Overview

In Quest of Justice provides the first full account of the establishment and workings of a new kind of state in Egypt in the modern period. Drawing on groundbreaking research in the Egyptian archives, this highly original book shows how the state affected those subject to it and their response. Illustrating how shari’a was actually implemented, how criminal justice functioned, and how scientific-medical knowledges and practices were introduced, Khaled Fahmy offers exciting new interpretations that are neither colonial nor nationalist. Moreover he shows how lower-class Egyptians did not see modern practices that fused medical and legal purposes in new ways as contrary to Islam. This is a major contribution to our understanding of Islam and modernity. 

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9780520395619

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Fahmy's archive-centered iconoclasm of traditional binaries and ideas of ahistorical essences targets the grand narratives about modernity in the Middle East-Islamism, Orientalism and nationalism-at the same time as bringing a focus on gritty neglected aspects of modernization in academia. * Bustan: The Middle East Book Review * Ambitious in its scope and elegant in its organization, Khaled Fahmy's In Quest of Justice is a significant intervention in the fields of legal and medical history in modern Egypt and the Middle East. By interweaving law and forensic medicine, Fahmy takes on several prominent debates in Middle East studies. * Arab Studies Journal * In Quest of Justice makes a significant contribution to this scholarly momentum by offering a historical reconstruction and analysis of the connection between medicine and law in nineteenth-century Egypt. * Bulletin of the History of Medicine * Provides a fascinating account of the rise of a state apparatus in Egypt during the nineteenth century. . . . The book represents a level of reflection and an unrivaled knowledge of the archive that can only spring from a distinguished career and years of research. This veritable chef d'oeuvre will serve as a key text for many students and scholars of Egyptian and Middle Eastern history. * American Historical Review * In Quest of Justice makes a significant contribution to . . . scholarly momentum by offering a historical reconstruction and analysis of the connection between medicine and law in nineteenth-century Egypt. * Bulletin of the History of Medicine * The book is written in an elegant style that reads as smoothly as good fiction. . . . Fahmy's interest in legal medicine in nineteenth-century Egypt has led him to make a groundbreaking contribution to Islamic legal studies as well as produce a novel history of the emergence of the modern Egyptian state . . . Above all, In Quest of Justice is a book written with passion and animated by a deep, moving love for Egypt and for its people. * Journal of the American Oriental Society *

Author Information

Khaled Fahmy is Sultan Qaboos bin Sa’id Professor of Modern Arabic Studies at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of All the Pasha’s Men: Mehmed Ali, His Army and the Making of Modern Egypt. 

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