fellah

noun

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

   “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.”

   “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.”

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

   “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.”

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

2. (alt-of, alternative)Alternative spelling of fella.