The Striking Cabbies of Cairo and Other Stories: Crafts and Guilds in Egypt, 1863-1914

3. Petitions and Protests under Isma’il

3 Petitions and Protests under Isma’il ⠖⠗⠖⠗⠖⠗⠖⠗⠖⠗⠖⠗⠖⠗⠖⠗ Hey! Hey! Pasha of Pashas! Our Pasha has gone to the north and is never coming back. —Construction workers’ song, Upper Egypt, 1900s estructuring of productive relations was only the economic dimension of crafts and service workers’ response to the pressures of the 1860s and 1870s. Urban workers also reorganized and engaged in new forms of collective action in defense of their interests. Where guilds were becoming increasingly incapable of defending members collectively against higher taxes, economic change, and local exploitation, crafts and service workers sought alternatives. In particular, they tried to draw in state intervention in attempts to change the terms of their restructuring . They wrote petitions to the authorities, brought court cases, and mobilized resources collectively in sub- and extraguild networks. They appealed to government regulations, and less frequently, customary practice. They often depicted themselves as loyal subjects in search of the mercy of a just ruler, but increasingly asserted a kind of citizenship. Where attempts to engage the state officially through formal and collective claim making failed, guild members and crafts workers often resorted to more illicit “weapons of the weak,” dodging taxes, subverting regulations, creating unof ficial networks, and bribing officials. Crafts workers’ mobilization played a significant role in bringing down their guilds, and had some impact on shaping the form of state intervention in craft affairs, but was largely unable to change the terms of restructuring. 67 R Co-opting the Guilds Like his grandfather, Ismail did not see the need to abolish the guilds, but again sought to use them in the service of state building. Most importantly, guild shaykhs were used to assess and collect existing, increased, and new taxes. As West, reporting on Suez in 1870, wrote, “all taxes” were collected by the guild shaykh.1 Ali Mubarak agreed.2 The rising professional tax (wirku) levied on the profits of all merchants, artisans, and service workers in Egypt (arbab al-karat) continued to be assessed and collected by the guild shaykh in the 1860s and 1870s. When the octroi returned under Isma’il in the 1860s (it had been abolished under Sa’id), the guild shaykh was to assist in its assessment.3 The government also used shaykhs to collect many of the smaller dues which proliferated during these years. In 1878, for example, the head of the expanding guild of boatmen (murakibiyya) in Alexandria was instructed to levy a tax on every 198 litres of dry goods transported by his boatmen.4 After 1868, the heads of the construction guilds were supposed to sign a statement on appointment affirming, among other things, that they would do what is necessary “in the assessment of [the guild members’] tax bracket and what is fixed for them.”5 Further, the close link between guild activity and taxation is continuously underlined in the hundreds of petitions sent by guild members on guild-related matters to the government, where the majority of such petitions during the 1860s and 1870s were connected in one way or another with taxation. Overall it was not without some justi- fication that in 1870 Borg wrote, “[The guilds’] object at the present time is to facilitate the levying of the capitation and other taxes, and to secure the due execution of the works required by Government.”6 Under Ismail, it would appear that the character of the guild as a unit of taxation became more marked than ever before.7 These policies heavily compromised the ability of the guilds to protect their members in the face of what were becoming punitive fiscal demands , for the guilds, of course, were the very instrument through which the government raised such taxes. Guild leaders thus found themselves in a precarious situation, for they were supposed to deliver higher taxes to the government, while simultaneously maintaining support within the guild.8 For although the government expected more from guild shaykhs, seeking to make them fulfil statelike functions, it did not propose to pay them a salary or to subsume them into the bureaucracy. Indeed, most shaykhs remained practising masters of their trades, and effectively received monies in return for their duties—not from the government, but from customary dues owed them by guild members. Responsibility for taxation certainly in 68 The Striking Cabbies of Cairo and Other Stories some sense bolstered the shaykh’s position at the local level (it...