The Waseda IAS center held its first seminar on its solicited research topic “Cities and Villages of the Nile Delta through the Ages: Environments, Technologies, and Survival Strategies” on May 13th (Fri) 2011 at Waseda building 120-1, room 201-1.

Professor HASEBE began his presentation by noting the significance and objectives of the “Cities and Villages of the Nile Delta through the Ages: Environments, Technologies, and Survival Strategies” research work, which began in April 2011 at the Waseda University research center for the Ministry of Education’s “Project for the Promotion of Distinctive Joint Research”.

He said that research on Ottoman empire era Egyptian cities moves forward while research on its villages has stagnated. In this regard, he noted the importance of research on the Nile’s delta region, and pointed to sharia court records as valuable sources for such research. He said that these court records contain a wealth of information on the surrounding communities, and are also important sources in the study of agriculture. Actually, he presented quite a few specifics on the surrounding communities that he himself had found by reading through sharia court records from the major northern Nile delta city of al-Mahalla al-Kubra, giving us a fleeting glimpse of the wealth of information in these documents.

In these court records, he also found a large trove of information on the event described in the title of this presentation, the 1686 Attack on Flax Shipments. His analysis addressed the scale of marine transportation of flax, and the deep influence of the Rosetta shopkeepers on flax distribution, and revealed many interesting facts, such as information on the birthplaces of the men who handled the shipping. He also showed how the diverse inhabitants of the Nile delta area connected the cities and villages involved in the flax trade.

He also bemoaned the fact that, despite flax’s broad production and consumption throughout Egypt from ancient times up to the modern era, there has been little research done on flax, which even rivaled cotton for importance in modern Egypt. He feels that more investigations into flax are needed, along the lines of his own case studies.

As you would guess from the above, his presentation wound up largely a discussion of the staple crop of flax and the vital role of marine transportation of goods and people in Egypt up to modern times, attempting to paint an accurate picture of agriculture in Egypt. In that sense, this first seminar of the new research project showed promise for strong questions concerning the natural environment and related technologies.

Report by: KATSUNUMA Satoshi (Researcher, Univ. of Tokyo, Dept. of Applied Ethics, and Life and Death Studies)