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.