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

Egyptian Frescoes (15): What If...

What if ibn Khaldun (1332-1406 in Cairo) was mistaken when he predicted, in his Introduction to Universal History, his Muqaddimah, that Horus the Falcon God who came out of his defeat and humiliation at Falujah, in the Neguev, would storm al-Qahira, the Victorious, and loot, in vengeance, the country of his birth?

Horus the Falcon God

The god with one eye representing the sun and the other the moon, had started with noble and wise purpose: he spared the life of a King, he called for Muslims and Copts to join in his dream of renewal, he induced the 6% who owned 65% of the most fertile land to share it with the destitute Fallah. After all, the Falcon God and the middle rank officers who followed him were children of Egypt's recent past. They were the immediate heirs to Muhammad 'Ali Basha, the Founder of Modern Egypt. Their nationalism had been forged for them by S'ad Zaghlul, the Father of the Nation. They were finally schooled in the verses of Ahmad Shawqi, the Prince of Poets, who proclaimed: "innama al-Umamu bil Akhlaqi wa idha ma Dhahabat Akhlaqahum Dhahabu", it is Morality which makes a People; once a Nation loses its principles, it is bound to vanish.

At the initial stages of their government, the inexperienced members of the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), under the chairmanship of Gamal 'abd il-Nasir, showed unmistakeably their dedication to pursue the tasks ahead. Egypt had grown into an unjust society in which the King flaunted his riches while the peasant earned fifteen piasters a day. Dysentery, bilharzia and trachoma were chronic diseases that disabled society. The military and its people had been humiliated by British occupation and by defeat in Palestine. What if, having appraised the changes that were occurring in the world and in the Middle East, as a result of the Second World War, and after Ambassador Caffery of the United States had contributed to the success of their Coup d'État in 1952, what if the Free Officers would intelligently have taken advantage of our new age to bring about revolution and change, modernization and prosperity? 

One of the earliest slogans used by the RCC, in 1952, became "al-Din li'llah wa al-Watan lil-gami' ". Religion should not interfere with Citizenship. Posters had been pasted across the land that showed a Coptic Church steeple and a Minaret side by side. The problem with Egyptian Society, after 1945, lay in that the world war had divided the nation instead of uniting it. The Arabic-speaking majority had to contend, on the one hand, with a significant Coptic minority that had been drawn closer to the British and, on the other hand, with originally foreign Khawagat residents, often Egyptian born, whose numbers and influence had increased as a result of war in Europe and whose roles, as agents of economic and social progress, was undeniable. The task ahead for the Free Officers ought to have been that of forging a new sovereign nation in which Muslims and Copts shared in a common purpose while the Khawagat continued their modernizing influence, this time, under the aegis of a national government as had been the case since Muhammad 'Ali Pasha and his descendants when they invited them to Egypt, until 1878, when a system of Capitulations shielded them from Egyptian Law.  The time was ripe for a constitution to be drafted and submitted to the people that would define citizenship and correct social and political anomalies that had resulted from Lord Cromer’s imperialist administration.

Yet another task awaited the RCC, that of negotiating the end of British military presence in the Suez Canal by putting a full stop at the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1924.

John Foster Dulles

In 1953, John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State in President Dwight Eisenhower's cabinet, toured the Middle East. During his stop in Cairo, he met with Nasir and presented the Egyptians with a project to set up a Middle Eastern Defense Organization (MEDO) whose Head Quarters would be in Fayid, along the Suez Canal. The aim of this military alliance in which the United States, Britain and the states of the region would guarantee the security of the international waterway and the Middle East against the Soviet Union, this alliance, not unlike NATO in Europe, would assure Egypt, the host country, a role of prominence. The British would surrender their installations on the Canal to MEDO. Their contingent would fall under a unified command in which Egyptian officers would hold significant positions. In the alliance, the Egyptian Armed Forces would be equipped and modernized by America, as had been the case with Turkey’s Forces in NATO. No member of the alliance would attack another, as Israel has been doing repeatedly ever since. The United States, also, committed itself to finance the building of a High Dam in Aswan, a pet project of the Revolutionary government, and to contribute to the industrialization of Egypt, a tall agenda indeed, which would have touched upon education and training at all levels of Egypt’s activities. 

The third What If deals with character, morals, ethics and values. You may recall that, in 1907, Egyptians who were impressed by the ways of the British, founded a National Sporting Club, al-Nadi al-Ahli. Egyptians took, for the first time, to Western sports and, soon, excelled in them. The idea behind the founders of the NSC was to provide the youth with the means to build their personality and overcome any cultural traits that thwarted individual and group activities in an industrial age. Three words are still current amongst the people in their daily lingo, Insha'a l-lah, God Willing, Bukrah, Tomorrow, and Ma'lish, Not to Worry, the three conducive to slackness. Jokingly, Egyptians refer to this their indigenous IBM system, each of the letters referring to one of these three traits of character. This proverbial nonchalance has resulted in low rating at work and irresponsibility and continues to hamper the rise of a work ethic which would enable the Egyptian worker to compete in the world arena. To the Reformists of the beginning of the nineteenth century, IBM prevented Egypt from moving ahead. They believed this could be remedied amongst the upcoming elites by way of sports as well as schooling. Over sports, one had to visit, prior to 1952, the mushrooming sporting clubs across the land to see the young, boys and girls, train in earnest as they competed in the swimming pool, on the tennis and squash courts and in the football and basketball fields. The Egyptian Boy Scouts movement, also, took its lead from the British Lord Baden Powell with the same purpose in mind. In terms of schooling, secondary schools were finally established that would bridge the gap between national identity and modernity. One can safely say that, at the eve of the 1952 Coup, there existed in Egypt indigenous elites who were the envy of Arabs and Muslims alike. The RCC had, at their disposal a treasure of Egyptian skills, knowhow and expertise who were ready and dedicated to rebuilding their country.

After 1961, in an article in al-Ahram,

H. Haykal

Hasanayn Haykal, a spokesman of the President, wrote about the experts and the knowledgeable in Egypt, Ahl al-Khibra. The Regime, he emphasized had preferred Ahl al-Thiqa, the loyal elements of society, to Ahl al-Khibra. The military who had wrested power from the Civilians were asserting themselves and indicating that they would not share power with any civilian. Over the slogan `al-Din li-llah wa al-Watan lil-Gami'`, religion belongs to God and the Nation is everyone's: it was hoped it would become Article Two of the 1956 Constitution of the Republic? Instead, Article Two read: Islam is the Religion of the State. Egypt's opportunity to espouse Secularism was missed. Also, the chance for Egyptian Islam to rid itself of the shackles of Medieval Times was forsaken in the efforts of Nasir to compete with the Muslim Brotherhood who spoke for a majority of the people over matters of Religious Nationalism. Nasir was also vying for the leadership of Arab Nationalism. When he accused the Ikhwan to attempt against his life, during a speech he gave in Alexandria in 1954, the Brotherhood was banned and its leaders arrested. The Ikhwan went underground or else escaped to Saudi Arabia. During those police raids, the Left was also shipped to detention camps in an oasis of the Western Desert.

Al Sanhoury

The eminent jurist, ‘abd al-Razzaq al-Sanhuri (1895-1971), who headed the Supreme Court, warned publicly against the trampling of individual liberties. Thugs invaded his office and beat the elderly man up. Al-Sanhuri resigned his post and left the country. The Egyptian Military was well in control of the State. This was the beginning of their reign of terror.

In April 1955, Nasir was invited to Bandung, in Indonesia, to represent the Arab World and attend a Conference of Non-Aligned Countries. He was turning his back on MEDO and any friendship with the United States. That same year, the Soviet Bloc agreed to sell him arms.

The Aswan Dam would also be built by the Soviets at the cost of unilaterally nationalizing the Anglo-French Company of the Suez Canal in the summer of 1956. It became a matter of months before war erupted and Britain, France and Israel invaded the Canal Zone. The costly 1956 War in which the entire Egyptian Army was destroyed, would be followed by the wars of 1967 and 1973. These wars would not have occurred had Egypt joined MEDO, later to be renamed the Baghdad Pact. It is claimed that the GNP of the country had fallen 75% by 1972 and there was little money to invest in the youth and the future. Each military defeat, also, drew Egypt closer to the Soviet Union and Egypt became non-aligned in name only while, in reality, it had become involved in the Cold War on the side of the Soviets and Israel stood squarely on the opposite side with the United States. And, while Nasir’s adventurism took him all over the Third World, Egypt was being neglected and abandoned to incompetent stewardship. Egyptians had hoped for a new dawn in 1952.

What they inherited was two decades of disappointments brought about by the ignorant, pretentious, greedy and vindictive falcons that Horus unleashed against the City of their forefathers, to empty their granaries and to leave them materially and morally impoverished.

When one writes in hindsight half a century after the facts, one is bound to see reality in one’s own perspective, through one’s own experience and with the nostalgia of younger years. The Arab World, in general, and Egypt, in particular, are at their worse in standing today in the globe.

Early pictures of Suez Canal

Oil and the Suez Canal have represented a curse for their people and one wonders if their leaders could have handled the Neo-Colonialists better than their ancestors did with Colonialism. And, yet Egyptians have to look to Turkey to reflect on if, what if, the recent past could have been otherwise. In 1952, my Egyptian friends and I welcomed the Coup d’État. I had the privilege of listening to Nasir address the crowds and was mesmerized by his charisma. When I left, after the 1956 War to study in Beirut, I was angry with the West I once so much admired. Then I lived through the 1958 Lebanese Civil War and witnessed American Marines land on Lebanon’s beaches and thought to myself ``how dare they?``. That was when the military in Iraq toppled the Monarchy and put an end to the Baghdad Pact. Came then the Union of Egypt and Syria. Were the Arabs on track again? It took the Six-Day War for me and millions to experience our Rude Awakening. What If, I then told myself, what if the what ifs I reflected upon here and now had become reality.

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

Egyptian Frescoes (14): The Six-Day War.

On June 5th, 1967, at dawn, waves of Israeli fighter-bombers were thrust into the skies of Western Egypt from the Mediterranean Sea. They had dribbled around Egyptian radars that expected them over Sinai. In barely thirty seven minutes, the entire Egyptian air fleet that stood, neatly, on the tarmacs of several military airports was destroyed, an air operation which was reminiscent of Japan’s total destruction of General Mac Arthur’s Air Force on the ground in the Philippines. As this very short and surgically executed operation took place and, during the rest of that fateful day, Egyptian and Arab radio broadcasts were announcing that the enemy planes were being plucked out of the skies by Egypt's air defences. Egyptian and Arab masses in the streets were in a state of delirium. The Road to Jerusalem had finally been opened as Nasir had promised in one of his firee speeches, on January 29th of that same year.

It took the entire day for the truth to emerge. What has since been referred to as the Six-Day War was, in reality, the Thirty Seven Minute War. Indeed, once the entire air force of Egypt was sent out of action, neither its armour, its artillery, its infantry or its navy could fight effectively. It took six days for the cessation of moping up operations to go into effect. It has taken till this day for Egyptians and Arabs to overcome the impact of this stunning defeat. The Six-Day War had announced loud and clear to Arabdom that the 1952 Coup which brought Gamal 'abd il-Nasir to power had proven that he and his Regime were a failure.

Barely after this, the shortest war, had been waged, Yusif Shahin, released his latest movie, al-'Usfur, the Sparrow. Censorship forbade the film to be shown. Audiences had to wait until 1973, after the victorious crossing by the Egyptians of the Suez Canal, during the Presidency of Anwar is-Sadat, to see it. Spectators weep each time they watch the camera hold hands with the script and the melody and take them through their great expectations and the deep pains they experienced as a result of their unbearable disappointments. An entire people's sense of betrayal, its humiliation by a regime that cheated on them, terrorized them and robbed them of their dreams when it urged them to stand up in dignity, is narrated in songs which are drawn from the best of Mahmud Darwish's tradition and from popular Baladi ballads. The message of Shahin appeals to everyone, the intellectual and the commoner, whose pathos was scorched. Way and long before the Arab Youth would muster the courage to rise in anger against its military rulers in an Arab Spring, the cynicism which the Sparrow brought about in Arab masses forewarned, one can see it four decades later, of the first rays of a new beginning that appears at the horizon.

The Revolution had come to correct the wrongs of yesteryears. The Revolution promised Social Justice. The Revolution would vindicate the colonial past and restore the lost pride of the Arab People. The Revolution, also, became committed to economic development and to raising the standard of living of the masses. The self proclaimed leader of the Revolution, Colonel Nasir and his conspirators among the Free Officers, would lead the way for a new Egypt to be born. The intellectuals supported the Revolution. So did the trade-unions. The peasantry acclaimed the Land Reform. Nasir, who was proving to be a formidable communicator, saw his star rise rapidly in the national and world arenas. 

Gamal Abdel Nasser

On October 26th, 1954, in a speech he gave in Alexandria, the one they now called the Rayyis was fired upon but he did not die. The Muslim Brotherhood was blamed for his attempted assassination and a witch hunt began against the Ikhwan. Hundreds were rounded up and sent to concentration camps in the desert and abused. Egypt was turning into a police state. The Communists, also, were rounded up and so was any imaginary enemy of the Regime. Fear had set in politics. The military ruled with an iron fist. Meanwhile, the junta was permeating all walks of life in the country. It was said at the time that the way towards social advancement passed through the military academies. Men in uniform were becoming a privileged class which, more often than not, placed themselves above the laws of the land. Some remarked jokingly that, before the Coup, in 1952, Egypt had one king. Now, one could count at least a dozen from the inner circle of the President who flaunted their power and their wealth around. Corruption had taken its roots.

The Egyptian Revolution had been intent on bringing about fundamental changes to the country and such changes did occur. Demographically, for one, infant mortality which had been estimated at 200 per 1000 in 1950 dropped to 50 as a result of improved hygiene and diet. The revolution opened dispensaries in the villages. It also increased the number of schools. As the population exploded in numbers, the trend towards urbanization followed at a critical pace. This measure by the government illustrates how policies were adopted haphazardly by incompetent policy makers who had not anticipated the slums that would mushroom around the cities as a result of overpopulation in the countryside. This haphazardness became the trade mark of the Regime which embarked upon worthy projects which proved, in the end, ill thought and poorly carried out. At the end of the day, when Nasir closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, on the 23rd of May, 1967, he did so while a major part of his Army was bogged down in Yaman, supporting a revolution. On the 5th of June, his air force was destroyed by Israel in retaliation. Between April 18 and 24, 1955, Nasir was invited at a Conference of Non-Aligned Nations in Bandung, Indonesia. He was received by President Sukarno and welcomed by PM Nehru of India, President Tito of Yugoslavia and PM Chu en-Lai of China, three major players on the world scene, as the sole representative of 150 million Arabs who stretched from Morocco to Iraq. This was the time when the Cold War was raging between the United States of America and the Soviet Union. Nasir's Egypt had gotten entangled in that cold war at great cost to itself. Historians will one day trace the true reasons for this entanglement. At face value, it appears as though Nasir's rashness, his inner anger and his arrogance led him onto the slippery path that caused the 1956 Tri-Partite Aggression against Egypt and brought him into the Soviet fold. It shall have taken the sudden death of its leader, in 1971, for Egyptians to disentangle themselves from a game of nations they proved they could not successfully play.

Bandung Conference

Meanwhile, Nasir's Egypt negotiated an arms deal with the East in spite of America. It received financing for a dam in Aswan in spite of America. Neither Tito nor Nehru had gone that far into the Soviet orbit. When Nasir flatly refused to host the Middle East Defense Organization (MEDO) on his territory, Egypt was abandoned to itself and was attacked on October 29th, 1956, by Israel, Britain and France and his newly equipped army was annihilated as a result. Dependency on the Soviets, meanwhile, was increasing by the day at the expense of non-alignment. The Arab World became divided into pro-Egyptian states and those that supported the Baghdad Pact. The Cold War had finally reached the Eastern Mediterranean, Yaman and the Horn of Africa.

Nasir was neglecting Egypt for the sake of his adventurist foreign policy. Israel rehearsed in 1956 the War of 1967 while the Egyptian Regime deluded itself by making believe it had defeated three powers on its own. The regime, also, toyed with an ideology which combined Arabism and Socialism. Its ideological vagaries were inducing its residents, especially the Khawagat, to consider leaving and some began to depart. As a result of the 1956 War, Jews, French and British citizens and businesses were expelled. And, in 1961, like a mother that turns against her own children, the State started nationalizing Egyptian owned enterprises, including the Misr Group initiated by Tal'at Harb. The country had grown impoverished and out of breath. Egypt's charismatic leader whom all had expected to perform miracles could not anymore. When his sudden death was announced on September 28th, 1970, many commentators explained popular hysteria as a proof that his popularity had not waned. True, the loss of his charisma, for the leader, is often expressed by anger on the part of his followers who turn against him; it may also be expressed by a sense of loss and despair. 

Many will consider the appraisal of the Nasir years harsh on my part and I admit they are. Unless one understands that Nasir was the child of his epoch. His vindictiveness, reflected in his petty actions and in some of his speeches, strip him of the title of a wise and great statesman. His police helped buttress his own insecurities.

Abdel Hakim Amer

His appointment of 'abd al Hakim 'Amir as his Commander-in-Chief denotes his preference for loyalty rather than competence. And yet competence amongst Egyptians there was who were eager to serve uplift their country. These competent Egyptians were, instead, pushed aside by a class conscious leadership which seemed to want to get even with those they had long envied. The Regime preferred to humiliate rather than utilize the many who were the result of several generations of reforms which Muhammad 'Ali Basha had initiated.

Let us, for fun's sake, next play the What If game. The aim of the game is not to make one cry over spilt milk but rather to speculate if, indeed, there were avenues that could otherwise have been borrowed and mistakes that could have been avoided. A footnote to What If should be a reminder that Major Kamal id-Din Husayn, a prominent member of the Free Officers, addressed a meeting of Egypt's intelligentsia, early on after 1952. Attendants were offering points of views and advice to the new powers that be. The Major responded that it was the officer corps that had become today's intellectuals. The new intellectuals he pretentiously referred to were devoid of any skills in determining costs and benefits of their acts. In 1967, barely a decade later, incompetence led to the threshold of the Thirty Seven Minutes Debacle.

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

Egyptian Frescoes (13): The Lonely Minority.

They were the majority of the population of Egypt when the Arab conqueror of the City of Babylon, on the Nile, 'Amr ibn il-'As, pitched his tent, his fustat, outside its walls. Fustat became the new capital of the Land of the Kuft, as the Arabs of the Peninsula called it, the Land of Aigaiou Huptios, below the Aegean, as the Greek geographer, Strabo (64BC-24AD) referred to Egypt. The Arabs had wrested the country from the Byzantine who had conquered it from the Persians who had expelled the Romans who had defeated the Ptolemes who had ended Pharaonic rule once and for all.

Old Coptic church

The Copts aided in the defeat of Emperor Heraclius. They were well rewarded in return by their new Muslim masters who reduced their taxes substantially and brought in major improvements in infrastructure. Most spectacular was a canal from the Nile to the Red Sea which, when completed, improved trade with as far as the Land of Bharat, India. It was named Nahr Amir al-Mu'minin, after the Commander of the Faithfull, the First Caliph, Abu Bakr; the more ambitious waterway to link the Red Sea with the Mediterranean was abandoned, 1300 years before the Suez Canal.

The Copts were also encouraged to administer their land. For a long period of time, script and language of administration remained Copt, meaning in the speech of the Pharaoes. In a relatively short period of time, however, as was the case with the conquered populations of Syria, Mesopotamia and North Africa, the peasantry converted to the religion of the Conqueror and to his language. Egypt was Islamized and Arabized. Today, around 10% of the population of Egypt adheres to the Coptic Religion although the entire population, Muslim or Copt, speaks Arabic. The Coptic language, which is a form of popularised Ancient Egyptian, has persisted in the rituals of religion and assisted Egyptologists who deciphered the Hieroglyphs to pronounce their reading of ancient texts correctly. Conversions were, at first, motivated by tax exemptions which Muslims enjoyed. The Coptic clergy did not reach the Fallah on his field. Islamic practice was simple and straight forward. And, as is the case in India with the Untouchables after the invasion of the Muslim Moghuls, converting to the Faith of the conqueror allowed for upper mobility. In time, the Muslims were pitted against Christians and society became divided against itself similarly to the period of Akhnaton, between 1348BC and 1338BC, when the God Amon was displaced by this Pharaoe's favourite Aton. 

A Lonely Minority, the title of Edward Wakin's book on the Copts, well describes how this community fared under Muslim majority rule. It is a moving and partisan book. Written in 1963, it is still pertinent today as the Coptic population dwindles as a result of conversions caused by strict Church laws against divorce: for a Copt to convert to Islam enables him or her to obtain an immediate separation. One other reason for the shrinking of the Christians is that they are emigrating to America, Canada and Australia in significant numbers. The Copts have suddenly resented their minority position in a land they consider to be their own inheritance. The story of their faith tells of a folk who constantly had to cope with insurmountable challenges. Instances of this story are to be related here and now.

Saint mark

Who are the Copts? Upon being converted by the Apostle Saint-Mark in 42AD, the subjects of Pharao rapidly distinguished themselves from other Christian converts in the Middle East and in Europe over the question of the Nature of Christ. Was this problem deeply rooted in their pre-Christian beliefs? Most probably, if one recalls the Story of Osiris. A theological controversy erupted at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 over the question as to whether Christ, during his lifetime and until his resurrection, was Son of God or simply Man. The Coptic Monophysite position, that he was Son of God and Son of Man at the same time, led to a schism among Christians with the Monophysites at loggerheads with the ones who became known as Duophysites. The Patriarch of Alexandria declared himself Pope. His following extended as far south as Ethiopia. For a while, at least, the Coptic Church was assigned by all other churches to calculate annually the date of Easter, the Day of Resurrection, an assignment that had been reached at a previous council, at Nicea, in 325. This was in recognition of the Coptic Church having been amongst the first to come into existence. The Coptic Church had also introduced monasticism to Christianity. And, finally, Saint Mark the Evangelist was buried in Alexandria. When Byzantium occupied the Roman Province of Aegyptus, in 395, the Copts, however, were systematically abused by Constantinople for their heresies. Such abuse increased their ethno-religious identity. The invadors from Arabia, only four thousand strong, could therefore occupy such a vast land with the assistance of the Copts and they launched their raiders south into Nubia and west as far as the shores of the Atlantic, as a result.

The Copts have, in general, not fared well in fourteen centuries of Muslim domination although they had good times as well as bad ones. True, the Umayyads, who ruled Egypt from 661 till 750AD from Damascus, lived up to the earliest political commitments towards the People of the Book, Christians, Jews and Sabeans. The Shari'ah, the Divinely Inspired Law, defined the rights for all in the 'Ummah, the Community of Believers. These were never equal rights. They remained favorable, though, to Christians for a long while.

During Fatimi and 'Abbasi times, there was prosperity in the land and Copts benefited. Even when the foreign Mameluks dismantled Arab rule over Egypt, after 1258, the Copts had their limited rights protected. That was until the founders of Modern Egypt came to power in the 19th Century. The issue of citizen rights in a modern state was now being raised as West met East on the shores of the Mediterranean. During the Seventh Crusade, Saint Louis, King of France, landed in Egypt in 1249 with his Knights. A Coptic Monk remarked, in his chronicle, that the Franj, the foreigners that is, were not welcome in his Land. Louis IX was captured in Mansurah until ransom was paid for his release to Shajar al-Durr, the Armenian widow of al-Malik al-Salih that same year. Under Muhammad 'Ali Basha, the Jiziyah, the poll tax traditionally imposed upon the Copts since Islam conquered Egypt, was abolished. The Pasha allowed Copts to serve in his armies. The future appeared bright for Egyptian Christians who took advantage of the opportunities offered to them in education and in the public service during the nineteenth and well into the twentieth centuries. 

In 1908, Butros Ghali was called upon by Khedive 'Abbas Hilmi to head the government.

Boutros Ghali

He was the first Copt to reach such high office. In 1910, unfortunately for him, he was assassinated, most probably because he was a Copt. Muhammad 'Abduh urged calm and worked for a rapprochement between Muslim and Copt. The major bone of contention between the two religions was the Christian Creed that Jesus was Son of God. To Muslims, this was an unforgiveable act of blasphemy. Egypt's Muslims were, also, convinced that they were descendants of the Arab invaders. In the long process of Islamization, the non-Arab had to become a client of a Muslim from Arabia. The Mawalis, as they were referred to, adopted the name of their sponsor, as did the African slaves in America. The neophytes claimed they were ethnically Arabs. Two intellectuals, Lutfi al-Sayyid (1872-1963), a Muslim, and Salama Musa (1887-1958), a Copt, argued that all Egyptians were descendants of Pharoe. That was before a DNA analysis would demonstrate that all Egyptians were not Semites. Some suggest that Egyptians are Hamites instead. To the amateurish observer, one could point to the statue of King Khesekhewy of the First Dynasty, who founded Memphis in 2890BC. He sits peacefully in the Cairo Museum. His features resemble those of anyone one may cross on the streets of Cairo. On the bas-reliefs of the Temple of Hwt-Ka Ptah dedicated to the God Ptah, in Memphis itself, more Egyptians one rubes elbows with daily must have their fathers and brothers carved on the graffiti, the stellae, the limestone murals of that ancient temple or on any other temple wall in Upper or Lower Egypt so strong is the resemblance between Ancient Egyptians and the present population of Egypt. And, in the Coptic Museum which was founded in 1910, one could almost recognize the portrait of Husni Mubarak on some icon representing Saint Mark the Evangelist. Last but not least, the Seated Scribe which welcomes one at the entrance of the Egyptian Museum in Berlin would well have been the twin of my childhood friend, Adham, who lives in Hawaii. So much for the physiognomy of Homo Aegypticus.

Egyptian Scribe

In 1919, a second Copt, Yusif Wahba (1853-1934), became Prime-Minister. He was a friend of Muhammad 'Abduh. A British commission whose aim it was to introduce special privileges which would be based on ethnicity and religion, the Brunyate Commission for Judicial Reform (1917), was rejected by Wahba Basha. The purpose of the British was then to divide and rule. Some Copts understood that and resisted their efforts. Yusif Wahba was a learned lawyer. He translated the Code Napoleon into Arabic. He was the first Egyptian judge to sit in the Mixed Courts, which placed him in contact with European jurists. In 1882, he created the Maglis Milli, the first secular Coptic Council to manage the affairs of his community outside the control of the Church. His example was encouraging young Copts to move from their rural stronghold in Asiyut and Bani Suwayf, Gibli in the South, to join schools and the university in Cairo.

Makram Ebeid

In 1936, yet another prominent Copt, Makram 'Ubayd (1879-1961) who had become a follower of Egypt's Nationalist leader, Sa'd Zaghlul, was appointed Secretary General of the Wafd Party that demanded the British evacuate the territory. Like many other prominent members of the Coptic Community before him, and like many more after him, Makram 'Ubayd stood fast with Muslims for the good of his nation, Misr.

It is remarked that Colonialism which brought much good as well as much bad to the colonized peoples resulted from the Soldier, the Merchant and the Missionary working hand in hand for the interests of the Colonial Power. The Coptic Church which had developed throughout the centuries, thus building a string of monasteries, seminaries, churches and schools, was now threatened by French Catholic priests and British and American missionaries who chipped at the Coptic community and raided its members. In the early twentieth century, a Coptic Catholic Church and Coptic Protestant churches came about. During the Arabization of Egypt, Copts had adopted Arabic first name, although names after Saints were retained: Mor'os, Girgis and so forth. Now, first names such as Maurice or William appeared. Significantly, also, Pharaonic names like Isis and Ramsis lingered on...

The Copts have fallen on hard times since the 1952 Coup. Their hopes for a secular state faded when the 1956 Constitution was drafted. Article Two of this document explicitly stated that Islam is the Official Religion of the Land. This signified that all laws should be inspired by the edicts of the Qur'an. In practical terms, men and women rights were not equal. Neither were Muslim and non-Muslim, according to the Law. After the political union of Egypt with Syria whose Christian population plays an important role in that country's affairs, the 1958 Constitution of the United Arab Republic, as the new state came to be known, Article Two was dropped to the dismay of many Muslims in Egypt. When the new republic was ended by Syria's unilateral withdrawal, the 1964 Constitution of the Egyptian Arab Republic re-instated Article Two. This meant that the Copts would remain a diminished community. It also suggested to the rising Islamists that more had to be done to give constitutionality to a state whose religion was Islam. The Secular State remains, in the meantime, a mirage in this land of deserts and mirages. It leaves the Copts with three choices for years to come: further conversion is taking place, emigration to the West is on the rise, and Coptism, which appears to be the reply to Islamism, an ideology which is dogmatic, uncompromising and militant, appeals to the young. The majority of responsible Egyptians appears totally impervious to the fate of the Copts. It has, moreover, forgotten the contribution of members of this community to the development of Egypt.

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

Egyptian Frescoes (12): The 1952 Coup d'État.

When the late Yusif Shahin presented his epic movie, Saladin, to Arab audiences, was he suggesting that Gamal 'abd il-Nasir march on Jerusalem? By the time the movie hit the screens in 1965, the colonel who, on July 23rd, 1952, had staged a coup against King Farouk and his government, had risen to the greatest heights in the eyes of all

Gamal Abdel Nasser

Arabs. It was therefore reasonable that he be represented as the heir to the Great Ayyubid whose descendants already had ruled over Egypt for almost a century, from 1171 to 1266.

Gamal 'abd ul-Nasir (1918-1970) grew up as a boy in Alexandria and, later, as an adult in Cairo, in an Egypt in turmoil.  

His father was a postman, meaning that he could read and write. The family was exposed, through the newspapers, to the times of Sa'd Zaghlul and the 1919 Revolution. Such times made one cope with the humiliating Anglo-Egyptian Treaty. The nation stood helpless as an autocratic ruler emasculated parliament. In secondary school, Gamal participated in demonstrations against the British. The street battles between the various coloured shirts were, also, a daily occurrence. And, Hasan al-Banna was a rising star prior to the War. In 1936, the British induced the King to open the military academies to sons of the Lower Middle Class. The British were anticipating 1939 and they encouraged the Egyptian military to rise to 50.000 soldiers strong.

Egypt's armies had gone a full circle, from the time when Muhammad 'Ali Basha instituted a fighting force whose officers were Turks and Albanians whom the French trained and whose foot soldiers were from the Fallahin, to the time of Khedive Isma'il where officers now were sons of the Egyptian landed aristocracy, to post-1936 when the recently urbanized could send their sons to fight and die in the Infantry. The Cavalry, later to become an Armoured Unit, the Navy and the recently created Air Force were led by members of the Egyptian plutocracy.  And so was it that 'abd ul-Nasir entered the School of Infantry along with others who would rise in rank and eventually plot to topple the monarchy.

Egypt's Modern infantry 1940's

During my school years on Malika Nazli Street, every morning, officers reported to the 'Abbasiyyah Barracks. I could notice that officers from the upper classes drove themselves to their units. Infantry officers were driven by lorry to their respective units. At the time, the Infantry, was not mechanized: like Napoleon's infantrymen who reached Russia on foot, the Mushah, as infantry was called, walked and walked and walked. Another childhood memory happened when, one afternoon, my mother took me to Groppi's for hot chocolate and pastries. Next to our table sat an Egyptian cavalry major and his wife. At my age, I knew all about. And, although they all wore the same kahki battle dress, I had come to identify physical features and their language with the name of the regiment they belonged to: for instance, here, on both upper sleeves, one read Poland; the face and the spoken words became associated in my mind. There were Australians whose symbol was a kangaroo, New Zealanders and Maoris and their kiwi badge, South Africans, Sikh and Rajput or Pundjabis, Kenya Riffles, Free French and Jewish Brigade, Gurkas and, last but not least, the bearded ladies of the Black Watch Regiment. Came in a Welsh captain and his Khawagayyah date. They sat next to our table and the Welshman immediately requested from the British Military Police that the Egyptian cavalry major, his superior in rank, be evicted from the premises. To my mother and to me, this was shocking. It appeared, we later learnt, to be standard practice in British India. Not so in Egypt. And yet the MPs obliged.

King Farouk of Egypt

I was coming to understand that there were inequalities among those who were sent to die in the desert, in the Egyptian Forces and between Egyptians and Brits in uniform. Inequality would breed resentment and bitterness, on the nationalist front and when, on May 15th., 1948, the Egyptian Army was thrown into battle in Palestine. Haydar Pasha, the Commander-in-Chief, was ordered by the King to hastily prepare for war. Second World War Italian weapons and ammunition were acquired which, on the battle field, proved defective. The war involved mostly infantry. Officers from other combat units were being spared. It has been reported that, after the Siege of Falujah, in the Neguev, where an Egyptian unit was surrounded and later surrendered to the Israelis, the younger officers around  Captain Gamal 'abd il-Nasir started plotting against the civilian leadership in Cairo.

Infantry 

Meanwhile, 1952 was an eventful year in the country: on January 25th. of that year, the British in Isma'liyyah, in an armed confrontation with the police, the Buluk Nizam, disarmed them. There were casualties on both sides and the confrontation was hailed as a victory for the Egyptians who had held their ground. The very next day, riots in Cairo, caused the European quarters to be set aflame:

the Shepherds Hotel, stores owned by Jews, the Turf Club frequented by British were looted and set ablaze. We were sent home from school and I bicycled from one hot spot to another to watch. The forces of order could not stop the rioters. It was a cold January day but the fires had raised the temperature of the air for everyone.  

Before sunset, that day, the Army was called upon to restore order and imposed a curfew. The next morning, my father and I walked towards Norton Pharmacy. The streets were littered with debris and the stench from burnt paint filled the air. Robert Hughes, had been looted and torched. So was Lappas and Ben Zion. Norton's was spared when, it was explained to us, the Egyptian staff convinced the rioters its owners were neither English nor Jewish but Turks. The city was later cleared of rubble and life appeared to return to normal. Rumours circulated that the Communists and the Ikhwan were the major culprits behind the burning of European Cairo and many rioters were arrested and admitted their crimes under torture. 

Old Shepherd's  Hotel Cairo

The Communist-led trade-unions called for workers to strike and were sent to jail. In my family's immediate circle, daily routine was back although one friend was often being cited: as early as the end of the First Palestine War of 1948-1949, he had chosen to leave Egypt and advised my father to do the same. He belonged to the Shawam Community. My father had called his decision crazy when he chose to leave this Land of Plenty. The exchange rate of the Egyptian Pound was higher than the Pound Sterling at the time. The gentleman in question settled in Monaco and bought much property in and around Monte Carlo. He never stopped after that pointing a finger of I-told-you-so to us whenever the opportunity arose.

Meanwhile, our family prepared to go to Lebanon for our annual summer holidays. We were at home, in the Shuf Hills, on July 23rd., when news reached us that there had been a Coup back home. One General Muhammad Nagib, had arrested the King who was in his summer palace in Alexandria. Also, under house arrest were the members of his Cabinet. The country remained quiet and the bulk of the population appeared to favour the change. The King would not be tried, after all, but instead went into exile. The popular ‘Ali Mahir would head a new civilian government. Everything seemed to return to what one was used to and we remained in the Hills till September, my father included, as there was no urgency for him to interrupt his summer break.

It is during this very period that a fundamental question was being raised by the Egyptian tourists to Lebanon whom we frequented: were the events of the end of July a simple change at the helm with a general replacing a king or was this the beginning of a revolution? The question had been brought about by developments which left people perplex. The first was the immediate dissolution by the Military Council of all existing political parties except the Muslim Brotherhood.

General Mohamed Naguib

The second was the promulgation of an Agrarian Reform Law, on September 11th, which, in effect, expropriated the Royal Family and the Landed Aristocracy of its wealth and power. When the real leader of the Coup appeared to replace General Nagib, Colonel 'abd il-Nasir, the Bikbashi, as he was known amongst his Free Officers, was showing his true social colours. His infantrymen had won the day against the Navy, the Cavalry and the Air Force. Amongst the prominent members of the Free Officers, meanwhile, it was being reported that Anwar is-Sadat was a member of the Ikhwan. At the other end of the ideological spectrum was Colonel Khalid Muhiyi al-Din, a Communist, both representing the have-nots. At the same time, one slogan of the New Regime was offering hope for the future: al-Din lil-lah wa al-Watan lil-Gami', Religions belong to God but the Nation is the property of All. Were we witnessing the rise of an Egyptian Mustafa Kemal Atatürk?

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

Egyptian Frescoes (11): The Question of Palestine.

Long before the Question of Palestine and the Jewish Question became intimately related in the minds of the Arabs in the Twentieth Century, the geography of the Near East and the position of Egypt, at the juncture of three continents, constantly projected that country into the limelight. One simply has to visit the narrows of Nahr al-Kalb, north of Beirut, to gage the importance of this passageway to the armies of Pharao, to Asssyrians and Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs from the Peninsula, or French and British, in the modern era.

The City of Jaffa 

The invaders all left their autograph. The Land of Palestine, south of the Ancient Lycus River, the River of the Dog mentioned above, stood as a buffer or a gateway to fertile Egypt. In our times, Napoleon Bonaparte headed north from Cairo along the Mediterranean coastal road till Jaffa. The plague and the Ottomans stopped his cavalcade towards Nahr al-Kalb in 1799. One Nathan Schur suggested, in his Napoleon and the Holy Land, that the young general had planned to proclaim, once he reached Jerusalem, the creation of a Jewish State. His aim was to establish an allied European entity in Palestine which would consolidate his hold on Egypt, the main object of which was to threaten the road to India for the British.

Napoleon

That was well before the opening of a Suez Canal and before the West struck oil in Mesopotamia, in Persia and in the Arab Gulf. It was well before Theodore Herzl (1860-1904), the Austrian journalist, covered the Dreyfus Trial and, as a result, wrote, in 1896, Der Judenstaat. It was also long before Adolf Hitler embarked upon his policy of extermination of the Jews of Europe. One will have to wait until preparations for the First World War came about to reckon with European objectives in the Middle East. These objectives were facilitated by the alliance of the Young Turks with Germany and Austria, the losers of the war. As the British and French battled the Ottomans in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which would divide the Arab spoils of war between England and France, and a Balfour Declaration addressed to Baron Rothschild, which allowed European Jews to set their home in Palestine, were on the drawing board. At the Paris Peace Conference, both these documents were tabled and the Arabs discovered that all promises made to Sharif Husayn would not be honoured. Moreover, a system of mandates and protectorates would be imposed on all Arab territories, except Saudi Arabia. Finally, the gates to Palestine would be open to Jewish Immigration from Europe whose percentage of the entire Palestinian population rose from less than 1% after the war to 17% in 1931, and 27% in 1935.

Al-Sharif Hussein

The Europeans had not considered the damage which the creation of a Jewish State would do to their interests and reputation in the long run. When Theodore Herzl visited 'Abd ul-Hamid II, the Sultan-Caliph, in Istambul, in 1901, he requested permission to establish Jewish colonies in Palestine against the settlement of the entire Ottoman Debt by European Jewish financiers. Jerusalem was the third holiest city of Islam after Makkah and Madina. The Sultan-Caliph is reported to have replied that He would rather be skewered than lose the Holy Land. Herzl then negotiated with the Egyptian Authorities, through Joseph Chamberlain, Secretary to the Colonies, that land in and around al-'Arich, in Egypt proper, be granted to him for his pet project of an Alteneuland. The Egyptians rejected the idea. The British Mandate over Palestine and the Balfour Declaration, made in 1917, opened the way to the eventual creation of Israel in 1948.

Joseph Chamberlain

In the meantime, Palestinians had been rioting against immigration of Europeans to their lands. The Nabi Musa Riots of 1920, outside Jerusalem, were followed by the 1929 Riots and the more serious ones which started, in 1936, in Jaffa, outside Tel Aviv, spread to the rest of the Mandate and lasted till 1939.

The rioting in Palestine had received much attention in Egypt. Everyone seemed to pay lip service to the cause of the Palestinians. Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, the close collaborator of the Prophet and father of his daughter, 'Aisha, had been quoted as saying: ma min ummatin tarakat al-Jihad illa wa duriba 'alayha al-dhull, only Jihad, holy war guaranteed against humiliation. As the Second World War approached, an Eighth British Army was being assembled in Egypt, to defend the Canal. British tanks rolled towards 'Abdin Palace and forced the young King Faruq, whose sympathies for the Axis Powers were known, to appoint Mustafa al-Nahhas, leader of the Wafd Party, to form a government and join in the war effort on February 4th, 1942. All political parties were being compromised by the occupier. Only the Ikhwan stood fast against the British. This made them the most popular nationalist force in the country.

Mustafa El-Nahaas Pacha

The Ikhwan were also having access to light weapons and ammunition which were either stolen from the British or else, after 1942, when Field-Marshal Rommel was defeated by Montgomery at al-'Alamayn, were being traded by the Bedouins of the Western Desert. The Ikhwan learnt to use these weapons with the assistance of a few officers of the insignificant Egyptian Army. The Ikhwan had now opted for armed struggle against those whom they defined as enemies of Islam. On the Jewish Palestinian side, terrorism had appealed to extremist factions of society as well. It is not clear if Irish freedom fighters assisted the Ikhwan although it is known they did Jews against the British when Lord Moyne, who did not favour the creation of a Jewish State, was assassinated in Cairo, on November 6th, 1944, by members of a Jewish terrorist organisation. In 1945, on February 24th., Ahmad Mahir, the Prime Minister, who opposed Ikhwan participation at elections, was gunned down. In 1948, on December 28th., yet another Prime Minister, Mahmud al-Nuqrashi, was also assassinated. The membership of the Brotherhood had been estimated that year at 2 million strong and King Faruq was worrisome. 

Hassan El-Banna

On Feburary 12th., 1949, the King had Hasan al-Banna murdered. His party was also banned and simply went underground.

In the meantime, the British Mandate over Palestine had ended on May 15th., 1948 and the six member states of the Arab League, which came into being on 22 March 1945, marched armies into Palestine. The Ikhwan partook into the conflict by providing irregulars. All were confronted by better equipped, better trained Jewish combatants and the Arabs called for a truce. Amongst the Jewish combatants were members of the Jewish Brigade which Haïm Wiseman (1874-1952) had formed in Palestine to fight alongside the Eighth Army during the Second World War. I was a boy when units of this army paraded in Cairo in celebration of King Georges VI's birthday. They marched along Kasr el-Nil street, across Midan Soliman Pasha. My Jewish schoolmates cheered. Back at the Lycée de Bab el-Louk during my last year, Jews in class had espoused Zionism and talked of moving to Israel to build the new state. On a camping trip we undertook to Marsa Matruh, I recall one evening when we talked passionately around the campfire. The Communists amongst my Jewish childhood friends were also Zionists. We could not understand then how Internationalism and Nationalism, or Religion and Nationalism could become one and the same. My Jewish friends, of course, felt the threat of Muslim Brotherhood terrorism and so did the Khawagat. Mr. Moseri, the owner of the Egyptian Cement Factory had not explained to his son how Egyptian humiliation in Palestine would inevitably inflict woes upon the interests of the Jews of Egypt. And Jacques Mizrahi, an Egyptian Jew as his name, Mizrahi, from Mizr, indicated, had not considered how Schwarte and Schlechte would mix in the land east of Eden.

Lycée Français du Caire

 Over the Ikhwan, I had befriended Mahmud Fathi Sa’id, an active member of the Brotherhood who, at the eve of the Military Coup of the 23rd of July 1952, came out of the cupboard when the government lifted the ban on their activities. I once asked Fathi while we hiked in Wadi Digla, in the desert east of Ma’adi, if it was true that the Brotherhood really intended to slaughter all of us Khawagat once they assumed power. He looked me straight in the eyes and replied: kullukum illa inta ya Andreyyah, all except you..