Copyright by Hanan Hassan Hammad 2009 The Dissertation Committee for Hanan Hassan Hammad Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Mechanizing People, Localizing Modernity Industrialization and Social Transformation in Modern Egypt: al-Mahalla al-Kubra 1910- 1958 Committee: Kamran Scott Aghaie Abraham Marcus Denise Spellberg Kamran Asdar Ali Mohammad Reza Ghanoonparvar Mechanizing People, Localizing Modernity Industrialization and Social Transformation in Modern Egypt: al-Mahalla al-Kubra 1910- 1958 by Hanan Hassan Hammad, B.S; M.A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August, 2009 Dedication To my parents, Layla Abu ‘Ammu and Rif‘at Hammad, and their people; men and women of al-Mahalla Acknowledgements Completing this dissertation, and my entire graduate studies program, would have been impossible without the guidance and support of my advisor Kamran Aghaie. I’d like to thank Kamran for his patience and faith in me even in my lowest moments. From the inception of this dissertation to finishing it, Professor Abraham Marcus has been always there for training, coaching, and encouraging me. His works and passion for the social history of the Arab people have been a great source of inspiration. I particularly appreciate his and Professor Denise Spellberg’s invaluable comments on this dissertation. For years, Spellberg has provided me and my family with incredible moral and academic support. I appreciate her insistence on not letting me research modern Egypt before she was sure about my competence in medieval history. I’d like to thank Professor M. R. Ghanoonparvar for his unconditional endorsement even when I had to leave the study of Persian culture for history. I’d like to thank him for serving on my committee while never ceasing to encourage me to pursue research on Iranian culture and literature. I’d like to thank Professor Kamran Ali for sharing his deep knowledge of Egyptian history and culture. I’d like also to thank Professor Joel Beinin for sharing his unpublished article on the Egyptian textile workers. It is very sad that this dissertation came to an end after Professor Ra’uf ‘Abbas had passed away. With his generous help during conducting my research in Cairo, v Professor ‘Abbas lived up to his reputation as an emblem of Egyptian generosity and decency. Fortunately his vigorous revision of Egyptian history is still being carried out by his students in the Egyptian Society of Historical Studies in Cairo. Among them, I’d like to thank Professor Nasser Ibrahim for providing me with logistical help even when it put him at odds with the vicious bureaucracy of Cairo University. At the archive of Dar al-Mahafuzat al-‘Umumiyya I was very fortunate to meet Ms. Mirfat, ustaz Ahmad Sulyman, hajja Nabila Fadl and all their colleagues and assistants in the Department of al-Wizarat. Their generosity extended from explaining legal terms and archival codes to supplying me with wonderful ful sandwiches and sweet tea. I can’t thank enough ustaz ‘Isam who never resented bringing dusty files weighing dozens of pounds to my desk on a daily basis. His sweet voice reciting the Qur’an, chanting, and telling jokes added lots of joy and humor to my dry archival research. I’d like also to thank madam Nadia and her team at Dar al-Watha’iq al-Qawmiyya and many others at Dar al-Kutub. At Misr Spinning and Weaving Company I received help and hospitality in the library and the Public Relations Department. I’d like to thank the head of the Training Department, Engineer Rif`at al-Mahallawi, for his sincere enthusiasm for my research and answering my endless questions. This work is about the people of al- Mahalla and would not have been done without their help and willingness to share their memories and stories. Among many whom I can’t mention all; I’d like to thank Mahmud Khalil, the labor activist Hamdi Husayn, the novelist Gar al-Nabi al-Hilw, the poet Farid, the family of Fikri al-Khuli and, of course, my family. Research for this project was conducted with generous funds from the Fulbright- Hays Fellowship and writing the manuscript was possible with a one year fellowship from the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin. My appreciation extends to the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at UT for several FLAS fellowships and vi travel grants which supported my graduate program. Special thanks go to Robin Dougherty, the wonderful Middle East bibliographer at UT for her invaluable help and for sharing her amazing personal collection of old Egyptian periodicals. It is with deep sorrow that my lifetime friend Sana’ al-Misri will never see this work. She was the first person, and may be the only one, who wanted me to abandon journalism for meaningful research. Many friends and colleagues played an important role in finishing this dissertation by reading, editing and commenting on parts of it or simply by being there for me whenever Cairo and Austin turned into a monster of emptiness and meaninglessness. Thank you Banafsheh Madaninejad, Christelle Le Faucheur, Amal Ragab, Intisar Salih, Kristi Barnwell, Yoav Di-Capua, Nagla’ ‘Abd al- ‘All, Somy Kim, Tessa Farmer, Lucie Ryzova, Dalal Yunis, Sohair Suliman Barakat, Forouzan Zanjefili, Orit Bashkin, and Michael Gasper. I’d like to thank Pat Reidy for accompanying me during my long research trips to Cairo and al-Mahalla and listening to my endless complaints about everything related or unrelated to the research. I appreciate him for proofreading the entire manuscript and for his valuble comments on the whole project. Without the laughs and smiles of Layla and Ali, surviving this long journey of graduate school would have been impossible. vii Mechanizing People, Localizing Modernity Industrialization and Social Transformation in Modern Egypt: al-Mahalla al-Kubra 1910- 1958 Publication No._____________ Hanan Hassan Hammad, PhD The University of Texas at Austin, 2009 Supervisor: Kamran Scott Aghaie This dissertation tells the tale of al-Mahalla al-Kubra during the transition from handloom crafts to the mechanized textile industry and from a local community to a battleground for the nationalist cause in the first half of the twentieth century. By exploring the relationships between culture, politics, and modern industrialization and how subaltern groups shaped their local experiences of modernity in a setting remote from the central government and the cosmopolitan culture of Cairo and Alexandria, it unpacks the social history of men and women, artisans and workers, notables and fitiwwat who were situated between national capitalism and foreign domination. The goal is to write the history of the society from the bottom up and to write a history that is an alternative to the already established histories of nationalism and colonialism. It provides a historical reconstruction and analysis of the process of assimilation undergone by the recruited peasants into urban industrial life and explores the various ways in which they viii and the Mahallawiyya negotiated living together and dealt with their mutual hostility on an everyday basis. Identity is the core question in this process of assimilation. Did modern, horizontal class relations actually replace traditional, vertical communal and patronage relations? To what extent did the traditional social institutions help or hinder the process of adapting to forms of social life associated with modern industry? I argue that both vertical class and horizontal communal relations co-existed and sometimes competed. In that fluid dynamic, individuals and groups acted and interacted depending on their socio-economic status, communal commitments, conjuncture or the way that a given situation developed, and a shared, often contested, discourse. ix Table of Contents List of Tables ......................................................................................................... xi Introduction ……………………………………………………………………….1 Chronology……………………………………………………………………….14 Map of al-Mahalla al-Kubra……………………………………………………..16 Chapter 1 The Transformation of al-Mahalla al-Kubra in the 19th and 20th Centuries ………………………………………………………….. 17 Chapter 2 Modernization with the Whip and the Making of an Industrial Worker…………….. ................................................................................…59 Chapter 3 Begging, Stealing and Striking: Labor Resistance in al-Mahalla ……106 Chapter 4 Fluid Identities: Localism, Nationalism, and Class………………...…148 Chapter 5 Poor Women Making al-Mahalla Modernity………... ………………211 Chapter 6 Between “National purity” and “Local Flexibility”: Prostitution in al- Mahalla……………………………………………………………….271 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………331 Bibliography…………………………………………………………….……. ….337 Vita . ……………………………………………………………………………....352 x List of Tables Table 1.1: The relative decline in al-Mahalla’s population comparing to Tanta and Mansura Table 1.2: Foreigners living in al-Mahalla between 1897 and 1947. Table 1.3: The mix of origins, ethnicity, and citizenship of non-Egyptians in Markaz al-Mahalla as they appear in the 1917 census under the category of nationality and race. Table 1.4: The most frequent professions among foreigners in al-Mahalla at the turn of the century. Table 1.5: The distribution of foreigners in al-Mahalla’s sections ( Shiyakha ) in 1947. Table 1.6: People working in textile industry and trade in al-Mahalla between 1897 and 1947. Table 1.7: Textile industry in al-Mahalla 1927. Table 1.8: Superiority of al-Mahalla among Egyptian towns in textile industry in the first decade of the 20 th century. Table 1.9: Cotton and silk handlooms in al-Mahalla between in 1910. Table 1.10: The decline of silk weaving and the increase in cotton in al-Mahalla between 1897 and 1947. Table 1.11: Distribution of people working in textile in al-Mahalla in 1917 Table 1.12: Decline in number of people working in silk textiles. xi Table 1.13: Continuing increase in the company’s capital. Table 1.14: Increase in the Company’s operating machinery.