Egypt Chron--Arab Conquest to 1882
EGYPT-Chronological Keys & Notes-Arab Conquest to 1882
Background Note on Arab-Islamic Egyptian History. According to one Middle East historian, the decisive factor which distinguished Islamic political history from European history (both developed a strong commercial class with an agricultural base) was the emergence of powerful military autocracies throughout the Islamic world in the 9th and 10th centuries. The first wave of Arab armies spread a much-resented Arab suprematism under the Ummayyad dynasty based in Damascus. The rival Abbasids, who took over the empire in 750 thanks to strong Persian military support, took advantage of this widespread ethnic and cultural resentment by shifting the empire's center east and founding Baghdad as its capital. Since the Abbasid caliphs were unable to unify such a diverse and conflicted population, they had to bring in professional military groups, largely recruited from Turkish tribes of Central Asia. The caliphs became so dependent on their protectors that dynasties of regionally-based military oligarchies soon emerged as the actual rulers.
639-642 Following the death of Muhammad (632), Arab warriors inspired by their new faith sweep out of Arabia into the surrounding regions, conquering Egypt as a source of revenue and food supplies for the Hijaz and as a strategic base for further expansion.
The weakness of the Byzantine force (and of its Graeco-Roman culture) in Egypt made this rapid conquest doable for "a small Arab army offour thousand horsemen. " The cruelty and intolerance of the Byzantine prefect in the 630s had alienated many from the monophysite Coptic creed By 710, Arabic had replaced Greek as the primary language.
650-868 The increasingly exploitive use of Egypt for revenue gathering produces a succession of peasant revolts, forcing the Arab ruling class to bring in Turkish military help.
868-905 The Tulunid dynasty, which established the tradition of military autocracies in Egypt, usefully illustrates the prevailing conditions of fragmentation and militarization. Ahmad ibn Tulun, a Turkish soldier who was raised as part of the Abbasid court (his father had been enslaved in Central Asia and forced into the military) was sent to Egypt to strengthen Abbasid control. Instead, he developed his own military force and proclaimed Egypt's independence. Then he defeated the Abbasid forces in Syria, annexing the region. From.this time forward, , Egypt was ruled by a projessionalized and alien military caste of mercenaries and slaves. The Tulunid court was a thin Turkish imitation of Abbasid court culture, and it soon disintegrated into factions, while Shiite uprisings showed the Tulunids unable to govern the territory they had conquered.
905 Abbasid forces invade and retake Egypt but are unable to restore stability, being weakened by regional uprisings throughout their overstretched empire.
934-969 The Ikshidids, another foreign military regime (Ikshid is a Central Asian princely title), establish order and rule Egypt as an autonomous dynasty until the Fatimid invasion.
969-1169, The Fatimids, an Ismaili ("Severer") Shiite movement (holding that the seventh imam was the last of the divinely inspired imams) take over Egypt from their North African base with Berber forces and rule a Sunni population. Jawhar, the Fatimid general, founds Cairo as the Fatimid capital. ("Cairo" is the European version of the Arabic al-Qahira-"the victorious"-given to celebrate the entry of a new ruler. At the gateway to the Nile Delta, it is open to attack from three directions. Hence the long series of invaders from the Arabs to the British.) The city soon becomes a center of commerce, scholarship and political power. Fatimid rulers establish the college mosque of Al Azhar to train Shiite missionaries for expansion into Syria, where they are fiercely resisted.
1055 The Seljuk Turks, tribal warriors from Central Asia, capture Baghdad, keeping the Abbasid caliphate as a figurehead of Sunni hegemony and threatening the Fatimids' Shiite regime from the east. (N.B. The Seljuk ruler adopts the title of "sultan"-- from an Arabic term for "power"-to separate his role from the religious symbolism of "caliph.") The Fatimids are also threatened from within by factionalism and by challenges from orthodox Sunnis and urban-based Sufi movements.
1099 Jerusalem is captured in the first Crusade and its inhabitants are massacred. But regional rivalries prevent any effective Arab response.
1171 After leading a Syrian invasion and occupation of Egypt, Saladin (Salah al-Din), a Kurdish general from Damascus, establishes a Sunni regime loyal to the Abbasids, which becomes the Ayyubid dynasty. He mobilizes Egyptian and Syrian forces for a jihad against the Christian states in Palestine. Pious and committed to Sunni renewal, Saladin re-organizes Al Azhar to serve as the center of Sunni learning and establishes madrasas (Islamic schools) throughout Egypt. He treats Christians and Jews with tolerance.
1187 Saladin recaptures Jerusalem, treating captives generously.
1254-1517 The era of Mamluk ("slave") rule in Egypt. With the Ayyubids in decline after Saladin's death in 1193, their Turkish-speaking slave soldiers take over and establish a powerful, fiercely independent military regime. (The slaves were taken as boys from the Caspian and Caucasus region and integrated into the Egyptian military caste.) In the absence of dynastic succession, rivalries at the top produce frequent changes of leadership. Native-born Egyptians are restricted to minor posts in a centralized administration. The Mamluks are always an alien oligarchy, ruling with a tight fist and heavily taxing the peasant class. But they successfully develop Egypt's commercial potential as the "middleman" in trade between Asia and Western* Europe.
1260. The Mamluk army halts the Mongol advance, in a historic battle at Ayn Jalut in Palestine. (The Mongols had captured Baghdad in 1258.) Thus while maintaining Egypt, Palestine and Syria as the western barrier against Mongol expansion, the Mamluks preserve Arab culture from Mongol domination.
1517 Ottoman jorces defeat the Mamluks and assume "official "(but increasingly distant) control of Egypt. Background: In 1514, when the Ottomans had defeated forces of the new Safavid dynasty in Persia, the Mamluks had been allied with the Safavids. In 1516 a Mamluk force was defeated by the Ottoman Sultan Selim ("the Grim") near Aleppo. In 1517, a new Mamluk sultan rejected Selim's peace terms, forcing the Ottomans to invade Egypt and install an Ottoman viceroy. However, it proved so difficult to control Egypt from Constantinople thatfrom the 174 century on, Mamluk jadions assumed de facto authority over the Turkish buraucracy.
Basic info: After the Ottoman conquest, the main government officials, garrison troops and higher-level judges were usually Turkish-speaking imperial servants, obtained by the capture of boys selected from Christian villages in the Balkans, where the first stage of Ottoman expansion occurred (By Islamic law, no freeborn Muslim could be enslaved.) After being converted to Islam and given military training, the most promising youths were educated to be future officers and administrators, and could rise to the very highest posts. The idea is that those chosen to be "slaves " of the Sultan must have no competing loyalties, no ties to the local population. They will have bonded solely with others in the military. In Egypt, the long period of rivalry between the Sultan's military and the locally entrenched Mamluks inevitably favored the latter over time.
1786 The Ottoman sultan tries to end Mamluk domination by sending an army to Egypt, but after a year of embattled occupation, the troops are withdrawn.
1798 Napoleon Bonaparte invades and occupies Egypt, to interfere with British trade routes and threaten India. He also brings scholars and scientists who document Egypt's past (e.g. the Rosetta Stone) and introduce modernizing ideas for a French colonial state.
1801 British, Indian and Ottoman jorces combine to force a French withdrawal. The Sultan leaves the task of bringing order to a triumvirate of rival forces---the Turkish troops, the Mamluk factions, and a corps of Albanian mercenaries.
1805 Muhammad Ali, the Albanian general, defeats the Mamluks and is "appointed" viceroy of Egypt after taking over and gaining the support of local sheiks and ulama. Impressed by French military and technological advances, he sets about modernizing Egypt. He sends selected students to France for a Western education (especially in commerce & administration), paving the way for Egypt's intellectual and professional classes.
Note: Napoleon's invasion and Muhammad Ali's subsequent takeover "woke up" Egypt. Not only were modernization programs started much earlier than anywhere else in the Middle East, but Egypt became the first Arab country to assert its virtual independence from the Ottoman Empire Ironically, it simultaneously jell into the orbit of European imperialism. The giant figure of Muhammad Ali personifies the tensions between nationalism and foreign control, He was a foreign military ruler who single-handedly shaped an economic and cultural revolution through his Westernizing programs. Through his military successes, which the Europeans had to keep uniting to stop, he became a model for the Arab Nationalist struggle. On the other hand, Muhammad Ali's ruling dynasty lasted from 1805 wail 1952, and it was much despised when it was overthrown by Nasser's Arab Nationalist revolution.
1807 British forces attempt to invade Egypt to establish a base against the French, but are defeated and withdraw.
1811 The Sultan presses M. Ali to send his largely Turkish army to Arabia to put down the heretic Wahhabis (backed by Ibn Saud), who have taken over the holy cities, Mecca and Medina, and banned the pilgrimage as idolatry. An eight-year military campaign ensues, led by M. Ali's sons. Remaining in Egypt, M. Ali massacres the remaining Mamluk leaders in Cairo and expropriates their land, as well as the landholdings of the ulama who had helped him to power. Over time, M. Ali establishes state control over all land and a monopoly over trade in crops, which is eventually extended to manufactures.
1818 M. Ali's oldest son, Ibrahim, a gifted general, leads a decisive offensive against the Wahhabis, recruiting support from anti-Wahhabi tribes. The entire Arabian peninsula is not pacified until 1819.
1820 M. Ali begins to replace his Turkish Ottoman soldiers with an army of his own, hiring officers trained by former French and Italian officers from Napoleon's army. The goal (never achieved) is to man the rank-and-file troops entirely with Sudanese slaves.
Military expeditions to the Sudan, launched in 1920, resulted in Turko-Egyptian control, as it was called, by 1822. By 1823, 30, 000 black slaves had been obtained from raids on the "pagan " tribes of the south. But so many Sudanese died before and after reaching Egypt, M Ali was forced to drag peasants into the army from the fields, which led to rural revolts that were brutally suppressed.
1821 Uprising in Greece against Ottoman control leads to the Sultan requesting intervention by M. Ali's newly strengthened army. Ibrahim, M. Ali's prodigiously competent son & general, leads Egyptian forces in a long, difficult campaign in Greece. He eventually overcomes the longbesieged Greek defenders at Missolonghi in 1825.
1827 Naval battle between Turkish and Egyptian fleets and British, French and Russian ships at Navarino destroys M. Ali's navy. M. Ali independently withdraws from the Mediterranean, ending the war of Greek independence. This angers the Ottoman Sultan, who was not consulted.
1831 M. Ali's re-strengthened army invades Syria, led by Ibrahim. (M. Ali knows the Sultan will eliminate him whenever possible so he launches a"var of pre-emption.") By the end of 1832, Egyptian forces have swept into Anatolia and are poised to capture Sultan Mahmud's capital at Constantinople, which would have catastrophic political consequences for the Europeans.
1833 European powers (Britain, France and Russia) intervene to save the Ottoman Empire. They negotiate a compromise that gives M. Ali "official" control of Syria, which the Sultan had earlier promised to him in return for undertaking the campaign in Greece. But M. Ali's policy of heavy taxation and conscripting Syrians for his army produces widespread uprisings.
1839 M. Ali renews his military campaign against the Ottoman sultanate, jorcing British and Russian forces to intervene once more and drive Egyptian forces out of Syria. (France backs Egypt, hoping to strengthen their alliance, but supplies no military aid). The imposed peace treaty to settle the "Egyptian Question" recognizes M. Ali's dynastic control of Egypt itself but it severely limits the size of his army and cripples his modernization program.
1848 Death of Ibrahim, who had just been given control by his aged father, who dies himself in 1849. Hence the accession ofAbbas, M. Ali's eldest grandson. Raised in a harem and insular, Abbas opposes Western influence but nonetheless agrees to the British construction of a muchneeded railroad linking Alexandria and Cairo.
1854 Death of Abbas and accession of Said, M. Ali's fourth son. Said, naive and pro-Western, is persuaded by Ferdinand de Lesseps, an old French friend, to give far-reaching concessions to a French consortium of financiers to build the Suez Canal. Later revisions of the concession, arbitrated by Napoleon III, force an indemnity upon Egypt that adds to its already large foreign debt.
1863 Death of Said and accession of lsmail, son of Ibrahim. European-educated, Ismail promotes extravagant modernizing and Westernizing programs that rapidly develop Egypt but significantly increase Egypt's debt to jorelgn fnanclers who exploit every advantage. Ismail is increasingly dependent on British and French advisors who are anxious to protect European investors. At this time the American Civil War interrupts Southern cotton exports, producing a boom in Egyptian cotton that leads Ismail to promote that industry. But with peace in 1965, prices collapse with disastrous consequences for Egypt's economy.
1867 Ismail pays a large but undisclosed amount to the Sultan to re-title Egypt's ruler as the Khedive, which gives him a higher status than that held by rulers of other Ottoman provinces.
1869 The Suez Canal opens. Ismail's huge celebration brings European VIPs to a new opera house, and Verdi writes an opera (Aida) especially for the occasion. Ismail commissions British general Samuel Baker to curtail the slave trade from the Upper Nile by establishing Egyptian authority in Equatoria. The British government recognizes that the Suez Canal poses a threat to India as well as to British trade unless it is kept out of the control of rival powers.
1871 Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, who was to become the most famous activist for Muslim unity, is invited to Cairo by Ruiz Pasha after being expelled from Constantinople for publicizing heretical views. Barred by the ulama from Al Azhar, he mentors a circle of young Egyptian intellectuals (including Muhammad Abduh and Saad Zaghlul) who develop the first revolutionary societies for Egyptian independence.
1875 The financial crisis forces Ismail to sell all his shares in the Suez Canal to Great Britain. Disraeli, the British PM, pulls a quick deal to give the British, rather than the French, majority control over the Canal.
1876 Establishment of the Dual Control system of British and French supervision of Egypt's finances.
1877 Ismail signs the Anglo-Egyptian Slave Trade Convention, which commits the Sudan to end all slave trading by 1880. The popular British officer Charles Gordon is appointed governorgeneral of the Sudan to accomplish this, and he undertakes a "Christian crusade" against the slave trade. This upsets Sudanese Muslim tribes that are economically tied into the traditional slave system, and it eventually leads to the Mahdi's uprising in 1881.
1879 Ismail makes a desperate alliance with the Assembly of Delegates, who challenge European control of Egypt by demanding a constitutional government. But he's too unpopular to succeed as a rebel. In June, Britain and France persuade the Sultan, Abdulhamid II, to depose Ismail and install his 26-year old son, Tiwfik, who becomes a figurehead for European interests. Many liberal intellectuals are exiled, including Jamal al-Din al-Afghan. He is kept under surveillance in India for a year, then moves to Paris to write anti-imperialist polemics on behalf of a pan-Islamic revival. He is joined in this effort by another Egyptian exile, his ex-student M. Abduh, who will eventually return to reform Al Azhar and promote liberal Islamic thinking.
1881 The Urabist Revolution. Col, Ahmed Urabi (sometimes spelled "Arabi" or even "Orabi") leads an effort by Egyptian army officers to stop the "cost-cutting" elimination of Egyptians from the army along with the traditional privileging of Turkish and Circassian officers. Urabi discovers a plot to arrest him before he presents his petition to the Council of Ministers. As he's being arrested, his forewarned army supporters break in and rescue him. Urabi then demands the resignation of the Minister of War. Urabi's cause is soon broadened in scope by his alliance with the nationalist movement, which is opposed to all foreign influence in Egypt. In Sept., Urabi leads a massive demonstration at the palace, demanding a new ministry with a national assembly committed to a constitutional government. Shaken, the young Khedive, Tewfik, accedes to Urabi's demands, which prompts Britain and France to consider intervention.
The British, whose main goal is securing the Canal, prefer backing an intervention by the Ottoman Sultan. But France's new conservative government, headed by Gambetta, adopts a hard-line policy of direct intervention, fearing an uprising in France's newly colonized Tunisia if the Europeans appear weak.
1882 How the British invasion and occupation of Egypt happened. In Jan., Gambetta writes a Joint Note, hastily co-signed by the British Foreign Office, which assures Tewfik of BritishFrench military backing if there is any threat to the status quo. The Note backfires, publicly exposing Tewfik's "puppet" status, awakening Egyptian's worst fears of a European takeover, and unifying the people behind Urabi. At this point, Urabi is the de facto ruler of Egypt. Meanwhile, political turmoil in France forces Gambetta out and replaces him with de Freycinet, a less interventionist-minded president. In May, de Freycinet and the British decide to send a joint British-French expedition of warships toAlexandria as a show offorce, hoping it will lead Urabi to compromise with the Khedive. In June, riots break out in Alexandria during protests against the warships, and 50 Europeans are killed. This hardens anti-Urabist feeling in Britain even though Urabi tried to stop the rioting. The naval squadrons remain but have no authority to disembark. Urabi prepares for an invasion by strengthening fortifications at Alexandria. In July, the British admiral, Sir Beaumont Seymour, demands that Urabi dismantle the fortifications, issuing a July 10 ultimatum before bombarding the city. In France, de Freycinet refuses to join in any attack on Alexandria, and orders the French ships to return. The British bombardment sets the city on fire, and on July 15 the British disembark to restore order. Urabi retreats to organize a military resistance. British PM Gladstone, the Liberal leader, gives a speech in the House of Commons in which he expresses regret that England has not been joined by other Europeans in restoring order to Egypt. Nevertheless, Gladstone declares, England is "ready to go forward alone," with or without co-operation. On Sept.13, British troops easily defeat Urabi's forces (many are untrained peasants, or fellahin, recruited for the cause) in a surprise attack at Tel el Kabir.
A summary comment: On Sept. 14,1882, the British began an "occupation" of Egypt that was to last over seventy years. It was the culmination of a long period of European interventions that began with Napoleon's 1789 invasion, and it had the effect of separating Egypt from the Ottoman Empire. In retrospect, British policy found itself drawn into contradictory missions. From the 1830s on, Britain was committed to strengthening the Ottoman Empire and keeping it intact. However, the eventual need to control the Suez Canal forced Britain to drag Egypt away from Ottoman control. Ironically, the Canal, whose construction appeared to solidify French interests in Egypt, proved to be the cause of British domination, which evolved from the necessity of protecting the new shorter route to India. Finally, consider the Canal's divergent meanings. To the British, it became the "lifeline of the empire." To the French, it represented their dominant cultural and economic "influence." To the Egyptians, it stood for the Europeans' exploitation of a subject people. This is why Nasser's nationalization of the Canal in 1956 had such powerful symbolic resonance, in Egypt and throughout the Arab world.
12-4-04
Background Note on Arab-Islamic Egyptian History. According to one Middle East historian, the decisive factor which distinguished Islamic political history from European history (both developed a strong commercial class with an agricultural base) was the emergence of powerful military autocracies throughout the Islamic world in the 9th and 10th centuries. The first wave of Arab armies spread a much-resented Arab suprematism under the Ummayyad dynasty based in Damascus. The rival Abbasids, who took over the empire in 750 thanks to strong Persian military support, took advantage of this widespread ethnic and cultural resentment by shifting the empire's center east and founding Baghdad as its capital. Since the Abbasid caliphs were unable to unify such a diverse and conflicted population, they had to bring in professional military groups, largely recruited from Turkish tribes of Central Asia. The caliphs became so dependent on their protectors that dynasties of regionally-based military oligarchies soon emerged as the actual rulers.
639-642 Following the death of Muhammad (632), Arab warriors inspired by their new faith sweep out of Arabia into the surrounding regions, conquering Egypt as a source of revenue and food supplies for the Hijaz and as a strategic base for further expansion.
The weakness of the Byzantine force (and of its Graeco-Roman culture) in Egypt made this rapid conquest doable for "a small Arab army offour thousand horsemen. " The cruelty and intolerance of the Byzantine prefect in the 630s had alienated many from the monophysite Coptic creed By 710, Arabic had replaced Greek as the primary language.
650-868 The increasingly exploitive use of Egypt for revenue gathering produces a succession of peasant revolts, forcing the Arab ruling class to bring in Turkish military help.
868-905 The Tulunid dynasty, which established the tradition of military autocracies in Egypt, usefully illustrates the prevailing conditions of fragmentation and militarization. Ahmad ibn Tulun, a Turkish soldier who was raised as part of the Abbasid court (his father had been enslaved in Central Asia and forced into the military) was sent to Egypt to strengthen Abbasid control. Instead, he developed his own military force and proclaimed Egypt's independence. Then he defeated the Abbasid forces in Syria, annexing the region. From.this time forward, , Egypt was ruled by a projessionalized and alien military caste of mercenaries and slaves. The Tulunid court was a thin Turkish imitation of Abbasid court culture, and it soon disintegrated into factions, while Shiite uprisings showed the Tulunids unable to govern the territory they had conquered.
905 Abbasid forces invade and retake Egypt but are unable to restore stability, being weakened by regional uprisings throughout their overstretched empire.
934-969 The Ikshidids, another foreign military regime (Ikshid is a Central Asian princely title), establish order and rule Egypt as an autonomous dynasty until the Fatimid invasion.
969-1169, The Fatimids, an Ismaili ("Severer") Shiite movement (holding that the seventh imam was the last of the divinely inspired imams) take over Egypt from their North African base with Berber forces and rule a Sunni population. Jawhar, the Fatimid general, founds Cairo as the Fatimid capital. ("Cairo" is the European version of the Arabic al-Qahira-"the victorious"-given to celebrate the entry of a new ruler. At the gateway to the Nile Delta, it is open to attack from three directions. Hence the long series of invaders from the Arabs to the British.) The city soon becomes a center of commerce, scholarship and political power. Fatimid rulers establish the college mosque of Al Azhar to train Shiite missionaries for expansion into Syria, where they are fiercely resisted.
1055 The Seljuk Turks, tribal warriors from Central Asia, capture Baghdad, keeping the Abbasid caliphate as a figurehead of Sunni hegemony and threatening the Fatimids' Shiite regime from the east. (N.B. The Seljuk ruler adopts the title of "sultan"-- from an Arabic term for "power"-to separate his role from the religious symbolism of "caliph.") The Fatimids are also threatened from within by factionalism and by challenges from orthodox Sunnis and urban-based Sufi movements.
1099 Jerusalem is captured in the first Crusade and its inhabitants are massacred. But regional rivalries prevent any effective Arab response.
1171 After leading a Syrian invasion and occupation of Egypt, Saladin (Salah al-Din), a Kurdish general from Damascus, establishes a Sunni regime loyal to the Abbasids, which becomes the Ayyubid dynasty. He mobilizes Egyptian and Syrian forces for a jihad against the Christian states in Palestine. Pious and committed to Sunni renewal, Saladin re-organizes Al Azhar to serve as the center of Sunni learning and establishes madrasas (Islamic schools) throughout Egypt. He treats Christians and Jews with tolerance.
1187 Saladin recaptures Jerusalem, treating captives generously.
1254-1517 The era of Mamluk ("slave") rule in Egypt. With the Ayyubids in decline after Saladin's death in 1193, their Turkish-speaking slave soldiers take over and establish a powerful, fiercely independent military regime. (The slaves were taken as boys from the Caspian and Caucasus region and integrated into the Egyptian military caste.) In the absence of dynastic succession, rivalries at the top produce frequent changes of leadership. Native-born Egyptians are restricted to minor posts in a centralized administration. The Mamluks are always an alien oligarchy, ruling with a tight fist and heavily taxing the peasant class. But they successfully develop Egypt's commercial potential as the "middleman" in trade between Asia and Western* Europe.
1260. The Mamluk army halts the Mongol advance, in a historic battle at Ayn Jalut in Palestine. (The Mongols had captured Baghdad in 1258.) Thus while maintaining Egypt, Palestine and Syria as the western barrier against Mongol expansion, the Mamluks preserve Arab culture from Mongol domination.
1517 Ottoman jorces defeat the Mamluks and assume "official "(but increasingly distant) control of Egypt. Background: In 1514, when the Ottomans had defeated forces of the new Safavid dynasty in Persia, the Mamluks had been allied with the Safavids. In 1516 a Mamluk force was defeated by the Ottoman Sultan Selim ("the Grim") near Aleppo. In 1517, a new Mamluk sultan rejected Selim's peace terms, forcing the Ottomans to invade Egypt and install an Ottoman viceroy. However, it proved so difficult to control Egypt from Constantinople thatfrom the 174 century on, Mamluk jadions assumed de facto authority over the Turkish buraucracy.
Basic info: After the Ottoman conquest, the main government officials, garrison troops and higher-level judges were usually Turkish-speaking imperial servants, obtained by the capture of boys selected from Christian villages in the Balkans, where the first stage of Ottoman expansion occurred (By Islamic law, no freeborn Muslim could be enslaved.) After being converted to Islam and given military training, the most promising youths were educated to be future officers and administrators, and could rise to the very highest posts. The idea is that those chosen to be "slaves " of the Sultan must have no competing loyalties, no ties to the local population. They will have bonded solely with others in the military. In Egypt, the long period of rivalry between the Sultan's military and the locally entrenched Mamluks inevitably favored the latter over time.
1786 The Ottoman sultan tries to end Mamluk domination by sending an army to Egypt, but after a year of embattled occupation, the troops are withdrawn.
1798 Napoleon Bonaparte invades and occupies Egypt, to interfere with British trade routes and threaten India. He also brings scholars and scientists who document Egypt's past (e.g. the Rosetta Stone) and introduce modernizing ideas for a French colonial state.
1801 British, Indian and Ottoman jorces combine to force a French withdrawal. The Sultan leaves the task of bringing order to a triumvirate of rival forces---the Turkish troops, the Mamluk factions, and a corps of Albanian mercenaries.
1805 Muhammad Ali, the Albanian general, defeats the Mamluks and is "appointed" viceroy of Egypt after taking over and gaining the support of local sheiks and ulama. Impressed by French military and technological advances, he sets about modernizing Egypt. He sends selected students to France for a Western education (especially in commerce & administration), paving the way for Egypt's intellectual and professional classes.
Note: Napoleon's invasion and Muhammad Ali's subsequent takeover "woke up" Egypt. Not only were modernization programs started much earlier than anywhere else in the Middle East, but Egypt became the first Arab country to assert its virtual independence from the Ottoman Empire Ironically, it simultaneously jell into the orbit of European imperialism. The giant figure of Muhammad Ali personifies the tensions between nationalism and foreign control, He was a foreign military ruler who single-handedly shaped an economic and cultural revolution through his Westernizing programs. Through his military successes, which the Europeans had to keep uniting to stop, he became a model for the Arab Nationalist struggle. On the other hand, Muhammad Ali's ruling dynasty lasted from 1805 wail 1952, and it was much despised when it was overthrown by Nasser's Arab Nationalist revolution.
1807 British forces attempt to invade Egypt to establish a base against the French, but are defeated and withdraw.
1811 The Sultan presses M. Ali to send his largely Turkish army to Arabia to put down the heretic Wahhabis (backed by Ibn Saud), who have taken over the holy cities, Mecca and Medina, and banned the pilgrimage as idolatry. An eight-year military campaign ensues, led by M. Ali's sons. Remaining in Egypt, M. Ali massacres the remaining Mamluk leaders in Cairo and expropriates their land, as well as the landholdings of the ulama who had helped him to power. Over time, M. Ali establishes state control over all land and a monopoly over trade in crops, which is eventually extended to manufactures.
1818 M. Ali's oldest son, Ibrahim, a gifted general, leads a decisive offensive against the Wahhabis, recruiting support from anti-Wahhabi tribes. The entire Arabian peninsula is not pacified until 1819.
1820 M. Ali begins to replace his Turkish Ottoman soldiers with an army of his own, hiring officers trained by former French and Italian officers from Napoleon's army. The goal (never achieved) is to man the rank-and-file troops entirely with Sudanese slaves.
Military expeditions to the Sudan, launched in 1920, resulted in Turko-Egyptian control, as it was called, by 1822. By 1823, 30, 000 black slaves had been obtained from raids on the "pagan " tribes of the south. But so many Sudanese died before and after reaching Egypt, M Ali was forced to drag peasants into the army from the fields, which led to rural revolts that were brutally suppressed.
1821 Uprising in Greece against Ottoman control leads to the Sultan requesting intervention by M. Ali's newly strengthened army. Ibrahim, M. Ali's prodigiously competent son & general, leads Egyptian forces in a long, difficult campaign in Greece. He eventually overcomes the longbesieged Greek defenders at Missolonghi in 1825.
1827 Naval battle between Turkish and Egyptian fleets and British, French and Russian ships at Navarino destroys M. Ali's navy. M. Ali independently withdraws from the Mediterranean, ending the war of Greek independence. This angers the Ottoman Sultan, who was not consulted.
1831 M. Ali's re-strengthened army invades Syria, led by Ibrahim. (M. Ali knows the Sultan will eliminate him whenever possible so he launches a"var of pre-emption.") By the end of 1832, Egyptian forces have swept into Anatolia and are poised to capture Sultan Mahmud's capital at Constantinople, which would have catastrophic political consequences for the Europeans.
1833 European powers (Britain, France and Russia) intervene to save the Ottoman Empire. They negotiate a compromise that gives M. Ali "official" control of Syria, which the Sultan had earlier promised to him in return for undertaking the campaign in Greece. But M. Ali's policy of heavy taxation and conscripting Syrians for his army produces widespread uprisings.
1839 M. Ali renews his military campaign against the Ottoman sultanate, jorcing British and Russian forces to intervene once more and drive Egyptian forces out of Syria. (France backs Egypt, hoping to strengthen their alliance, but supplies no military aid). The imposed peace treaty to settle the "Egyptian Question" recognizes M. Ali's dynastic control of Egypt itself but it severely limits the size of his army and cripples his modernization program.
1848 Death of Ibrahim, who had just been given control by his aged father, who dies himself in 1849. Hence the accession ofAbbas, M. Ali's eldest grandson. Raised in a harem and insular, Abbas opposes Western influence but nonetheless agrees to the British construction of a muchneeded railroad linking Alexandria and Cairo.
1854 Death of Abbas and accession of Said, M. Ali's fourth son. Said, naive and pro-Western, is persuaded by Ferdinand de Lesseps, an old French friend, to give far-reaching concessions to a French consortium of financiers to build the Suez Canal. Later revisions of the concession, arbitrated by Napoleon III, force an indemnity upon Egypt that adds to its already large foreign debt.
1863 Death of Said and accession of lsmail, son of Ibrahim. European-educated, Ismail promotes extravagant modernizing and Westernizing programs that rapidly develop Egypt but significantly increase Egypt's debt to jorelgn fnanclers who exploit every advantage. Ismail is increasingly dependent on British and French advisors who are anxious to protect European investors. At this time the American Civil War interrupts Southern cotton exports, producing a boom in Egyptian cotton that leads Ismail to promote that industry. But with peace in 1965, prices collapse with disastrous consequences for Egypt's economy.
1867 Ismail pays a large but undisclosed amount to the Sultan to re-title Egypt's ruler as the Khedive, which gives him a higher status than that held by rulers of other Ottoman provinces.
1869 The Suez Canal opens. Ismail's huge celebration brings European VIPs to a new opera house, and Verdi writes an opera (Aida) especially for the occasion. Ismail commissions British general Samuel Baker to curtail the slave trade from the Upper Nile by establishing Egyptian authority in Equatoria. The British government recognizes that the Suez Canal poses a threat to India as well as to British trade unless it is kept out of the control of rival powers.
1871 Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, who was to become the most famous activist for Muslim unity, is invited to Cairo by Ruiz Pasha after being expelled from Constantinople for publicizing heretical views. Barred by the ulama from Al Azhar, he mentors a circle of young Egyptian intellectuals (including Muhammad Abduh and Saad Zaghlul) who develop the first revolutionary societies for Egyptian independence.
1875 The financial crisis forces Ismail to sell all his shares in the Suez Canal to Great Britain. Disraeli, the British PM, pulls a quick deal to give the British, rather than the French, majority control over the Canal.
1876 Establishment of the Dual Control system of British and French supervision of Egypt's finances.
1877 Ismail signs the Anglo-Egyptian Slave Trade Convention, which commits the Sudan to end all slave trading by 1880. The popular British officer Charles Gordon is appointed governorgeneral of the Sudan to accomplish this, and he undertakes a "Christian crusade" against the slave trade. This upsets Sudanese Muslim tribes that are economically tied into the traditional slave system, and it eventually leads to the Mahdi's uprising in 1881.
1879 Ismail makes a desperate alliance with the Assembly of Delegates, who challenge European control of Egypt by demanding a constitutional government. But he's too unpopular to succeed as a rebel. In June, Britain and France persuade the Sultan, Abdulhamid II, to depose Ismail and install his 26-year old son, Tiwfik, who becomes a figurehead for European interests. Many liberal intellectuals are exiled, including Jamal al-Din al-Afghan. He is kept under surveillance in India for a year, then moves to Paris to write anti-imperialist polemics on behalf of a pan-Islamic revival. He is joined in this effort by another Egyptian exile, his ex-student M. Abduh, who will eventually return to reform Al Azhar and promote liberal Islamic thinking.
1881 The Urabist Revolution. Col, Ahmed Urabi (sometimes spelled "Arabi" or even "Orabi") leads an effort by Egyptian army officers to stop the "cost-cutting" elimination of Egyptians from the army along with the traditional privileging of Turkish and Circassian officers. Urabi discovers a plot to arrest him before he presents his petition to the Council of Ministers. As he's being arrested, his forewarned army supporters break in and rescue him. Urabi then demands the resignation of the Minister of War. Urabi's cause is soon broadened in scope by his alliance with the nationalist movement, which is opposed to all foreign influence in Egypt. In Sept., Urabi leads a massive demonstration at the palace, demanding a new ministry with a national assembly committed to a constitutional government. Shaken, the young Khedive, Tewfik, accedes to Urabi's demands, which prompts Britain and France to consider intervention.
The British, whose main goal is securing the Canal, prefer backing an intervention by the Ottoman Sultan. But France's new conservative government, headed by Gambetta, adopts a hard-line policy of direct intervention, fearing an uprising in France's newly colonized Tunisia if the Europeans appear weak.
1882 How the British invasion and occupation of Egypt happened. In Jan., Gambetta writes a Joint Note, hastily co-signed by the British Foreign Office, which assures Tewfik of BritishFrench military backing if there is any threat to the status quo. The Note backfires, publicly exposing Tewfik's "puppet" status, awakening Egyptian's worst fears of a European takeover, and unifying the people behind Urabi. At this point, Urabi is the de facto ruler of Egypt. Meanwhile, political turmoil in France forces Gambetta out and replaces him with de Freycinet, a less interventionist-minded president. In May, de Freycinet and the British decide to send a joint British-French expedition of warships toAlexandria as a show offorce, hoping it will lead Urabi to compromise with the Khedive. In June, riots break out in Alexandria during protests against the warships, and 50 Europeans are killed. This hardens anti-Urabist feeling in Britain even though Urabi tried to stop the rioting. The naval squadrons remain but have no authority to disembark. Urabi prepares for an invasion by strengthening fortifications at Alexandria. In July, the British admiral, Sir Beaumont Seymour, demands that Urabi dismantle the fortifications, issuing a July 10 ultimatum before bombarding the city. In France, de Freycinet refuses to join in any attack on Alexandria, and orders the French ships to return. The British bombardment sets the city on fire, and on July 15 the British disembark to restore order. Urabi retreats to organize a military resistance. British PM Gladstone, the Liberal leader, gives a speech in the House of Commons in which he expresses regret that England has not been joined by other Europeans in restoring order to Egypt. Nevertheless, Gladstone declares, England is "ready to go forward alone," with or without co-operation. On Sept.13, British troops easily defeat Urabi's forces (many are untrained peasants, or fellahin, recruited for the cause) in a surprise attack at Tel el Kabir.
A summary comment: On Sept. 14,1882, the British began an "occupation" of Egypt that was to last over seventy years. It was the culmination of a long period of European interventions that began with Napoleon's 1789 invasion, and it had the effect of separating Egypt from the Ottoman Empire. In retrospect, British policy found itself drawn into contradictory missions. From the 1830s on, Britain was committed to strengthening the Ottoman Empire and keeping it intact. However, the eventual need to control the Suez Canal forced Britain to drag Egypt away from Ottoman control. Ironically, the Canal, whose construction appeared to solidify French interests in Egypt, proved to be the cause of British domination, which evolved from the necessity of protecting the new shorter route to India. Finally, consider the Canal's divergent meanings. To the British, it became the "lifeline of the empire." To the French, it represented their dominant cultural and economic "influence." To the Egyptians, it stood for the Europeans' exploitation of a subject people. This is why Nasser's nationalization of the Canal in 1956 had such powerful symbolic resonance, in Egypt and throughout the Arab world.
12-4-04
