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Egypt Rural Society
Until the time of Napoleon's invasion, Mamluk fief holders,
large landowners, and the chiefs of nomadic tribes controlled
rural Egypt. This rural elite--a small fraction of the populace--
derived its wealth from land, livestock, and the collection of
taxes on commission. Beduin shaykhs lived among and were related
to the tribal people over whom they exercised jurisdiction. The
large landowners lived in villages and were usually related to
some of the other families. The fief holders, predominantly
Turkish and Circassian in origin, had the most tenuous links to
the villages because they tended to reside in cities and often
brutalized the peasants on their estates. Most fellahin (sing.,
fellah; peasant, from the Arabic verb, falaha, to till the
soil), were socioeconomically similar. Village headmen allocated
families usufruct right to village land, but the village as a
whole was responsible for tax payments.
Rural society changed during the nineteenth century. Rulers
made it easier for individuals to own land, and they held
individuals responsible for tax payments. Large land grants to
court favorites and extensive land registration frauds resulted
in concentrated landholdings and an increased number of people
who owned large pieces of land. During this period, the
government gave tribal shaykhs substantial land grants but
required that they permanently farm and occupy their parcels. The
move caused many beduins to give up their nomadic way of life.
Settled beduins gradually became liable for the same taxes
imposed on the fellahin.
Granting land (and government administrative posts) only to
shaykhs undermined tribal loyalty and solidarity. The process
created a class of wealthy landholders within tribes, and the
landlord-tenant relationship proved inimical to the strongly
egalitarian traditions of beduin society. As tribal loyalties
weakened, shaykhs began marrying prosperous settled Egyptian
women, while poorer nomads married within the masses of peasants.
Many of the beduin and nontribal owners of large amounts of land
pursued economic opportunities in the growing cities and became
absentee landlords. Many absentee landlords specialized in
commodity trading and controlled Egypt's expanding agricultural
exports. They also became involved in the urban credit market.
The fellahin sharecroppers who tilled the land of absentee owners
became increasingly indebted to the local, usually usurious,
moneylenders because their share of crops generally provided
insufficient income to support a family for the entire period
between harvests.
Private ownership of land and increased production of export
crops, especially cotton, also resulted in the emergence of
landholders, who owned mid-sized plots of five to fifty
feddans. This group competed only marginally with the
landed elite but was prosperous by rural standards. In 1990 these
mid-sized landowners continued to play an integral role in rural
society.
Class differentiation increased among the fellahin throughout
the nineteenth century. Small landholders with one to five
feddans became poorer but were better off than tenants and
sharecroppers. The tenants and sharecroppers were better off than
a growing class of landless villagers who earned their
livelihoods from casual agricultural labor. (By the end of the
nineteenth century, one of every four people in rural areas owned
no land.) Landowners who became indebted or fell into tax arrears
easily lost their holdings. Until 1926 the government could
expropriate land if its owner owed as little as £E2 in back
taxes.
From the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, large
estates continued to consolidate their holdings while small farms
fragmented further with each passing generation. From 1896 to the
eve of the first land-reform legislation in 1952, the number of
landowners with parcels of fewer than five feddans had
nearly tripled. The number of large landowners with holdings of
at least fifty feddans declined gradually in the same
period. Large landowners controlled 33 percent of all cultivated
land by 1952 (only 0.5 percent of all landowners were large
landowners). In contrast, about 75 percent of all rural property
owners were peasants with holdings of less than one
feddan. This group owned only 13 percent of the land. The
average-sized holding in the under-five-feddan range
dropped by 50 percent. The number of mid-sized holders (owning
six to fifty feddans) dropped from about 12 percent to 5
percent of all landowners, although their share of cultivated
land remained nearly constant at 30 percent.
Frequent incidents of peasant unrest accompanied the changes
in rural Egypt. Peasant uprisings, which were usually localized,
were all sparked by complaints such as high taxes, intolerable
landlord imposts, corvées, foreclosures, and rising rents. Some
protests spread throughout a district or region and required
extensive military intervention to restore control. Uprisings
often took on religious or messianic overtones. By 1950 when an
estimated 60 percent of the rural population was landless, it was
not uncommon for groups of discontented sharecroppers and tenants
to try to seize the land they cultivated.
The Free Officers made land reform a priority after the 1952
Revolution. Continuing into the 1960s, the Free Officers
promulgated measures that distributed about 700,000
feddans of land to about 318,000 peasant households, i.e.,
13 percent of the cultivated land to 10 percent of the country's
rural families. A law in 1952 limited individual landownership to
200 feddans. The law also prevented owners from
transferring more than 100 feddans to members of their
immediate families; excess holdings had to be sold to small
farmers or tenants. The law also limited the amount of cash rents
and the percentage of the harvest that absentee owners could
collect from tenants and sharecroppers. A law in 1961 limited
individual ownership to 100 feddans; another law in 1969
limited it to 50 feddans. These land reforms failed to
eliminate large landowners, but they did reduce the group's share
of cultivated land from 33 percent of the total to 15 percent
between 1952 and 1975.
Peasant smallholders (with fewer than five feddans)
were the main beneficiaries of the reforms. In 1952 they owned
about 35 percent (2.1 million feddans) of Egypt's
cultivated land. By 1965 they owned 52 percent (3.2 million
feddans). Although several thousand tenant and
sharecropping families were able to purchase tiny parcels (none
greater than five feddans) and join the ranks of
smallholders, the majority of landless villagers did not benefit
from the reforms. Landlords' creativity in exploiting the surplus
rural labor market thwarted government efforts to assist these
landless villagers. Landlords also learned how to circumvent
legislation designed to guarantee sharecroppers half of the
harvest. By the 1980s, the combination of rapid population
growth, increasing production costs, and high rates of inflation
had eroded the gains of the smallholders. An estimated 44 percent
of all rural families lived below the officially defined poverty
level.
Peasants who owned between eleven and fifty feddans
were able to increase their landholdings by purchasing excess
land from large landlords. This group of peasants comprised 2.5
percent of all landowners in 1952 and 3 percent in 1965. By the
latter date, this group owned 24 percent of all cultivated land.
In 1990 rural society was just as stratified as it had been
before the initiation of land reform in 1952. Approximately
11,000 large landowners (those owning more than fifty
feddans--less than 0.3 percent of all owners) were still
at the top of the social hierarchy. These large landowners were
typically absentee landlords and renters who worked in urban
areas as merchants, civil servants, professionals, or corporate
managers. Although wealthy, they lacked the prerevolutionary
landowning elite's influence in rural areas, and their impact on
village social relations tended to be limited. Nevertheless, they
continued to be influential in national politics and exercised
indirect influence in rural areas through their diverse ties to
large peasant owners.
The second stratum of rural landowners consisted of two
peasant groups, medium holders owning six to ten feddans
and large holders owning eleven to fifty feddans. Although
this second stratum accounted for only 5.5 percent of all rural
landowners, it owned one-third of all the cultivated land. Both
groups' holdings were large enough to generate profits from
agriculture, and the more prosperous individuals among the groups
tended to fill the political role previously held by the large
landlords. Large peasant owners in particular exercised
significant influence in local and even regional politics. The
large holders tended to be commercial farmers with extensive ties
to domestic capital and were frequently involved in subsidiary
marketing, livestock, and transport enterprises. In most
villages, at least one of the peasant families with medium or
large landholdings was descended from a lineage that most members
of the community considered superior. Farmers in this second
stratum have also experienced substantial occupational mobility
since 1952. A typical family with several sons would send one or
more of them to university to prepare for careers in the civil
service, the military, or the professions.
Peasant smallholders (those owning fewer than five
feddans) comprised 94 percent of all Egyptian landowners.
In general, holdings of fewer than five feddans were too
small for profitable agriculture. Consequently, smallholders had
to supplement their incomes by working on the land of larger
owners, by engaging in other agricultural activities such as
raising livestock, or by finding seasonal work in urban areas.
Many smallholders rented their plots for part or all of the year
to other peasants, especially to those who owned between five and
ten feddans. About one-quarter of all land owned by
smallholders was leased to larger owners.
Since 1952 there have been no reliable statistics on the
number of landless villagers. Although landlessness decreased
between 1952 and 1965, it has been rising since the late 1960s.
Throughout Egypt the landless constituted perhaps as much as 40
percent of the rural population; the majority lived in the
villages of the Delta and Upper Egypt. Landless peasants
supported their families by cultivating land for absentee owners
as tenants and sharecroppers; by working as agricultural laborers
for large peasant owners; by providing village services such as
carpentry, blacksmithing, machinery maintenance, and livestock
herding; and by migrating to cities and other Arab countries in
search of short- and long-term employment. Remittances from adult
males working away from home and (stimulated by labor shortages
in agriculture) combined to outpace a rise in rural wages
inflation and helped to alleviate poverty among the landless
peasants--the poorest villagers--in the 1980s.
In 1989 approximately 50 percent of Egypt's population lived
in villages. In the past, urban residents had little or no
contact with the villagers who produced their food. Most peasants
were suspicious of urban landlords and government officials whose
presence in the villages coincided with the collection of rent
and taxes. But in the twentieth century, extensive rural-urban
contacts developed as a result of large-scale migration to the
cities, the establishment of government services in villages, and
the mass media. Nevertheless, a sharp distinction between rural
and urban areas persisted. Wide disparities existed between
cities and villages in amenities, services, and educational and
health facilities. Mortality rates, especially for infants, and
illiteracy rates were notably higher in rural areas
(see Population;
Health and Welfare
, this ch.).
In the 1980s, temporary migration in search of wage labor was
particularly common among villagers in Upper Egypt; men left
their families in the care of relatives during the slack
agricultural seasons. In some Nubian villages, for example, all
males between the ages of eighteen and forty-five were gone for
much of the year. Migrants served as intermediaries between rural
and urban Egypt and as agents of social change in the village.
Because of the increasingly important role of nonagricultural
work in the Delta, many villagers found new occupations that
resulted in social cleavages. For example, the opportunity to
earn a living independent of their fathers permitted men to
exercise more freedom from traditional authority figures. Higher
education provided upward mobility for substantial numbers of
rural children and led to new social distinctions within
villages.
The basic unit of village organization was the patrilineal
lineage or clan. Composed of various families descended from a
common male ancestor four to six generations in the past, a
lineage inhabited a specific quarter of the village. Lineages,
controlled by elder males, were an integral force in village life
and politics. Families gained their identity not as autonomous
entities but as part of their larger lineage.
Lineages had a corporate identity with a recognized
leadership pattern. A man's closest social contacts were with his
brothers and cousins. A guest house was used to entertain
visitors at the lineage's expense. Various lineages vied for
power and influence within the village. The interests of the
lineage were frequently more important than the interests of
individuals. Propinquity was crucial in settling disputes within
a lineage. In conflicts with outsiders, individuals were expected
to unite in the interests of their lineage. Propinquity was so
important in rural society that to suggest a person had no kin
was a profound insult.
Lineages and a general disapproval of the public display of
wealth blunted many of the economic disparities within and among
village clans. Still, religious feasts and rites of passage
provided an opportunity for lineages to display their wealth.
Lineages usually invited other lineages to extravagant weddings
and other celebrations. Several religious festivals required
wealthy people to distribute meat to the less fortunate. Return
from the hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) called for elaborate
decorations in the pilgrim's house. In general, the socially
acceptable means of displaying wealth helped integrate prosperous
individuals into the community rather than separate them from it.
A number of changes in the 1980s limited the influence of
lineages. In the past, lineage elders maintained their authority
by controlling land. But the recent increase in pressure on land
has meant that fewer young men would inherit large plots. Many of
these young men, realizing they would never own a substantial
piece of land, have migrated to cities and other countries and
are no longer influenced by their elders. The prevalence of
nuclear families in cities has also eroded lineage ties.
Data as of December 1990
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