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The Politics of Households in Ottoman Egypt: The Rise of the Qazdaglis, by Jane Hathaway. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Xv + 173 pages. Gloss. to p. 179. Bibl. to p. 189. Index to p. 198. $49.95. Reviewed by Mary Ann Fay
In her 1992 Ph.D. dissertation, Jane Hathaway challenged the traditional historiography of Ottoman Egypt by arguing that the elite of beys (members of the beylicate created by the Ottoman administration) and military officers was not a throwback to the Mamluk sultanate, and that the system that emerged in the late 17th century should not be characterized as Mamluk or even neo-Mamluk. The volume under review, The Politics of Households in Ottoman Egypt, is a revision of the author's dissertation. With the addition of new material on women, it makes a contribution to the history of Ottoman Egypt and in particular to the origins of the household that dominated 18th-century Egypt, the Qazdughli. The study does not, however, succeed in its larger aim, which is to demonstrate that there were no structural or cultural continuities between the Mamluk sultanate and late 17th- and 18th-century Egypt, which other scholars, including this reviewer, have termed neo-Mamluk.
In her denial of continuity between the classical Mamluk and the Ottoman periods, Hathaway takes a Turco-centric approach to Egyptian history that attributes historical change in the province predominantly to forces emanating from the imperial center. This is evident in her approach to historical causality: She identifies the Anatolian mercenaries and soldiers who made their way to Egypt in the late 17th century, among them the founder of the Qazdughli household, as the primary agents of change during this period. As for the more indigenous institution of the beylicate, the author divorces it from the Mamluk past by arguing that revolutionary changes in the land tenure system transformed the beys into Ottoman tax farmers. Finally, she contends that the model for the households of the beys and the regimental parvenus was the elite Ottoman household, modeled after that of Sultan Suleyman I, and not the households of the Mamluk sultans or princes who ruled Egypt until the Ottoman conquest.
Although Hathaway's arguments are not persuasive, her work makes a significant contribution to the literature by turning scholarly attention away from...