Bücher der Reihe Middle East Studies Beyond Dominant Paradigms

Challenging the ethnocentric notion that a capitalist economy could only be transferred to the peripheral states through contact with Europe, this text argues that the capitalist transformation of the Egyptian economy was begun by Muslim merchants and Mamluk rulers in the 18th century.

Challenges the paradigm of the societal decline as inadequate for understanding the Ottoman society and state during this period. This book evaluates the established historical view of the Ottoman Empire as an Eastern despotic nation-state in decline, and instead analyzes it as a modern state comparable to contemporary states in Europe and Asia.

This study of modern Egypt aims to open the debate regarding new terms and methods for understanding the Middle East and Islamic societies. Sonbol shows continuity in the division of Egyptian society into two groups: the ""Khassa"" which tried to impose a hegemonic culture, and the opposing ""Amma"".

Although decades of scholarship have critiqued traditional binaries of developed and undeveloped in Arab studies, the narrative of 1798 symbolizing the coming of the modern west to the rescue of the static east endures. This book takes stock of this dominant paradigm, interrogating its origins and the ways in which scholarship perpetuates it.

"This volume originated in a conference held at the Middle East Studies Center at Portland State University in 2013, Minorities of the Modern Middle East."--Acknowledgments page.