A new weekly series about Egypt (Saturdays)

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

Egyptian Frescoes (10): Hasan al-Banna and the Ikhwan Muslimin.

The transition from a traditional to a modern society, from one that is rural to an urban one, from illiteracy towards becoming exposed to an array of ideas, this transition is both slow and stressful anywhere. In Egypt, it brought change as the War of 1939 approached. In the world at large, it caused nations who thought the First World War to be the last war to now prepare for another. The Age of Liberalism was in confrontation with an Age of Totalitarianism.

In 1929, a Great Depression which caused massive unemployment spread fast across the planet. Egypt's economic development, which had become closely associated with that of Europe since its modern sector operated in the cash economy, was severely affected. This sector, although still infant, collapsed in the 1930's. Social ills afflicted mainly the towns and cities along the Valley of the Nile. Only the subsistence economy was spared that would now be expected to sustain the entire Egyptian population. Egyptian society was ripe for new ideologies which, instantly, sought to sooth, explain and promise remedies.

Communism and Zionism fascinated mainly the Jews in Egypt. Fascism spoke directly to the Italian Khawagat. Amongst Egyptians, Blue Shirts from the Wafd Party battled in the streets the Green Shirts of Ahmad Husayn, a demagogic orator who took his lead from Mussolini and Hitler, starting in 1930. His party, Misr al-Fatat, Young Egypt, was disbanded in 1938 by the authorities who charged him with inciting violence against the State. The al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin did not wear any particular colour of shirt; they grew a beard instead, the mustache having been shaven off in the manner of the Sahaba, the Compagnons of the Prophet.

The Ikhwan had been formed, in 1928, by one Hassan al-Banna 

Hassan al-Banna

Al-Banna was born near the provincial town of Damanhur. His name tells of a recent ancestor who must have been a bricklayer, a "builder". His father was a watchmaker who, most probably, learnt the trade from an Armenian whose apprentice he may have been in his youth. Hasan's father studied at al-Azhar. Father and son were pious Muslims. More significant, Hasan's father belonged to the Hanbali Madhhab, one of four schools of Islamic law which was the least prone to compromise with change. More on this later in this frescoe. Suffice it to say that Hasan al-Banna's world view was determined, in its formative years, by the trade he learnt while he assisted his father, the watchmaker: as one who had become familiar with watch repairs, he could fathom the interdependence of each single part with the whole. The trade demanded, essentially, patience and thoroughness, which he must have acquired. As for his Hanbali affiliation, in colloquial Egyptian, a Hanbali referred to someone whose views were set in his conservatism when it came to matters of faith, one who took his Islam more seriously than any other Muslim.

al-Banna had taught school in Damahur. He was sent to Teachers Training College, Dar al-'Ulum, in Cairo in 1923, and he earned a scholarship to travel to Europe. He turned it down.  And, in 1927, he was appointed to teach secondary school in the Suez Canal City of Isma'iliyyah. There, the presence of foreigners was tangible. Ten thousand British troops were also camped nearby who frequented the city on their leave. al-Banna made his xenophobia known in cafés and in mosques. When he founded Jami'yat al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin in 1928, he had recruited 60 disciples to his views. He lectured against British presence in Egypt. He denounced the ways of Egypt's foreigners. He called for the observance of Islamic Law and the establishment of a true Islamic society in Egypt.

al-Banna, the teacher, was eventually posted in Cairo in 1932. His associates followed him to the capital. Barely the following year, the Ikhwan were founding schools, charitable associations, clinics and libraries. In 1936, the population of Egypt had reached 16 million. Since 1925, primary education rose from 193 thousand pupils to 661 thousand. In secondary education, the figure had reached 45 thousand from 17. The Ikhwan aimed to reach such a youth. Also, imitating the famous Egyptian feminist, Huda Sha'rawi (1879-1947) who had created, in 1923, a Union of Egyptian Women to promote women's rights, al-Banna, ten years later, founded the Muslim Sisterhood. 

Huda Sha'rawi

The sisters would wear the hijab, the head-scarf, in defiance to Sha'rawi's theatrical removal of her veil when she returned from Paris to Alexandria Harbour in 1909. The Sisterhood favoured education for women but it had to be Islamic education.  

Hasan al-Banna was addressing a rising strata of society, a lower middle class, when he warned Egyptians of the dangers of abandoning  their beliefs and religious practices. Morality, in society, is related to social cohesion, not to creed. Transition, for the new lower middle class, from a pre-modern to a modern civilization, invited new interpretations of Islam. Hasan al-Banna had stepped in to fill the vacuum which changes were causing and was drawing his social contract for the present and the future by using the ingredients of the past. He demanded complete submission to the strictest doctrine of Islam he knew. Totalitarianism was certainly in the air when he presented his ideological platform.

al-Banna had sought and found his inspiration from Rashid Rida (1865-1935), the Editor of al-Manar. Rida, the collaborator of Muhammad 'Abduh, had grown in time to be an admirer of

Rashid Rida

Muhammad ibn 'abd al-Wahhab (1703-1792), the preacher from Najd, in Arabia. The latter, was heir to the ideals of ibn Taymiyah (b. in 1263) the theologian and judge who died in prison, in 1328, in Damascus for his extreme views on Religion and State. All four, al-Banna, Rida, ibn 'abd al-Wahhab and ibn Taymiyyh, were in the intellectual trail of Ahmad ibn Hanbal (780-855) from Baghdad, the most rigid jurist when it came to formulating the Shari'ah, the Religious Law, the Path towards an all encompassing Islamic way of life.

Shortly before the death of the Prophet in Madina, in Hijaz, in 632, the Coranic Revelation came to an end: "wa al-yawm akmaltu lakum dinakum". Muslims were left with a compendium of Surat from which they derived a set of rules by which they may conduct themselves. Wherever there existed no rules, pious and learned Muslims would consider the Sayings, the aHadith of the Prophet, to help understand the path Allah had traced for them. The Science of Hadith divided these Sayings into true, weak or correct sayings. In time, Sayings were fabricated to suite interest groups. Whenever such Sayings, however weak, were conform with the spirit of Islam, they were retained. ibn Hanbal rejected, outright, most sayings in seeking to interpret the Scriptures.

Hanbali Law

Also, in the development of Islamic Jurisprudence, the technique of analogy was devised, Qiyas. The early jurists, moreover, utilized the consensus of Jurists and the opinion of the most learned, pious and eminent amongst them. Consensus, Ijma', and opinion, Ra'y, were acceptable to the most flexible of the four schools of law, attributed to abu Hanifa (702-767). While rulers favoured Hanafi Law which allowed them much latitude, Hanbali Law was adamant to use either of spurious aHadith, and certainly not consensus and opinion: only the text of the Qur'an bore the ultimate weight in Islamic Jurisprudence.

Hasan al-Banna taught formally to his disciples and informally in public that pristine Islam should not be tampered with. Innovations which the Europeans had brought into Egyptian society should be banned. His was a literalist reading of the Coran. And yet, like all fundamentalists before him, al-Banna was a man of his age, a reformist of what he and his disciples were experiencing. It is important that this point be retained. Conservatives are aware of the threats to their values and their creed. They react to change because they notice change. It is certainly the case amongst conservatives of the Lower Middle Class.

Hasan al-Banna ought to have known Rashid Rida personally. Or else, he must have regularly read Majallat al-Manar which the Syrian-born radical edited, after Muhammad 'Abduh's death. Rida was in favour of restoring the Caliphate yet opposed King Fu'ad's ambition to occupy this spiritual high office: the king may have claimed he was a descendant of the Prophet; he was, in fact, an Albanian through and through who, after the First World War, had even considered claiming the Albanian throne for himself; the King, also, was an Italophile who had studied in Turin and spoke Italian better than he did Arabic. al-Banna shared the view that the Caliphate ought to be re-instated and revert to a true descendant of the Prophet, a member of the Tribe of Quraysh. Rida, who had Wahhabi leanings, had turned out to become an advocate of Wahhabism: 

King 'abd al-'Aziz ibn Su'ud

he met with King 'abd al-'Aziz ibn Su'ud of Saudi Arabia, the descendant of the houses of 'abd al-Wahhab and Al Su'ud in Najd and the unifier, in 1915, of the entire Arabian Peninsula under his rule. ibn Su'ud fought along with his military phalanx called the Ikhwan. al-Banna chose Ikhwan to name the association he created to rid Egypt of its ills. Rashid Rida urged Muslims to turn away from European influence. al-Banna's refusal to further his studies in Europe may well have resulted from Rida's such admonitions made to his readers. Rida had been converted, in his youth, to the brand of Islamic Nationalism which Jamal ed-Din al-Afghani preached all his life. Nearing the year of his death, Rida stood committed to the Question of Palestine as a Muslim Nationalist should. 
So would Hasan al-Banna.  

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

Egyptian Frescoes (9): Tal'at Harb and Egyptian Economic Nationalism.

He was born in 1867 and died in 1941. He graduated from Fu'ad University as an economist. The university was staffed by Britishers and most subjects, the sciences and the social sciences, were taught in English. The Egyptians who later joined the university staff would also study in England. A few were educated in France, Italy or Germany. This was a time when the government was lavish with its scholarships. In 1907, Tal'at Harb wrote a pamphlet on the urgency for Egyptians to create their bank. Shareholders ought to be Egyptian. Depositors, of course, would be. Harb preached endlessly for this idea. He pointed to what was happening to Egypt when it remained in foreign hands.

Talaat Harb

His words did not fall on deaf ears. The Khediviate and, later, the Monarchy were in favour of regaining control of the land they were losing to the Khawagat. Amongst the landowning class, the intellectuals and the civil service who had grown loyal to Sa'd Zaghlul and to the Wafd Party, the time had come to change the course of Egyptian history.

As he stood still facing what is now Tahrir Square, Harb was pondering over the future from his high pedestal. His statue had replaced that of Sulayman Basha (al-Faransawi). Maydan al-Isma'liyyah had also been renamed after Liberation lest one was reminded too often of the House of Muhammad 'Ali. He stared in the direction of Kasr el-Nil Barracks, symbol of occupation, and the River Nile where permanence flowed. Our family had moved from Maadi into the heart of the city so that we be close to our schools and to my father's work. My mother also could easily drop by the Cairo Women's Club, on Maydan Mustafa Kamil, where Arabic and English were spoken, not French. Tal'at Harb and I had become neighbours now that he had moved into the quarter of the Khawagat.

It should be reminded that, no sooner did Muhammad 'Ali Basha order the creation of a centre for translation of European works, Madrasat al-Alsun, that there appeared on the book stalls texts of all kinds. The Age of Egyptian Liberalism to which Tal'at Harb belongs owes it vision of the future not only to the teachings of Muhammad 'Abduh, that Islam and Science were not in opposition, but also to the works of Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill, Rousseau and Montesquieu, and many more in translation.

Yet another book whom Fathi Zaghlul, the brother of Sa'd, had made available to the avid Egyptian readership was Edmond Demolins' A Quoi Tient la Superiorité des Anglo-Saxons, published in French in 1897. It told of the breeding of Britain's elites: education, sports and moral fiber had made tiny Britain powerful and rich. Character was an individual's strength and character building ought to be at the root of upbringing and education. Tal'at Harb appears to have acquired both.   

In 1911, Harb published The Reform of the Egyptian Economy and the Project for a National Bank. It took another nine years till Bank Misr was founded. And, from 1920 till 1940, his bank's Board of Governors approved or initiated more than 20 projects, companies and plants, who would form the nucleus of an industrial and commercial sector in Egypt's economy that, in some cases, resembled that of the Khawagats'; in others, it was, again, dedicated to promote the modernization of the country. These projects invariably received financing from Bank Misr. They were all directed by Egyptians although foreign expertise was inevitably sought. They also operated entirely in Arabic. These realizations provided employment to the Egyptians who had studied abroad or in Egypt itself. They induced more Egyptians to seek a university education. Bank Misr financed a printing house and the manufacturing of paper, cotton ginning, and cotton, linen and silk weaving and dyeing, fisheries, transportation, mines and quarries, and a travel agency to compete with Thomas Cook who controlled the growing tourist industry which brought Europeans and a smack of Americans to Ancient Egypt. All these companies which Bank Misr assisted or partly owned had Misr, Egypt, included in their name, like Misr li'l Nasig, Misr li'l Siyaha or Misr li'l Ta'min. In 1932, MisrAir was founded.

Um Kalthum

So far for commerce and industry. In 1935, Studio Misr which had been producing films with the technical assistance of Germans and Frenchmen, since a decade earlier, presented Wadad, a movie picture starring Um Kulthum, the rising feminine voice in the country. The movie was shown at Cinema Misr, on 'Imad ed-Din Street. It was a success. Nagib al-Rihani's comedies also hit the screen. Egypt was on the way of regaining the pride it had lost when the British stopped the armies of Muhammad 'Ali that marched on Istambul at Kutahya, in 1833, and when the British again defeated 'Urabi Pasha at Tall al-Kabir, in 1882, thus subsequently occupying Egypt. Meanwhile, the new social class which Bank Misr represented was not unlike that which, in Germany, shortly before Bismarck, had caused a Kultuurkampf. It brought the intellectuals and the civil servants, the entrepreneurs and the political elites, the landlords and the Court of King Fu'ad together in this national initiative. This was a class of liberal nationalists who shared in the effort of uplifting Egyptian society.

As early as 1907, the National Sporting Club, al-Nadi al-Ahli, was inaugurated on al-Gazirah, adjacent to the

Gezirah Sporting Club

Guerzirah Sporting Club which, like the Maadi Sporting Club, had been established by the British for themselves and was for long out of bound to the Natives. European sports like foot ball, tennis and swimming, athletics and rowing had caught the imagination of Egyptians. In the narrow lanes of Cairo where the workshops were located, young apprentices spent their lunch breaks playing football with a ball of fortune. On the Nile banks, crowds cheered as 'Abd al-Latif abu Hayf, Mar'i Hammad and Hasan 'abd al-Rahim, trained for the Channel crossing that would make them world famous. In 1948, Mahmud Fayyad, would win gold at the Olympics and Mahmud 'abd al-Karim would later become world champion in Squash Racquet. The new Egyptian elites showed interest and support for physical training, the spirit of competitiveness and fair play. The game of cricket, furthermore, puzzled rather than attracted people like myself: the Brits competing passionately at the game then suddenly stopped for tea, then carrying on with their playing, sometimes the following day. Come to think of it, economic development was such a game where ingenuity, patience and tenacity paid dividends back.

The new elites used the grounds of Nadi al-Ahli to meet and exchange ideas. Eventually, they moved from coffee houses and tea rooms to private clubs, like the Muhammad 'Ali Club on Sulayman Basha and the Royal Automobile Club, on Qasr al-Nil, in which business ventures, electoral strategies and the latest from the outside world in terms of inventions were discussed. The rise of Communism and Fascism in the West, and of totalitarianism in Egypt itself, was obviously of great interest to Egyptian Liberals. The dangers to the 1923 Constitution by an authoritarian monarch in 'Abdine Palace was as well. But, more on this later.

Abdine Royal Palace

The new elites of Egypt were obviously not impervious to the business ventures of the Khawagat. In fact, when sporting clubs were eventually opened to the Locals, as they were referred to, Egyptians started getting to be more informed about the strengths and the weaknesses of Khawagat society. They met at the Maadi, Heliopolis and Guezirah sporting clubs and at the Alexandria Sporting Club at Smouha. English was now competing with French as the main foreign language of communication. Otherwise, Egyptians spoke amongst themselves in Arabic. As I said, the mood was one of liberalism, of laisser faire, laisser passer.

The Misr group had inspired more financial and industrial conglomerates to form. Ahmad 'Abbud, was yet another baron in the business world: this magnate of the sugar industry, bought out the British Khedivial Mail Lines and his Khedewiyyah connected Alexandria with Haifa, Beirut, Latakiyyah, Limasol and Athens. Not since the sinking of Muhammad 'Ali's fleet at Navarino, in 1827, had the Egyptian flag been seen flapping on the waters of the Eastern Mediterranean. And there was Shabrawishi whose perfumes sent a sweet Breeze from the Nile in the air when people congregated around the ladies that had removed their Yasmak, their Ottoman-designed veil. Not in their wildest dreams could Rifa'a al-Tahtawi and Muhammad 'Abduh fathom such changes amongst a few Egyptians would happen in such a short time. These new elites moved with great ease between the modern world and the realm of their ancestry. They could telegraph to Europe to put in an order or close a deal then return home to their customs and their mores, to their daily religious practices and to listening, in the concert hall, to the compositions of Muhmmad 'abd al-Wahhab and the voice of Umm Kulthum. Someone once remarked that, in this respect, Egypt and Japan had much in common. 

The Ingiliz had, no doubt, introduced a growing number of Egyptians to values which were not indigenous to their culture. This was certainly the case with the Liberal elites. Socially, they rubbed shoulders with Foreigners. In clubs, they could be seen drinking beer. Their spouses and daughters dressed like Christians and Jewesses and wore bathing suites in pools and along the beaches. In the villas they had built for their families, they raised pets like the English did, who carried English names and were ordered around in English: sit, Rex. And, they had the fondest memories of their journeys to Europe. In the Canal City of Isma'iliyyah, one Hasan al-Banna, objected to the way in which his country had been evolving: "ya nas, he used to preach in some café to his growing audience, taraktum dinakum wa dhahabat akhlakukum", you have abandoned your religion and lost your souls to immorality. al-Banna and the formation he brought about, al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin, should adorn the next frescoe.

A new weekly series about Egypt 

The author of this series "Egyptian Frescoes" André Dirlik was born in Egypt and spentthe 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 (8 of 19) issued with the permission of the author. 

Egyptian Frescoes (8): The Khawagah Who Escaped.

He was born at the Italian Hospital in al-'Abbasiyyah on the day Vladimir Illitch Ulianov saw the light of day. His father, an admirer of Hitler, had expected him two days earlier and would surely have named him Adolf. Six days after his birth, King Fouad 1st (1868-1936) died. His paternal grandmother was a proud Italian. They named him Andrea after the Genoese Admiral and Condottiere, Andrea Doria, who had defeated Kupudan Pasha, Khayr ad-Din Baba Awrush (Barbarossa) and his Moors and Ottomans in the Western Mediterranean Sea. Bad omen? Only time would tell.

Khawagah Andariyyah went to Miss Purvis' Kinder Garden in Ma’adi where he and his friend of previous lives, Adham Safwat, held hands and cried while their mothers walked away from them on their first day at preschool. A few years later Andareh and Adham would board the train towards Bal al-Luq Station. Adham would get off at al-Sayyidah Zaynab to go to Madrasat al-Ibrahimiyyah while he disembarked at the terminal with other Meadi boys and girls who frequented the Lycée Français du Caire. These boys and girls were mainly Jewish. In his class, only he and the Helmy brothers were Christian. There were also a few Christians and Muslims in other classes. 

Andre

The question of religious and national identity was never brought up in those days. In fact, one was taught to never speak religion, discuss nationality and dissect family in public. That was until André was moved against his wish to the Jesuit Collège de la Sainte Famille, in Faggalah. In that school there were Christians, to mean more precisely Catholics, and non-Christians. We the Catholics, of course, were bound to go to Heaven in spite of the Original Sin; not the others. Very original indeed.

Thank Sweet Jesus, Andre's mother was Lebanese Arab and a Protestant. His maternal grandparents, his uncles and his mother were close to the majority of Egyptians. His great grandmother who raised him would listen to the Qur'an over the radio every morning when she drank her first cup of coffee. His grandfather sold life insurance to Egyptians and befriended many of his clients. André followed in their footsteps. And, yet, he looked like a Khawagah, he felt comfortable amongst the Khawagat, he partook in the culture which had impregnated their world. Whenever the radio played Arabic music he changed the band to Western music. He loved accompanying his parents to the opera. The Khedivial Opera House, he had learnt, was built by Pietro Avoscani and inaugurated at the same time as the Suez Canal in 1869. Isma'il Pasha had commandeered Giuseppe Verdi to compose Aida for the opening night. André, knew Verdi as his paternal grandmother would sit at the piano, his father accompanying her at the cello, and she would sing areas from his and Puccini's after Sunday lunch. In fact, Il Trovatore was performed instead in 1869 and one had to wait until 1871 for Egyptians and the world to hook on to the Victorious March of Radamès.

Cairo Opera house

The lyrical season attracted most Caireen Italians each year. Some even came from as far as Alexandria and the Suez Canal. There were a few Egyptian courtiers. Italy had been close to the Pashas since Muhammad 'Ali's time. Their expertise in preserving Antiquities, in mapping the Nile Delta, in mineral exploitation, in teaching the Arts of drawing and sculpture, had brought scores of Italians from the Kingdoms of Savoïa and of Naples. André's Italian great grandfather had escaped the Austrian secret police in his native Turin. He called his daughter who was born in Cairo Italia-Libera. He had been member of the Carbonari. He manufactured horse carriages in Cairo. When André rode his first bicycle to school he invariably borrowed the longest way to get there and back. Shubra stood behind the central train station. Italians, Greeks and Shawam dwelled in that neighbourhood. Close by, in Sabtiyyah, workshops had sprung where Italians cast iron and operated machine tools to manufacture parts of all kinds. They had proven skills with drafting and with crafting. They reproduced automobile parts which were missing on the market. Near 'Abidin were the ablest cabinet makers in Cairo: witness Pontremoli who displayed his wares on Shari' Sulayman Basha. Around the Italian artisans stood Egyptian apprentices who, one day, would replace them and carry on the tradition.

According to the 1928 Census, there had settled 24.000 Italians in Egypt. Their role in conceiving and building, in manufacturing and in tailoring gave one the impressions they were the majority among the Khawagat. At the eve of the war, in 1939, their presence was being made felt as they rallied in favour of the occupation of Libya and Abyssinia by Mussolini. Their newspapers invited the Duce to occupy Egypt as well. André's father who had been orphaned early on as a boy having lost his father, originally from the Caucasus, had been raised as an Italian by an Italian mother and grandmother. He was a member of the Fasci and displayed his card and uniform proudly. Barely, however, before the British and Egyptian authorities rounded up the Italians and the Germans and interned them in Fayid, on the Suez Canal, he bartered his Turkish citizenship for an Egyptian one and was spared. Like his father whose mother tongue was Turkish, he spoke little Arabic. He did not need to in his daily activities, as the Lingua Franca of the Khawagat had become French.

When the Comédie Française came to town, in the winter of every year, boys and girls from the numerous French schools in the city boarded busses to the Opera House to enjoy plays by Molière, Racine and Corneille which they had memorized in class. It is remarkable that Bonaparte's short expedition into Egypt in 1798 would have caused such a cultural impact on that country. Muhammad 'Ali, of course, was the first francophile. It is suggested that, in Kavalla where he was born, Frenchmen traded tobacco with his father and he befriended a few in his youth. At the opening of the Suez Canal, Empress Eugénie, spouse to Napoléon III, was guest of honour and congratulated Ferdinand de Lesseps for his grandiose achievement. 

 Empress Eugénie

Isma'il who had gone to military academy in Versailles, spoke fluent French, and so on and so forth. In spite of British occupation, French schools mushroomed throughout the major cities. Jews, Greeks, Italians, Shawam and all other ethnic minorities sent their children to them. Even Edward Said, who was American-born and went with his four sisters to the English School, had to speak French at the Maadi Sporting Club to feel he belonged. It is amazing, when one considers the Shawam, descendants of Lebanese and Syrian Christians whose great grandfathers had emigrated to Egypt, that they would cease to speak the language of their ancestry, even forget it. In Egypt, this cost them dearly the day nationalist fervour took them by surprise. They discovered the hard way they could become francophones but not French.

Meanwhile, they partook like every other Khawagah in the economic adventure of their time. Wherever French was Langue de Travail, in the Suez Canal, banks like the Comptoire d'Éscompte de Paris or Crédit Lyonnais, the French-owned Compagnie du Gaz, French Import-Export establishments and French Engineering firms, or in the Belgium-owned Tramways, Sugar Refineries, Compagnie d'Héliopolis, a satellite city which Baron Empain had conceived and built in partnership with the Armenian, Boghos Nubar in 1905, and in which many Shawan chose to live, Shawam were employed. They were also involved in running two dailies, Le Progrés Égyptien and La Bourse Égyptienne which shaped and reinforced the visions of all Khawagat, whatever their origins and affiliations. The Shawam got into textile weaving, soap manufacturing, perfumes, oil pressing and, later, light industries. Trade in lumber, pharmaceuticals, cinemas, anything that earned money was, also, of interest to them. They even made Tarabish, plural of Tarbouche, according to Robert Solé.

The Khawagat were impervious of all that was happening around them both in Egypt itself and around the world. When the Second World War erupted half a million troops from the British Empire came to beef up the 10.000 men and 400 airmen which the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty allowed. Martial Law was imposed. The conflict was far away.

Ahmed Shawki

Prosperity was at hand. Restaurants and bars were full. So were the cinemas. Life at the Sporting Clubs, which the British has erected for themselves at first then for others, now catered to the moneyed class. Andre's maternal grandmother, meanwhile, insisted that her family accompany her at Kishkish out of loyalty to her past: Naguib al-Rihani, a Lebanese-Egyptian was referred to as the Molière of the Arabs. His humour was biting, à l'Égyptienne. He spared no one. While he entertained in Arabic, his sketches were forewarning: he may have foretold of the Ides of March. No one listened.

Time had been ticking for al-Khawagat. Ask your Armenian watchmaker. The bulk of the Armenians who reached Egypt had survived a genocide no one ever heard of. That batch of Armenians was very poor. It was also very skillfull. Watchmakers, jewellers, mechanics, photographers, hard working and thorough. Norton pharmacies employed Armenians because they spoke Turkish and because they were reliable. Armenians were artistic and fine sportsmen and Nubar, the accountant at the main pharmacy, often took André to witness his team, the Homenetmen, beat Maccabi and other teams at basket ball or foot ball. In 1945, at the end of the war, two Soviet ships docked in Alexandria: they had come to carry those Armenians who had not done well to Soviet Armenia. Nubar the accountant was amongst them. Baron Matossian, the cigarette manufacturer, was not.

Andre's mother was a close friend to the one he called Tante Khadigah. Khadigah was the niece of Ahmed Shawqi (1868-1932), the one all Egyptian literati named the Prince of Poets. Both ladies would read Shawqi's poems loud and marvel at the feelings which were expressed so exquisitely and poignantly. Shawqi lived partly in Alexandria and was a contemporary of Constantine Kavafis (1863-1933). They never met nor were they aware of one another. 

Constantine Kavafis 

Kavafis is considered one of the greatest literary figures of the Twentieth Century. He was born and died in Alexandria. His soul belonged to Byzantine Constantinople and his language was that of Homer. Marguerite Yourcenar, in her preface to his poems, wrote: "c'est un des plus grands, le plus subtil en tout cas, le plus nourri pourtant de l'inépuisable substance du passé. Il redonne vie à des mots à jamais péris. Il nous entretient des thèmes les plus marginaux. Il offre des détails que l'Histoire laisse de côté. Sa pensée est d'une intimité fugitive et il porte des regards attendris et émus sur la réalité".

No doubt, the ethos of the Khawagat had burgeoned in the fertile land of Egypt, a land in which the bright sun is welcome in the open air as well as behind shutters in the afternoon. And the clean breeze from the desert blows all bad dreams away. And, the environment is nonchalant and, at the same time, charged with challenges and opportunities. And, Muslim and Arab Egypt which lurk in the surroundings increases the sense of belonging to something particularly pleasing because it was unique in structure and kind. Like in a frescoe by Diego Riveira, the eye and the mind will tell of different stories, all epic, whether one stares from afar or is close, from an angle or from the front, from the right to the left and vice versa. One constantly has to remember how it was and how it became, why it was and why it should not have lasted. It is then that one is able to escape from there and from oneself.

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


Egyptian Frescoes (7): The Economic Forces for Change.

Paradoxically and ironically, it is the bankruptcy which Khedive Isma'il forced upon Egypt which brought to that country its spectacular development at the eve of the Twentieth Century. It shall be recalled that the grandson of Muhammad 'Ali Basha had pursued the dream of the Founder of Modern Egypt. He completed the project his predecessor, Khedive Sa'id, initiated of building a Suez Canal. He even considered, between 1867 and 1869, commissioning from the French sculptor Frédéric August Bartholdi a statue representing The Fallaha, the peasant woman, standing at the entrance of the Canal, a torchlight held above her head. 

This project later inspired Bartholdi, who was a close friend of de Lesseps, the builder of the Canal, to work on the Statue of Liberty which France offered the United States of America. Isma’il also pursued the arduous and costly task of founding a new city off al-Qahira. In the field of economics, he promoted cash crop agriculture. He encouraged foreigners from around the Mediterranean to settle in his country and contribute to its development. The liberal trade restrictions which the British had imposed upon Egypt in the punishing treaty, at the Port of Balta, in 1843 in Anatolia, were meanwhile forcing him to borrow heavily from European bankers. When his creditors demanded that they be paid back, Isma'il Basha had to sell his entire shares in the Suez Canal Company to the British. Isma'il was the main landowner in his country. His holdings were liquidated to the highest bidder and an Egyptian landowning class was born as a result. By the same token, foreign interests acquired prime land in Egypt for the first time in its Muslim history. 

You will recall that, at Tall al-Kabir, the Egyptians were defeated by a British Expeditionary Force and that the occupation of the country began. Egypt was fortunate in that the able Lord Cromer was assigned the task to administer the realm. His policies brought stability and development to the Egyptians. A modern bureaucracy was trained to oversee the running of state affairs. An unsettled world, around the Mediterranean, induced peoples to seek and find a safe haven in the British Protectorate of Egypt.

This frescoe will deal with those whom the Egyptians came to refer to as al-Khawagat. Khwajah, from Persian, came to mean non-Muslim, in Egypt. For a while, it excluded the indigenous Copts. The first half of the Twentieth Century, in Egypt, represents the Age of the Khawagat. While they mingled amongst themselves, they rarely mixed with the Egyptian population, except for those whom they employed in their homes as servants or as unskilled workers in their shops and workshops, in the factories and on the plantations they would be setting up. Their contribution proved enormous to the development of the country. One will have to wait until the 1952 Military Coup when those foreigners will be unseated. In the meantime, much is owed to the very Greeks and Italians, Jews and Shawam from the Lebanese Coast and Mountains and from the cities of Damascus and Aleppo, Armenians and others, and to Frenchmen and British who chose to settle and seek their fortune along the Banks of the River Nile. This fact is not being recognized till this day.

They came in droves, along the Palestinian land route or by boat to Alexandria. Their bold exile, often forced by circumstance, sometimes driven by a sense of adventure, induced the immigrants to attempt everything to succeed in this land of bread, onions and meat, to use the Biblical image of those Israelites who, in the Desert of Sinai, longed for their life in Egypt before Exodus.

Some Khawagat had already earned professions: they were trained pharmacists, teachers, engineers, accountants, dentists and doctors. Others eked a living upon arrival but their entrepreneurial drive made them try their hand at many things: grocers, peddlers, petty merchants, waiters in cafés belonged to this category of immigrants. It did not take long before every Khawagah had settled down, found appropriate lodgings, raised a family and slowly but surely risen in the social pyramid. 

In 1898, Ernest Cassel, Ralph Isaac Suarez and Constantine Salvagos had established the National Bank of Egypt. Cassel was an Englishman who operated his bank from London. Suarez was a Sephardic Jew from Smyrna and Salvagos was Greek. This was not the first attempt at banking in Modern Egypt. From 1839-1841, Armenians set the first money lending operation of a kind. Suarez, who gave his name to Maydan Sawiris, Suarez Square, in Maadi, a suburb of Cairo which he helped plan, and his partners provided lines of credit to merchants in cotton, tobacco and sugar cane for export. European tools and machinery, textiles and wood were imported amongst other things. In 1902, an Agricultural Bank was founded which extended loans to the new landlords. Home developers also had access to money for their projects. The currency in circulation, the Gunayh, owed its name to the Guinea, a coin used in England after 1663 whose name originated in West Africa, in the country of Guinea, where a standardized piece of weaved materiel was bartered against goods for trade.

First Egyptian Pound (Gunayh)

Egypt's population ought to have reached 10 million at the turn of the 20th century. It is suggested that the bubonic plague originated in Egypt. The all powerful Mameluk State was wrecked by the plague. Infant mortality, bilharzia, dysentery, trachoma were endemic to the Nile Valley and weakened the human stock further. British administration and strides in public health were to remedy this tragic situation and the population of Egypt started to grow in number and in strength. This was welcome news as the demand for labour was constantly on the rise, in agriculture of course but also in the workshops and the construction sites that sprung in Alexandria and Cairo, of course, but also in Port Said, Mansurah, Zaqaziq, Tantah and Miniyah, all bustling towns and cities where cash crops where gathered and sent to market.

The Greeks were to form the largest immigrant community in time. They disembarked around 1843 in Alexandria. The 1907 Census counted 63.000 immigrants from Hellas. In 1940, they were a quarter of a million. In every town across the land, at least one Greek family had settled and operated a grocery. 

Roumi (Greek) Cheese

The Kefalotiri Cheese was referred to as Gibna Rumi by Egyptians. Greeks also ventured into opening restaurants and hotels. They were the proverbial waiters in cafés. They were dominant in Alexandria. In Cairo, they also had their churches, their schools and their hospital. In little time, their profile had risen considerably: Lappas was a fashionable grocer on Kasr el-Nil Street. Not far away, Sistovaris was the furrier where the Ladies of the Khedivial Court bought and stored their furs. Gianaclis wines were produced near Alexandria. Spatis bottled soda water. Serpakis produced ice blocks. And, the Benaki Museum, in Athens, bares witness to Emmanuel and his son Antonis who made their fortune in cotton trading.

Clothing retail stores such as Cicurel, Orosdi Back and Chemla, lined up along the fashionable Fouad Street, and general stores such as Gategno and Rivoli, not far, were Jewish owned and Jewish staffed. Jews had also initiated the Real Estate market and were partaking in the development of neighbourhoods in the new city whose perimeter stretched from Azbakiyyah Gardens, along Shari' Fu'ad and Shari' Qasr al-Nil, to the Nile. High rise buildings grew on and around the fashionable streets. Appartments were rented to the new foreign middle class of professionals and employees in foreign owned financial, commercial and industrial concerns. Along Shari' 'Adli, banks and insurance companies had their offices. The great Synagogue of Cairo stood in the heart of that district, barely a mile away from the Cor di Iesu Church, not far from the Mixed Courts and from Saint Joseph Church, near Maydan Mustafa Kamil. Jews were also prominent in setting up the stock markets in Cairo and in Alexandria. Originally, those Jews were Sephardic Jews who had been driven out of Spain after the Reconquista and during the Inquisition. Some fled to Holland, most crossed into North Africa and were welcomed by the Ottoman Sultan, Sulayman-the-Magnificient, in 1520.

Haret El Yahud (Jews Street)

They settled in Salonika, Rhodos and Smyrna. Sephardic Jews were to be distinguished from Egyptian Jews, who lived in Harit al-Yahud, in al-Hamzawi, near al-Azhar. Egyptian Jews spoke Arabic at home and could not be physically distinguished from their Egyptian neighbours. They also belonged to a Jewish Sect known as the Karaïtes, literalists whose Talmud, exegesis and Rabinical Laws differed from other Jews. Ashkinazi Jews flocked into Egypt later after the Soviet Revolution, at the start of the First World War and, when the Nazis usurped power in Germany, and during and after the Second World War when Europe was in ruin. They referred amongst themselves to the Oriental Jews as Schwatzes and the Sepharads called them Schlechties in return.

While Egypt's Compradors were busy making money, and while their children were in schools, in Bab al-Luq and in Faggalah and in Shubra and in Daher, French schools for the most part, their wives had been shopping along the very chic Kasr el-Nil Street. They could stop at the fashionable grocer, Lappas, for imported mushrooms from Italy, truffles from France and chestnuts from Belgium, or could look into Kazruni's emporium for Persian rugs to adorn their villas in Garden City, Zamalik or Maadi, a suburb 10kms upstream which a train service now connected to the city; they peeped into Salon Vert for the latest materials from France and Italy; then, they stopped at Groppi for hot chocolate and Swiss pastries; nearby was Robert Hughes whose tweed, gabardine, corduroy and Jersey woolens, and his Church Shoes, were sought after: although this was a store for men, women found at Robert Hughes what they needed for tennis, golf and horse riding; the Carnaval de Venise catered to the new bourgeoisie and offered the latest in silk neckties, pyjamas and robes while Le Gallion, which was adjacent to it, imported high priced ‘cadeaux’ to be offered as presents celebrating special occasions; finally, the ladies of leisure could rub shoulders with the Ladies of the Court at Norton's Pharmacy where Turkish and English were spoken and where my grandfather insisted his clients treat themselves to a cup of Ovaltine and marons glacés while they chatted over the merits of this or that cake of Yardley soap or jar of Ponds cold cream or Elizabeth Arden beauty product. Male clients were offered a cigar with their Turkish coffee and children received a Kit-Kat chocolate bar. 

Groppi

In the savoir-faire of the time, lady clients did not handle money and their bills were sent directly to their husbands. One regular customer at Norton's, Sha'rawi Basha, honoured his bills once a year, after his crop of mangoes had reached the market place. Except for the members of the Court and of the Landowner Class, no Egyptians ventured into modern Cairo, a city which, not unlike Alexandria and the European quarters along the Suez Canal, reminded one of the City of Algiers which the French Colons owned while Native Algerians were confined to their Kasbah: les Arabes - as the Khawagat referred to the Egyptians - must well have felt they did not belong in their country.

This frescoe could not be complete without mention of the Italians and the Levantines, mostly Arabic speaking Christians. There were also Maltese, Serbs and Croats from the Dalmatian Coast, and Armenians amongst the Khawagat. And, last but not least, should one mention the French, the Belgium and the British, the backbone of Egypt's Comprador Economy, an economy whose lifeline was with the dominant foreign powers, as the word Comprador suggests. All such non-Muslim ethnic groups, without exception, fall under the qualification of the Khawagah. All were eager to carve their place under the Egyptian sun. Each, in their own right, had been contributing to change and development in Egypt. They shall indirectly deserve our attention in the next frescoe as I deal with the Khawagah Who Escaped.