The Age of the Efendiyya: Passages to Modernity in National-Colonial Egypt by Lucie Ryzova (review)

A welcome and carefully researched addition to the substantial literature on the Egyptian effendiyya, Lucie Ryzova's Age of the Efendiyya explores the emergence of this group from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century as the "first self-consciously modern generation in Egyptian history" (4).¹ Ryzova identifies her subjects as "the white-collar workers" who staffed the modern bureaucracy and pursued careers as lawyers, doctors, architects, teachers, and writers. At the same time, she defines the effendiyya not primarily in terms of class or education but rather in terms of orientation toward the modern: an effendi is "an Egyptian who actively claims to be modern" (8).

Arguing that previous scholars have not attended closely enough to the emergence of the effendiyya, Ryzova focuses on social origins as the "basic question of this book": "Where did this generation of self-consciously modern and middle-class-claiming men come from, and how did they come to be?" (4–5). The second question of the book is more cultural, namely, "How did this modern Egyptian subject—the efendi—construct himself," and, more specifically, how did he come to "perceive [himself] as modern" (5)? In pursuing her answers, Ryzova draws on sources such as films, autobiographies, novels, photographs, and periodicals (especially advertisements) to produce a "'thick' description of the efendi, of vernacular modernity" (31).

The second question is explored first, in chapter 2, which argues convincingly that the effendi constructed himself against his two "class others"—the aristocracy or colonial elite, on the one hand, and the poor and traditional awlad al-balad (peasants or villagers), on the other (5). He accomplished this not through a synthesis of the modern and the traditional but through the "mastery of both codes" and his "capacity to claim either of the two social registers in the proper social context" (36, 87). Thus an effendi was formed both through his successful claim to be modern and through his "refusal to assimilate into a compromised cultural elite" that was not traditional enough (23). It is, in part, an argument for an Egyptian "indigenous modernity," against what Ryzova somewhat superficially characterizes as the argument of "post-colonial theorists" that "efendi culture was merely about drawing a boundary between itself and its past and striving to imitate the colonizer" (175). "Efendi texts," she argues, constructed their subject "as the only positive character, the only solution to a border problem. One has too much tradition (is un-modern), the other has too much modernity or, better, a wrongly understood modernity. The efendi character is always right" (85).

A significant contribution of the book to current scholarship is chapter 3, "Hearts Full of Hope," which answers the "basic question" about social origins through a rich exploration of the strategies pursued by "middling" families so that at least one of their sons could acquire a modern education. These strategies were informed by "distinctly modern perceptions of social mobility" (5) but also drew on premodern practices and values. The long-standing ethic of diversifying the careers of sons as a social insurance policy for the entire family meant that sending one or two off for a modern education was not a great leap, while existing assumptions that the eldest son would take over his father's profession and/or pursue religious training meant that a first-generation effendi was usually a younger son. The chapter concludes that "the logic governing educational and career choices for male offspring as an investment in a collective future was predicated on a rather traditional patriarchal model. The social and economic strategies through which schooling was often achieved were equally ages-old" (137). Yet Ryzova argues that such decisions should not be categorized as either modern or traditional, because they drew on both strategies and, in the process, created something different (6).

Diverging from scholarship that she argues focuses on curricular content or institutional history, Ryzova explores modern schooling as a...