Makamat

"The Maqamat recounts in the words of the narrator, al-Harith ibn Hammam, his repeated encounters with Abu Zayd al-Saruji, an unabashed confidence artist and wanderer possessing all the eloquence, grammatical knowledge, and poetic ability of al-Hariri himself. Time and again, al-Harith finds Abu Zayd at the centre of a throng of people in a new city. Abu Zayd brings tears to his listeners' eyes with the vivid description of his pretended hardships and dazzles them with his poetry and then suddenly disappears with their presents." Cf. "Hariri, al-." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 16 Apr. 2007.

Animals in rural Egypt became enmeshed in social relationships and made possible many tasks otherwise impossible. Rather than focus on what animals represented or symbolized, Mikhail discusses their social and economic functions, as Ottoman Egypt cannot be understood without acknowledging animals as central shapers of the early modern world.