Age of the Efendiyya

In colonial-era Egypt a new social category of modern men emerged the <em>efendiyya</em>. Working as bureaucrats teachers journalists free professionals and public intellectuals the <em>efendiyya</em> represented the new middle class elite. They were the experts who drafted and carried out the state's modernisation policies and the makers as well as majority consumers of modern forms of politics and national culture. As simultaneously authentic and modern they assumed a key political role in the anti-colonial movement and in the building of a modern state both before and after the revolution of 1952. <p/>Lucie Ryzova explores where these self-consciously modern men came from and how they came to be such major figures by examining multiple social cultural and institutional contexts. These contexts include the social strategies pursued by traditional households responding to new opportunities for social mobility; modern schools as vehicles for new forms of knowledge dissemination which had the potential to redefine social authority; but also include new forms of youth culture student rituals peer networks and urban popular culture. The most common modes of self-expression among the <em>effendiyya</em> were through politics and writing (either literature or autobiography). This articulated an <em>efendi</em> culture imbued with a sense of mission duty and entitlement and defined the ways in which their social experiences played into the making of modern Egyptian culture and politics.<br>