Egypt’s nineteenth-century history shows elite boundaries continuously being crossed

Evidence

The boundaries separating core members of this “Ottoman–Egyptian elite” from those outside this privileged group, however, were not water-tight and, given time, individuals within that group started to learn Arabic, took Cairo, rather than Istanbul, to be their main dwelling place, and came to identify more and more with Egypt as their country. At the same time, those outside the group, anxious to improve their lot, started to learn Turkish, intermarried with elite members and gradually assumed more and more of “Ottoman” manners and etiquette. Indeed the history of Egypt in the nineteenth century, and especially the second half of it, can be seen precisely as showing this tendency to cross and transgress these boundaries. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 1326