Letters From Egypt To Plain Folks At Home

Mary Whately�s letters paint a fascinating picture of life in Egypt in 1879. And her insight into customs, culture, and climate ring true even today. Plus, many Bible quotations and allusions are woven throughout the letters, along with illustrations of how life in Egypt reminded Mary of those passages. Letters from Egypt is a living geography book that will touch your mind, your imagination, and your heart.

Mary Whately's letters offer a fascinating insight into life in Egypt in 1879, and will prove to be an invaluable addition to the bookshelf of anyone with an interest in the people, customs, culture and climate of Egypt in this period. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1879 edition. Excerpt: ... 107 LETTER IX. SLAVERY AS IT IS IN EGYPT, Egypt is fall of slaves. A great deal is written and said now about the hope that the slave traffic may be stopped, but this is a much more difficult thing than people in England have generally any idea of; there are besides the same difficulties which took so much time and trouble in the days of those good men who got the slave-trade abolished in our colonies, other difficulties which I need not enter on here: it is enough to say that there is no Wilberforce to labour and pray for years with his pious friends in the cause of the poor slaves, so I fear the time is not very near for their emancipation. Meanwhile, at all events, Egypt is full of them, as I said before; the cities, in .particular, are teeming with negro slaves. In America (in the Southern States, that is), till the late war, and long ago in our "West Indian Islands, field work was chiefly done by black slaves working in gangs, because white men could not work much in the heat of such climates. But that is not the case here; field labour is mostly done by the " children of the soil," and though a negro shepherd or herdsman is sometimes seen, the chief employment of slaves is as domestic servants. People of moderate fortune keep at least two or three; and, I am sorry to say, Christians quite as much as Moslems. Many who are in a position of life to do their own work keep a negress (who does it very imperfectly), and do nothing themselves. Of course the expense is great; really more than hiring a servant, because there is a large sum paid for the woman at first, and then she has to be fed and clothed, and being generally very wasteful, she costs a good deal. A cook or waiter in an European family will often keep a slave, and let his...

"Relentlessly entertaining"—Michelle Green, The New York Times Women travelers in Egypt in the nineteenth century saw aspects of the country unseen by their male counterparts, as they spent time both in the harems of Cairo and with the women they met along the Nile. Some of them, like Sarah Belzoni and Sophia Poole, spoke Arabic. Others wrote engagingly of their experiences as observers of an exotic culture, with special access to some places no man could ever go. From Eliza Fay’s description of arriving in Egypt in 1779 to Rosemary Mahoney’s daring trip down the Nile in a rowboat in 2006, this lively collection of writing by women travelers includes Lady Evelyn Cobbold, Isabella Bird, Norma Lorimer, Harriet Martineau, Florence Nightingale, Amelia Edwards, and Lucie Duff Gordon.

This richly textured social history recovers the voices and experiences of poor Egyptians--beggars, foundlings, the sick and maimed--giving them a history for the first time. As Mine Ener tells their fascinating stories alongside those of reformers, tourists, politicians, and philanthropists, she explores the economic, political, and colonial context that shaped poverty policy for a century and a half. While poverty and poverty relief have been extensively studied in the North American and European contexts, there has been little research done on the issue for the Middle East--and scant comprehensive presentation of the Islamic ethos that has guided charitable action in the region. Drawing on British and Egyptian archival sources, Ener documents transformations in poor relief, changing attitudes toward the public poor, the entrance of new state and private actors in the field of charity, the motivations behind their efforts, and the poor's use of programs created to help them. She also fosters a dialogue between Middle Eastern studies and those who study poverty relief elsewhere by explicitly comparing Egypt's poor relief to policies in Istanbul and also Western Europe, Russia, and North America. Heralding a new kind of research into how societies care for the destitute--and into the religious prerogatives that guide them--this book is one of the first in-depth studies of charity and philanthropy in a region whose social problems have never been of greater interest to the West.