farmer

In "e;The Peasant: His Economic and Social Conditions,"e; Youssef Nahhas paints an accurate and realistic portrait of the life of the Egyptian peasant in the early twentieth century, revealing the features of his suffering spanning the ages. From the cruelty of the Mamluks, who confiscated his land and extorted his crops under the unjust "e;Iltizam"e; laws, to the glimmer of hope brought by the era of Muhammad Ali with his agrarian reforms and major irrigation projects, the author navigates the pages of history to reveal how the peasant remained the pillar of agriculture and the source of livelihood for the nation, yet remained hostage to successive policies and major events that swept Egypt. This book exposes the reader to the naked reality of the lives of the common people, between inexhaustible patience and unquenched ambition, and makes the peasant an honest mirror of Egypt's social and economic history.