Conflict and Consensus: Decision-Making and Leadership Selection in Cairo's Guilds, Late Eighteenth / Early Nineteenth Centuries

HISDEMAB seminar with Pascale Ghazaleh

The Ottoman courts of Egypt produced abundant documentation, which allows historians to trace some of the social dynamics that animated Cairo, for example, under Ottoman rule. In particular, the craft and trade groups of the Ottoman period appeared in court to resolve and register their disputes and agreements. Here, I look at a specific type of document involving guilds, and examine its implications for what we know of decision-making, state intervention, and autonomy with regard to this social group.

Pascale Ghazaleh teaches Ottoman history at the American University in Cairo. She has published work on craft guilds, merchants, and property in Ottoman Egypt. Her current research concerns conflicts over ownership of the past, competing claims to heritage, and narratives of nineteenth-century history.

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