Fellah



A fellah (فَلَّاح fallāḥ; feminine فَلَّاحَة fallāḥa; plural fellaheen or fellahin, فلاحين, fallāḥīn) is a peasant, usually a farmer or agricultural laborer in the Middle East and North Africa. The word derives from the Arabic word for "ploughman" or "tiller".

Due to a continuity in beliefs and lifestyle with that of the Ancient Egyptians, the fellahin of Egypt have been described as the "true Egyptians".

A fellah could be seen wearing a simple Egyptian cotton robe called galabieh (jellabiya). The word galabieh originated around 1715–1725 and derived from the Egyptian slang word gallabīyah.

Origins and usage


"Fellahin", throughout the Middle East in the Islamic periods, referred to native villagers and farmers. It is translated as "peasants" or "farmers".

Fellahin were distinguished from the effendi (land-owning class), although the fellahin in this region might be tenant farmers, smallholders, or live in a village that owned the land communally. Others applied the term fellahin only to landless workers.

In Egypt
After the Arab conquest of Egypt, they called the common masses of indigenous peasants fellahin (peasants or farmers) because their ancient work of agriculture and connecting to their lands was different from the Jews who were traders and the Greeks, who were the ruling class. With the passage of time, the name took on an ethnic character, and the Arab elites to some extent used the fellah synonymously with "indigenous Egyptian". Also when a Christian Egyptian converted to Islam he was called falih which means "winner" or "victorious".

The Egyptologist E. A. Wallis Budge, wrote with regards to the Egyptian fellah: “...no amount of alien blood has so far succeeded in destroying the fundamental characteristics, both physical and mental, of the ‘dweller of the Nile mud,' i.e. the fellah, or tiller of the ground who is today what he has ever been." He would rephrase stating, "the physical type of the Egyptian fellah is exactly what it was in the earliest dynasties. The invasions of the Babylonians, Hyksos, Ethiopians, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, and Turks, have had no permanent effect either on their physical or mental characteristics."

The percentage of fellahin in Egypt was much higher than it is now in the early 20th century, before large numbers migrated into urban towns and cities. In 1927, anthropologist Winifred Blackman, author of The Fellahin of Upper Egypt, conducted ethnographic research on the life of Upper Egyptian farmers and concluded that there were observable continuities between the cultural and religious beliefs and practices of the fellahin and those of ancient Egyptians.

In 2003, the fellahin were still leading humble lives and living in mud-brick houses, like their ancient ancestors. In 2005, they comprised some 60 per cent of the Egyptian population.

In the Levant
In the Levant, specifically in Palestine (Palestinian territories and Israel), Jordan and Hauran, the term fellahin was used to refer to the majority native peasantry of the countryside.

The term fallah was also applied to native people from several regions in the North Africa and the Middle East, also including those of Cyprus.

In Dobruja
During the 19th century, some Muslim Fellah families from Ottoman Syria settled in Dobruja, a region now divided between Bulgaria and Romania, then part of the Ottoman Empire. They fully intermingled with the Turks and Tatars, and were Turkified.