Doctoral Student Fellow
Doctoral Student, Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, Graduate School of Arts & Science
Rule of Merchants: The Practice of Commerce and Law in Late Ottoman Egypt, 1841-1876
Omar Cheta is a doctoral candidate in the joint program in Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies, and History. He holds a B.A. in Economics from the American University in Cairo and an M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Chicago. He is generally interested in the social history of the (Ottoman/post Ottoman) Middle East during the early modern and modern periods. His dissertation explores the formulation of a new definition of commerce and the concurrent emergence of associated professional practices in nineteenth-century Egypt. He has a forthcoming chapter on this topic in an edited volume entitled New Approaches to Egyptian Legal History.
Omar joins the Humanities Initiative as an honorary fellow. He is the recipient of the 2012-13 Mellon Dissertation Fellowship in the Humanities from NYU.