fellah

plural fellahs · plural fellahin · plural fellaheen

1. A peasant, farmer or agricultural laborer in the Middle East and North Africa.

   1929-1930, H P Lovecraft, Fungi from Yuggoth And at the last from inner Egypt came // The strange dark One to whom the fellahs bowed

   5 more examples

   The Egyptian fellaheen, in many of their ways and customs, reproduce almost exactly their ancient prototypes. They use the same ploughs and the same shadoofs for raising water.

   1893 October, C[lement] B[oulton] Roylance Kent, “Life in Modern Egypt”, in Sylvanus Urban [pseudonym], editor, The Gentleman’s Magazine, volume CCLXXV, number 1954, London: Chatto & Windus, […], →OCLC, page 353

   Religion long kept the two races, Arab and Egyptian, apart, and when eventually the Christian fellaḥ in the neighbourhood of Cairo had become Mohammedan, the Mohammedan Arab had become a townsman with a townsman’s sense of superiority over the country bumpkin.

   1920, Archibald Sayce, “Cairene and Upper Egyptian Folk-Lore” in Folk-Lore 31 p. 176

   It has the prophetic vision. Fuit Ilium! The sack of windy Troy. Kingdoms of this world. The masters of the Mediterranean are fellaheen today.

   1922, James Joyce, Ulysses

   The real problem of the Arabian population in Palestine is how to get rid of the economic domination and control by approximately 100 families of effendi who now own the land, keeping the fellaheen in obscurity and ignorance and subjecting them to merciless exploitation.

   1929 November 30, Judah L. Kaufman, quotee, “BRITISH LABOR HAILS PALESTINE WORKERS; […]”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 16 Dec 2025

   Before her, seated half-crouching upon a wicker chair, was a big-breasted sphinx-faced fellah girl, with her skirt drawn up above her waist to expose some choice object of my friend's study.

   1957, Lawrence Durrell, Justine

plural fellahs

1. alternativeAlternative spelling of fella.