Isqat Al-Nizam

Overview

For the past decade, Egypt has been awaiting a change in its leadership: but the dynastic successions that took place in several other Arab countries in the 1999-2000 (Morocco, Jordan, and Syria) caused many both inside and outside Egypt to believe that a similar course of events here was practically a fait accompli. That logic was abruptly overturned by a spontaneous revolt by Tunisians, whose president fled on 14 January, followed by an eighteen-day uprising throughout Egypt (25 January-11 February) which ended with President Mubarak’s resignation.

Created by student's enrolled in HIST 412 during the Spring 2011 semester, the Isqat Al-Nizam section includes background information on the January 25th Revolution, social media analyses, and a biographical dictionary of the uprising.

Categories

Biographical Dictionary of the Egyptian Revolution, 2011

The entries in this biographical dictionary were composed by students in HIST 412, "Isqat al-Nizam," a course in the comparative study of revolutions. The entries given here represent the final assignment of the students in the course, and are intended as a guide to help those interested in the study of current events in Egypt. Many of the personalities profiled here are not widely known in the Western press, but have been important in the evolution of events in Egypt.

Historical and Socioeconomic Background for the 2011 Egyptian Uprising

This page highlights certain structural factors that contributed to the 2011 Egyptian Uprising. It focuses on four interconnected variables: socioeconomic issues,the institutionalization of the coercive security apparatus (patrimonialism),international support networks, and popular mobilization (or lack thereof).

Role of Social Media in the January 25th Revolution

Entries in this category analyze Twitter feeds, YouTube videos, and other online social networks. The category also makes comparisons between western news coverage of the demonstrations and reports gleaned from social networks.

Acknowledgement

The dictionary originated as a cooperative final project undertaken by students in Dr. David Blanks’ and Dr. Michael Reimer’s sections of HIST 412, “Isqat al-Nizam.” Each students was asked to prepare biographical entries for several prominent personalities, from among the ancien régime, the transitional government(s), the media, Egypt’s political parties, and a wide range of revolutionary activists.

The students who comprised Dr. Blanks’ section were: Ahmed El Ahwal, Aya Fahmy, Aya Sheta, Basma Serag, Clotilde Malauzat, Dina Moussa, Mahinour Alam El Deen, Mai Hassan, Mariam Mellek, Mohamed Allam, Mohammed El-Sheshtawy, Nada Mansour, Salma El Maghraby, Sara Elkasrawy, Seham Kafafi, Selim Youssef, Shereen El Gallal, Shereen Kabil, Taher El Khateeb, and Wioletta Uluszczak. The students who comprised Dr. Reimer’s were: Hesham Abdelbary, Hedy Abdou, Amr Abozeid, Laila Afifi, Nareman Amin, Monica Baky, Soliman El Aaser, Nesma El Shazly, Mahinour El-Badrawi, Arwa Gaballa, Mostafa Hanafi, Nathanael Mannone, Sara Meleika, Jennifer Melis, Salah Moones, Robert Raimond, and Wessam Zaky. It is a pleasure to acknowledge all of the students in this course who made original, substantive contributions to the dictionary, whose work forms the basis of this dictionary. However, for a variety of reasons, not least of which is the fact that the revolution has continued to unfold in dramatic ways since May 2011, when the class terminated and the final project was due, it was thought prudent to edit, update, and expand the dictionary, in the hope of making it available as a resource to a wide variety of users. For this purpose, Dr. Michael Reimer received a special grant for research on Egypt’s revolution from the Provost’s Office of the American University in Cairo. Many thanks go to the Provost’s office for this funding, and to Dr. Khaled Fahmy, Chair of the History Department, and Dr. Graham Harman, Associate Provost for Research Administration, for their enthusiastic support of the project. His research assistant for this phase of the project was Ms. Nareman Amin, a recent graduate of the American University in Cairo with a B.A. in History, who was among the original student contributors to the project. She offered her assistance in going through all the entries in order to edit them for quality, consistency, and cross-referencing, to review critically the documentation cited, to update entries that seemed particularly in need of the same, and to add new entries for personalities who had gained prominence in the intervening months or whose omission from the original list seemed particularly grievous. Important touches she added also included the citation of personal names in Arabic and the addition of photographs wherever possible. She also corrected and expanded the bibliographical citations in a great many of the entries.

In short, it is due supremely to Ms. Nareman Amin’s conscientious, and painstaking efforts over the months since summer 2011 that the dictionary is what it is at present in terms of design and content. It is presented in the hope that it will constitute a basic reference for future research, writing, and electronic media analysis of the revolution; and in the aspiration that, pedagogically, it may serve as a model for the kinds of research that undergraduates undertake in the future, at the American University in Cairo and beyond.

Getting started

To contribute to the Isqat al-Nizam section, you must be enrolled in professor Michael Reimer's section of HIST 412 at the American University in Cairo.