A Tale of Two Villages: Family, Property, and Economic Activity in Rural Egypt in the 1840s

The example of the villages of Badaway and Damas in the eastern Nile Delta in the 1840's shows how families of rural notables succeeded in improving their social and economic status in the Egypt of Muhammad Ali. Evidence from tax and census documents indicates that multiple-family households were becoming the dominant form of organization and that the dominant family in each village was characterized by a large household containing several family generations, slaves, and retainers. The more land a family owned, the more complex was the household, and polygamy was more common among landholding families. Nonetheless, the trend toward multiple-family households is also discernible among the landless and nonagricultural families, probably for cultural rather than economic reasons.