The post-revolutionEgyptianland reform was an effort to changeland ownership practices inEgypt following the1952 Revolution launched byGamal Abdel Nasser and theFree Officers Movement.
Prior to the 1952 coup that installedMuhammad Naguib as president, less than six percent of Egypt's population owned more than 65% of the land in the country, and less than 0.5% of Egyptians owned more than one-third of all fertile land.[1] These major owners had almost autocratic control over the land they owned and charged high rents which averaged 75% of the income generated by the rented land. These high rents coupled with the highinterest rates charged by banks plunged many smallfarmers andpeasants into debt. Peasants who worked as laborers on farms also suffered, receiving average wages of only eight to fifteenpiastres a day.The combination of these circumstances ledhistorian Anouar Abdel Malek to call the pre-reform Egyptian peasantry "an exploited mass surrounded by hunger, disease and death".[2] Another historian, Robert Stephens, has compared the state of Egyptian peasants before land reform to that of French peasants before theFrench Revolution.[3]
On September 11, 1952, Law Number 178 began the process ofland reform in Egypt. The law had numerous provisions that attempted to remedy the Egyptian land problems:
Additionally, the law provided for the redistribution of any land that owners held over the limits it established:
Law 178 initially met opposition from Prime MinisterAli Maher Pasha who supported a limit of 500 feddans for land ownership. However, theRevolutionary Command Council demonstrated its power by forcing him to resign, replacing him withMuhammad Naguib and passing the law.
In 1958, three provisions of the land reform law were revised:
In 1961, the government again revised the land reform program by lowering the land ownership maximum to one hundred feddans.
Initially, land reform essentially abolished the political influence of major land owners. However, it only resulted in the redistribution of about 15% of Egypt's land under cultivation, and by the early 1980s, the effects of land reform in Egypt drew to a halt as the population of Egypt moved away fromagriculture. The Egyptian land reform laws were greatly curtailed underAnwar Sadat and eventually abolished.