ABSTRACT
Several modern historians have used Arabic and European sources to present a coherent picture of the main political events concerning the establishment of Ottoman rule in Egypt up to 1525. These accounts, however, omit almost entirely an element that played a central role in the stormy period following the conquest, namely the bedouins, or to use the term of the contemporary sources-Arabs (‛Arab, ‛Urban, or A‛rab). This lacuna, which the present chapter attempts to fill, was caused primarily by neglect of Turkish sources, which contain considerable information on the Arabs.
