The boldness of this slim volume is both its strength and its weakness. Nelly Hanna, a renowned scholar of Egyptian society and economy, pursues two goals: to stress the wide-ranging economic contribution of artisans in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Cairo, and to argue for its impact on nineteenth-century Egyptian capitalism. Scattered evidence drawn from court records offer uneven, if intriguing evidence in support of the first goal. The latter argument emerges as a corollary of the former more than it is substantiated. Overall, the book is intended as a forceful rebuttal to a long tradition of Eurocentric scholarship for which “the non-European world followed a traditional economy until Western influence introduced it to modern economies” (p. 5). Specifically in reference to Egypt, Hanna contests prevailing interpretations that conceive colonialism or, alternatively, merchants involved in long-distance trade and the state as the sole propagators of modernity. By contrast, Hanna posits the existence of a “capitalism from below” (146). In so doing, she clearly responds to a commitment to restore not only the economic centrality but also the dignity of the laboring classes.

The analytical premise of this study is compelling: to identify a plurality of forms of early modern capitalism as they emerge from the sources documenting concrete economic practices. For Hanna, Cairo's artisans were occupied in a wide range of economic organizations, including “‘artisan capitalism,’ in which they ran enterprises that employed many works, and ‘artisan entrepreneurship,’ in which artisans undertook and supervised a number of traders or crafts in order to increase their revenues” (12). “Artisan entrepreneurs” were those who “made use of the commercial practices that we usually associate with merchants … and were less tied to guild rules, but at the same time were very much part of the artisan community” (57). Regrettably, these definitions, which are fairly vague, are applied to a myriad of examples but do not offer a grid for systematic analysis.

The more immediate target of this book is the literature on Egyptian and Ottoman guilds. Complementing influential studies by André Raymond, Suraiya Faroqhi, and others and informed by a bourgeoning historiography on early modern European guilds, Hanna counters assumptions about guilds' conservatism by demonstrating the manifold ramifications of the artisan economy, including the integration of rural production and international trade and the use of old or new types of contracts to raise and transmit capital. From sparse comments we learn that eighteenth-century Cairo had “250 or more guilds” (169), textile workers amounted to twelve thousand individuals, and linseed oil pressing employed some two thousand people (33). The focus on the textile and linseed oil sectors helps Hanna show that the phenomena she seeks to describe were at play both in an export-dominated sector (textiles) and in one aimed at domestic consumption and the Holy economy (linseed oil). Chapters 4 through 6 offer ample evidence of the dynamism of Cairo's artisan groups and their evolution over time. In the seventeenth century we encounter cases of “unprecedented social mobility” (106). In the eighteenth century, artisan entrepreneurs reacted to increased monetization and the consolidation of Mamluk dynasties. Through anecdotes and vignettes, Hanna succeeds in convincing readers that Cairo's urban economy between 1600 and 1800 was highly commercialized. But the reach and concrete forms of this commercialization remain elusive.

This elusiveness is at odds with the book's bold claims and ultimately makes even sympathetic readers wonder why Hanna chose to envelop a thin body of evidence in a thick ideological mantel inspired by Peter Gran's Islamic Roots of Capitalism (1979). If her earlier work offered both specialists and non-specialists innovative analyses of early modern Muslim economies and cultures, this time she paves the way for future scholars who, through more rigorous empirical research and more pointed comparisons to Europe, will be able to clarify the specificities of Egyptian economic systems.