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After important intellectual contributions to the Arab Nahda, the Syro-Lebanese of Egypt (the Shawam) underwent a far-reaching process of French acculturation. This process culminated in their cultural alienation from mainstream Egyptian society, and became a major reason for their departure from Nasserite Egypt in the sixties. Unlike previous narratives dealing with the history of the Shawam in Egypt, which underscored static identitarian choices as the driving force behind their cultural alienation, my thesis situates their adoption of French language and culture in the wider context of the Egyptian francophonie. This relatively unknown francophonie thrived in pre-revolutionary Egypt and was fully embraced by Egypt's urban cosmopolitan society. Despite the British occupation, French was the language of culture, finance, the press, justice and administration until the regime change. Using a more context-based approach, this thesis explores details of daily practices and experiences to discern the conditions in which the Shawam made their choices. I turn to their educational policies and appropriation of Egypt's prestigious French schools to assess the role played by these schools in their deep French acculturation. I also examine the vibrant francophone literary circles and salons, which flourished in Cairo during the interwar period, where they were particularly visible. Shawam intellectuals had not disappeared from Egyptian intellectual life, but had limited their activity to the much smaller, and much more powerful, francophone one. I contend that their cultural alienation was not the result of an innate separateness between Egyptians and them, but was contingent on historical factors, pertaining both to the community and its land of adoption. / Après leur collaboration précieuse au projet de la Nahda arabe, les Syro-Libanais d'Egypte (les chawâms) se sont tournés de plus en plus vers la langue et la culture françaises. Cette adoption démesurée de la langue française au détriment de la langue arabe a engendré leur éloignement culturel de la grande majorité de la société égyptienne. Elle devient même une raison principale de leur exode de l'Egypte dans les années 1960. Si la plupart des récits historiques ayant abordé le sujet des chawâms d'Egypte trouvent dans l'identité de ceux-ci (différents de par leur origine et leur religion) l'explication ultime de ce phénomène, je constate que cette hypothèse demande d'être nuancée. Je propose de mettre leur aliénation dans le plus grand cadre de la francophonie égyptienne, mal connue même aujourd'hui. Pendant un siècle et demi et malgré l'occupation britannique, le français demeurait la langue de la culture, les finances, la presse, la justice et l'administration, jusque' au changement de régime et la crise de Suez. Pour ce faire, j'étudie en grand détail les expériences et les pratiques de tous les jours pour mieux discerner les circonstances dans lesquelles les chawâms ont fait leurs choix culturels. J'examine leurs politiques de scolarisation et leur appropriation des écoles françaises prestigieuses ayant joué un rôle principal dans cette acculturation. De surcroit, ce mémoire analyse de très près les cercles et les salons littéraires francophones du Caire durant l'entre-deux-guerres, où les chawâms étaient actifs et pleinement visibles. Loin d'avoir disparu de la vie intellectuelle égyptienne, ils avaient approprié la scène francophone, plus restreinte mais très puissante. Je soutiens que plusieurs agents historiques, liés à la fois à l'Egypte et aux chawâms, ont contribué à cette aliénation culturelle.

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This study contributes to the cultural and intellectual history of the early modern Middle East by analyzing how books were produced and circulated, and which audiences existed for various types of books in the Ottoman capital, Istanbul. Focusing on the 17th century, I draw upon the material evidence of manuscripts, statistical and network analysis of archival sources, as well as upon narrative and biographical texts. My analysis shows the limitations of conventional socio-economic categories for writing Ottoman cultural history, and argues for a new approach to writing cultural history. Because almost all of the books in Istanbul were produced by hand, this research offers a counterpoint to the much-explored narrative of printed books. In early modern Istanbul, book-making was highly decentralized. Readers could and did create their own books, sometimes for reasons of economy and sometimes to achieve a special closeness to the work. In fact, the quintessential book in early modern Istanbul was not a fancy volume, but a humble personal notebook created from folded leaves of paper and filled with excerpts or short treatises. Because it was possible to copy and own just the portion of a book that was of interest, fragmented and partial texts were the norm. As a result, libraries that collected reliable and complete texts were an essential part of book circulation. These libraries were set up for copying as much as for reading. I introduce an exemplar manuscript that was held for this very purpose. Ownership of books was most highly concentrated among those who bore the title of efendi. Men, especially wealthy men, were also more likely to be bookowners than others, but book ownership was not widespread. However, people from every segment of society came into contact with books and the texts they contained, often as listeners rather than readers. This dissertation inverts a common paradigm for writing cultural history. Rather than map cultural currents onto predetermined social groups, I begin with clusters of books that anecdotally or statistically belong together. I then use manuscript evidence such as reading statements, as well as probate inventories, to suggest their audiences. Each book had its natural ecology: the texts with which it naturally belonged because of how it was used and by whom. Books had affinities that crossed traditional subject boundaries. For example, the constellation of medrese books most frequently owned together includes law, grammar, and lexicography. Less rarified books also had their own ecologies. A single title might appear both as a deluxe book intended for display in a refined home and as a scrappy storybook meant to be read aloud in a boisterous coffeehouse setting. In such a way, some texts could transcend social categories altogether. / History

This dissertation focuses on preachers as key actors in the rise of a political public sphere in the early modern Ottoman Empire. Recently, literature on the political importance of corporate bodies and voluntary associations has transformed the understanding of the early modern Ottoman polity. Emphasis has shifted from the valorization of centralized institutions to understanding power as negotiated between the court and other stakeholders. My dissertation joins in this collective effort by way of studying preachers, and through them examining the negotiation of religious authority between the central administration and civic groups. I depict preachers as “mediating” religious power between the elite and the non-elite, and between the written and the oral cultures. I argue that the production of religious doctrine and authority took place at this intermediary space of encounter. This study of early modern Islam with reference to the frame of public sphere has two main implications. Firstly, I present a “preacher-political advisor” type in order to demonstrate that the critical potential of religion was preserved in a new guise. Secondly, I show that informal circles of education gained primacy in the seventeenth century, giving rise to the vernacularization of formal sciences. The close reading of the manuscript sources left by preachers and their pupils also constitutes the first systematic exploration of the intersection between orality and literacy, and an important contribution to the study of Ottoman popular culture. / Middle Eastern Studies Committee

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