ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to conceptually frame and document the socio-cultural development during late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Cairo. Literature of the political history of Cairo during that period proved that the hawari was an essential base for resisting British occupation. The chapter focuses on the turn of the twentieth century as the temporal agent for such a significant change in the image as well as in the lifestyle. Early forces of change emerged when western-educated Egyptian elites, on returning home from their educational missions in Europe, were appointed to lead national governmental and cultural institutions. Families and descendants of many old families remained in Old Cairo, while those of the higher order had left the old city in search of a new modern life by the turn of the century. Meanwhile, the emerging heavy presence of migrants and their relative financial and spatial autonomy allowed them a private domain of independent practice and sub-culture.
