 28
International Cooperation 304–5 religious practice, role in
Palestinian People’s Party (PPP) 297 demonstrations 34
Palestinian Revolutionary Movement 288 repatriation 224–5, 229
Parrini, Ugo 248 residential areas, Damascus 29–30
pasdaran 91, 93, 95, 98, 99, 100, 104, restructuring, economic 84
106, 107 Reza Shah Pahlavi 91–2, 144–6
Paspati, Alexander 181 rites of violence 41
patronage 220–1, 223–4 Riza Shah see Reza Shah Pahlavi
Paykar Organization 104 Roma see Gypsies
peasantry, Egypt 76–7 Rudé, George 25, 27
Pellew, Edward, Lord Exmouth 218–19 rural populations 10–11, 142, 143
Pensiero ed Azione (Thought and
Action) 241–2 Said, Edward 284, 300–1
Peres, Shimon 293, 294 Saliba, Angelo 224–5
petitions 4, 162, 178–9, 182, 192 Sanandaj 100–1
Philike Etaireia (Society of Friends) 269 Sayigh, Rosemary 288
piracy 266–74 Scott, J.C. 3
Popov, Vesselin 175, 180, 182–3 self-protection 85
Popular Front for the Liberation of Selim I, Sultan 28
Palestine (PFLP) 289, 301 shabnamahs (night letters) 152–3
popular protests, contemporary Shanab, Abu, grain fraud 74–5
accounts 26–7 shantytowns: disconnection campaigns
Port Said 70–3, 78 124–7, 133; discourse on rights 121–5;
Port Said and Suez Coal Company 71–2 Egypt 118; elected representatives
porters, Alexandria 73–4 132–4; electricity charges 130–1;
poverty 10–11, 215, 227–30 electricity fraud 118, 119–20;
prayer 28, 29, 34 electrification 117–21; electrification
premodern culture, difficulties for as political mechanism 134; hostility to
historians 26 Lydec 125–7; infra-legal status
press, role in Pahlavi Iran 152 117–18, 119; legalization of electricity
prices 38 supply 131–2; Lydec 118–21; Morocco
proletarianization, Pahlavi Iran 153–4 116; oumanâ (representatives) 131–2;
property rights, Pahlavi Iran 145 political context of electrification
prostitution, Gypsies 183, 187 132–3; professionalization of
protest: aims 42; conservatism 42; as electricity piracy 127–31; state
deferential 40–3; legitimacy 43–4; tolerance 118
Mamluk period 32–5; as sharecroppers, Pahlavi Iran 141, 144,
multidimensional 42–3; Ottoman 147–51, 164
period 35–40; regional diversity 49n; shari‘a 51–2
by unemployed 95, 96; see also Sharon, Ariel 303
demonstrations Sherkat-i Vahid 96
Provincial Councils, Egypt 82 Shiraz 55–7
public space, women in 53 shops, closure 29, 37
punishment, of Gypsies 191–2 Sidqi, Muhammad 245

318
 INDEX

silk weavers 29 hunger strike 97–8; US embassy seizure

Sitarah-i Bakhtiyari (Bakhtiyari Star) 152 107; women’s demonstrations 55
slave women, historical sources 201 Temple, Lady, visit to Bardo 222
slavery 53; abolition of African slavery The Union (cigarette workers) 245–8
in Tunis 219; Algiers 201–3; Tunis 218 Thompson, E.P. 1, 7–8, 41
slaves 12–14; access to property after Tilley, Charles 40
emancipation 205–6; black 13, 201–3; trade, regulation 38
charitable endowment 205–6; Christian tribal rebellion, 1929 156–8
218; community 204; emancipation Trikoupis, Charilaos 276
203–5; employment following Tudeh party 93
manumission 219; identity 203; within Tulun, Ibn 32, 43
Islam 203–4; manumission of Christian Tunis see Tunisia
218–19; marriage after emancipation Tunisia: abolition of African slavery 219;
205–6; occupations after emancipation Algerian refugees 227; Bardo 217–18;
204; prices 202–3; social position after charity 228; concessions to European
emancipation 204–5; and social status investors 215; consular missions 223–4,
202; white 202–3 229; disputes over employees 225–6;
smuggling 161 domestic service outside court 223–7;
social historians, view of crowds 26 elite domestic service 216–23;
society, relationship with law 176 employment of former slaves 219;
soldiers, as focus of protest 33 European population 214; Europeans as
south Asia, critique of nationalism 4 employers 224; governesses 226–7;
South Asian Subaltern Studies 1 growth of hospitality industry 225;
space, legitimacy 116 guilds 215; Husaynid dynasty 217–18;
space, management by authorities 119 infrastructure projects 216; labour
splintering urbanism 117 migration 214; Maltese immigrants 221;
stereotyping, Gypsies 184–5 manumission of African slaves
strike breakers 248 219; manumission of Christian slaves
subaltern groups: activism 3–4; 218–19; migrant labour 223–4; palace
agency 1; definition 2; independence servants 220; patronage 220–1; poverty
struggles 16–18; marginalization 1–3; amongst Europeans 227; property
self-protection 8–10; social protest 2 rights 215–16; repatriation 224–5, 229;
subaltern studies 2; complexity 69–70; sleeping Neapolitans 213; social
marginalization 4; problems of networks 230–1; treatment of servants
scholarship 5; scope 18 213, 220
Subaltern Studies Group (SSG)
284, 286 ulama 26
Sufis 28 Umayyad Mosque 28, 31, 32, 33–4, 37
Surkhi, Mahdi 159 ‘umdas 82–3, 90 n.65
Syndicate of Project/Seasonal Workers of Unemployed Workers of Ahwaz and
Abadan (SPWA) 105 Vicinity 99
Syndicate of Unemployed Project Workers unemployment, Iranian Revolution 94–5
of Abadan (SUPWA) 95, 99 union leadership, Egypt 243–5
Union of Greek Workers 248
Tabriz 92, 100 Union of the Unemployed 101
tagmata (military/gendarmerie) 270–1 Union of the Unemployed Workers
tahassun (sit-ins) 102, 113–14n of Isfahan and Vicinity (UUWIV)
tahlila 28 100, 104
tax collectors, as focus of protest 33 Union of Unemployed People of
taxation 38, 53, 188–90, 193 Kermanshah 106
ta‘ziyya plays 58–61, 65–6n Union of Workers and High School
Tehran: campaigns by unemployed Graduates 99
96–101; House of Labor 104–5, 106; unions, widening participation 248

319
 INDEX

United National Leadership of the women: as bandits and pirates 271; bread
Uprising (UNLU) 292 riots 55–6; dramatic role in politics 54;
UPL see Free Popular University education 52; emancipated slaves 12,
urbanization, Morocco 116 200–7; employment in Tunis 215; as
focus of study 200; Iranian Revolution,
values, community 40–1 1979 93; legal rights 52; marriage 51;
Vassilike Phalanga (Royal non-domestic work 52–3; portrayed in
Phalanx) 272 ta‘ziyya plays 59; and public space 53;
veiling 51, 54 riots 54–8; role in Iranian politics 61;
vigilantism 40–1 in rural Iranian society 62n; Shiraz
demonstration, 1865 55; as slaves in
waqf (charitable endowment) 205–6 Tunis 221–3; social status and behavior
war for liberation (Greece 1821–7) 267–9 54; taxation 53; Tehran demonstrations
Watson, Robert 52 55; veiling 51, 54
Weber, Eugen 5 women’s demonstrations 50–1, 58–61
weighers and measurers, Egypt 74–6 work, social significance 214
West Bank 288
wet-nurses 223 Zemon Davis, Natalie 41
Wick, Alexis 284–5 Ziegler, Jean 304
Wills, Charles 52, 62n Zionism 285

320