Though The Thief and the Dogs does not explicitly mention the 1952 Egyptian revolution, Mahfouz was obliquely referring to it in this novel and many of his others; thus, a brief look at this seminal moment in 20th-century Egyptian politics may help illuminate some aspects of the work.
The Ottoman Empire was ostensibly in control of Egypt until 1805, when Muhammad Ali seized power. In 1882 the British occupied Egypt, and in 1914, the Khedivate of Egypt was made a separate sultanate and a protectorate of Britain. During WWI, the Egyptian people, opposed to British occupation, demanded their independence; after the war, Saad Zaghlul and the Wafd Party led the Egyptian nationalist movement in winning a majority at the Legislative Assembly. The British response was an exile of Zaghul and compatriots, which then led to Egyptians and Sudanese rising up against the British. The British ended the protectorate status. Egypt declared independence in 1923 and created a new constitution that same year.
Farouk became king in 1936 after King Fuad died. He signed the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty with Britain, which had Britain remove all troops from Egypt except those protecting the Suez Canal and surroundings, as well as agree to supply and train Egypt’s army. Egyptian nationalists were not pleased with this treaty. After WWII ended in 1945, the Egyptian government demanded the treaty be revised to end the British military presence and annex Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. A war with Israel in 1948 was also frustrating to many in Egypt, and the army largely blamed Farouk.
Muhammad Naguib and Gamal Abdel Nasser were members of the Free Officers Movement, which formed secretly in 1949. Along with other discontented army officers, they decided to overthrow Farouk in order to end the connection with Britain as well as the Muhammad Ali dynasty. The bloodless revolution began on July 23, 1952. Farouk was forced to abdicate, and went into exile in June of the following year. In a broadcast on Cairo Radio’s English and foreign services, the army stated “The Army revolt was not merely a movement against the ex-king, but it has also been, still is, and always will be a force directed against corruption in all its forms." The Officers appointed former Prime Minister Ali Mahir to lead the civilian government, but he resigned a few months later after failing to deliver on the reforms the Officers wanted.
Egypt became a republic on June 18th, 1953; Muhammad Naguib became its first president and commander-in-chief. As the Middle East Monitor summarizes, “The revolutionary government was driven by nationalism influenced by pan-Arabism and anti-imperialist agendas and was vehemently opposed by imperial powers such as the United Kingdom—which had occupied Egypt since 1882—and France.” Tensions with these countries would arise in 1956 with the Suez Canal crisis.
Egyptians came to disagree as to whether 1952 was a revolution or a coup. Civilian political parties were banned soon after, and replaced by the authoritative Liberation Rally government party. Yet the revolution did redistribute land rights, decreeing that landowners could not own more than 200 acres of land and that the rest of their estates should be divided among Egypt’s poor. International Affairs offers an account of Nasser’s rule: “Nasser and his fellow officers were authoritarian. Freedom was envisaged in a national sense, but not in terms of individual political empowerment or rights. The latter notions would have neither accorded with the wider social and political culture of Egypt at that time, nor with the determination of the reforming regime to be an effective instrument of change...Nasser saw off the British military presence in 1954. He survived an assassination attempt by the Muslim Brotherhood, which he proceeded to neuter, but which he did not seek to destroy. By March 1955, the British and Americans had begun to look around for means of being rid of him but he emerged unscathed and enhanced from an attempt by the British and French to overthrow him militarily following his nationalization of the Suez Canal in 1956. Nasser removed the expatriate presence from Egypt, forever. He delivered reforms, initially, that were long overdue, including land reform. He launched the state-sponsored industrialization of the economy. His rule saw the beginning of mass education, including free tertiary education, with guaranteed employment for university graduates.”
