Browsing by Author "Mestyan, A"

Now showing 1 - 14 of 14
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    Arabic theater in early khedivial culture, 1868-72: James Sanua revisited
    (International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2014-02-01) Mestyan, A
    This article revisits the official culture of the early khedivate through a microhistory of the first modern Egyptian theater in Arabic. Based on archival research, it aims at a recalibration of recent scholarship by showing khedivial culture as a complex framework of competing patriotisms. It analyzes the discourse about theater in the Arabic press, including the journalist Muhammad Unsi's call for performances in Arabic in 1870. It shows that the realization of this idea was the theater group led by James Sanua between 1871 and 1872, which also performed Ê¿Abd al-Fattah al-Misri's tragedy. But the troupe was not an expression of subversive nationalism, as has been claimed by scholars. My historical reconstruction and my analysis of the content of Sanua's comedies show loyalism toward the Khedive Ismail. Yet his form of contemporary satire was incompatible with elite cultural patriotism, which employed historicization as its dominant technique. This revision throws new light on a crucial moment of social change in the history of modern Egypt, when the ruler was expected to preside over the plural cultural bodies of the nation. © 2014 Cambridge University Press .
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    Digital source imperialism and the Arab world
    (2016) Mestyan, A
    The term “digital imperialism” has been commonly used to describe cases where digital products transform social customs, but I use the term “digital source imperialism” here to refer to those who seek to control or monopolize access to digital products that belong to the public domain.
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    Domestic Sovereignty, A‘yan Developmentalism, and Global Microhistory in Modern Egypt
    (Comparative Studies in Society and History, 2018) Mestyan, A
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    Erratum: Power and music in Cairo: Azbakiyya (Urban History (2013))
    (Urban History, 2013-11-01) Mestyan, A
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    Global Ottoman: The Cairo-Istanbul Axis
    (2017) Mestyan, A
    What does the Ottoman framework mean for urban historians of the Arab world and in particular of Egypt?
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    “I Have To Disguise Myself”: Orientalism, Gyula Germanus, and pilgrimage as cultural capital, 1935–1965
    (The Hajj and Europe in the Age of Empire, 2016-11) Mestyan, A
    The present volume focuses on the political perceptions of the Hajj, its global religious appeal to Muslims, and the European struggle for influence and supremacy in the Muslim world in the age of pre-colonial and colonial empires.
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    Ignác Goldziher's report on the books brought from the orient for the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
    (Journal of Semitic Studies, 2015-01-01) Mestyan, A
    © The author. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the University of Manchester. All rights reserved.This paper contains the English translation of Ignác Goldziher's Hungarian essay Report on the Books Brought from the Orient for the Hungarian Academy of Sciences with Regard to the Conditions of the Printing Press in the Orient (1874). The introduction provides the historical and scholarly context of the article. The Arabic printed books Goldziher bought in Egypt reflect his understanding of a specialized Arabic Studies library in the 1870s. The general argument is that Goldziher connected the Arab nation and Arabic texts based on the Hungarian and German concepts of liberal nationalism. This connection instrumentalized religious texts for a non-religious goal.
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    Materials for a history of Hungarian academic orientalism: The case of Gyula Germanus
    (Welt des Islams, 2014-01-01) Mestyan, A
    This article provides materials for an institutional history of academic Hungarian Orientalism through the life of Gyula Germanus (1884-1979). Using hitherto unexploited archives, this text explores his education, integration into academia, and career up to 1939. I argue that Germanus was an assimilated Hungarian of Jewish origin with a strong loyalty to the state. His two conversions - to Calvinism in 1909 and to Islam in 1930 - also transformed him from a minor Turkologist into a popularly acclaimed Arabist. This study demonstrates that academic Orientalism as a national science was a contested vehicle of social mobility in the Hungarian transition from an imperial to a nation-state setting.© 2014 koninklijke brill nv, leiden.
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    “Muḥammad Yūsuf Najm – A Maker of the Nahḍa”
    (Al-Abhath, 2016-10-01) Mestyan, A
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    Sound, Military Music, and Opera in Egypt during the Rule of Mehmet Ali Pasha (r.1805-1848)
    (Ottoman Empire and European Theatre Vol. II – The Time of Joseph Haydn. From Sultan Mahmud I to Mahmud II (r.1730-1839), 2014) Mestyan, A
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    The Probate Regime: Enchanted Bureaucracy, Islamic Law, and the Capital of Orphans in Nineteenth-Century Egypt
    (Law and History Review) Mestyan, A; Nori, R
    Abstract In this article, we explore the “probate regime,” an administrative field of government activity of legally transferring, taxing, and administering bequests. As an example, we study the changes of the Egyptian probate regime in a longue durée perspective, with a focus on the nineteenth century when Egypt was a sub-Ottoman “khedivate.” We argue that the rationalization and expansion of the previously Ottoman administration of bequests, unlike Western bureaucracies, retained religious norms in the 1850s-1860s. In the context of Egyptian legal transformation, the change in the probate regime represents a case when Islamic norms became contested between administrative bodies of the government and the Muslim judge (qadi). Drawing on novel archival research in Egypt and elsewhere, we first consider the institutions of the Ottoman probate regime (probate judge, fees, and a probate bureau). Next, we zoom in on the way the khedivial probate bureau became a large, de-Ottomanized, Muslim administration of death by the 1870s in a partnership between khedives and local jurists. The khedives also considered the orphans’ wealth under the care of the bureau a source of government capitalism. Despite the abolishment of the probate bureau in 1896, the khedivial transformation ensured that Muslim principles remained normative during the British occupation which ushered in a new division of law into “religious” and “civil” legal domains.
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    Upgrade?: Power and sound during Ramadan and ‘Id al-fitr in the nineteenth-century Ottoman Arab provinces
    (Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 2017-01-01) Mestyan, A
    © 2017 by Duke University Press. This essay focuses on the month of Ramadan and its end celebration, ‘Id al-Fitr, the Festival of Breaking the Fast, in the Ottoman Arab provinces in the second half of the nineteenth century. What was the effect of new technologies and urbanization on these Muslim practices in their relationship to politics and the new public spaces? Building on recent scholarship, Mestyan argues that these were reconstituted as part of symbolic politics and served as a test period for using new technologies to synchronize collective action. He explores this process by historicizing the relationship between power and sound during Ramadan.