The Animal in Ottoman EgyptSince humans first emerged as a distinct species, they have eaten, fought, prayed, and moved with other animals. In this stunningly original and conceptually rich book, historian Alan Mikhail puts the history of human-animal relations at the center of transformations in the Ottoman Empire from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Mikhail uses the history of the empire's most important province, Egypt, to explain how human interactions with livestock, dogs, and charismatic megafauna changed more in a few centuries than they had for millennia. The human world became one in which animals' social and economic functions were diminished. Without animals, humans had to remake the societies they had built around intimate and cooperative interactions between species. The political and even evolutionary consequences of this separation of people and animals were wrenching and often violent. This book's interspecies histories underscore continuities between the early modern period and the nineteenth century and help to reconcile Ottoman and Arab histories. Further, the book highlights the importance of integrating Ottoman history with issues in animal studies, economic history, early modern history, and environmental history. Carefully crafted and compellingly argued, The Animal in Ottoman Egypt tells the story of the high price humans and animals paid as they entered the modern world. |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
agricultural Ahmad Ajā’ib al-Athar al-Bahayra al-Din al-Jabartī al-Nil al-Qāhira Alexandria Arabic Beasts Beinecke Rare Book Book of Kings British buffalo cow Cairo Cambridge University Press camels canal canine Cevdet charismatic charismatic megafauna city’s corvée countryside court creatures disease donkeys early modern period economic Egyptian eighteenth century elephants epizootics European Evliya Çelebi example global Hamont History horses humans and animals hunting Ibid idem imperial important Indian Ocean institutions Islamic Istanbul Journal Kalemi Kitāb labor land Landberg MSS livestock Mahkamat Rashid Mamluk Manuscript Library meat Mediterranean Mehmet ʿAli menagerie Middle East military Misir Misr Mughal Muhammad Ali Muhammad ibn Muslim nineteenth century nonhuman ostrich Ottoman Egypt Ottoman Empire peasants political populations productive role rural Sadaret Safavid Sauvadon sixteenth social street dogs Studies sultan Suraiya Faroqhi Tärikh trade trans TSMA urban village Yale University Yıldız York zoological ʿAbd ʿAI ʿAjāʾib al-Āthār 1994 ʿAlī ʿAli’s