ABSTRACT
Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti (1753–1825) was a Muslim scholar in Egypt, at the time the largest province of the Ottoman Empire. The French invasion of Egypt in 1798 spurred al-Jabarti to compose a detailed chronicle of the first six months of the occupation, followed by a more critical account after the Ottomans reclaimed the province in 1801. He later continued his narrative until a few years before his death. The resulting work, Marvelous Chronicles: Biographies and Events, is an indispensable source for the history of Ottoman Egypt. Marvelous Chronicles documents the loss of the only society al-Jabarti had ever known. After the French evacuation, the return of the previous regime of administrators of Georgian mamluk [elite slave] origin was derailed by the rise of Mehmed Ali Pasha—a strongman from what is now north-eastern Greece—who arrived in Egypt with the Ottoman army dispatched to oversee the French withdrawal. By playing his rivals off against each other, Mehmed Ali clawed his way to the governorship of the province in 1805, a post he held until 1848. His overhaul of Egypt's institutions completed the loss of the society that had shaped al-Jabarti. Marvelous Chronicles is a testimony to this loss.
