Part 43

The beys became divided in their wishes, one party being desirous of co-operating with the British, the other with the pasha. These delays proved ruinous to their cause; and General Fraser, despairing of their assistance, evacuated Alexandria on the 14th of September. From that date to the spring of 1811 the beys from time to time relinquished certain of their demands; the pasha on his part granted them what before had been withheld; the province of the Fayum, and part of those of Giza and Beni-Suef, were ceded to Shahin; and a great portion of the Sa'id, on the condition of paying the land-tax, to the others. Many of them took up their abode in Cairo, but tranquillity was not secured; several times they met the pasha's forces in battle and once gained a signal victory. Early in the year 1811, the preparations for an expedition against the Wahhabis in Arabia being complete, all the Mameluke beys then in Cairo were invited to the ceremony of investing Mehemet Ali's favourite son, Tusun, with a pelisse and the command of the army. As on the former occasion, the unfortunate Mamelukes fell into the snare. On the 1st of March, Shahin Bey and the other chiefs (one only excepted) repaired with their retinues to the citadel, and were courteously received by the pasha. Having taken coffee, they formed in procession, and, preceded and followed by the pasha's troops, slowly descended the steep and narrow road leading to the great gate of the citadel; but as soon as the Mamelukes arrived at the gate it was suddenly closed before them. The last of those to leave before the gate was shut were Albanians under Salih Kush. To these troops their chief now made known the pasha's orders to massacre all the Mamelukes within the citadel; therefore, having returned by another way, they gained the summits of the walls and houses that hem in the road in which the Mamelukes were confined, and some stationed themselves upon the eminences of the rock through which that road is partly cut. Thus securely placed, they began a heavy fire on their victims; and immediately the troops who closed the procession, and who had the advantage of higher ground, followed their example. Of the betrayed chiefs, many were laid low in a few moments; some, dismounting, and throwing off their outer robes, vainly sought, sword in hand, to return, and escape by some other gate. The few who regained the summit of the citadel experienced the same fate as the rest, for no quarter was given. Four hundred and seventy Mamelukes entered the citadel; and of these very few, if any, escaped. One of these is said to have been a bey. According to some, he leapt his horse from the ramparts, and alighted uninjured, though the horse was killed by the fall; others say that he was prevented from joining his comrades, and discovered the treachery while waiting without the gate. He fled and made his way to Syria. This massacre was the signal for an indiscriminate slaughter of the Mamelukes throughout Egypt, orders to this effect being transmitted to every governor; and in Cairo itself the houses of the beys were given over to the soldiery. During the two following days the pasha and his son Tusun rode about the streets and tried to stop the atrocities; but order was not restored until 500 houses had been completely pillaged. The heads of the beys were sent to Constantinople.

A remnant of the Mamelukes fled to Nubia, and a tranquillity was restored to Egypt to which it had long been unaccustomed. In the year following the massacre the unfortunate exiles were attacked by Ibrahim Pasha, the eldest son of Mehemet Ali, in the fortified town of Ibrim, in Nubia. Here the want of provisions forced them to evacuate the place; a few who surrendered were beheaded, and the rest went farther south and built the town of New Dongola (correctly Dunkulah), where the venerable Ibrahim Bey died in 1816, at the age of eighty. As their numbers thinned, they endeavoured to maintain their little power by training some hundreds of blacks; but again, on the approach of Ismail, another son of the pasha of Egypt, sent with an army in 1820 to subdue Nubia and Sennar, some returned to Egypt and settled in Cairo, while the rest, amounting to about 100 persons, fled in dispersed parties to the countries adjacent to Sennar.

See A. A Paton, _History of the Egyptian Revolution_ (2 vols., 2nd ed., enlarged 1870); and FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY WARS. (E. S. P.; S. L.-P.; D. S. M.*)

3. _Modern History._

Wars in Arabia.

(1) _Rule of Mehemet Ali._--Mehemet Ali was now undisputed master of Egypt, and his efforts henceforth were directed primarily to the maintenance of his practical independence. The suzerainty of the sultan he acknowledged, and at the reiterated commands of the Porte he despatched in 1811 an army of 8000 men, including 2000 horse, under the command of his son Tusun, a youth of sixteen, against the Wahhabis (q.v.). After a successful advance, this force met with a serious repulse at the pass of Jedeida, near Safra, and retreated to Yembo' (Yambu). In the following year Tusun, having received reinforcements, again assumed the offensive, and captured Medina after a prolonged siege. He next took Jidda and Mecca, defeating the Wahhabis beyond the latter place and capturing their general. But some mishaps followed, and Mehemet Ali, who had determined to conduct the war in person, left Egypt for that purpose in the summer of 1813. In Arabia he encountered serious obstacles from the nature of the country and the harassing mode of warfare adopted by his adversaries. His arms met with various fortunes; but on the whole his forces proved superior to those of the enemy. He deposed and exiled the sharif of Mecca, and after the death of the Wahhabi leader Saud II. he concluded in 1815 a treaty with Saud's son and successor, Abdullah. Hearing of the escape of Napoleon from Elba--and fearing danger to Egypt from the plans of France or Great Britain--Mehemet Ali returned to Cairo by way of Kosseir and Kena. He reached the capital on the day of the battle of Waterloo. His return was hastened by reports that the Turks, whose cause he was upholding in Arabia, were treacherously planning an invasion of Egypt.

During Mehemet Ali's absence in Arabia his representative at Cairo had completed the confiscation, begun in 1808, of almost all the lands belonging to private individuals, who were forced to accept instead inadequate pensions. By this revolutionary method of land "nationalization" Mehemet Ali became proprietor of nearly all the soil of Egypt, an iniquitous measure against which the Egyptians had no remedy. The attempt which in this year (1815) the pasha made to reorganize his troops on European lines led, however, to a formidable mutiny in Cairo. Mehemet Ali's life was endangered, and he sought refuge by night in the citadel, while the soldiery committed many acts of plunder. The revolt was reduced by presents to the chiefs of the insurgents, and Mehemet Ali ordered that the sufferers by the disturbances should receive compensation from the treasury. The project of the _Nizam Gedid_ (New System), as the European system was called, was, in consequence of this mutiny, abandoned for a time.

Tusun returned to Egypt on hearing of the military revolt at Cairo, but died in 1816 at the early age of twenty. Mehemet Ali, dissatisfied with the treaty concluded with the Wahhabis, and with the non-fulfilment of certain of its clauses, determined to send another army to Arabia, and to include in it the soldiers who had recently proved unruly. This expedition, under his eldest son Ibrahim Pasha, left in the autumn of 1816. The war was long and arduous, but in 1818 Ibrahim captured the Wahhabi capital of Deraiya. Abdullah, their chief, was made prisoner, and with his treasurer and secretary was sent to Constantinople, where, in spite of Ibrahim's promise of safety, and of Mehemet Ali's intercession in their favour, they were put to death. At the close of the year 1819, Ibrahim returned to Cairo, having subdued all present opposition in Arabia.

Meanwhile the pasha had turned his attention to the improvement of the manufactures of Egypt, and engaged very largely in commerce. He created for himself a monopoly in the chief products of the country, to the further impoverishment of the people, and set up and kept going for years factories which never paid. But some of his projects were sound. The work of digging (1819-1820) the new canal of Alexandria, called the Mahmudiya (after the reigning sultan of Turkey), was specially important. The old canal had long fallen into decay, and the necessity of a safe channel between Alexandria and the Nile was much felt. Such was the object of the canal then excavated, and it answered its purpose; but the sacrifice of life was enormous (fully 20,000 workmen perished), and the labour of the unhappy fellahin was forced. Another notable fact in the economic progress of the country was the development of the cultivation of cotton in the Delta in 1822 and onwards. The cotton grown had been brought from the Sudan by Maho Bey, and the organization of the new industry--from which in a few years Mehemet Ali was enabled to extract considerable revenues--was entrusted to a Frenchman named Jumel.

Conquest of the Sudan begun.

In 1820 Mehemet Ali ordered the conquest of the eastern Sudan to be undertaken. He first sent an expedition westward (Feb. 1820) which conquered and annexed the oasis of Siwa. Among the pasha's reasons for wishing to extend his rule southward were the desire to capture the valuable caravan trade then going towards the Red Sea, and to secure the rich gold mines which he believed to exist in Sennar. He also saw in the campaign a means of getting rid of the disaffected troops, and of obtaining a sufficient number of captives to form the nucleus of the new army. The forces destined for this service were led by Ismail, then the youngest son of Mehemet Ali; they consisted of between 4000 and 5000 men, Turks and Arabs, and left Cairo in July 1820. Nubia at once submitted, the Shagia Arabs immediately beyond the province of Dongola were worsted, the remnant of the Mamelukes dispersed, and Sennar reduced without a battle. Mahommed Bey, the defterdar, with another force of about the same strength, was then sent by Mehemet Ali against Kordofan with a like result, but not without a hard-fought engagement. In October 1822 Ismail was, with his retinue, burnt to death by Nimr, the _mek_ (king) of Shendi; and the defterdar, a man infamous for his cruelty, assumed the command of those provinces, and exacted terrible retribution from the innocent inhabitants. Khartum was founded at this time, and in the following years the rule of the Egyptians was largely extended and control obtained of the Red Sea ports of Suakin and Massawa (see SUDAN: _History_).

In 1824 a native rebellion of a religious character broke out in Upper Egypt headed by one Ahmad, an inhabitant of Es-Salimiya, a village situated a few miles above Thebes. He proclaimed himself a prophet, and was soon followed by between 20,000 and 30,000 insurgents, mostly peasants, but some of them deserters from the "Nizam Gedid," for that force was yet in a half-organized state, and in part declared for the impostor. The insurrection was crushed by Mehemet Ali, and about one-fourth of Ahmad's followers perished, but he himself escaped and was never after heard of. Few of these unfortunates possessed any other weapon than the long staff (_nebbut_) of the Egyptian peasant; still they offered an obstinate resistance, and the combat in which they were defeated resembled a massacre. This movement was the last internal attempt to destroy the pasha's authority.

Sufferings of the fellahin.

The fellahin, a patient, long-suffering race save when stirred by religious fanaticism, submitted to the kurbash, freely used by the Turkish and Bashi Bazuk tax-gatherers employed by Mehemet Ali to enforce his system of taxation, monopolies, corvée and conscription. Under this régime the resources of the country were impoverished, while the finances fell into complete and incomprehensible chaos.

A vivid picture of the condition to which Egypt was reduced is painted in the report drawn up in 1838 by the British consul-general, Colonel Campbell:--

"The government (he wrote), possessing itself of the necessaries of life at prices fixed by itself, disposes of them at arbitrary prices. The fellah is thus deprived of his harvest and falls into arrears with his taxes, and is harassed and bastinadoed to force him to pay his debts. This leads to deterioration of agriculture and lessens the production. The pasha having imposed high taxes has caused the high prices of the necessaries of life. It would be difficult for a foreigner now coming to Egypt to form a just idea of the actual state of the country as compared with its former state. In regard to the general rise in prices, all the ground cultivated under the Mamelukes was employed for producing food--wheat, barley, beans, &c.--in immense quantities. The people reared fowls, sheep, goats, &c., and the prices were one-sixth, or even one-tenth, of those at present. This continued until Mehemet Ali became viceroy in 1805. From that period until the establishment of monopolies prices have gradually increased; but the great increase has chiefly taken place since 1824, when the pasha established his regular army, navy and factories."

The conclusion in 1838 of a commercial treaty with Turkey, negotiated by Sir Henry Bulwer (Lord Dalling), struck a death-blow to the system of monopolies, though the application of the treaty to Egypt was delayed for some years. The picture of Egypt under Mehemet Ali is nevertheless not complete without regard being had to the beneficent side of his rule. Public order was rendered perfect; the Nile and the highways were secure to all travellers, Christian or Moslem; the Bedouin tribes were won over to peaceful pursuits, and genuine efforts were made to promote education and the study of medicine. To European merchants, on whom he was dependent for the sale of his exports, Mehemet Ali showed much favour, and under his influence the port of Alexandria again rose into importance. It was also under Mehemet Ali's encouragement that the overland transit of goods from Europe to India via Egypt was resumed.

Ibrahim in the Morea.

Mehemet Ali was fully conscious that the empire which he had so laboriously built up might at any time have to be defended by force of arms against his master Sultan Mahmud II., whose whole policy had been directed to curbing the power of his too ambitious valis, and who was under the influence of the personal enemies of the pasha of Egypt, notably of Khosrev, the grand vizier, who had never forgiven his humiliation in Egypt in 1803. Mahmud also was already planning reforms borrowed from the West, and Mehemet Ali, who had had plenty of opportunity of observing the superiority of European methods of warfare, was determined to anticipate the sultan in the creation of a fleet and an army on modern lines, partly as a measure of precaution, partly as an instrument for the realization of yet wider schemes of ambition. Before the outbreak of the War of Greek Independence in 1821 he had already expended much time and energy in organizing a fleet and in training, under the supervision of French instructors, native officers and artificers; though it was not till 1829 that the opening of a dockyard and arsenal at Alexandria enabled him to build and equip his own vessels. By 1823, moreover, he had succeeded in carrying out the reorganization of his army on European lines, the turbulent Turkish and Albanian elements being replaced by negroes and fellahin.[23] His foresight was rewarded by the invitation of the sultan to help him in the task of subduing the Greek insurgents, offering as reward the pashaliks of the Morea and of Syria. Mehemet Ali had already, in 1821, been appointed governor of Crete, which he had occupied with a small Egyptian force. In the autumn of 1824 a fleet of sixty Egyptian war-ships carrying a large force of disciplined troops concentrated in Suda Bay, and, in the following March, Ibrahim as commander-in-chief landed in the Morea. But for the action of European powers the intervention of Mehemet Ali would have been decisive. His naval superiority wrested from the Greeks the command of the sea, on which the fate of the insurrection ultimately depended, while on land the Greek irregular bands were everywhere routed by Ibrahim's disciplined troops. The history of the events that led up to the battle of Navarino and the liberation of Greece is told elsewhere (see NAVARINO and GREEK INDEPENDENCE, WAR OF); the withdrawal of the Egyptians from the Morea was ultimately due to the action of Admiral Sir Edward Codrington, who early in August 1828 appeared before Alexandria and induced the pasha, by no means sorry to have a reasonable excuse, by a threat of bombardment, to sign a convention undertaking to recall Ibrahim and his army.

The Syrian campaigns.

Before the final establishment of the new kingdom of Greece, the Eastern question had late in 1831 entered into a new and more perilous phase, owing to the revolt of Mehemet Ali against the sultan on pretext of chastising the ex-slave Abdullah, pasha of Acre, for refusing to send back Egyptian fugitives from the effects of Mehemet Ali's "reforms." The true reason was the refusal of Sultan Mahmud to hand over Syria according to agreement, and Mehemet Ali's determination to obtain at all hazards what had been from time immemorial an object of ambition to the rulers of Egypt. For ten years from this date the relations of sultan and pasha remained in the forefront of the questions which agitated the diplomatic world. It was not only the very existence of the Ottoman empire that seemed to be at stake, but Egypt itself had become more than ever an object of attention, to British statesmen especially, and in the issue of the struggle were involved the interests of Great Britain in the two routes to India by the Isthmus of Suez and the valley of the Euphrates. The diplomatic and military history of this period will be found sketched in the article on Mehemet Ali. Here it will suffice to say that the victorious career of Ibrahim, who once more commanded in his father's name, beginning with the storming of Acre on the 27th of May 1832, and culminating in the rout and capture of Reshid Pasha at Konia on the 21st of December, was arrested by the intervention of Russia. As the result of endless discussions between the representatives of the powers, the Porte and the pasha, the convention of Kutaya was signed on the 14th of May 1833, by which the sultan agreed to bestow on Mehemet Ali the pashaliks of Syria, Damascus, Aleppo and Itcheli, together with the district of Adana. The announcement of the pasha's appointment had already been made in the usual way in the annual firman issued on the 3rd of May. Adana, reserved for the moment, was bestowed on Ibrahim under the style of _muhassil_, or collector of the crown revenues, a few days later.

Mehemet Ali now ruled over a virtually independent empire, subject only to a moderate tribute, stretching from the Sudan to the Taurus Mountains. But though he was hailed, especially in France, as the pioneer of European civilization in the East, the unsound foundations of his authority were not long in revealing themselves. Scarcely a year from the signing of the convention of Kutaya the application by Ibrahim of Egyptian methods of government, notably of the monopolies and conscription, had driven Syrians, Druses and Arabs, who had welcomed him as a deliverer, into revolt. The unrest was suppressed by Mehemet Ali in person, and the Syrians were terrorized and disarmed. But their discontent encouraged Sultan Mahmud to hope for revenge, and a renewal of the conflict was only staved off by the anxious efforts of the powers. At last, in the spring of 1839, the sultan ordered his army, concentrated under Reshid in the border district of Bìr on the Euphrates, to advance over the Syrian frontier. Ibrahim, seeing his flank menaced, attacked it at Nezib on the 24th of June. Once more the Ottomans were utterly routed. Six days later, before the news reached Constantinople, Mahmud died. Once more the Ottoman empire lay at the feet of Mehemet Ali; but the powers were now more prepared to meet a contingency which had been long foreseen. Their intervention was prompt; and the dubious attitude of France, which led to her exclusion from the concert and encouraged Mehemet Ali to resist, only led to his obtaining less favourable terms. (See MEHEMET ALI.)

Mehemet Ali's authority confined to Egypt.

The end was reached early in 1841. New firmans were issued which confined the pasha's authority to Egypt, the Sinai peninsula and certain places on the Arabian side of the Red Sea, and to the Sudan. The most important of these documents are dated the 13th of February 1841. The government of the pashalik of Egypt was made hereditary in the family of Mehemet Ali.[24] A map showing the boundaries of Egypt accompanied the firman granting Mehemet Ali the pashalik, a duplicate copy being retained by the Porte. The Egyptian copy is supposed to have been lost in a fire which destroyed a great part of the Egyptian archives. The Turkish copy has never been produced and its existence now appears doubtful. The point is of importance, as in 1892 and again in 1906 boundary disputes arose between Turkey and Egypt (see below). Various restrictions were laid upon Mehemet Ali, emphasizing his position of vassalage. He was forbidden to maintain a fleet, and his army was not to exceed 18,000 men. The pasha was no longer a figure in European politics, but he continued to occupy himself with his improvements, real or imaginary, in Egypt. The condition of the country was deplorable; in 1842 a murrain of cattle was followed by a destructive Nile flood; in 1843 there was a plague of locusts, whole villages were depopulated. Meantime the uttermost farthing was wrung from the wretched fellahin, while they were forced to the building of magnificent public works by unpaid labour. In 1844-1845 there was some improvement in the condition of the country as a result of financial reforms the pasha was compelled to execute. Mehemet Ali, who had been granted the honorary rank of grand vizier in 1842, paid a visit to Stamboul in 1846, where he became reconciled to his old enemy Khosrev Pasha, whom he had not seen since he spared his life at Cairo in 1803. In 1847 Mehemet Ali laid the foundation stone of the great barrage across the Nile at the beginning of the Delta. He was barely persuaded from ordering the barrage to be built with stone from the pyramids! Towards the end of 1847 the aged pasha's mind began to give way, and by the following June he was no longer capable of administering the government. In September 1848 Ibrahim was acknowledged by the Porte as ruler of the pashalik, but he died in the November following. Mehemet Ali survived another eight months, dying on the 2nd of August 1849, aged eighty. He had done a great work in Egypt; the most permanent being the weakening of the tie binding the country to Turkey, the starting of the great cotton industry, the recognition of the advantages of European science, and the conquest of the Sudan. (F. R. C.)

Abbas I. and Said Pasha.