Pl. fellaheen, fellahs. [a. Arab. fellāḥ husbandman, f. falaḥa to till the soil.] A peasant in Arabic-speaking countries; in Eng. applied esp. to those of Egypt.
1743. Pococke, Descr. East, I. 177. The Mahometan inhabitants of Egypt are either original natives, in the villages call’d Filaws, or they are of the Arab race.
1802. Ann. Reg., 742. The Fellahs … are the farmers and husbandmen of the country.
1856. Stanley, Sinai & Pal., i. (1858), 22, note. ‘Fellah’ and ‘Fellahin’ the inhabitants of villages and cultivated ground.
1877. A. B. Edwards, Up Nile, xxii. 714. Farther on, the brown Fellaheen, knee-deep in purple blossom, are cutting the clover.
