The Police and the People in Nineteenth-Century Egypt
Author(s): Khaled Fahmy
Source: Die Welt des Islams, New Series, Vol. 39, Issue 3, State, Law and Society in
Nineteenth-Century Egypt (Nov., 1999), pp. 340-377
Published by: BRILL
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THE POLICE AND THE PEOPLE IN
NINE'ENTH-CENTURY EGYPT
BY
KHALEDFAHMY
New York
In the summer of 1817 Mehmed 'All, Governor of Egypt for
twelve years, appointed a new market inspector (muhtasib) for
Cairo. Exasperated by repeated reports of irregularities and fraud
in the markets of Cairo and frustrated by his previous muhtasib's
inability to impose law and order he is reported to have said, "I
have extended my authority to lands far and distant. I am feared
by the bedouins, by highwaymen and by many others. Except by
the rabble of Cairo; they are not deterred by my muhtasibs.They
deserve to have a new muhtasibwho will show them no mercy and
give them no reprieve." Soon after his appointment, the new
market inspector set out implementing his draconian measures
that were intended to bring order to the loose markets of Cairo:
a counterfeiter of currency was hanged from one of the old gates
of medieval Cairo (Bab Zuwayla) with a coin hanging from his
nose; butchers caught selling meat at prices higher than those set
down by the Pasha's dfwan had their noses slit by the muhtasib
himself; and kunafamerchants cheating in weight and prices were
forced to sit on their hot pans while still on fire.1
This staging of spectacles of punishment to deter onlookers was
not used only with the boisterous merchants of Cairo; the authorities had recourse to this kind of punishment in numerous other
occasions and with different kinds of offenders. For example, in
1824 when Mehmed 'Ali started founding his new disciplined
'Abdel-Rahman al-Jabarti, 'Aja'ib al-Atharft al-Tarajimwa-l-AkhMbr
(Cairo:
Bulaq, 1297 AH/1880 AD), IV, pp. 277-79 (events of Sha'ban and Ramadan,
1232). "Kunifa"is a popular Ramadan pastry.
? Koninklijke Brill BV, Leiden, 1999
Die Weltdes Islams 39, 3
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THE POLICEAND THE PEOPLE
341
army by conscripting fellahin from the Sa'id, a major rebellion
broke out in which 30,000 men and women were reported to have
taken part. In a desperate attempt to stop the rebellion from
spreading to other provinces the Pasha (as Mehmed 'All was simply known in Egypt) wrote to the Governor of Isna to hang some
of the elderly or disabled at the entrances of villages to be a deterrent to others.2 Four years later when the government was still
going ahead with its conscription policy and when conscription
waves followed each other torrentially ravaging the countryside,
men took desperate means to avoid being drafted into the army.
One such method was for potential recruits to maim themselves in
the hope of being declared medically unfit for military service.
When the extent of maiming became known to the authorities,
and when it was reported that it was often the wives and mothers
who were assisting the men in these dramatic gestures, Mehmed
'Ali ordered these women to be hanged at village entrances "so as
to be an example to others."3
The spectacular use of the culprit's body as a deterrent or as a
site of retribution, however, had its own limitations. After all, even
if the punishment was flogging and not hanging, the body of the
culprit could sustain only a limited amount of pain that might or
might not have been an effective deterrent. Furthermore, for this
kind of punishment to work the spectacle had to be massive and
the audience great, hence the public hangings in big squares in
urban centers, and at village entrances in the countryside. This,
again, had its limitations, since only a limited number of people
could be present at any one moment to watch the spectacle. And
if the severity and "enchanting" nature of the spectacle of the
gallows was intended to be part of a gradually expanding repertoire of stories to be circulated by the spectators to those who were
absent, then more abstract means were soon discovered that
2
Ma'iyya Saniyya, Turki: S/1/47/7, doc. no. 306, on 13 Sha'ban 1239/14
April 1824. The choice of the elderly and disabled was explained by saying that
"they were useless and could not perform any [valuable] task." This and all
subsequent archival documents are from the Egyptian National Archives, Dar alWatha'iq al-Qawmiyya,Cairo.
3 Ma'iyyaSaniyya,Turki: S/1/48/3 doc. no. 235, on 7
Rajab 1243/25 January
1828.
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342
KHALED FAHMY
would convey, in a more efficient way, the idea of the inevitability
of the punishment and its link to the crime being committed.
One such "abstract"tool was the idea of the "Law"and its deliberate use to represent the power of the sovereign, a power that
was now represented not in physical images but was couched in
juridico-legal terms.4 The records of the Cairo and Alexandria
police departments as well as those of numerous tribunals
(majalis) established in Egypt towards the end of Mehmed 'Ali's
reign to adjudicate commercial, civil and criminal cases show
clearly how a different concept of justice was brought into being,
and how different were the ideas of law, equality and punishment
that informed it. An example might illustrate this point.
In 1878 a case brought in front of the prestigious Majlis alAhkam, which had been founded thirty years earlier and which
functioned as the highest court in the land, reveals the changing
manner in which the authorities now dealt with law-offenders.The
case concerned a certain black cook named Khayrwho accused a
woman called Zarifafrom Cairo of stealing a sum of 1,195 piasters.
This she did, so Khayrclaimed, while she was paying her condolences in the death of his son who had died on the 10th of October, 1877. Immediately after discovering the theft, he went to the
local police station (the dabtiyyatal-thumn,i.e. that is, the police
station of the "eighth", i.e., the quarter, in this case that of
Qaysfn) and filed a complaint accusing Zarifa of theft. Zarifawas
then summoned to the police station where she denied the
charges and said that she had gone to pay her condolences together with other women and that she had taken no money. The
case was then forwarded to the General Cairo Police HQ (Dabtiyyat Misr) where Zarifa again denied the charges. Her criminal
records were checked, but none was found. However, a neighbor
of hers claimed that eight months before they had gone together
to pay their condolences in the Delta town of Kafr al-Shaykhand
there she had stolen a number of small things from the house of
4 As should be obvious Foucault's
analysis of the juridico-political power of
the modern has been very influential in framing the questions that inform this
study. His Discipline and Punish (New York: Vintage Books, 1979) and History of
Sexuality, vol. 1 (London: Pelican, 1981) have been paritcularly useful.
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THE POLICE AND THE PEOPLE
343
the deceased. On the basis of this testimony and on other circumstantial evidence, the Cairo Police Commissioner found her guilty
and forwarded the case to the Cairo Court of First Instance, Majlis
Misr.5 The Court, after hearing both Khayr's and Zarifa's testimonies, found the latter guilty and sentenced her to three months
imprisonment in the Iplikhane (lit. a textile workshop in Bulaq to
the north-west of Cairo which functioned as a prison for women.)
Both parties were informed of the verdict, but Zarifa "objected to
it", so the case was forwarded to the Cairo Court of Appeal, the
Majlis Isti'naf Misr. The Court of Appeal upheld the verdict of the
Court of First Instance. But again, according to the regulations,
both parties were informed and, again, Zarifa rejected the verdict
and requested to file an appeal. In her appeal she raised a number
of issues trying to prove her innocence and explained that the
Court of Appeals should not have been taken in by the testimony
of the neighbor, who was also black and "would naturally back the
claim of her fellow black cook". She also added that the only hard
"evidence" against her was that she was present at the house when
the theft was supposed to have taken place. This, she added, was
not a good reason for convicting her, since she was only paying
her respects to the deceased and his family, and "if paying condolences are grounds for arrest, then people will stop visiting each
other [in such occasions]". Her well-argued appeal notwithstanding, Zarifa lost the case and was, indeed, sent to the Iplikhane.6
Contrasted to the manner Mehmed 'Ali's authorities dealt with
accusations of fraud by the Cairo merchants nearly sixty years
earlier, this case of theft and the manner in which it was handled
shows how much the "Law" replaced the "gallows" as a means of
implementing justice. Not only do we see imprisonment replacing
the severe corporal punishment that the Pasha's muhtasib enjoyed
inflicting on his culprits, but we also see a highly detailed and
stratified system of justice where police stations and the new
5 For the
working of the court system, see Rudolph Peters, "Administrators
and Magistrates: The Development of a Secular Judiciary in Egypt, 1842-1871,"
in this issue.
6
Majlis al-Ahkam, S/7/10 [old no.: 750], case no. 355, on 13 Ramadan 1295/
10 September 1878.
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344
KHALED FAHMY
majalisseem to have replaced the functions that the muhtasibused
to fulfil. These police stations which summoned the different litigants of a given case, and which kept criminal records, together
with the new tribunals where the defendant had the right to appeal verdicts and occasionally bring his/her case in front of Majlis
al-Ahkam represent a shift from the "rituals"of public punishments to the "routines" of the legal code,7 a shift that is wellrepresented by the fact that Zarifa's case took nearly a year to
come to a final conclusion, while one can assume that Mehmed
"Ali's muhtasib'sjustice was quick and summarily decided upon.
This new legal system with its new modes of punishment intended
to overcome the above-mentioned limitations that circumscribed
the intimidating, deterring effects that the spectacle of the gallows
had had. What was targeted now was the minds of the populace
and not their gazes. The goal was to "re-present"the sovereign in
his absence and to use the law as an ever-potent symbol expressing
his wish and desire. In this more subtle manifestation of power
"the 'mind' [is used] as a surface of inscription for power...; the
submission of bodies [is brought about] through the control of
ideas; [and] the analysis of representations as a principle in a
politics of bodies [becomes] much more effective than the ritual
anatomy of torture and execution."8
The shift from a system of justice which relied mainly on physical punishment to bring about a correspondence between the
crime and its punishment to one that relied on the more abstract
procedure of the court system to instil in the minds of the population that every crime was detectable and punishable has been
described as part of the story of the modernization of the Egyptian
legal system in the nineteenth century. This story includes a chapter of legal reform which is seen as part of a larger saga depicting
the gradual march of rationality, progress and the rule of law and
one which is usually described using the traditional methods of
intellectual history. For example, the career of some key figures
7 For an elaboration on this transition see Mitchell Dean, Criticaland Effective
Histoies: Foucault'sMethodsand HistoricalSociology (London: Routledge, 1994),
pp. 166if.
8 Foucault,
Disciplineand Punish, p. 102.
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THE POLICE AND THE PEOPLE
345
who were instrumental in translating European legal codes into
Arabic is emphasized, so is the role of the Khedive in patronizing
and encouraging this translation process. 9
By contrast, this paper offers a description of an important
chapter in the social (as opposed to the intellectual) history of law
in nineteenth-century Egypt. Rather than following some of these
would-be reformers on their sojourn to Europe and tracing their
careers back in Egypt to see how well they have understood the
European legal models and how successful they were in translating
European legal codes into Arabic and in introducing them in
Egypt, what is offered below is a social history of legal reform in
nineteenth-century Egypt. Granting that the role played by these
legal reformers was crucial in affecting important legal modifications, what this paper attempts to explain is the manner in which
this process of legal reform was implemented, rather than to describe the intellectual origins that might have influenced it. In
attempting to elucidate the social history of legal reform in nineteenth-century Egypt a particular institution is examined below,
viz. the police. Specifically, what is addressed below are the following questions: what was the role that the police played in the
burgeoning legal system? What purposes did the Khedival state
(i.e. the state that Mehmed 'All and his successors managed to
establish in Egypt before the British Occupation in 188210) had in
establishing the police force? How effective was this police force in
maintaining a state of law and order both in cities and in the
countryside? If these questions aim at illuminating some aspects of
what the Khedival state had in mind, a social history of the police
in nineteenth century Egypt would not be complete if it did not
equally raise questions about how this increasingly intrusive agent
of the state was perceived by the people. This paper, therefore,
also attempts to answer the following questions: how accessible did
the people find this new police force? How successful were they in
9 For a
good example of this argument see Farhat Ziadeh, Lawyers, the Rule
law
and Liberalism in Modern Egypt (Stanford: Hoover Institution, 1968).
of
10 While the title of "Khedive" was not
officially bestowed on the rulers of
Egypt untill 1865 when Isma'il managed to secure it from the Sultan, it had
already been commonly used in Egypt to refer Mehmed 'All and his successors.
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346
KHALED FAHMY
bringing their cases to the police and in using the police to receive
"justice"?And, in short, was this new institution perceived as an
oppressive one serving mostly the state's interests, or was it also
perceived as an institution that could be manipulated to serve
their own interests even if this meant bringing charges against the
"state"and some of its public officials?
To answer these questions and to flesh out what the relation
between the police and the people might have been like the police records themselves are consulted. Housed in the Egyptian
National Archives (Dar al-Watha'iq al-Qawmiyya) these records
range from administrativecorrespondence dealing with personnel
issues, to petitions presented by average citizens to the police, to
official transcriptssummarizing results of investigations conducted
to solve serious (and not so serious) crimes. By using these police
records in conjunction with a number of contemporary laws an
adequate account of the social history of the police can be
gleamed.
The policeand public securit
The attempt to found a state "of law and order" in Egypt was
one tool that Mehmed 'Ali used to entice Europe to support his
bid for independence from the Ottoman Empire. As early as September 1829, when he passed his first penal legislation" and
much before he first expressed his desire for official independence from the Ottoman Empire in the late 1830s, Mehmed 'Ali
was already using law, and penal law in particular, to carve out an
independent realm for himself in which his laws and his bureaucracy would reign supreme at the expense of the Sultan's. The
main impetus behind the process of legal reform in Mehmed 'Ali's
was to make Egypt safer for European, and especially British merchants, passengers and mail. This was a crucial necessity if ever
Mehmed 'Ali was to convince Europe, and Britain in particular,
1 For an exhaustive surveyof this law, see Rudolph Peters, "Forhis correction
and as a deterrent example to others: Mehmed 'Ali's first criminal legislation
(1829-1830)," IslamicLaw and Society,6 (1999), pp. 164-193.
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THE POLICE AND THE PEOPLE
347
that by granting him independence from the Sublime Porte, they
would not be jeopardizing their increasingly important interests in
Egypt. In this respect the Pasha was quite successful, for his efforts
in making Egypt safer for Europeans to travel in and for European
merchants to do business did not go unnoticed. One of the students he sent to Britain in the early 1830s, for example, in commending his patron to the British public could safely argue that "a
Christian's head is as safe on his shoulders at Cairo as it is in
London, and his purse safer in his pocket."12 European observers
equally commented on the peace and tranquility that reigned in
Egypt, thanks to the Pasha's security measures. After Britain had
managed to diffuse the 1839-1841 crisis by placating Mehmed 'Ali
in agreeing to grant him the hereditary rule of Egypt and the
Sudan and thus evaded the threat of portioning the Ottoman
Empire, the British press was impressed by how the Pasha had
behaved towards the British residents and tourists alike. "Even
when we were battering down his forts and beating his troops,"
gloated The Illustrated London News, "the old Pacha escorted the
mail-bags and passengers across the desert as if nothing had hapact that none of the rulers of civilised Europe would
pened-an
have had the forbearance to do."'3 And shortly after his death
when another crisis loomed in the horizon between 'Abbas Pasha,
Mehmed 'Ali's successor, and the Sublime Porte (a crisis that was
concerned with which law to be applied in Egypt as is described
below), British commentators were looking back nostalgically to
the tranquil situation that Mehmed 'All had managed to introduce in Egypt. One observer published a pamphlet in which he
reminded his readers that
We have heard some persons who resided a long time in Egypt relate that
it was one of the sayings of Mohamed Ali, "Egyptis a bridge between Asia
12 Hasanaine
al-Besumee, EgyptUnderMuhammadAly Basha (London: Smith
Elder & Co., 1838), p. 10. Al-Besumee was one of the students whom Mehmed
'All had sent to Britain and who was obviously commissioned to write this
pamphlet in order to curryfavor with the British public and to argue his patron's
case in London. For a recent analysis of al-Besumee and his aims in writing this
pamphlet, see 'Abd al-KhaliqLashin, Misriyyatfi al-Fikrwa-l-Siyasa(Cairo: Sina,
1993), pp. 55-71.
's TheIllustratedLondonNews, 31 August 1844.
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348
KHALED FAHMY
and Europe; England must have a free passage over it or she must take
possession of Egypt."These words of the Pasha are true: Egypt must be
tranquil; otherwise for our communications with India, England must
make herself master of the country... It is then a question of our own
interest to maintain tranquilityin Egypt; and this tranquilitycan only be
secured by a strong government.14
This British observer had no doubt how this tranquility had been
affected in Egypt: "...the people [of Egypt] have still the salutary
fear with which the administration of Mohamed Ali inspired them;
they know that the government has the means of punishing them,
of repressing disturbances, and it is this fear and this knowledge
which keep them quiet."15 The Pasha might have had various reasons for pacifying the population, repressing the bedouins and
instituting a state of law and order, not the least important of
which was to enhance his own personal security. But one of these
reasons had to be his deeply felt desire to assuage European, and
especially British, public opinion as to the value of his reforms for
them.
As a sign of the greater public security in Egypt during
Mehmed 'Ali's time the number of public executions diminished
considerably: European travellers were consistently reporting
fewer and fewer public executions during the later years of
Mehemd Ali's reign,16 and in the first three years of 'Abbas's none
was reported.17
This significant achievement was a result of a long and protracted process of legal reform. One aspect of this legal reform
was the repeated revisions and additions to the first penal code of
1829-1830;18 another was the gradual elaboration of legal proce-
14
Anon., TheEgyptianRailway(London:Hope & Co., 1852), pp. 36-7.
15Ibid., p. 34.
16
RudolphPeters,"Theevolutionof the penal systemin nineteenthcentury
Egypt,"paper presentedto "TheShiftingBoundariesof Marginality
Workshop",
Oxford,4-6June 1999,p. 9. See also KhaledFahmy,Al thePasha'sMen:Me med
'At, His Armyand theMakingof Modern
Egypt(Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity
Press,1997), p. 121.
17 Anon., The
EgyptianRailway,p. 33.
18Most
notablyQanuinal-Muntakhabat
during Mehmed'Ali's reign; text in
FilibJallad, Qmuisal-Idarawa-l-Qadd'
(Alexandria:1890-1892),III, pp. 351-78.
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THE POLICE AND THE PEOPLE
349
dures.19Of paramount significance was the introduction in Egypt
of the Ottoman Penal Code of 1850. This had been done after
adding two chapters that took into account the specific Egyptian
context and the fact that in various aspects the Egyptian local
government had preceded Istanbul in a various fields of penal
legislation.20 In addition, the establishment throughout Egypt of
legal tribunals, majalis,that adjudicated criminal, commercial and
administrativecases contributed significantly to the importance of
these new codes since it was these locally legislated codes, rather
than those passed in Istanbul, or, indeed, those derived from the
shari'a that these new majaliswere implementing. Finally, and with
regard to criminal investigations, the majalis were increasingly
admitting new kinds of evidence that were not usually admitted by
the qadicourts, chief among these being forensic medical reports,
a move that significantly enhanced the authorities' ability to con19
Although there is no indication that there was a clear distinction between
procedural and substantial law, nevertheless, a number of articles scattered in
various laws and regulations formed the nucleus of procedural law and were
often referred to in the rulings of the Majalis.See, for example, Arts. 2 and 3 of
Chapter 1 of al-Qaniin al-Sultani,passed in 1850, regarding the prosecution of
murder cases, and Art. 6 of Chapter 3 of the same law on how to co-ordinate
activities of the siy&siand the shar'linvestigating authorities (text in Ahmad Fathi
Zaghlil, al-Muhamah(Cairo, 1900), Appendix, pp. 157-58, 164, respectively); the
of 1856} (text in Jallad, IV, pp. 129-31); the
"Qadis'Ordinance", Ld'ihatal-qud&h,
September 1858 Five-ArticleCircular:Majlis al-Ahkam, Reg. S/7/10/2 (old no.
664), Order without no., p. 32, 13 Safar 1275/22 September 1858; reproduced
in Amin Sami, Taqwum
al-Nfl (Cairo:Dar al-Ma'arif,19??), III, pt. 1, p. 297; "Surat
harakit al-afandiyyahukkamal-shar ft ijra' al-ahkamal-shar'iyya"(text in Jallad,
Qamfs al-IdAra,II, p. 104). See also Rudolph Peters, "Murder on the Nile:
Homicide trials in 19th century Egyptian Shari'a courts," Die Weltdes Islams,30
(1990), p. 101; and id., "Islamicand secular criminal law in 19th century Egypt:
the role and function of the qadi," IslamicLaw and Society,4 (1997), p. 70-90.
20For a
complete reproduction of al-Qanun al-Sultani see Ahmad Fathi
Zaghlul, al-Muhamih(Cairo, 1900), Appendix, pp. 156-78;for an analysis of this
law see Rudolph Peters, "The origins of pre-1883 Egyptian penal legislation,"
paper presented to the 1996 Annual MESA Meeting, Providence, RI, 21-24
November 1996, pp. 9-12; for the circumstances surrounding its promulgation
see Aziz Khanki, al-Tashrnwa-l-Qada'QablaInshli' al-Mahcakim
al-Ahliyya[Law and
Justice Prior to the Founding of the National Courts] (Cairo: al-Matba'a al'Asriyya,n.d.), and Baer, "Tanzimatin Egypt,"pp. 33-37; Gabriel Baer,"Tanzimat
in Egypt:The Penal Code," in Gabriel Baer, Studiesin the SocialHistoryof Modern
Egypt(Chicago, 1969), pp. 109-33, and idem."The transition from traditional to
western criminal law in Turkey and Egypt,"StudiaIslamica,45 (1977), pp. 139-58.
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350
KHALED FAHMY
trol crime.21Finally, this improved public securitywas the result of
the establishment of a police force in Cairo and Alexandria (and,
subsequently, in different provincial centers) that functioned both
as an investigating authority and as a prototype of a public
prosecutor's office (akin to the parquet system in modem French
law).22 It is this police force that is the subject of this paper and
it is to the manner in which it functioned that we now turn.
The police as an agent of the intrusive state
Although the police force that was organized during Mehmed
'Ali's reign was not the first to be instituted in Egypt, it functioned
in a much more efficient manner and penetrated the urban centers and the countryside in a more diffuse and subtle way than
earlier police systems in Ottoman Egypt had managed to do. This
was the result not only of a plethora of newly legislated codes that
systematized the actions of the police and increased its ability to
investigate suspected crimes, but was also due to an intricate web
of local and provincial agents who increased the police's ability to
have closer, intimate knowledge of happenings in the smallest cul-
de-sac in the various cities and in the tiniest villages throughout
the country. These agents included "spies" (bass&szn),sentry soldiers (Ar.: qawwds/Tur.:qavvds), and regular, uniformed police
soldiers ('asdkiral-tif) in addition to the numerous officials on the
local and provincial levels (e.g. mashdyikhal-hdrdt,i.e. heads of
neighborhoods, mashdyikhal-athmdn,i.e. heads of quarters, and
mashdyikhal-qurd,i.e. village heads) who regularly reported to the
21For an account of the role
played by forensic medicine in the Egyptian
legal system in the nineteenth century see Khaled Fahmy, "The anatomy of
justice: forensic medicine and criminal law in nineteenth-century Egypt,"Islamic
Law and Society,6 (1999), pp. 224-271.
22The
only complete study of the history of the Egyptianpolice is that of 'Abd
al-WahhabBakr, al-BlUsal-Mis (Cairo:Madbfuli,1988). See also Ehud Toledano,
State and Societyin Nineteenth-Century
Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1990); and Juan R Cole, Colonialismand Revolutionin the MiddleEast:Social
Originsof Egypt's'Urabi Movement(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993),
pp. 214-17.
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THE POLICE AND THE PEOPLE
351
local police stations any suspicious person and/or activity. An
analysis of some of the cases that were brought to the attention of
the police in the second half of the nineteenth century can illustrate how this intricate network effectively transformed the police
stations from stationary government buildings into vibrant nerve
centers with tentacles spreading throughout the urban and rural
fabric eventually enabling the state to control and manipulate
society in unprecedented ways.
Our first case is a highly dramatic one of murder that took
place in Cairo in 1862. It involved a certain Halid Efendi, a Turkish-speaking captain in the army who was accused of beating to
death a soldier called Hasan in Qasr al-Nil barracks where both
men were serving. The case started when a Turkish-speaking
qavvds (police sentry) discovered the body of a thirty-year old man
lying next to the Sayyida Zaynab Mosque in south-western Cairo.
It must have been a strange sight indeed for a crowd of onlookers
immediately gathered and soon the body was sent to Dabtiyyat
Misr, the Cairo Police Headquarters, in Azbakiyya where a preliminary post-mortem investigation was conducted. The investigation,
however, could not conclusively identify the cause of death, and
the body had to be sent, as a matter of course, to Qasr al-'Aini
Hospital for an autopsy.23 The result of the autopsy conducted in
this central hospital, unlike the previous medical investigation was
conclusive: the autopsy report was clear that this was an unnatural
death and was the result of internal complications that had been
caused by beating on the buttocks.
The main questions, then, were to find out the identity of the
dead man, how his body was dumped near the mosque and who
the culprit was. It is here that the network of spies and local government agents came to the assistance of the police, for when the
shaykh of the nearby quarter, Darb al-Gmaamiz, was asked about
what he knew of the case, he immediately summoned the shaykh
of the local neighborhood, Shaykh Salim of Harat al-Hilmiyya,
23 For the
procedures by which the Qasr al-'Aini Hospital would conduct
autopsies and the decisive role played by autopsies in the ensuing criminal
investigations see Fahmy, "Anatomy of justice."
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352
KHALED FAHMY
Shaykh Sulayman of al-SayyidaZaynab, and Ahmad al-Qadi, head
of the local guild of donkey drivers and ordered them to be diligent in finding the young boy who was rumored to have been
driving the donkey with the dead man on it. After long, detailed
investigations and interrogations of numerous witnesses, the police managed to identify a young boy whose interrogation led to
a long and intricate trail of witnesses some of whom lived, in turn,
in the far away quarter of Bflaq at the other end of the city. The
result of these investigations all pointed to a single man: Halid
Efendi of Qasr al-Nil Barracks. A certain Husayn al-Azhari, who
turned out to have been a colleague of the dead man, testified that
Halid Efendi had beaten Hasan to death because he suspected
him of stealing sixteen bars of soap. When Hasan denied the theft,
Halid Efendi tied him to the pole of the main tent and started
beating him continuously from the morning roll call to the afternoon one.
When the results of the investigations were forwarded to the
Cairo Police Commissioner, and probably due to the gravityof the
crime as well as to the social status of the accused (it is obvious
from his title-"Efendi"-and from his military rank that Halid
Efendi was a member of the Ottoman Egyptian elite24), the Dabit
Bey (as the police Commissioner was known) felt obliged to inform the Khedive in person. Sa'id Pasha, apparently trusting his
police force, returned the case back to the Dabtiyyaand ordered
it to pursue the case. Having effectively secured the backing of the
Khedive, the Dabtiyyahad Halid Efendi arrested and imprisoned
in the main police station's jail. The Dabtiyyathen, in its capacity
as public prosecutor, prepared its case against Halid Efendi and
forwarded it to the local council which acted as a criminal court,
Jam'iyyat al-Muhafaza.Since this was a murder case and since it
had to be viewed according to the shari'a, the Cairo Dabtiyya
wrote to the Alexandria one to inform the relatives of the murdered man since it was rumored that he had relatives living there,
and since the shari'a necessitates
that homicide
24
can only be
For the ethnic divide in Egyptian society in the nineteenth century, see
Toledano, State and Society; for signs of this ethnic divide within the army, see
Fahmy, All the Pasha's Men, pp. 242-52.
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THE POLICE AND THE PEOPLE
353
viewed after a relative of the deceased had accused the suspect.
When the Alexandria Dabtiyya failed to locate any relatives of the
deceased, the Governor of Cairo acted as a plaintiff on their behalf. As was the custom in these homicide cases, the case had to
be viewed simultaneously according to the shari'a and according
to al-siyasa, an elaborate system of state-enacted law complementing the shari'a.25 Since the causal link between the beating and the
death could not be established according to the strict rules of the
shari'a, Halid Efendi could not be convicted. When the case was
viewed according to siyasf principles, however, he was found guilty.
Relying mainly on the investigations that were conducted in the
police station and on the autopsy report, Jam'iyyat al-Muhafaza
succeeded in establishing a causal link between the act of beating,
which was established by the testimonies of the shari'a-accepted
witnesses, and death, which was decisively shown by the autopsy
report to have been unnatural and to have been caused by beating. As a result, Halid Efendi was sentenced to five years in the
Liman of Alexandria, the main prison in Egypt, after which time
he was to be exiled to his country.26
As illustrated by this case, the police had at their disposal a
whole network of agents and local officials who, while not officially
part of the police force, cooperated with it and increased its efficiency and its ability to investigate crimes. It also shows the intricate manner in which homicide cases were legally reviewed; significantly, the introduction of new non-shar' codes and of such
25
For the intricate relationship between shari'a and siyasa in nineteenthcentury Egyptian legal system and especially with regard to criminal law, see
Rudolph Peters, "Islamic and secular law in 19th century Egypt: The role and
function of the qdiz,"IslamicLaw and Society,4 (1997), pp. 70-90; and Fahmy,
"Anatomyof Justice, "pp. 224-272.
26 Muhafazat Misr, Reg. L/1/20/8 (old no. 1108), case no. 10,
pp. 171-172,
7 Safar 1279/4 August 1862. The conviction was according to Art. 11 of Chapter
One of al-Qanunal-Sulta&n(text in Zaghlfil, Appendix, pp. 157-178) which states
that if the qadi has not sentenced a murderer to death but to the payment of
blood money, the judicial council can sentence him, in addition, to five to fifteen
years of hard labor. The exile clause applied to those convicted murders who
were not born in Egypt. It is spelled out as Article Three of the September 1858
Five-Article Circular: Majlis al-Ahkam, Reg. S/7/10/2 (old no. 664), Order
without no., p. 32, 13 Safar 1275/22 September 1858; reproduced in Sami,
Taqffm al-Nl, III, pt. 1, p. 297.
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354
KHALED FAHMY
novel techniques of criminal investigation as forensic medicine
was not seen as a contradiction or as a factor that would hamper
the elaborate process of police investigations. If anything, the
police and, indeed, the entire legal establishment, stood to benefit
from what later in the century would be viewed as an odd mixture
of "religious"and European-inspired"secular"law. It is these combined factors that enhanced the reputation of the police force and
made the Khedive feel that his trust in it was not mis-placed: such
was his belief in it that he allowed it to handle a case that might
result in the conviction of a member of the Turkish-speakingelite.
The ability of the police to solve complicated homicide cases by
relying on local informers, the arsenal of legal codes at their disposal, and forensic medicine can further be illustrated by the following case dating from the following year, 1863, but taking place
in the countryside, in Samallut in Upper Egypt. This time the
police proved their resourcefulness not because of assistance they
received from local officials, but, rather, in spite of all kinds of
obstacles and intimidation that these local officials had placed to
obstruct their investigations.
The case started on 5 April 1864 when the nazir of qism alFishn in Upper Egypt, who acted also as the police commissioner
besides his role as provincial governor, was touring his province as
part of his regular duties.7 While touring the fields of a certain
village near Samallut he overheard the fellahin whispering that the
local village shaykhshad been hiding a grave matter: some time
earlier some villagers had seen vultures hovering around a beans
field which had a very foul smell emanating therefrom. When the
27 For the duties of
provincial governors in investigating crimes and how to
ease the difficulty encountered by claimants in finding them to present their
(The Decree Organizing
petitions or file their cases, see La'ihat Tartibal-Dabtiyydt
Police Stations) issued in 1865: MajlisKhusfsi, Reg. S/11/8/8, Order no. 28, pp.
113-118, 17Jumada II 1282/7 November 1865. It was the ability of these officials
to combine between administrative and judicial functions that dismayed European observers seeing this as an outright violation of the principle of separation
of powers, and uncritically reached the conclusion that the judiciary was not
independent and that the police were ineffective in nineteenth-century Egypt.
These allegations were crucial for European calls for controlling Egypt, and were
effectively used by Lord Cromer to build a case for British intervention to end
the turmoil and injustice that he claimed were reigning supreme in Egypt.
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THE POLICE AND THE PEOPLE
355
fellahin attempted to investigate matters further, they were prevented by the village shaykhsand were warned against informing
the provincial authorities.
When these rumors reached the n&zir,he immediately went to
the suspected plot but could not find any strange signs. He then
went to the local cemetery where two recent graves were identified; he then ordered them to be opened and the bodies therein
exhumed. Two unshrouded bodies were found which were
promptly sent to the local hospital for an autopsy. The provincial
doctor's report confirmed the ndzir'ssuspicion. It said that there
were clear signs that the bodies had been buried in haste since, in
addition to the lack of shrouds, the arms and legs of both bodies
were not brought together and the mouths were left open, in
violation of Islamic principles of burial. More seriously, the doctor
said that although the advanced state of decomposition of the
bodies prevented him from ascertaining any suspicious signs on
the skin, he could see one fractured knee, a broken nose, and a
thigh separated from the hip, signs which he conclusively identified as the result of using an axe (balfa) on one body and a thick
wooden stick (nabbft) on the other. Death, he concluded, had
been caused by beating with these weapons.28
28 The
use of the nabbtt was very common in Upper Egypt in local fights.
Many such fights ended with death, but it proved very difficult for the authorities
to try these cases, or to convict the nabbint-users
of murder. This was due to the
fact that according to the shari'a intent to kill is inferred from the weapon or
instrument used in the act. According to the most authoritative doctrine of the
Hanafite school that prevailed in Egypt only fire, sharp objects, or instruments
capable of cuttting of parts of the body would express criminal intent. Murders
committed with a nabbfitwere therefore not regarded as intentional and could
not result in capital punishment. Realizing) that this was a ruse resorted to by
many suspects and that many serious incidents went unpunished, and eager not
to violate shari'a principles when adjudicating suspected homicide cases, Majlis
al-Ahkamconvened a meeting with senior 'ulam&' and reached a consensus that
henceforth the qadis should apply the doctrine of the two companions (of alImam Ibn Hanifa), Abf Yfsuf and Muhammad al-Shaybaniwhich held, like the
other schools of jurisprudence that intent to kill is expressed by any weapon or
instrument that as a rule can be lethal.} Accordingly, the Majlisdecreed in 1858
that the nabbit should be considered a weapon expressing criminal intent and
that murder committed with the nabbutcould be punished with death. Majlis alAhkam, Reg. S./7/10/2, Order no. 13, p. 32, 13 Safar 1275/22 September 1858.
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356
KHALED FAHMY
When the nazir, heading the local police, proceeded to investigate the case further, a heavy wall of silence fell on the entire
village: witnesses refused to step forward or testify to anything that
might incriminate the village shaykhs; after a second post-mortem
examination had been called for, the two bodies mysteriously disappeared and two fresh one, properly buried this time, replaced
them; two "witnesses" stepped forward and testified that the two
(original) dead bodies had belonged to their brothers, and that
the whole suspicious evidence, including the autopsy report, had
been concocted by the n.zir, and, finally, when examining the
local "death registers", which recorded the date and cause of
death of all the recently deceased, the names of these two bodies
were not registered
Neither the nazir, nor his police force, were deterred, however.
By pressing the fellahin and interrogating various potential witnesses, the nazir finally managed to identify the local barber-surgeon who was responsible for washing corpses as part of the ritual
burial procedures. It turned out that he had not ordered the local
scribe to record them in the "death registers" since he must have
suspected that the local doctor, whose signature was required to
have them properly recorded, would not agree to certify that these
had been natural deaths. Further interrogation finally pinned the
murder on one Muhammad 'Umar, who turned out to have killed
these two men, Harun Hasan and 'Abduh Yfisuf, apparently after
having had a dispute with them over the sheep and two donkeys
that they were planning to sell. The fact that the two men were
strangers from outside the village and were on their way further
north to sell their livestock, and, more significantly, that
Muhammad had two brothers who were local, well-known and
powerful village shaykhs, might have enticed Muhammed to get
away with his murderous act. As a result of the report prepared by
the nazir summarizing the findings of his investigations and the
crucial medical report, the case was forwarded to the local tribunal, Majlis Bani Suwayf, which sentenced Muhammad 'Umar to
seven years in the Sudan. This sentence was altered to ten years
when the case was forwarded to the Appeals Tribunal, Majlis
Isti'naf, and was further increased to twelve years by Majlis al-
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THE POLICE AND THE PEOPLE
357
Ahkam. In addition, all local officials were stripped of their posts
and the entire population was disarmed.29
Naturally, not all suspicious criminal cases ended in conviction;
often police investigations would clear suspects who appeared to
be strongly implicated in a given case as in the following one
involving the death of a certain Ibrahim al-Masri. In 1877 he arrived with his mother in Alexandria seeking employment. He soon
found ajob as a tailor in the workshop of a certain Hanin Istifan.
Some time later he was reported missing by his employer and soon
thereafter he was found dead in a house inhabited by twenty-two
Jews. When his mother was informed of his death she accused
Hanin and another man of killing him.
A detailed police investigation ensued, the high point of which
was the autopsy report. This showed that the body was stiff and
hence death had occurred twenty-four hours earlier. It also found
clear signs of alcohol in the stomach and a close examination of
brain tissues showed signs of intoxication. Furthermore, both
lungs had an unnatural inflammation. The report concluded that
death must have been caused by excessive drinking leading to a
severe indigestion, which, in turn, blocked the larynx causing
suffocation, which was the reason behind the damaged brain tissue. As to the contusions on his face and the muddy clothes in
which he was found, this, the police reasoned, must have been
caused by his repeated falling while in such a drunk state. This
drunkenness would also explain how he ended up in a house of
strangers who, when questioned, insisted that they had never seen
him before. In other words, the police were clever enough not to
mistake the bruises on his body for signs of a physical attack, and
accepted the reasoning of the forensic doctor who concluded that
death was caused by excessive drinking. As a result, the Alexandria
Dabtiyya decided not to charge anyone with murdering Ibrahim
al-Masri.30
29 Majlis al-Ahkam, Reg. S/7/10/29
(old no. 633), case no. 39, pp. 44-48, 19
Jumada I 1282/11 October 1865.
30 Dabtiyyat Iskandariyya, Reg. L/4/18/3
(old no. 1674), case no. 133, pp. 1619, 5 Dhf al-Hiija 1294/11 December 1877.
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358
KHALED FAHMY
From their own records the police, besides appearing as an
ever-present agent of the state willing to and capable of investigating serious criminal cases, come across also as an efficient force
which considered its job not only to catch culprits of serious
crimes and present their cases for trial, but also recommended
measures intended to make city and country alike safer and more
secure. Consider, for example, the findings of the police regarding the following case which involved three men who, on 28
Shawwal 1274 (11 June 1858) went around in the streets of Cairo
entertaining passers-by, especially those marching in zaffas, the gay
and boisterous wedding processions. They did this by pouring
honey on one of them, Hasanayn Shilbaya, and sticking cotton all
over his body, and then dragging him with ropes tied to an iron
ring around his neck, pretending that he was a circus animal. The
two men then paraded their friend in the narrow alleyways of the
crowded quarter of al-Darb al-Ahmar for entertainment, asking for
money from passers-by and onlookers. They seemed to be having
fun, making money and entertaining the amused onlookers until
tragedy struck in an unexpected way: a match was lit, the cotton
caught fire, the lion-man was soon set ablaze, and soon thereafter
Hasanayn died of his burns. Typically the police were promptly
informed and conducted a thorough investigation that found no
criminal intent behind the accident. However, it found the two
partners of Hasanayn guilty of negligence according to Article
Seven of Chapter Five of al-Qanun al-Sultani; they were both sentenced to two months in the Dabtiyya's prison. Equally significant,
the Dabtiyya informed Diwan al-Dakhiliyya (Ministry of Interior)
of the incident and recommended that the neighborhood and
quarter shaykhs be informed to prevent such potentially dangerous
acts in the future.3'
31
Majlis al-Ahkam, Reg. S/7/10/4, case no. 608, pp. 69-70, 17 Jumada II
1275/January 1859. The relevant Article Seven stipulated that public officials who
violated the law or their superiors' orders should be imprisoned for a period
between one and six months if their violation of orders had resulted in serious
damage; text in Zaghlfl, al-Muhamah,Appendix, p. 176. See the comparable case
from much later in the century when the Rifa'iyyatariqa, whose members were
renowned for snake charming, were banned from public performance after it was
discovered that a man in Biba (a town near Bani Suwayf) had been fatally bit by
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THE POLICE AND THE PEOPLE
359
Before turning to the important question of how the police
were perceived by the people and in concluding this section of
how it functioned, two other factors have to be mentioned that
significantly transformed the police stations into these vibrant
centers of power that they had become in the second half of the
nineteenth century. The first is a point already alluded to and
concerns the role of forensic medicine in criminal investigation.
For as has been illustrated in the cases mentioned above, the
police had regular recourse to this new effective tool to establish
criminal proof. Helping the police in this delicate role was not
only the Qasr al-'Aini Hospital with its qualified medical staff who
regularly conducted autopsies and performed chemical examinations on suspected poisonous material, but also by a regular medical staff that were constantly present at the police station. For
every police station was required to have a main doctor, hakambashi, a deputy doctor, hakzmthiin, and a female doctor, hakzma.
These doctors, (collectively called hukama' al-siy&sa,i.e. forensic
doctors as opposed to hukamz' al-sihha, i.e. health doctors32) would
routinely look into all reported accidents that occurred in their
respective quarters to ascertain if they had any criminal implications, e.g. burns, traffic accidents (mostly caused by speeding carriages33), fights, and accusations of rape; these latter were the reserve of the female doctors.34 In addition, it was part of their duty
to conduct external post-mortem examinations (as opposed to the
complete dissection performed at Qasr al-'Aini) to establish the
cause of death, and no corpse was to be buried without a "death
one of their snakes during a street show: Dakhiliyya decree dated 16 RabI' I
1300/25 January 1883, quoted in Jallad, Qamusal-Idarawa-l-Qad', II, p. 354.
32
DabtiyyatMisr, Reg. L/2/31/1, doc. no. 74, pp. 40, 63, 22 Sha'ban 1296/
11 August 1879.
33 See, in this
respect, the interesting petition presented by a woman called
Khadra from Fumm al-Khalig in southern Cairo who was complaining of the
release from the Dabtiyya'sjail of the man who was accused of killing her son
when he hit him with his speeding carriage:Dakhiliyya,Mukatabat'Arabi, carton
no. 14, 17 Dhf al-Qa'da 1291/26 December 1874.
34 For the forensic duties of the female doctors see Khaled Fahmy, "Women,
medicine and power in nineteenth-century Egypt," in Lila Abu-Lughod, ed.,
Remaking Women, Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1998, pp. 51-59.
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360
KHALED FAHMY
certificate"that had been issued by one of these forensic doctors.35
The second factor that enhanced the effectiveness of the police force was the regular procedure, probably instituted from as
early as the 1850s, to keep criminal records of all previously convicted suspects. These simple registers, sijilldt al-sawabiq,were extremely crucial devices in the hands of the police not only because
the main penal code, al-Qanfn al-Sultani, distinguished between
first and repeated offenders regarding the punishment to be
meted out, but also because such "texts of power" proved to be
important tools that helped the police identify a given law-offender as a "criminal".36
As opposed to earlier penal systems,most
notably, the shari'a, where an offender is identified as someone
who had simply committed an illegal act, what the "criminal
record" represented was a tight way of referring to the "criminal"
precisely as such, i.e. as someone who is nearly pre-conditioned to
break the law. By keeping records that sometimes went back more
than fifteen years, the state was effectively starting a process of
profiling those whom it considered to be habitual offenders. In
other words, with the new nineteenth-century penal codes that
were buttressed by the entire machinery of the bureaucratic state
we witness not only the rise of an efficient police state, but also the
birth of the "criminal",a person who in addition to performing an
illegal act, was also seen as someone who was nearly pre-disposed
to commit a crime. In a similar fashion, the mad, the homosexual
and the prostitute were also "born"out of the incessant legislating
activity of the state, the obsessive concern about public morality,
and new interest in public hygiene that accompanied the rise of
the moder state.
35 For a detailed account of how these certificates were issued and how to
double-check them against the daily reports handed in by the undertakers, see
Lai'hat Bayt al-Mal, issued on 11 DhC al-Hijja 1276/30 June 1860 quoted in Jallad, Qamusal-IdErawa-l-Qadic',II, pp. 5-23.
6 There are countless cases in which criminal records were checked and in
which the police, in preparing its case for trial, would check the criminal record
of the accused. See, for example, the case of MuhammadAhmad who was caught
roaming the streets of Alexandria and was discovered to have had no known
domicile and who was accused of theft in 1878. The Alexandria police checked
his record and found two earlier offenses dating from six years previously:
DabtiyyatIskandariyya,Reg. L/4/18/4 (old no. 1675), case no. 226, pp. 21-22, on
5 Rabi' I 1295/9 March 1878.
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THE POLICE AND THE PEOPLE
361
The dabtiyya, betweenreligious (shari'a) and state-enactedlaw (siyasa)
Further cases show that the delicate role that the police stations, the Dabtiyyat, played was not limited to enforcing the law,
but also to interpreting it. For as has been shown above, and as is
further illustrated below, the Dabtiyyat had effectively replaced the
mahikim shar'iyya as the first sites that people had recourse to for
filing their legal complaints. The choice of the police station, the
Dabtiyya, as opposed to the newly-founded tribunal, the majlis, as
places where people sought to have their legal cases reviewed was
based on an accurate understanding of the different roles that
theses two new institutions came to play in the evolving legal system. For even though the majalis and the older mahdkim shar'iyya
appear comparable, with the former apparently replacing the latter as a result of the ostensible "modernization" of the law, a closer
look reveals a more complicated picture. The difference lay not
only in the fact that the mahakimwere applying the Islamic shari'a
while the majalis, as has been shown above, were applying a mixture of local, Ottoman, and European-inspired legal codes; more
crucially, the difference lay in that the mahakim readily admitted
witnesses who would come in person to testify in front of the qadi
after their probity had been established by the 'udil,37 while, in
sharp contrast, the majalis conducted their business solely and exclusively from written reports submitted to them.38 Significantly, it
was at the Dabtiyyat that these reports were initially prepared in
criminal cases, and it followed that it was to the police station that
people went to present a petition, a legal complaint, or even an
appeal against a majlis ruling.
Equally significant was the fact that the people who approached
the police to redress their legal complaints were clear about what
kind of law both the police and the majalis were applying. Specifi37
For the central role occupied by witnesses testimony in adjudicating cases
brought in front of shari'a courts in seventeenth-century Egypt, see Galal H. ElNahal, The Judicial Administration of Ottoman Egypt in the Seventeenth Century
(Chicago: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1979).
8 See Rudolph Peters, "Administrators and Magistrates: The Development of
a Secular Judiciary in Egypt, 1842-1871," in this issue.
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362
KHALED FAHMY
cally, nowhere do we see people confusing al-siyasa with "secular
law", or thinking that there was a fundamental clash between it
and the shari'a , a legal system that was only later in the century
and in much twentieth-century "modernization theory" literature,
referred to as a defunct, obsolete religious law that had to give way
to the rational, "modern" legal codes imported from Europe.39
Indeed, an analysis of the reasons for which people approached
the police shows that the police with their siyisi laws were often
thought of as a means by which people could achieve what they
understood as their shar' rights.
For example, when a woman called Shafiqa bt. Isma'il Agha was
prevented by her ex-husband, soon after their divorce, from collecting her belongings from her marital home, she went straight
to the Dabtiyya to present an official petition against him. The
Dabtiyya then dispatched a police force to the house and conducted an inventory which it then sent to the makama to divide the
movables according to the shari'a. When the ex-husband raised
further objections, the Dabtiyya wrote to the Cairo Governorate
and suggested that the Governorate should pursue the case itself.4 In another case, a mother had a dispute with her daughter
about the inheritance left by her husband. Even though the
woman knew perfectly well that this was a shar'r matter, it was to
the Dabtiyya that she went to resolve it.41 More telling of the manner in which the Dabtiyyat were perceived as places where people
39 Nor, it should be added, was there an
apologetic attempt to show how
"modern" al-shari'a was and how compatible it was with European law and with
requirements of modern life. These mental acrobatics that characterized much of
the intellectual output of so-called Islamic modernists is more linked with
nationalist politics and its obsession with showing how the nation's "tradition"
was alwaysalready "moder" and with demonstrating that the nation could easily
"catchup" with the more "modern"West, than an accurate reflection of what law,
both in its shar'nand siydsiaspects was commonly understood in much of the
nineteenth
century. How shari'a came to be perceived
as incompatible
with
modernity, and how various nationalist intellectuals attempted to refute this view
are questions that require more detailed analysis, however, and as such fall
beyond the scope of this study.
40 DabtiyyatMisr, Reg. L/2/11/12 (old no. 565), doc. no. 127, p. 54, 4 Rabi'
II 1279/29 September 1862
41
DabtiyyatMisr, Reg. L/2/11/20 (old no. 637), doc. no. 72, p. 52, 20 Rabi'
II 1281/22 September 1864
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THE POLICE AND THE PEOPLE
363
could resolve their disputes even if these were shar'i ones is the
following case that started with a petition presented to the Alexandria Police Headquarters, Dabtiyyat Iskandariyya in 1868. The
petitioner, a certain 'Ali Hamdin had for a long time been a ndzir
and one of the beneficiaries of a waqfin Alexandria. As a result of
a certain dispute between him and other beneficiaries, the shari'a
court of Alexandria reviewed the case and issued a verdict against
him, lifting him from the niz&ra. He subsequently presented a
petition to the Alexandria Police requesting that a special committee (qumisiyin) of four 'ulama' who work in the Alexandria Police
Headquarters review his case. He explained his request by saying
It should be obvious to your excellencies that cases are either shar'l or
siyas. As to those cases that are to be reviewed according to al-siyasa,
these are countless. With regard to those cases that are to be reviewed
according to the shari'a,... these, in fact, are of three kinds. First are those
cases that relate to inheritance. Second, are real estate and property
cases. And third, are cases of waqfs...Of this last kind, I was afflicted by a
calamitous ruling issued by the qadtof the Alexandria (Shari'a) Court, a
ruling that neither the Muhammadan shari'a would approve of, nor
would the justice of the siydsaallow...
What we see here is a nazir of a waqfwho felt that he was unjustly
treated by the shari'a court and, in thinking of a place to appeal
this ruling at, he went to the police station requesting that his case
be reviewed by the 'ulama' presiding over the Dabtiyya's majlis,
which functioned as a tribunal of first instance. His belief in the
probity of the Dabtiyya's 'ulama' was in such contrast to the acrimonious language he reserved for the q&dzof the shari'a court,
and his belief in them so profound that he ended his petition by
saying "if what I claim here turns out to be contrary to the truth,
then I [suggest that I] be punished with double the punishment
stated in the law..."42 'All Hamdin might have gone to the police
headquarters only as a last resort after other avenues of redressing
what he believed to be a serious misconduct of justice had been
closed to him. Nevertheless, it remains significant that he believed
42
Dakhiliyya, Mukatabat 'Arabi, Box no. 5, letter from head of the Alexandria
Police to Deputy-Director (waktl) of Diwan al-Dakhiliyya, dated 27 Jumada I
1285/16 August 1868.
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KHALED FAHMY
that this misjustice could be redressed by going to the police.
Popular perceptions of the police
Introduction:
The central role the police played in investigating crime and in
upholding public security should be obvious by now. As opposed
to the now defunct muhtasib, the police station with their legal,
administrative and medical personnel became new centers of
power that were increasingly impossible to ignore, and their uniformed officers and soldiers together with the wide network of
non-uniformed spies, sentries and detectives attached to them
were important persons to contend with. The amount of power
wielded by the Dabtiyya in its monitoring of public security, in
investigating crime and in preparing cases for the legal tribunals
made these buildings important symbols of the Khedival state's
authority.
If the police became such an integral part of the state, fulfilling
important legal and juridical functions in addition to posing as an
important symbol of sovereignty, how were they perceived by the
people? If, for the state, the police were an important tool to
control and monitor society, how, it must be asked, did society see
them and the arguably intimidating, organized state behind them?
To answer these questions we have to turn back to police records
to see under what circumstances people had recourse to the police, and to check what kind of cases or problems they thought the
police could be helpful in solving, and, in general, to try and
discover what their expectations of the police were.
The Dabtiyya and family disputes:
The first case concerns an eighty-year-old man by the name of
Bayyimi al-'Attari who, on the morning of 20 February 1858,
marched off to the Cairo Police Headquarters to file a complaint
against his wife. In his claim he said that the previous night he had
another fight with Rizqa, his wife, a fight which like previous ones
had apparently been triggered by Rizqa's continued refusal to
have sex with him. When he insisted on sleeping with her, his wife,
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THE POLICE AND THE PEOPLE
365
pushed him around, made fun of him in front of their three children and left the single room which they all shared together. After
Rizqa had bolted the door from outside, their elder son, Sayyid
Ahmad, somehow managed to leave the room for the dawn
prayers, leaving old Bayyumi raging with frustration inside. Finally,
at daybreak the old man found an axe in the room and hailed
down on the locked door with it, eventually succeeding to break
loose. Once free, he immediately set to the police station to report
on what his wife had done to him.
Furious and enraged, he had to think of a story to use in the
police station to get back at his wife (bi-qasd ighdzat zawjatihi). So
when he passed by a slaughterhouse on his way to the police station, he at once had a fantastical idea. He got his earthenware jug
and filled it with some stagnant water from there. He also took the
axe with him, and when he arrived at the police station, he produced both the jug and the axe and claimed that his wife had
filled the drinking jug with her menstrual blood in an attempt to
poison him; his son, he added, had attempted to kill him with the
iron axe.
Startled by these accusations, the police officer on duty immediately ordered a medical examination to be conducted on the
claimant, and another examination to be done on the contents of
the drinking jug. Bayyfimi was found healthy, although old and
with week eyesight. No signs of illness or contusions were detected
on his body. More significantly, though, the liquid in the jug was
sent to be analyzed in Qasr al-'Aini and was discovered not to be
menstrual blood. The claimant then confessed that he had been
lying and admitted that he had done so to get back at his wife, and
retracted his earlier testimony. Bayyumi was found guilty of filing
false accusations and when the case was reviewed by the local legal
tribunal acting as a court of first instance, Majlis al- Zaqaziq, the
sentence rendered was lenient due to his old age and week eyesight: he was only sentenced to fifteen days' imprisonment. The
case was finally forwarded to, Majlis al-Ahkam which ratified the
ruling of the Majlis al-Zaqaziq.43
43
[old no. 661], case no. 14, p. 4, on 10 Dhu
Majlis al-Ahkam, Reg. S/7/10/1
al-Qa'da 1274/22 June 1858. Article Five of the Five-Article Circular published in
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KHALED FAHMY
As interesting and amusing as this case may be, it is illustrative
of the manner in which lower-classEgyptians thought of and reacted to the very active role the police came to play in Egyptian
life by the middle of the nineteenth century. Bayyumi might not
have been aware of the intricacies of the medico-legal system and
its integral role in the burgeoning criminal legal system; nevertheless, the ease by which he approached the police station is typical
of how different members of Egyptian society, men and women,
both in town and country, literate and illiterate alike had easy
access to this increasingly important agent of the state.
Far from being atypical, Bayyfmi's case is illustrative of the
manner in which people went to police stations to resolve family
disputes or to complain of members of their own family. There
were, for example, numerous cases where some male member
would accuse a female relative, usually a daughter, a niece or a
sister of improper sexual behavior and would ask the resident
female doctor in the Dabtiyya,the hakzma,"to check her virginity".
This was often demanded to prove defloration, which, in turn was
required to receive the shari'a-stipulated bride-money, mahr almithLFor example, when Gaziyawho had sex with Hasan al-Full,
a young man who used to frequent a tavern in Bflaq where, in
fact, they had met, was found by a detective (bassas)who presumably had been hired by her father, she was sent to the Dabtiyya.In
the police station, she was examined by two hakimasand was found
to be thayyib,i.e. deflowered. Her father received 312 piasters as a
down payment of the bride-money, mahr al-mith:44Other times,
fathers would publicly disown their daughters after dragging them
to the police station, and after what was commonly believed to be
a firm virginity test had revealed that their daughters had been
deflowered. This was the case of Shaykh Sayyid Hasan al-Fiqi
whose two daughters, Nafisa and Zahra,were caught together with
September 1858 stipulated that any person found guilty of presenting false
accusations should be punished by the same punishment that would have been
passed on the defendant had the claimant succeeded in proving his/her case,
instead of the previous sentence which was imprisonment for a period between
five and forty five days:; quoted in Sami, Taqwimal-Nil, III, pt. 1, p. 297.
4 Majlis al-Ahkam,Reg. S/7/10/18 (old no. 626), case no. 410, pp. 100-101,
4 Sha'ban 1280/14 January 1864.
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367
a third woman friend in a "compromising situation" with three
men in the street. After discovering in the police station that
Zahra had been deflowered, Shaykh Sayyid refused to accept her
and her sister back home, and authorized "the government (alhukuma) to do whatever it sees fit with them."45
Fathers also often went to the police to complain of their sons'
behavior; occasionally they would disown them so that they cease
to be responsible for their acts. For example, after the twenty-two
year old Imbarak al-Azhari had confessed to his father that he had
stolen a 40-piaster garb from a neighbor, his father decided he
had had it with him: he dragged him to the police station and said
that Imbarak had become a criminal ("sar min al-ashqiya' ). He was
sentenced to three months in the liman of Alexandria.46 Another
case involved a young man called Muhammad Husayn who was
caught by his father after having stolen his brass watch and fled
the house. In the police station he said that he wished his son be
sent to the army, and he did not want to deal with him again
("mutabarri' minhu"). The police accepted the father's testimony
and the majlis ibtid'z convicted the son of theft.47 Furthermore,
the records of the liman of Alexandria contain names of young
boys who had been sent there after their parents had complained
to the Alexandria police of their unruly behavior.48
45
DabtiyyatMisr, Reg. L/2/6/3, case no. 89, pp. 74-75, 17 Muharram 1295/
21 January 1878.
46Majlisal-Khusiisi,carton 12, doc. dated 16 Dhu al-Qa'da 1282/2 April 1866.
47
Dabtiyyat Misr, Reg. L/2/6/2, case no. 161, pp. 79-80, 8 Dhu al-Qa'da
1294/14 November 1877. See also the similar case of 'Abd al-HayySalim who
accused his son of stealing clothes from some of his acquaintances: Majlis alAhkam, Reg. S/7/10/1, case no. 122, p. 55, 21 Dhfual-Hijja1274/2 August 1858.
48 See, for example, the case of the nine-year old 'Ali al-Ni'na'iwhose mother
took him to DabtiyyatIskandariyya"because he is recalcitrant and living on the
streets" ('asz wa dayirbidin ma'wa)". She hoped that by sending him to the Iman,
her son might acquire some skill: Diwan al-Tarsana,Reg. M/14/3, p. 59, dated
7 Safar 1282/2 July 1865. Similarlythe thirteen-yearold Shihata al-Fili was sent
to the police station and from there to the km&an
after his parents had requested
that he acquire some skill. He spent two months in the linmn,which besides
being a prison had numerous Arsenal workshops:ibid,p. 68, letter dated 15 Rabi'
I 1282/8 August 1865
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KHALED FAHMY
The police and criminal cases:
If the police were widely perceived as efficient and capable of
redressing people's grievances in family disputes and in conflicts
over waqfs and inheritance, this was even more so with regard to
criminal cases.49 The police records show various investigations in
serious criminal offense having been initiated after receiving a
petition, 'arduhal, from private persons. In July 1858, for example,
a highly dramatic cases occurred in a village near Minya in Upper
Egypt, a case in which a woman called Mahbuba, the wife of 'All
Jad Allah, who was beaten to death by the shaykh of the local hissa
(part of a village), a man called Muhammad al-Sha'rawi. Sha'rawi,
who comes across from the ensuing interrogations as a particularly
vicious man, too eager to appease his superiors, had Mahbfba
imprisoned in the local goal after he had failed to locate her
husband. It turned out that the husband, 'All Jad Allah, had disappeared after being summoned to perform corvee labor for the
Suez Railway, and that Sha'rawi, thinking that Mahbfba's denials
of her husband's whereabouts were disingenuous, decided to imprison her, apparently to force 'All to come out of hiding. When
his plan did not work out as smoothly as he had hoped, Shaykh
Sha'rawi started to beat his prisoner severely on the chest and her
neck, and a couple of days later she died of her wounds.
After Mahbuba's death, both her mother and her brother went
to the local qddz charging Shaykh Sha'rawi of murder. Significantly, they also went to the local mudiriyya, which functioned as
police stations in urban centers to present an official petition and
to start litigation according to al-siyasa. As a clear sign that they
understood the importance of this kind of investigations and the
crucial role that forensic medicine played in it they insisted that
the resident doctor examine Mahbuba's body to nail down Shaykh
Sha'rawi by proving the fact of beating and establishing it as the
cause of death. Placing the body on a camel they went to Qulusna,
49 It has to be noted that the criminal cases mentioned above were cases that
the police had taken the initiative to investigate after reports had been received
of a particular suspicious incident. What follows, in contrast, are cases in which
the police started their investigations after receiving a petition from private
persons.
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THE POLICE AND THE PEOPLE
369
a neighboring urban center, where the deputy doctor established
that Mahbfba had been severely beaten with a hard stick from her
chest to her face, and from her shoulders to her wrists. He added
that she was bleeding from her mouth when she died. Death, he
concluded, was caused by beating.
After the claimants had brought the case to the attention of the
local police, Sha'rawi was interrogated. He completely denied the
charges, claiming that he had gone to Mahbuba's house only because her husband owed him some money; when he could not
find him, he had her imprisoned on the orders of the local governor (al-ndzir). He subsequently released her and sent her home,
where she later died. When he had gone to pay his condolences,
he added, he asked her relatives to inform him if her husband,
'Ali, had appeared. The relatives told him that they would not do
so, leaving him no choice but to take the son into custody. At that
point, he claimed, the relatives became infuriated (hasal li-ahlihd
hamzqa), had Mahbuba's body exhumed, "and roamed the area
with it requesting a medical examination in order to falsely accuse
me [of murder]."
When the qadi was questioned by the police, he said that, on
the night of Mahbfba's death, her body was brought to him,
washed and placed in a shroud (mughassala wa-mukaffana). He
added that her brother wanted to have her examined. When he
asked him if he could detect any signs of beating on her body, the
brother denied seeing any suspicious signs. The qadt then claimed
to have informed the brother that ascertaining the nature of any
suspicious marks on the body was something that only a doctor
could do. The brother had buried her, but soon afterward had her
exhumed, put the body on a camel and took it to the local governor. The qiad added that he thought that the contusions found
on the body had been produced after the exhumation and had
been caused by the rope which tied the corpse to the camel.
The defendants were now asked to respond to these counterallegations. Confronted by the testimonies of Sha'rawi, the qadi,
the nazir and other local shaykhs, they withdrew their accusations,
except for the part regarding exhumation of the body: they insisted that the medical examination had been conducted prior to
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KHALED FAHMY
burial, and not after exhumation. Soon thereafter, and probably as
a result of the re-appearance of the husband, 'Ali, the defendants
resumed their accusation, claiming that they had been intimidated by the monolithic denials of all the local authorities: the
nazir, the qidz and the shaykhs. They added that they could not
produce any witnesses because no one had been present when
Mahbfba was arrested, that no one had seen the actual beating in
the gaol, and that the only person who could have seen the marks
of the beating would have been the professional corpse-washer (almughassila), who happened to be Mahbuiba's own mother, but
who, unfortunately, was blind. They thus rested their entire case
on the report of the deputy doctor (tamassakf bi-mi tawaddah bikashf al-hakim).
When the case was reviewed according to the shari'a, it was
dismissed. The local tribunal, Majlis al-Fishn, however, was suspicious of the conspiracy of silence by the qadi, the nazir and the
shaykhs. The Majlis found Muhammad al- Sha'rawi guilty of murder and sentenced him to five years in the Liman of Alexandria.
The case was forwarded to Majlis al-Ahkam, which approved and
ratified the sentence.50
In that same year, 1858, an even more dramatic case took place
in Cairo that also involved a case of death caused by severe beating. Like the previous case, this one clearly shows how the police
station came to be perceived as a site for contesting the power and
prestige of members of the ruling elite. The case concerned a very
important official, a certain 'Umar Bey Wasfi, who was the nazir of
the stables of Ilhami Pasha's estate, thus placing 'Umar Bey very
close to the epi-center of political power in Egypt. (Ilhami Pasha
was the son of 'Abbas, and the great newphew of Sa'id, then current ruler). On 12 November 1858 twenty-seven slaves in that estate stormed into the Central Cairo Police Station to present a
joint petition against 'Umar Bey whom they accused of beating to
death a fellow slave called Sultan. Frightened and intimidated,
they gave a torrent of horrible details about 'Umar Bey's brutality.
50
Majlis al-Ahkam, Reg. S/7/10/1
Dhfi al-Qa'da 1274/12 July 1858.
(old no. 663), case, no. 75, p. 33, end of
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They claimed that he had ordered Sultan to be lashed because the
slave had gone missing without permission for a a couple of days;
that the beating was excessively brutal and severe; that they
stopped counting the number of lashes after it had exceeded
hundreds, but then one of them said that he was counting on his
fingers and knuckles as he used to count the ninety-nine Sublime
Names of God, and that with each round, i.e. with each ninetynine lashes, he would extend a finger, and that at the end he had
extended fifteen fingers, making the number of lashes slightly less
than 1,500! They added that 'Umar Bey himself, dissatisfied by the
fellow slaves who were ordered to beat Sultan, had taken it upon
himself to do the job personally, drawing particular delight from
doing so; that he ordered the slave to strip himself naked, and as
a result blood was splashing all over the floor from his buttocks
and his back; and, most horribly, that after he had finished beating him, 'Umar Bey had Sultan's legs shackled with iron chains
and had molten lead poured on the shackles. Soon afterward,
Sultan died. They added that that was not 'Umar Bey's first case of
murder, and that he had directly caused the death of two fellow
slaves in the previous three years: one by beating him, and the
other by imprisoning him without food or water until he died of
starvation. They ended their testimony by explaining that they
were very frightened that given 'Umar Bey's history of brutality,
they were afraid that any one of them might be next in line.
Realizing the gravity of the allegations and its sensitive nature,
given that it took place in one of the viceregal palaces, that of
Ilhami Pasha, the great nephew of the Khedive, the Dabtiyya
promptly dispatched a small police force headed by a senior officer and accompanied by both its resident doctors. When they
arrived at the palace, 'Umar Bey could not be found, but they
found Sultan lying dead after the iron shackles had been sawed,
with clear signs of beating. Given its advanced state of decomposition (the slaves reported the incident three days after it had
happened), the medical examination was not decisive, and the
body had to be sent to Qasr al-'Aini for dissection. The autopsy
report determined that serious beating had been inflicted on the
body and that "some vital internal organs were damaged as a
result".
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KHALED FAHMY
The senior police officer than asked to see 'Umar Bey, but was
told that he had already left the palace. Then an interesting chase
ensued between the police and their suspect: first one, then another senior police officer would go to the palace to issue a summons for appearing before the Dabtiyya,only to be told that they
had just missed the Bey who had left using the second entrance of
the palace; and when road blocks were established to arrest him,
the Bey turned out to have been hiding in the palace all the time.
Finally when he dared to leave the palace, 'Umar Bey was stopped
by one senior police officer who jumped into his carriage and
forced him to go to the Dabtiyya.Once there, and when the Cairo
Police Commissioner overtook the interrogation himself, the Bey
summoned one of his scribes who produced a purse containing
150 pounds in a clear attempt to bribe that most senior police
officer. As a result, the Police Commissioner merely took the
purse to the Dabtiyya'sscribe to open it, count its contents, and
prove the flagrant bribery attempt. In his interrogation, the Bey
tried to deny the charges by claiming that he did, indeed, beat
Sultan, but that the total number of lashes was seventy-five,aimed
at disciplining him ("bi-qasdal-ta'db"), not to kill him, and that
Sultan might have died as a result of something that the other
slaves had done to him; that the police should not believe the
testimony of the slaves regarding the number of lashes since it was
clear that they could not possibly count to 1,500 as some slaves
had claimed; and that the slave who claimed that he was using his
fingers and knuckles to count must have been confused "for if he
was so busy praising God [by uttering His Sublime Names], then
most probably he got confused"; and that the previous two cases
were utterly fabricated by these trouble-making, undisciplined
slaves "who seem intent on presenting false accusations," and
whose disobedience might spread to other slaves if it went unpunished.
Clearly cognizant of the gravity of the case, the Dabtiyya prepared a detailed report and forwarded it to Majlis al-Ahkam, the
supreme legal body in the land. The Majlis apparently decided
that this was such a serious case to handle alone, and so it forwarded the case to al-Ma'iyyaal-Saniyya,the Viceregal Cabinet. In
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summarizing its findings, Majlis al-Ahkam reminded the Ma'iyya
that 'Umar Bey was clearly guilty and should be convicted. It explained that this was obviously a homicide case that should be
reviewed both according to both the shari'a and al-siyasa. While it
might be difficult, the Majlis added, to convict the Bey according
to the shari'a because of the absence of a claimant with a direct
relation to the deceased as the shari'a stipulates (and probably
also sensing that the case against the Bey might be deemed weak
by a shar' q.da given the inconsistency in the witnesses' testimonies, a matter of crucial importance for the shari'a), he should
most certainly be convicted according to al-siyasa. The Majlis explained that "since ['Umar Bey has killed the slave Sultan] by
ordering and forcing [other persons to do so], and since he has
violated and wasted the respect due to the state and attacked its
authority (idh annahu imiran mujbiran [qatal Sultan al-'abd] wa qad
ta'addd wa dayya' hurmat al-hukima wa ... hatak hurmatahd), the
state would feel "justified to ask for its rights to be avenged and to
punish him for attacking its sovereignty." The Majlis concluded its
petition to al-Ma'iyya to convict 'Umar Bey by reminding it that he
had attempted to bribe a senior official hoping that the latter
might turn a blind eye to the case.5'
As interesting as all the details of this case surely are, many of
which have been left out, three things stand out for their relevance to this study. The first is the extreme diligence that the
police took to investigate the case. It is remarkable that immediately after being informed of the incident the Dabtiyya sent a
senior officer accompanied by both resident doctors who corroborated the testimony of the slaves given at the police precincts. The
extra effort that the police took in arraigning a bey who had been
accused of murdering a slave by chasing him in the streets of Cairo
and dragging him to the police station illustrates how seriously the
police took their job.
Secondly, the absence of a final sentence and Majlis al-Ahkam's
51
Majlis al-Ahkam, Reg. S/7/10/3,
p. 54-65, 22 Rabi' II 1275/30 November
1858. I have repeatedly tried to find the Ma'iyya's decision in this important case
but to no avail. Given the strength of Majlis al-Ahkam's recommendation,
however, I would be very surprised if 'Umar would have been left unpunished.
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KHALED FAHMY
forwarding the case to the Viceregal Cabinet for a conclusive verdict might be taken as a sign of the timidity on the part of the
Majlis which must have thought that incriminating a person so
close to the Viceregal household, the center of power in Egypt,
should be left to Sa'id in person. Yet as frustrating as this must
have been for the slaves who appear to have been genuinely afraid
for their lives, the absence of a final verdict is a far cry from the
allegations of the corruption and inefficiency of the legal system
in Egypt before the British takeover in 1882. For it remains highly
significant that Majlis al-Ahkam, in forwarding the case to alMa'iyya had to stress that the murder of a slave by anyone, even
if he was close to the Viceregal household, should be regarded as
an affront to the sovereignty and dignity of the state.
Thirdly, and most significantly, and even if one were to see the
Majlis's timidity in passing a verdict as a sign of corruption and
lack of independence by the judiciary, the Dabtiyya, in contrast,
pursued its task promptly and efficiently. By the 1850s the police
must have been thought of by lower-class members as an ultimate
refuge against injustice committed by their superiors, and they
were willing and capable of presenting their cases there in an
attempt to redress this injustice. In this remarkable case, it is
highly telling that the slaves prevented the pharmacists and doctors of the palace from washing Sultan's corpse or burying it before the police doctors had arrived. Similarly the local undertakers
who were summoned to bury the body refused to show up. It must
have taken extreme courage on the part of the twenty-seven slaves
to break through the palace gates and to march off to the Dabtiyya
to report against their Bey, leaving behind their fellow slave's body
guarded, it must be assumed, by other slaves lest the Bey's bullies
remove all incriminating evidence. The slaves must have had at
least some belief in the police's ability to deal with their case for
them to have taken these risks.
Conclusion
A ballad that was popular in Upper Egypt towards the end of
the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth cen-
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THE POLICE AND THE PEOPLE
375
tury gives an interesting glimpse of how the police were perceived
in the countryside. It starts by addressing an aggrieved mother
malik bitijri 'aljusur wi-khayfa?
bajri 'a-waldikhaduh it-tayfa
(Whyare you so afraid running over the dikes?
I am running after my son, the police have taken him in)52
As in all modern police forces, the Egyptian police in the nineteenth century must have been intimidating and occasionally brutally oppressive. Being an important agent of the new state that
the Khedives were founding in Egypt, the Dabtiyya was only too
eager to uphold the dignity and authority of the state. In so doing,
it must have been understood by many Egyptians, especially those
in the lower echelons of society, as an oppressive, alien institution.
Furthermore, and as has been shown above, it may be safely
argued that this police force was instituted by the Khedival authorities to have a tighter control of the Egyptian population. Specifically, the police played a crucial role in the effective control of
serious crime in both cities and rural areas; police investigations
played a central role in criminal investigations; and their reports
often proved decisive in preparing cases for trial before the numerous non-shari'a tribunals, the majalis, that proliferated in
Egypt starting in the 1840s. The police stations were also important centers that controlled the spread of epidemics and suspicious homicides since an adequate medical staff was always present
there to deal with such emergencies. Finally, it was at police stations that vital statistics, one of the most effective tools of government control, were compiled.
Nevertheless, and in spite of these obvious connections that
linked police stations to the modern, intrusive state that the
Khedives were building in Egypt, and which made them very reliable sites of controlling and monitoring the population, police
stations were also "enabling" sites that allowed the population to
challenge and contest some of these same mechanisms of control.
52
Frances Hart Breastead, ed. and trans., The Songs of an Egyptian Peasant,
Collected and Translated into German by Heinrich Schaefer (Leibzig: J.C. Hinrichs,
1904), p. 66.
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376
KHALED FAHMY
Since the legal system allowed people to present petitions (mostly
as a means of checking the abuses of the local governors) and to
file appeals on court rulings (as a safety mechanism that aimed at
reducing legal malpractice) and since these petitions ('arduhalat)
and appeals (abilluhit) were to be presented to the police, these
police stations proved to be sites that were frequented very often
by people from all walks of life. Indeed, it is at the police station,
rather than at the court building, that Egyptians had their first
encounters with the intricate legal system introduced in the nineteenth century, and it is there that one should look to try and
gauge people's reaction to this important pillar of the modern
state.
Moreover, the very nature of the nineteenth-century police
force made it function in a qualitatively different manner than
earlier police institutions. Having at its disposal a whole arsenal of
newly-legislated penal codes that defined crimes and specified
their respective punishments, the police in investigating suspected
crimes and in preparing their cases for trial in the legal tribunals,
the majalis,had clear yardsticksby which to identify crimes and to
go about investigating them. Such important practices as conducting post-mortem examinations and keeping criminal records significantly enhanced the ability of the police to maintain public
security.
Yet, for the police to be more efficient, they relied not only on
such intrusive tools of manipulation and surveillance as represented by forensic medicine and criminal records, but also on an
elaborate network of secret agents, detectives and local and provincial officials. In other words, part of the efficiency of the modern police force lay in its diffusive character, a character that
enabled it to penetrate society and to monitor the population in
a subtle, effective manner. But this very diffusive nature of the
police, and indeed of the entire modern state, at the same time,
opened the police to manipulation and control by the very same
people that it was organized to monitor and control. For as has
been shown above, once police stations had been established in
urban and rural centers, and once the role that the police played
in the legal system had been grasped, people had recourse to
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THE POLICE AND THE PEOPLE
377
these buildings to petition against court rulings, to initiate legal
action against members of the upper classes, and to seek to redress what they considered to be massive injustice that had befallen them. In other words, due to its very diffuse and subtle
nature, as represented by its police force, the modern state lends
itself to manipulation and control at the same time as it seeks to
monitor and control its population, and its numerous sites of
power where the population were supposed to be counted, registered, monitored and controlled, proved to be sites where the very
diffuse power of the state was contested and challenged.
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