Center Journals

This article portrays the life of Nafisa Khatun, a member of Egypt's social elite during the tumultuous period between the 18th and 19th centuries. Originally taken captive in the Caucus Mountains in Georgia, she was sold into slavery in Cairo’s slave market. After being a concubine, she would later become the wife to two of the most prominent Mamluk princes—Ali Bey "the Great" and Murad Bey—both of whom had wanted to rise to the throne of Egypt individually and secede completely from the Ottoman Empire. Nafisa Khatun's life story mirrored such larger narratives, as she eventually gained a high status within Mamluk society, becoming chief of the Mamluk Harem and acquiring substantial real estate wealth, becoming one of the wealthiest women within the Mamluk elite. Her fate would take another turn for the worse, however, after Mohammed Ali Pasha consolidated his control of Egypt and began his efforts at annihilating the Mamluk caste, which culminated in the famous Cairo Citadel massacre of 1811. Nafisa Khatun, who lived only briefly after that event, was reduced to penury, illness and suffered loss of influence. This study uses the case study of Nafisa Khatun to understand the extent to which large social, economic and political changes impacted the lives of individuals who lived through them. Nafisa Khatun's life told the story of Egypt's historical transformation, before being changed by the challenges presented by the period of modernization,

In the autumn 1850, the Ottoman state decided to advance its administrative reforms, originally proclaimed in the 1839 Gülhane edict. Aleppo was at that time one of the places in Bilad ash-Sham (Greater Syria) where two of the most unpopular measures were undertaken: The ferde (poll tax) was introduced and military conscription was imposed on the subjects in order to recruit men from the city and the surrounding countryside for service in the new Ottoman army. These measures coincided with growing European economic interest in Aleppo and the rise of a class of Catholic entrepreneurs financially connected to the city’s European traders. The protests against the Ottoman reform measures, led by inhabitants of the eastern suburbs, were unprecedented for being viewed as confessionally motivated. Angry masses rose and attacked the quarters inhabited by a majority of Christians, with insurgents plundering and destroying possessions in those quarters, burning down a number of churches and killing some individuals. The Ottoman state was only able to restore order when reinforcements arrived, troops armed with new cannons, which were able to subdue the insurgents’ quarters. Going beyond this incident's sectarian sheen, this paper argues against the presumption of a deep-seated animosity between Muslims and Christians. Instead, an outline of the history of the Christian community and the Christians’ economic and political interactions in the city during the long Ottoman period is provided. Furthermore, the 1850 incident is not isolated historically from episodes of protest and unrest that occurred in Aleppo beginning in the 1770s – the only epoch during which violence took on a religious/sectarian hue—and the paper will remedy this by illustrating in detail the patterns of continuity and discontinuity in the tradition of protest and violence in the city.