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African Slaves in 19th-Century Rural Egypt

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2009

Kenneth M. Cuno
Kenneth M. Cuno*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Urbana, Ill.; e-mail: kmcuno@illinois.edu
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Extract

By all accounts, the population of enslaved Africans in Egypt increased in the 19th century compared to earlier times. An estimated 5,000 African slaves were imported annually during the 1840s and 1850s, and as few as 1,000 in 1860. However, during the cotton boom (1861–64), some 25,000 to 30,000 slaves were brought to Egypt each year to satisfy the demand for labor generated by the rapid expansion of cotton cultivation.

Type
Quick Studies
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , May 2009 , pp. 186 - 188
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

NOTES

1 Fredriksen, Børge, Slavery and Its Abolition in Nineteenth-Century Egypt (Bergen, Norway: Historisk Institut, 1977), 41–42.Google Scholar

2 Ibid., 53, and Gabriel Baer, “Slavery and its Abolition,” in idem, Studies in the Social History of Modern Egypt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), 171.

3 On these registers and their characteristics, see Cuno, Kenneth M. and Reimer, Michael J., “The Census Registers of Nineteenth-Century Egypt: A New Source for Social Historians,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 24 (1997): 193–216CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Egyptian National Archives (Dar al-Wathaʾiq al-Qawmiyya). Daftar Taʿdad al-Nufus bi-Nahiyat Sandub min 20 Jumada al-Ula 1263 [April 1847], Daqahliyya, no. 7799; Daftar Taʿdad al-Nufus bi-Nahiyat Sandub bi-Qism Nawasa al-Ghayt bi-Mudiriyyat al-Daqahliyya fi ʿAm 1285 [1868], no. 7803; Daftar Taʿdad al-Nufus bi-Nahiyat Damas, 1264 [1848], no. 7759; Daftar Taʿdad al-Nufus bi-Nahiyat Damas bi-Qism Mit Ghamr 1286 [1868], no. 7761; Daftar Taʿdad al-Nufus bi-Nahiyat Zafar bi-Markaz al-Simbillawin 1264 [1848], no. 7773; Daftar Taʿdad al-Nufus bi-Nahiyat Zafar bi-Qism al-Simbillawin 1285 [1868], no. 7774.

5 Baer, “Slavery and its Abolition,” 168.

6 Baer, “Slavery and its Abolition,” 165.

7 Egyptian National Archives. Shariʿa Court of al-Daqahliyya (Mahkamat al-Daqahliyya), Sijill Tarikat wa-Aylulat 3: 120–24, case no. 216.

8 The number of slaves manumitted in different provinces was regularly reported in the official gazette, Al-Waqaʾiʿ al-Misriyya. On former slaves in Egypt, see Powell, Eve M. Troutt, “Slaves or Siblings? Abdallah al-Nadim's Dialogues about the Family,” in Histories of the Modern Middle East: New Directions, ed. Gershoni, Israel, Erdem, Hakan, and Woköck, Ursula (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2002), 155–66Google Scholar; and Liat Kozma, “Women on the Margins and Legal Reform in Late Nineteenth-Century Egypt, 1850–1882” (PhD diss., New York University, 2006).