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Egypt
Index
This edition of Egypt: A Country Study replaces the
previous edition published in 1983. Like its predecessor, the
present book attempts to treat in a compact and objective manner
the dominant historical, social, economic, political, and
national security aspects of contemporary Egypt. Sources of
information included scholarly books, journals, and monographs;
official reports and documents of governments and international
organizations; and foreign and domestic newspapers and
periodicals. Relatively up-to-date economic data were available
from several sources, but the sources were not always in
agreement.
Chapter bibliographies appear at the end of the book; brief
comments on some of the more valuable sources for further reading
appear at the conclusion of each chapter. Measurements are given
in the metric system; a conversion table is provided to assist
those who are unfamiliar with the metric system (see
table 1,
Appendix). Landholdings, however, are presented in
feddans, a unit of measure that remains in general use
although Egypt officially uses the metric system. One
feddan equals 1.038 acres. The Glossary provides brief
definitions of terms, such as feddan, that may be
unfamiliar to the general reader.
The information available on ancient and modern Egypt is
detailed and voluminous. Limitations of space and time, however,
precluded the presentation of anything more than a short survey.
The transliteration of Arabic words and phrases posed a
particular problem. For many of the words--such as Muhammad,
Muslim, Quran, and shaykh--the authors followed a modified
version of the system adopted by the United States Board on
Geographic Names and the Permanent Committee on Geographic Names
for British Official Use, known as the BGN/PCGN system; the
modification entails the omission of all diacritical markings and
hyphens. In numerous instances, however, the names of persons or
places are so well known by another spelling that to have used
the BGN/PCGN system may have created confusion. For example, the
reader will find Cairo rather than Al Qahirah, Giza rather than
Al Jizah, Suez rather than As Suways, and Gamal Abdul Nasser
rather than Jamal Abd an Nasr. For some place-names, two
transliterations have been provided
(see
fig. 1).
Data as of December 1990
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