Locating the sciences in eighteenth-century Egypt

• Published in: British journal for the history of science 2010-12, Vol.43 (4), p.557-571
• Main Author: MURPHY, JANE H.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Ambivalence; Arts; British; Colonialism - history; Egypt; Egyptian civilization; Elites; Entanglement; France; General points; History of medicine and histology; History of science; History of science and technology; History of social organization of science and scientific research; History, 18th Century; Humans; Intellectuals; Invasion; Knowledge; Middle Eastern politics; Military; Natural history; Ottoman Empire; Palaces; Pedagogy; Political debate; Politics; Positioning; Power; Religious groups; Religious naturalism; Savants; Science; Science - history; Sciences; Scientific communities; Vision
• ISSN: 0007-0874; 1474-001X
• DOI: 10.1017/S0007087410001251

In the last years of the eighteenth century, Egypt famously witnessed the practice of European sciences as embodied in the members of Bonaparte's Commission des sciences et des arts and the newly founded Institut d'Egypte. Less well known are the activities of local eighteenth-century Cairene religious scholars and military elites who were both patrons and practitioners of scientific expertise and producers of hundreds upon hundreds of manuscripts. Through the writings of the French naturalist Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772–1844) and those of the Cairene scholar and chronicler ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Jabartī (1753–1825), I explore Egypt as a site for the practice of the sciences in the late eighteenth century, the palatial urban houses which the French made home to the Institut d'Egypte and their role before the French invasion, and the conception of the relationship between the sciences and social politics that each man sought. Ultimately, I argue that Geoffroy's struggle to create scientific neutrality in the midst of intensely tumultuous political realities came to a surprising head with his fixation on Paris as the site for the practice of natural history, while al-Jabartī’s embrace of this entanglement of knowledge and power led to a vision of scientific expertise that was specifically located in his Cairene society, but which – as Geoffroy himself demonstrated – could be readily adapted almost anywhere.