Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 August 2009
The term effendiyya (singular: effendi) appears in many articles and books on the social and political history of the Middle East between the end of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. Many authors have made use of this term, but very few have paused to discuss its meaning. At least one important scholar, however, raised doubts about its usefulness.
1 Lerner, Daniel, The Passing of Traditional Society (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1958)Google Scholar; Erlich, Haggai, Students and University in 20th-Century Egyptian Politics (London: Frank Cass, 1988)Google Scholar; Ramadan, ʿAbd al-ʿAzim, Tatawur al-Haraka al-Wataniyya fi Misr 1918–1936 (Cairo: Dar al-Katib al-ʿArabi, 1968)Google Scholar; Gershoni, Israel, Mitzraim beyn Yehud le-Ahdut, 1919–1948 (Egypt Between Distinctiveness and Unity: The Search for National Identity, 1919–1948) (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1980)Google Scholar; Fernea, Robert, The Shaykh and the Effendi (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970)Google Scholar; Deeb, Marius, Party Politics in Egypt: The Wafd and its Rivals 1919–1939 (London: Ithaca Press, 1979)Google Scholar; Mitchell, Richard P., The Society of Muslim Brothers (London: Oxford, 1969)Google Scholar; Main, Ernest, Iraq, From Mandate to Independence (London: Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1935)Google Scholar; Ryzova, Lucie, “Egyptianizing Modernity Through the ‘New Effendiya’: Social and Cultural Construction of the Middle Class in Egypt under the Monarchy,” in Re-Envisioning Egypt 1919–1952, ed. Goldschmidt, Arthur, Johnson, Amy J., and Salomoni, Barak A. (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2005), 124–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shechter, Relli, “Reading Advertisements in a Colonial/Development Context: Cigarette Advertising and Identity Politics in Egypt 1919–1952,” Journal of Social History 39 (2005): 483–503CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bernstein, Deborah and Hasisi, Badi, “‘Buy and Promote the National Cause’: Consumption, Class Formation, and Nationalism in Mandate Palestinian Society,” Nations and Nationalism 14 (2007): 127–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bashkin, Orit, “When Muʾawiya Entered the Curriculum—Some Comments on the Iraqi Educational System,” Comparative Educational Review 50 (2006): 346–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 I have discussed the concept in the past. See Eppel, Michael, “The Elite, the Effendiyya, and the Growth of Nationalism and Pan-Arabism in Hashimite Iraq, 1921–1958,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 30 (1998): 227–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Sluglett, Peter, “The Urban Bourgeoisie and the Colonial State: The Iraqi and Syrian Middle Classes between the Two World Wars,” in The Role of State in Western Asia, ed. Rabo, Anika and Utas, Bo (Istanbul: Swedish Research Institute, 2006), 77–90Google Scholar.
4 For the uses of “effendi” in the 19th-century Ottoman Empire and in Ottoman Syria, see, for example, al-Hakim, Yusuf, Suriya wa-l-ʿAhd al-ʿUthmani (Syria and the Ottoman Era) (Beirut: Dar al-Nahar li-l-Nashr, 1991), 43Google Scholar.
5 An excellent example of the use of the term effendiyya regarding the generations in prerevolutionary 20th-century Egypt and also in Syria can be found in an article by a prominent contemporary Egyptian journalist; Salah ʿIsa, “Al-Thuwwar wa-l-Effendiyya” (Revolutionaries and Effendiyya), Al-Ahram, 12 February 1998, 2.