Research Reveals Egyptian Gambling Laws in Alexandria in 1912

Makram Safety, a passionate scholar of Alexandria in particular and Egypt in general has uncovered rare licenses prohibiting gambling establishments during the late 19th and early 20th century. While official records may accidently or deliberately distort memory of those times, the discovery of a collection of permits for diverse professions, shops, and street vendors, provide rare insight into historic Egyptian gambling laws because the documents can’t be intimidated, shamed, or otherwise inclined towards hypocrisy.

In particular, the records reveal licensing shops, which came into peak fruition by 1912, with an influx of foreigners spontaneously taking residence within Alexandria. Makram elaborated that the documentation revealed an aspect of the licenses, concerning the role of a public ‘Control Section’ to the Ministry of the Interior then known as the ‘Glasses Interior’, where the owners of shops and doers of all activities applied for licenses from the Ministry of Interior to practice their activities. They were required to pledge to the Ministry of the Interior not to allow gambling in their shops of any kind, which the Ministry accepted by granting them licenses. The Control Section maintained its own records with an original copy of the license granted to licensee’s place of business or activity at the time.

Since the licenses have made clear that other businesses in Egypt specifically had to forsake gambling in order to obtain licenses, it seems implicit that license probably were not available expressly to operate any offline gambling establishments. It should be needless to observe, the licensing of online casinos in Egypt couldn’t have been an issue back then.

Modern policy has changed drastically since Egypt currently permits many different methods of wagering. The excellent casinos include the Omar Khayyam Casino within the Cairo Marriot, recently patronized by Hollywood superstar Richard Gere. Moreover, internet gambling in Egypt is entirely permissible at foreign sites which accept Egyptian players and even offer Arabic texts.