{{short description|Farmer or agricultural laborer in the Middle East and North Africa}} {{About||the Arabic word for "success" or "victory" in the context of Islam|Falah|the star|67 Ophiuchi}} A '''fellah''' ({{langx|ar|فَلَّاح}} {{Transliteration|ar|fallāḥ}}; feminine {{lang|ar|فَلَّاحَة}} {{Transliteration|ar|fallāḥa}}; plural ''fellaheen'' or ''fellahin'', {{lang|ar|فلاحين}}, {{Transliteration|ar|fallāḥīn}}) is a local farmer, usually a farmer or agricultural labourer in the Middle East and North Africa. The word derives from the Arabic word for "ploughman" or "tiller".
In Egypt, fellahin refers to farmers, whether they are from the north or the south of the country.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Definition of FELLAH |url=https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fellah |access-date=2026-03-06 |website=www.merriam-webster.com |language=en}}</ref> 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.<ref name="pate">{{cite book|author=Pateman, Robert & Salwa El-Hamamsy|title=Egypt|date=2003|publisher=Marshall Cavendish Benchmark|place=New York|page=54|isbn=9780761416708|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2FIvzA6RIHsC&q=fellahin&pg=PA54 |quote=The fellahin have been described as the 'true' Egyptians.}}</ref>
==Origins and usage== "Fellahin", throughout the Middle East in the Islamic periods, referred to native villagers and farmers.<ref>{{cite book|title=Yemen Into the Twenty-First Century: Continuity and Change|first1=Kamil A. |last1=Mahdi |first2=Anna |last2=Würth |first3=Helen |last3=Lackner |publisher=Garnet & Ithaca Press|year=2007|page=209|isbn=9780863722905 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=v1Mebwe9R_AC&q=fellahin&pg=PA209}}</ref> It is translated as "peasants" or "farmers".<ref name="dictionary2">{{Citation |title=Fellahin - Fallahin - Falih - Aflah' |website=maajim.com |url=https://www.maajim.com/dictionary/فلاحين/6/معجم%20اللغة%20العربية%20المعاصرة |publisher=maajam dictionary}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Masalha |first=Nur |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xYWNCX-eYRcC |title=Catastrophe Remembered: Palestine, Israel and the Internal Refugees: Essays in Memory of Edward W. Said (1935–2003) |publisher=Zed Books |year=2005 |page=78|isbn=978-1-84277-623-0 }}</ref> Fellahin were distinguished from the effendi (land-owning class),<ref>Warwick P. N. Tyler, ''[https://books.google.com/books/about/State_Lands_and_Rural_Development_in_Man.html?id=HTzSDHxSck4C&redir_esc=y State Lands and Rural Development in mandatory Palestine, 1920–1948]'', Sussex Academic Press, 2001, p. 13</ref> although the fellahin in this region might be tenant farmers, smallholders, or live in a village that owned the land communally.<ref>Hillel Cohen, ''Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917–1948'', University of California Press, 2008, p. 32</ref><ref>Sandra Marlene Sufian, ''[https://books.google.ne/books?id=Zt9Do3WEUQoC Healing the Land and the Nation: Malaria and the Zionist Project in Palestine], 1920–1947'', University of Chicago Press, 2007, p. 57</ref> Others applied the term fellahin only to landless workers.<ref>Michael Gilsenan, ''[https://books.google.co.tz/books/about/Lords_of_the_Lebanese_Marches.html?id=WHQ2ebMllGIC&redir_esc=y Lords of the Lebanese Marches: Violence and Narrative in an Arab Society]'', I. B. Tauris, 1996, p. 13</ref>
==In Egypt== The Fellahin of Egypt are indigenous rural villagers living in Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt in Egypt, and their agricultural methods contributed to the rise of Ancient Egypt.<ref>{{Cite web |title=eHRAF World Cultures |url=https://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/cultures/mr13/summary |access-date=2026-04-05 |website=ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu}}</ref> The Fellahin are mostly Muslims who live in the Nile Valley.<ref name=library.ubc>{{citation|title=Fellahin also known as "Egyptians (Rural)"|url=https://open.library.ubc.ca/cIRcle/collections/ubccommunityandpartnerspublicati/52387/items/1.0375649}}</ref>[[File:Egyptian Fellaheen from Cairo Governate.jpg|thumb|218x218px|An Egyptian farming family from the Cairo Governorate]]After the Muslim conquest, the rulers called the common masses of farmers fellahin because they worked in agriculture and due to their connection to their lands.<ref name="dictionary2" />
The Egyptologist E. A. Wallis Budge, wrote with regard 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."<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Lefkowitz |first1=Mary R. |author-link=Mary Lefkowitz |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AClFWV6PE8wC |title=Black Athena Revisited |last2=Rogers |first2=Guy MacLean |date=1996 |publisher=UNC Press Books |isbn=978-0-8078-4555-4 |pages=159 |language=en}}</ref> He would rephrase stating, "the physical type of the Egyptian fellah is exactly what it was in the earliest dynasties of ancient Egypt."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Budge |first=Sir Ernest Alfred Wallis |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MvFKAQAAIAAJ |title=The Nile: Notes for Travellers in Egypt and in the Egyptian Sûdân |date=1910 |publisher=T. Cook & son (Egypt), Limited |pages=143 |language=en}}</ref> thumb|A group of Egyptian fellahs, 1955|218x218pxThe 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.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Winifred S. Blackman |url=http://archive.org/details/fellahinofuppere0000wini |title=The Fellahin of Upper Egypt: their religious, social and industrial life to-day with special reference to survivals from ancient times |date=1927 |publisher=George G. Harrap |others=Internet Archive}}</ref><ref name="note5">{{cite news|first=Caryll|last=Faraldi|title=A genius for hobnobbing |date=11–17 May 2000 |work=Al-Ahram Weekly |url=http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/Archive/2000/481/bk3_481.htm|access-date=30 November 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171201080842/http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/Archive/2000/481/bk3_481.htm|archive-date=1 December 2017|url-status=dead}}</ref>
In 2005, they comprised some 60 percent of the total Egyptian population.<ref>{{cite web | archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20080514092415/http/www.semp.us/publications/biot_reader.php?BiotID=312 | archivedate=14 May 2008 | url=http://www.semp.us/publications/biot_reader.php?BiotID=312 | title=Who Are the Fellahin? | work=Biot | issue=312 | date=24 December 2005 | publisher=SEMP, Inc.}}</ref>
==In the Levant== In the Levant, specifically in Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan and Hauran, the term fellahin was used to refer to the majority of the countryside.<ref>{{cite book|title=Syria and the Holy Land|first1=George Adam|last1=Smith|publisher=George H. Doran company|year=1918|page=[https://archive.org/details/syriaandholylan01smitgoog/page/n45 41]|url=https://archive.org/details/syriaandholylan01smitgoog|quote=fellahin syria.}}</ref> 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== {{Main|Dobrujan Arabs}}
During the nineteenth 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.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.academia.edu/2540987 | title=George Grigore. "Muslims in Romania", ISIM Newsletter (International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World) no. 3, Leiden. 1999: 34 | last1=Grigore | first1=George }}</ref>
==Gallery== <gallery> File:Egypt, Fellahin in the Fields, Cairo.jpg|Fellahin with hoes in the fields near Cairo File:Egypt, Plowmen and Team, Cairo.jpg|Egyptian fellahin using a traditional agricultural plow File:Fellah women, Egypt.jpg|Fellah women (1860s-1920s) </gallery>
==See also== *Egyptians *Copts, Egyptian Christian Orthodox *Peasant
==References== {{reflist}}
==External links== {{Commons category|Fellahs}} * [http://www.egyptindependent.com/opinion/egypts-forgotten-fellahin Egypt's forgotten fellahin]
{{Authority control}} {{Use dmy dates|date=October 2024}}
Category:Egyptian farmers Category:Indigenous peoples of North Africa Category:Social history of Egypt Category:Israeli farmers