Rising from obscurity to prominence in 1805, Muhammad ‘Ali actively sought to carve out for himself an empire in the eastern Mediterranean. He might have planned to revitalize the Ottoman empire under his leadership, and may even have nursed the idea of replacing the sultan as Universal Caliph of Islam. The Pasha’s stormy expansionism on both sides of the Red Sea – in Arabia and the Sudan – and in Greece, North Africa, and above all in Syria, should be viewed within a grand design of independence and regional hegemony. Since his other campaigns are dealt with elsewhere in this book (see chap. 6), we will concentrate here on the Pasha’s adventures in the Arabian peninsula and his and his successors’ drive into the interior of Africa.

Muhammad ‘Ali’s activities in Arabia

The Muwahidun movement – commonly known as the Wahhabis – originated and developed in the remote plateau of Najd in central Arabia, outside the sphere of effective Ottoman power. Its founder, Shaykh Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab (1703–92), was a puritan and steadfastly fundamentalist muslih (reformer) of Islam. An ‘alim of the strict Hanbali madhhab, the shaykh “rebuked the errors and laxity of the times,” and was in particular opposed to the European cultural invasion of dar al-Islam. He sought to eliminate the consequential bi‘da (objectionable innovations) that had distorted Islam, and he dogmatically interpreted it in his Kitab al-tawhid. He recalled the Muslims to the pure and unadulterated faith and practices of the ideal state of the Prophet and the four Rightly Guided Caliphs of the seventh century.

With the proclamation of his caliphate in January 910, al–Mahdī, the first of the Fātimid rulers, celebrated the culmination of a clandestine struggle that had deep roots and varying fortunes in many Islamic territories far from the north African scene of his ultimate triumph. His rise to power occurred not in the eastern areas of Iran and Iraq, where his immediate ancestors were born, or at his recent headquarters at the town of Salamiya in north central Syria, or in the Yemen or any of the other regions where his followers had been active. Al–Mahdī was already recognized as the supreme religious leader, the imam, of the Ismā‘īlī Shi‘ites by his loyal adherents, but he had not, until then, governed a politically defined realm; nor had there been in Islam as a whole another Shi‘ite caliph except for ‘Alī ibn Abī Tālib two and a half centuries earlier. Al–Mahdī’s ascension was, in his own view and that of his followers, a restoration, a revolution in which the wrongs of 250 years were redressed by the combining at last of the divinely sanctioned imamate and the caliphate in one office. He would henceforth guide the Islamic community as God had always intended, and as his ancestors the Prophet Muhammad and Muhammad’s sole legitimate heir ‘Alī had done. His immediate goal was to return Islam to its true and proper form by bringing those who most loved the family of the prophet back into positions of authority. He would, moreover, fight against the enemies of Islam both abroad and at home; the ‘Abbāsid usurpers were thus served notice that their own claim to rule would no longer be without a rival.

The Christian community in Egypt between 641 and 1517 was an often divided population in a state of constant transition. At the time of the Muslim conquest, the great majority of Egyptians were Christians of some sort, Christianity having been the religion of the Byzantine rulers of Egypt for over 300 years. The gradual transition from majority to minority under Muslim rule was a complex process that had a lasting impact on most aspects of the Christian communities in Egypt. The traditional understanding of Egyptian Christianity after the conquest as being theologically and culturally fixed and moribund is far from the reality of the dynamic religious, social and cultural activities of the Egyptian Christians. Similarly, the traditional notion of the Christian population of Egypt being cut off from the rest of the world is misleading, since there was considerable interaction with the outside world, especially with other Christian populations under Muslim control. Although subject to varying degrees of pressure and persecution from Muslims, the Egyptian Christians suffered equally from internal divisions and sectarian infighting. In spite of their internal dissension and dwindling numbers, however, the Egyptian Christians managed to keep a distinctive culture and identity alive and active in the first nine centuries of Muslim rule.

According to later traditions, St. Mark the Apostle brought Christianity to Egypt in the mid-first century. The earliest documentary and archaeological attestations of Christianity in Egypt are considered to be from the second century, but such evidence does not become secure in date or common in occurrence until the third century.

“The economic, and perhaps even the political history of a country cannot be successfully investigated without a proper knowledge of the means of payment current in the period studied.” When it comes to Islamic Egypt, the sentiment behind these words has not fallen on deaf ears. Drawing upon sources – documentary, literary, and numismatic – that can only be described as rich, especially in comparison with other areas of the medieval Islamic world, much work has been produced about the monetary history of Islamic Egypt for the 875 years covered by this volume. Yet using this material is often fraught with difficulty. The research is scattered across the years and found in many journals – some well–known, some obscure – as well as in numerous monographs, collected–study volumes, encyclopedias and the like. Given the fragmented nature of this specialized scholarship, it is not unusual to find that even though many conclusions regarding various aspects of money in Islamic Egypt have trickled into the wider field of Egyptian history, others have remained in the preserve of numismatists. Furthermore, while limited narratives of Egyptian monetary policy – usually divided by dynastic period or type of coin – have been written, as yet no coherent narrative summary of Egyptian monetary developments from the Muslim conquest to the Ottoman takeover has been attempted. This should not be a surprise, for such an undertaking would be huge indeed. It would also be premature prior to the publication of the Fustāt–Cairo volume of the Sylloge Numorum Arabicorum, Tübingen What follows is necessarily only an overview of the monetary history of Egypt.

The Ayyūbid period was a turning–point in Egypt’s pre–modern history. During it Egypt regained the regional preeminence it had lost under the later Fātimids. The period also saw the first appearance of many of the institutions Egypt would maintain until the beginning of the modern era, and in some cases well into it. Yet Ayyūbid rule lasted only eighty years, under rulers whose interests were often elsewhere. Moreover, in spite of the importance of their institutional models for succeeding periods, the Ayyūbids imposed new institutions haphazardly, and Ayyūbid politics largely escapes study through the examination of its institutional structures. How did such a regime – one that was both shortlived and distant from its subjects – leave so lasting an imprint on an Egypt so rightly known for its continuity?

The Ayyūbids came to power in the long aftermath of the Second Crusade (1147–48). This crusade, having been launched to recover Edessa and fought in central Syria, had little immediate impact on Egypt. Its indirect consequences nonetheless represented a serious threat to Fūtimid rule. Perhaps the most significant outcome was the centralization of Muslim power in Syria and Mesopotamia. In 549/1154 Nūr al-Dln Zengī, whose father’s conquest of Edessa had set off the crusade, seized Damascus as a result of it. He then organized a state devoted to the prosecution of the war against the Kingdom of Jerusalem. At the same time Baldwin III asserted his power over his nobles, making the kingdom more dangerous to its rivals. With his new freedom of action Baldwin conquered Ascalon in 548/1153, a victory that gave him a short route to the Nile Delta.

The regime of the Circassian Mamlūks, or the “state of the Circassians” as contemporaries called it to distinguish it from the state of the Turks, formed a bridge between Egypt’s most brilliant medieval period and the beginning of the sixteenth century which we, in Europe, see as the beginning of modern times. The use of the ethnic criterion to designate this period shows that the change in the origin of the dominant class had been felt to be a major factor that had to be taken into account in explaining the political evolution. It might also be thought that this change did not explain every aspect of an ongoing process, some results of which were maintained under the Ottoman administration.

The general development

First we shall consider the major phases of this lengthy period (1382–1517), summarizing only briefly the military confrontations and international relations which, while not the subject of this chapter, cannot be overlooked when interpreting internal political changes. Four major phases of varying length are apparent.

This first period saw the restoration of the Mamlūk state under the amīr al–Malik al-Zāhir Barqūq (1382–1389). Barqūq, who contrived to impose his exclusive authority from 1378, under the sultanate of the two sons of al–Malik al–Ashraf Sha‘bān (al–Malik al–Mansūr ‘Alī and then al–Malik al–Sālih Hajjī, whose atābak he was and whose mother he had married) acceded to the sultanate as Qalāwūn had done in former times. Save for a break when he would have to accept the return to the throne of his ousted ward (in 1389–90), he would wield power until his death in 1399.

Ottoman transformation and Egypt’s changing role

The seventeenth century was an era of momentous change for all provinces of the Ottoman empire, as the empire came to the end of the phase of continuous territorial expansion that had stretched from the mid-fifteenth century through the late sixteenth century. The end of this phase of expansion has until recently been construed as the onset of the Ottoman empire’s decline. A critical reexamination of the so-called decline paradigm, however, has led some historians of the Ottoman empire to abandon the notion of an imperial golden age under Sultan Sulayman I (1520–66), and to recast the course of Ottoman history in terms of a late sixteenth-century fiscal and military crisis followed by an adjustment of imperial priorities.

The crisis of the late sixteenth century changed the character of Ottoman military manpower and land tenure. Confronted with massive inflation, thought to have resulted at least in part from an influx of Spanish American silver, the imperial treasury debased the Ottoman silver currency (aqcha) and delayed the imperial troops’ salaries; consequently, soldiery revolts, in particular among the imperial Janissaries, became increasingly common. In the countryside, inflation combined with overpopulation to force land-holding cavalry officers and peasants off the land in what was dubbed the Great Flight. This upheaval coincided with a series of costly wars against the Hapsburgs (1593–1606) that ended in stalemate. To counter the Hapsburgs’ firepower, the Ottomans had armed peasants with rifles; in consequence, firearms spread throughout the countryside, enabling dispossessed landholders to turn to brigandage and to offer their services as mercenaries.

The constitution of 1923 consolidated a new legal and institutional framework for the Egyptian state. Yet this political moment is an inadequate marker of the economic and social developments inextricably bound up with it. Changes in a society and its political economy are best analyzed in terms of long-term historical and structural tendencies that cannot be dated with precision.

The years between the accession of Khedive ’Abbas Hilmi (r. 1892–1914) and the election of the first Wafd government in 1924 in many ways delimit a single era. This conjuncture was formed by stabilization and subsequent frustration of British colonial rule; increased capital investment in agriculture, transport, commerce, and industry; and dramatic expansion, followed by sharp decline, in agricultural productivity. From this perspective, the popular reaction to the Dinshawai incident of June 1906 was not a spontaneous originary moment of nationalist mobilization, but a response to the developments that preceded it and informed its meaning. A reconfigured market; a reactivated political movement featuring a mélange of Egyptianist, Ottomanist, and Islamist discourses; new social groups; revised ideals of gender relations; and new forms of culture and politics elaborated and legitimized one another. After the First World War, the moral, economic, and political crisis of Anglo-French colonialism created an environment conducive to a new political order in Egypt.

The nationalist movement was an effect of urban middle strata educated in modern, western-style, schools – the effendiyya – and circles of large landholders simultaneously articulating and responding to collective anti-colonialist sentiment and action. This dynamic process reorganized the structural and discursive limits governing nearly every major question in Egypt until well after the military coup of July 23, 1952.

The death of Cleopatra the Great (VII) in 30 bc marked a pivotal moment in Egyptian history and indigenous culture. Long accustomed to foreign political domination after a succession of Libyan, Nubian, Assyrian, Persian and Macedonian rulers, Egyptian society had nonetheless proved remarkably resilient, assimilating its resident conquerors to varying degrees, while patiently enduring the brief ascendancy of those who ruled from a distance. When, however, the conquering Octavian “added Egypt to the empire of the Roman people,” Egypt was forever relegated to the periphery of political power, and pharaonic society could no longer command extraordinary accommodation from alien rulers. If the Ptolemies were compelled to mollify Egyptian sensibilities for fundamental reasons of national stability, the Romans might do so for mere political expediency.

Although there is now some dispute regarding the degree to which Egypt differed from other Roman provinces, certain unique features have long been noted. Octavian specifically excluded Egypt from customary senatorial control. Rather, he placed the province under the direct “dominion [kratēsis] of Caesar,” a phrase traditionally interpreted to indicate Egypt’s status as a “personal estate” of the emperor. Unlike other provinces, Egypt was administered by a prefect (Latin praefectus; Greek eparchos) of equestrian rank, accountable exclusively to the emperor, rather than by a proconsul of senatorial rank, with potentially divided loyalties. Indeed, senators or even prominent equestrians were formally prohibited from entering Egypt without the explicit approval of the emperor. As in the Ptolemaic regime, Egyptian currency remained a closed system, isolated within the empire. Until the reforms of Diocletian (AD 296), the export of Alexandrian coinage was prohibited, and the exchange of all foreign currency obligatory.

As his name indicates, Abū Hāmid al–Qudsī, an unprepossessing scholar of the fifteenth century, was a native of Jerusalem. In his youth, however, he moved to Egypt, where he studied with many of the leading traditionists and jurists of his day. Overwhelmed by the splendors of his adopted country, he wrote a treatise extolling its virtues and, in particular, comparing it favorably with his native Syria. Such compositions, celebrating the “wonders” (fadā’il) of a city or region, were of course common in the later medieval Islamic world, and the inhabitants of Damascus or Medina could draw upon comparable works to bolster their civic pride. But Abū Hāmid had a strong case when he identified Egypt as the “heartland of Islam,” and the last bastion of civilization. He was by no means alone in his admiration: the great historian Ibn Khaldūn, another immigrant to Egypt, had himself been attracted by the reports which reached him in the Islamic west of Egypt’s magnificence.

That Egypt should have emerged over the course of the Middle Ages as the fulcrum of the Islamic world is a matter which, despite the antiquity of Egyptian civilization, requires explanation. After all, for much of the first several centuries of Islamic rule, the country was politically and culturally passive, following political developments and decisions taken in the east, the occasional efforts of an Ahmad Ibn Tūlūn or Abu’l–Misk Kāfūr notwithstanding. Moreover, the astounding fertility of the Nile valley cannot obscure the non–agricultural poverty of medieval Egypt. Apart from its vast expanse of unproductive desert land, Egypt consisted of a utilizable land area roughly the size of Holland, and was almost completely lacking in those resources which fueled the rapid expansion of late medieval European civilization, such as undeveloped arable, iron and wood, let alone specie. Eventually, the scarcity of natural resources would take its toll.

The emergence of an autonomous Egypt

From 850, the attention of Arab chroniclers ceased to focus on the eastern provinces of the Dār al-Islām, the ‘Abbāsids’ primary concern for a century. Southern Iraq, potentially so rich because of its high–yielding agriculture, its vast port of Basra, its convergence of caravans and riverine navigation (the main route directing the Iranians toward Mecca and the commodities of the Indian Ocean toward the Byzantine markets), was nonetheless shaken by unrest. From 820 to 834 the disturbances engendered by the undisciplined Zutt, buffalo breeders who had arrived from India during the Sassanid period, compelled the ‘Abbāsid caliphs in 222/837 to relocate them in northern Syria, confronting the Byzantines. Subsequently, the general uprising of the Zanj erupted, a rebellion of black slaves imported from Zanzibar to cultivate the southern Iraqi plantations of sugar cane and rice under unbearable climatic conditions. Inspired by an ‘Alid pretender, they were initially victorious. The Zanj temporarily occupied Basra and, after 255/869, menaced all the fertile agrarian lands of southern Mesopotamia. Although they were vanquished in 270/883, the region’s agriculture did not recover from the devastation that was inflicted on it. A group of Ismā‘īlī agitators, the Carmatians, had inaugurated their programs of indoctrination in the region of Kūfa around 264/877. After founding a state at Bahrayn on the southern shore of the Persian Gulf in 286/899, they instigated revolts among the poor peasants of southern Iraq and the Arab tribes of the Syro–Iraqi steppe at the beginning of the fourth/tenth century.

The events of 1882 mark a watershed in the modern history of Egypt. By defeating the Egyptian army and occupying the country, Britain brought a forceful conclusion to almost a century of Great Power rivalry and of increasing Egyptian independence. While Egypt remained a province of the Ottoman empire, and the dynasty founded by Muhammad ’Ali continued on the throne, the country now moved to an even further orbit of Ottoman influence, and its direction fell to a small number of Europeans backed by a British garrison. Whether the mistaken result of haste in the face of diplomatic protest, or the inevitable consequence of geo-political realities, Britain’s promises soon to evacuate Egypt went unfulfilled, and there began a long new chapter in Egypt’s foreign domination and Britain’s global empire.

Early in the occupation it became clear that the problems that had precipitated intervention would not quickly be solved, however benign or uncertain were British intentions. The financial crisis that had led Isma’il inexorably into the web of European bondholders had worsened; the weakness of the Egyptian regime, exploited by ’Urabi and fully revealed at Tall al-Kabir, was only worsened by the obvious subordination of the new khedive, Muhammad Tawfiq, to the British; the insecurity of imperial communications that political and financial collapse had threatened was deepened, not corrected, by British intervention; rebellion in the Sudan threatened Egypt’s entire African empire and even the security of her southern borders. To restore Egypt’s finances would take years of painful and painstaking economizing; to restore authority to the Egyptian government while maintaining British strategic objectives would require a constant balancing act.

Fāṭimid political history

At the heart of the Fātimid state lay the imamate, which challenged both the political hegemony and the religious authority of the Sunnā ‘Abbasid caliphate. The Fātimids were a sect of Shī‘īs, that is, one of several groups who argued that ‘Alī ibn Abī Tālib should have succeeded the Prophet Muhammad as head of the Islamic community of believers. These partisans of ‘Alī (shī‘a, hence the term Shī‘ī) also eventually claimed that the headship of the Islamic community should rest with the descendants of ‘Alī and his wife Fātima, the daughter of the Prophet. They also believed that the descendants of ‘Alī and Fātima had inherited special authority to interpret the Qur‘an and religious law and belief. Disputes among different groups of Shī‘īs often centered, therefore, around genealogy. The Fātimids traced their own descent through Ismā‘īl, one of the early Shī‘ī imams, and thus we call them Ismā‘īlī.

When the Fātimids came to Egypt, they had already worked out their genealogical claims in detail, moved from being a secret missionary group to an openly declared caliphate, and founded a state in Ifriqiyya (modern–day Tunisia). The turning–point for the dynasty came with the accession of the fourth Fātimid imām–caliph, al–Mu‘izz li–dīn Allāh in 342/953. In 358/969, he succeeded in conquering Egypt after three unsuccessful attempts by his predecessors. The relatively bloodless campaign was led by his general Jawhar, who founded a new capital city, Cairo, just two miles north of the original Arab capital Fustāt. Several years later, al–Mu‘izz moved his court from north Africa to Cairo, and Egypt remained the center of the Fātimid empire until the end of the dynasty in 1171.

The period 1525–1609 covers approximately the first third of the history of Ottoman Egypt, and has distinct characteristics. It starts with the pacification of the country after the suppression of Ahmad Pasha al-Kha’in’s revolt and of the serious disturbances by Bedouin tribes that followed it, and the promulgation of the code for the government of Egypt, Qanun-name-i Misir by the grand vizier Ibrahim Pasha. Egypt remained tranquil and passive under Ottoman rule that was firm and effective. Around the late 1580s, however, the army became unruly owing to economic difficulties and in the context of the general decline of the Ottoman empire. After that the viceroys had increasing difficulty maintaining their rule. The whole period, which can be described as the ascendancy of the viceroys (or pashas), ends in 1609 with suppression of a serious soldiers’ rebellion by a strong viceroy. New political forces came to the fore, and the viceroys acted merely as formal representatives of the sultan.

The main sources

Historians attempting to describe the period face a dilemma of meager source materials. Egypt during the Mamluk period is unusually rich in historical sources – chronicles, biographical dictionaries, handbooks, and the like. The last decades before the Ottoman occupation, the conquest itself, and the next six years (until Dhu l-Hijja 928/November 1522) are superbly covered by Ibn Iyas, one of the best representatives of the great Egyptian historiographic tradition. ’Abd al-Samad al-Diyarbakri, an Ottoman judge who came to Egypt with Salim’s army, stayed there to serve as a qadi. His chronicle is a translation into Turkish of Ibn Iyas’s work, with significant changes, and then a detailed continuation of the chronicle for a period of two-and-a-half years (up to Shawwal 931/July 1525).