The Animal in Ottoman Egypt

ALAN MIKHAIL, The Animal in Ottoman Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). Pp. 336. $53.00 cloth.

Roughly a fifth of the way into the text of The Animal in Ottoman Egypt, Alan Mikhail makes a startling claim-startling, at least, for scholars of the transition to modernity in Egypt and the Middle East. He argues, "in the period from 1780 to 1820, equally if not more consequential than Napoleon's invasion or the rise of Mehmet 'Ali was the massive reduction in livestock populations" (39). To set such figures as Napoleon and Mehmet 'Ali alongside the buffalo cow and the ox in terms of their importance in early modern and modern Egyptian history speaks to the boldness of Mikhail's latest monograph-one which is bound to excite and to provoke historians of the Middle East and Ottoman Empire in equal measure.

At the foundation of Mikhail's argument is the notion that late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Egypt witnessed a fundamental shift in the relationship between humans and animals. Before this juncture, the relationship between the human and animal inhabitants of the Nile Valley was characterized by close contact and mutual dependence. Afterwards, by contrast, the relationship was characterized by a steadily expanding interspecies chasm, largely occasioned by the efforts of the emergent modern Egyptian state to diminish the perceived risk that animals posed to the hygiene and productivity of Egyptian society.

The book is structured to illustrate this shift and its implications in vivid terms. Mikhail takes three classes of animals-livestock, dogs, and "charismatic megafauna," such as elephants, lions, tigers, giraffes, and hippopotami-and develops a nuanced image of their lives and interactions with humans both before and after the rise of the interspecies chasm...