By examining a series of misaḥa, or land surveying, manuscripts, this talk foregrounds the critical role of ulamā (scholars) at the mosque and madrasa of al-Azhar in the transmission of surveying knowledge in late Ottoman Egypt. The talk traces the trajectory of one manual described by its author as “a popular book” to show how scholars recited, verified, and annotated manuscripts in the “uncommon science” of surveying across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Situating these manuscripts as evidence of working technical knowledge, rather than cultural artifacts, undermines prevailing narratives of an epistemological break in the nineteenth century that emphasize the founding of state institutions such as the Muhandiskhana, or engineering school. The manual’s format and language spoke directly to the rural landholders and intermediaries working under the Ottoman administration’s decentralized system of land management. As such, each copy exhibits differences in materiality, production, and use, which attests to the continuing relevance of a scholarly tradition of technical knowledge exchange in the Lower Nile and the Ottoman world. As a series, they index key social and political-economic transformations underpinning Ottoman-Egyptian society across this period.
Samaa Elimam, is an architectural and landscape historian and assistant professor of architecture at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research examines the intersection of technology, empire, and environment in the Nile Valley under late Ottoman rule. Samaa’s current book project investigates cultures of engineering and land surveying along the Nile River during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly in Egypt and Sudan. Other research topics have explored rival regimes of technical knowledge in the nineteenth century, methods of land classification and mapping, the colonial management of large hydrological systems, and the aesthetics of public works. She received a Ph.D. in Architecture from Harvard University, an M.Arch from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and a B.A. in Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley.