What does fellah mean?
A fellah is an Arab peasant farmer, a term used especially for the tillers of the soil in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East. Borrowed directly from the Arabic word for a cultivator of land, it entered European languages during the era of intense Western engagement with the Ottoman world, and it appears frequently in nineteenth- and twentieth-century travel writing, ethnography, and fiction about rural Egypt. The fellahin were long regarded as the backbone of Egyptian agriculture, working small plots of land along the Nile, and the word consequently carries strong associations with rural life, hard manual labor, and traditional ways of living. In English it remains a somewhat literary or specialist term rather than everyday vocabulary. Writers should note its conventional plural, "fellahin" (also rendered "fellaheen"), which is typically used when referring to the peasantry as a class rather than to individual farmers.
nounA fellah is an Arab peasant or farmer, especially one who tills the land in Egypt or other parts of the Middle East. The term is most often used of the agricultural working class in Arab countries.
- An Arab peasant or agricultural labourer, especially in Egypt or the wider Middle East.
"The fellah rose before dawn to irrig his fields along the Nile."
"The novel paints a sympathetic portrait of a fellah struggling to keep his smallholding alive."
"Nineteenth-century travelers frequently described the fellahin they saw working the cotton fields of Egypt."
The plural follows the Arabic form fallāḥīn and is conventionally anglicized as "fellahin"; the spelling "fellaheen" also occurs. It is typically treated as a plural in -in rather than taking an English -s.
"The fellahin of the Nile valley have cultivated these banks for millennia."
Borrowed straight from Arabic, this little word names the farmers whose labor along the Nile fed pharaohs and modern empires alike.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of fellah
"Fellah" comes from the Arabic fallāḥ (فَلَّاح), meaning "peasant" or "tiller of the soil," literally "one who cultivates the land." The word entered English in the early nineteenth century through travelers' and scholars' accounts of Egypt and the Levant. Its usual English plural, "fellahin," adapts the Arabic plural fallāḥīn.
Related word forms
How fellah is actually used
"Fellah" is a somewhat literary or historical term in English, common in writing about Egypt and the Ottoman-era Middle East; it can carry connotations of rural poverty or an idealized agrarian life depending on context. The standard plural is "fellahin" (sometimes spelled "fellaheen"), and the plural is generally preferred when speaking of the class as a whole.
Easily confused with fellah
"Fella" is an informal pronunciation-spelling of "fellow," meaning a man or chap, whereas "fellah" is a specific term for an Arab peasant farmer.