– Publications — Adam Mestyan
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Publications
ORCID site Academia.edu site

Monographs

Modern Arab Kingship — The Remaking of the Ottoman Political Order in the Interwar Middle East
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2023.
Arab Patriotism — The Ideology and Culture of Power in Late Ottoman Egypt
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017.

Edited Volumes

Primordial History, Print Capitalism, and Egyptology in Nineteenth-Century Cairo: Muṣṭafā Salāma al-Naǧǧārī's The Garden of Ismail's Praise
Cairo: Ifao, 2021.
Látvány/színház (Spectacle/Theatre — Genre, body, performativity)
Ed. by Ádám Mestyán and Eszter Horváth. Budapest: L'Harmattan, 2006 (in Hungarian).

Peer-reviewed articles

"Micro-Numerals: Unit Fractions, Carats, and the Arabic Culture of Accountancy, 900s–1900s"
Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 69, 3–4 (2026): 548–628.
"Microhistory As Industrial History — Environment, Sugar Capitalism, and Labour in Egypt, 1863–1879"
Past & Present 268 (2025): 143–180.
"Acquisition By Use in Islamic Law: Ihya' al-Mawat in Three Legal Opinions from Late Ottoman Egypt"
The Arabist 47 (2024): 79–93.
"The Probate Regime — Enchanted Bureaucracy, Islamic Law, and The Capital of Orphans in Nineteenth-Century Egypt"
With Rezk Nuri. Law and History Review 40, 4 (2022): 597–624.
"From Administrative to Political Order? Global Legal History, the Organic Law, and the Constitution of Mandate Syria, 1925–1930"
Journal of Global History 17, 2 (2022): 292–311.
"An Egyptian Shaykh's Literary World: Digitally Reconstructing Islamic Print Culture Through Mustafa Salama al-Najjari's Books, Cairo 1870"
With †Kathryn Schwartz. Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association 9, no. 2 (2022): 85–90.
"Land Privatization in Islamic Law? The Case of Irsad in Egypt, 1850–1950"
The Arabist 44 (2022): 87–104.
"Muslim Dualism? — Inter-Imperial History and Austria-Hungary in Ottoman Political Thought, 1867–1921"
Contemporary European History 30, 4 (2021): 478–496.
"Seeing Like a Khedivate: Taxing Endowed Agricultural Land, Proofs of Ownership, and the Land Administration in Egypt, 1869"
Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 63, no. 5–6 (2020): 743–787.
"Pious Endowments: Land and Women in Late Ottoman Egypt — Reading the Grand Mufti's Opinions, 1848–49"
The Arabist 41 (2020): 85–100.
"Domestic Sovereignty, A'yan Developmentalism, and Global Microhistory in Modern Egypt"
Comparative Studies in Society and History 60, 2 (2018): 415–445.
"Upgrade? Power and Sound during Ramadan and 'Id al-Fitr in the Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Arab Provinces"
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 37, no. 2 (2017): 262–279.
"Affairisme dynastique et dandysme au Caire vers 1900: Le Club des Princes et la formation d'un quartier du divertissement rue 'Imad al-Din"
With Mercedes Volait. Annales Islamologiques 50 (2016): 55–106 (in French).
"Preface — Ignac Goldziher's Report on the Books Brought from the Orient for the Hungarian Academy of Sciences"
Journal of Semitic Studies 60, 2 (2015): 443–480.
"Arabic Theatre in Early Khedivial Culture, 1868–1872: James Sanua Revisited"
International Journal of Middle East Studies 46, 1 (2014): 117–137.
"Materials for a History of Hungarian Academic Orientalism: The Case of Gyula Germanus, 1884–1979"
Die Welt des Islams 54 (2014): 4–33.
"Power and Music in Cairo: Azbakiyya"
Urban History 44, 4 (2013): 681–704.
"Arabic Lexicography and European Aesthetics: the Origin of Fann"
Muqarnas — An Annual on the Visual Cultures of the Islamic World 28 (2011): 69–100.

Encyclopaedia entries

"Fuad I"
Encyclopaedia of Islam, Three. Leiden: Brill, 1: 22–24.
"Khedive"
Encyclopaedia of Islam, Three. Leiden: Brill, 2020, 2: 70–71.
"Tawfiq Muhammad al-Bakri"
Encyclopaedia of Islam, Three. Leiden: Brill, 2019, 6: 19–21.

Articles and chapters in edited volumes

"Hārūn Al-Rašīd, the Arabian Nights, and Politics on the Arabic Stage, 1850s–1920s"
In The Thousand and One Nights: Sources and Transformations in Literature, Art, and Science, edited by William Granara and Ibrahim Akel, 175–197. Leiden: Brill, 2020.
"The Muslim Bourgeoisie and Philanthropy in the Late Ottoman Empire"
In The Global Bourgeoisie, ed. Christof Dejung et al., 207–228. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019.
"Muḥammad Yūsuf Najm — A Maker of the Nahḍa"
al-Abḥāth 64 (2016): 97–118.
"'I Have To Disguise Myself' — Gyula Germanus and Pilgrimage as Cultural Capital, 1935–1965"
In Hajj and Europe in the Age of Empires, ed. Amr Ryad. Leiden: Brill, 2016.
"Sound, Military Music, and Opera in Egypt during the Rule of Mehmet Ali Pasha (r. 1805–1848)"
In Ottoman Empire and European Theatre, Vol. II, 539–564. Vienna: Hollitzer, 2014.
"Cultural Policy in the Late Ottoman Empire? The Palace and the Public Theatres in Nineteenth-Century Istanbul"
In Kulturpolitik und Theatre, ed. Philipp Ther, 127–149. Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2012.
"Niqāṭ ḥawla al-siyāsa al-thaqāfiyya li-ḥukūmat ʿUrābī (Notes on the Cultural Policy of the ʿUrābī Government)"
Rūznāme — Yearbook of the Egyptian National Archives (2010): 203–214 (in Arabic).
"From Private Entertainment to Public Education: Opera in the late Ottoman Empire"
In Oper und Geschichte, 263–276. Wien: Oldenburg Verlag, 2010.
"The ethics of knowledge: Religio Academici reconsidered"
In Religio Academici, 215–239. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 2009.
"The Nefertiti-paradigm"
Holmi 8 (2006): 1075–1087 (in Hungarian).
"The orthographical canonisation of the Qur'an"
In A változatosság dicsérete. Budapest: Collegium Erasmus, 2005.

Digital publications & projects

"News of Cairo ("Digital Cairo")"
2022–2024. Lead PI, co-directors Hugh Cayless and Mercedes Volait, part of La fabrique du Caire moderne project, supported by NEH and Ifao. Zenodo.
"La fabrique du Caire moderne"
2018–present. Research blog (carnet Hypothèses); same project as News of Cairo, hosted by the Institut français d'archéologie orientale (Ifao).
"Project Naggari"
2017–2022. Co-director with †Kathryn Schwartz. The Online Reconstruction and Visualization of a Nineteenth-Century Arabic Library. Zenodo.
"Jara'id: A Chronology of Arabic Periodicals (1800–1929)"
2009–2020. With Till Grallert et al. (Version v1.0) [Data set]. Zenodo.

Book reviews

"Ahmed El Shamsy, Rediscovering the Islamic Classics: How Editors and Print Culture Transformed An Intellectual Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020)"
Middle Eastern Literatures 26, 3 (2023): 378–381.
"Daniel Stolz, The Lighthouse and the Observatory: Islam, Science, and Empire in Late Ottoman Egypt (Cambridge, 2018)"
Isis 110, 3 (2019): 633–634.
"István Ormos, Egy életút állomásai: Kmoskó Mihály, 1876–1931 (Budapest: Magyar Egyháztörténeti Enciklopédia Munkaközösség, 2017)"
Budapest Review of Books (Budapesti Könyvszemle) 31, 1–2 (2019): 97–98.
"Matthew Ellis, Desert Borderland: The Making of Modern Egypt and Libya (Stanford, 2018)"
International Journal of Middle East Studies 51, 2 (2019): 325–327.
"Ali Yaycioglu, Partners of the Empire: The Crisis of the Ottoman Order in the Age of Revolutions (Stanford, 2016)"
The Hungarian Historical Review 6, no. 1 (2017): 243–246.
"Liat Kozma, Policing Egyptian Women — Sex, Law, and Medicine in Khedivial Egypt (Syracuse, 2011)"
British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 40, no. 4 (2013): 469–470.
"Julia Clancy-Smith, Mediterraneans (Berkeley, 2011)"
European Review of History 19, no. 3 (2012): 461–463.
"Imaging the Mediterranean — Reviews of Ian Chambers, Mediterranean Crossings and Mediterranean Passages"
European Review of History 18, 2 (2011): 267–270.
"István Ormos, Max Herz Pasha (Cairo: IFAO, 2009)"
Élet és Irodalom, October 2009 (in Hungarian).
"The Morality of Symbolic Geography"
Review of East-Central Europe, nos. 1–2 (2005). Budapest Review of Books, 3 (2008) (in Hungarian).
"Elisabeth Clegg, Art, Design, and Architecture in Central Europe 1890–1920 (Yale, 2006)"
East-Central Europe online, 2007–, published in hardcopy 2009/1.

Translations & popular writing

"The Arab Kingdom"
Aeon, 7 August 2023.
"Ignaz Goldziher, Report on the Books Brought from the Orient for the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences"
Translated from Hungarian. In Journal of Semitic Studies 60, 2 (2015).
"Was Cairo's grand opera house a tool of cultural imperialism?"
Aeon, 25 April 2018.
"Global Ottoman: The Istanbul-Cairo Axis"
Global Urban History, 13 February 2017.
"Al-Masraḥ al-ʿArabī fī al-Thaqāfa al-Khidiwiyya: Iʿādat al-Naẓar ilā James Sanua"
Majallat al-Muqtaṭaf al-Miṣriyya, 30 July 2015 (in Arabic).
"Dar al-Mahfuzat al-ʿUmumiyya"
Hazine website, March 2014.