Fallahin

A fellah ( ; feminine ; plural ''fellaheen'' or ''fellahin'', , ) is a local peasant, usually a farmer or agricultural laborer in the Middle East and North Africa. The word derives from the Arabic word for "ploughman" or "tiller".

Due to a continuity in beliefs and lifestyle with that of the Ancient Egyptians, the fellahin of Egypt have been described as the "true" Egyptians.

Origins and usage

"Fellahin", throughout the Middle East in the Islamic periods, referred to native villagers and farmers. It is translated as "peasants" or "farmers". Fellahin were distinguished from the ''effendi'' (land-owning class), although the fellahin in this region might be tenant farmers, smallholders, or live in a village that owned the land communally. Others applied the term ''fellahin'' only to landless workers.

In Egypt

The Fellahin are rural villagers indigenous to Egypt, whose agricultural methods may have contributed to the rise of Ancient Egypt. The Fellahin are mostly Muslims who live in the Nile Valley.

After the Muslim conquest, the rulers called the common masses of indigenous peasants ''fellahin'' (peasants or farmers) because their ancient work of agriculture and connecting to their lands was different from the Jews who were traders and the Byzantine Greeks, who were the ruling class. With the passage of time, the name took on an ethnic character, and the Arab elites to some extent used the term ''fellah'' synonymously with "indigenous Egyptian". And when a Christian Egyptian (''copt'' or ''qibt'') converted to Islam, he was called ''falih'' which means "winner" or "victorious".

The Egyptologist E. A. Wallis Budge, wrote with regards to the Egyptian fellah: "...no amount of alien blood has so far succeeded in destroying the fundamental characteristics, both physical and mental, of the 'dweller of the Nile mud,' i.e. the fellah, or tiller of the ground who is today what he has ever been." He would rephrase stating, "the physical type of the Egyptian fellah is exactly what it was in the earliest dynasties. The invasions of the Babylonians, Hyksos, Ethiopians, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, and Turks, have had no permanent effect either on their physical or mental characteristics."
The percentage of ''fellahin'' in Egypt was much higher than it is now in the early 20th century, before large numbers migrated into urban towns and cities. In 1927, anthropologist Winifred Blackman, author of ''The Fellahin of Upper Egypt'', conducted ethnographic research on the life of Upper Egyptian farmers and concluded that there were observable continuities between the cultural and religious beliefs and practices of the ''fellahin'' and those of ancient Egyptians.

In 2003, the fellahin were still leading humble lives and living in mud-brick houses, like their ancient ancestors. In 2005, they comprised some 60 percent of the total Egyptian population.

In the Levant

In the Levant, specifically in Palestine, Jordan and Hauran, the term ''fellahin'' was used to refer to the majority native peasantry of the countryside. The term ''fallah'' was also applied to native people from several regions in the North Africa and the Middle East, also including those of Cyprus.

In Dobruja

During the nineteenth century, some Muslim Fellah families from Ottoman Syria settled in Dobruja, a region now divided between Bulgaria and Romania, then part of the Ottoman Empire. They fully intermingled with the Turks and Tatars, and were Turkified.

Gallery

File:Egypt, Fellahin in the Fields, Cairo.jpg, ''Fellahin'' with hoes in the fields near Cairo
File:Egypt, Plowmen and Team, Cairo.jpg, ''Fellahin'' using a traditional agricultural plow

See also

*Copts, Egyptian Christian Orthodox
*Peasant

References

External links

Egypt's forgotten fellahin

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Egyptian farmers
Indigenous peoples of North Africa
Social history of Egypt
Israeli farmers