Fellah

For the Arabic word for "success" or "victory" in the context of Islam, see Falah. For the star, see 67 Ophiuchi.

A fellah (Arabic: فَلَّاح fallāḥ; feminine فَلَّاحَة fallāḥa; plural fellaheen or fellahin, فلاحين, fallāḥīn) is a local farmer, usually a farmer or agricultural laborer in the Middle East and North Africa. The word derives from the Arabic word for "ploughman" or "tiller".

Fellahin children harvesting crops in Egypt

Due to a continuity in beliefs and lifestyle with that of the Ancient Egyptians, the fellahin of Egypt have been described as the "true" Egyptians.^[1]

Origins and usage

An Egyptian farming family from the Cairo Governorate

"Fellahin", throughout the Middle East in the Islamic periods, referred to native villagers and farmers.^[2] It is translated as "peasants" or "farmers".^[3][4] Fellahin were distinguished from the effendi (land-owning class),^[5] although the fellahin in this region might be tenant farmers, smallholders, or live in a village that owned the land communally.^[6][7] Others applied the term fellahin only to landless workers.^[8]

In Egypt

A group of Egyptian fellahs, 1955

The Fellahin are rural villagers indigenous to Egypt, whose agricultural methods may have contributed to the rise of Ancient Egypt. The Fellahin are mostly Muslims who live in the Nile Valley.^[9]

After the Muslim conquest, the rulers called the common masses of farmers fellahin because they worked in agriculture and due to their connection to their lands.^[3]

The Egyptologist E. A. Wallis Budge, wrote with regards to the Egyptian fellah: "...no amount of alien blood has so far succeeded in destroying the fundamental characteristics, both physical and mental, of the 'dweller of the Nile mud,' i.e. the fellah, or tiller of the ground who is today what he has ever been."^[10] He would rephrase stating, "the physical type of the Egyptian fellah is exactly what it was in the earliest dynasties.^[11]

Fellah women in Egypt, 1860s-1920s

The percentage of fellahin in Egypt was much higher than it is now in the early 20th century, before large numbers migrated into urban towns and cities. In 1927, anthropologist Winifred Blackman, author of The Fellahin of Upper Egypt, conducted ethnographic research on the life of Upper Egyptian farmers and concluded that there were observable continuities between the cultural and religious beliefs and practices of the fellahin and those of ancient Egyptians.^[12][13]

In 2005, they comprised some 60 percent of the total Egyptian population.^[14]

In the Levant

In the Levant, specifically in Palestine, Jordan and Hauran, the term fellahin was used to refer to the majority of the countryside.^[15] The term fallah was also applied to native people from several regions in the North Africa and the Middle East, also including those of Cyprus.

In Dobruja

Main article: Dobrujan Arabs

During the nineteenth century, some Muslim Fellah families from Ottoman Syria settled in Dobruja, a region now divided between Bulgaria and Romania, then part of the Ottoman Empire. They fully intermingled with the Turks and Tatars, and were Turkified.^[16]

Gallery

• 
  Fellahin with hoes in the fields near Cairo
• 
  Fellahin using a traditional agricultural plow

See also

• Copts, Egyptian Christian Orthodox
• Peasant