Egypt of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has long been a focus for study by social scientists and humanists of various disciplines. To an extensive bibliography is now added a unique work of social history that explores the lives of Egypt's poor and the shifting attitudes toward them over 150 years. Mine Ener has written an account of how the poor of Cairo and Alexandria negotiated assistance from traditional institutions and government agencies alike, and how the nature of institutions offering assistance changed during this time. She posited that, for much of this period, the attitude of successive Egyptian governments toward the poor was one infused with an Islamic ethos of charity and informed by shifting political concerns. Continuous evidence of government behavior—from Mehmet Ali Pasha in the early nineteenth century to King Farouk in the mid-twentieth—demonstrates that the source of charity was never thoroughly depersonalized. Each one claimed to be the source of assistance and couched his claims in the language of the concerned and conscientious Muslim ruler.

For a long time, policies were aimed generally at managing the poor rather than policing or provisioning them. Gradually, however, rational and secular ideas shifted perceptions of the poor and led to a more insistent differentiation between able-bodied and dependent people, and to the criminalization of begging and vagrancy. Meanwhile, associations joined government and private efforts to provide poor relief. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these changes in attitude and behavior toward the poor took place in the context of emergent Egyptian nationalism, and caring for the poor became one aspect of nation building.

The present work is important because it is grounded in real examples of poor individuals, and shows the stages of the bureaucratization and depersonalization of assistance in Egypt. Ener drew on a rich mixture of source materials, including police, endowment, judicial, and other archives in Egypt; English administrative materials from the Public Record Office; and police records from Istanbul. In addition, she examined Egyptian and foreign newspapers, local histories, and foreign travel accounts. To these Ener brought an historian's eye and an anthropologist's ear, giving careful attention to the details about impoverished and needy people who have long been missing from historical analyses in the Middle East.

Ener was one of a growing group of scholars of Middle Eastern and Islamic societies asking questions about the roles of charity, the shifting mix of assistance to include government agencies and private associations alongside individual giving, concepts of poverty, and the place of the poor in history. In her discussion of Egypt, she engaged with ideas and episodes in Ottoman, European, and American history in order to highlight Egyptian specificity while demonstrating the ways in which Egypt both responded to and provoked outside reaction. Charity became a tool of political competition both with domestic and foreign groups, as well as foreign governments. Ener's work and ideas are also important for those exploring the nature of state-formation and nation building. At the same time, she has written a history of charity that resonates with anyone engaged in the study or pursuit of charity/aid/welfare endeavors in the world today. Our only regret is that this book is her last, due to her untimely death in August 2003.