The rise of modern corporations was at the heart of the transformation of debt relations in the middle decades of nineteenth century Egypt. In the first half of the century, debt was primarily a means of sociality and not an economic category; it established social obligations between individuals and therefore constituted the basis of social bonds and structures. The basis of social relations and not necessarily a means of trade and commerce, it was not clearly delineated from gifts, nor was it necessarily quantified. Islamic legal works of the period (both fiqh manuals and the fatawa literature) are a case in point. Discussions of hiba (grant), to take one example, blur the distinction between ‘ariyya (loan-for-use) and hadiyya (gift), rendering the appearance of a distinct economic sphere impossible. Discussions of qard (monetary loans), to take another, are largely limited to simultaneously stressing the prohibition of contractual agreements to interest rates, and encouraging paying back over and above the amount borrowed. Moreover, qards are treated as part of the ‘doors of benevolence’ (abwab al-ihsan). The rise of Corporations in the second half of the century, of which the Suez Canal Company was the paradigmatic example, contributed to the redefinition of debt and its consignment to the economic. Debt, in other words, became quantifiable and distinct from other social relations, thanks to the corporations outlook being at once impersonal, a legal person, and sanctioned by the Sovereign. Debt consequently became integral to government, and a means of both extraction and subjectivation. At the heart of this transformation was the shift from Islamic institutions of debt to ‘modern’ institutions, notably shares and bonds. My paper explores this shift in instruments and institutions of debt central to its transformation. It traces both the emergence and proliferation of these new instruments, highlights the interplay between modern and sharia instruments, and explores the ways in which the old continued to shape the new