Author's note: For their very close readings and extremely valuable critiques of this article, I thank Jane Hathaway, Yuen-Gen Liang, Jessica Barnes, Murat Dağlı, Martin W. Lewis, Beth Baron, Sara Pursley, and the five anonymous IJMES reviewers. Others have also offered vital help in the research and writing of this article. I thank Shauqi Hasan Shaʿban, Bradley Naranch, Edith Sheffer, Yossef Rapoport, Sarah Elkind, James Baldwin, Mrinalini Rajagopalan, Jeannie Sowers, Joyce Chaplin, and Sean Hanretta. For invitations to present earlier versions of this work, my appreciation goes to Steve Caton, Shahzad Bashir, Burçak Keskin-Kozat, Jessica Barnes, and Jennifer Thomson.

¹ Understandably, more has been written about Cairo than any other city or region in Ottoman Egypt. For scholarship on other parts of Ottoman Egypt, see the following. On al-Daqahliyya and al-Mansura in the Ottoman period, see Cuno, Kenneth M., The Pasha's Peasants: Land, Society, and Economy in Lower Egypt, 1740–1858 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Nasira ʿAbd al-Mutajalli Ibrahim ʿAli, “al-Daqahliyya fi al-ʿAsr al-ʿUthmani” (master's thesis, ʿAyn Shams University, Cairo, 2005). On Alexandria, see Reimer, Michael J., “Ottoman Alexandria: The Paradox of Decline and the Reconfiguration of Power in Eighteenth-Century Arab Provinces,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 37 (1994): 107–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ʿUthman, Nasir, “Mahkamat Rashid ka-Masdar li-Dirasat Tijarat al-Nasij fi Madinat al-Iskandariyya fi al-ʿAsr al-ʿUthmani,” al-Ruznama: al-Hauliyya al-Misriyya li-l-Wathaʾiq 3 (2005): 355–85Google Scholar. On Ottoman Rashid, see Salah Ahmad Haridi ʿAli, “al-Haya al-Iqtisadiyya wa-l-Ijtimaʿiyya fi Madinat Rashid fi al-ʿAsr al-ʿUthmani, Dirasa Wathaʾiqiyya,” Egyptian Historical Review 30–31 (1983–84): 327–78. On Ottoman Upper Egypt (al-Saʿid), see Ahmad, Layla ʿAbd al-Latif, al-Saʿid fi ʿAhd Shaykh al-ʿArab Hammam (Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-Misriyya al-ʿAmma li-l-Kitab, 1987)Google Scholar; Hamid al-Maraghi al-Jirjawi, Muhammad ibn Muhammad, Taʾrikh Wilayat al-Saʿid fi al-ʿAsrayn al-Mamluki wa-l-ʿUthmani: al-Musamma bi-“Nur al-ʿUyun fi Dhikr Jirja min ʿAhd Thalathat Qurun,” ed. al-Namaki, Ahmad Husayn (Cairo: Maktabat al-Nahda al-Misriyya, 1998)Google Scholar. On al-Minufiyya, see Mahariq, Yasir ʿAbd al-Minʿam, al-Minufiyya fi al-Qarn al-Thamin ʿAshar (Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-Misriyya al-ʿAmma li-l-Kitab, 2000)Google Scholar. On rural Ottoman Egypt in general, see ʿAbd al-Rahim, ʿAbd al-Rahim ʿAbd al-Rahman, al-Rif al-Misri fi al-Qarn al-Thamin ʿAshar (Cairo: Maktabat Madbuli, 1986)Google Scholar.

² ʿAli al-Maqrizi, Ahmad ibn, al-Mawaʿiz wa-l-Iʿtibar bi-Dhikr al-Khitat wa-l-Athar, 2 vols. (Bulaq, Egypt: Dar al-Tibaʿa al-Misriyya, 1853), 1:245Google Scholar. For al-Maqrizi's full description of Fayyum, see ibid., 1:241–50.

³ On the fact that Fayyum and Beni Suef were often treated as one administrative unit, see Katkhuda ʿAzaban, Ahmad al-Damurdashi, Kitab al-Durra al-Musana fi Akhbar al-Kinana, ed. ʿAbd al-Rahim, ʿAbd al-Rahim ʿAbd al-Rahman (Cairo: Institut français d'archéologie orientale, 1989), 42Google Scholar. There is one register of the court of Beni Suef available to researchers in the Egyptian National Archives. It is incorrectly catalogued as register 120 of the court of al-Bab al-ʿAli in Cairo. It covers part of the year 1639. This register is referenced in El-Nahal, Galal H., The Judicial Administration of Ottoman Egypt in the Seventeenth Century (Minneapolis, Minn.: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1979), 77Google Scholar.

⁴ In 2008, register 120 of the court of al-Bab al-ʿAli remained the only (albeit miscataloged) register from either the court of Fayyum or Beni Suef available in the Egyptian National Archives. Given that between 1979 (the publication date of El-Nahal's work) and 2008 this register remained the only one from either of these two courts, it seems likely that these records are no longer extant.

⁵ Jane Hathaway describes the period from roughly 1650 to 1750 as “a relatively unexplored backwater of the Ottoman Egyptian subfield.” The Politics of Households in Ottoman Egypt: The Rise of the Qazdağlıs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 15.

⁶ For some histories of Ottoman Egypt based on these archival collections, see Hathaway, Politics of Households; idem, A Tale of Two Factions: Myth, Memory, and Identity in Ottoman Egypt and Yemen (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 2003); Shaw, Stanford J., The Financial and Administrative Organization and Development of Ottoman Egypt, 1517–1798 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1962)Google Scholar. On the potential of using these archives for the history of Ottoman Egypt, see idem, “The Ottoman Archives as a Source for Egyptian History,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 83 (1962): 447–52.

⁷ In these cases, the names of individual mültezimīn, Ottoman officials, kāşifler, and engineers are often given. In contrast, ahāli and ehl-i vukūf are cited only as collective social groups without any further differentiation.

⁸ The so-called “restoration” of the beylicate at the end of the 18th century looms large in much of this scholarship. Perhaps the most seminal work in establishing this historiographical perspective as the dominant mode of evaluating the 18th century, and even earlier periods, is the chapter entitled “The Ascendancy of the Beylicate in Eighteenth-Century Egypt” in Holt, P. M., Egypt and the Fertile Crescent, 1516–1922: A Political History (London: Longmans Green and Co., 1966), 85–101Google Scholar. Reading earlier periods of Ottoman rule through this late 18th-century lens, many scholars have too often and too quickly emphasized the Mamluk character of various political, military, and social phenomena, creating a teleology that can only end with the Mamluks at the end of the century. On this point, Jane Hathaway writes of “an urge to link Ottoman to Mamluk Egypt via the beylicate. This is accompanied by a tendency to refer to the late eighteenth century as the culmination of the beylicate's evolution.” Politics of Households, 15.

⁹ Both of these conflicts were between rival military factions and were largely carried out in the streets of Cairo. On 1711, see Raymond, André, “Une ‘révolution’ au Caire sous les Mamelouks: La crise de 1123/1711,” Annales Islamologiques 6 (1966): 95–120Google Scholar. On the 1740s, see the relevant sections of al-Damurdashi, Kitab al-Durra al-Musana. For secondary studies, see Holt, Egypt and the Fertile Crescent, 85–101; Crecelius, Daniel, “Egypt in the Eighteenth Century,” in The Cambridge History of Egypt: Modern Egypt, from 1517 to the End of the Twentieth Century, ed. Daly, M. W. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 2:59–86Google Scholar.

¹⁰ For classical examples of this model, see İnalcık, Halil, “Centralization and Decentralization in Ottoman Administration,” in Studies in Eighteenth Century Islamic History, ed. Naff, Thomas and Owen, Roger (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1977), 27–52Google Scholar; Mardin, Şerif, “Center–Periphery Relations: A Key to Turkish Politics,” Daedalus 102 (1973): 169–91Google Scholar. For some recent critiques of the model, see Khoury, Dina Rizk, State and Provincial Society in the Ottoman Empire: Mosul, 1540–1834 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Peirce, Leslie, Morality Tales: Law and Gender in the Ottoman Court of Aintab (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2003)Google Scholar. See also the following very useful historiographical essay: Khoury, Dina Rizk, “The Ottoman Centre versus Provincial Power-Holders: An Analysis of the Historiography,” in The Cambridge History of Turkey: The Later Ottoman Empire, 1603–1839, ed. Faroqhi, Suraiya N. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 3:135–56Google Scholar.

¹¹ For a very useful recent work reconceptualizing peripheries in the early modern Spanish empire, see Casalilla, Bartolomé Yun, Las redes del imperio: élites sociales en la articulación de la Monarquía Hispánica, 1492–1714 (Madrid: Marcial Pons; Seville: Universidad Pablo de Olavide, 2009)Google Scholar. My thanks to Yuen-Gen Liang for bringing this study to my attention.

¹² Barkey, Karen, Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹³ For Ottoman orders to send Anatolian lumber to Egypt, see the following examples: Prime Ministry's Ottoman Archive (Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi, hereafter BOA), Cevdet Nafia, 644 (28 R 1190/15 June 1776); BOA, Cevdet Nafia, 302 (23 Za 1216/28 March 1802); Egyptian National Archives (Dar al-Wathaʾiq al-Qawmiyya, hereafter DWQ), Mahkamat Rashid 132, p. 199, case 308 (16 Ş 1137/29 April 1725); DWQ, Mahkamat Rashid 132, p. 88, case 140 (17 Ş 1137/30 April 1725). For other examples of the importation of wood from Anatolia to Egypt, see al-Jabarti, ʿAbd al-Rahman ibn Hasan, ʿAjaʾib al-Athar fi al-Tarajim wa-l-Akhbar, ed.al-Rahim, ʿAbd al-Rahim ʿAbd al-Rahman ʿAbd (Cairo: Matbaʿat Dar al-Kutub al-Misriyya, 1998), 4:245–46, 254, 255, 400Google Scholar. On the movement of wood from the Black Sea coast to Egypt, see BOA, Cevdet Bahriye, 5701 (n.d.). The shipbuilding concerns of the Ottoman navy were often a primary factor in the movement of lumber between Anatolia (and other regions of the empire) and Egypt. On this point, see Brummett, Palmira, Ottoman Seapower and Levantine Diplomacy in the Age of Discovery (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1994), 96, 115–16, 144, 174Google Scholar. For a discussion and analysis of Ottoman Egypt's dual system of grain export and timber import, see Alan Mark Mikhail, “The Nature of Ottoman Egypt: Irrigation, Environment, and Bureaucracy in the Long Eighteenth Century” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2008), 134–252.

¹⁴ This movement of food was a two-way street. During instances of famine in Egypt, food was moved from elsewhere around the empire to the province. In the following case, for example, shortages of rice in Egypt were met by shipments from Crete: Topkapı Palace Museum Archive (Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi Arşivi, hereafter TSMA), E. 2444/107 (n.d.).

¹⁵ In addition to the following discussion of grains moving from Fayyum to the Hijaz, see also these cases about grain shipments from Upper Egypt to the region: DWQ, Mahkamat Manfalut 2, p. 189, case 631 (24 Ca 1179/8 November 1765); DWQ, Mahkamat Manfalut 2, p. 190, case 632 (20 C 1179/4 December 1765); DWQ, Mahkamat Manfalut 2, p. 190, case 633 (3 Z 1180/2 May 1767); DWQ, Mahkamat Asyut 2, p. 235, no case no. (23 Z 1107/23 July 1696).

¹⁶ DWQ, Mahkamat Rashid 125, p. 328, case 540 (8 Za 1132/11 September 1720); DWQ, Mahkamat Rashid 132, p. 196, case 298 (25 R 1137/10 January 1725).

¹⁷ DWQ, Mahkamat Rashid 125, p. 333, case 548 (23 L 1132/28 August 1720).

¹⁸ DWQ, Mahkamat Rashid 125, p. 287, case 452 (13 Ca 1132/22 March 1720).

¹⁹ DWQ, Mahkamat Rashid 125, p. 323–24, case 530 (12 M 1133/13 November 1720). Unlike these other locales, Morocco was not a part of the Ottoman Empire in the early 18th century.

²⁰ Some of these many cases include DWQ, Mahkamat Rashid 125, p. 319, case 517 (28 Ra 1133/27 January 1721); DWQ, Mahkamat Rashid 154, p. 3, case 5 (6 C 1159/25 June 1746); DWQ, Mahkamat Rashid 154, p. 10, no case no. (A) (29 S 1161/29 February 1748).

²¹ DWQ, Mahkamat Rashid 125, p. 147, case 257 (27 Z 1132/29 October 1720).

²² DWQ, Mahkamat Rashid 125, p. 287, case 452 (13 Ca 1132/22 March 1720).

²³ DWQ, Mahkamat Rashid 154, p. 341, no case no. (22 M 1163/1 January 1750). For cases involving the sending of provisions and military supplies from Egypt to Crete, see TSMA, E. 5207/62 (Evail M 1057/6–15 February 1647); TSMA, E. 664/55 (n.d.).

²⁴ See, for example, DWQ, Mahkamat Rashid 125, p. 319, case 517 (28 Ra 1133/27 January 1721); DWQ, Mahkamat Rashid 154, p. 3, case 6 (8 R 1162/27 March 1749); DWQ, Mahkamat Rashid 154, p. 2, no case no. (15 R 1162/3 April 1749); DWQ, Mahkamat Rashid 154, p. 3, case 4 (12 M 1162/2 January 1749); DWQ, Mahkamat Rashid 154, p. 341, no case no. (4 Ra 1163/11 February 1750).

²⁵ DWQ, Mahkamat Rashid 154, p. 10, no case no. (21 S 1161/21 February 1748).

²⁶ For a very small sampling of the thousands of cases involving shipments of grain from Egypt to Istanbul, see DWQ, Mahkamat Rashid 122, p. 67, case 113 (21 Ca 1131/11 April 1719); DWQ, Mahkamat Rashid 123, p. 142, case 241 (25 B 1131/14 June 1719); DWQ, Mahkamat Rashid 124, p. 253, case 352 (1 Ca 1132/10 March 1720); DWQ, Mahkamat Rashid 125, p. 318, case 516 (26 Ra 1133/25 January 1721); DWQ, Mahkamat Rashid 146, p. 139, case 116 (1 C 1153/24 August 1740); DWQ, Mahkamat Rashid 148, p. 176, case 219 (21 Z 1154/27 February 1742); DWQ, Mahkamat Rashid 154, p. 182, case 203 (25 Z 1162/6 December 1749); DWQ, Mahkamat Rashid 157, p. 324, case 319 (15 R 1166/19 February 1753).

²⁷ The best treatment of Ottoman Egypt's many trading links remains Raymond, André, Artisans et commerçants au Caire au XVIII^e siècle, 2 vols. (Damascus: Institut français de Damas, 1973–74)Google Scholar.

²⁸ Much of this is recounted in Abu-Lughod, Janet, Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250–1350 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

²⁹ Panzac, Daniel, La caravane maritime: Marins européens et marchands ottomans en Méditerranée (1680–1830) (Paris: CNRS éditions, 2004)Google Scholar; idem, “International and Domestic Maritime Trade in the Ottoman Empire during the 18th Century,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 24 (1992): 189–206; Crecelius, Daniel and Badr, Hamza ʿAbd al-ʿAziz, “French Ships and Their Cargoes Sailing between Damiette and Ottoman Ports 1777–1781,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 37 (1994): 251–86Google Scholar; Raymond, Artisans et commerçants.

³⁰ Hanna, Nelly, Making Big Money in 1600: The Life and Times of Ismaʿil Abu Taqiyya, Egyptian Merchant (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

³¹ See, for example, Erlich, Haggai and Gershoni, Israel, eds., The Nile: Histories, Cultures, Myths (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2000)Google Scholar; Erlich, Haggai, The Cross and the River: Ethiopia, Egypt, and the Nile (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2002)Google Scholar. The focus of these works is more the economic and cultural relations forged along the Nile than the environmental history of the river or the ecological communities created through the shared usage of water, which are my interests here. More generally on commercial relations between the Sudan and Egypt in the 18th century, see Walz, Terence, Trade between Egypt and Bilād as-Sūdān, 1700–1820 (Cairo: Institut français d'archéologie orientale, 1978)Google Scholar.

³² See, for example, Tuchscherer, Michel, ed., Le commerce du café avant l'ère des plantations coloniales: espaces, réseaux, sociétés (XV^e–XIX^e siècle) (Cairo: Institut français d'archéologie orientale, 2001)Google Scholar.

³³ In this vein, see Panzac, Daniel, La Peste dans l'Empire Ottoman, 1700–1850 (Louvain, France: Association pour le développement des études turques, 1985)Google Scholar; idem, Quarantaines et lazarets: l'Europe et la peste d'Orient (XVIIe–XXe siècles) (Aix-en-Provence, France: Édisud, 1986); Dols, Michael W., “The Second Plague Pandemic and Its Recurrences in the Middle East: 1347–1894,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 22 (1979): 162–89Google ScholarPubMed; Kuhnke, LaVerne, Lives at Risk: Public Health in Nineteenth-Century Egypt (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

³⁴ Gran, Peter, Islamic Roots of Capitalism: Egypt, 1760–1840 (Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 1979)Google Scholar; el-Rouayheb, Khaled, “Was There a Revival of Logical Studies in Eighteenth-Century Egypt?” Die Welt des Islams 45 (2005): 1–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In this regard, see also idem, “Sunni Muslim Scholars on the Status of Logic, 1500–1800,” Islamic Law and Society 11 (2004): 213–32; idem, “Opening the Gate of Verification: The Forgotten Arab-Islamic Florescence of the 17th Century,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 38 (2006): 263–81. For general information on the various impacts of North Africans in Ottoman Egypt, see al-Rahim, ʿAbd al-Rahim ʿAbd al-Rahman ʿAbd, Wathaʾiq al-Mahakim al-Sharʿiyya al-Misriyya ʿan al-Jaliyya al-Magharibiyya ibbana al-ʿAsr al-ʿUthmani, ed. al-Tamimi, ʿAbd al-Jalil (Zaghwan, Tunisia: Markaz al-Dirasat wa-l-Buhuth al-ʿUthmaniyya wa-l-Muriskiyya wa-l-Tawthiq wa-l-Maʿlumat, 1992)Google Scholar; Husam Muhammad ʿAbd al-Muʿti, “al-Buyut al-Tijariyya al-Maghribiyya fi Misr fi al-ʿAsr al-ʿUthmani,” (PhD diss., Mansura University, 2002); idem, “Riwaq al-Maghariba fi al-Jamiʿ al-Azhar fi al-ʿAsr al-ʿUthmani,” al-Ruznama: al-Hauliyya al-Misriyya li-l-Wathaʾiq 3 (2005): 165–204; ʿAbd Allah Muhammad ʿAzabawi, “al-ʿAlaqat al-ʿUthmaniyya al-Maghribiyya fi ʿAhd Kullin min Maulaya Muhammad (1757–1790) wa-Ibnihi Yazid (1790–1792),” Egyptian Historical Review 30–31 (1983–84): 379–413.

³⁵ Panzac, “International and Domestic Maritime Trade,” 194–95.

³⁶ For a detailed study of the food provisioning of the Hijaz from Egypt in the 18th century, see al-Muʿti, Husam Muhammad ʿAbd, al-ʿAlaqat al-Misriyya al-Hijaziyya fi al-Qarn al-Thamin ʿAshar (Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-Misriyya al-ʿAmma li-l-Kitab, 1999), 131–41Google Scholar. ʿAbd al-Muʿti estimates the following total yearly averages for shipments of food from Egypt to the Hijaz in the 18th century: 30,000 ardabbs of wheat, 15,000 ardabbs of fūl, 5,000 ardabbs of lentils, and 500 ardabbs of rice. The value of an ardabb varied greatly over the course of the long 18th century from a minimum of 75 L in 1665 to 184 L in 1798. Raymond, Artisans et commerçants, 1:LVII; Hinz, Walther, Islamische Masse und Gewichte umgerechnet ins metrische System (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1955), 39–40Google Scholar.

³⁷ On the administrative unity between Lower Egypt (the Nile Delta) and Fayyum in the realm of land tenure during the Ottoman period, see Cuno, The Pasha's Peasants, 66. On shifts in trading patterns in the 15th century, see Hanna, Nelly, An Urban History of Būlāq in the Mamluk and Ottoman Periods (Cairo: Institut français d'archéologie orientale, 1983), 7–32Google Scholar. Daniel Crecelius argues that Qusayr saw a resurgence in importance as a Red Sea trading port at the end of the 18th century. Crecelius, Daniel, “The Importance of Qusayr in the Late Eighteenth Century,” Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 24 (1987): 53–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁸ The maintenance of these awqāf was one of the key realms of grandee influence in the countryside. This influence, however, does not seem to have been extended to water management or to the repair of irrigation works in Fayyum.

³⁹ Shaw, Financial and Administrative Organization, 269–70. One of the most famous and lucrative of these awqāf in the late 17th century was very near Fayyum and possibly administratively connected to it. It consisted of a group of nine villages in al-Bahnasa (Beni Suef) controlled by Hasan Agha Bilifya, a Faqari grandee and commander of the Gönüllüyan military bloc. Hathaway, Jane, “The Role of the Kızlar Ağası in 17th–18th Century Ottoman Egypt,” Studia Islamica 75 (1992): 153–58Google Scholar; idem, Politics of Households, 157–60; idem, “Egypt in the Seventeenth Century,” in The Cambridge History of Egypt: Modern Egypt, from 1517 to the End of the Twentieth Century, ed. M. W. Daly (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 2:50.

⁴⁰ For descriptions of the topography, geography, and history of Fayyum in various periods, see Boak, A. E. R., “Irrigation and Population in Faiyum, the Garden of Egypt,” Geographical Review 16 (1926): 353–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hewison, R. Neil, The Fayoum: A Practical Guide (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1984), 1–17Google Scholar; Willcocks, W. and Craig, J. I., Egyptian Irrigation, 2 vols. (London: E. & F. N. Spon, 1913), 1:441–47Google Scholar; al-Maqrizi, al-Khitat, 1:245–48; Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. “al-Fayyūm” (P. M. Holt).

⁴¹ The Fayyum was often termed the lowest of land (asfal al-arḍ). al-Safadi, Abu ʿUthman al-Nabulusi, Taʾrikh al-Fayyum wa-Biladihi (Beirut: Dar al-Jil, 1974), 9Google Scholar. This text was written in 1243 during an inspection of Fayyum commissioned for administrative purposes by the Ayyubid sultan Salih Najm al-Din al-Ayyub. Al-Nabulusi (as the author is most commonly known) writes that he spent a little over two months in Fayyum in order to compose this text on Fayyum's geography, people, industries, and built environment. Ibid., 8. Though written nearly 500 years before the 18th century, this is one of the few narrative sources devoted solely to Fayyum and represents the most complete cadastral survey to have survived from Mamluk Egypt. I will therefore make reference to it where appropriate for comparative purposes. I do not mean to imply, of course, that what al-Nabulusi writes in his account obtained until the first half of the 18th century. For another edition of this account and for a useful collection of essays on the text, see Sezgin, Fuat, Amawi, Mazen, Ehrig-Eggert, Carl, and Neubauer, Eckhard, eds., Studies of the Faiyūm Together with Tārīḫ al-Faiyūm wa-Bilādihī by Abū ʿUṯmān an-Nābulusī (d. 1261) (Frankfurt am Main: Institute for the History of Arabic-Islamic Science at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, 1992)Google Scholar. See also Rapoport, Yossef, “Invisible Peasants, Marauding Nomads: Taxation, Tribalism, and Rebellion in Mamluk Egypt,” Mamlūk Studies Review 8 (2004): 1–22Google Scholar; Keenan, G., “Fayyum Agriculture at the End of the Ayyubid Era: Nabulsi's Survey,” in Agriculture in Egypt: From Pharaonic to Modern Times, ed. Bowman, Alan K. and Rogan, Eugene (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 1999), 287–99Google Scholar.

⁴² Hewison, The Fayoum, 2.

⁴³ In the 13th century, its land was said to be made of the perfect combination of unadulterated alluvial deposits (al-iblīz al-maḥḍ) and composite soils (al-ṭīn al-mukhtaliṭ). Al-Safadi, Taʾrikh al-Fayyum, 5.

⁴⁴ The total percentage of salts in the lake is 1.34. Sodium chloride represents 0.92 of the total. Boak, “Irrigation and Population in Faiyum,” 356.

⁴⁵ On Birkat Qarun, see Butzer, Karl W., Early Hydraulic Civilization in Egypt: A Study in Cultural Ecology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 36–38, 92–93, 108Google Scholar; Ali Shafei Bey, “Fayoum Irrigation as Described by Nabulsi in 1245 A.D. with a Description of the Present System of Irrigation and a Note on Lake Moeris,” in Sezgin et al., Studies of the Faiyūm, 308–309. The presence, size, shape, and location of the ancient ancestor of Birkat Qarun, Lake Moeris, have been subjects of much scholarly debate. See, for example, Caton-Thompson, Gertrude and Gardner, E. W., “Recent Work on the Problem of Lake Moeris,” The Geographical Journal 73 (1929): 20–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Evans, J. A. S., “Herodotus and the Problem of the ‘Lake of Moeris,’” The Classical World 56 (1963): 275–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar. As suggested by this last citation, much of the literature is concerned with explaining Herodotus’ description of the lake. The relevant section of his The History is 2.148–50.

⁴⁶ For technical details and drawings of drainage and discharge in Fayyum, see Willcocks and Craig, Egyptian Irrigation, 1:442–47; Ali Shafei Bey, “Fayoum Irrigation,” 286–309. On the problem of drainage in modern Egypt, see Amer, M. H. and de Ridder, N. A., eds., Land Drainage in Egypt (Cairo: Drainage Research Institute, 1989)Google Scholar; Nijland, H. J., ed., Drainage along the River Nile (Cairo: Egyptian Public Authority for Drainage Projects and The Netherlands: Directorate-General of Public Works and Water Management, 2000)Google Scholar.

⁴⁷ For a 13th-century description of this ridge, see al-Safadi, Taʾrikh al-Fayyum, 5, 7.

⁴⁸ On Bahr Yusuf, see Ali Shafei Bey, “Fayoum Irrigation,” 298–99; Rivlin, Helen Anne B., The Agricultural Policy of Muḥammad ʿAlī in Egypt (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press 1961), 238–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Willcocks and Craig, Egyptian Irrigation, 1:441–44; Butzer, Early Hydraulic Civilization, 16, 36–38, 53.

⁴⁹ We are fortunate to have the following example of the financial and administrative organization of the distribution of this water in Ottoman Fayyum: DWQ, al-Ruznama, Daftar Irtifaʿ al-Miyah bi-Bahr Sayyidna Yusif lihi al-Sala wa-l-Salam ʿan al-Qabda al-Yusifiyya Tabiʿ Wilayat al-Fayyum, Raqam al-Hifz al-Nauʿi 1, ʿAyn 59, Makhzin Turki 1, Musalsal 4557. This register consists of copies of Ottoman firmans, Arabic administrative cases, and financial calculations related to how much water (these amounts were known as qabaḍāt al-miyāh) various villages and regions of Fayyum were to receive for a given year. It is best thought of as a detailed bureaucratic accounting book of how much water went where. It includes entries for the following hijrī years: 948, 1017, 1027, 1066, 1091, 1102, 1109, 1114, 1116, 1125, 1127, 1128, 1129, 1130, 1187, 1192, 1195, 1197, 1200, and 1207.

⁵⁰ During the Ottoman period, both of these structures were part of a class of irrigation works in Egypt known as al-jusūr al-sulṭāniyya. If a canal or irrigation feature served a large group of peasants rather than the interests of a small privileged few, contributed to the common good, or aided in the achievement of equality among peasants, then it was considered a sulṭānī irrigation work, the responsibilities of which fell on the Ottoman state in Egypt. Baladī works, by contrast, were those that served the irrigation needs of one particular community and no one else, and they were to be maintained by locals. For cases explicitly stating the imperial (sulṭānī) status of the dam of al-Gharaq and the dike of al-Lahun, see BOA, Mühimme-i Mısır (hereafter MM), 3:11 (Evasıt B 1131/30 May–8 June 1719); BOA, MM, 4:36 (Evail Za 1139/20–29 June 1727). For cases involving repairs to Fayyumi irrigation works other than these two, see BOA, MM, 5:301 (Evahir L 1148/5–14 March 1736); BOA, MM, 5:475 (Evahir S 1152/30 May–8 June 1739). On the medieval history of the difference between sulṭānī and baladī irrigation works, see Borsch, Stuart J., “Environment and Population: The Collapse of Large Irrigation Systems Reconsidered,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 46 (2004): 458–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tsugitaka, Sato, State and Rural Society in Medieval Islam: Sultans, Muqtaʿs and Fallahun (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997), 225–27Google Scholar.

⁵¹ For descriptions of the construction and maintenance of the dike of al-Lahun in the 13th century, see al-Safadi, Taʾrikh al-Fayyum, 12, 15–17.

⁵² BOA, Cevdet Nafia, 458 (9 Ra 1158/11 April 1745).

⁵³ Not everyone was pleased with the quality of the canal's waters. In the mid-13th century, al-Nabulusi complained that water in Bahr Yusuf was extremely vile (radīʾ). Passing through wide areas of gluey muddy earth (arḍ ṭīniyya lazija), this water collected all sorts of rotten human and animal waste, making it into a stagnant and boggy pool (māʾ baṭīḥa wa-naqʿa). Al-Safadi, Taʾrikh al-Fayyum, 9–10. For more general information on the waters of Bahr Yusuf, see ibid., 17.

⁵⁴ In 1695, for example, the Nile's flood was much greater than expected. It overwhelmed Fayyum's irrigation features and was said to have killed many people in the region and to have destroyed large areas of its agricultural land. Al-Damurdashi, Kitab al-Durra al-Musana, 30.

⁵⁵ As it was in the 13th century as well. For such earlier instances of repairs carried out on these dams and other irrigation works, see al-Safadi, Taʾrikh al-Fayyum, 6, 12, 16.

⁵⁶ BOA, MM, 5:111 (Evail M 1147/3–12 June 1734).

⁵⁷ On some of the particularities of agricultural cultivation in Fayyum, see Watson, Andrew M., Agricultural Innovation in the Early Islamic World: The Diffusion of Crops and Farming Techniques, 700–1100 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 17, 28, 40Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ Holt, P. M., “The Beylicate in Ottoman Egypt during the Seventeenth Century,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 24 (1961): 220–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁹ For comparisons with other instances of repair work in Ottoman Cairo, see Hanna, Nelly, Construction Work in Ottoman Cairo (1517–1798) (Cairo: Institut français d'archéologie orientale, 1984)Google Scholar; Behrens-Abouseif, Doris, Egypt's Adjustment to Ottoman Rule: Institutions, Waqf, and Architecture in Cairo, 16th and 17th Centuries (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994)Google Scholar.

⁶⁰ For another case that makes these points explicitly, see BOA, MM, 8:66 (Evail N 1175/26 March–4 April 1762).

⁶¹ BOA, İbnülemin Umur-i Nafia, 94 (Evasıt Ra 1121/21–30 May 1709). The Egyptian Arabic word sharāqī refers to land that is not reached by water and is hence parched and dry. In contrast to būr land, which is uncultivatable wasteland, sharāqī earth has the potential for cultivation given the proper amount of water.

⁶² As in most similar cases, no information is given about the specific identity of these engineers. By comparison, al-Nabulusi offers tantalizingly suggestive information that in similar situations of repair in the 13th century the engineers consulted in these cases were indeed local Fayyumis. He writes that people of the village (ahl al-qarya) who were often consulted in irrigation repair jobs were known as engineers (yuʿrifūn bi-l-muhandisīn). Al-Nabulusi adds that this title had nothing to do with any technical training in engineering or related sciences. It seems, rather, that it was given to those with expertise and experience in the local environment of whatever irrigation work was under repair. Of course, this 13th-century account says nothing specifically about our case from 1709. al-Shafiʿi, Abu ʿUthman al-Nabulusi al-Safadi, Taʾrikh al-Fayyum wa-Biladihi (Cairo: al-Matbaʿa al-Ahliyya, 1898), 16Google Scholar. My thanks to Yossef Rapoport for bringing this passage to my attention.

⁶³ The Egyptian purse equaled 25,000 paras, the basic unit of currency in Ottoman Egypt. On the para, see Shaw, Financial and Administrative Organization, xxii. Repairs to irrigation works in Fayyum were usually funded from the Egyptian Irsaliye. The Irsaliye represented the overall revenue garnered from an Ottoman province in any given year, and it was the responsibility of the provincial governor to send these funds to Istanbul. The Egyptian Irsaliye was historically the largest in the empire. Diverting a portion of these funds from the imperial coffers to finance needed irrigation repairs in the province was clearly undesirable from the perspective of the imperial administration. For cases concerning various aspects of the organization of the yearly Egyptian Irsaliye, see TSMA, E. 664/4 (n.d.); TSMA, E. 664/64 (1 C 1059/12 June 1649); TSMA, E. 5207/57 (Evail B 1056/12–21 August 1646); TSMA, E. 5207/58 (Evasıt B 1056/22–31 August 1646); TSMA, E. 7016/95 (n.d.); TSMA, E. 5207/49 (Evahir Ca 1056/5–14 July 1646); TSMA, E. 664/66 (n.d.); TSMA, E. 4675/2 (20 N 1061/6 September 1651); TSMA, E. 3522 (24 Ş 1148/8 January 1736). For a detailed discussion of the Irsaliye, see Shaw, Financial and Administrative Organization, 283–312, 399–401. For a detailed accounting of each component of the Irsaliye from 1596 to 1597, see Stanford J. Shaw, The Budget of Ottoman Egypt, 1005–1006/1596–1597 (The Hague, Netherlands: Mouton, 1968). For a case in which the dam of al-Gharaq was repaired using funds from the cizye, see BOA, Cevdet Nafia, 2570 (Evahir Ş 1174/28 March–6 April 1761).

⁶⁴ This again points to the necessity and utility of considering the Ottoman imperial record for the history of Fayyum and of Egypt more generally.

⁶⁵ Al-Jabarti, ʿAjaʾib al-Athar, 1:69.

⁶⁶ Al-Jabarti was born in 1753 and wrote much of his chronicle on the basis of earlier materials. Thus, he almost certainly took his information about the repairs of 1709 from another source.

⁶⁷ BOA, MM, 1:116 (Evail R 1122/30 May–8 June 1710).

⁶⁸ Though this case specifically mentions imperial funds and others do not, financial losses were a consistent concern of the Ottoman bureaucracy in Egypt when dealing with repairs to the province's irrigation works.

⁶⁹ The use of the title kāşif in this order provides a good case study for considering the nature of Mamluk influence in Ottoman Egypt by showing how the Ottoman bureaucracy both maintained and modified some elements of Mamluk rule (and of even earlier Egyptian polities) in its administration. The 1525 Ottoman law code (Kanunname) retained the Mamluk term kāşif to refer to subprovincial governors. Despite the continued use of this term, however, the Mamluk system of land management based on the iqṭāʿ was wholly replaced by a very different arrangement that by the early years of the 17th century had developed into a tax-farming (iltizām) system that differentiated land administration in Egypt from the tımārs found in the rest of the empire. Thus though technically mültezimīn (those who hold a tax farm), these men are variously referred to in the sources of the period using both “Mamluk” and “Ottoman” titles—sancak, sancak beyi, mültezim, kāşif, emir, and bey. Rather than reading this sort of slippery mélange of Mamluk, Ottoman, and other titles as “proof” of the continuation of only Mamluk influence in Egypt, I see it more as evidence of a new and different configuration of social and political power in Egypt that characterized the conglomerated and accumulated nature of Ottoman imperial rule. This paragraph relies heavily on Hathaway, Politics of Households, 9; Holt, “The Beylicate in Ottoman Egypt during the Seventeenth Century.”

⁷⁰ In an apparent mistake or change, the amount reported to be released at the end of the order is eleven Egyptian purses and 11,650 paras.

⁷¹ BOA, MM, 1:167 (Evasıt S 1123/31 March–9 April 1711).

⁷² The length of the zira varied greatly in Ottoman Egypt. Throughout this article, I take one zira to equal 63 cm. According to the standard work on Islamic weights and measures, the zira varied from 58 to 68 cm. Hinz, Islamische Masse und Gewichte, 56. According to Gábor Ágoston, one zira equaled 75.8 cm. Ágoston, Gábor, Guns for the Sultan: Military Power and the Weapons Industry in the Ottoman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 247Google Scholar.

⁷³ BOA, MM, 4:36 (Evail Za 1139/20–29 June 1727).

⁷⁴ For critical readings of these kinds of petitions to the imperial centers of Cairo and Istanbul, see James Edward Baldwin, “Islamic Law in an Ottoman Context: Resolving Disputes in Late Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth-Century Cairo” (PhD diss., New York University, 2010), especially the chapter entitled “Petitioning the Sultan”; Jirjis, Majdi, “Manhaj al-Dirasat al-Wathaʾiqiyya wa-Waqiʿ al-Bahth fi Misr,” al-Ruznama: al-Hauliyya al-Misriyya li-l-Wathaʾiq 2 (2004): 237–87Google Scholar. On petitioning in the Ottoman Empire more generally, see Halil İnalcık, “Şikâyet Hakkı: ʿArż-i Ḥâl ve ʿArż-i Maḥzar’lar,” reprinted in idem, Osmanlı’da Devlet, Hukuk, Adâlet (Istanbul: Eren Yayıncılık, 2000), 49–71.

⁷⁵ BOA, MM, 6:149 (Evasıt Ca 1157/22 June–1 July 1744).

⁷⁶ Ibid.; BOA, MM, 5:696 (Evahir M 1155/28 March–6 April 1742); BOA, MM, 6:2 (Evahir S 1156/16–25 April 1743).

⁷⁷ Mehmed Paşa al-Yedekçi was appointed vali of Egypt in September 1743. He was described as a man of perception and sound judgment (rüyet ve tefekkür) who possessed the essence of trust and ability (cevher-i sadākat ve kifayet) and who had within him the germ of grace and faithfulness (maya-ı himmet ve emānet). BOA, MM, 6:37 (Evasıt Ra 1156/5–14 May 1743). For more on the period of his rule, see also al-Jabarti, ʿAjaʾib al-Athar, 1:260–61.

⁷⁸ BOA, MM, 6:238 (Evasıt Ca 1158/11–20 June 1745).

⁷⁹ Ibid. For more on the removal of Mehmed Paşa, see BOA, Cevdet Nafia, 458 (9 Ra 1158/11 April 1745).

⁸⁰ As was customary practice, the new vali Raghib Paşa requested from the imperial administration that these funds be taken from the Egyptian Irsaliye of 1743–44 (1156). No doubt existed that this money was necessary to revive the villages of Fayyum (akālīm-i Fayyum'un ihyasine peyda olmak). However, given Mehmed Paşa's dishonesty in repairing the dam of al-Gharaq, the sultan shirked the custom of taking funds from the Irsaliye. He ordered, instead, that the portion of these funds (over twenty-eight Egyptian purses) needed to repair those sections of the dam that should have been repaired by Mehmed Paşa in the first place were to be secured from the former vali as a form of punishment for his theft. This amount was, of course, in addition to the seven purses he had stolen from the state and promised to repay. The remainder of the necessary funds (over twelve Egyptian purses needed to repair newly damaged areas) was to be taken from the profits of villages “sold” as ḥulvān (a fee paid to the treasury for rights to a tax farm).

⁸¹ In the spring of 1746, the dam of al-Gharaq was repaired for the last time, after five consecutive years of intense repairs. BOA, MM, 6:295 (Evahir Ra 1159/13–22 April 1746). Much of the dam was in near total ruin in 1746, and Raghib Paşa was thus ordered to fix as much of the structure as possible in as permanent a manner as possible to prevent the need for any future repairs. The sultan's government allocated the needed funds for these repairs from the Egyptian Irsaliye of 1744–45: fifteen Egyptian purses and 5,250 paras to repair a section measuring 22,350 sq. ziras (8,870.7 sq. m.). Here again each square zira (0.3969 sq. m.) cost fifteen paras to repair. The dam continued to function without incident for a few years after 1746. BOA, MM, 6:557 (Evahir N 1162/4–13 September 1749).