Khaled Fahmy


Khaled Fahmy is a historian and the Sultan Qaboos Bin Sa'id Professor of Modern Arabic Studies at the University of Cambridge. His research interests include the social and cultural history of the modern Middle East, with an emphasis on the history of the army, of medicine and of law in nineteenth-century Egypt.

Biography

Fahmy received his BA in economics, then an MA in political science from the American University in Cairo. He then received a DPhil in economic and social history at St Peter's College, University of Oxford in 1993. Following his stay at Oxford he became an assistant professor in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. From 1999 to 2010 he was an associate professor in the Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University.
In 2010, Fahmy returned to Egypt where he was a professor in the Department of History at the American University in Cairo. In 2014-2015 he was an Arcapita Visiting Professor at the Middle East Institute, Columbia University. In 2015-2016 he was the Shawwaf Visiting Professor in Modern Middle East History at Harvard University. In 2017-2018, he is the His Majesty Sultan Qaboos Bin Sa'id Professor of Modern Arabic Studies at University of Cambridge.

Publications

Fahmy's dissertation on the social history of the army of Mehmed Ali Pasha was later published by Cambridge University Press under the title All the Pasha's Men: Mehmed Ali: His Army and the Making of Modern Egypt. An Arabic translation was published by Dar al-Shorouk. This was followed by a Turkish translation published by Bilgi University Press under the title Paşa'nın Adamları:Kavalalı Mehmed Ali Paşa, Ordu ve Modern Mısır.
Fahmy also wrote a biography of Mehmed Ali Pasha that appeared in the Makers of the Muslim World Series published by Oneworld Publications under the title of Mehmed Ali: From Ottoman Governor to Ruler of Egypt. He published a collection of articles in Arabic on the history of law and medicine in nineteenth-century that appeared under the title " الجسد والحداثة: الطب والقانون في مصر الحديثة].
In addition to his books, Fahmy has published a number of academic articles on topics including midwifery, false torture, conscription, cosmopolitanism, the census, urban planning, prisons, the police, the scent of the modern city, forensic medicine, and prostitution – all dealing with nineteenth-century Egypt.