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Asyut in Modern Times: The Problem of Invisibility

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2021

Peter Gran
Peter Gran*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA
*
pgran@temple.edu
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Extract

If a major city, the major administrative capital of the south and an integral part of how the system reproduces itself, is invisible beyond an occasional passing reference in the familiar narrative of the history of a country, something has gone amiss. Such is the situation of Asyut, a city so invisible that even the English spelling of its name is elusive—variably Asyut, Assuit, Assiut, Siout, or even Essiout—sometimes appearing to be a deliberate attempt to retain an ancient pharaonic or biblical rendering. So why is there this invisibility and how can it be overcome?

Type
Roundtable
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 53 , Issue 1 , February 2021 , pp. 113 - 117
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

1 Gran, Peter, Persistence of Orientalism: Anglo-American Historians and Modern Egypt (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2020)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Djebar, Assia, Les Nuits de Strausbourg: Roman (Arles: Actes Sud, 1997)Google Scholar; Fanon, Frantz, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 2004)Google Scholar. The idea of Egyptian decolonization has not penetrated Anglo-American thought to the extent that the idea of North African and Palestinian decolonization has, Edward Said's Orientalism serving as an unfortunate reminder.

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4 Chris Toensing, in “Chosen People Ideology” (Middle East Report Online, 20 January 2012), presents a summary of my argument.

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16 Ibrahim, Nasser and Abbas, Raouf, Deux cent après Expédition d’Égypte, Vision Égyptienne (Cairo: Dar al-ʿArabiyya li-l-Kitab, 2008)Google Scholar. Nelly Hanna's early scholarship includes Construction Work in Ottoman Cairo 1517–1798 (Cairo: IFAO, 1984). Ibrahim, Nasir, al-Azamat al-Ijtima‘iyya fi Misr fi al-Qarn al-Sabi‘ ‘Ashar (Cairo: Dar al-Afaq al-‘Arabiyya, 1998)Google Scholar; Jirjis, Majdi, al-Qada’ al-Qibti fi Misr (Cairo: Mirit, 1999)Google Scholar.