Port Sa'īd, 1859-1882: Nothing But Scum Jettisoned Upon the Edge of the Desert. Migration and Gender in a Provincial Port-City

The Egyptian and Mediterranean city of Port Sa'īd was founded in 1859, upon the inception of the Suez Canal works. The city soon became a stop-over in the global trajectories of goods as well as of laborers, migrants, and travelers. In 1867, the population was estimated at 25,770. That included men, children, and women, although these are relegated to marginalia in the literature on the technological and imperial feat of Suez, often portrayed as an exclusively male accomplishment. Women, in fact, were also migrating to Egypt from various countries bordering the Mediterranean, from Syria, as well as from the rest of Egypt. The archives speak of women who ran inns, owned bars and coffee-houses, worked as waitresses, nannies, or prostitutes. Misery, failure, domestic violence, but also resilience and independence vividly emerge. Thanks to Egyptian, British, French, and Italian sources of various kinds, I analyze the physical settings and the urban arrangements of migrant communities in Port Sa'īd as primary documents to understand the city’s social layout. Through the lens of gender, I explore the ways in which communities interacted and authorities of various kinds attempted to control the urban space and its denizens. Overall, my work intends to show how the production of urban space in a late 19^th-century Middle Eastern port-city was explicitly centered on the regulation of gender, public space, social control, and racial exclusion. And it strives to de-center and displace Egyptian history by situating a provincial center in the reach of the historical spadework.