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- Title
'Snatched by Destiny's Hand': Obituaries and the Making of Class in Modern Egypt.
- Authors
Omar, Hussein A H
- Abstract
This article examines the newspaper obituary as a source for historians of the late 19th and early 20th century Egypt. Long utilized by genealogists, these sources have been neglected by historians, for a number of reasons. Rather than read them as an uncritical reflection of social relations, as genealogists have, historians ought to engage with them critically as a way of understanding how individuals imagined themselves and their social worlds. The article argues that reading and writing obituaries was one of the ways in which a previously differentiated and divided Egyptian elite began to imagine itself as belonging to a single, horizontal class. It further demonstrates how obituaries can be used to chart social mobility in a context where surnames were neither heritable nor standardised. Obituaries provide unique insights into social transformations independent of the political ruptures around which state archives are organised and official histories written. The article shows how sociocultural developments (such as the rise of Islamic modernism) are reflected in and were transformed through, the reading and writing of obituaries. Discourses around the 'good Muslim death' were inscribed and indeed prescribed through this form, even as it came under increasing attack at the turn of the 20th century for being un-Islamic. Aside from opening up new methodological avenues for writing the history of class, and the history of gender beyond the state, the article emphasises the importance of death as a historical subject of enquiry in its own right.
- Subjects
EGYPT; OBITUARY writing; EGYPTIAN history; SOCIAL classes -- History; GENDER; ISLAMIC modernism; SOCIOCULTURAL factors; HISTORY; SOCIAL history
- Publication
History Compass, 2017, Vol 15, Issue 6, pn/a
- ISSN
1478-0542
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/hic3.12380