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. 

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

Egyptians Frescoes (6): Still on the Trail of Muhammad ‘Abduh and Jamal Al-Afghani.

Meet the main authors of the mood which ushered the twentieth century for Egyptians.

It is as if the world immediately surrounding Egypt had been shattered by the Great War. The Ottoman Empire existed no longer. It had lost its Arab and European provinces, West of Istambul, and had turned in desperation against its Armenian population causing havoc amongst hundreds of thousands of unarmed civilians; many Armenians who survived this genocide fled to Egypt where they took refuge. The Russian Empire collapsed and the Bolsheviks faced separatist currents over the entire territory while they preached tirelessly that their revolution would end the wrongs afflicted against those who were oppressed and exploited. The Austro-Hungarian Empire dissolved into independent entities. And Britain, France and Germany were in tatters. Egypt, on the other hand, had prospered from the war. Immigrants brought new energies and skills to the Nile Valley. And, to the Egyptians themselves, the scents of freedom were in the air and were finally reaching their shores for the first time.

King Fuad I

The political and ideological configuration of the country had not stopped evolving ever since Muhammad ‘Ali had created his modern kingdom. This time, the British tightened their grip on the Suez Canal. Their troops would remain stationed for much longer in the country. This was confirmed by the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936. The ruler of Egypt now became yet another son of Isma’il Pasha, Fu’ad (1868-1936) who was crowned King in 1922. Fu’ad 1st was a constitutional monarch who rapidly learnt, with the help of the British, to curtail the powers of the Legislature which the Nationalists controlled, as in 1923 when he abrogated the Constitution. Riots in Cairo forced him to re-instate it.

Fu’ad had previously been Rector of the first Egyptian university named after him. The Secretary of the Fu’ad University, Qasim Amin (1863-1908) was a jurist who had studied Law at the University of Montpellier. He was a friend of ‘Abduh and Zaghlul. He was influenced by Darwinism and proclaimed that, unless Egypt embraced modernity, it would cease to be fit to survive. Herbert Spencer and John Stuart Mill were his mentors and made him a liberal. Amin is today celebrated for his works on the advancement of women. His Tahrir al-Mar’ah, (The Liberation of Woman) deplored the status of women in his time. Only through education and work could a woman liberate herself from the domination of men. He had applauded Rifa’a al-Tahtawi - the Shaykh who had accompanied two dozen youths to Paris in the early nineteen century - for having, he himself, drafted his marriage contract in all fairness to his spouse. In Huquq al-Nisa fil Islam (The Rights of Women in Islam), he urged that hers be rehabilitated if Egypt were to join the civilized nations. Amin created girls’ schools. He was an inspiration to two prominent feminists, Huda Sha’rawi and Doriyya Shafiq, who would lead an Egyptian Feminist Movement  

Hoda Shaarawi

When the Ottoman State collapsed and surrendered, the Young Turks fled. Tal’at Pasha was assassinated in Berlin by an Armenian patriot seeking revenge. The hero of the Battle at Galipoli, Mustafa Kemal Pasha, assumed control of Turkey’s destinies. He confronted the Greeks and the Italians in Smyrna, faced the French in Alexandretta and the British in Constantinople. The Sultan-Caliph ‘Abd ul-Mejid had sided with the British. Kemal Pasha simply abolished both Sultanate and Caliphate, by a stroke of his pen from his new capital, in Ankara. In British India, a shocked Muslim community reacted swiftly under the leadership of Mohamad Ali and Shaukat Ali, two brothers who founded the Khilafat Movement and published a Khilafat manifesto calling upon Britain to protect the Caliphate.

In Cairo, Shaykh ‘Ali ‘abd al-Raziq, a student of ‘Abduh, now a Shari’a Judge, published al-Islam wa Usul al-Hukm (Islam and the Foundations of Governance) in 1925. Shaykh ‘Ali supported the separation between State and Religion. He argued that the prophet Muhammad had been both prophet and statesman during his lifetime. His role as prophet was that which had made Him be chosen by Allah. The Prophetic Verses of the Coran were meant for all times. Not so his role as a statesman who belonged to seventh century Arabia. This was a most revolutionary statement on the part of one from al-Azhar. It could well have initiated what happened in Christianity when literary criticism was applied to the Scriptures. Instead, political events were occurring in Egypt whereby King Fu’ad was toying with the idea of claiming the Caliphate for himself. A fake genealogy had been fabricated by which Fu’ad, the Albanian who spoke better Italian than Arabic, would be a Qurayshi, from the tribe of the Prophet. The learned at al-Azhar forced ‘Ali ‘abd al-Raziq to recant his profound thoughts publicly.

Appears Rashid Rida (1865-1935). He was born in Tripoli, near Beirut and died in Cairo. He was trained as a ‘Alim, had gotten acquainted with the publication by ‘Abduh and Afghani of al-‘Urwa al-Wuthqah, which they issued while in Paris. Rida was ‘Abduh’s most prominent disciple and they both published al-Manar (The Lighthouse), a monthly magazine which delved into Coranic Commentaries when ‘Abduh returned to Egypt.

Rashid Reda

Eventually, Rida’s political philosophy became that of begging for an Islamic State in which Creed would be purged of all its impurities and Western influences. He wished to rejuvenate the notion of the Caliphate and called upon Muslims to follow the guidance of the Salaf, the early converts to Islam. To the Faithful, ‘Ibadat dealt with religious practice while Mu’amalat concerned social relations. For Islam and for Muslims, Shari’a Law was fundamental towards leading a righteous life; Rashid Rida would not tamper with that principle. In his later days, Rida defended Wahhabism which Egyptians remembered had been defeated by their own Muhammad ‘Ali Basha when his son Ibrahim led the Egyptian armies to Hijaz, in Arabia, in 1803, to wrest the holy cities of Makkah and Madina from the marauding heretics from Najd.

Enters Lutfi al-Sayyid (1872-1963). He was known as the Teacher of his Generation. He was Fu’ad University’s first Principle. al-Sayyid was born in the countryside and went to Coranic School. He was then sent to Cairo to acquire his secondary education at the Khidawiyyah, one of a handful of schools established to provide a solid Arabic and Islamic education alongside all the modern sciences as well as French and English. All my Ma’adi Sporting Club friends went to the Ibrahimiyyah, a similar school. Their teachers were impeccable. I envied them for that school but could not convince my father that there was where he should have sent me. al-Sayyid was a lawyer and a friend of ‘Abduh, and of Zaghlul whom he accompanied to the Paris Peace Conference. He worked under Cromer, also edited at the same time, in 1907, al-Jarida, a nationalist newspaper. He finally founded the Umma Party with Zaghlul. His translation of Aristotle from French is still visited till this day. al-Sayyid was, furthermore, an admirer of British Liberalists and French Encyclopaedists. While heading Fu’ad University, the first batch of women graduating from this institution made history thanks to him and to Qasim Amin. al-Sayyid was an Egyptian Nationalist who preached that Egyptians were not Arabs although they spoke Arabic. He would become the champion of Secularism and Liberalism in Egyptian politics. And, when it was decided to build a Mausoleum to the memory of Sa’d Zaghlul , the Father of the Nation, his arguing that it should reflect the Pharaonic past of Egypt, won the day. It was built of pink granite as a replica of the Mamisi at the Temple of Kom Ombo, along the Nile, in Upper Egypt.

Ibrahim Al-Yaziji

The intellectual ferment which readers in the cities were being exposed to would receive, after the World War, yet another dimension. It came from the shores of Lebanon and dealt with Arabic philology. Its exponents were Christian. They had been trained by Butrus al-Bustani (1819-1883) and Ibrahim al-Yaziji (1847-1906).

The century was maturing and the Egyptian elites were being exposed to several possible avenues as to how they wanted to rule themselves. They could now turn to Egyptian or Arab Nationalism, or to separation of Religion and State, or to a modern form of the Islamic State. These elites were modernists in that they were critical of the rigidity (jumud) of traditional, medieval ways which they blamed for their decadence. As the political scene, in Egypt, witnessed the constant fluidity in alliances between the British High Commissioner, the King and Parliament, new perspectives for the future were being forged within the country or were caused from without in the wider world. After all, is constancy in history not about change and does not our future result from the synthesis which contradiction of the opposites brings about? Contradiction of ideas. Opposites in interests. Cairo’s cafés hummed with theories and ideologies. 

Yet the Shishas bubbled as if to spell that the time for radicalism and totalitarianism had not yet come. A few more frescoes will have to appear before the name of Hasan al-Banna and the organization he will create, the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Ikhwan, become habitual café-talk.

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.

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.