Love and money in eighteenth-century Egyptian literature

Until recent decades, mainstream studies on the history of Ottoman Egypt considered the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to be a period of decline. Political institutions were seen as being corrupt, the ruling classes exploited the population and peasants suffered from over-taxation, while artisans and traders were denied any possibilities of economic growth. Some of the reasons given to explain this situation were the lack of patronage from Egypt’s rulers and the fact that they often knew little or no Arabic.