Bonaparte in Egypt and the Egyptians of To-day

by Abdullah Browne

CHAPTER XI

AFTER THE STORM

Under the changed conditions in which the French were now living they began to find time hanging heavily on their hands, so they turned their attention to the task of providing occupation for their leisure hours, and as a first step in the realisation of this desirable object built themselves an assembly-room. This and some other projects kept them busy for some weeks, and helped to heal the bitterness that the revolt had created, and, like the Egyptians, if not ready to bury the past altogether, they were willing enough to let it lie in oblivion, and, largely influenced by the fact that the destruction of the fleet had left them locked in the country with no very hopeful possibility of their being soon able to receive help from France, they set themselves to get on with the people as well as might be, and included in their schemes some intended at once to please and gratify the Cairenes and impress them with a sense of the superiority of the French.

Among the other devices that it was thought could not fail to serve these ends and win general applause was the construction of a Montgolfier balloon. This having been successfully accomplished, the public were invited to come and see a wonderful contrivance by which the French were able to communicate with far-off lands, and thus, if need should arise, seek and obtain help from their native country or elsewhere. Such an announcement naturally brought the Egyptians, who are always curious to see and inspect novelties of all kinds, in crowds to the Esbekieh on the day appointed for the ascent. Fortune, however, was not generous to the French, and though the balloon was a success in all things that skill could command, an adverse and indifferent wind left it loitering in sight until the moment of its collapse arrived, and it sank ignominiously to earth, to the great scorn of the people, who derisively styled it a "big kite," and compared it to the kites that the boys of Egypt had long been wont to amuse themselves with. The failure was a sad blow to the French, who had hoped to see the balloon float majestically away and disappear in the north, as though it were indeed bound for Paris.

A worthier and more successful enterprise that the French engaged in was the opening of a public library in the district to the south of the town still known as the Nasrieh. Of this Gabarty, who is not sparing in his ridicule of the balloon, gives an enthusiastic description, and records with the most unstinted appreciation his sense of the high courtesy with which the French received all visitors. He himself went often, and tells us not only of the delight with which he enjoyed its wonders, but of the pleasure afforded by the welcome offered to all visitors, and especially to those who showed an interest in or knowledge of the sciences. For their inspection all the treasures of the place were freely produced, and all help given them to understand the object and worth of what they were shown. There were many things in the library that the Egyptian visitors could thoroughly appreciate—rare Oriental manuscripts, maps and atlases of all parts of the world, illustrated volumes, astronomical and other scientific diagrams and philological works. For all these, as well as for the French savants who so freely and liberally put their time and knowledge at the service of their guests, Gabarty has unstinted praise and admiration.

Even more successful than the library, from the popular point of view, was the laboratory that the French threw open to all comers. Popular science was then in its infancy. The chemistry of to-day was altogether unknown and undreamt of. Electricity was in its early babyhood, even the telegraph being yet to come. Steam was an unharnessed giant. Gas, photography, and a host of things that are now-a-days among the most commonplace of our surroundings were unknown, not only in Egypt but in Europe. And by the Nile, where art and science once flourished, the little knowledge that still survived was the inheritance and privilege of the Ulema, and was sadly cramped and debased by the false theology that had elevated religious pedantry above all other knowledge or desire. It is no wonder, therefore, that the French were able to astonish their guests beyond measure by showing them a host of those "experiments in natural science" that in our own boyhood days we delighted in when presented to us as the "magic of chemistry," such as the production of a solid by the mixing of two liquids. The marvels of electricity as then known were also displayed, and, as Gabarty says with his customary candour, "other wonders that intelligence like ours could neither understand nor explain."

All the visitors to the library and laboratory were not, of course, as intelligent or appreciative as the Sheikh Gabarty, and some of the few historians who condescend to mention things unconnected with the battles and bloodshed that is their proper subject, record with glee, as a fitting illustration of the native mind, the story of the Sheikh who, having beheld with Oriental stolidity all the marvels the French could show him, asked whether the science of Europe was equal to the task of enabling him to be present in two places at once, and, being assured that it could not, expressed his contempt for such lamentably imperfect science. That the incident really occurred there is no reason to doubt, but the Sheikh's attitude was not such a childishly absurd one as our friends the historians would wish us to believe. To understand it we must go back to the time and the place, though even from the present we may gain a hint. Not long since an Italian boy showed me a little booklet that had been given to him by his teacher, a Catholic priest. It was a short history of the life of a saint, and recorded how a mule had gone on its knees out of respect for the "Host." The book had the printed imprimatur of his Holiness the late Pope. I asked the boy if he really believed the story, and he replied, "Why not?" Why not, indeed! Luther not only believed in the devil, but saw him, and threw his ink-bottle at him; notwithstanding which, I, though not a Christian in any sense, most firmly believe in Luther, and hold him as one far beyond the world's great hero Bonaparte in all that constitutes true greatness. I can, therefore, quite understand how a pious Sheikh in Cairo, in the year of grace 1799, could believe in the possibility of a man being, by the aid of lawful or unlawful arts and sciences, both here and there at the same time, for to him, as to Luther, belief in the supernatural made all things possible, and, just as Luther had a hundred hearsay traditions of the pious and godly to justify his interpretation of the hallucination produced by an overworked brain, so the Sheikh had not only traditions but the sworn testimony of many eye-witnesses to the possibility of the impossibility in which he thus expressed his belief. And as it held in the closing days of the eighteenth century, so in these, the early years of the twentieth, the Church of Rome still holds as heretic whoever disputes the truth of the worshipping mule, and in the East not only are miracles firmly believed in, but do actually, in a sense, take place. A night's march from Hodeidah, up in the hills of Yemen, there was in the seventies of the last century a certain saint who held open court for all who came, and it was the tradition, and, as I can testify, the verity of the place that when his guests sat down to meals the more they ate the more was left. I have seen this miracle as it was, and perhaps still is, commonly accounted, repeated not once, but again and again during my stay. And this same saint was held by all the populace of Hodeidah, which in those days did not number a single Christian among its residents, to have on many occasions attended the public prayers in Hodeidah and those in Sana'a at one and the same time. The saint, grown old and bedridden when I saw him, was a fine old Arab, and though speaking with difficulty, asked me a few intelligent questions about India and England. Whence, as it seems to me, having abundance of such evidence before him, and having a boundless faith in the omnipotence of the Creator and of His regard for the doings of His people, the mocking Sheikh in the French laboratory was in fact ridiculing not French science but French infidelity. In the Cairo of to-day there are but few who have such simple, honest faith as that old Sheikh. Whether on the whole Cairo or its people are much the better of the change is a question not altogether so beyond discussion as my reader probably thinks.

But whether the old Sheikh was serious or ironical in his question, it is quite certain that the Sheikh Gabarty was perfectly serious in his comments, and in the records of these things that he has left us there is much to guide us in forming an idea of the Egyptian of the period, for though he was one of the "learned," he was essentially one of the people, and, like them, when under no special restraint, accustomed to speak his mind clearly and without any other bias than the impulse of the moment. Born in Cairo in the year 1754, he was like Sayed Mahomed Kerim, the Governor of Alexandria, of Arab origin, and, like him, though preserving much of the Arab in his nature, essentially an Egyptian. Originally from Zeilah on the African coast of the Gulf of Aden, his family had been settled in Egypt for seven generations, and had taken the name Jibarty, or, as it is pronounced in Egypt, Gabarty, from their first home, Jibart being one of the names by which Zeilah is still known. Claiming descent from the family of Abou Talib, that uncle of the Prophet of Islam who, though unconverted to the faith of his nephew, accorded him his protection and sympathy in the days when he so sorely needed a friend, the Gabarty family had in Egypt been scarcely less famous for its origin than for its piety, learning, and wealth. Sheikh Ali, the great-grandfather of the Sheikh Abdu Rahman Gabarty—the historian of whom I am writing—attained full honours as a saint, and in the time of Bonaparte his tomb at Edfoo was still a place of pilgrimage for the pious, not only of Egypt, but of Arabia and Abyssinia and other lands of Islam.

Another notable member of the family was the Sheikh Abdu Rahman's father, a man of great learning, a deeply read student of all the sciences and branches of learning then cultivated in Egypt, a noted bibliophile and the author of many works covering a wide range of subjects. The "Standard-bearer of knowledge" and "Moon of Islam and its followers" are some of the phrases in which his son with filial piety describes him, and it is certain that, considering his time and place, he was not unworthy of them. Recognised by the Ulema as the most accomplished and brilliant scholar of the day, in private life he was beloved for his affability, generosity, and public spirit, the latter being evidenced by, among other things, his establishing in his own house a lending library, which he placed at the free disposal of all students. As an author he produced a long list of works chiefly of a controversial character, but some of an eminently practical nature, such as his guide to the ceremonies of the pilgrimage to Mecca. Nor was he without inventive skill—an instrument for ascertaining the kibla, or point to which all Moslems are bound to turn when praying, and a circular calender covering a long period of time, and supplying corresponding dates for a number of different eras, such as the Moslem, Coptic and Greek, being among the more noteworthy. He was also a great amateur of sundials, and constructed many of various types. His scientific knowledge, public spirit, and practical nature were all combined to enable him to carry out single-handed a reform in the weights and measures of the Cairo markets.

Abdu Rahman, the historian, was a worthy son of this distinguished man. Like him, a great scholar, though less broad in his reading, an acute thinker, indefatigable worker, an earnest and conscientious follower of his religion, and yet free, as his history proves, of all fanaticism and bigotry, independent in spirit, truthful and candid in speech and writing, yet withal courteous and generous in his intercourse with others, it was but natural that he should succeed his father as one of the foremost of the Sheikhs of the Azhar University, and that he should have been one of the men chosen to form the Dewan when Bonaparte asked for the names of the leading men.