ABSTRACT
As the title of this book indicates, it investigates and assesses Egyptian attitudes toward the Ottomans. The historian undertaking such a task is faced with complicated methodological problems. To what extent were the writers of the chronicles representative of their society? We have seen that Ibn Iyas expresses the pain of the fallen Mamluks. Many of the latter chroniclers were ulama and bureaucrats, who spoke for specific sectors of society and who were dependent on the goodwill of Ottoman rulers. One should also beware of the pitfall of anachronistic interpretations of premodern sentiments. Although ethnic tensions did exist in Ottoman times, they had nothing to do with nationalistic ideologies, which emerged only in the second half of the nineteenth century. Moreover, the Ottomans as they appear in the writings of Arab chroniclers, biographers, mystics and travellers are not necessarily the Ottomans of objective truth, if indeed it exists at all in the matters with which we are concerned.1
