Fellah
Fellah (Arabic: فلاح) (plural Fellaheen or Fellahin, فلاحين), also alternatively known as Fallah (plural Fallaheen or Fallahin) is a peasant, farmer or agricultural laborer in the Middle East and North Africa. The word derives from the Arabic word for ploughman or tiller.
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[edit] The rural people of the Middle East
Fellahin was the term used throughout the Middle East in the Ottoman period and later to refer to villagers and farmers.[1] Nur Masalha translates it as "peasants".[2] They were distinguished from the effendi, or, landowning class,[3] although the fellahin in this region might be tenant farmers, smallholders, or live in a village that owned the land communally.[4][5] Others applied the term fellahin only to landless workers.[6] The term fallahin applied to Christian, Druze and Muslim villagers.[7] The term fallah was applied to people from several regions in the Middle East, including those of Egypt and Cyprus.
Comprising 60% of the Egyptian population,[8] the fellahin lead humble lives and continue to live in mud-brick houses like their ancient ancestors. Their percentage was much higher in the early 20th century, before the large influx of Egyptian fellahin into urban towns and cities. In 1927, anthropologist Winifred Blackman, author of The Fellahin of Upper Egypt, conducted ethnographic research on the life of Upper Egyptian farmers and concluded that there were observable continuities between the cultural and religious beliefs and practices of the fellahin and those of ancient Egyptians.[9]
[edit] Fellahin in Egypt
The rural peasants provided the pharaohs with both the manpower to build their majestic monuments and the food to support the workers. Even today, the fallahin wrest two or three crops from their tiny fields in a futile attempt to feed Egypt's ever-expanding population. These farmers live in small villages, often settled by their Pharaonic ancestors, scattered along the Nile.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
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- ^ Yemen into the twenty-first century: continuity and change By Kamil A. Mahdi, Anna Würth, Helen Lackner, Garnet & Ithaca Press, 2007, p.209 [1]
- ^ Catastrophe remembered: Palestine, Israel and the internal refugees : essays in memory of Edward W. Said (1935-2003), Nur Masalha, Zed Books, 2005, p. 78
- ^ State lands and rural development in mandatory Palestine, 1920-1948, Warwick P. N. Tyler, Sussex Academic Press, 2001, p. 13
- ^ Hillel Cohen, Army of Shadows, Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917–1948, University of California Press, 2008, p. 32
- ^ Healing the Land and the Nation: Malaria and the Zionist Project in Palestine, 1920-1947, Sandra Marlene Sufian, University of Chicago Press, 2007, p. 57
- ^ Lords of the Lebanese Marches: Violence and Narrative in an Arab Society, Michael Gilsenan, I.B.Tauris, 2003, p. 13
- ^ Syria and the Holy Land, George Adam Smith, George H. Doran company, 1918, p. 41 [2]
- ^ Who are the Fellahin? – Biot #312: December 24, 2005. SEMP, Inc.
- ^ Faraldi, Caryll (11–17 May 2000). "A genius for hobnobbing". Al-Ahram Weekly. http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2000/481/bk3_481.htm.
