I get off the bus near Al-Ahram Newspaper’s offices in the Ramses neighbourhood at around noon and make my way across the street and underneath Al-Galaa Bridge where street vendors sell anything from clothing to food items. As I navigate through the busy streets around people and cars, I think about the COVID-19 pandemic and I wonder at the countless Egyptians who need to pass through these crowds to make a living every day.
As I approach Cinema Radio, there’s a room to my left where I find a collection of furniture. I see a set of round double reflection mirrors, each divided down the middle –either horizontally or vertically– into two sections, each offering a different reflection. Below them is a cabinet set named Isfet, which, in ancient Egyptian culture, represents “chaos and darkness,” the opposite of another piece of hanging furniture named Maat, which represents “order and light.”
The view upon entering Elshahed’s “Cairo Modern” exhibition at New York City’s Center for Architecture. Most of the featured photographs have been reprinted from al-Emara magazine.
On a tree-lined side street just around the corner from Washington Square Park – and close enough to Zooba, the hip Cairo- and now New York-based Egyptian street food restaurant, to warrant traipsing over for lunch– scenes from everyday life in Cairo are on display at New York City’s Center for Architecture.
A backlit black-and-white image at the center of the room shows a woman in a striped shirt and knee-length skirt, flanked by palm trees and bamboo lawn furniture, the sort that’s still ubiquitous at sporting clubs and cafés across Egypt, posing for the camera on the Nile’s Mounira Island. A thirty-one-story high-rise towers in the background. Another image shows a pair of students seated in those same bamboo chairs on the lawn outside the American University in Cairo’s six-story Science Building, its large glass windows protected by an elaborate brise soleil.
Panel from Cairo Modern. A pair of students talk on the lawn of the now-demolished AUC Science Building. When the university moved to a new campus in New Cairo, it sold off valuable land downtown allowing for such demolitions. This type of distinct architecture has not been preserved well in twenty-first-century Cairo.
While the scenes feel timeless, the focus of the exhibition is not the characters at all. Instead, the focus is on the built environment they inhabit. The images have been brought together, in part, to challenge the anthropocentrism of history and underscore the impermanence of modernist buildings in this city on the Nile. The Sabet Sabet Building, built in 1958, which rises in the background of the image from Mounira, still stands in Garden City. But the Science Building on AUC’s downtown campus, designed by architect Medhat Hassan Shaheen and built in 1966, has been abandoned and demolished, victim to what academics callCairo’s urbicide.
Under normal circumstances, many of us would be deep in archival work that usually characterize our academic summers. Although COVID safety measures prevent us from traveling to research sites and accessing physical archives, it doesn’t mean we have to stop developing our projects. Countless digital and open access resources are available to historians who are for the time being at home and to those for whom travel may be an issue now and in the future. As a scholar of modern Egypt, precarious access to archival material is a constant factor; so, in addition to in-person research, I also regularly consult online sources. I’ve compiled a brief list of some of these online repositories in hopes it can help researchers working on nineteenth and twentieth century Egypt who are currently looking to diversify their source base or need access to primary sources.
By Natalya Stanke, Tessa Litecky, and Elisabeth Koch
Hazine recognizes that most archives and libraries are closed right now and emphasize prioritizing during these times the health and safety of all those who work at archives and libraries as well as the health and safety of those who use archives and libraries. We are publishing archive reviews in the hopes that eventually these repositories will be accessible again.
The ARCE Grand Salon, Photo Credit: ARCE 3D Model
Just a block south of Tahrir Square in the heart of Cairo lies the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE). Since 1948, ARCE has served as a powerful force for conservation, education, and historical research within Egypt. The archive and library collections cover 7,000 years of Egyptian history, including prehistoric Pharaonic, Coptic, Islamic, and more contemporary materials. ARCE’s conservation efforts are housed within the ARCE Conservation Archive, which serves as a resource for researchers interested in the dynamics of preserving Egyptian cultural heritage.
The lobby of the American Research Center in Egypt (photo credit: N.A. Mansour)
At MESA 2019, Djodi Deutsch, Academic Programs Manager for the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE), participated in a discussion on doing research in Egypt today; she based this on years of working with ARCE fellows conducting dissertation research and other projects. She kindly shared this list of research sites in Egypt with us (and on social media!) to share with you. Note these are not archive reviews –we’ve hyperlinked the research sites that we do have reviews for– but we are working on bringing you Egypt-specific archive reviews, along with other content. Feel free to drop us a line at hazineblog@gmail.com if you want to write us a piece! For now, this guide should help you get a general sense of what is out there.
Statue of a Peasant Woman in the Agricultural Museum Gardens (photo credit: Taylor Moore)
Obviously Dar al-Wathaiq (the National Archives) and Dar al-Kutub are still accessible. Dar al-Wathaiq requires a lengthy application process you can begin by visiting the location on the Corniche. Dar al-Kutub, both at the Corniche and Bab al-Khalq are running as usual: these repositories are good for rare books, manuscripts, and periodicals.
Dar al-Kutub (Corniche Location) is on the right side of the image. The left side of the image is Zamalek, where the Majma al-Lugha al-‘Arabi can be found (photo credit: N.A. Mansour)
Here is the list itself, compiled by Djodi Deutsch
Maktabat al-Azhar (al-Azhar Library) in Cairo is reportedly about to move to a new location not far from the original location on Salah Salem Street, around the corner from al-Azhar mosque and al-Azhar Garden. Thus, it does not merit a full archive review. HOWEVER, one of our editors, N.A. Mansour, has been using it and she put together a Twitter thread with all the relevant information. Click through to read the thread in its entirety (you DO NOT need a Twitter account to read it) and we look forward to featuring an entire archive review when the library moves.
Statue of a Peasant Woman in the Museum Gardens (photo credit: Taylor Moore)
The Cairo Agricultural Museum complex, located right off of Salah Salem street in the neighborhood of Dokki, is a gem of object collections and archival holdings hidden in plain sight. Its under-utilized collections will be of interest to historians and social scientists working on agriculture, food, natural history, political economy, rural Egyptian history, and public works from the Pharaonic period until present day. The museum is also a rare find for scholars interested in material culture and museum studies in modern Egypt. Its exhibits stand as an archive in and of themselves. They provide material testament to developments in the natural sciences, anthropology, food science, visual culture, and curatorial practices as many of the collections and dioramas remain untouched since the first half of the twentieth century.
History
In 1930, King Fouad of Egypt established the Agricultural Museum in the Cairo suburb of Dokki in the palace of Princess Fatima, the daughter of the great Khedive Ismail. It is one of the first agricultural museums in the world—second only to the Royal Agricultural Museum in Budapest. The museum was officially inaugurated by King Farouk in 1938 when he selected the venue to host 18th International Cotton Congress. The Agriculture Museum was preceded by an array of agricultural expositions organized by the Khedival Agricultural Society (later Royal Agricultural Society), an organization determined to improve agricultural methods in Egypt, and “the lot of the fellah.” The society created a small agricultural museum in 1920. This initial collection was ultimately modified into a cotton museum, which later became a part of the “Fouad I Agricultural Museum” when it opened to the public (el Shakry, 2007).
The Museum’s initial collections consisted of an array of objects donated from scientific institutions throughout Egypt, including the Royal Geographical Society, the Royal Agricultural Society, and the Egyptian Department of Antiquities. Hungarian artists oversaw the creation and curation of the museum’s first displays (Davies 2014). With its holdings “lying halfway between a museum of natural history and a purely agricultural museum,” the Egyptian government mobilized the museum as cultural and educational space for the public until the 1960s (Ghawas, 1972). For the next thirty odd years, the museum was essentially left for dead. Most of its artifacts and object collections were relocated to storage, and the exhibition halls were transformed into makeshift government offices, presumably for Ministry of Agriculture staff. In the 1990s, restoration projects began in earnest. As they were completed, sections of the museum were slowly reopened to the public beginning with the Hall of Ancient Egyptian Agriculture and the Cotton Museum in 1996. Currently, the museum complex is composed of seven exhibition halls (the museum pamphlet refers to these entities as small museums, or mutahif), a library, research laboratories, greenhouses, and a cinema. The grounds surrounding the museum have been maintained as a beautiful garden space, with two Pharaonic-style gardens located near the entrance to the Hall of Ancient Egyptian Agriculture.
Collections
As mentioned above the Cairo Agricultural Museum boasts seven exhibition halls which depict varying topics in natural history and agricultural science. The majority of the museum’s labels are in Arabic, however some exhibits provide English translations.
1. Scientific Collections
Whale Skeleton in the Scientific Collections Hall (photo credit: Taylor Moore)
The Scientific Collections Hall is the oldest in the museum. The first floor is dedicated to ethnographic materials that depict the social and economic lives of the Egyptian fellahin. The most stunning exhibits of this building are the large, life-size dioramas of a rural wedding procession, and a village souk complete with a community forn, a café with galabiyya-wearing men laughing while smoking shisha, and even a female fortune teller reading shells. There are also rooms specializing in rural handicrafts, “habits and customs,” and the High Dam. The second floor houses a large natural history collection of taxidermy animals native to Egypt and Sudan, with rooms specializing in the life-cycles of domestic farm animals, insects and crop pests, as well as a room of popular Egyptian products and manufactured food goods from the 1940s and 1950s.
Diorama of an Upper Egyptian Village Market in the Scientific Collections Hall (photo credit: Taylor Moore)
2. Botanical Revolution Hall
This hall, also referred to as the “Plant Kingdom Museum,” was established in 1935. Its
exhibits depict Egypt’s field crops, horticultural and garden plants, and popular agricultural machinery. The first floor specializes in grain crops such as wheat, barley, corn, and rice, and also has a room on onions and garlic. The second floor specializes in fiber crops, and rooms on fruits, vegetables, legumes, and more.
3. The Cotton Museum
In many aspects the original collection of the Agricultural Museum, the Royal Agricultural Society organized the Cotton Museum in 1920, and opened it to the public in 1926. The collections in their most recent state were inaugurated in the Cairo Agricultural Museum in 1996 on Eid el Fellah (a feast day commemorating the victories of the peasantry and the implementation of Nasserist agricultural reforms after the 1952 revolution). The collections explore the importance of the cotton crop over the long duree of Egyptian history in its many forms from field to finished product, and include rare cotton the seeds and fibers from varying species of cotton crop grown around the world.
4. Ancient Egyptian Agriculture
This collection highlights role of the Nile River and the importance of agriculture in the economic, social, and spiritual realms of Pharaonic civilization. Many of these collections were acquired between 1932 and 1938 as donations from the Egyptian Museum and the Egyptian Department of Antiquities. Cappers and Hamdy (20007) provide original catalogue entries for specimen in this collection as well as some in the “Greek, Coptic, and Islamic” collections below.
5. Agriculture in Greek, Roman, Coptic, and Islamic Periods
These collections represent the second stage of development in early Egyptian agriculture
from 332 BC, when Alexander the Great conquered Egypt, until the rule of Mohammed
(Mehmet) Ali Pasha in 1805. However, the majority of materials are concentrated in the Greek and Roman periods. They highlight the role of plants in society (from popular field crops to medicine), the raising of livestock, and the social lives of the peasant classes at in these periods.
A Poster Advising Consumers to Boil Milk to Prevent the Spread of Disease (photo credit: Taylor Moore)
6. The Syrian Hall
This exhibit, inaugurated on July 31, 1961 commemorates Egypt and Syria’s short-lived union in the form of the United Arab Republic from 1958 to 1961. Its contents include information on trade between the two countries, and provide a collection of Syrian handicrafts, produce, and rural life.
7. The Egypt-China Friendship Exhibition
Opened in 2013, this exhibit is composed mostly of art and ceramics donated from China
to illustrate the thriving political relationship between Egypt and China.
8. Library
The museum’s library is a quaint two-floor building with an array of books, periodicals, and maps ranging from the mid-nineteenth century until the early 2000s. The subjects of the collection focus on a variety of agriculture and “agriculture-adjacent” materials such as botany, horticulture, public works, livestock, geography, and the social and economic aspects of rural life. Some examples of publications held in the library include volumes of Mémoires Présentés à l’Institut d’Egypte from the 1880s until the 1930s, yearly reports from the Department of Public Works from the 1880s onwards, and a Ministry of Agriculture periodical entitled Zamīl al-Fallāḥ published in the 1930s. Certain publications of the Ministry of Agriculture can also be found here, however most of those materials are held in the library of the Ministry of Agriculture and the National Agricultural Library (both located down the street from the Agricultural Museum.) As far as I know, this collection has not been catalogued and I was only able to conduct a cursory survey of the holdings during my research there. Future researchers may find more than detailed in this review.
Research Experience
The Agricultural Museum and Library is easily accessible to researchers. Those that speak Arabic will have an easier time of things, although many of the museum and library staff know some level of English. As of 2016, the entry fee to the main collection halls, library, and gardens was 5 LE, with an extra fee to enter the Hall of Ancient Egyptian Agriculture. However, researchers must note that depending on the day, and maybe even the hour, particular halls or exhibitions may be locked and/or closed to visitors. Generally, the main exhibits in the natural history, or scientific collections, and the library are always open to the public.
The library, located near the research laboratories a ways off from the main buildings, is a charming and pleasant workspace. More often than not, researchers will have the reading room to themselves, sharing the space with only a handful of library staff. Madame Azza is the main librarian. After signing your name in a logbook, Madame Azza will ask you what kinds of materials you are interested in. You can give her specific texts or vague subject and she will bring the exact text, or texts that might interest you out to the reading room for you. If you are lucky, she may allow you to wonder through the upstairs stacks yourself. This is the area where most of the old periodicals, governmental reports, and “rare books” from 1880 until 1950 are housed.
Model of Honeycombs in a Beehive (photo credit: Taylor Moore)
Currently, there is neither known catalogue for the ethnographic and natural history collections, nor the holdings in the library. I was also not able to find information on the provenance of the museum’s collections. However, as of June 25 2017 the Egyptian Central Department of Archaeological Acquisitions examined and registered over 1,000 of the Agricultural museum’s ancient animal and geological artifacts. There may be a way to access the catalogue or reports from this investigation. Those wishing to work with certain objects or collections should get in touch with the museum staff directly. Although the museum’s pamphlet provides a phone number and an email address for researchers to direct their inquiries, it is recommended that scholars make requests in person to the museum staff who may put you in touch with the museum director. It is advised that researchers provide a statement in Arabic addressing their academic affiliation, research interests, and the collections they are interested in working with.
Unlike other archives in Egypt, such as Dar al-Watha’iq al-Qawmiyya (The Egyptian National Archives) and Dar al-Kutub (The Egyptian National Library) where photographs of materials are forbidden, or in the Egyptian Geographical Society’s Ethnographic Museum where photographs of the exhibits can be taken for a fee, the Cairo Museum of Agriculture allows researchers to take pictures of materials in both the library and the museum for free.
Transportation
The Cairo Agricultural Museum is located in the neighborhood of Dokki. The museum is an easy 25 minute walk from the Behouth (Dokki) or the Opera (Zamalek) metro stations. Given the museum’s location right off of Salah Salem, it is easily accessible via taxi, Uber, or Kareem as well. Researchers can simply direct them to “al-mathaf al-zara’i” or “wizarat al-zira’a.” There are a handful of restaurants, cafes, and kushks located near the museum, particularly in the directions of the Dokki Shooting Club (Nadi Es-Sid) and Mohandessin.
Contact Information (according to museum pamphlet):
Telephone: +2(02)33372933 and +2(02)37616874
Website: www.agrimuseum.gov.eg
Email: agri.museum@yahoo.com
Hours: Sunday through Friday 9AM-2PM; The museum is occasionally closed for maintenance and hours are liable to change.
The most in-depth descriptions of the museum, its history, and its exhibitions can be found in
Al-Mathaf Al-Zira’i Kama ’Arfithu (elKhattab, 2003), located in the museum’s library collection, Guide du Musée Agricole Fouad I , and the Bulletin of the Royal Agricultural Society.
Additionally, some of the most useful sources that cover the history of the museum, as well as its current state and collections are below. (I have also included limited secondary literature regarding the general history of agriculture in twentieth century Egypt as it pertains to the history of organizations such as the Ministry of Agriculture, the Fellah Department in the Ministry of Social Affairs, and the Royal Agricultural Society):
Davies, Claire. “The Anatomy of Melancholy: Cairo’s Lost Agriculture Museum.” Bidoun, no. 14 Objects: A Treasury of Bidounish Wonders (Spring/Summer 2008). https://bidoun.org/articles/the-anatomy-of-melancholy.
El Shakry, Omnia S. The Great Social Laboratory: Subjects of Knowledge in Colonial and Postcolonial Egypt. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2007, pp 125-126.
Ghawas, M. H. El. “The Agricultural Museum, Dokki.” Museum International 24, no. 3 (January 12, 1972): 174–76.
Hassan, Fayza. “The Forgotten Museums of Egypt.” Museum International 57, no. 1/2 (May 2005): 42-48.
Johnson, Amy J. Reconstructing Rural Egypt: Ahmed Hussein and the History of Egyptian Development. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2004.
Meyer, Sara-Duana. “The Dimly Lit Marvels of Cairo’s Agricultural Museum.” Mada Masr (blog).. https://www.madamasr.com/en/2015/05/14/feature/culture/the-dimly-lit-marvels-of-cairos-agricultural-museum/.
Rivlin, Helen Anne B. The Agricultural Policy of Muhammad ’Ali in Egypt. Y First edition edition. Harvard University Press, 1961.
The most information regarding the museums collections focuses mainly on the Ancient Egypt collections. The texts below produce in depth information about their research experience at the museum, detailed information about the objects examined, and attempt to catalogue them and/or cite a catalogue given to them during their research:
Bober, Phyllis Pray. Art, Culture, and Cuisine: Ancient and Medieval Gastronomy. University of Chicago Press, 2001.
Cappers, R.T.J, and R. Hamdy. “Ancient Egyptian Plant Remains in the Agricultural Museum (Dokki, Cairo).” In Fields of Change Progress in African Archaeobotany, 165–214. Groningen Archaeological Studies 5. Barkhuis, 2007.
Crane, Eva. The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting. Taylor & Francis, 1999.
Darby, William Jefferson, Paul Ghalioungui, and Louis Grivetti. Food: The Gift of Osiris. Academic Press, 1977.Ikram, Salima. Choice Cuts: Meat Production in Ancient Egypt. Peeters Publishers, 1995.
Taylor M. Moore is a PhD Candidate in Modern Middle Eastern History at Rutgers University. Her dissertation explores the entangled histories of magic, medicine, and museums in early twentieth century Egypt.
Dar al-Mahfuzat al-ʿUmumiyya is an important Egyptian government archive, despite the fact that few people know of its existence. Today, the institution is officially known as the Registry and Property Records Archive of the Egyptian Finance Ministry. It is located beside the Citadel in Cairo, near the al-Rifaʿi and Sultan Hasan mosques. Its documents, containing much more than property-related information, are significant for the administrative and urban history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Egypt.
History
An interior view of the old defterhane building from the second quarter of the nineteenth century
The origins of Dar al-Mahfuzat can be traced back to the defterhane, which was a main depository of government documents. It burned down and was re-established by Mehmet Ali Pasha in 1828. In the nineteenth century, it was variously under the responsibility of the Accountant Office in the Diwan-i Khidiwi, the Finance Ministry (Diwan/Wizarat al-Maliyya), the Cairo Governorate (Muhafazat Misr), or the Ministry of Interior (Wizarat al-Dakhiliyya). In 1905, the institution became a part of the Finance Ministry. In 1929, its name was changed to Dar al-Mahfuzat al-ʿUmumiyya (and some of its documents were transferred to the ‘Abdin Palace as part of an effort to establish a separate royal archive). The post-1952 regime established the National Archive of Historical Records (Dar li-l-Watha’iq al-Tarikhiyya al-Qawmiyya, hereafter DWQ) and ordered the transfer of documents located in the ʿAbdin collection, Dar al-Mahfuzat, and other governmental agencies to this central organization under the Ministry of National Guidance (Wizarat al-Irshad al-Qawmi). However, until a proper building was found, it exercised central control over state historical records only in theory. In the 1960s, DWQ and Dar al-Kutub (the National Library) were united. In 1977, Dar al-Mahfuzat was ordered to join this central organization under the Ministry of Culture (formerly National Guidance), but in 1979 it was re-established as part of the Ministry of Finance. It remained until now as part of the Property Tax Office (Maslahat al-Daraʾib al-ʿAqariyya).
Collection
The exact holdings of Dar al-Mahfuzat are not known officially. There is no public catalog. The best available description is in Insaf ʿUmar’s thesis, especially its appendices (see bibliography below). It is possible that some parts of the collection were already transferred to other governmental offices or to DWQ.
The documents preserved in Dar al-Mahfuzat today certainly include three important collections. 1) The pension dossiers of state employees (Milaffat Khidmat al-Muwazzafin) between the 1830s and 1959 (including non-Egyptian subjects who received pension from the Egyptian state). In these dossiers one can trace the entire careers of state employees and obtain some information on their heirs. These files provide also an insight into the administrative work and cooperation between different branches of the state. 2) The tax-registers of buildings in Cairo (Jaraʾid ʿAwaʾid al-Amlak al-Mabniyya, which once belonged to the Cairo Governorate [Muhafazat Misr]), and possibly of other cities as well. This collection mostly contains documents from the turn of the century to the early 1950s. 3) Tax registers of agricultural lands (Mukallafat al-Atyan al-Ziraʿiyya).
There might be other collections. For instance, registers of births and deaths were stored in Dar al-Mahfuzat at one time but may have been transferred to another office. The sijills of the provincial shariʿa courts, which were present in the 1980s, are now in DWQ. Some dossiers of Dar al-Mahfuzat are presently empty.
The number of documents/dossiers/registers is not known officially. Insaf ʿUmar gives various numbers. Judged by my own experience, there must be tens of thousands of registers concerning taxation and thousands of dossiers concerning state pensioners. Insaf ‘Umar estimates 88,794 dossiers of state pensioners.
Library
There is also a library in Dar al-Mahfuzat. Its collection is significant for the legal history of Egypt: it holds printed books between the 1830s and 1870s, mostly in Ottoman Turkish, which contain the official orders from the governors and various state regulations. There is also a collection of the journal al-Waqaʾiʿ al-Misriyya (seemingly, the full series), and some books in French or Italian about Egyptian law. There are other nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Arabic printed materials concerning taxation or administrative laws. The Arabic material is cataloged in Insaf ʿUmar’s thesis but he does not include the Ottoman Turkish books. As of December 2013, the library was being re-organized.
The facade of the current Dar al-Mahfuzat building, seemingly interpreted by an Instragram filter
Research Experience
Dar al-Mahfuzat retains archival functions but it is not an archive per se. It is a functioning governmental office with the responsibility of safeguarding highly sensitive information related to state and private income. Not surprisingly, security is tight. It seems that in the 1980s access was easier. It is also possible that the revolutionary atmosphere in 2011 made state institutions more defensive. Until the autumn of 2013, there was a research (viewing) room (qaʿat al-bahth) with a small staff of four ladies. In the beginning, one employee had to escort me in the building, later I was allowed to move more freely. They were very helpful but not entirely knowledgeable about the holdings.
Researchers can only work three hours per day, from 10:00 to 13:00. This three-hour research period is an official decision and it is printed on every research permission. Therefore, complaints to employees are futile and may be interpreted as disrespectful. It often happens that the requested material arrives late or the researcher is asked to come back the day after. However, almost everything I wanted to look at arrived sooner or later.
There is no digital or printed catalog. In the case of pension files, one has to know the date of the retirement or read all the handwritten registers until you find the name or the profession you are looking for, and then ask for the indicated dossier. Given the limited number of working hours, consulting these pension-registers can take up significant research time. In the case of property taxation, one has to consult a separate office in the Garage Building in Opera Square first, in order to gain information about the pre-1952 administrative arrangements and names of the streets, etc. The staff is very helpful there. Once this information is obtained, one can request the given codes of the registers at Dar al-Mahfuzat.
When a register or a dossier arrives, a security guard also enters the room, and sits next to the researcher (sometimes so close that you may feel restricted in free movement). However, after a time, security is frequently relaxed; I was often left without a “guard” (of course, the ordinary research staff remained in the room).
At my last visit in December 2013, I found the research room closed and some of the employees dismissed. There was a new director and the remaining research employees were transferred to the library which became the new “viewing room.” Still, during this research visit, I could only view the requested material in one of the working offices, among the administrators under the supervision of a security guard. Do not be surprised if you see that an employee eats a sandwich above a one-hundred-year old document. However, the atmosphere, after the first wave of surprise about my presence, was rather kind and welcoming. I could even work more than three hours. Despite the initial efforts of the security personnel to restrict my viewing, ultimately I was permitted to read whatever page of the registers I wanted.
Storage conditions of the defters in Dar al-Mahfuzat, picture taken for Insaf ‘Umar dissertation
My advice is to be kind, humble, and persistent. Of course, you can only chat in Egyptian Arabic. Depending on the scope of your research, you must organize your time wisely – it is possible that you have to return time and time again. Be always aware that this is a living part of the Ministry of Finance. In any country in the world this would cause difficulties, especially if you are a foreigner.
Access
Dar al-Mahfuzat is usually open from morning around nine to the mid-afternoon and is located on 2 Shari’a al-Mahjar. However, research is restricted to 10:00 – 13:00, and sometimes four days a week. It is open during the summer.
Permission needs to be requested from the Security Bureau (Maktab al-Amn) of the Property Tax Office of the Finance Ministry, at the left side of the Saʿd Zaghlul Mausoleum. Since there were rumors that foreigners cannot do research, I submitted 1) photocopies of my passport, 2) a letter of recommendation from my university in Arabic (and English) 3) a letter, signed by my Ambassador that I am a scientific researcher, in Arabic (and English) 4) a research plan in Arabic 5) a form to be filled in (you will be given) 6) Two colored passport-sized photographs.
It is crucial that on the form you define the time period of your research as broadly as possible because you will be given only those files which fall within the specified period. For instance, if you focus on the 1880s, you should provide dates between 1850 and 1920 or more, since perhaps the person you are looking for retired much later and you will not even receive the name-registers after the stated end of your period.
The permission process can take months, often half a year. For me it took longer, perhaps because I submitted my request in 2011. After receiving permission, I went to Dar al-Mahfuzat and, despite the permission from the Ministry, was immediately taken by the security personnel to the director, who, after a little chat, gave her permission too. As the office is now under new management, circumstances may be different.
The permission is valid for one year (365 days) with the possibility of renewal.
Dar al-Mahfuzat is not wheelchair accessible.
Reproductions
Dar al-Mahfuzat does not permit the use of cameras or laptops while working with documents. Moreover, the archive provides no photocopying services. Researchers are permitted only to hand copy the documents they consult. You cannot bring a laptop into the viewing room.
Transportation and Food:
The easiest way to access the archive is by taxi or bus to Sayyida ʿAʾisha or the al-Rifaʿi and Sultan Hasan Mosques.
There are plenty of small kusheri and ful shops nearby.
Future Plans and Rumors
Egypt is in the midst of immense political changes which affect all levels of government bureaucracy including Dar al-Mahfuzat. Researchers should be prepared to navigate a quickly evolving bureaucratic environment while undertaking their research.
There will be possible changes. Look for updates.
Contact information
Though Dar al-Mahfuzat can be reached by phone, I do not recommend calling it directly. First go to the Security Office and request permission in person. There is no website.
Resources and Links:
The most important resources are:
J. Deny, Sommaire des Archives Turques du Caire (Cairo: IFAO, 1930)
Insaf ʿUmar, “Min Kunuz Dar al-Mahfuzat al-ʿUmumiyya – Milaffat al-Muwazzafin bi-l-Hukuma al-Misriyya,” in: Khamsun ʿAmman ʿala Inshaʾ Dar al-Wathaʾiq, ed. Muhammad Sabir ʿArab et al (Cairo: Dar al-Kutub, 2009), 160-194.
Some material is in:
Al-Wathaʾiq al-ʿArabiyya fi Dar al-Mahfuzat (Cairo: al-Majlis al-ʿAli li-l-Thaqafa, 2007)
Al-Daftarkhana: Dar al-Mahfuzat al-ʿUmumiyya (Alexandria: Maktabat al-Iskandariyya, 2010)
Works of Ibrahim ʿAbduh, ʿAli Barakat, Crabbs, Gran, Hunter, Peters.
Though Dar al-Mahfuzat almost totally missing from these two important studies in English, they provide good context:
Helen Rivlin, The Dar al-Watha’iq in ‘Abdin Palace at Cairo as a Source for the Study of Modernization of Egypt in the Nineteenth Century (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1970).
Yoav di Capua, Gatekeepers of the Arab Past: Historians and History Writing in Twentieth-Century Egypt (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2009).
Adam Mestyan is a Junior Fellow at the Society of Fellows, Harvard University and currently writing his first book on the relationship between political power and theater in nineteenth-century Egypt.
Cite this: Adam Mestyan, “Dar al-Mahfuzat al-‘Umumiyya (Cairo),” HAZINE, 3 Mar 2014, https://hazine.info/2014/03/03/daralmahfuzat/
Tahrir Documents is a collection of pamphlets, newsletters, signs, poems, and other texts gathered in and around Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt, between March 2011 and May 2012. The physical documents are housed at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in the Department of Special Collections at the Charles E. Young Research Library. However, all documents are available online at www.TahrirDocuments.org as scanned PDF files with accompanying English translations. The archive seeks to create a record of the print culture of the Egyptian uprising against Hosni Mubarak and its aftermath.
Tahrir Square, January 25, 2012: an archive in the making
History
Tahrir Documents was founded in 2011 through the efforts of a group of American graduate students in Cairo and explicitly states its lack of affiliation “with any political organization, Egyptian or otherwise.” Generally speaking, documents were gathered once a week on Fridays, when they were distributed to crowds in Tahrir Square. They were then scanned and translated by volunteers, primarily Egyptians and Americans, a number of whom were students of the Center for Arabic Study Abroad (CASA). The founders of Tahrir Documents intended the archive to illustrate the richness and diversity of print culture in Tahrir Square at a time when media discourse on the “Egyptian Revolution” gave primacy to the impact of online social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Further, translating these documents into English represented an attempt to give the diverse and polyvalent texts available in Tahrir Square a wider English-speaking readership. Efforts to collect and translate documents continued through May 2012, at which point no further documents were added to the collection.
Collection
The collection includes a wide range of documents collected in and around Tahrir Square from spring 2011 to spring 2012, including newsletters and broadsheets, pamphlets, announcements, advertisements, and poetry. The archive also includes a small number of largely text-based signs held by protestors at Tahrir Square. Though most of the documents are stand-alone pieces, there are several newsletters of which multiple issues were collected and translated. Each document exists in the original along with a full English language translation. The date of collection and of translation are included on the Tahrir Documents website.
The Tahrir Documents website includes 567 documents. In this respect it differs from other efforts to document and archive the Egyptian uprising of 2011 and the events that followed, such as University on the Square, R-Shief, or the Committee to Document the 25th January Revolution, which include a much wider range of material (electronic media, photographs, oral histories, music, and so on). The archive’s self-imposed limits are generally speaking a boon for researchers in that they result in a relatively coherent collection—one knows, for example, that all of these documents were produced in Egypt and were physically present in the space of Tahrir Square on the date collected—but the archive’s discontinuation in May 2012 can be frustrating in light of subsequent events in Egypt.
The Research Experience
All documents in the collection are digitized and available online, making them easily available to researchers throughout the world. Scans or photographs of the original documents are posted with translations on the Tahrir Documents website and can be downloaded by users. Documents are posted in chronological order according to translation date and are also divided into seven main categories according to subject: Revolution, Politics, Solidarity, Culture, Constitution, Regime, and Religion. Each category includes a number of sub-categories, and documents are frequently listed under multiple categories or sub-categories. Most useful, perhaps, is the ability to search the full texts of translations for the entire collection. Unfortunately, it is not possible to conduct searches in Arabic. As the documents were translated by a large group of volunteers, some inconsistencies in translation or transliteration do at times crop up; for the most part, however, this is not a huge hurdle (most names and places are transliterated in modified International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies style, for example). In general, the interface is easy to use and accessing the documents poses no difficulties.
Broadly speaking, these documents would be of interest to researchers of post–January 2011 Egypt, especially the political culture of Tahrir Square. Those whose focus extends to Arab political culture more generally will also find rich primary material, as the documents include political tracts, manifestos, and explanatory notes from political currents ranging from salafi to revolutionary socialist. Indeed, given the location where these documents were collected, it is not surprising that the vast majority are explicitly political in content; however, the location-specific—rather than subject-specific—method of collection has resulted in the inclusion of some surprising and unusual pieces. Those more interested in Egyptian popular culture, for example, will also find poems, fiction, and advertisements collected here.
Sample document on TahrirDocuments.org
Access
The Tahrir Documents web site is easily accessible. Those who want to access the original documents must go to the Department of Special Collections at the Charles E. Young Research Library at UCLA. Visitors have to register and documents are delivered in one to two days. The Department of Special Collections is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Saturday, except during holidays; non-UCLA visitors must be over eighteen years old and present a government-issued photo identification to obtain an access-only card from the circulation desk at the Young Research Library.
Upcoming News and Rumors
The online component of Tahrir Documents will officially migrate to a UCLA library website in the coming months. This transition will bring with it a new interface and metadata, which should allow for new ways of searching and filtering results.
