Talk:Subdivisions of Egypt

Merger proposal

I propose merging and restructuring this page into Local Government in Egypt as the explanation behind the subdivisions is there as is the list of provinces. The list of local units can do with restructuring into the various levels to ease searches. Ypedia1 (talk) 21:29, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

  Y Merger complete.

Note that I've done this rather simply, and am of course very happy for this to be refined further. For example, the demographics section seems unnecessary on this page. Klbrain (talk) 09:37, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Submunicipal divisions

"The village is the smallest local unit in rural communities, and is the equivalent of a district in urban areas. However, villages differ from each other in terms of legal status. The heads of villages or districts are appointed by the respective governors. In addition to this, districts are occasionally further divided into sub-district neighborhoods called sheyakha in rural areas, or residential districts (singular: حي سكني ḥay sakani, plural: أحياء سكنية aḥya' sakaniya) in urban areas."

There is a lot going on in this little section, mostly that terms are being defined but then being used interchangeably. Questions:

• 1. How is "district" being used in the first sentence of this section when speaking to urban areas? Is there Egyptian administrative terms for "district" and "village" levels?
• 2. What's the heirarchy here, so that we're clear on this? Is it simply markaz>village>sheyakha and kism>district>sakani? Are new cities and police-administered areas also subdivided in the same way?
• 3. What does it mean that "villages differ from each other in terms of legal status." How would that be the case?

Criticalthinker (talk) 18:14, 21 February 2025 (UTC)

I agree with you. When I restructured the article, I did my best to reconcile contradictory information as effectively as possible. There's still a lot of work to be done to clarify some of the more ambiguous content. These ambiguous terms are not mentioned on the Arabic Wikipedia.

1. In Egyptian administrative terms, a district (hayy) is the third-tier urban unit, while a village (qarya) is the third-tier rural unit.

2. I aimed to clarify the hierarchy in my restructuring, so it should now be much clearer.

• Urban: Kism > District (in some cases, districts are further subdivided into sheyakha). Hayy sakani simply means "residential district" in Arabic and is not an administrative unit.
• Rural: Markaz > Village

New urban communities operate somewhat differently, as they are administered by the New Urban Communities Authority. However, the entire NUCA city of New Cairo, for instance, falls under Cairo’s East Nasr City district (see here: [1]). Each "area" of New Cairo, such as the First Settlement or Fifth Settlement, is administratively considered a sheyakha. I suspect this may serve purposes beyond administration, perhaps for the distribution of police resources and whatnot.

Police-administered areas appear to mainly refer to port-adjacent police departments, but to be honest, I'm not entirely sure how this system functions nor can I find Arabic material that explains it. There's an, Alexandria Port Police Department, but the port itself is in the Ras El Teen district.

3. I’m not qualified to answer that, to be honest. I don’t fully understand what they mean and would appreciate further elaboration. However, I assumed good faith and left it as is.

4. Regarding your question about city-states on my talk page, I honestly don’t know what the original contributor meant by this. It’s not a term I’ve encountered before. The three governorates listed are distinct in that they are entirely urban and therefore lack marakiz, having only aqsam, while Alexandria is nearly 100% urban. Again, I assumed good faith, but I’m open to rewording that section. Turnopoems (talk) 12:55, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Okay, another thing. I've read that a qism lie outside the regular administrative structure, but they seem to be conflated with a markaz. How I've seen it explained:

Urban Governorate>Hayy

Regular Governorate>Markaz>City-or-Village

It appears that kism can be formed in either of these at the level of a Hayy in an urban governorate. But, they don't necessarily - and don't always - follow the boundaries of an urban Hayy. I think the problem we have is that though the Hayy seems to be the formal administrative division of an urban governorate, that functionally, the kism seems to be how the national government organizes most services in an urban governorate. Kism appear to be part of a parallel structure next to local administration. So to put a markaz and kism on the second level is functionally correct, but probably not technically. It appears that a Hayy is technically on the same administrative level as the Markaz. It also probably needs to be made clear that there are third-level cities on the same administrative level as villages. Criticalthinker (talk) 18:20, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

I must say your name is very appropriate and I agree that it's confusing because sometimes the terms are used interchangeably, with East Nasr City listed as a qism in the article but also referred to as hayy, further divided into sheyakhas. The way it's currently presented in the article is how it's presented in their respective Arabic-language Wikipedia article. Qism is referred to as a second-level administrative unit, while hayy is a third level administrative unit inside cities. Could it be that single-city governorates have a separate hierarchy that goes governorate > hayy > sheyakha while regular governments are governorate > markaz > hayy (>sheyakha)/village.

Marakiz: https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%82%D8%A7%D8%A6%D9%85%D8%A9_%D9%85%D8%B1%D8%A7%D9%83%D8%B2_%D9%85%D8%B5%D8%B1

Aqsam: https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%82%D8%A7%D8%A6%D9%85%D8%A9_%D8%A3%D9%82%D8%B3%D8%A7%D9%85_%D9%85%D8%B5%D8%B1

Hayy: https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%82%D8%A7%D8%A6%D9%85%D8%A9_%D8%A3%D8%AD%D9%8A%D8%A7%D8%A1_%D9%85%D8%B5%D8%B1

Frankly, I do not know if this is due to the local administration law being changed in 2014, forfeiting the concept of qism altogether. Not even Google is yielding a satisfactory answer to this so I'm at a loss. Turnopoems (talk) 21:57, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Yes, please see this link I found to a study showing the hierarchy. I can't seem to find the article in which is states that the qism are independent of hayy boundaries; I'll keep looking. What is more confusing is that apparently, the country's census agency gives detailed information in urban governorates only for the qism, even though the hayy is the base unit in every urban governorate.

BTW, this sentence...

"In some cases, large cities inside a markaz (e.g., Giza and Shubra El Kheima) are administered separately as a qism or several aqsam."

Also doesn't appear to be correct. The article for Shubra El Kheima, in fact, doesn't even mention a qism, rather, that the urban area is covered by two hayy, Awwal and Thani. And this is unusual because most articles on Egyptian cities does the thing of conflating qism and markaz in the mixed districts and don't mention hayy. lol Criticalthinker (talk) 23:09, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

I'm willing to rework the article according to this map. I've been trawling government websites since yesterday and I couldn't find any mention of the word qism, even areas previously referred to as qism on the Wiki list were now referred to as hayy on government websites, which was adding to my confusion, as if everyone collectively decided to forget about this term even though it's clearly been in use before and is referenced in the main text of the Arabic language article. What I found this morning is an entry in the website of the Egypt State Information Service that conclusively proves that the 2014 law killed the concept of qism.

"The law defines the units of local governance as muhafazat (governorates), markaz (center), mudun (city), ahya (districts), and qura (village), each possessing legal personality."

Source: https://www.sis.gov.eg/section/75/85?lang=ar

This seems to further imply that the sheyakha is not an administrative unit, so those urban governorates only have a two-tier system, with the additional tier serving non-administrative purposes. It is not the only non-administrative unit though, because Cairo is also divided into 4 regions, "mantaqa" (https://cairo.gov.eg/en/Pages/Regions.aspx?SubmID=141).

This means the list of municipal divisions needs to be reworked as well. I will see how much of the current text I can transform into a historical account. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. Turnopoems (talk) 11:59, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for looking into this! I have an interest in local government/administration, so when I find these things that confuse me, I see if someone knows anything about them. I appreciate all of your hard work.

Anyway, now that you've found this source, what would the hierarchy be by type of governorate? Would it be like I said Regular Governorate>Markaz-or-Mudun (I've seen Medina, too)>Qura-or-Qura-level-Mudun. And then Urban Governorate>Ahya? It appears this may not be the case, because for the regular or "mixed" governorates, I've seen Ahya and Markaz included in the same governorate. I guess it comes back to the question of what a "city" is outside of the Urban Governorates, and if they exist at each level of administration. Criticalthinker (talk) 17:48, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

I'm not an expert on the subject, but over the past few weeks, I've been doing major reworks of various articles within WikiProject Egypt and when I came across this page the inconsistencies you mentioned stood out glaringly. I find the current iteration somewhat lacking as well to be honest, though it remains the most coherent formulation I can achieve with the available sources. For example, your question about the hierarchies, I truly do not know because even the link I provided in my previous response is frustratingly vague on this matter. I was trying to synthesize the information from that source with the hierarchical structure outlined in the attachment from the study you sent. However, it falls short of offering a precise delineation of what constitutes a sheyakha or how additional administrative tiers, such as "areas" (mantaqa), are systematically integrated.

My best guess is that it looks like this:

City governorate > Mantaqa (non-administrative and non-ubiquitous?) > Hayy > Sheyakha (non-administrative?)

Urban-rural governorate > Markaz > City > Hayy (non-ubiquitous) > Sheyakha (non-administrative?)

OR

Urban/rural governorate > Markaz > Village

So the city is not equivalent to a markaz, in urban-rural governorates both cities and villages occupy a third-tier administrative level under the markaz.

If you or anyone else find additional sources that can be of use please ping me and I'll do my best to include it in the article. Turnopoems (talk) 21:04, 12 March 2025 (UTC)