This book offers an unique window onto the social history of Cairo in the eighteenth century. Yuhanna al-Armani has long been known by historians of Coptic art as an eighteenth-century Armenian icon painter who lived and worked in Ottoman Cairo. Here for the first time is an account of his life that looks beyond his artistic production to place him firmly in the social, political, and economic milieu in which he moved and the confluence of interests that allowed him to flourish as a painter. Who was Yuhanna al-Armani? What was his network of relationships? How does this shed light on the conta ... More

This book offers an unique window onto the social history of Cairo in the eighteenth century. Yuhanna al-Armani has long been known by historians of Coptic art as an eighteenth-century Armenian icon painter who lived and worked in Ottoman Cairo. Here for the first time is an account of his life that looks beyond his artistic production to place him firmly in the social, political, and economic milieu in which he moved and the confluence of interests that allowed him to flourish as a painter. Who was Yuhanna al-Armani? What was his network of relationships? How does this shed light on the contacts between Cairo's Coptic and Armenian communities in the eighteenth century? Why was there so much demand for his work at that particular time? And how did a member of Cairo's then relatively modest Armenian community reach such heights of artistic and creative endeavor? Drawing on eighteenth-century deeds relating to al-Armani and other members of his social network recorded in the registers of the Ottoman courts, this book offers a fascinating glimpse into the ways of life of urban dwellers in eighteenth-century Ottoman Cairo, at a time when a civilian elite had reached a high level of prominence and wealth. Al-Armani's life and career tell us much about the immediate world to which he belonged and about the wider context of the Ottoman Empire, which constituted a vast trading area under a single juridical whole.