Military Chronicles of 17th-century Egypt as an Aspect of Popular Culture

This paper deals with a group of Arabic chronicles dating from the second half of the seventeenth century in Egypt, when Egypt was under Ottoman rule. The chronicle Waqāʾiʿ Miṣr al-Qāhira and others close to it will be considered in the context of folk literature and as representatives of folk literature and of popular culture. The author’s claim is that these chronicles, which have usually been considered as historical documents, could actually be counted as part of folk literature. Both form and content seem to indicate that these chronicles are very similar to epics aimed at entertaining an audience of listeners be either the militaries or other.