BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 METHOD:PUBLISH PRODID:-//Telerik Inc.//Sitefinity CMS 15.1//EN BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:Eastern Standard Time BEGIN:STANDARD DTSTART:20251102T020000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYDAY=1SU;BYHOUR=2;BYMINUTE=0;BYMONTH=11 TZNAME:Eastern Standard Time TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 END:STANDARD BEGIN:DAYLIGHT DTSTART:20250301T020000 RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYDAY=2SU;BYHOUR=2;BYMINUTE=0;BYMONTH=3 TZNAME:Eastern Daylight Time TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT DESCRIPTION:The Moynihan Institute’s\, Middle Eastern Studies presents Omar Cheta\, from the History Department.When Egypt’s markets opened to privat e capital in the 1840s\, profound legal experimentation followed. The resu lting commercial sphere reflected the political contestations among Egypt’ s governors\, European consuls\, Ottoman rulers and a growing number of lo cal and foreign entrepreneurs. How Commerce Became Legal explores the lega l and business practices that resulted from this fusion of legal concepts and governed commerce in Egypt. Focusing on the decades between Cairo’s au tonomy within the Ottoman Empire in the 1840s and its incorporation into t he British Empire in the 1880s\, Omar Cheta considers how modern laws rede fined the commercial sphere\, shaping a mode of market governance that wou ld persist for decades to come. He highlights the demarcation of a new law -defined commercial realm separate from the land regime and from civil or family-centered exchanges\, and reconstructs these changes through both le gal codes and state orders\, as well as individual merchant voices preserv ed in court documents.Omar Y. Cheta is assistant professor of history at S yracuse University. His first book\, How Commerce Became Legal: Merchants and Market Governance in Nineteenth-Century Egypt was published by Stanfor d University Press in September 2025. He is currently researching the hist ory of Arab Americans in Syracuse\, New York\, at the turn of the twentiet h century. \; \;  \; DTEND:20251015T173000Z DTSTAMP:20260312T161554Z DTSTART:20251015T160000Z LOCATION: SEQUENCE:0 SUMMARY:Book Talk | ‘How Commerce Became Legal: Merchants and Market Govern ance in Nineteenth-Century Egypt’ UID:RFCALITEM639089145541725514 X-ALT-DESC;FMTTYPE=text/html:
The Moynihan Institute’s\, Middle Eastern Studies presents Omar Cheta\, from the History Department.

When Egypt’s markets opened to private capital in the 1840s\ , profound legal experimentation followed. The resulting commercial sphere reflected the political contestations among Egypt’s governors\, European consuls\, Ottoman rulers and a growing number of local and foreign entrepr eneurs.

How Commerce Became Legal explores th e legal and business practices that resulted from this fusion of legal con cepts and governed commerce in Egypt. Focusing on the decades between Cair o’s autonomy within the Ottoman Empire in the 1840s and its incorporation into the British Empire in the 1880s\, Omar Cheta considers how modern law s redefined the commercial sphere\, shaping a mode of market governance th at would persist for decades to come.

He highlights the demarcation of a new law-defined commercial realm separate from the land regime and f rom civil or family-centered exchanges\, and reconstructs these changes th rough both legal codes and state orders\, as well as individual merchant v oices preserved in court documents.

Omar Y. Cheta is assistant professor of history at Syracuse University. His first book\, How Com merce Became Legal: Merchants and Market Governance in Nineteenth-Century Egypt was published by Stanford University Press in September 2025. H e is currently researching the history of Arab Americans in Syracuse\, New York\, at the turn of the twentieth century. \; \;  \;

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