Egypt of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has long been a focus for study by social scientists and humanists of various disciplines. To an extensive bibliography is now added a unique work of social history that explores the lives of Egypt's poor and the shifting attitudes toward them over 150 years. Mine Ener has written an account of how the poor of Cairo and Alexandria negotiated assistance from traditional institutions and government agencies alike, and how the nature of institutions offering assistance changed during this time. She posited that, for much of this period, the attitude of successive Egyptian governments toward the poor was one infused with an Islamic ethos of charity and informed by shifting political concerns. Continuous evidence of government behavior—from Mehmet Ali Pasha in the early nineteenth century to King Farouk in the mid-twentieth—demonstrates that the source of charity was never thoroughly depersonalized. Each one claimed to be the source of assistance and couched his claims in the language of the concerned and conscientious Muslim ruler.