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 (5 of 19) issued with the permission of the author. 

Egyptian Frescoes (5): War in the Desert and War at the Paris Peace Conference. 

It shall be noted that, under the stewardship of Lord Cromer, Egypt had greatly changed. Its bureaucracy was sound. Its infrastructure had been expanded. The Suez Canal was profitable. Irrigation projects were tended to. Light industries were being established. Housing was on the upsurge as new neighbourhoods were developed to accommodate civil servants and immigrants. This was in Cairo. In Alexandria, the harbour’s basins were expanded and the city grew with increased commercial activities. The towns of Port Said, Isma’iliya and Suez also came of age. The same trend could be witnessed, in the villages, from the Mediterranean to Aswan, on the First Cataract.

Preparation for war had meant that huge investments in military installations were allocated. Egypt was not spared. Camps, stores, hospitals, roads and railroads were built in preparation for the days ahead. The presence of foreign soldiers, also, brought new livelihood to Cairo and the Canal towns. Stella Beer had been locally brewed since 1897 and bars mushroomed. Also, apprehension which the war was causing pushed emigrants to chose Egypt as a safe heaven. Mainly from the shores of the Mediterranean came individuals and families who either found employment locally or started their own businesses. This trend exploded during and especially after the war. Syrians and Lebanese, Armenians, Greeks, Serbs and Croats, and Italians, French and English were boarding ship for Alexandria.

Savoy Hotel

At the eve of the war, the British military sequestered the Savoy Hotel, located on Midan Soliman Pasha where the Behler Building now stands. The Head Quarters of the military operation to come were located there. At the fall of Jerusalem to General Allenby, this HQ was moved to that liberated city. I shall not get into the operations of the campaign but look at how the defeat of the Ottomans in Palestine and Syria and how the Arab Revolt which TE Lawrence made possible would influence Egypt. One shall remember that the Egyptian public remained a witness to events outside and around the country. Although censorship was imposed on information and martial law kept tight control over the Nationalists, discussions and opinions were shared in those new establishments one now called al-Qahwa, the Café, where coffee, Indian and Mint teas and Karkadeh, Hibiscus infusion from Aswan, were served. The most famous cafés were located around al-Azhar and al-Husayn. They also had spread to ‘Abdin, al-Sayyida Zaynab, al-Daher and Shubrah.

Cemal Pasha

The Young Turks had many fronts to defend. To the West were Greece, Bulgaria and Rumania. North of the Black Sea was Russia. And, south along the Suez Canal was Britain. Cemal (to be pronounced Djemal) Pasha, the third member of the Triumvirate had been Minister of the Navy. He now assumed command of the forces in Syria with Head Quarters in both Beirut and Damascus. Cemal’s government was brutal. Dissidents were hung, arrested and jailed or shunned from society. The major waves of immigrants from Lebanon and Syria who fled to Egypt, those who came to be known as Shawam (Damascenes) or from Barr al-Sham (the Coast of Damascus) owe their flight to Egypt to Cemal. Amongst them were disciples of Butrus al-Bustani and Nasif al-Yaziji, the initiators of al-Nahda, the Renaissance in the Arabic Language.

News of Allenby’s War reached Egypt’s cafés daily through the grape vine. For instance, Sharif Husayn of Makkah had been negotiating with the British in Cairo and considered revolt against the Sultan-Caliph in Istambul. One al-Awrans, an Englishman, had been sent to Hijaz to assist the Hashemite Sharif carrying gold and weapons. At the outset of the war, Allenby was successful against the Ottomans along the Palestinian Coast. Let it here be said  that he had  revised his tactics during the Second Boer War, using mobility and transforming his cavalry as mounted infantry. This was also the time when British soldiers would trade their Scarlets, their red coats, for a uniform whose colour borrowed that of the Indian Kahki fruit which made them blend into the desert sand. Allenby had inched towards Jerusalem till, on December 9^th, 1917,

Amir Faisal

he entered the Jaffa Gate on foot, his horse by his side, exactly as Godfrey de Bouillon had, during the First Crusade, in 1099, when he conquered Jerusalem for Christendom. The symbolism could not have escaped learned Egyptians. Finally, Allenby rendez-vous-ed with al-Awrans who had conquered ‘Aqaba and reached the outskirts of Damascus: on October 2^nd , 1918, they marched alongside Amir Faisal, the son of Sharif Husayn, into the Syrian metropolis. A different page would now be written for the Arabs.

Rumours of a secret agreement between Britain and France to partition the conquered Arab lands had also reached Cairo. They were leaked by the Bolsheviks who had replaced the Mensheviks and Tsar Nicolas II. Sharif Husayn asked for clarifications to his correspondent in Cairo, Sir Henry McMahon, who denied categorically the existence of such an agreement on February 18^th, 1918. Allenby was promoted First Viceroy of Megiddo after the battle around the city by that name, in October 1918, against the reputed Yildirim Army of Ottomans and Germans. His was a most brilliant victory over the enemy in which he used aeroplanes, infantry and cavalry in a blitz operation. Australians, Indian and South Africans fought under his command as well as a company of Armenians and French. Upon his return to Cairo, he was appointed High Commissioner of Egypt and the Sudan and moved to the Residency in Garden City.

Sa’d Zaghlul, meanwhile, had chosen with three other members of the Legislative Assembly, to proceed to Paris to attend the Peace Conference. It was in 1919. The British stopped the four Egyptians, soon to be referred to as al-Wafd, the Delegation, and they were instead exiled to Malta. Egyptians revolted across the country and Kitchener reverted his decision. 

The Wafd reached Paris after all. While not much attention was paid either to Zaghlul or to Faisal and Lawrence for that matter, both the veracity of the Sykes-Picot Agreement of May 16^th 1916, emphatically denied by McMahon, and a Balfour Declaration which committed Britain to favour, on November 2^nd, 1917, the establishment of a Jewish Home in Palestine, were on the table for all delegates to the Conference to consider. More than one, in Egypt, felt betrayed.

By the same token, the United States of America had entered the war in 1917. The following year, President Woodrow Wilson addressed Congress and, in his speech, called for a League of Nations to be formed after the war. In the Fourteen Points he listed as a blueprint for the post-war period, the last point stated that be reached ‘’mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small nations alike’’.

Saad Zaghlul

Sa’d Zaghlul returned to Egypt to a hero’s welcome and was hopeful for the future. It shall be recalled that he had been influenced by Mufti Muhammad ‘Abduh, his friend. He worked tirelessly to rid Egypt of British occupation but he was a realist who believed this was to be a slow process in which time was on Egypt’s side. As a prominent political personality he constantly hindered any government in Cairo which was friendly to the British and the occupier exiled him, this time, to the Seychelles Islands. When he returned to his homeland, in 1923, the Wafd Party won the elections and Zaghlul was asked to head the government. He could not, as prime minister, however, halt the rioting across the land and rein in the extremists amongst the Nationalists.
When the Commander of the Egyptian Army, Sir Lee Stack, was assassinated, in 1924, he resigned from Government. Sa’d Zaghlul died a few years later, on August 23^rd, 1927. The entire nation wept at his funeral. The entire nation mourned its first native leader since Pharaoh times.