A new weekly series about Egypt 

The author of this series "Egyptian Frescoes" André Dirlik was born in Egypt and spent the first twenty years of his life in Cairo, then moved to Beirut where he studied at the American University. He later completed his studies at Mc Gill University, in Montreal. 

André's long career as professor exclusively at the "Collège Militaire Royal de Saint-Jean" was only interrupted when that institution closed it's doors in 1995. 

Egyptian Frescoes part (4 of 19) issued with the permission of the author. 

Egyptian Frescoes (4): General Allenby and Sa’d Zaghlul.

The drums of war had fallen silent in Europe, after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Bismarck’s First Reich entered the family of Europe by hosting a Berlin Conference in 1884. The Chancellor of a rising power, unified Germany, orchestrated the Scramble for Africa where Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Belgium would slice each a piece of the Black Continent for themselves. France had already occupied Algeria in 1830. The British had helped themselves to choice territories in Eastern, Southern and Western Africa. There were still leftovers at the heart of a continent for everyone to be satisfied with.

Battle of Tel El Kebir

Meanwhile, prior to the American Civil War, between 1801 and 1805, the United States had sent frigates to Tripoli first, then to Algiers to bombard these cities and sink what was referred to as Pirate ships. And, during the Greek War of Independence, British and French vessels defeated Ottoman and Egyptian forces under the command of Ibrahim Pasha, son of Mohammad ‘Ali, at Missolonghi, in 1825, and at Navarino, in 1827. By 1882, the British occupied Egypt after the Battle of Tall al-Kabir. In the Ottoman Empire itself, and in neighbouring Persia, the successors of Peter the Great and the Czarina Catherine, pushed south into Muslim Lands thus conquering Crimea and the Caucasus, between 1820 and 1850, and infringing upon Northern Persia in Azerbaydjan. Czar Nicolas I had referred to the Sultan-Caliph in Istambul as the Sick Man of Europe in 1860. He claimed Constantinople, the Straits of Dardanelles and the right of access to the Mediterranean for Russia. He called for the Ottoman Empire to be dismantled.

Muslims watched in dismay. In Egypt, more and more who lived and worked for the government in the cities had shed the Qaftan of the al-Azhar student for a western attire; they wore suites tailored by Avierino, an Italian immigrant, and the cylindrical pressed felt red Tarbush which had been borrowed from the Ottomans; they also, more often than not, carried a newspaper. They were becoming Afandiyyah. Sa’d Zaghlul (1859-1927) belonged to the new bureaucracy created by Lord Cromer.

Saad Zaghlul

He was born in the Delta and went to study at al-Azhar. Unlike Muhammad ‘Abduh and like Mustafa Kamel, he read French law. He was known to the police as an activist whose aim was to rid the country of the British. Zaghlul had been introduced to Princess Nazli Fadl, the niece of the late Khedive Isma’il who held a Salon in her palace, near the recently built ‘Abdine Khedivial Palace, past Maydan Ibrahim Basha. ‘Abduh was one of the habitués at her Salon. So were Cromer and Lord Kitchener, the Military Commander in Egypt. In 1892, Zaghlul was appointed Judge at the Court of Appeal. In 1895, he married the daughter of the Prime Minister, Mustafa Basha Fahmi and in 1906 was appointed his Minister of Education. In 1910, he was given the Justice portfolio. He had joined the newly formed al-Umma, the Nation, Party and been elected at the Legislative Assembly. He used this platform to criticize Khedive ‘Abbas Hilmi II and the British.

The telegraph had provided swift access to information. The telegraph linked the five continents. The spread of newspapers made news of the world available as never before in the history of mankind. Egyptians like Sa’d Zaghlul could follow events around them. The Agadir Incident during which a German frigate, the Panther, had ventured, in 1911, into Moroccan territorial waters unannounced, led the British Navy which ruled the seas to perceive this action as a threat of things to come: the Panther was forced to withdraw to the Baltic Sea. Again in 1911, Italy, an ally of Britain and France, declared war on the Ottoman Empire. 20.000 troops were landed in Tobruk, Libya, near the Egyptian border. They would occupy Cyrenaica, Tripolitania and Fezzan. One note of interest, an airplane was used during this campaign for the first time in modern warfare, an Etrich Taube biplane which bombed a location near Benghazi where a Young Turk – more will be said about them - captain Mustafa Kemal, was in command. In the same year, the Dodecanese Islands, in the Aegean Sea, were wrested by Italy from the Ottoman Empire.

Sultan Abdel Hamid II

More critical for the British, in 1878, was the signature of a treaty in Berlin, an alliance which was forged between the First Reich and the Ottoman Empire at the time when two protagonists in the Balkans, Czar Nicolas II and Habsburg Emperor Franz-Joseph, vied for influence over Serbia. British diplomacy had now much to worry about, in Europe, in the Mediterranean, in the Middle East and along the land route to India. The aim of the British was to prevent Russia from heading south through the Dardanelles, or into Persia and Afghanistan. Building the Berlin-Baghdad Railroad, beginning in 1903, was another headache for London. Then came the visit of Kaiser Wilhelm II to Istambul on his way to the Holy Land in 1898 that crowned German ambitions in the Middle East. Already, in Persia and in Mesopotamia, German archaeological teams were at work. One such team had come across oil seeping from the ground; it sent samples to Berlin. German presence in the Middle East was not a welcome one for London.

A bit of Ottoman history which will prove pertinent for Egypt: ‘Abdul Hamid II, the one they called the Red Sultan for his cruelty, was toppled by a group of officers known as Jön Türkler, Young Turks, in 1906. The Committee for Union and Progress was directed by Mehmet Talat, a telegraph operator and by Generals Enver and Cemal. They confirmed their commitment to the alliance with Germany. Their aim was primarily to stop the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. Abdul Hamid II was deposed and replaced by Abdul Mecid, a figurehead sultan and caliph. Germany promised officers at the brigade level under the command of Maj.Gen. Werner von Frankenberg. In Cairo, the British had been beefing their alliances and their defences in preparation for war in the region around the Suez Canal. As one walked towards the Nile from al-Azhar, one reached the open market of ‘Ataba. Beyond it, near the Gardens of Azbakiyyah where the new opera house had been erected during Isma’il’s reign, was Ibrahim Basha square. This was new Cairo. When one turned left and borrowed Qasr al-Nil Street, one reached Maydan Sulayman Basha named after Sulayman al-Faransawi, the Chief of Staff of Muhammad ‘Ali’s army, one Colonel Sèvres who converted to Islam and is buried in Egypt. Past the Maydan and built along the Nile, not far from the Residence of the British Pro-consul, there stood the Kasr el-Nil Barracks, the Head Quarters of the Imperial Army. It is here that plans were beings drawn in case war broke out in the Middle East.

Allenby

Troops from Australia, from New Zealand, from India and from South Africa were now being ferried to Suez. Their encampments were located in Tall al-Kabir and Fayid, along the Suez Canal. Security was tightened and Sa’d Zaghlul and his Nationalist friends were kept on a short leash. Edmund Allenby (1861-1936) was in Britain before the war broke out.  He had been in command in South Africa during the two Boer Wars of 1880 and 1899, in the Transvaal and in the Free State of Orange. It is during the second Boer War that Allenby served under Lord Kitchener. 

Kitchener had previously visited Egypt and learnt Arabic. He was assigned the task of mapping Palestine. He also recaptured Khartum, in the Sudan, from the Mahdists who had defeated and assassinated Lord Gordon in 1898. At the start of the First World War he was appointed Minister of War. He was responsible for assigning the younger Allenby the task of commanding what was known as the Egyptian Expeditionary Force although no Egyptian served in this war. In the next frescoe, Allenby’s war will be narrated. Sa’d Zaghlul’s war will be waged at the Paris Peace Conference, on the island of Malta and in the Seychelles during his two exiles, and as Prime Minister of Egypt when he will face Egypt’s ruler and the British occupier.