In consequence of despatches which reached Bonaparte on the 3rd of January 1799, announcing the intention of the Porte to invade the country with the object of recovering it by force, Bonaparte resolved on his Syrian expedition, and appointed governors for Cairo, Alexandria, and Upper Egypt, to govern during his absence. From that ill-fated expedition he returned at the beginning of June. Advantage had been taken of this opportunity by Murād Bey and Ibrāhīm Bey to collect their forces and attempt a joint attack on Cairo, but this Bonaparte arrived in time to defeat, and in the last week of July he inflicted a crushing defeat on the Turkish army that had landed at Aboukir, aided by the British fleet commanded by Sir Sidney Smith. Shortly after his victory Bonaparte left Egypt, having appointed Kléber to govern in his absence, which he informed the sheiks of Cairo was not to last more than three months. Kléber himself regarded the condition of the French invaders as extremely perilous, and wrote to inform the French republic of the facts. A double expedition shortly after Bonaparte’s departure was sent by the Porte for the recovery of Egypt, one force being despatched by sea to Damietta, while another under Yūsuf Pasha took the land route from Damascus by al-Arish. Over the first some success was won, in consequence of which the Turks agreed to a convention (signed January 24, 1800), by virtue of which the French were to quit Egypt. The Turkish troops advanced to Bilbeis, where they were received by the sheiks from Cairo, and the Mamelukes also returned to that city from their hiding-places. Before the preparations for the departure of the French were completed, orders came to Sir Sidney Smith from the British government, forbidding the carrying out of the convention unless the French army were treated as prisoners of war; and when these were communicated to Kléber he cancelled the orders previously given to the troops, and proceeded to put the country in a state of defence. His departure with most of the army to attack the Turks at Mataria led to riots in Cairo, in the course of which many Christians were slaughtered; but the national party were unable to get possession of the citadel, and Kléber, having defeated the Turks, was soon able to return to the capital. On the 14th of April he bombarded Bulak, and proceeded to bombard Cairo itself, which was taken the following night. Order was soon restored, and a fine of twelve million francs imposed on the rioters. Murād Bey sought an interview with Kléber and succeeded in obtaining from him the government of Upper Egypt. He died shortly afterwards and was succeeded by Osman Bey al-Bardīsī.
On the 14th of June Kléber was assassinated by a fanatic named Suleiman of Aleppo, said to have been incited to the deed by a Janissary refugee at Jerusalem, who had brought letters to the sheiks of the Azhar, who, however, refused to give him any encouragement. Three of these, nevertheless, were executed by the French as accessories before the fact, and the assassin himself was impaled, after torture, in spite of a promise of pardon having been made to him on condition of his naming his associates. The command of the army then devolved on General J. F. (Baron de) Menou (1750-1810), a man who had professed Islam, and who endeavoured to conciliate the Moslem population by various measures, such as excluding all Christians (with the exception of one Frenchman) from the divan, replacing the Copts who were in government service by Moslems, and subjecting French residents to taxes. Whatever popularity might have been gained by these measures was counteracted by his declaration of a French protectorate over Egypt, which was to count as a French colony.
In the first weeks of March 1801 the English, under Sir R. Abercromby, effected a landing at Aboukir, and proceeded to invest Alexandria, where on the 21st they were attacked by Menou; the French were repulsed, but the English French evacuation. commander was mortally wounded in the action. On the 25th fresh reinforcements arrived under Husain, the Kapudan Pasha, or high admiral; and a combined English and Turkish force was sent to take Rosetta. On the 30th of May, General A. D. Belliard, who had been left in charge at Cairo, was assailed on two sides by the British forces under General John Hely Hutchinson (afterwards 2nd earl of Donoughmore), and the Turkish under Yūsuf Pasha; after negotiations Belliard agreed to evacuate Cairo and to sail with his 13,734 troops to France. On the 30th of August, Menou at Alexandria was compelled to accept similar conditions, and his force of 10,000 left for Europe in September. This was the termination of the French occupation of Egypt, of which the chief permanent monument was the Description de l’Égypte, compiled by the French savants who accompanied the expedition. Further than this, “it brought to the attention of a few men in Egypt a keen sense of the great advantage of an orderly government, and a warm appreciation of the advance that science and learning had made in Europe” (Hajji Browne, Bonaparte in Egypt and the Egyptians of to-day, 1907, p. 268).
Soon after the evacuation of Egypt by the French, the country became the scene of more severe troubles, in consequence of the attempts of the Turks to destroy the power of the Mamelukes. In defiance of promises to the British government, orders were transmitted from Constantinople to Husain Pasha, the Turkish high admiral, to ensnare and put to death the principal beys. Invited to an entertainment, they were, according to the Egyptian contemporary historian al-Jabarti, attacked on board the flag-ship; Sir Robert Wilson and M. F. Mengin, however, state that they were fired on, in open boats, in the Bay of Aboukir. They offered an heroic resistance, but were overpowered, and some killed, some made prisoners; among the last was Osman Bey al-Bardīsī, who was severely wounded. General Hutchinson, British, Turks and Mamelukes. informed of this treachery, immediately assumed threatening measures against the Turks, and in consequence the killed, wounded and prisoners were given up to him. At the same time Yūsuf Pasha arrested all the beys in Cairo, but was shortly compelled by the British to release them. Such was the beginning of the disastrous struggle between the Mamelukes and the Turks.
Mahommed Khosrev was the first Turkish governor of Egypt after the expulsion of the French. The form of government, however, was not the same as that before the French invasion, for the Mamelukes were not reinstated. The pasha, and through him the sultan, endeavoured on several occasions either to ensnare them or to beguile them into submission; but these efforts failing, Mahommed Khosrev took the field, and a Turkish detachment 7000 strong was despatched against them to Damanhur, whither they had descended from Upper Egypt, and was defeated by a small force under al-Alfī; or, as Mengin says, by 800 men commanded by al-Bardīsī, when al-Alfī had left the field. Their ammunition and guns fell into the hands of the Mamelukes.
In March 1803 the British evacuated Alexandria, and Mahommed Bey al-Alfī accompanied them to England to consult respecting the means to be adopted for restoring the former power of the Mamelukes, who meanwhile took Minia and interrupted communication between Upper and Lower Egypt. About six weeks after, the Arnaut (or Albanian) soldiers in the service of Khosrev tumultuously demanded their pay, and surrounded the house of the defterdār (or finance minister), who in vain appealed to the pasha to satisfy their claims. The latter opened fire from the artillery of his palace on the insurgent soldiery in the house of the defterdār, across the Ezbekia. The citizens of Cairo, accustomed to such occurrences, immediately closed their shops, and every man who possessed any weapon armed himself. The tumult continued all the day, and the next morning a body of troops sent out by the pasha failed to quell it. Tāhir, the commander of the Albanians, then repaired to the citadel, gained admittance through an embrasure, and, having obtained possession of it, began to cannonade the pasha over the roofs of the intervening houses, and then descended with guns to the Ezbekia and laid close siege to the palace. On the following day Mahommed Khosrev made good his escape, with his women and servants and his regular troops, and fled to Damietta by the river. This revolt marks the beginning in Egypt of the breach between the Albanians and Turks, which ultimately led to the expulsion of the latter, and of the rise to power of the Albanian Mehemet Ali (q.v.), who was destined to rule the country for nearly forty years and be the cause of serious European complications.
Tāhir Pasha assumed the government, but in twenty-three days he met with his death from exactly the same cause as that of the overthrow of his predecessor. He refused the pay of certain of the Turkish troops, and was immediately First appearance of Mehemet Ali. assassinated. A desperate conflict ensued between the Albanians and Turks; and the palace was set on fire and plundered. The masters of Egypt were now split into these two factions, animated with the fiercest animosity against each other. Mehemet Ali, then in command of an Albanian regiment, became the head of the former, but his party was the weaker, and he therefore entered into an alliance with the Mameluke leaders Ibrahim Bey and ’Osmān Bey al-Bardīsī. A certain Ahmed Pasha, who was about to proceed to a province in Arabia, of which he had been appointed governor, was raised to the important post of pasha of Egypt, through the influence of the Turks and the favour of the sheiks; but Mehemet Ali, who with his Albanians held the citadel, refused to assent to their choice; the Mamelukes moved over from El-Giza, whither they had been invited by Tāhir Pasha, and Ahmed Pasha betook himself to the mosque of al-Ẓāhir, which the French had converted into a fortress. He was compelled to surrender by the Albanians; the two chiefs of the Turks who killed Tāhir Pasha were taken with him and put to death, and he himself was detained a prisoner. In consequence of the alliance between Mehemet Ali and al-Bardīsī, the Albanians gave the citadel over to the Mamelukes; and soon after, these allies marched against Khosrev Pasha, who having been joined by a considerable body of Turks, and being in possession of Damietta, was enabled to offer an obstinate resistance. After much loss on both sides, he was taken prisoner and brought to Cairo; but he was treated with respect. The victorious soldiery sacked the town of Damietta, and were guilty of the barbarities usual with them on such occasions.
A few days later, Ali Pasha Jazāirli landed at Alexandria with an imperial firmān constituting him pasha of Egypt, and threatened the beys, who now were virtual masters of Upper Egypt, as well as of the capital and nearly the whole of Lower Egypt. Mehemet Ali and al-Bardīsī therefore descended to Rosetta, which had fallen into the hands of a brother of Ali Pasha, and having captured the town and its commander, al-Bardīsī purposed to proceed against Alexandria; but the troops demanded arrears of pay which it was not in his power to give, and the pasha had cut the dyke between the lakes of Aboukir and Mareotis, thus rendering the approach to Alexandria more difficult. Al-Bardīsī and Mehemet Ali therefore returned to Cairo. The troubles of Egypt were now increased by an insufficient inundation, and great scarcity prevailed, aggravated by the taxation to which the beys were compelled to resort in order to pay the troops; while murder and rapine prevailed in the capital, the riotous soldiery being under little or no control. Meanwhile, Ali Pasha, who had been behaving with violence towards the Franks in Alexandria, received a hatt-i-sherif from the sultan, which he sent by his secretary to Cairo. It announced that the beys should live peaceably in Egypt, with an annual pension each of fifteen purses (a “purse” = 500 piastres) and other privileges, but that the government should be in the hands of the pasha. To this the beys assented, but with considerable misgivings; for they had intercepted letters from Ali to the Albanians, endeavouring to alienate them from their side to his own. Deceptive answers were returned The Mamelukes and Ali Pasha. to these, and Ali was induced by them to advance towards Cairo at the head of 3000 men. The forces of the beys, with the Albanians, encamped near him at Shalakān, and he fell back on a place called Zufeyta. They next seized his boats conveying soldiers, servants, and his ammunition and baggage; and, following him, they demanded wherefore he brought with him so numerous a body of men, in opposition to usage and to their previous warning. Finding they would not allow his troops to advance, forbidden himself to retreat with them to Alexandria, and being surrounded by the enemy, he would have hazarded a battle, but his men refused to fight. He therefore went to the camp of the beys, and his army was compelled to retire to Syria. In the hands of the beys Ali Pasha again attempted treachery. A horseman was seen to leave his tent one night at full gallop; he was the bearer of a letter to Osmān Bey Hasan, the governor of Kine. This offered a fair pretext to the Mamelukes to rid themselves of a man proved to be a perfidious tyrant. He was sent under a guard of forty-five men towards the Syrian frontier; and about a week after, news was received that in a skirmish with some of his own soldiers he had fallen mortally wounded.
The death of Ali Pasha produced only temporary tranquillity; in a few days (February 12, 1804) the return of Mahommed Bey al-Alfī (called the Great) from England was the signal for fresh disturbances, which, by splitting the Mamelukes into two parties, accelerated their final overthrow. An ancient jealousy existed between al-Alfī and the other most powerful bey, al-Bardīsī. The latter was now supreme among the Mamelukes, and this fact considerably heightened their old enmity. While the guns of the citadel, those at Old Cairo, and even those of the palace of al-Bardīsī, were thrice fired in honour of al-Alfī, preparations were immediately begun to oppose him. His partisans were collected opposite Cairo, and al-Alfī the Less held Giza; but treachery was among them; Husain Bey (a relative of al-Alfī) was assassinated by emissaries of al-Bardīsī, and Mehemet Ali, with his Albanians, gained possession of Giza, which was, as usual, given over to the troops to pillage. In the meanwhile al-Alfī the Great embarked at Rosetta, and not apprehending opposition, was on his way to Cairo, when a little south of the town of Manūf he encountered a party of Albanians, and with difficulty made his escape. He gained the eastern branch of the Nile, but the river had become dangerous, and he fled to the desert. There he had several hairbreadth escapes, and at last secreted himself among a tribe of Arabs at Rās al-Wādī. A change in the fortune of al-Bardīsī, however, favoured his plans for the future. That chief, in order to satisfy the demands of the Albanians for their pay, gave orders to levy heavy contributions from the citizens of Cairo; and this new oppression roused them to rebellion. The Albanians, alarmed for their safety, assured the populace that they would not allow the order to be executed; and Mehemet Ali himself caused a proclamation to be made to that effect. Thus the Albanians became the favourites of the people, and took advantage of their opportunity. Three days later (March 12th, 1804) they beset the house of the aged Ibrahim Bey, and that of al-Bardīsī, both of whom effected their escape with difficulty. The Mamelukes in the citadel directed a fire of shot and shell on the houses of the Albanians which were situated in the Ezbekīa; but, on hearing of the flight of their chiefs, they evacuated the place; and Mehemet Ali, on gaining possession of it, once more proclaimed Mahommed Khosrev pasha of Egypt. For one day and a half he enjoyed the title; the friends of the late Tāhir Pasha then accomplished his second degradation,[22] and Cairo was again the scene of terrible enormities, the Albanians revelling in the houses of the Mameluke chiefs, whose hareems met with no mercy at their hands. These events were the signal for the reappearance of al-Alfī.
The Albanians now invited Ahmed Pasha Khorshīd to assume the reins of government, and he without delay proceeded from Alexandria to Cairo. The forces of the partisans of al-Bardīsī were ravaging the country a few miles south of the capital and intercepting the supplies of corn by the river; a little later they passed to the north of Cairo and successively took Bilbeis and Kalyub, plundering the villages, destroying the crops, and slaughtering the herds of the inhabitants. Cairo was itself in a state of tumult, suffering severely from a scarcity of grain, and the heavy exactions of the pasha to meet the demands of his turbulent troops, at that time augmented by a Turkish detachment. The shops were closed, and the unfortunate people assembled in great crowds, crying “Yā Latīf! Yā Latīf!” (“O Gracious [God]!”) Al-Alfī and Osmān Bey Hasan had professed allegiance to the pasha; but they soon after declared against him, and they were now approaching from the south; and having repulsed Mehemet Ali, they took the two fortresses of Turā. These Mehemet Ali speedily retook by night with 4000 infantry and cavalry; but the enterprise was only partially successful. On the following day the other Mamelukes north of the metropolis actually penetrated into the suburbs; but a few days later were defeated in a battle fought at Shubra, with heavy loss on both sides. This reverse in a measure united the two great Mameluke parties, though their chiefs remained at enmity. Al-Bardīsī passed to the south of Cairo, and the Mamelukes gradually retreated towards Upper Egypt. Thither the pasha despatched three successive expeditions (one of which was commanded by Mehemet Ali), and many battles were fought, but without decisive result.