Middle-level clerks and servants actively mediated Ottoman-Egyptian elite boundaries

Evidence

More problematic is the insufficient attention given in Toledano’s account of the people at these uneasy peripheries, these borders separating the two groups one from the other. Scribes, guards, lower-ranking government bureaucrats, non-commissioned officers, nurses and servants: these are examples of people who stood at the peripheries of these two groups and facilitated the communication and the interaction between their respective members. Instead of highlighting the roles of these people as negotiators of boundaries and facilitators of the dialog between the two groups, Toledano in fact highlights the distinctiveness of both groups and the near impossibility of a dialog. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 108

Categorization

• DEFINE: Useful intellectual framing — the analytic payoff of studying ‘peripheral’ intermediaries rather than polar groups.
• XREF: connects to: Ottoman legal reform displaced oral testimony with documentary procedure, reshaping trust norms; Mid-century Egyptian cities kept Turkish-speaking elites and Arabic-speaking commoners linguistically segregated — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 108; Egyptian elites mythologized Sudanese servants as guardians of Ottoman social boundaries. (+4 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Ottoman legal reform displaced oral testimony with documentary procedure, reshaping trust norms; Mid-century Egyptian cities kept Turkish-speaking elites and Arabic-speaking commoners linguistically segregated — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 108; Egyptian elites mythologized Sudanese servants as guardians of Ottoman social boundaries. (+4 more)