The history of mental illness and psychiatry in the Middle East reflects the multiple ways in which colonial governments defined their national projects and relationships with their subjects. With the British occupation of Egypt in 1882, and the British professionalization of mental health, the responsibility for treating mental illnesses was placed within the hands of British, and British-trained, male doctors who acquired increasing legitimacy. Ultimately, the British administration of Egypt’s asylums transformed mental health care in general, whilst having a disproportionate impact on women. Women, as both patients and nurses, were therefore a central part of the new medical and social order that was being defined and constructed by British experts and administrators in turn-of-the-century Egypt. This study examines the impact of the professionalization of psychiatry on definitions of mental health and modes of treatment in relation to men and women in Egypt. In what ways was the ascribing of mental illness to women different from that of men? How was this affected by the development of the psychiatric profession and the creation of the modern European-trained psychiatrist in Egypt? The study will explore how the professionalization of mental health, as practiced in the asylum by male doctors who possessed medical authority over women’s minds and bodies, actively sought to assert the primacy of British psychiatric practices whilst excluding traditional healing methods such as the zār, in which women were the primary providers and patients. It will also reveal how members of the psychiatric profession developed a colonial nosology largely influenced by Victorian gender norms that incorporated perceived cultural constructs of Egyptian women. Traditional marital and reproductive roles were thus essential factors in the diagnosis and treatment of women’s madness. The study has attempted to present alternative voices to the state’s hegemonic discourse by relying on citizen petitions, ‘arḍaḥāl, to amplify the voices and experiences of mentally ill women and their families. These petitions reveal the manner in which Egyptian men and women contested the confinement of family members during the first decade of the asylum’s establishment. The research also makes use of primary archival material including administrative reports at Dār al-Wathāʼiq al-Qawmīyah in Egypt and the National Archives at Kew Gardens as well as reports of the Lunacy Division and the Department of Public Health at the Wellcome Library.