Definition of "fellah"

Religion long kept the two races, Arab and Egyptian, apart, and when eventually the Christian fellaḥ in the neighbourhood of Cairo had become Mohammedan, the Mohammedan Arab had become a townsman with a townsman’s sense of superiority over the country bumpkin.

1920, Archibald Sayce, “Cairene and Upper Egyptian Folk-Lore” in Folk-Lore 31 p. 176

It has the prophetic vision. Fuit Ilium! The sack of windy Troy. Kingdoms of this world. The masters of the Mediterranean are fellaheen today.

1922, James Joyce, Ulysses

And at the last from inner Egypt came // The strange dark One to whom the fellahs bowed

1929-1930, H P Lovecraft, Fungi from Yuggoth

Before her, seated half-crouching upon a wicker chair, was a big-breasted sphinx-faced fellah girl, with her skirt drawn up above her waist to expose some choice object of my friend's study.

1957, Lawrence Durrell, Justine

All of them were crudely caricatured scenes of life among Moslems: a schoolmaster, ruler in hand, presiding over a class of small boys, a fellah ploughing, a drunk being ordered out of a bar.

1955, Paul Bowles, The Spider's House

It differed from the Ulema both in a more modernistic interpretation of Islamic dogma and in its social demands, which included the redistribution of land among the fellahs.

1977, Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace, New York: Review Books, published 2006, page 39