Bonaparte in Egypt and the Egyptians of To-day

by Abdullah Browne

CHAPTER XVI

MAHOMED ALI AND HIS SUCCESSORS

The three years of French rule in Egypt had been to the people an endless round of trials and vexations such as they had never before experienced. Compared with the worries and tribulations they had endured at the hands of the French the evils from which they had suffered under the Mamaluks appeared to them as mere trifles. For the future, therefore, their highest aspiration was to live once more the free, unfettered lives they had been wont to enjoy in the past. Had the departure of the French left the government in the hands of the Beys as of old all would have been well. The lordly tyranny of the Beys would, no doubt, have promptly exacted the utmost "contribution" that could be extracted from their impoverished pockets, but however harsh their measures might have proved they would have been seasoned and softened by concessions here and there, and the people would have borne them patiently enough as being for the good of the Moslem faith and therefore for the glory of God and, above all perhaps, as a thankoffering for their release from the rule of the once disdained but now detested feringhee.

But this was not to be. The French had gone but the Turks were within and the English were without their gates, and the unhappy people soon found that instead of the period of repose for which they longed they had entered upon a new era of misfortune. We have seen how the Turkish troops had behaved at their first arrival just before the siege of Cairo, but their conduct then was mild and humane compared to what it now became. Adopting the convenient theory that they were in a newly conquered country, the army acted accordingly, and no appeal to their chiefs or to the civil authority that had been set up in the name of the Sultan, was of the slightest effect in checking this fresh flood of outrage. For four years, therefore, the country was so torn by the intrigues of rival parties, the contests of opposing factions, and the incapacity of the nominal rulers that its condition can only be described as one of lawless anarchy. At length, picking his way step by step with wondrous skill and boundless energy and self-reliance, one man slowly but surely, with unfaltering persistency, advanced to the front, and while yet making no pretence or show of power suddenly planted himself as master over all. This man was the famous Mahomed Ali, the founder of the present Khedivial family and the man who first set in motion the train of events that have led directly to the present Anglo-European occupation of the country.

A Sherlock Holmes in his power of reading the thoughts of others, a Doctor Nikola in his art of subduing them to his own will, and a Captain Kettle in the calculating daring of the resources by which he won his way, the story of Mahomed Ali, could it be told in detail and truthfully, not as it appeared to the many who could not understand the man, but as it really was, would be one of the most engrossing pages of history that could be told. As it is, the mere bald recital of its incidents is a narrative that, even badly related, is full of interest. But to deal with his story at all adequately or justly needs not a chapter but a long volume. Here, therefore, I shall not attempt to even enumerate the principal events of his career, but content myself with merely mentioning the few points essential to the purpose of this book, the facts necessary to enable the reader to understand the influence he had upon the formation of the Egyptian of to-day.

Born at Cavala, the small seaport town facing the Island of Thasos at the head of the Ægean Sea, in 1769, Mahomed Ali had early settled down to the peaceful and uneventful life of a tobacco merchant when, in 1800, the Sultan having decided to send an army for the expulsion of the French from Egypt, he was appointed lieutenant of a contingent of three hundred militia recruited from his native district. Soon after the arrival of the troop in Egypt the officer in charge, abandoning his post, returned to Turkey, and Mahomed Ali, assuming command, gave himself the rank of Bim-Bashi, or Colonel. In the turbulent times that followed his arrival he courted the support now of one party now of another abandoning each in turn as his own interests seemed to dictate, and seizing every opportunity that offered or that he could create, by the exercise of a masterful combination of tact, cunning, and cautious boldness, succeeded, in the course of four years, in placing himself at the head of affairs and getting himself recognised as the Governor of the country.

This was in the early part of the year 1805. The people of Cairo had grown so weary of the tyranny and turpitude of the Turkish soldiers and of the ceaseless and unmeasured evils from which they were suffering, and, rightly attributing these to the incompetency of Khurshid Pacha, the Governor of Egypt appointed by the Sultan, came to the determination that they would have no more of him. Recognising, as the Sheikhs had said when Bonaparte first formed the Cairo Dewan, that to secure good government it is necessary to place power in the hands of men who can and will use it and who are capable of ruling, and that there were none to be found among the Egyptians themselves qualified to undertake the task with any hope of success, they looked around to see who among the many men then contending for power and in a position to take definite action, would be the best to replace the Governor they had decided to depose. Of all they could think of Mahomed Ali was the one that met the most general approval. He had not then taken any very prominent place in the turmoil of the time, but he had made himself known to the leading Sheikhs and notables as a Turkish officer of but little ambition, great modesty, wise in council, an advocate of smooth things, and one who sympathised with the people and their troubles, and withal a man who could act and who could command. To the Sheikhs, indeed, he must have seemed little if at all less than a God-sent candidate for the post they chose to consider as at their disposal. On the whole they were probably not far wrong, for difficult as it would be to picture Mahomed Ali as a messenger from heaven, so far his career, to the extent to which it was visible, had been almost entirely such as to justify the Sheikhs' belief in his good qualities. That he was shortly to assume a different character the Sheikhs could not possibly foresee. Could they have done so, most probably they would not have chosen him, but as it was they made unquestionably the wisest choice open to them.

Having made their choice the Sheikhs went, on the 14th of May, 1805, to the residence of the Arnout Commander, and being received by him with the courtesy he always extended to the representatives of learning and religion, as compensation perhaps for his own deficiencies in respect of both, they told him, with scant waste of words, that the townspeople had come to the decision that the Pacha must be "sent down," in plain English—deposed. "And whom," said their host,—"whom do you desire to put in his place?" They answered that he was the man whom they desired to rule over them. To this he raised objections. But though like Macbeth he had not thought it within the prospect of belief that he should be king, he had no mind to let "I dare not" wait upon "I would," and finally consented, whereupon the Sheikhs wrapped him in a robe of honour and brought him forth mounted upon a gallant steed that all the town might salute their new Governor.

But weak and incompetent as Khurshid Pacha was, he had no intention of abandoning his post until he should be deposed therefrom by the man by whom he had been appointed. So, shutting himself up in the citadel, he bid defiance to Mahomed Ali and all who dared question his most impotent authority, and would not even enter upon a discussion. Thereupon Mahomed Ali besieged the citadel, and, being unwilling to resort to extremes, contented himself with investing it so as to cut off supplies; and while his enemy, to whom, in passing it may be said, he owed much of the progress he had made in Egypt, was thus cooped up in the citadel, the wily Arnaout began to lay a train more effectual than one of powder for the attainment of his own aims. This was the despatch to Constantinople of messengers, with an account of the action he had taken, an abundance of justifying facts and arguments, and an humble petition that his Majesty the Sultan would be pleased to sanction the steps taken, to recall Khurshid Pacha and issue the firmans, or imperial mandates, necessary to place the acting government on a proper basis. Unable to oppose this usurpation of authority, and being further moved by the appeals sent by the Ulema of Cairo on behalf of their choice and action, the Sultan granted the request made, and sent a messenger duly empowered to recognise Mahomed Ali as the Governor of Egypt and to recall the unlucky Khurshid.

Thus it was by the spontaneous act of the Egyptians themselves that they were released, as it proved to be, once and for ever from the atrocious misgovernment to which they had so long been subject. Apart from this fact, which in itself possesses an importance none of the historians of the country appear to have realised, this incident is one that must not be overlooked in considering the attitude of the Egyptians, and indeed of all Moslems, towards the Sultan of Turkey both as Sultan and as Caliph. Of the general aspect of that subject I have already spoken, and we have here one of those limitations to the loyalty the Sultan can command which I then mentioned as existing—that that loyalty is only due so long as the Sultan acts consistently with the law of Islam as interpreted by the Ulema, whence the deposition of Khurshid having the approval of the Ulema it became an act almost of necessity assumed to be consistent with the dignity and authority of the Sultan, and one that must have his ultimate consent and sanction. The election of Mahomed Ali as Pacha, or Governor, of Egypt was not therefore, as historians have incorrectly represented it to be, an act of rebellion, but the exercise of a power legally invested in the Ulema; moreover, it was at once referred to the Sultan for his approval, and could therefore claim to be a simple forestalling of what the Ulema conceived would have been his own action had he been on the spot. But while the Ulema in this matter acted upon their own authority and within the limits of their privileges, it is plain that they did so at the instigation of the people, and their action must accordingly be taken as that of the people. As such it is a noticeable fact that in the emergency in which they were placed this people, so little accustomed and so unwilling to concern themselves in the organisation or administration of the government, intuitively selected the one and only man in the country capable of accomplishing their desire and of reducing the anarchy that prevailed to order. Their choice is the more remarkable in that, up to that moment, Mahomed Ali had had no adequate opportunity of showing that he possessed the masterful character the Ulema recognised as a necessary qualification of the man who would successfully rule the country. He had until then played the part of a modest spectator interfering in public affairs or in the rivalries of parties and factions only when forced to do so, and then always as a promoter of peace and harmony. There were, however, two facts strongly in his favour. These were the sympathy he showed towards the people, and the manner in which he restrained his own small body of troops from imitating the licentious conduct of the rest of the Turkish army. These were points the people could and did appreciate, and points in which he had no rival. And though not a few writers have hinted that his sympathy was but a hollow pretence, I see no reason for believing that this was so. Prior to his going to Egypt his life had been such as might well render him sympathetic towards peaceful citizens outraged and robbed by a turbulent soldiery. If, in after years, he proved a grinding taskmaster to this same people it is quite possible he never realised the fact, but thought that he was dealing well and fairly with them and as was best for their own interests. If this were so he has had many well-intentioned but equally fallible successors, and was withal but repeating the great blunder of the French—a blunder that, as I have elsewhere said, is a common fault of the philanthropists and reformers of the day, and which is, perhaps, a failing of the majority of men, that of wrongly estimating the needs and wishes of others and of seeking to force upon them a false and inadequate standard of life and happiness.