Introductionintroduction 1 Introduction

IntroductionIntroduction 1 Introduction

Scope of the Research

The Desert as a Negative Image of Egyptian Society Egypt is composed of four administrative areas: the Urban Governorates, Lower Egypt, Upper Egypt, and the Frontier Governorates. The Nile is divided into two branches, which form a delta at Cairo. Lower Egypt is the northern part, from Cairo to the Mediterranean. Upper Egypt is the southern part, from Cairo to the border between Egypt and Sudan. In 2014, the Frontier Governorates included two governorates in Sinai (North and South Sinai) and two governorates in the Western Desert (Matruh and New Valley).1 Egypt is well known for being a society dependent on the Nile for water. As such, Egypt has emerged and been described as a centralized society. This view has influenced the literature on Egyptian society. A common view of Egyptian history is that it is a centralized state in which the capital city of Cairo plays a dominant role in every aspect of its inhabitants’ lives. This image has also been characterized by a prevailing dualism. This view is concerned with centre–local relations; that is, the contrasts between metro- politan Cairo and other local communities. One outcome of this view is the neglect of the regional perspective. This neglect of regional differences in the spatial configuration is deeply connected with the historical view of the pro- gressive and unitary development from the traditional to the modern in Egyptian society. In the conventional view of Egypt, its centre is Cairo, the capital, and the “local” is the other regions. There is an epistemological distinction between the centre and the local that has been constructed in the thinking of researchers, in whose thinking the centre and the local overlap in the concepts of moder- nity and universality on the one hand, and the concepts of tradition and particularity on the other. Therefore, it is impossible to observe the interface between the centre and the local, presupposing from a systematic viewpoint that a qualitative differ- ence exists between them. To avoid this epistemological trap, it is necessary to deconstruct the relationship between the centre and the local through the

1 The Western Desert, which borders on Libya, has also been called the Libyan Desert. The governorate of the Western Desert is named Wadi Jadid, which means New Valley, in compari- son with the Nile Valley. The Nile Valley signifies the Nile basin, including Lower and Upper Egypt.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2016 | doi 10.1163/9789004317390_002 2 Introduction continuous practice of feedback, sometimes reflecting the centre in the local and sometimes reflecting the local in the centre. Certainly, much has been discussed with respect to the local. However, it is possible to deconstruct the local, unless the discussion relates to the centre without deconstruction. The only effort required is to project the centre into the local and to look for the influences of the centre in the local without reflection. The deconstruction of the local follows the opposite process—that is, to project the local into the centre. The point of reference for this process is to establish the local as a centre. In this manner, the centre could truly be decon- structed, and the relationship between the centre and the local would appear not as concentric circles with only quantitative differences but as a web of many relationships that are different in quality and that are segmented and overlapping, with a number of centres and localities. Egypt has usually been described as a typical agrarian society, characterized by the centralized management of water, large scale land reclamation, labour intensive agriculture, systematic crop rotation and so on. However, this is an image that was created after the July Revolution in 1952 when the population rapidly increased, an image emphasized by the revolutionary regime to pro- mote the national identity as an agricultural society. This image tends to turn our eyes away from the historical transformation and the variety of agrarian life in Egypt through history. In fact, the social structure of rural Egypt today was formed in the process of modernization and colonization in modern times, from the beginning of the 19th century. The actual social structure and the spatial configuration of Egypt have been less centralized and homogeneous than is claimed by this image. Doubtless, if Egypt were viewed from a local perspective, the locality would be taken as the centre. For example, since the middle ages, the region of Upper Egypt was the land of escape for political forces that had been defeated in the power politics of Cairo, when the forces resolved to strive for victory with redoubled efforts. In this context, Upper Egypt was the local space in relation to the centre. However, Upper Egypt was also the space in which the original culture peculiar to it persisted. Its heroic ballads of Arab nomads remain well known to the public today. In fact, it was closely linked with the Arabian Peninsula by caravan routes in the 19th century. At the same time, the caravan routes were roads of pilgrimage to Mecca.2

2 The most famous is the ballad of Bani Hilal, who migrated from Hijaz and Najd in the Arabian Peninsula to North Africa, including Egypt.