In 1989 Egypt remained under the social, political, and cultural dominance of an elite, a pattern it has retained since pharaonic (see Glossary) times. Although the personal, ideological orientation, and cultural values of the ruling class changed drastically after the 1952 Revolution, the gulf between the urban elite and the popular masses remained large. A group called the Free Officers came to power in 1952. The group, which included people such as Gamal Abdul Nasser (former president of Egypt), Anwar as Sadat (also former president of Egypt), and Husni Mubarak (current president of Egypt), played an instrumental role in carrying out the 1952 Revolution. The Free Officers, along with their civilian allies, comprised a strongly nationalistic cadre who believed the former ruling class had betrayed the country's welfare to foreign interests. The Free Officers, many of whom were not from the top social classes, altered the country's structure of wealth and power. But according to some scholars, the Free Officers' policies merely changed the membership of the elite rather than causing its demise.
The prerevolutionary elite rose to their position of power through the country's entry into the world agricultural commodity market in the nineteenth century (see Rural Society, this ch.). The upper classes consisted of the royal family, absentee landlords, professionals, and business people (merchants, financiers, and a few industrialists). A disproportionately large number of foreigners belonged to the elite groups in Cairo and Alexandria. Opportunities for social mobility changed in response to the transformation of the country's economy. A prosperous landowning family, for example, might choose to secure its status by sending one son to Al Azhar University for a career in religion and another to one of the newly established secular universities while encouraging still another to manage the family's estates.
The civil bureaucracy established by Muhammad Ali (1805-49) and elaborated under British hegemony provided a career for sons of middle- and upper middle-class families. It gave employment to the growing number of Egyptian professionals (mostly lawyers, doctors, and engineers) and fueled the expansion of secular education. The government bureaucracy employed the sons of landlords, of prosperous farmers, and of civil servants themselves.
Despite the major social changes in Egypt between 1800 and 1950, the upper-class elite continued to dominate politics in the country. The educated middle class increasingly resented the elite's control of government. This resentment was particularly strong among military officers because their middle-class origins impeded their advancement to the top decision-making ranks. Among these military officers were the Free Officers.
Egypt's new political elite pledged to rid the country of foreign influences and to broaden economic opportunities for the general population. Nasser implemented numerous socialist policies designed to alter the pattern of class stratification. The June 1967 War, however, halted government initiatives for redistributing wealth. Beginning in 1974, the government introduced a series of laws intended to restore and promote private ownership of previously socialized sectors of the economy. These new policies, known as infitah (opening or open door; see Glossary), helped consolidate the class structure. In 1989 Egypt continued to be a country with a skewed distribution of wealth; about 2,000 families had annual incomes in excess of E35,000 (for the value of the Egyptian pound--see Glossary) while more than 4 million people earned less than E200.
Urban Society
Although the majority of Egyptians lived in villages as recently as 1988, cities, which have been important in Egypt for more than 2,000 years, continued to be important. Traditional urban society was more heterogeneous than in most other areas of the Middle East. Quarters, segregated along religious and occupational lines, were effectively self-governing in their internal affairs. As in villages, kinship relations provided a basis for solidarity, and relationships among families frequently overrode differences in wealth and social position. Prosperous families assumed leadership roles and took responsibility for their less fortunate kin and neighbors. The rapid urbanization that began in the nineteenth century created large residential and industrial suburbs and led to the emergence of a professional middle class and a working class. Nevertheless, elite wealthy families that had ruled Egypt for generations, and in some cases for centuries, continued to dominate the cities until the early 1950s.
The postrevolutionary ruling elite was believed by many to have come from rural backgrounds. In reality most of the elite came from the urban middle class and were sons of mid- and low-ranking bureaucrats. A few members of the new elite came from the ranks of the old elite, although most influential members of the new elite were military officers. Most of these officers held positions in the government agencies that were in charge of national security, but others also held important positions in local government and the diplomatic service. Below the top echelons of government, however, the military played a less important role. This situation was reflected in the fact that since 1952, only about 6 percent of individuals in lower-level administrative posts had attended a military college. Educated bureaucrats from the middle and upper-middle classes continued to fill the bulk of civil service posts. Since 1952 three of every four bureaucrats have come from cities, with one of every two coming from Cairo. About a third had fathers who were civil servants. Although the military's formal presence in the bureaucracy was limited, officers clearly made the most important decisions. The emergence of a military elite led to a new kind of civil servant, the officer-technocrat. Politically ambitious professionals had a significant incentive to join the officers corps, and officers were motivated to acquire professional training (see Training and Education, ch. 5).
Although the prerevolutionary elite lost its status as the ruling class, it was not eliminated. The land redistribution program of the 1950s and socialist policies of the 1960s compelled many old elite families to sell agricultural and industrial properties that had been important sources of their wealth. Nevertheless, most of these families were able to maintain their social and economic positions through their domination of the prestigious professions. The old elite had highly valued education before the revolution, and many families had sent at least one son abroad for professional training. Thus, the old elite had lost its political influence after the 1952 Revolution, but its investments in education enabled its offspring to emerge as the doctors, engineers, and top-level administrators of the new regime.
After 1974 the government encouraged the growth of private enterprise through infitah policies, and a large number of people from old elite families emerged as part of a new class of wealthy contractors, financiers, and industrialists. Many of these people, who had held senior-level civil service positions, switched to private practice, industry, or commerce because their government salaries had been relatively low. A person holding a ministerial-level position in government could earn up to 1,000 percent more by taking a post in the private sector. Joint ventures between Egyptian and foreign firms, partnerships for Egyptians in foreign firms, and commissions for Egyptians dealing with private companies all contributed to the formation of a new entrepreneurial class. By 1990 prerevolutionary elite families remained financially secure and socially prominent and had regained some political influence.
The middle class, emulating the old elite, recognized the link between higher education and prestigious civil service jobs. The government, which had initiated the development of secular education as part of the effort to staff the civil bureaucracy with trained personnel, has provided a secure, well-paid position to virtually every college-educated applicant since the 1920s. Prior to the 1952 Revolution, postsecondary education was costly, and middle-class families who were determined to send at least one son to college usually endured considerable financial hardship. Most middle-class youth could not afford to attend college, but they could still gain entry into the less prestigious, lower civil-service ranks by obtaining a high school diploma. Before 1950 secondary schools were not free, but middle-class families could generally afford the fees. As an increasing number of middle-class high school graduates sought government employment, the bureaucracy became overstaffed with poorly paid, white-collar workers who had little prospect of advancement into top administrative positions, most of which were held by university graduates. Frustration among low-ranking civil servants was an important factor leading to the 1952 Revolution.
After the 1952 Revolution, the Free Officers increased career-advancement opportunities in government, improved pay scales in the civil service, and expanded public education opportunities at all levels. To meet middle-class demands for equitable access to higher education, the government abolished college and university fees and introduced competitive admission based on special entrance examinations. The state continued to be the principal employer of college graduates. A government decree in 1964 required the civil service to offer jobs to all Egyptians holding degrees from postsecondary colleges and institutes. During the early and mid-1960s, when Egypt's economy was socialized, the public sector employed thousands of new mid- and upper-rank administrators, as well as tens of thousands of high school graduates. The annual increase in the number of university graduates soon greatly exceeded the number of positions available in the civil service. By the mid-1970s, the civil service employed more than 1.3 million people, and overstaffing became a serious problem in all government ministries. After the government introduced the infitah in 1974, it no longer felt obliged to hire every college graduate. Individual ministries determined the number of new positions that needed to be filled each year; once the quota was met, the names of other applicants were placed on waiting lists. During the 1980s, an average of 250,000 college graduates were waiting at any given time to be called for government jobs; the typical applicant remained on the waiting list for more than three years. This situation caused unrest among middle- and lower-middle-income students who had hoped that higher education would be their ticket to upward mobility.
Whereas the middle class was preoccupied with education and civil service careers, most urban Egyptians, who belonged to the lower class, were concerned about earning a livelihood in an economy characterized by persistent and extensive unemployment and underemployment (see Employment, ch. 3). In terms of occupations and incomes, the lower class was very heterogeneous and comprised three main groups: service providers, skilled workers, and unskilled laborers. The first group included artisans, bakers, barbers, butchers, carpenters, office and sales clerks, cobblers, drivers, household and hotel domestic workers, janitors, small shopkeepers, tailors, street vendors, waiters, and numerous other providers of urban services. The majority of service workers were involved in the large informal sector of the economy; they were not covered by minimum wage laws and did not participate in the social security program. A few service workers, primarily talented artisans and enterprising shopkeepers, earned sufficient money to support a family without the assistance of a second income; the more successful among them actually merged into the lower middle class. The majority of service workers, however, were generally unable to provide adequate food and shelter for a family on the income from one job.
The second lower-class group consisted of skilled workers who were usually employed in private or public factories. Many also worked in the construction industry as electricians, masons, mechanics, painters, and plumbers. Workers in this group tended to prefer jobs in the public sector, which employed approximately 42 percent of the industrial labor force in the 1980s, because government-owned manufacturing enterprises guaranteed job security, paid salaries that were at or above the legal minimum wage, and provided benefits such as routine promotions, raises, paid holidays, and sick leave. Most skilled workers were generally more financially secure than most service workers. Nevertheless, the typical working male who headed a household found it difficult to support a family on one income. To supplement family incomes, most workers held two jobs, permitted their wives or unmarried daughters to work, or received remittances from family members working abroad. Many skilled workers also migrated to other Arab countries where they received higher salaries.
Unskilled laborers comprised the poorest stratum of urban society. Most of them either lacked permanent jobs or were employed in low-wage, menial jobs such as street sweeping, trash collection, sewage-system maintenance, and grave digging. Males with no skills frequently found temporary work on construction sites, especially in Greater Cairo. Intermittent work was also available on the docks of Alexandria and the cities along the Suez Canal. During the 1980s, unskilled workers headed most of the estimated 35 percent of urban households with incomes below the poverty line. According to a study by AID, about half of Egypt's urban population lived in absolute poverty, and most of these lived in households headed by unskilled workers.
The infitah generally had an adverse impact on the lower class. Despite the substantial rise in wages after the mid-1970s, real incomes failed to keep pace with the rampant inflation. Although extensive government subsidies on basic necessities alleviated the worst effects of inflation, most lower-class families spent up to 75 percent of their budgets on food. When the government announced in January 1977 that it would eliminate subsidies on selected "luxury" items, including beer, French bread, refined flour, and granulated sugar, the poor rioted in cities throughout the Delta and Nile Valley. In Cairo the police were unable to control the violence, and the government called in the army to restore order. The government canceled its plan to abolish certain subsidies, and since 1977, it has periodically expanded the whole subsidy program.
In addition to the food subsidies, some members of the lower-class benefited from remittances sent to them from family members who were working abroad. About nine of every ten Egyptians working in other countries were from the lower class. At least 1 million poor families received remittances from fathers or sons who were working in Libya or the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf. The remittances raised household incomes by between 100 percent and 700 percent, resulting in significantly higher living standards. The absence of so many workers had also created a general shortage of trained personnel, a situation that permitted skilled workers to bargain for increasingly higher wages. In the early 1980s, for example, a free-lance tile-setter could earn about as much in one week as a government minister could earn in a month.
Although the living standards of poor families receiving remittances improved after 1974, the lower class, like the middle class, was generally skeptical of the infitah. Both classes benefited from Nasser's policies, which expanded access to education and employment opportunities, but they generally believed that reduced government spending on social programs, pared public sector employment, and increased incentives for private enterprise would undermine gains achieved in the 1950s and 1960s. The upper class, which accounted for less than 10 percent of the total population, supported the infitah because they benefited from policies aimed at easing import-export restrictions and from programs designed to attract foreign investment.
Rural Society
Until the time of Napoleon's invasion, Mamluk fief holders, large landowners, and the chiefs of nomadic tribes controlled rural Egypt. This rural elite--a small fraction of the populace--derived its wealth from land, livestock, and the collection of taxes on commission. Beduin shaykhs lived among and were related to the tribal people over whom they exercised jurisdiction. The large landowners lived in villages and were usually related to some of the other families. The fief holders, predominantly Turkish and Circassian in origin, had the most tenuous links to the villages because they tended to reside in cities and often brutalized the peasants on their estates. Most fellahin (sing., fellah; peasant, from the Arabic verb, falaha, to till the soil), were socioeconomically similar. Village headmen allocated families usufruct right to village land, but the village as a whole was responsible for tax payments.
Rural society changed during the nineteenth century. Rulers made it easier for individuals to own land, and they held individuals responsible for tax payments. Large land grants to court favorites and extensive land registration frauds resulted in concentrated landholdings and an increased number of people who owned large pieces of land. During this period, the government gave tribal shaykhs substantial land grants but required that they permanently farm and occupy their parcels. The move caused many beduins to give up their nomadic way of life. Settled beduins gradually became liable for the same taxes imposed on the fellahin.
Granting land (and government administrative posts) only to shaykhs undermined tribal loyalty and solidarity. The process created a class of wealthy landholders within tribes, and the landlord-tenant relationship proved inimical to the strongly egalitarian traditions of beduin society. As tribal loyalties weakened, shaykhs began marrying prosperous settled Egyptian women, while poorer nomads married within the masses of peasants. Many of the beduin and nontribal owners of large amounts of land pursued economic opportunities in the growing cities and became absentee landlords. Many absentee landlords specialized in commodity trading and controlled Egypt's expanding agricultural exports. They also became involved in the urban credit market. The fellahin sharecroppers who tilled the land of absentee owners became increasingly indebted to the local, usually usurious, moneylenders because their share of crops generally provided insufficient income to support a family for the entire period between harvests.
Private ownership of land and increased production of export crops, especially cotton, also resulted in the emergence of landholders, who owned mid-sized plots of five to fifty feddans. This group competed only marginally with the landed elite but was prosperous by rural standards. In 1990 these mid-sized landowners continued to play an integral role in rural society.
Class differentiation increased among the fellahin throughout the nineteenth century. Small landholders with one to five feddans became poorer but were better off than tenants and sharecroppers. The tenants and sharecroppers were better off than a growing class of landless villagers who earned their livelihoods from casual agricultural labor. (By the end of the nineteenth century, one of every four people in rural areas owned no land.) Landowners who became indebted or fell into tax arrears easily lost their holdings. Until 1926 the government could expropriate land if its owner owed as little as E2 in back taxes.
From the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, large estates continued to consolidate their holdings while small farms fragmented further with each passing generation. From 1896 to the eve of the first land-reform legislation in 1952, the number of landowners with parcels of fewer than five feddans had nearly tripled. The number of large landowners with holdings of at least fifty feddans declined gradually in the same period. Large landowners controlled 33 percent of all cultivated land by 1952 (only 0.5 percent of all landowners were large landowners). In contrast, about 75 percent of all rural property owners were peasants with holdings of less than one feddan. This group owned only 13 percent of the land. The average-sized holding in the under-five-feddan range dropped by 50 percent. The number of mid-sized holders (owning six to fifty feddans) dropped from about 12 percent to 5 percent of all landowners, although their share of cultivated land remained nearly constant at 30 percent.
Frequent incidents of peasant unrest accompanied the changes in rural Egypt. Peasant uprisings, which were usually localized, were all sparked by complaints such as high taxes, intolerable landlord imposts, corv es, foreclosures, and rising rents. Some protests spread throughout a district or region and required extensive military intervention to restore control. Uprisings often took on religious or messianic overtones. By 1950 when an estimated 60 percent of the rural population was landless, it was not uncommon for groups of discontented sharecroppers and tenants to try to seize the land they cultivated.
The Free Officers made land reform a priority after the 1952 Revolution. Continuing into the 1960s, the Free Officers promulgated measures that distributed about 700,000 feddans of land to about 318,000 peasant households, i.e., 13 percent of the cultivated land to 10 percent of the country's rural families. A law in 1952 limited individual landownership to 200 feddans. The law also prevented owners from transferring more than 100 feddans to members of their immediate families; excess holdings had to be sold to small farmers or tenants. The law also limited the amount of cash rents and the percentage of the harvest that absentee owners could collect from tenants and sharecroppers. A law in 1961 limited individual ownership to 100 feddans; another law in 1969 limited it to 50 feddans. These land reforms failed to eliminate large landowners, but they did reduce the group's share of cultivated land from 33 percent of the total to 15 percent between 1952 and 1975.
Peasant smallholders (with fewer than five feddans) were the main beneficiaries of the reforms. In 1952 they owned about 35 percent (2.1 million feddans) of Egypt's cultivated land. By 1965 they owned 52 percent (3.2 million feddans). Although several thousand tenant and sharecropping families were able to purchase tiny parcels (none greater than five feddans) and join the ranks of smallholders, the majority of landless villagers did not benefit from the reforms. Landlords' creativity in exploiting the surplus rural labor market thwarted government efforts to assist these landless villagers. Landlords also learned how to circumvent legislation designed to guarantee sharecroppers half of the harvest. By the 1980s, the combination of rapid population growth, increasing production costs, and high rates of inflation had eroded the gains of the smallholders. An estimated 44 percent of all rural families lived below the officially defined poverty level.
Peasants who owned between eleven and fifty feddans were able to increase their landholdings by purchasing excess land from large landlords. This group of peasants comprised 2.5 percent of all landowners in 1952 and 3 percent in 1965. By the latter date, this group owned 24 percent of all cultivated land.
In 1990 rural society was just as stratified as it had been before the initiation of land reform in 1952. Approximately 11,000 large landowners (those owning more than fifty feddans--less than 0.3 percent of all owners) were still at the top of the social hierarchy. These large landowners were typically absentee landlords and renters who worked in urban areas as merchants, civil servants, professionals, or corporate managers. Although wealthy, they lacked the prerevolutionary landowning elite's influence in rural areas, and their impact on village social relations tended to be limited. Nevertheless, they continued to be influential in national politics and exercised indirect influence in rural areas through their diverse ties to large peasant owners.
The second stratum of rural landowners consisted of two peasant groups, medium holders owning six to ten feddans and large holders owning eleven to fifty feddans. Although this second stratum accounted for only 5.5 percent of all rural landowners, it owned one-third of all the cultivated land. Both groups' holdings were large enough to generate profits from agriculture, and the more prosperous individuals among the groups tended to fill the political role previously held by the large landlords. Large peasant owners in particular exercised significant influence in local and even regional politics. The large holders tended to be commercial farmers with extensive ties to domestic capital and were frequently involved in subsidiary marketing, livestock, and transport enterprises. In most villages, at least one of the peasant families with medium or large landholdings was descended from a lineage that most members of the community considered superior. Farmers in this second stratum have also experienced substantial occupational mobility since 1952. A typical family with several sons would send one or more of them to university to prepare for careers in the civil service, the military, or the professions.
Peasant smallholders (those owning fewer than five feddans) comprised 94 percent of all Egyptian landowners. In general, holdings of fewer than five feddans were too small for profitable agriculture. Consequently, smallholders had to supplement their incomes by working on the land of larger owners, by engaging in other agricultural activities such as raising livestock, or by finding seasonal work in urban areas. Many smallholders rented their plots for part or all of the year to other peasants, especially to those who owned between five and ten feddans. About one-quarter of all land owned by smallholders was leased to larger owners.
Since 1952 there have been no reliable statistics on the number of landless villagers. Although landlessness decreased between 1952 and 1965, it has been rising since the late 1960s. Throughout Egypt the landless constituted perhaps as much as 40 percent of the rural population; the majority lived in the villages of the Delta and Upper Egypt. Landless peasants supported their families by cultivating land for absentee owners as tenants and sharecroppers; by working as agricultural laborers for large peasant owners; by providing village services such as carpentry, blacksmithing, machinery maintenance, and livestock herding; and by migrating to cities and other Arab countries in search of short- and long-term employment. Remittances from adult males working away from home and (stimulated by labor shortages in agriculture) combined to outpace a rise in rural wages inflation and helped to alleviate poverty among the landless peasants--the poorest villagers--in the 1980s.
In 1989 approximately 50 percent of Egypt's population lived in villages. In the past, urban residents had little or no contact with the villagers who produced their food. Most peasants were suspicious of urban landlords and government officials whose presence in the villages coincided with the collection of rent and taxes. But in the twentieth century, extensive rural-urban contacts developed as a result of large-scale migration to the cities, the establishment of government services in villages, and the mass media. Nevertheless, a sharp distinction between rural and urban areas persisted. Wide disparities existed between cities and villages in amenities, services, and educational and health facilities. Mortality rates, especially for infants, and illiteracy rates were notably higher in rural areas (see Population; and Health and Welfare, this ch.).
In the 1980s, temporary migration in search of wage labor was particularly common among villagers in Upper Egypt; men left their families in the care of relatives during the slack agricultural seasons. In some Nubian villages, for example, all males between the ages of eighteen and forty-five were gone for much of the year. Migrants served as intermediaries between rural and urban Egypt and as agents of social change in the village. Because of the increasingly important role of nonagricultural work in the Delta, many villagers found new occupations that resulted in social cleavages. For example, the opportunity to earn a living independent of their fathers permitted men to exercise more freedom from traditional authority figures. Higher education provided upward mobility for substantial numbers of rural children and led to new social distinctions within villages.
The basic unit of village organization was the patrilineal lineage or clan. Composed of various families descended from a common male ancestor four to six generations in the past, a lineage inhabited a specific quarter of the village. Lineages, controlled by elder males, were an integral force in village life and politics. Families gained their identity not as autonomous entities but as part of their larger lineage. Lineages had a corporate identity with a recognized leadership pattern. A man's closest social contacts were with his brothers and cousins. A guest house was used to entertain visitors at the lineage's expense. Various lineages vied for power and influence within the village. The interests of the lineage were frequently more important than the interests of individuals. Propinquity was crucial in settling disputes within a lineage. In conflicts with outsiders, individuals were expected to unite in the interests of their lineage. Propinquity was so important in rural society that to suggest a person had no kin was a profound insult.
Lineages and a general disapproval of the public display of wealth blunted many of the economic disparities within and among village clans. Still, religious feasts and rites of passage provided an opportunity for lineages to display their wealth. Lineages usually invited other lineages to extravagant weddings and other celebrations. Several religious festivals required wealthy people to distribute meat to the less fortunate. Return from the hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) called for elaborate decorations in the pilgrim's house. In general, the socially acceptable means of displaying wealth helped integrate prosperous individuals into the community rather than separate them from it.
A number of changes in the 1980s limited the influence of lineages. In the past, lineage elders maintained their authority by controlling land. But the recent increase in pressure on land has meant that fewer young men would inherit large plots. Many of these young men, realizing they would never own a substantial piece of land, have migrated to cities and other countries and are no longer influenced by their elders. The prevalence of nuclear families in cities has also eroded lineage ties.