Children of Gebelawi (Arabic: أولاد حارتنا, romanized: ʾawlād ḥāratnā) is a novel by the Egyptian writer and Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz.

An English translation by Philip Stewart was published in 1981 and is no longer in print; the American University of Cairo had controlled the world rights since 1976 and had licensed Heinemann Educational Books to publish Stewart's version, but Heinemann sold back its rights a few weeks before the Nobel Prize.

Three Continents Press still had license to publish in the American market, and Stewart wanted to continue publishing quietly in America and to avoid a world-wide relaunch of such a controversial book, but when he refused to sell his copyright, American University of Cairo commissioned a new version by Peter Theroux for Doubleday.

Abdel-Rahman also claimed that "If this sentence had been passed on Naguib Mahfouz when he wrote Children of the Alley, Salman Rushdie would have realized that he had to stay within bounds".

[5] The story recreates the interlinked history of the three monotheistic Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), allegorised against the setting of an imaginary 19th century Cairene alley.

"[citation needed] The first four sections retell, in succession, the stories of: Adam (Adham أدهم) and how he was favoured by Gabalawi over the latter's other sons, including the eldest Satan/Iblis (Idris إدريس).

In subsequent generations the heroes relive the lives of Moses (Gabal جبل), Jesus (Rifa'a رفاعة) and Muhammad (Qasim قاسم).

Arafa tries to use his knowledge of explosives to destroy the strongmen, but his attempts to discover Gabalawi's secrets leads to the death of the old man (though he does not directly kill him).

The book version of the material reflects the Middle Eastern story telling tradition dating back to One Thousand and One Nights.

The book is pessimistic but as David Frum[6] has pointed out ends on a positive note: "Yet the people bore the outrages steadfastly, taking refuge in patience.