Egypt's Mediterranean: Muslim Merchants and the Business of Empire in the Eighteenth Century

Egypt's Mediterranean explores the intersections of commerce and statecraft in the eighteenth-century Ottoman Empire through the lives of overlooked intermediaries who lived and worked on Egypt's Mediterranean coast. Egypt's port cities mediated the geographic distance and economic scales between the province's agricultural landscape, its Red Sea connections, its hegemonic capital city, and its position within the wider Ottoman realm, while Ottoman Muslim merchants acted as linchpins of imperial governance in Egypt, mediating the state's access to Egyptian wealth. Drawing on Arabic, Ottoman, and French sources, Egypt's Mediterranean foregrounds the role of Muslims and Islamic law in Mediterranean history, decentering European capital and actors in an interconnected story of imperial realignment and changing fortunes on the eve of modernity.