A Nobility of the Spirit: Lineage, Household, and State in Ottoman Egypt

Title: A Nobility of the Spirit: Lineage, Household, and State in Ottoman Egypt

Speaker: Adam Sabra, Professor of History and King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud Chair in Islamic Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara. His research focuses on the social and cultural history of Mamluk and Ottoman Egypt, with a special interest in Sufism.

Synopsis: The Ottoman period witnessed the rise of a scholarly nobility in Egypt of unprecedented wealth, influence, and durability. This lecture will examine the causes of this fundamental change in Egyptian society through the lens of a single scholarly lineage. The Bakrī Lords (al-Sāda al-Bakrīya) were jurists, political advisors to Ottoman governors, and much more, but the lineage's preeminent status among Egypt's scholars was legitimated by its reputation for inherited sanctity, culminating in appointment to the office of naqīb al-ashrāf in the eighteenth century.