Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians

Record summary

Edward William Lane’s 1836 ethnography records Egyptian beliefs about jinn, inhabited ruins, magic, divination, spirit possession, and places avoided after dark. It is useful for comparing nineteenth-century descriptions of allegedly anomalous locations with local religious vocabulary and everyday social practice. Lane generally presents these materials as reported customs rather than verified supernatural events, and his account is mediated by translation, informants, colonial assumptions, and selective observation. The lead is therefore valuable chiefly as a documented representation of belief and place-based tradition.