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The New Mamluks: Egyptian Society and Modern Feudalism (Middle East Studies Beyond Dominant Paradigms)

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Dr. Sonbol of the Center for Muslim-Christian Undederstanding of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University employs cutting-edge methodology in her latest volume on modern Egypt. This analytical history of pre-Muhammad Ali to present-day Egypt uses local Arabic idioms to tie events of the eighteenth century to events of the twentieth. By looking at culture differently than previous historians of Egypt, she argues that one must study cultural struggle as a method for examining the historical process outside of the conventional political and economic paradigms. State-society relations is the prototypical model for examining recent Egyptian history; Dr. Sonbol convincingly demonstrates that, by defining 'state' and 'society' in local terms, one sees that there was not sharp separation of the two. "By ... developing a methodology that is more in accordance with the nature of [Egyptian] society, this study has attempted to show that, in fact, there were close alliances between state and society, that the state can be seen as a medium through which particular hegemonies worked" p. 200.