「徴兵免除」嘆願文書に見る一九世紀中葉エジプトの農村社會

Abstract

The recruitment of fallahs (peasants) for military service in the nineteenth century affected the foundations of Egyptian agrarian society because it deprived the Egyptian rural areas of agricultural labor. The fallahs hated the conscription as a "blood tax" and ventured to present petitions directly to the central government, a form of protest which was officially permitted for fallahs in those days. The sentiments of fallahs regarding conscription are well reflected in their petitions for exemption from military service for sons who were drafted. The aim of this article is to point out some characteristics of Egyptian agrarian society in the mid-nineteenth century by analyzing the form and contents of thirty-six petitions related to conscription. These documents are among the unpublished documents called mahafiz ma'iya saniya turki in the Egyptian National Archives (Dar al-watha'iq al-Qawmlya). This article consists of five chapters. The first and second describe the thirty-six petitions in terms of their form and contents. The third, fourth and fifth analyze the contents of the petitions with respect to the mechanisms of village control, the organization of the village and the structure of the family respectively.