An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians

Fülszöveg

K THE MODERN EGYPTIANS
I EDWARD WILLIAM LANE
In 1825 a young Cambridge student arrived in Egypt, then part of the Turk-ish Empire. His quest was health, since he was consumptive; what he found, however, was a whole new world of fascinating manners, strange customs, unusual beauties and unsuspected depths. This was Cairo, and the survival of médiéval Islam ic civilization.
Lane lived in Egypt intermittently over a period of some 25 years, residing for the most part in Cairo, where he assumed the disguise of an Egyptian scholar. During this time he worked on a dictionary of Classical Arabic, gathered information for his pioneer translation of The Arabian Nights, and saturated himself in the life around him.
The most important result of these years of study and enthusiasm was An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (1836) . A painstakingly accurate and thorough survey of both Islamic life and the peculiarly Egyptian aspects of Cairo, it is also a fascinating... Tovább

Fülszöveg

K THE MODERN EGYPTIANS
I EDWARD WILLIAM LANE
In 1825 a young Cambridge student arrived in Egypt, then part of the Turk-ish Empire. His quest was health, since he was consumptive; what he found, however, was a whole new world of fascinating manners, strange customs, unusual beauties and unsuspected depths. This was Cairo, and the survival of médiéval Islam ic civilization.
Lane lived in Egypt intermittently over a period of some 25 years, residing for the most part in Cairo, where he assumed the disguise of an Egyptian scholar. During this time he worked on a dictionary of Classical Arabic, gathered information for his pioneer translation of The Arabian Nights, and saturated himself in the life around him.
The most important result of these years of study and enthusiasm was An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (1836) . A painstakingly accurate and thorough survey of both Islamic life and the peculiarly Egyptian aspects of Cairo, it is also a fascinating travel book which the layman can read \Vith great enjoyment. It is also stili considered one of the finest ethnographie accounts ever prepared.
Lane's book reproduces the Cairo of about 150 years ago, with its teeming bazaars and markets, streets lined with stalls of small craftsmen, Koranic schools, wandering dervishes and fakirs, itinérant barbers and storytellers, squalor and brilliant architecture, austere Sun ni Islam and boisterous folk festivals, courts and cadis, fanatical mobs and unexpected courtesies and toler-ances—in short, the magical world of the premodern, civilized Near East.
Despite its age Lane's book is stili a relevant work today. The phenomena he describes stand in the immediate past, and still influence the present as mem-oried tradition. In the rural sections, too, much of the life that Lane describes was ex tant a génération or so ago, and may still continue.
Republication of the 5th (1860) édition, edited by E. S. Poole. New introduction by Jon Manchip White. 131 illustrations. Index, xxxiii + 619pp. 5^4 x 814. 22935-1 Paperbound
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