The Muslim conquest of Egypt followed naturally from that of Syria. The sources for the early Muslim conquests are extremely problematical, and it would be wrong to be too categorical about specific details. The Arabic sources are generally agreed that the first attack was launched from southern Palestine at the end of 18/639 or the beginning of 19/640. The leader and inspiration for this expedition was ‘Amr ibn al-‘Ās as a member of the powerful Umayyad clan. The force he led was very small, perhaps 3,500–4,000 troops, but as the conquest progressed they were joined by further reinforcements, notably 12,000 led by Zubayr ibn al-‘Awwām, a senior companion of the Prophet ‘Amr, however, remained in command.

The invasion force headed southwest along the eastern fringes of the desert to the Byzantine stronghold of Babylon (Old Cairo). Here they besieged the garrison of the fortress, which surrendered after some seven months in Rabī II, 20/Easter 641. Alexandria, not Babylon, was the Byzantine capital and, after securing his position ‘Amr marched through the Delta to attack the city. Divisions among Byzantines and the loss of so much territory seem to have led to a spirit of defeatism among the defenders. At the end of the year 30 (November 641) a treaty was made in which the Byzantines agreed to give up the city by Shawwāl 21/September 642. This meant the end of serious resistance: it was now up to the small army of conquerors to establish a working government over the rich lands they had so swiftly acquired.

In Islamic times, as in all other phases of its long history, Egypt cannot be comprehended or analyzed in isolation. It was always embedded in a series of larger complexes, whether political, economic, or cultural. Whether it is useful to call the totality of these complexes a “world system” is a question best deferred until a later point in this chapter. Whatever we call them, these complexes were constantly evolving and shifting, as was Egypt’s role within them. It is natural but misleading to identify one moment as normative and to judge all other periods against that one. We shall be very badly misled, for example, if we focus on Egypt in the half–century after 1300, when the borders of its empire were secure, its armies were triumphant, its cities were bursting with new construction, it was the linchpin between two flourishing trade zones in the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean, and its centrality in the intellectual and religious life of the Arabic–speaking Sunnī world was uncontested. There are periods, and they are in fact quite common, when Egypt was but a marginal player, and that within a rather small arena.

An understanding of Egypt’s place in its Eurasian and African milieu, then, must begin with some reflections on periodization. The terminal dates for our essay, 641 and 1517, are clear-cut and unambiguous. The first represents the moment at which Egypt was abruptly wrenched out of Constantinople’s political, economic, and religious orbit; the second is that moment when it was just as abruptly and unexpectedly dragged back in.

States and elites

The culture of the Ottoman period has often been analyzed by using the same criteria applied to the periods before and after it, Mamluk Egypt (1250–1517) and the nineteenth century. This is problematic for two reasons, firstly because of the very different roles played by the state in relation to culture and learning and secondly because of the role of elites in providing models and patterns of culture. The influence of the ruling class in shaping culture can change between one period and another, and can be greater at certain times than at others. When the state is centralized, the ruling class is much more likely to play a dominant role than it is in a decentralized state. The cultural production is more likely to be polished and refined when ruling classes dominate the direction that it takes, and less so when their role is reduced. When the state is decentralized, as it was during the Ottoman period, and the structures at the top are weaker, the cultural forms and patterns from below are more likely to emerge. Therefore, rather than compare this period to those before or after it, we may approach it through the larger framework of its changing social and political structures.

In both Mamluk Egypt and Egypt under the rule of Muhammad ’Ali and his descendants (nineteenth century), the state was very centralized and played an active role in financing and shaping culture and in education. Likewise the ruling elites were actively involved in creating cultural models.

Introduction

Of the span of Egypt’s history since the arrival of Islam, no comparably brief period has received more scholarly and popular attention than the years 1798–1801, when the country was conquered and occupied by a French military expedition commanded by Napoleon Bonaparte. Publication – for political, propagandistic, and scholarly motives – of materials pertaining to the expedition began early. Before the end of 1798 London publishers were selling collections of French despatches and correspondence intercepted in transit from Egypt to France. At least one account of the military aspects of the expedition was in print before the French evacuated Egypt in 1801. The first major intellectual product of the civilian intellectuals who accompanied the French army – Denon’s Voyage dans la basse et haute Egypte – was in print in 1802, with English editions appearing the following year in London and New York. The first edition of the vast Description de l’Egypte began to appear in 1810.

Discourse in Arabic on the expedition also began early. ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti composed his first narrative of events some seven months after the invasion, and a second account, dedicated to the Ottoman commander Yusuf Pasha, in December 1801; the latter had been translated into Turkish by 1810. Another account in Arabic was written by Niqula al-Turk, who had been sent to Cairo by the Lebanese amir Bashir Shihab to report on the events of occupied Egypt.

Although by no means the most important Jewish community of the medieval Muslim world either numerically or culturally, Egyptian Jewry is certainly the best–known to modern historical scholarship, or at least the most intimately known with regard to its quotidian life during the Islamic High Middle Ages, owing to the rich documentation that has survived in the Cairo Geniza. The Geniza was a vast repository of discarded written materials – sacred and secular, literary and documentary – that was attached to the Ben Ezra synagogue in Fustāt (Old Cairo). Emptied of its contents in 1896, the Geniza was found to contain over a quarter of a million manuscripts and fragments dating back as far as the mid-eighth century, although the lion’s share of the material dated from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries, that is from the Fātimid, Ayyūbid, and early Mamlūk periods.

Egypt had always been the foremost center of Hellenistic Jewry. However, by the time of the Arab conquest, the heyday of the Egyptian Jews had long passed and their numbers were considerably reduced in the suppression of Jewish uprisings during the first two centuries of the Common Era and later, as a result of Byzantine Christian persecution. Still, the number of Jews was large enough to impress the Muslim conquerors from the Arabian desert. According to the early chronicler Ibn ‘Abd al–Hakam, there were 40,000 Jews in Alexandria alone when the city fell to the Muslims in 642. Although the actual figure was probably closer to 4,000, it is a good indication of the rude desert Arabs’ sense of wonder and amazement at the size and sophistication of the large urban Egyptian Jewish community.

General observations

Egypt continued its drift toward autonomy during the course of the eighteenth century, moving at the same time from dominance by households to rule by individuals. As it emerged from the generally passive condition imposed on it by two centuries of Ottoman domination and freely developed closer links with Europe under the leadership of aggressive beys of a new and ambitious Mamluk household, Egypt assumed a central importance in European strategic planning that it has never lost. Much of this importance rested on a unique geographic position, but Egypt sustained a vibrant economy of its own. It remained the richest and most important Ottoman province, for it distributed to various regions of the Ottoman empire (and increasingly, as the century wore on, to European states eager for its trade) agricultural bounty of such crops as rice, sugar, and wheat as well as a broad range of products, chiefly Yemeni coffee, from Africa, Asia, and the Red Sea region.

Despite the continuing tyranny of its military establishment, the seemingly incessant outbreaks of violence among competing military households, and frequent visits of plague and pestilence, Egypt’s economy remained strong well into the century. During a lengthy period of political stability in mid-century the economy provided prosperity for the upper and middle classes, sustained a considerable population increase, and supported the physical expansion of Cairo and the port cities.

By the second half of the century, however, the long-term effects of Europe’s economic expansion – the direct purchase of coffee, for instance, by the Europeans from the Yemen and their introduction into Middle Eastern markets of coffee and rice grown in the New World – began to have a debilitating impact on the Egyptian economy.

The political history of Egypt between 1848 and 1879 is dominated by the buildup of the dynastic state and by European economic and political penetration leading to the establishment of foreign control. These interacted with each other and provided the context for other important developments, such as the breakdown of viceregal autocracy. Power relations changed between the ruler and his elite, whose members were developing interests of their own, and between government and society. The central power became partially Egyptianized while subjecting the mass of society to greater regulation and control.

The growth of the state was marked by consolidation of the Muhammad ’Ali family as an Egyptian dynasty, expansion of the administrative apparatus, and the appearance of a bureaucratic elite with a new indigenous component. Foreign penetration was expressed in appropriation by Europeans of part of Egypt’s rural surplus, the self-assertion and intervention of foreign consulates, lending by European bankers, and the buildup of a huge debt owed entirely to foreigners. Beginning in 1875, these developments converged. An international control over Egyptian finances was established, creating a state within a state. The European powers and bondholders then destroyed the viceroy’s autocratic powers while retaining the office and the dynasty. By 1879, Europe had taken over the state itself – the prize and object of power.

As is evident from other chapters of this volume it would be artificial and misleading to try to separate the history of Islamic Egypt from that of its neighbors, especially Syria and Palestine. After all, the geopolitical situation of Egypt throughout the Middle Ages dictated both the necessity to defend its right flank from encroachments by rival powers in Syria and, to a lesser extent, Mesopotamia, and to secure its commercial interests in the Mediterranean through control of the ports of the Levant. These geopolitical factors were not of course peculiar to the Islamic period and are recurring themes of both ancient and modern times. That being the case, it is not surprising that it is also impractical to confine the historiography of the Ayyūbid and Mamlūk periods to writing about Egypt alone or to those composed by Egyptian authors. Although historians resident in Egypt became more and more prominent in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and an Egyptian group of writers flourished in Cairo during the fifteenth century, for the whole of the Ayyūbid period, Syrian and Mesopotamian authors dominated what was recorded about Egypt. Since, moreover, the Egyptian Ayyūbid sultans, including Salāh al–Dīn, were involved with building and maintaining an empire with its capital in Cairo but including Syria, Palestine, and other territories, there is no history focusing on Ayyūbid Egypt per se, so that it must be studied as a part of Ayyūbid history in general.

Upon the accession of Qānsūh al-Ghawrī to the Cairo sultanate in 906/1501, the Mamlūk oligarchy over which he presided had ruled Egypt and Syria as a unified imperium for more than 250 years. While no institution of such longevity could remain immune to evolutionary change, the Mamlūk regime was remarkable for its stability in a turbulent international milieu. This stability was sustained in large part because of the Mamlūks’ commitment to a static concept of imperialism and their allegiance to conservative values of caste hegemony. To be sure, the Mamlūk oligarchy, during its final decades of sovereignty, exhibited behavioral characteristics that contemporary observers found ominous both for the preservation of the realm’s security and ensuring its fiscal solvency. And yet these characteristics were the predictable manifestations of tendencies – positive and negative – in existence since the military elite’s inception under the late Ayyūbids.

The last effective Ayyūbid monarch in Cairo, al–Sālih Najm al–Dīn, regarded the mamlūk slave–soldiers of his predecessor as a threat, fearing that their loyalty might devolve upon his Syrian rivals. He sought to defend his position by founding a new corps of troops whose officers set up the Mamlūk regime upon his death. They initially regarded their function as custodial, aimed at protecting their own status from Ayyūbid claimants. Rudimentary as their ideas were about statecraft at this early stage, these founders appreciated their vulnerability as usurpers. Installed as bodyguards of a paranoid ruler, they rightly saw their prospects as tenuous if a successor who resented the privileges their patron had granted them took power.

From Napoleon to Sa’d Zaghlul (1798–1919)

The beginning of modern Egyptian cultural development has traditionally been set at 1798, the date of Napoleon’s invasion. Although the significance of this date for the socio-economic development of Egypt has in recent years become the focal point for some of the liveliest debates in Middle Eastern history, its status as a cultural turning-point is difficult to ignore; as one recent commentator has noted, “the postulation of the French occupation...as the original event that stirs modern Arabic literature [and, by implication, other branches of modern Arab culture] to life...is heavily documented and cannot easily be gainsaid.” Essentially an episode in the history of Anglo-French imperialist rivalry, the French invasion has generally been judged a military failure, but the three-year occupation that followed saw developments that were radically to change the cultural and educational development of the country. The teams of scholars and scientists Napoleon brought with him undertook a comprehensive survey of the country, subsequently published as Description de l’Egypte; a scientific Institut de l’Egypte was founded; a printing-press was introduced to Egypt, used not only for printing proclamations for the local people but also for production of a newspaper, Le courier de l’Egypte, and a scientific and educational journal, La décade égyptienne. To win support Napoleon also set up an administrative council and a series of provincial councils, by means of which the Egyptians were involved in western representative institutions for the first time.

Introduction

Between September 1881 and September 1882 the ‘Urabi revolution in Egypt tried to roll back Anglo-French financial and political predominance, the Turco-Circassian monopoly on high military posts, and the authority of Khedive Tawfiq. Like Colonel Nasir, Colonel Ahmad ‘Urabi gave his name to an upheaval that challenged the Muhammad ‘Ali dynasty and European power. While Nasir’s revolution was a qualified success, however, ‘Urabi’s failed, ending in outright British occupation and reducing the nominally restored khedive almost to a figurehead.

Egyptian partisans of Tawfiq and many westerners have dismissed the ‘Urabi movement as a mere military revolt. It is called a revolution here to emphasize the movement’s extensive civilian involvement and social depth. For some, a failed revolution is by definition only a rebellion or a revolt. But if we are to continue calling the failed upheavals of Europe in 1848 and Russia in 1905 revolutions, there is no reason to single out the ‘Urabi movement for demotion to “revolt.”

The military demonstration at ‘Abdin palace on September 9, 1881 began the revolution, forcing the khedive to dismiss Mustafa Riyad’s cabinet. Wealthy landed notables from the previous majils shura al-nuwwab (hereafter, the chamber) sanctioned the army’s move in advance, and people from a range of social backgrounds quickly lent their support.

The slogan “Egypt for the Egyptians” underlines the proto-nationalist strand in the revolution. This was not conceived in narrow ethnic terms and coexisted easily with religio-political appeals to jihad and professions of loyalty to the Ottoman sultan-caliph (sultan ‘Abd al-Hamid II did not denounce ‘Urabi as a rebel until seven days before the fateful battle of Tall al-Kabir).

Introduction

Unlike political events, social and economic processes are not amenable to periodization according to precise starting and ending-points. By their very nature, such processes do not begin at a certain moment in history, but rather mature over time; nor do they end abruptly, but rather tend to peter out gradually. Since the purpose of this chapter is to chart the main processes that took place in Egyptian society, we shall try to define a time frame that can accommodate within its loose boundaries the main social and economic developments. “The long nineteenth century” as conceived here spills over in both directions – it begins with the third quarter of the eighteenth century and ends in the first quarter of the twentieth: “just as the coming of the French in 1798 should not be thought of as a beginning, so the coming of the English in 1882 should not be thought of as an end.”

It has been argued that if we focus on both “continuity and rupture” it is quite obvious that the period of Muhammad ‘Ali should be discussed in conjunction with the second half of the eighteenth century. But at the same time, the 1860s and 1870s were a period of intense change, which mark a rupture with the past:

“The expansion of European commerce, leading to the inflow of European capital, the great changes in communications with the coming of the telegraph in the 1870s, the opening of new schools, the beginning of newspapers and periodicals in the 1870s, and behind them all the demographic changes...all these are very important, and in some ways they can be regarded as opening a new period, and one that continues far beyond 1882.”

The sources

The long rivalry between the Mamlūks and the Ottomans that led to war and conquest was a confrontation between two Muslim Sunnī empires, both governed by Turkish–speaking rulers. The predominant language in the central Ottoman provinces was Turkish; the Mamlūk state included Egypt and Syria, with the Hijāz – the central Arab lands of the Middle East – within its sphere of influence. In historical perspective, the struggle was over the hegemony of the Sunnī world, which was challenged by the new Shī‘ī Safavid state in Iran, and by the Portuguese naval, neo–crusading aggression in the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. The military power of the Mamlūk state was based on the excellent Mamluk cavalry and auxiliary forces. Yet it conducted a fundamentally defensive and static strategy; its boundaries were essentially the same as they had been in 1250, when the empire was established. Conversely, the Ottoman empire was an aggressive and dynamic state, which devoted all its energies to conquest and expansion, skillfully integrating all its economic and human resources for further advancement. The outcome of the decisive war, that lasted from August 1516 until January 1517, was the fall of the Mamlūk sultanate.

The conquest of Syria and Egypt by the Ottomans is described in detail by a variety of sources – Arabic, Turkish, European and Hebrew. There are not many instances in which an occupation of one empire by another is recorded so accurately, sometimes day by day, giving a clear picture of confrontations of different traditions, mentalities and attitudes, describing how the Ottoman administration took over after the overthrow of the Mamlūk sultanate.

Egypt’s population in the early seventh century AD cannot be determined with any certainty, but it probably numbered less than the five million persons frequently attributed to the province at the height of the Roman Empire in the Early Principate. By the year 600, the population may have declined to three million; mortality resulting from plagues erupting during Justinian’s reign in the sixth century cannot be accurately estimated. Many Egyptians were designated “Chalcedonians” or “Monophysites,” but this distinction did not represent a genuine cleavage of ethnic identity in Egyptian society. An assumption that “Chalcedonian” referred exclusively to Greeks rather than to native Egyptians is erroneous. Greek remained an important spoken and written language in Egypt, although by the early seventh century Coptic was used increasingly in written records. Subliterary texts in Coptic dated back to the early third century.

Many other aspects of Egypt’s economy, social structure and spiritual outlook during Late Antiquity persisted into the early seventh century. But the privatization of public functions by owners of great estates intensified from the fourth century, a process that significantly altered institutional structures during the remaining periods of Byzantine administration. Members of the social elite could still acquire some familiarity with the repertory of Greek authors of antiquity, as testified by the writings of the poet Dioskoros of Aphrodito in the sixth century or the historian Theophylact Simocatta in the early seventh. Theatrical performances in Alexandria during the early seventh century continued to entertain audiences that included high officials.

During Egypt’s liberal age, between 1923 and 1952, European-style constitutionalism and political pluralism were incorporated into the country’s political landscape. The period witnessed genuine, though irregular, electoral competition among individuals and groups, cross-class participation in the process, and an operative, if imperfect, system of political and civil liberties. While elites controlled democratic practice, people from humble social classes also engaged in political activity.

Eager for independence from British control and for social and economic reform, the population considered competing ideologies for Egypt’s political and economic development including western-style liberalism, monarchy, Islamic fundamentalism, Marxism, feminism, and secular nationalism. Nonetheless, the excessive powers of the monarchy, the lack of an indigenous bourgeoisie with political strength, and the absence of a developed proletariat able to defend the liberal experiment combined to impede pluralistic democratic development.

Political parties during the liberal age

In 1922, Britain granted Egypt formal independence, limited by four British-imposed conditions: the security of imperial communications, defense of Egypt against aggression, protection of foreign interests and minorities, and continued British administration of the Sudan. The colonial authorities changed the title of Egypt’s head of state from sultan to king, and within a year sanctioned promulgation of a democratic constitution. With Egyptians assuming increasing control over their state, the age of liberal politics began.

The liberal era, which spanned the years between 1923 and 1952, featured a political system characterized by western-style constitutionalism and parliamentary government. Egypt’s constitution was patterned on western liberal documents, and drawn up by Egyptian legal experts sympathetic to the king and the British.

Introduction

Towards the end of the 1970s, as the opening up (infitah) toward the west and the liberalization of the economy were sharply criticized as “betrayal” of the 1952 revolution’s goals, as return of the exploitative bourgeoisie, and as abandonment of the Palestinian cause, certain observers, Egyptian and foreign, began to lay out a new “model” for the reading of contemporary Egyptian history. This model attempted to view Egypt’s various “experiments,” before and after the revolution, from a common perspective; it also made it possible to explain the “cycles” through which Egypt has ultimately failed to “modernize” and regain the place among nations that its millenia of history allows it to demand. Muhammad ‘Ali and Nasir, breaking with a past of national humiliation, both incarnated Egypt’s “will to power” by basing restoration of its regional and international role on a state economy heavily reliant on industry and the construction of a national armed force: the failure of both projects was brought about by conjunction of the “perverse” consequences of their own options and methods, and by the hostility from coalitions of external interests, alarmed by the regional role to which Egypt aspired. The successors of Muhammad ‘Ali and Nasir, Isma’il and Sadat, both betrayed or distorted their predecessors’ “developmentalist” aims and sacrificed the public good and Egypt’s independence to the mercantile interests of a class of speculators and unscrupulous businessmen that served as a wedge for foreign penetration. The crucial point here is the repetition itself and the way these successive “cycles” may be articulated: Nasir “repeats” Muhammad ‘Ali, precisely because, under Isma’il, the work of his grandfather had been swayed from its objectives; in the same way, if Sadat “repeats” Isma’il, it is because the conditions that had led to Muhammad ‘Ali’s failure were still in force, producing the same effects, and enabling the articulation of something that may appear as a “law” pertaining to the specific history of Egypt.

The period of Muhammad ’Ali’s reign, which started in 1805 when he was appointed by the Ottoman sultan as wali of Egypt and ended in 1848 with his deposition as a result of mental illness, offers one of the most interesting epochs of modern Egyptian history. During this period Egypt, while still forming a part of the Ottoman empire, assumed an increasingly independent stance, and was finally granted as a hereditary domain to Muhammad ’Ali by the sultan ’Abd al-Majid in 1841. The Pasha, as Muhammad ’Ali came to be known in Egypt (or the Viceroy, as he was commonly known to Europeans), managed in a long and effective reign to bring to an end Mamluk power in Egypt and to create in its stead a loyal elite composed of members of his own family, of friends and acquaintances from his home town of Kavalla, and of members of the expanding bureaucracy that he founded in Egypt. Moved by a desire to turn his tenure as governor into a more secure and permanent position, Muhammad ’Ali undertook various radical measures that changed Egypt’s position within the Ottoman empire, strengthened its economic ties with Europe at the expense of older links with other provinces of the empire, and radically changed its social and cultural map. Most significantly, by creating a massive naval and military force, the Pasha was able to expand Cairo’s control not only over the entire province of Egypt, but also much beyond the traditional borders of the province to include the Sudan, Crete, the Morea, the Hijaz, Yemen, Syria, and even parts of Anatolia, the heartland of the Ottoman empire.