At the Crossroads of Empires

Abstract

In January 1844, Joseph Hekekyan, a British-trained engineer in Muhammad Ali's service, recounted how the Commission of Ornato (a joint commission of Europeans and Ottoman subjects charged with overseeing city planning and public health efforts in Alexandria) had toured the Maristan Qalīwūn, a hospital founded as a pious endowment in the thirteenth century, with the purpose of assessing its conditions and determining how many poor people could be sheltered in this institution. As Hekekyan reflected on the men, women, and children who had already made this “asylum for the poor” in Cairo their home, he noted how they were lodged, fed, and clothed “by the munificence of the Pasha” and how their presence represented the uninhibited charity of the Egyptian government. He was most concerned with how the government supported all of the shelter's residents without distinguishing between inhabitants of Egypt's countryside and those of Cairo and the length of residents' stay (many had married and had children during their residence). Hekekyan put forth his own suggestions for how the government should deal with the poor, calling for the introduction of a tadhkira system (identifying the indigents' place of residence) and proposing that the parishes take care of their own poor (Hekekyan 1844, 2: folio 239).