Acknowledgements

Most of this book was written in the spring and summer of 1986 at St. Antony's College, Oxford. Derek Hopwood, Albert Hourani, and Roger Owen facilitated my stay there, and together with the staff and other members of the Middle East Centre at St. Antony's, made it extremely enjoyable. I was supported financially during those months by a Presidential Fellowship from New York University, for which I owe particular thanks to Farhad Kazemi.

Chapter 3 of the book, half each of chapters 2 and 4, and certain other sections are based on my doctoral dissertation, supervised by Manfred Halpern and Charles Issawi of Princeton University. To both of them I am grateful for their interest in my work and their support. Part of the research for the dissertation and book was done in Egypt, in the reference room and the periodicals room at Dar al-Kutub, the Egyptian national library, where the staff were always friendly and efficient. My trips to Egypt were funded first by a grant from the Program in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton and on two subsequent occasions by fellowships from the American Research Center in Egypt. I want to thank the many individuals at both institutions who gave me help, including James and Susan Allen, Carl Brown, May Trad, and Paul Walker.

Many of the arguments made in this book were first born, developed, or stolen from conversations with friends. For its major themes I have learned and taken most from Stefania Pandolfo. Her discussions of my work first decided its direction, and her reading of subsequent versions improved it at every point. Among many other friends and colleagues who have helped, I owe special thanks to Michael Gilsenan, Uday Mehta, Brinkley Messick, Roy Mottahedeh, and Helen Pringle. I am also grateful to Elizabeth Wetton of Cambridge University Press for her patient work overseeing the editing and production of the book, and to Charlene Woodcock of the University of California Press for the paperback edition.

I owe my greatest debt, for her intellectual support, her criticism, her encouragement, and her care, to Lila Abu-Lughod. I might possibly have

finished this book without her presence. But neither the book nor the rest of life would have been the same. Finally I want to thank my family, for whom these pages are no doubt insufficient excuse for my ten-year absence from England.

The book is dedicated to my mother, and to the memory of my father.