In June 2007, 11-year-old schoolgirl Budour Ahmed Shaker died at a private clinic in Maghagha after an excessive dose of anesthesia while undergoing the procedure of female genital cutting, sparking widespread protests and prompting the Egyptian government to outlaw the practice by closing a legal loophole allowing it to be performed for "documented health reasons".

The ban instead drove the practice underground, with doctors charging higher fees to compensate for the risk of being prosecuted.

[2] The 1885 Census of Egypt recorded Maghagha (as Maghaghah) as a nahiyah in under the district of El Fashn in Minya Governorate; at that time, the population of the town was 3,126 (1,548 men and 1,578 women).

[4] Maghagha's souk is one of only two in Egypt to be government-owned (the other is in Shibin el-Kom), with fixed rental fees for vendors.

To that end, some of the markets have been rescheduled in the past: for example, the souk in Bani Khalid was established in the 1940s and was originally held on Sundays.