U.S.S.R.

ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
INSTITUTE OF THE PEOPLES OF ASIA

V.1UTSKY

Modern History
of the
Arab Countries

m
PROGRESS PUBLISHERS
MOSCOW
TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN BY LIKA NASSER
EDITED BY ROBERT DAGLISH

B. JiyU K H ft

HoBaa HCTopHsi apaGcKux cTpaH

Ha ÜH8AUÜCKOM H3blK e

First printing 1969

Printed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

 CONTENTS

I n t r o d u c t i o n ................................................................................... 7

Chapter I. The Arab Countries During the 16th to the 18th

C e n tu rie s ............................................................................ 9
Turkish Conquest.—The Social Order of the Arab Countries. Ottoman
Feudalism.—The Arab City in the Period of Ottoman Rule.—State
System.—The Decay of Ottoman Feudalism.—The Decline of the
Outward Might of the Ottoman Empire.—Popular Movements and the
Arab Countries’ Struggle for Liberation.

Chapter II. The French Expedition to Egypt (1798-1801) . . . . 38

The Aims of the Expedition.—The Beginning of the Expedition.—The
Defence of Cairo.—The Uprising Against the Invaders.—The Syrian
Expedition.—The Collapse of the Expedition.—The Results of the
Expedition.

Chapter III. Egypt under the Rule of Mohammed A l i ................... 48

The British Occupation (1801-03).—The Turco-Mameluke War (1802-
04).—Cairo Uprising (1804-05). The Advent to Power of Mohammed
Ali.—The Anglo-Turkish War of 1807. The British Expedition to
Egypt.—Agrarian Reform of 1805-15. Extermination of the Mamelukes.—
The Military Reforms of Mohammed Ali.—Development of Industry
and Agriculture. Monopolies.—The Conditions of the Fellaheen and the
Workers.—Reorganisation of the State Machinery.—Cultural Reforms.—
General Characterisation of Mohammed Ali’s Reforms.

Chapter IV. Palestine, Syria and Iraq at the Beginning of the 19th
C e n t u r y ........................................................................ 63
The Failure of French Plans in Syria.—The Anglo-French Struggle
for Iraq.—The Wahhabi Raids. The Growth of Feudal Anarchy.—The
Reforms of Beshir II in the Lebanon.—Abdullah Pasha and His
“Reforms” . The 1820 Uprising in the Lebanon.—The Extermination of
the Druse Nobility.—The Reforms of Mahmud II and Disturbances
in Syria and Palestine.—The Reforms of Daud Pasha in Iraq (1817-31).

Chapter V. The Wahhabis and the Arab Countries at the End

of the 18th and Beginning of the 19th Centuries . . 77
Arabia in the 18th Century. The Doctrines of Wahhabism.—The
Unification of Nejd.—The Wahhabis’ Struggle for the Persian Gulf.—
The Wahhabis’ Struggle for the Hejaz.—The Wahhabis’ Fight for
Syria and Iraq.

Chapter VI. The Egyptian Conquest of A ra b ia ............................. 85

The Beginning of the War Against the Wahhabis.—Mohammed Ali
in Arabia (1813-15).—Ibrahim’s Campaign and the Defeat of the
Wahhabi State.—The Wahhabi Uprisings (1820-40).—The British Ex­
pansion in South Arabia and on the Persian Gulf.

Chapter VII. The Conquest of the East Sudan by Mohammed Ali.

The Expedition to M o r e a ............................... . . 94

l* 3
 The Conquest of the Sudan.—The Greek Uprising.—Mahmud IPs Appeal
for Help to Mohammed AH.—The Morean W ar.—The Intervention of
the Powers.—N avarino. The Evacuation of the Egyptians from the
Morca.

Chapter VIII. Mohammed A lïs Struggle for Syria and Palestine.

Egypt's D e f e a t ........................................................................ 103
The Conflict with the Porte.—The First Syrian Campaign (1831-33).—
The Results of the W ar. The Unkiar-Skelessi Treaty.—Ibrahim’s
Reforms in Syria and Palestine (1832-40).—General Discontent. Uprisings
Against Recruitment.—The Question of Independence. A New Conflict
with the Porte.—The Second Syrian Campaign.—The Intervention of
the Powers.—The Capitulation of Mohammed Ali.
Chapter IX. Lebanon, Syria and Palestine in the Period of
Tanzimals ( 1 8 4 0 -0 7 )....................................................... 121
The Arab Countries in the World Capitalist Market.—Hatti-Sherif
Gulhane.—The Reforms of the First Period^ of the Tanzimat.—The
Reforms in Syria and Palestine.—The Liquidation of the Lebanese
Principality.—The Druse-Maronite Massacre of 1843.—The Activities of
the missionaries. British Plans for Jewish Colonisation in Palestine.—
The Hatti-Humayun of 1856. The Second Period of the Tanzimat.—The
Peasant Uprising in Kesruan (1859-60).—The Druse-Maro lite Massacre
of I860.—The French Expedition of 1860-61.—The “ Règlement Organi-
Îue" of the Lebanon.—The Enlightenment Movement of the 1860s.
lutrus el-Bustani.
Chapter X. Iraq, 1831 to 187L 7 he 7 a n z im a t ..................................... 140
The Economic Situation in Iraq in the Thirties and Forties of the 19th
century.—The Kurdish Uprising and Tribal Wars.—The Tanzimat
in Iraq.—The Development of Trade and the Means of Communica­
tion.—Midhat Pasha in Iraq.

Chapter XI. 7 he Arabian Countries During 1840 to 1870 • * • 146

Arabia After 1840.—Wahhabi Nejd.—The Growth of the Shammnr
Emirate.—British Colonies in Arabia 1840-70.

Chapter XII. Egypt in the Middle of the 19th Century (1841-76) . 152
Egypt After the Capitulation of 1840.—Abbas Pasha (1849-54).—The
Construction of the Suez Canal. The Economic Development of Egypt
in the Middle of the I9th Century.—The Reforms of Said and Ismail.

Chapter XIII. 7 he French Conquest of Algeria ami the Liberation

W ar of the Algerian People Under the Leadership
of Abd e l - K a d e r ................................................................... 167
Algeria on the Eve of the French Conquest.—The Seizure of Algiers
by the French.—The W ar of Liberation. Abd el-Kader.—The Seizure of
Constantine. The New W ar Against Abd el-Kader.—The French-
Moroccan W ar of 1844.—The Beginning of Colonisation. The Uprising
of 1845-46.—Popular Uprisings in the Fifties.—Algeria Under the
French Bourgeoisie.
Chapter XIV. 7 he Financial Enslavement of Tunisia and Its
Conversion into a S e m i-C o lo n y..........................................183
The Anglo-French Struggle for Tunisia.—The Reforms in Tunisia.—
The Financial Enslavement of Tunisia.

Chapter XV. 7 he Financial Enslavement of E g y p t ...............................189

Foreign Loans.—Mukabala. Ruznamch.—England’s Purchase of Shares in
the Suez Canal.—Egypt’s Financial Bancruptcy.—Dual Control.—The
Formation of the “ European Cabinet".

4
Chapter XVI. 7 lie National Liberation Movement in Egypt
(1 8 7 9 -8 1 )...................................................................... . . 200
Growth of the Spirit of Opposition.—The Military Demonstration of
February 18, 1879.—Wilson’s Financial Plan.—Resignation of the “ Euro­
pean Cabinet” .—The Déposai of Ismail Pasha and the Resignation of
Sherif Pasha.—The Ministry of Riaz Pasha. Reaction.—The Military
Come to the Fore.—The Struggle of the Nationalists Against the Cabinet
of Riaz Pasha.

Chapter XVII. The Arabi Pasha U p r is in g .............................................. 213

The Revolt o f September 1881.—The Wataneun Struggle Against Shcrif
Pasha.—The Mahmud Sami-Arabi Government (February-May 1882).—
The Conflict Between the Government and the Khedive.—The Dervish
Mission.—Disturbances in Alexandria.—The Constantinople Conference.—
The Bombardment of Alexandria.—The Anglo-Egyptian W ar of 18S2.—
The Victory of Reaction.

Chapter XVIII. Egypt Under British Rule (1882-1914) . . . . 232

The Question of the Term of British Occupation.—The Suez Canal
Regime.—The Question of Egypt’s Finances.—British Economic Policy
in Egypt.—The State Structure of Egypt (1882-1914).—The National
Movement. Mohammed Abdu. Abd er-Rahman el-Kawakebi. Mustafa
Kamil.—The Denshawai Incident Hune 13, 1906).—The National Move­
ment 1907-03. The Emergence of Political Parties and Trade Unions.—
The Period of Reaction (1909-14).

Chapter XIX . 7 he Mahdi State in the East S u d a n ................................ 251

European Penetration into the East Sudan.—The Uprisings of the
Mahdists.—The Internal System of the Mahdi State.—The Struggle of
the Powers Against the Mahdi State.—Fashoda.—The Anglo-Egyptian
Condominium.
Chapter X X . Algeria in 1870-1914 ................................................... 266
Republican Opposition in Algeria.—The Algerian Commune.—The
National Liberation Uprising of 1871.—Algeria Under the French
Imperialist Yoke.—The Algerian Arabs’ Demands.

Chapter X X I. 7 he Seizure of 7unisia by French Imperialism , 280

Italy's Claims.—Preparations for the Tunisian Take-over.—The French
Protectorate.—Italy and the French Protectorate.—Tunisia Under the
French Im perialist Yoke.—The National Liberation Movement. The
Young Tunisians.
Chapter X X li 7 he French Conquest of M o r o c c o ................................292
The Capitulations.—Territorial Seizures.—French Agreements with Italy
(1900), Britain (1904) and Spain (1904).—The Loan of 1904 and the
Mission of Talandier.—The Tangier Conflict of 1905.—The Algeciras
Conference of 1906.—The French and Spanish Occupation (1907-09). The
Uprising of 1907.—The Casablanca Conflict of 1903 and the Franco-
German Agreement of 1909.—The Powers’ Recognition of Mulai Hafid.—
The Occupation of Fez and the Agadir Crisis.—The Treaty on the
Protectorate.
Chapter XXIII. 7 he Italian Conquest of L i b y a .................................... 309
Diplomatic Preparations.—The Italo -Turkish W ar of 1911.—T he Lausanne
Peace Treaty of 1912.—Italy’s W ar Against the Arab Tribes.

Chapter XXIV. Syria, Palestine and Iraq at the End of the 19th
C e n tu r y ............................* ....................................................318
Turkey’s Financial Enslavement.—The New Ottoman Coup and the
Constitution of 1876.—Zulutn (Hamdaniau Despotism), 1373-1918.—The

5
 Decree of Muharrem.—German Penetration.—Britain’s and France’s
Positions in the Arab Provinces of Turkey.—The Arab People’s Struggle
Against the Reign of Zulum.

Chapter XXV. The Young Turk Revolution and the Arab

C o u n trie s........................................; .................................... 335
T he Revolution of 1903 in Turkey.—The Arabs and the Young Turk
Revolution.—“ Arab-Ottoman Fraternity”.—The Arab Delegation to the
Parliament. The Young Turks’ Policy on Nationalities.—-The Literary
Club and the Qahtaniya.—The Young Arab Society.—French Claims
on Syria and the Lebanon.—The Decentralisation Party.—The Syrian and
Iraqi Reform Societies.—The First Arab Congress.—El-Ahd (Covenant).
Preparations for an Arab Uprising.

Chapter XXVI. Arabia in 1 8 7 0-1914 ........................................................ 353

A General Review.—Aden and Hadhramaut.—Oman.—British Domains
in the Persian Gulf.—The Kuwait Conflict.—The Struggle of the Rashidis
and the Saudis. The Restoration of the Wahhabi State.—Ibn Saud's
Home and Foreign Policy.—Uprisings in the Yemen and Asir.—The
Hejaz.

Chapter XXVII. The Arab Countries in the First W orld War

(1 9 1 4 -1 8 )..................................................................................371
The Arab Countries’ Stand in the Imperialist War.—The Economic and
Political Situation in Turkey’s Arab Provinces.—The Arab Nationalists’
Attitude to the W ar.—The British Protectorate over Eçypt.—The War
and the Egyptian Economy.—The Egyptian National Liberation Move­
ment During the W ar.—Military Operations (1914-16).—Preparations
for the Arab Uprising in the Hejaz.—The 1916 Uprising in the
Hej'az.—Secret Talks on the Partition of the Arab Countries.—Occupa­
tion of Iraq. Anglo-French Conflicts in the Middle East.—The Palestine
Oifensive of 1917. The Balfour Declaration.—The Exposure of the
Secret Negotiations.—Turkey’s Military Collapse and the Anglo-French
Occupation of the Arab Countries.

Name I n d e x ................................................................................................. 404

Index of Geographical N a m e s ...................................................................410
Subject I n d e x ................................................................................................. 418
 INTRODUCTION

Modern History o[ the Arab Countries by the prominent Arabist

Vladimir Borisovich Lutsky (1906-1962), one of the Soviet Union’s
leading specialists in modern Arab history, was published after the
author’s death.
His book is the first attempt in Russian or Soviet literature to
write a systematic history of the Arabs in modern times. Lutsky
set about studying the modern history of the Arab countries as an
independent historical discipline in the thirties. An enthusiast wholly
dedicated to his subject, he was never afraid to blaze new trails and
is rightly regarded as the founder of the Soviet school of Arab his­
torians.
The Russian classical Orientalists of pre-revolutionary, days showed
no great interest in modern Arab history. Journalists, diplomats and
military men referred to Arab history only in connection with the
Eastern Question or the European Powers’ colonial policy. Despite
their importance to Russian scholarship even such impressive works as
K. M. Bazili’s Syria and Palestine Under Turkish Government (in
Russian) and A. Adamov’s Arab Iraq and the Basra Vilayet in Its Past
and Present (in Russian) are no more than essays on the history of
individual Arab countries.
In Soviet times many interesting articles and monographs dealing
with the history of the Arab countries and, in particular, Egypt, Syria,
the Sudan and Arabia, have been published. None of these works,
however, set out to provide a coherent and systematic account of Arab
history at the turn of the 19th century. Nor do any of them give
an over-all picture of the history and development of the Arab world
and its place and role in modern times.
The absence of Russian historical traditions, the relatively limited
amount of literature on the subject and the fact that many cardinal
problems of Arab history have been little studied both in Russian
and foreign literature were bound to have its effect on Lutsky’s book.
Some of its chapters and sections lack development. There is, for
example, no section on the social and economic history of Morocco,

7
 which remains a blank in world history to this day. At times Lutsky
only gives outlines and reference-points where further research and
concrete details are needed. But this does not detract from the sig­
nificance of his work as the first attempt to systematise and generalise
modern Arab history.
Lutsky writes from the Marxist-Leninist point of view. He sharply
criticises the European Powers* colonial policy and regards their
presence in the East as an evil.
His book is inspired by a warm and deeply felt affection for the
Arab peoples, enthusiasm for their struggle to free themselves from
the Turkish pashas and European colonialists, and belief in the Arab
peoples* future and in their ability to choose their own way of life.
Lutsky*s book is the result of much hard and painstaking work.
In its present form it consists of a series of lectures that took several
years to prepare. In 1936, he began lecturing at Moscow’s Institute of
Oriental Studies, at Moscow University and at many other higher
schools of learning. Some of his lectures appear as independent chapters
in the textbook Modern History of the Colonial and Dependent
Countries, Moscow, 1940 (in Russian). Later Lutsky considerably
expanded his university lecture course.
The present book is the fullest available version of the series
of lectures delivered by Lutsky at Moscow University between 1949
and 1953. Unfortunately, no verbatim report of this series of lectures
was made. The book was therefore compiled from the verbatim* report
of lectures delivered in previous years, which were revised and ex­
panded by referring to synopses from Lutsky’s own archives and to
students’ notes. Since there was no verbatim report of the lecture on
the French conquest of Algeria, Chapter XIII is based on Chapter X I
of Modern History of the Colonial and Dependent Countries, which
was contributed by Lutsky. Certain other sections of this book, in
particular, Chapters X and X X II, were also used in preparing the
Modern History of the Arab Countries.
Chapter X IX (The Mahdist State in East Sudan), Chapter X X
(Algeria in 1870-1914) and Chapter XXVII (The Arab Countries
in the First World War 1914-18) were prepared for publication by
R. G. Landa, Chapter IV (Palestine, Syria and Iraq at the Beginning
of the 19th Century), Chapter IX (Lebanon, Syria and Palestine
in the Period of the Tanzimat) and Chapter X X IV (Syria, Palestine
and Iraq at the End of the 19th Century) by I. M. Smilyanskaya.
Material prepared by M. S. Lazarev was used for Chapters X X V
and XXVII.
N. I v a n o v

8
 CHAPTER I

THE ARAB COUNTRIES DURING THE 16th

TO THE 18th CENTURY

TURKISH CONQUEST. At the beginning of the 16th

century, almost all the Arab countries were subjugated by
the Turks and incorporated in the Ottoman state. In 1514,
Sultan Selim I (the Cruel) led the Turkish army to conquer
northern Iraq. In 1516, he wrested Syria and Palestine from
the Egyptian Mamelukes and one year later routed the Ma­
meluke army, destroyed the Mameluke state and conquered
Egypt and the Hejaz.
The Turkish conquest of the Arab countries was continued
by Sultan Suleiman I (the Lawgiver), the successor of Se­
lim I. In 1520, the Turkish pirate Khair-ed-Din Barbarossa
declared himself the Turkish Sultan’s vassal and conquered
Algeria, and in 1533 the Sultan began sending officials from
Constantinople to rule the country. In 1534, the Turks made
their first attempt to conquer Tunisia. They were repulsed
by the Spanish and did not gain complete possession of the
country until 1574. In 1551, Turkey seized Tripoli.
The Turkish expansion spread to the Arabian Peninsula.
In 1532, the Turks conquered the Yemen and then the So­
malian Red Sea coast. Mosul served as the starting point
for their advance on southern Iraq. The age-old struggle
between Turkey and Iran for the possession of Iraq ended
in the victory of Turkey in 1638. After Iraq, the Turks con­
quered El-Hasa on the shore of the Persian Gulf.
Thus, within a period of about one hundred years almost
all the Arab countries, except Morocco in the west and Inner
Arabia and Oman on the Arabian Peninsula, were included
in the Ottoman Empire and for some three or four centuries
suffered Turkish oppression, which in the 19th and 20th
centuries was replaced by the even harsher colonial yoke of
the European capitalist Powers.
9
 What was it that prompted the Ottoman feudalists to
conquer the Arab countries? First, the desire to impose the
feudal system of exploitation on the people. There was also
the advantage to be gained from the Arab countries’ posi­
tion on the world trade routes. By controlling Algeria, Tuni­
sia and Tripoli, the Ottoman feudalists could carry on ex­
tensive trade with the European countries; they could even
squeeze out the Europeans and practice piracy on the Me­
diterranean. (This was the era of the primary accumulation
of capital, when piracy was part and parcel of sea trade.)
Lastly, Egypt, Syria and Iraq were very important centres
of transit trade between Europe and the East which, although
it declined somewhat after the discovery of the direct sea
route to India (round the Cape of Good Hope), still continued
to yield large profits.
The degree of subordination to the Ottoman Empire varied
from country to country. Algeria, Tunisia and Tripoli were
considered Ottoman provinces, but by the beginning of the
17th century they had already gained virtual independence
from the Porte. In the middle of the 17th century, the Turks
lost real power in the Yemen. Even in Syria, Palestine, Egypt
and Iraq, where Turkish pashas were installed, the domina­
tion of the Porte was often only nominal. Either the pashas
organised plots against the sultan, or the local Arab feudal
lords rose against the Turkish pashas, and from time to
time fierce uprisings shook the Ottoman Empire.

THE SOCIAL ORDER OF THE ARAB COUNTRIES.

OTTOMAN FEUDALISM. Anxious to gain support in the
Arab countries, the Turks, as a rule, preserved the social sys­
tem that had existed before their conquest. The land and
power remained in the hands of the local feudalists.
The system of landownership in the Arab provinces of
the Ottoman Empire was very complicated. All land was
divided into three basic groups: state land (mamleket) the
supreme owner of which was the sultan; land belonging to
religious establishments (waqf ); and privately owned land
(\mulk). In addition, communal landownership continued to
exist in some countries.
Land owned by individuals was relatively scarce. Its
owners could dispose of it as they saw fit. The state collected
only a land tax from the privately owned land: people had
10
to pay either the ushr (about a tenth) or the kkaraj, which
sometimes constituted half the harvest. The kharaj varied
according to the size of the harvest or was fixed according
to the unit of area. Non-Moslems also paid a poll-tax
(jizyah ). As a rule, private land belonged to big feudal lords
and was tilled by the peasants on the basis of the metayage
system.
Religious establishments owned large tracts of land. Eccle­
siastical estates (waqfs) were formed by “endowments” and
were exempt from taxation. The Moslem clergy was the
mainstay of the feudal system and in order to consolidate
it, big feudal lords presented large estates to Moslem reli­
gious establishments: mosques, madrasahs (collegiate mos­
ques), Dervish monasteries. It was not uncommon for small
peasants to sacrifice their plots to religious establishments in
order to save them from feudal usurpation. (Usually these
small holders had the use of the land until the family died
out. They had only to pay taxes to the religious establish­
ment.) The peasants on the ecclesiastical land (waqf) were
no better off than under a feudal lord.
At the time of the Turkish conquest, in some Arab
countries there still existed communal ownership of land.
Among the nomad herdsmen of North Africa, Iraq and
Arabia, the pastures were owned in common by the bedouin
clans. In the settled farming areas, the fellaneen commu­
nities periodically redistributed land among large families and
individual households. In such countries, the Turkish con­
querors pursued a policy of forced expropriation of the
peasants’ land. The communally-owned land was declared
state property and passed under the individual control of the
clan nobility—the emirs and sheikhs.
W hile abolishing communal landownership, the Turkish
conquerors often preserved the fellaheen community as an
appendage to the system of feudal exploitation. The whole
community was held collectively responsible for the prompt
payment of taxes. The community also saw to it that the
lord’s land was tilled.
The most widespread category of land in the Ottoman
Empire was the state land, which was divided into two
groups: khas and military fiefs. The khas was a large estate
with a revenue exceeding 100 thousand akchas,—it either
belonged to the sultan personally or was conferred on a

II
prince or on a high dignitary as long as he held his post.
Military fiefs were granted to the sipahi (knights) for life.
The sipahi were exempt from state taxation. In return, they
were obliged to provide first-class military service, regularly
turn up at reviews and take part in campaigns with their
cavalry. The number of horsemen depended on the amount
of revenue received from the fief. Usually for every three
thousand akclias one horseman had to be provided. The fiefs
were divided into two groups according to their wealth.
Military fiefs with a revenue of over 20 thousand akchas
were called ziamets and their owners zaims. Fiefs with a
revenue of up to 20 thousand akchas were called timars and
their owners timar ji or timariots.
If, during his lifetime, a sipaha conscientiously executed
his military duties, his property passed to his sons after his
death. They were given a new cnarter for which they paid
redemption money to the treasury. The fief charter was on
a strict class basis and was limited to the nobles. Each new
sipaha was supposed to be supported by two zahm and ten
timariots. City dwellers were not granted fiefs.
The land of the timars, ziamets and khas was tilled by the
peasants, who constituted the overwhelming bulk of the tax-
paying population— raya (herd). They received a plot of
land {chift) from the landlord, which they could pass on
only with his permission. Virtually, the peasants were bound
to the land. They had to fulfil all sorts of obligations: pay
the ashr or the kharaj and taxes for the use of winter and
summer pastures, mills, for. tobacco smoking, etc. The situa­
tion of the Christian raya was even worse. In addition,
the Christians had to pay a jizyah (poll-tax) or a kharaj
ra’asi.
The military fief system was widespread in Asia Minor
and on the Balkan Peninsula. It was not highly developed in
the Arab countries except for the northern parts of Syria
and Iraq. In the Aleppo and partly in the Mosul elayets the
Turks introduced a system of military-fief landownership.
In the other countries, the land remained mostly in the
hands of the local feudal lords, who paid tribute to the Sul­
tan’s deputies.
In Egypt, on the whole, the system of feudal landowner­
ship which had existed under the Mameluke sultans was
12
preserved. All the land belonged to the feudal lords: niul-
tazims (landowner-tax farmers), the Turkish pasha and the
Moslem clergy. Formally the land was considered state
property but could be acquired by the multazims. Many
midtazims, the Nubian sheikhs, for instance, owned dozens
of villages while some estates were split up between differ­
ent owners to such a degree that there were several landlords
in one village.
Multazims were picked out from among the Turkish func­
tionaries and officers as well as from the local Arab sheikhs.
The Turkish rulers of Egypt inherited from the Mameluke
sultans the custom of forming private guards from among
the Mamelukes, who had originally been slaves and were
specially trained for military service. The Turkish beys ap­
pointed the Mamelukes to important government posts and
granted them large tracts of land. As a result, towards the
end of the 18th century, twó-thirds of Egypt’s territory
was concentrated in the hands of the Mamelukes. They
became the dominating stratum of the Egyptian feudal
class.
Multazims were exempt from military service but could be
taxed. The taxes paid by the multazims were entered in a
special register kept by a special clerk {defterdar). If the tax
was not paid on time, the estate was confiscated and given
to a new owner.
Landownership was usually hereditary. In the Mameluke
circle, the land was not passed on from father to son, but
from the master to his favourite “slave”. After the death
of the owner, his heir was supposed to pay a large redemp­
tion sum to the treasury (three-year rent plus one-fifth of
the value of the land).
In each iltizam (the estate of a multazim ), the land was
divided into two parts: the lord’s land, or usia, and allotted
land, or atar. The lord’s land was tilled by the corvée sys­
tem or (on very rare occasions) by hired labour. Allotted
land was given to the peasants for life. The latter paid a
money rent to the landlord in Lower Egypt and rent in kind
in Upper Egypt. The rent in kind comprised from 20 to 35
ardeos of wheat from a harvest of 50 ardebs. If a peasant
inherited a plot of land he had to pay a large redemption
sum to the multazim .
13
 The money rent, which was known as mal-el-lmrr, was
collected from the peasants by the multazims and divided
into three unequal parts. One part was paid as tribute to
the Porte. This part was delivered to the pasha of Cairo and
at the end of the 18th century amounted to 80,000,000 mé­
dinas a year. Another part was used for the upkeep of the
provincial administration (the administration was named
kashifia after the regional governors— kashifs). This amount­
ed to 50 million medinas a year. These two amounts were
fixed by law and subject to unconditional payment. The re­
maining part of the mal-el-kurr accrued to the multazims.
In 1798, this amounted to 180,000,000 medinas in cash, not
counting payment in kind. But the landlords were still not
satisfied with this sum. Besides mal-el-hurr, they levied bar­
rará—traditional janissary duties (at first as voluntary
“gifts” in kind from the peasants; later, obligatory casn
payments). In 1798, this tax yielded a sum of 100,000,000
medinas. In addition every village had to pay local taxes
and duties.
Taxes were collected by the village administration head­
ed by a qa'im-mdqam (sub-governor), who was aided by the
senior sheikh. Following the harvest every year a surra f
(money-changer) would turn up in the village. He was a city
dweller, usually a Copt, who served the multazim landlord.
He evaluated the harvest, determined the size of the tax and
set to gathering it. As a reward for his services, the sarraf
collected an additional tax from the fellaheen. Also included
in the village administration were the wakil—the manager
of the lord’s land; the khquli—land surveyor, who also di­
rected public works; the mashhed, who carried out the func­
tions of a policeman and also took part in flogging the fella­
heen; and the gafiri—watchmen who guarded the lord’s gran­
aries. As distinct from the officials of the Indian community
listed by Marx, these were the landlord’s servants, who main­
tained his economic and political authority over the direct
producer—the fellah.
As in Egypt, in Syria and the Lebanon the conquerors
preserved the feudal system. The land remained in the
hands of the local Arab nobility (except for nortern
Syria).
Under the Turks, the Lebanon was a kind of autonomous
principality under the rule of the Ma’am dynasty. At the
14
end of the 17 th century it came under the rule of the emirs
of the Shehab family, who considered themselves the vassals
of the Turkish Sultan and paid tribute to the Porte, but no
Turkish troops were quartered there. There were similar
principalities in Syria, for example, Latakia.
The feudal society in the Lebanon, well described in
K. M. Bazili’s book, Syria and the Lebanon Under Turkish
Rule (published in Russian), was hierarchical. This country
was divided into three appanages—Kesruan, Metn and Shuf
administered by the local feudal dynasties. These appanages
were in turn divided into smaller domains, and so on. A
similar process occurred in the Latakia principality and in
southern Syria. At the head of the hierarchy stood the Tur­
kish pashas, who had their seats at Aleppo, Damascus and
Saida. They served as intermediaries between the Arab emirs
and the sultan.
The feudal sovereign was the absolute ruler of his own
land. The dependent emirs and sheikhs supplied horsemen
for the ruler’s army, collected taxes and paid tribute to him.
All of them were incredibly rich. The Lebanese Emir Fakhr
ed-Din II was reputed to be the richest man in the empire.
His court was astonishingly sumptuous. His annual income
was estimated at 900,000 livres, out of which he paid a
tribute of 340,000 livres to the Turkish Sultan. Sheikh Zahir,
who ruled in Safad in the 18th century, had an annual in­
come of about £50,000.
In the outlying districts of Syria and Palestine, there were
survivals of the primitive-communal system. These areas
had been for long inhabited by numerous nomadic and settled
tribes in which the slow process of feudalisation was taking
place. The tribal sheikhs, however, were still more like clan
and tribal chiefs than feudal rulers. In Volney’s description
(1784) of a tribal sheikh in southern Palestine many surviv­
als of the past are cited. The sheikh was in command of
500 horsemen but at the same time he himself looked after
the cattle, worked together with the members of his family,
and so on.
An important role was played by the spiritual feudals,
the priests. In Syria, the Lebanon and Palestine, there were
about ten Christian and five Moslem denominations. Here
feudal separatism was combined with spiritual separatism,
and the political struggle often assumed a religious charac-

15
ter. The higher clergy, especially the upper circles of the
Maronite Church, owned vast tracts of land and along with
the feudal lords exploited the peasantry.
The formation of feudal relations in Iraq, where sharp
differences existed between the north and the south, was
peculiar. In the north of Iraq, the land was concentrated in
the hands of the Kurdish beks, who headed the asliirat
tribes. Actually, these were big landowners, typical feudal
lords under the cover of the clan. Sometimes, their domains
extended over an area of tens of thousands of hectares. They
recruited soldiers and paid tribute to the Turkish Sultan’s
deputies.
In the south of Iraq, patriarchal relations prevailed. The
land belonged to the Arab tribes and was considered their
collective property. Many tribes settled down, combining
land tillage with nomad cattle-breeding. The Turkish au­
thorities tried to liquidate collective ownership of the land.
Community land was declared state property and handed
over to the clan’s elite. Attempts were made to turn the ob­
ligations of the tribal sheikhs into a hereditary duty which
called for the approval of the authorities. Thus arose large
Arab feudal families who owned huge tracts of land. These
measures of the Turkish Sultan met with resistance from the
ordinary tribesmen. Nomads and semi-nomads refused
to pay rent. A conflict arose between the new feudal lords
and the armed people which resulted in numerous uprisings
of the Arab tribes. Often the new feudal lords were mere­
ly nominal owners of the land allotted to them.
Almost the same process occurred in North Africa, where
the Turks owned part of the land on the seaboard and car­
ried on endless war against the Arab and Berberic tribes
who upheld their land rights.
Everywhere in the Arab countries, big feudal landown-
ership went hand in hand with small-scale farming. In the
form of huge taxes and requisitions, the landowners appro­
priated not only the surplus product, but the essential product
as well and did nothing to increase production. The econo­
my was stagnant, and at its best was only able to ensure its
own reproduction.
Simple reproduction did not create any reserves in event of
social or natural calamities. Frequent wars, feudal discord
and droughts ruined the peasantry and brought about the
16
decline of agriculture. Whole villages died out. Of the 3,200
villages that had existed around Aleppo in the 16th cen­
tury, there were only about 400 left at the end of the 18th.
The population either became extinct or fled to the cities.
Conditions in Egypt were very bad. “The rich Faiyum Val­
ley and the fertile plains of the Delta, so productive at the
time of the reign of the Pharaohs, Ptolemies and even under
the rule of the Romans, yield only one-fourth of what they
used to,” wrote Chabrulle in his Transactions of
the French Expedition . “The cause of these deplor­
able changes is not far to seek. Nature is not to blame. The
river is the same as before. Its periodic floods continue to
fertilise the N ile valley each year. But hope no longer en­
courages the farmer. He knows that the covetous intruder
will reap the fruits of his sweat and blood. W hy should he
produce new crops if neither he nor his children are able to
profit by them? He sows the land with disgust, reaps with
fear and tries to hide a meagre share of the grain from the
grasping oppressors to meet the needs of his family. In this
unhappy country, the peasant owns no property and can
never own any. He is not even a tenant. H e is simply a serf
of the clique oppressing his country.”
The process of the ruin of the peasantry, the dying out
and depopulation of villages went on in all parts of the Ot­
toman Empire. The sultans endeavoured to stop it by tying
the peasant to the land. As far back as the 16th century,
under Suleiman the Lawgiver, laws were passed to prevent
the flight of peasants. The code of laws worked out by the
Turks for Egypt (Kanun-name Misr), ordered the liashifs,
the mxdtazims and sheikhs to see to it that not one plot of
irrigated land remained uncultivated, to prevent the flight
of the peasants and to populate the ruined and empty vil­
lages with fellaheen. If a peasant ran away from his plot,
the sheikh was held materially responsible. The nsia
could be sold only together with the fellaheen who culti­
vated it.
Famine, hard work, the corvée system, numerous taxes
and duties, attachment to the land, the lack of rights, humilia­
tion by the landlords and his servants—this was the lot of
the Arab peasant.. Often the fellaheen, unable to endure the
yoke any longer, rebelled. They were attacked by bands of
janissaries and their Arab hirelings who meted out severe
2-573 17
reprisals. According to the codes of the Lawgiver, no mer­
cy was to be shown in dealing with peasant uprisings.

THE ARAB CITY IN THE PERIOD OF OTTOMAN

RULE. From the 16th to 18th centuries, Arab cities still bore
the imprint of the Middle Ages. These seats of the Turkish
beys and pashas were administrative rather than economic
centres. But trade was already being carried on and craft
production was developing.
Ottoman rule in the East coincided with the revival and
rapid growth of international trade. European industry was
in need of additional markets. It found them in the vast Otto­
man Empire. Turkish and Arab feudal lords bought English
and Dutch cloth, French silks and wines, Russian furs and
Bohemian cut glass. They exported to Europe grains, raw
silk, skins, crude wool, fruits, nuts, olive oil, home spun yarn
and cloth. Actually, this was the exchange of the raw mate­
rials exacted by the feudal lords from their producers as rent
in kind for foreign luxuries. “The inhabitants of trading
cities,” Adam Smith wrote, “by importing the improved man­
ufactures and expensive luxuries of richer countries afforded
some food to the vanity of the great proprietors, who largely
purchased them with great quantities of the rude produce
of their lands.”1
The fatal consequences of such trade are obvious. It in­
tensified the feudal exploitation of the peasantry and ruined
the rural population. Adam Smith and Volney observed
that Turkish trade proceeded on an unequal basis and caused
great harm to the Ottoman Empire.
One more peculiarity: as distinct from the caliphate, for
instance, the main role in this trade was played by foreign
merchants. “Who are the traders in Turkey?” Engels wrote.
“Certainly not the Turks. Their way of promoting trade con­
sisted in robbing caravans. Now that they are a little more
civilised it consists in all sorts of arbitrary and oppressive
exactions. The Greeks, Armenians, Slavonians and the
Franks established in the large seaports, carry on the whole
of the trade and have absolutely no reason to thank the Tur­
kish beys and pashas for being able to do so. Remove all

1 Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. Ill, Moscow, 1962, p. 323.

18
 the Turks out of Europe and trade will have no reason to
suffer.”1
Overseas commerce was concentrated at first mainly in
the hands of the Italians (Venice, Genoa, Pisa), who were
gradually squeezed out by English and French traders. They
had their own quarters in large trading cities. There were
European hotels and offices in Cairo, in the cities along the
Syrian coast and in North African ports. During the 18th
century, the English East India Company established trad­
ing stations in Baghdad and Basra.
The Armenians, Greeks and, to some extent, the Arabs,
acted as intermediaries and contractors for the European
traders. They engaged in transit trade, the large centres of
which were Cairo, Aleppo, Damascus, Baghdad, Trabizond
and Constantinople. Persian carpets, Indian muslins, pearls,
etc., came pouring in. Yemenite coffee was sent from Jidda
to Cairo, while from Sennar and Darfur came slaves, gold,
ivory musk, ostrich feathers. Through these cities local pro­
ducts were exported to the seaports and purchased by the
European traders.
Internal trade was rather poorly developed, although
centres of local exchange between town and country grad­
ually began to grow, the wares of the town craftsmen usu­
ally being sold in the city at daily bazaars or annual fairs.
There were two reasons for the predominance of Europe­
ans in the trade of the Ottoman Empire. The first was that,
by this time Europe had overtaken Turkey in both the cul­
tural and economic fields. The European traders had large
sums of capital behind them and much greater experience
in commerce. Their organisation of trade and transport of
products was much better. In a word, they had a better “trade
culture”. The second reason lay in the capitulation regime.
“Capitulations” in the Ottoman Empire were certificates
granting the European traders special rights and privileges.
Originally capitulations were privileges granted voluntar­
ily and unilaterally by the Turkish Sultan to foreign traders
and could be withdrawn at any minute. The first capitula­
tions were granted to Italian traders in the 14th century,
permitting them to settle in the cities of the Ottoman Empire,

1 F. Engels, “The Turkish Question,” .\e w York Daily Tribune

April 19, 1853.

2* 19
conduct trade and practice their religion. They contained
deeds of property and determined the amount of duty the
traders had to pay.
In the 16th century, capitulations assumed the character
of bilateral agreements. The first agreement of this kind was
concluded in 1535 between Suleiman the Lawgiver and Fran­
cis I, the King of France. The French not only obtained the
right to trade, but many other privileges as well (the ships
o f other nations could enter Ottoman ports only under the
protection of the French flag). French pilgrims were given
free access to the holy places and were free to practise their
religion. In 1604, similar agreements were concluded with
the English and the Venetians, who began to trade with
Turkey under their own flags. Gradually similar rights were
extended to the subjects of other European Powers.
As the Ottoman Empire weakened, the European Powers
began to regard the capitulations as their irrefutable rights
and tried to get them extended to include their local con­
tractors as well. Thanks to the capitulations, the traders were
exempt from taxation and from the jurisdiction of the Tur­
kish courts. Their property could not be confiscated.
The capitulation regime lasted till the 20th century (in
Egypt, for example, until 1937) and was used by the Euro­
pean Powers as an instrument for the colonial enslavement
of the Arab countries. It undermined the development of
national capital and placed the local traders in an unequal
position. European traders paid a custom rate comprising
three per cent of the value of the product, the local traders
paid from seven to ten per cent. Taxes were imposed on
foreign articles of merchandise only once, when they were
imported into the country. Those of the local traders were
taxed each time they passed through the numerous customs
offices and each time they were moved from one feudal estate
to another. Naturally this hindered and undermined the
development of capitalist relations in the Arab countries.
As regards industry, the Ottoman Empire also lagged
behind the advanced European countries, where the transi­
tion to manufacture and then to machine production was
making headway. In the Ottoman Empire, however, guilds
of handicraftsmen (asnaf) still predominated. In each guild
there existed the same hierarchy as in Europe. At the head
of each shop was a chief—sheikh. Next came masters and ap-

20
 prentices. Each shop had its own traditions and customs. The
largest centres of the crafts industry were Damascus and
Aleppo in Syria, Baghdad and Mosul in Iraq, Cairo in Egypt,
Tunis, Algiers, Tlemcen, Fez and Marrakesh in North A fri­
ca. The Arab handicraftsmen were famous for the produc­
tion of cloth, carpets, morocco, weapons, copper ware, etc.
Up to the 18th century, many of their wares were exported
to Europe. But from the time of the Industrial Revolution
local merchants were forced out even from the home markets.
In the Arab countries, there was still no clear-cut divi­
sion between the crafts and agriculture. In Egypt, for exam­
ple, yarn was produced directly in the peasant household.
The manufacture of woollen cloth remained the lot of the
peasant womenfolk. The same conditions prevailed in the
Lebanon. In Syria, in the province of Aleppo, not only wool­
len cloth but also cotton fabrics were produced in the vil­
lages. On the other hand, many city inhabitants engaged in
farming, especially market-gardening. Damascus, for exam­
ple, was buried in fruit and vegetable gardens.
The social structure of the Arab towns indicates that a
large proportion of the population was non-productive. Cai­
ro at the end of the 18th century had a population of 300,000,
100.000 being adult males. Of these 25,000 were artisans,
15.000 were workers and the remaining 60,000 were not pro­
ductively occupied. These were soldiers, landlords, clergy­
men, traders and their servants. The servants alone numbered
30,000. Not all artisans were engaged in productive labour.
The Cairo guilds included guilds for bath-house attendants,
hairdressers, jugglers, street singers and public speakers,
mule and camel drivers, dancers and drummers.
The Ottoman feudal system hampered the development
of the Arab towns. The local traders could not compete
with the Europeans who were protected by the capitulations
regime. Even European trade had many obstacles to over­
come. A t sea the cargo vessels were subject to attacks from
the corsairs, many of whom served the Turkish Sultan. Trade
caravans were looted by derebeys and their bands of rob­
bers. Lines of communications in the Ottoman Empire were
very bad. Goods were transported by pack animals. Each
town had its own customs and commercial legislation, its
taxes, weights and measures, and so on. A ll this on top of
feudal robbery held up the development of trade and

21
industry and made the transition to capitalist relations impos­
sible. “In reality,” Engels wrote, “the Turkish domination
like any other eastern domination is incompatible with capi­
talist society. Surplus value is in no way insured against the
rapacious grip of the satraps and pashas. The first and main
condition for the bourgeois enterprise is lacking—the safety
of the merchant’s person and property.”1

STATE SYSTEM. The predominant nationality in the

Ottoman Empire were the Turks. The Turkish feudal lords
formed the ruling class. Their power was maintained through
an apparatus of coercion with the sultan at its head. The
sultan, or padishah, was the supreme head of the state. He
wielded absolute military and civic power. In the 16th cen­
tury he became the caliph, the spiritual head of the Moslems.
Thè second person of importance was the sheikh el-1 slam,
the head of the Moslem clergy. The legislation, the court,
the madrasahs (collegiate mosques) and huge ecclesiastical
estates were concentrated in his hands. The cadis (judges),
the cadi askari (military judges) and the muftis (expound­
ers of the religious law) were under his control. The muftis
in each large centre of the empire headed the local clergy.
It was they who decided whether legislative enactments
were in conformity with the principles of Islam. The first
mufti in the Ottoman Empire was the sheikh el-Islam him­
self. The theologians and scholars {Ulema) were also in­
fluential strata of the Moslem clergy.
The empire’s central government was called Bab-el-Ali
—the Sublime Porte. At its head stood the first minister, or
the Great Vizir, who from the time of Suleiman the Law­
giver had held the title “ Sadr-Azam ”. He directed the whole
state administration. The Great Vizir was always accompa­
nied by a defterdar , who was in charge of the land register
and the distribution of the fiefs.
The most important issues were decided by the sultan
himself. In urgent cases the diwan (council) was convened.
The diwan was made up of senior generals, vizirs and other
dignitaries.
The army occupied an exceedingly important place in the
life of the military-feudal Ottoman Empire. It was based

1 Marx and Engels, Works, Vol. 22, 2nd Russ. Ed., p. 33.

22
on the knights (sipahi), who had to live within the bounda­
ries of those districts in which their timars were located.
Each district was called sanjaq or liwa (banner), and the
knights who lived there formed a combat unit of the Otto­
man cavalry. In event of war, they assembled their cavalry
under the banner of the sanjaq-bey , the commander of the
district, who commanded them as well as the knights of his
own sanjaq.
Each province (pashalik or eyalet) embraced several san-
jaqs . A province and its levy of knights was commanded by
a pasha, or bey of beys. Apart from the levy of knights,
many pashas had their personal feudal militias of Mame­
lukes and mercenaries (usually Maghrebs).
The Ottoman infantry corps was made up of janissaries
(from the Turkish yeni-cheri, new troops). This was a privi­
leged corps of professional infantry formed in the 14th cen­
tury. It was recruited mainly from young captured Slav boys,
who were forcibly converted to Islam and given a military
training. They had no families, were cut off from the local
population and served the Turkish Sultan zealously. The
janissary corps was divided into “nuclei” with agas at their
head. They enjoyed a number of privileges. At some time
during the 17th or the 18th century, the janissaries obtained
the right to settle down outside the “nuclei”, to marry and
raise a family, to engage in the crafts and in trade, while
continuing to offer military service on a hereditary basis.
Thus a special janissary stratum was formed from which the
Sultan’s guard and the military-police formations were
recruited for the purpose of exacting taxes and duties and for
suppressing revolts. Many towns and provinces of the Otto­
man Empire (Serbia, Algeria, Tunisia) suffered cruelly from
the outrages of the janissaries and often came under their
complete control. The janissary dominance was felt even in
the empire’s capital, Constantinople.
Apart from the knightly cavalry, the janissaries and the
mercenaries, the Turkish sultans and their deputies resorted
to the help of warlike tribes, whose role was especially im­
portant in the far-flung parts of the Ottoman Empire.
The Turks imposed their administrative system on the
Arab countries. Syria and Palestine were divided into four
pashaliks with centres in Aleppo, Damascus, Tripoli and
Saida (at the end of the 18th century, Akka was also made

23
a pashalik)\ The region of the city of Jerusalem was set aside
as a special sanjaq . In Iraq, there were only two pasha-
liks—Mosul and Baghdad. In Arabia, there were also two—
the Hejaz and the Yemen. Egypt, Tripoli, Tunisia and A l­
geria were independent pashaliks. The Somalian seaboard
was an independent province of Habash from the middle of
the 16th until the middle of the 18th century. The territory
of the Lebanon preserved its autonomy under the govern­
ment of the Arab emirs.
The Sultan’s deputies enjoyed unrestricted power in their
own domains. The central government did not bother its
governors with petty instructions. According to their own
judgement, they levied and collected taxes, distributed estates,
administered justice and reprisals, commanded their troops
and waged war on their neighbours or rebellious vassals.
There were no strong ties between the provinces. Outward­
ly the Ottoman Empire was a centralised state. In reality,
it was decentralised. It lacked internal economic cohesion
and national unity. Actually it was a conglomeration of
countries and peoples united under the sword of the con­
queror. Hence the existence of centrifugal forces which slow­
ly but surely pulled the empire apart.

THE DECAY OF OTTOM AN FEUDALISM. At the

end of the 17th century, the Ottoman Empire entered a
period of serious crisis, which affected all branches of social
life: the economy, was ruined; the machinery of the state
had decayed; the provinces would not obey the centre; the
demoralised army had lost its fighting efficiency; culture
had declined. Marx and Engels compared Turkey with the
decaying carcass of a dead horse which supplied the “neigh­
bourhood with a due allowance of carburetted hydrogen
and other well-scented gaseous matter”.1
This crisis was called forth by the decay of Ottoman feu­
dalism. Feudal production relations made the further devel­
opment of the productive forces impossible. Moreover, they
led to the destruction of the existing productive forces.
Turkey and her Arab domains were agrarian countries

1 Marx and Engels. “British Politics—Disraeli.—The Refugees—

Mazzini in London—Turkey”, New York D aily Tribune, April 7,
1853.

24
 and their main producer was the peasant. He practised
small-scale farming on his own plot by his own labour using
primitive implements. The basic law of this economy was
simple reproduction. Part of the harvest, which comprised
the essential product, was used for the reproduction of the
primitive means of production and manpower. The other
part, which comprised the surplus product, was completely
appropriated and used by the feudal exploiters. With the
growth of money-commodity relations and foreign trade,
the appetites of the feudal lords grew also. Sumptuous pal­
aces were erected in Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo and other
urban centres, which received luxuries from all over the
world, imported by enterprising European and eastern trad­
ers and paid for in kind with the products of the local peas­
ant households. But the needs of the feudal lords continued
to grow, and more and more goods had to be supplied.
Feudal plunder assumed catastrophic proportions for the
peasant household. Villages emptied, crops were abandoned.
Fields which had until recently been tilled were infested with
burr bushes and more than half of the land lost its fertility.
Famines were frequent.
The principle of collective responsibility was strictly fol­
lowed in the village. If a peasant family died out, its taxes
had to be paid by the neighbouring peasant household. If
a whole village died out, its taxes were paid by the neigh­
bouring village. This system hastened the ruin of the Arab
village.
The greater the damage done to the peasant household,
the fiercer was the struggle of various groups of feudalists
for the right to exploit it. The struggle for fiefs and estates
became more intense. Big feudal lords (ayani or kibari) seized
the land of the petty knights. Gömürji, the ideologist of the
last Kochi-beys, who died about 1650, wrote indignantly
about the growing power and prosperity of all sorts of scoun­
drels, about their seizure of the timars and ziamets : “The
owners of large and small estates, who were the real war­
riors for religion and the state, have been deprived of the
means of existence and not a trace of them is left.” W hile
seizing the military fiefs, the nobility declined military ser­
vice. Their example was followed by the same petty knights
whose fate was lamented by Kochi-bey Gömiirji. Previously
the Sultan had once been able to recruit from 100,000 to

25
120.000 vassals, whereas in the 17th century only 7,000 or
8.000 went on campaign. Most of them were mercenaries
and servants. The vassals avoided military service but strove
to retain their own lands. In this period we observe the
tendency to turn military fiefs into hereditary privately-
owned estates. This process, which was accompanied by the
ruin of the peasant household, undermined the very basis
of the Ottoman Empire’s might, the army.
This struggle for the right to exploit the ruined peasantry
spread throughout the Arab countries. In the 18th century,
it became more acute due to the decline of piracy and to
military defeats which deprived the feudal lords of their
main source of enrichment. Insurrections of the Arab sheikhs
and emirs against the pashas became more frequent, as did
the revolts of the pashas against the Porte. Internecine wars
ilared up and feudal separatism increased. The majority of
the Arab provinces became virtually independent of the
Turkish Sultan and passed into the hands of the local feudal
cliques, whose leaders strove to break away from the Porte
altogether and to found independent dynasties.
In Baghdad, the dynasty founded by Hasan Pasha was
firmly established. This dynasty ruled throughout the 18th
century. At times, when it exerted power over the Mosul
governors, its authority extended over the whole of Iraq.
The mutasallims, many of whom also held the title of pasha,
were subordinate to the Baghdad pashas. All attempts of the
Porte to depose this dynasty met with failure. The pashas
appointed by the Porte could not hold out in Baghdad more
than a couple of months. The kulemens1 overthrew and
killed them and proclaimed the next pretender of the Hasan
Pasha dynasty the new pasha. In 1780, power in Baghdad
was seized by Suleiman the Great (Buyuk), the kulemen
leader. He founded a new dynasty, the dynasty of kulemen
pashas, which ruled in Baghdad until 1831. The Baghdad
pashas had their own court modelled after the Sultan’s court
in Istanbul, with the same large harems and covetous cour­
tiers, numerous servants and fantastic oriental luxury.
The same went for Tripoli. The janissary dynasty of the

1 Kulemens—white slaves converted to Islam, who underwent

military training. They formed the army’s crack troops, rulers’
“guard”, like the Mamelukes in Egypt

26
Karamanli bey ruled from 1711. This dynasty was virtual­
ly independent of the Porte.
The Hussein dynasty in Tunisia began to reign in 1705. It
was founded by Hussein bey ibn Ali. Under this dynasty,
Tunisia became a fully independent state only nominally
under the control of the Turkish sultans.
In Algeria, power became concentrated in the hands of the
janissary freebooters, who turned the country into a virtual­
ly independent feudal state. W ith the help of the local feu­
dal lords and sheikhs of the warring tribes, the janissary
commanders laid the nomads and the peasants under trib­
ute, gathered large taxes to their own advantage and seized
land. A council of janissary army generals elected from
among themselves the governor of Algeria—the dey, a life
appointment, which could not be inherited. Under the dey
there were four beys, who stood at the head of the prov­
inces into which Algeria was divided.
In the middle of the 18th century, power in Egypt was
seized by the Mameluke beys, who pushed the janissary nuclei
into the background. According to Volney, the janissary
nuclei turned into mobs of vagrants and ruffians. The ad­
ministrating of the country passed to the leader of the strong­
est Mameluke clique known as sheikh-el-balad , who made
himself ruler of the whole country. The pasha became a vir­
tual prisoner of the Mameluke beys and, as Volney writes,
was deprived, banished and expelled. The first governor of
Egypt in the 18th century was Ibrahim Bey (1746-57), who
himself was not a Mameluke. But being a Turkish bey, a
kiyakliya, he was able to form a Mameluke detachment and
seized power with its support. His Mamelukes were gener­
ously rewarded with estates and posts and many of them
were appointed beys. A fierce struggle for power ensued after
the death of Ibrahim. It was won by A li Bey, nicknamed El-
Kabir (the Great), who, in 1763, became ruler of Egypt and
six years later proclaimed Egyptian independence. In 1773,
he was assassinated and power passed into the hands of the ri­
val Mameluke clique headed by Murad Bey and Ibrahim Bey.
Feudal separatism and internecine wars thus led to the
downfall of the vast Ottoman state, which had come into
being not as a result of economic development, but as a
result of the military requirements of Ottoman feudalism in
the course of its predatory wars. This state, like many other

27
multinational states of Eastern Europe, arose within the
framework of feudalism before the formation of nations and
the liquidation of feudal disunity. The forced union of dif­
ferent peoples at different levels of development into a vast
state was not durable and the contradictions between the
feudal structure of the society with its inherent centrifugal
tendencies and the centralised form of the Turkish state led
to the inevitable weakening of the Ottoman Empire.

THE DECLINE OF TH E OUTW ARD M IGHT OF THE

OTTOMAN EMPIRE. Grave internal crisis signified the
beginning of the ruin which was to envelop the whole Ot­
toman Empire. The former might of the Sublime Porte was
shaken. In the 15th and 16th centuries, from the military
point of view, the Ottoman Empire was the strongest state
in Europe. It gained many victories and added many coun­
tries to its domains. Its army of janissary infantrymen and
knights was considered invincible. But now the knights and
janissaries would no longer fulfil their essential military
obligations and went unwillingly to war. Industrial develop­
ment in Europe had brought a marked improvement in mili­
tary weapons and .in the art of war. The Turkish army,
however, remained at the level of the 14th and 15th centuries.
Consequently the Ottoman Empire passed from victory to
defeat, from the offensive to the defensive and from expan­
sion to territorial losses.
At the end of the 17 th century, Turkey suffered her first
serious defeat. Her war against Austria, Russia, Poland and
Venice ended in 1699 with the signing of the Treaty of Car-
lowitz, which gave Azov to Russia, Podolia to Poland, Central
Hungary, Transylvania, Backa and Slavonia to Austria and
the Morea and several of the Archipelago Islands to Venice.
Soon Turkey regained the Morea and temporary control
of Azov. But according to the treaty of Passarowitz, signed
in 1718, she had to yield the Banat and part of Serbia to
Austria. The 1739 Treaty of Belgrade wrested Azov and
Kabarda from her control and declared them neutral terri­
tories (the “barrier”). In 1774, the long Russo-Turkish war
ended with the signing of the Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji,
which gave Russia Kerch, Yenikale, Kinburn and also the
region of Kabarda. The Crimea and the Kuban were declared
independent of Turkey. Soon (in 1783) they were also
28
joined to Russia. The Kuchuk-Kainarji Treaty also gave
Russia the right to navigate the Black Sea and the Straits
for commercial purposes.
By the Treaty of Jassy in 1792, Russia gained the whole
northern seaboard of the Black Sea and the mouth of the
Dniester which became her border. In 1812, by the Treaty
of Bucharest, Russia received Bessarabia.
In her struggle with Turkey for the Black Sea and the
Balkan Peninsula, Russia was driven by the economic require­
ments of her landowners and merchants. Russia’s commod­
ity economy was growing. The landowners and merchants
needed an outlet to seaports that did not freeze up in winter
in order to ship wheat, wood, hemp and furs to Europe. The
importance of the Black Sea for Russian trade was increased
by the fact that many of Russia’s great rivers flowed into it.
But the Black Sea was in the hands of the Turks and the
outlet from it—the Dardanelles and the Bosporus—was
firmly closed to Russian ships. The question of capturing
Constantinople was also connected with tsarism’s desire for
hegemony in Europe.
The Austrian landowners and merchants were also seek­
ing an outlet to the warm water sea ports for their growing
export trade. Hence Austria’s desire to gain possession of
the Adriatic Sea and the Danube Basin. Austrian expan­
sion crossed and in many respects coincided with Russian
expansion. This led to conflicts between the two countries
which, however, did not keep them from reaching agreement
on the division of Turkey.
England and France were also eager to gain control of
Istanbul, the Straits, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Syria and
Iraq. These claims were made in the 18th century, but actual
fighting began in the 19th century. With the further devel­
opment of capitalism, the solicitations of the European
Powers in the Near East became more persistent and the
struggle between them for the division of the Ottoman Em­
pire more fierce. The fate of the empire’s domains, known
in history and literature as the Eastern Question, was cen­
tral to European diplomacy in the 19th century.

POPULAR MOVEMENTS A N D THE ARAB COUN­

TRIES’ STRUGGLE FOR LIBERATION. The yoke of
the Turkish feudal lords—sultans, pashas, janissaries and

30
knights—evoked many insurrections by the peoples of the
Ottoman Empire. These insurrections reflected the main class
contradiction between feudal lords and peasants as well as
the main national contradiction between the oppressors and
the oppressed. The feudal yoke in the Ottoman Empire bore
the stamp of foreign domination, so the peasants’ struggle
against the feudal lords went hand in hand with the nation­
al liberation movements. The bourgeoisie, which in the
18th century weis taking shape as a class in Greece, Serbia
and Egypt, also suffered from the Ottoman feudal yoke and
joined in the struggle against feudalism.
Generally speaking, there were two kinds of movements.
There were popular movements in Turkey herself, directed
against the feudal yoke. These were supported by the oppressed
nationalities and in the main assumed a class character.
On the other hand, there were movements of the oppressed
peoples. These were more like national liberation movements.
Among the popular anti-feudal movements in Turkey prop­
er were the uprisings headed by Badr ed-Din Simawi in
1415-18 and the Kara Yazici uprising at the turn of the 16th
century.
The uprising of Badr ed-Din Simawi spread over a huge
area, from the Balkans to East Anatolia. In his fiery speeches
Sheikh Badr ed-Din Simawi, the leader, inveighed against
the exploiters, preached universal equality, the liquida­
tion of class oppression and the communal use of property.
He called for the unity of the working people of all religions
and nationalities. In the ranks of the insurgents Moslems
fought side by side with Christians and Jews, and Turks side
by side with the Greeks and Slavs.
The geographical boundaries of the Kara-Yazici upris­
ing were even greater. It included the Balkans, Asia Minor,
northern Syria and Iraq. The insurgents seized Baghdad
and held it for many years. The Arab fellaheen and bedou­
ins took part in the uprising together with the Turkish peas­
ants, the petty knights and several pashas. Like the Badr
ed-Din movement, the level and the scale of this uprising
placed it in the same ranks with the W at Tyler, Thomas
Münzer and John Huss uprisings, with the French jacque­
rie and with the liberation wars of the Russian peasants.
The uprisings of the oppressed peoples were no less
persistent in character. The main centres of the anti-Turkish

31
 liberation movements were the Balkans, Transcaucasia and
the Arab countries. Although in some cases the leaders were
feudal lords, in principle, the movement assumed a pro­
foundly popular character.
One of the main centres of anti-Turkish resistance in the
Arab countries was the Lebanon. In 1516, the troops of Selim
the Cruel had seized the Lebanon and the mountainous re­
gions of Syria and Palestine. The administration of the coun­
try had been entrusted to Fakhr ed-Din I, an emir from the
Ma’anid dynasty who recognised vassal dependence on the
Porte. His attempts to avoid paying tribute, however, irritated
the Turks, who in the end decided to establish direct author­
ity over the country, but were met with fierce resistance
from both the Lebanese peasantry and the feudal lords. A
long stubborn struggle ensued. In 1544, Fakhr ed-Din was
poisoned at the court of the Damascene Pasha, and his son,
Kirkmas, like many other representatives of the Lebanese
nobility, was killed fighting the Turks who, in 1585, launched
a punitive expedition against the Lebanon.
A new stage in the resistance began in 1590 with the ad­
vent to power of Kirkmas’s son, Emir Fakhr ed-Din II. This
loyal pupil of Machiavelli, a Druse, who made himself out
to be a Christian when opportunity offered, was a clever
diplomat and master of intrigue. He had spies in Constan­
tinople, at the courts of the pashas and even in the homes of
his vassals. He plotted and sowed discord among the enemy.
Seeking the favour of the Sultan, at first he paid a high trib­
ute into the Turkish treasury and shared the spoils of war
with him. For this the Sultan appointed him ruler of the
mountain and coastal districts of the Lebanon and consider­
able parts of Syria and Palestine.
The ultimate purpose of the Emirs plan was a crusade
against the Sultan with the help of the West. Preparing for
the struggle against the Porte, he started talks with the Ita­
lians, began the construction of fortresses and brought the
strength of his army up to 40,000 men. In 1613, he provoked
a rebellion in which the whole population of the Lebanon
took part. However, the Turks emerged victorious. Fakhr
ed-Din II was compelled to flee from the Lebanon and spent
five years in Italy. His pompous Oriental suite and enormous
wealth held Europe spellbound. As a diplomat he was less
successful. His plans to knock together 2m anti-Turkish coa-

32
lition with the participation of France, Florence, the Vati­
can, the Maltese Order, and others failed.
Upon the accession to the throne of Osman II in 1618,
Fakhr ed-Din II was granted an amnesty and returned to the
Lebanon. Having regained his domains, he mapped out a
plan to develop them economically. He encouraged foreign
trade and to a great extent Europeanised the country. Bei­
rut was split up into boulevards after the European manner
and new buildings were erected. A group of young people
was sent to Italy to study. This was the beginning of Maro­
nite spiritual education. It promoted the European study of
Arab philology. At the beginning of the thirties, Fakhr ed-
Din II once again inflamed the people to rebel. He was taken
prisoner and sent to Constantinople as a hostage. In 1635,
disturbances flared up again. Fakhr ed-Din II was executed
and his principality routed.
Arab opposition to Turkey, however, continued. Through­
out the 17th century two hostile groups of the Lebanese
nobility had been fighting each other. One group, the Kaisites
(or “reds”, as they called themselves), led by the Ma’anid
family came out against local Turkish domination and gained
a following among the Lebanese peasants. The other group,
the Yemenites (or “whites”), led by the emirs of the Ala-
maddin family, was supported by the Turks. Varying for­
tunes attended the struggle. More often than not success fa­
voured the Kaisites, who established authority in the Lebanon
many times. In 1697, after the Ma’anid family had died out,
the Kaisites were headed by emirs from the Shehab family.
In 1710, the Turks, together with the Yemenites , made
one more attempt to settle accounts with the troops of the
Kaisite emirs. Having overthrown Emir Haidar Shehab, they
planned to turn the Lebanon into an ordinary Turkish prov­
ince. In 1711, however, the Kaisites crushingly defeated
the Turks and the Yemenites in a battle near Ain-Dar in
which all the members of the Alamaddin family perished.
The Turks were compelled to renounce their plans and for
a long time did not interfere in the Lebanon’s internal
affairs.
One of the most serious attempts of the Arab rulers to
free themselves from the hated Ottoman feudal yoke and
win independence is connected with the Russo-Turkish war
of 1768-74. The diplomacy of the European Powers, espe-
3-573 33
 daily tsarist Russia, in its desire to weaken Turkey, supported
the national liberation movements on the Balkans and in the
Arab countries. The leaders of the insurgent forces, in turn,
sought an alliance with Russia, hoping to gain their ends
with her help.
In 1769, taking advantage of the war with Russia, the
ruler of Egypt, Ali-bey el-Kabir, declared his independence
of the Turks. A Mameluke of Abkhazian origin, Ali-bey had
for long sympathised with Russia and concealed his hatred
for the Porte. In 1770, he declared himself sovereign and
assumed the title of “Sultan of Egypt and the Two Seas” .
His name was mentioned in the khutbahs (sermons) o f the
Egyptian and Hejaz mosques. In 1770, the province of H e-
jaz was added to his domains.
To get help in his struggle against Turkey, Ali-bey entered
into an alliance with Sheikh Zahir, the ruler of Safad (a re­
gion in Palestine). For many years this Kaisite had been
engaged in extending the domains presented to his father
by the Lebanese emir. Around 1750, having obtained the
small coastal settlement of Akka and turned it into a large
centre of sea trade and handicraft production, he moved his
capital there. He then restored an ancient fortress of the
Crusaders in Akka and converted it into an impregnable
stronghold, which was later to withstand even the forces of
Bonaparte. Zahir used the huge revenues gained by extor­
tionate tax-farming and the granting of monopoly mainly
to equip his army (its conjbat strength reached 60 to 70 thou­
sand men) and fleet.
Having broken away from the Porte, Ali-bey decided to
secure the aid of Russia. At this time a Russian squadron
under the command of Count Alexei Orlov was stationed on
the Archipelago. Having destroyed the Turkish fleet in the
famous Battle of Cheshme on June 25-26, 1770, the Russians
established their supremacy at sea and seized several of the
Archipelago islands, having actively supported the rebel­
lious Greeks. At the beginning of 1771, special emissaries of
Ali-bey arrived at the headquarters of Count Orlov on the
Island of Paros, where it was agreed to start a joint struggle
against the Turks.
At first Ali-bey was successful. In 1771, the Egyptians
with the support of Zahir’s troops began a formidable cam­
paign in Syria. They took Damascus, Saida and besieged
34
Jaffa. However, the treason of the Mameluke generals com­
pletely changed matters. Abu’l-Dhahab, who commanded the
Egyptian troops, suddenly withdrew his Mamelukes from
Damascus, fortified his position in Upper Egypt and started
a struggle against Ali-bey. The majority of the Mameluke
beys defected to Abu’l-Dhahab. Ali-bey was defeated and
fled to his ally in Akka. After the loss of Damascus and the
departure of the Mamelukes, Zahir’s situation became more
recarious. The Lebanese emir, Yusef Shehab, joined the
Î urks and with them besieged Saida. At the request of the
allies, a Russian squadron, under the command of Rizo, ar­
rived in Syria. It helped break the blockade of Saida and
seized Beirut (May 1772). In the autumn of 1772, having
concluded a truce with the Turks, the Russian squadron left
Syria. Once again Beirut passed into the hands of the Turks.
In the meanwhile, Count Orlov sent to Ali-bey a mission
headed by Lieutenant Pleshcheyev, which handed over to
the insurgents a large consignment of weapons and ammu­
nition. In 1773, having reorganised his forces, Ali-bey with
his 6,000-strong army came out against the rebellious Mame­
luke beys. In the battle near Salihia, however (in the eastern
part of the Delta) his troops were defeated. Ali-bey was
mortally wounded, taken prisoner and soon, on May 8, 1773,
died in Cairo. Sheikh Zahir’s situation was now critical.
True, in June 1773, the truce between Turkey and Russia
ended and once again a Russian squadron, under the com­
mand of Kozhukhov, arrived in Syria. The Lebanese emir
Yusef Shehab broke with the Turks and entered into an
alliance with the Russians and Sheikh Zahir. After a three-
month siege, the Russians captured Beirut. In October 1773,
Yusef Shehab requested Catherine II to make him a Russian
citizen and establish a protectorate over the Lebanon. After
the signing of the Kuchuk-Kainarji Treaty in 1774, this pe­
tition was rejected and the Russian squadron left Syria.
W hen the Russians departed, the Turks threw all their
forces against Sheikh Zahir. In 1775, he was besieged in
Akka and soon killed. The revolt was suppressed and the
capital of Zahir, Akka, became the residence of the Turkish
satrap Jazzar, whose name is associated with the darkest
days in Syrian history.
Jazzar (the Butcher), his real name was Ahmed, was of
Bosnian origin. He had embarked on his Mameluke career
3* 35
 in Egypt, where he had earned the nickname of Butcher by
ordering several massacres. During the Russo-Turkish war
he organised his own Mameluke detachment to fight the Rus­
sians. For his outstanding services in suppressing the Zahir
rebellion, he was appointed the pasha in Saida. Soon the
paslialiks of Tripoli and Damascus were also handed over
to him and he became the virtual ruler of Syria with Akka
as the centre of his domains.
The reign of Jazzar was remarkable for the unprecedented
brutality with which one rebellion after another was sup­
pressed. In 1780, a spontaneous peasant movement, support­
ed by some of the local nobility, started in the Lebanon. At
its head stood certain relatives of Yusef Shehab, who had
once again gone over to the Turks. The insurgents rebelled
against the heavily increased tribute that Jazzar had imposed
on the Lebanon. The revolt was brutally put down. Yusef
Shehab cut off his brother’s tongue, plucked out the eyes of
his other brother, and with his own hands killed one of the
Shehabs who had gone over to the insurgents. The janissa­
ries fed their prisoners with human flesh.
This was followed by the brutal suppression of the rebel­
lions of the Palestine bedouins and fellaheen of Saida. A
continuous struggle was waged in the Lebanon, where rival
feudal cliques roused the peasants to revolt with promises
of an easier life. The most serious rebellion against Jazzar
began in 1789. The insurgents seized Beirut, Saida, Sur and
approached Akka, but treason, committed on the part of
some of the feudal leaders, bribed by Jazzar, led to the de­
feat of the revolt. In 1790, in the Lebanon, yet another rebel­
lion was sparked off by discontent among the peasants and
internecine strife among the nobles. The rebellion began to
die down only in 1797, when Yusef Shehab’s nephew, Emir
Beshir II, who had fought against his uncle, gained a foot­
hold in the Lebanon.
In 1798, a big rebellion took place in Damascus, the in­
habitants of which refused to pay tribute to Jazzar. Some­
how, the Porte managed to settle the conflict by appointing
a new pasha in Damascus. However, the disturbances in
Syria continued.
In Iraq, uprisings took place throughout the 16th, 17th
and 18th centuries. These were movements of bedouins and
semi-settled farmers, whose life was still based on the trib-
36
al system. The insurgents upheld their rights to the land
and rose against the feudal system imposed by the Ottoman
Turks, refusing to pay taxes to the Turkish authorities. The
pashas replied by sending military expeditions to collect
taxes from their rebellious subjects, with the result that wars
between the pashas and the tribes continued almost without
a break from year to year. The local feudal lords—Kurds
and Arabs—played an ambivalent role. At times they would
help the pasha to pacify one tribe or another (usually for
a generous bribe), but often they headed the tribal anti-Tur­
kish uprisings.
To this picture of internecine wars and rebellions were
added the Persian raids. Fighting against Turkey as against
their permanent enemy, the shahs of Persia supported any
anti-Turkish action in Iraq whether tribal rebellions ór the
campaigns of the pashas. There were times in the forties of the
18th century when the Pasha of Baghdad fought against his
own sovereign together with the tribes and the Iranian Shah.
The three centuries of Ottoman rule in Iraq witnessed
scores of large-scale rebellions. One of the most significant
was the uprising of the tribes in southern Iraq under the
leadership of the Siab family. It started in 1651 in the district
of Basra. The insurgents captured Basra and held it for
many years together with the adjoining regions. Only in
1669 did the Turks succeed in putting down the rebellion
and installing their own deputy in Basra. In 1690, an Arab
rebellion of the Muntafiq tribes flared up, embracing the val­
ley of the lower and middle Euphrates. The Arabs occupied
Basra and conducted a successful campaign against the Tur­
kish troops until 1701. Even then the Turks failed to sup­
press the rebellion completely. With the support of the
Iranian shahs the Muntafiqs offered stubborn resistance to the
Turks in the 18th century. At the end of the century a fresh
wave of popular uprisings swept southern Iraq. They were
put down by the Baghdad Pasha, Buyuk Suleiman.
These numerous uprisings and internecine strife weak­
ened the Ottoman Empire. Feudal anarchy reigned in the
domains of the Sublime Porte. The popular movements and
uprisings of the Arabs, Greeks, Kurds, Armenians and Slavs
shook the decaying foundations of the feudal empire and
hastened the collapse of a reactionary feudal system which
had outlived itself.
37
 CHAPTER II

THE FRENCH EXPEDITION TO EGYPT

(1798-1801)

TH E AIMS OF TH E EXPEDITION. When the French

revolution at the end of the 18th century destroyed the
feudal system in France, it might have seemed that the Arab
countries were totally unprepared to accept its liberative
ideas. However, its influence soon began to be felt in the
Arab world, particularly in Egypt, the most advanced of
the Arab countries. Here feudal disintegration had made
great headway and the country was socially and economi­
cally ripe for an anti-feudal war. This influence was brought
to Egypt by the army of the French Republic under the
command of Bonaparte.
Having conquered Italy in 1797 and advanced into the
Balkan Peninsula, Bonaparte reached the borders of the
Ottoman Empire, which was in a state of a grave crisis.
Recently, in the war against Austria and Russia, it had
suffered a number of serious defeats. Weak and incapable
of offering any resistance, the empire was a fertile ground
for any attempt at annexation by the French bourgeoisie.
“The Ottoman Empire is doomed/’ Bonaparte wrote to the
Directory, “and there is no reason for us to support it.”
The Ottoman Empire’s strategic position encouraged N a­
poleon’s expansionist plans. The eastern end of the Mediter­
ranean and its southern coast were incorporated in the em­
pire. By gaining possession of the empire, France, having
already subjugated the Appenine Peninsula, would be able
to turn the Mediterranean into an inner lake of its own,
thereby delivering a crushing blow to her bitterest enemy,
Great Britain, which was the initiator of all counter-revo­
lutionary coalitions against the French Republic. Moreover,
Napoleon hoped that the conquest of the Arab countries in
North Africa and Asia Minor would permit France to create
38
a mighty colonial empire to make up for her lost American
colonies.
The growing strength of France caused serious alarm in
bourgeois England. France’s economic development threa­
tened England’s supremacy on the world markets and in the
colonies. An economically ascendant France would menace
the industrial monopoly set up by English capital. The Eng^
lish bourgeoisie was therefore eager to overwhelm its rival,
to seize its markets and colonies and make them its own. The
struggle between France and Britain for world supremacy
was the underlying reason for the long series of wars which
in the end led to the elevation of England and the break­
up of Napoleon’s empire.
In this struggle for world supremacy, the Ottoman Em­
pire was the trump card. Napoleon decided to take it from
England. He shrewdly made plans for the conquest of Egypt,
one of the Sultan’s richest domains. The short cut from
England to India lay through Egypt. True, the Suez Canal
had not yet been built. There was no sea route between A lex­
andria and Suez, but transshipping stations had been estab­
lished and passengers, goods and mail were unloaded at
Alexandria and delivered by caravan to Suez, considerably
reducing the journey to India. By seizing Egypt, Napoleon
would immediately gain a number of advantages. First, he
would acquire a rich colony. Secondly, he would consolidate
his position at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, whence
he could attack the Ottoman Empire. Thirdly, he would deal
a blow to England by disorganising her connections with
India and, fourthly, he would obtain a base for his long-
desired campaign against India.

TH E BEGINNING OF THE EXPEDITION. In 1798,

Bonaparte persuaded the Directory to undertake a campaign
of conquest against Egypt. Taking personal command of the
30,000-strong expeditionary corps he set sail with a French
squadron from Toulon in May 1798. Another force was
despatched to Egypt from Italy. Though Nelson’s recon­
naissance ships were scouring the Mediterranean, the French
managed to reach Alexandria without loss, capturing Malta on
the way. Several Maltese Arabs were included in the expe­
dition as interpreters and scouts.
On July 1, 1798, the French army landed at Alexandria.

39
 The inhabitants’ of this city put up some resistance, but were
soon suppressed and the French army moved southwards in
the direction of Cairo.
On the same day, Napoleon addressed the Egyptian peo­
ple with a proclamation in which French revolutionary ide­
als were mixed strangely with colonialist threats and a
cynical, demagogic play on the religious sentiments of the
more backward sections of the population. Napoleon pre­
sented himself almost as a devout Moslem and friend and
patron of Islam. Having seized Egypt, the richest province
of the Ottoman Empire, he declared himself a “friend of the
Turkish Sultan”. His purpose in coming to Egypt was to
“punish the Mamelukes”, the enemies of the Sultan, the
Egyptian people and France. He also argued the need to
defend French residents in Egypt, an argument later to be.
used by all colonialists as an excuse to interfere in the
affairs of other countries.
The proclamation began with the usual Moslem address:
“In the name of Allah, the Gracious and the Merciful. There
is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his Prophet.”
It continued: “In the name of the French nation founded
on equality and liberty, the great general and leader of the
French army appeals to the citizens of Egypt. From time
immemorial the Mameluke beys ruling your country have
insulted the French nation and subjected her merchants to
torture. The hour for revenge has arrived!
“For many centuries this rabble of slaves has oppressed
the most beautiful country in the world. But Allah, the ruler
of the heavens, has willed that their reign shall end.
“Oh people of Egypt! They will tell you that I come to
destroy your religion; believe them not: answer that I come
to restore your right, to punish the usurpers, and that I re­
spect, more than the Mamelukes ever did, God, his Prophet
and the Koran. Tell them also that all men are equal before
God except for their wisdom, talents and virtues excellen­
cies. But by what wisdom, by what talents and virtues are
the Mamelukes distinguished if they have arrogated all the
joys and blessings of life. If there is good.land, it belongs
to the Mamelukes. If there is a pretty slave girl, a handsome
steed or a good house, they belong to the Mamelukes. But
Allah is gracious, merciful and just to the people, and with
his help the Egyptians are called upon to take their places.
40
The most intelligent, educated and virtuous will rule and the
people will be happy.
“In Egypt, there were once great cities, long canals and
lively trade. A ll this has been ruined by the tyranny and
covetousness of the Mamelukes.
“Sheikhs, Cadis and Imams, assure the people that we are
true Moslems. Was it not we who marched on Rome and
crushed the Pope who urged the Christians to fight against
the Moslems? W as it not we who destroyed the knights of
Malta because these ignoramuses claimed that God had
ordered them to fight against the Moslems? Were we not al­
ways friends of the Ottoman Sultan (may Allah grant his
wishes) and enemies of his enemies? On the contrary, the
Mamelukes do not obey the Sultan. They acknowledge no
rule but their own.
“Thrice happy are they who shall be with us. They shall
prosper! Happy are they who remain neutral, for they still
have time to join us. But woe, triple woe unto them who
take up arms for the Mamelukes. They shall perish!”
This emotional preamble was followed by concrete orders:
“1. Each village situated at a distance of not more than
three hours’ march from the route of the French army must
send a delegation to the general in order to inform him that
the population has capitulated and hoisted the tri-coloured
French banner.
“2. A ll rebellious villages will be burnt.
“3. Every village that capitulates must also raise the ban­
ner of our friend, the Ottoman Sultan. (May Allah, grant
him a long life.)
“4. The village sheikhs must guard the Mamelukes’ prop­
erty.
“5. The sheikhs, Ulema, Cadis and Imams retain their
functions. In the mosques, prayers will be offered to Allah
as usual. The Egyptians will offer a thanksgiving for their
deliverance from the Mamelukes, exclaiming: ‘Glory to the
Ottoman Sultan! Glory to the French army! Cursed be the
Mamelukes; happiness to the Egyptian people!’ ”
News of the French invasion threw the Mamelukes into
a panic. The military council met in Cairo the same day. It
decided to request immediate help from the Sultan. The Ma­
meluke governor, Murad-bey, was charged with the defence
of Egypt. Five days later, he set out with his army to meet
41
Bonaparte. The cavalry moved along the banks of the N ile
and the infantry in boats. Murad-bey resorted to the tradi­
tional medieval method of defence to check the advance of
the French vessels along the Nile. He partitioned off the
river at Mugaza with a metal chain, along which he lined
up ships armed with cannon. The Mameluke cavalry and
infantry stood guard on shore.
The first clash between the French and the Egyptian forces
took place here on July 13. One Egyptian ship was destroyed
in the first hour of the battle. “Allah willed that the
sails catch fire and a spark fell on the ammunition,” wrote
the Egyptian chronicler Jabarti. “There was a dreadful ex­
plosion and the captain and sailors were thrown high into
the air. The boat was reduced to ashes. Murad was filled
with terror and fled, abandoning his guns and other heavy
objects. He was followed by his cavalry. The infantrymen
got into their wooden barges and sailed away to Cairo. This
news made a very sorrowful impression on the capital.” The
way to Cairo was open and the invaders pressed on to that
historic city.
THE DEFENCE OF CAIRO. The Mameluke beys con­
sidered their army “invincible”, but its shortcomings came
to the fore in the very first battle. A poorly organised feudal
levy, it was, of course, quite unfitted to withstand the most
modern army of the time, an army trained in the wars of the
French revolution. Napoleon gave credit to the individual
combat qualities of the Mamelukes, who fought like lions,
but he stressed their incompetency in organised mass opera­
tions. “Two Mamelukes were undoubtedly more than a match
for three Frenchmen; 100 Mamelukes were equal to 100
Frenchmen; 300 Frenchmen could generally beat 300 Ma­
melukes, and 1,000 Frenchmen invariably defeated 1,500
Mamelukes,” he remarked. In this connection Engels wrote:
“With Napoleon a detachment of cavalry had to be of a
definite minimum number in order to make it possible for
the force of discipline, embodied in closed order and planned
utilisation, to manifest itself and rise superior even to
greater numbers of irregular cavalry, in spite of the latter
being better mounted, more dexterous horsemen and fighters,
and at least as brave as the former.”1
1 Frederick Engels, Anti-Dühring, Moscow, 1962, p. 177.

42
 This first defeat showed the Mamelukes they were deal­
ing with a formidable opponent. W ith feverish haste they
set about fortifying Cairo. They built new ships and dug
fortifications. The inhabitants of the city, who had no desire
to submit to foreign oppression, willingly took part in the
defence. Craftsmen’s guilds collected money to purchase
weapons. Workers and artisans formed volunteer detachments.
There were not enough weapons to go round. Patriotic
demonstrations took place in the city. In the mosques, the
Ulema implored God to grant them victory.
Yet the defence was poorly organised. On July 21, Bona­
parte’s army approached Giza, situated on the western bank
of the N ile opposite Cairo. Here, at the foot of the ancient
pyramids, a fierce battle took place. The Mamelukes and the
city dwellers were crushingly defeated by the French. Out
of six thousand Mamelukes only three thousand survived.
Some of them fled with Murad-bey to Upper Egypt and
some with Ibrahim-bey to Syria where they were pursued
by the French. Thousands of city-dwellers, who fought on
the approaches to Cairo, were drowned in the river while
retreating. The victors broke into the city, plundered it and
took brutal reprisals against those who had participated in
the defence.

THE UPRISING A G A IN ST THE INVADERS. The

French, however, soon found themselves in difficulties. On
August 1, 1798, Admiral Nelson’s squadron entered Abou­
kir Bay and destroyed the French fleet anchored there. Out
of fifteen French vessels, only four escaped by fleeing to
Malta. The others were either burnt, sunk or captured. The
defeat was complete. The French expedition was cut off from
France and its position was precarious. Now there could be
no question of a campaign against India.
The Aboukir Battle put an end to the Porte’s doubts. In
September 1798, Sultan Selim III declared war on France
with the aim of regaining Egypt. The entry of the Porte into
the war gave new strength to the Egyptians, who continued
to struggle against the French invaders.
Gambling on the religious prejudices of the people, N a­
poleon acted the role of the “Moslem” ruler, Ali Bonabarda
Pasha. He went about in Oriental clothes, in a turban and
robe. He regularly visited the mosque on Fridays, took part
43
in traditional ceremonies and even converted to Islam one
of his generals, Jacques Menou, who was renamed Abdul­
lah. H e formed a consultative body, a diwan , made up of
local sheikhs and Ulema. He exploited the people’s hatred
of the Mamelukes. But none of these measures could conceal
the fact that the French administration had laid the towns
and villages under a heavy tribute (in cash and in kind), the
like of which they had never had to pay even under the
Mamelukes. This tax robbery, together with extreme extor­
tions and indemnities, the confiscation of food reserves and
fodder supplies, exceeded all limits. It was quite obvious that
the country was ruled by a foreign military clique.
For this reason, after Turkey’s entry into the war, the
guerilla war gained fresh momentum (mainly in the Delta
region). The guerillas attacked military couriers, small pa­
trols and detachments and wrecked communication lines.
They killed French officers, quartermasters and tax gatherers.
Napoleon sent punitive expeditions to the Delta. His gener­
als burnt the rebellious villages, but this only served
to strengthen discontent. Soon the uprising spread to
Cairo.
One October day, the citizens of Cairo were alerted by a
signal. A general attack on the French, mainly officers and
generals, ensued. They were killed one by one on the streets
and in their homes. Caught unawares, the French troops hast­
ily withdrew from Cairo. Bonaparte himself fled to an is­
land on the N ile not far from the city. From here he direct­
ed punitive operations. Fifteen thousand insurgents gathered
at the El-Azhar Mosque, barricaded all the roads leading to
the mosque and made prepárations to repulse the French
advance. Five thousand fellaheen from the neighbouring
villages and several thousand Bedouins from the Libyan
Desert hastened to their aid. Bonaparte sent one punitive
detachment against the fellaheen, another against the Be­
douins and concentrated his main forces near the rebellious
capital. The insurgents in the mosque were subject to artil­
lery fire. Thousands were killed. Those who did not perish
under artillery fire were killed by the bayonets of the French
grenadiers. No prisoners were taken. The insurgents begged
for mercy, but Napoleon turned a deaf ear to their pleas.
The cold-blooded massacre ended in the barbarous execution
of the six leaders of the uprising. They were beheaded and
44
their heads were mounted on pikes, which the French car­
ried around the streets of Cairo.
At the same time, in Upper Egypt, Murad-bey’s guerilla
detachments continuously harrassed the French garrisons.

THE SYRIAN EXPEDITION. Cut off from France,

Napoleon decided to march northwards with his army into
Asia Minor. With this end in view, he tried to establish
relations with the Syrian governors, but met with resis­
tance.
The campaign against Syria began in February 1799.
Without much trouble, Bonaparte’s 13,000-strong corps oc­
cupied El-Arish, Gaza, Jaffa, Haifa and in the middle of
March, approached the walls of Akka. The population, which
hated the Turkish Pasha, Ahmed Jazzar, offered no resist­
ance. The neighbouring tribes looked on curiously or even
supported the French, if not out of sympathy, at least out of
hate for Jazzar. On April 16, at the foot of Mount Tabor
in Gallilee, Bonaparte defeated the 20,000-strong Mameluke
army sent by the Damascene Pasha. The campaign seemed
to be turning out favourably, but the walls of Akka still
barred Napoleon’s advance to the north. The French were
short of siege artillery. They tried to ship it by sea, but it
was captured en route by the British Commodore, Sydney
Smith. Smith’s squadron then entered the Bay of Akka and
defended the fortress with its cannons. French emigrants
in the service of Jazzar and the first regular units of
Selim I l l ’s army, trained before the war by French instruc­
tors, also took an active part in the defence of Akka. Bona­
parte’s numerous attempts to storm the besieged fortress were
repulsed. To make matters worse, plague broke out in the
French camp. After a seventy-day siege, Bonaparte retreated
to Egypt. The Syrian campaign had ended in the utter defeat
of the French.
The Egyptian expedition was also doomed to failure. Bo­
naparte’s victory over the Anglo-Turkish landing party at
Aboukir on July 25, 1799, soon after his return to Egypt,
could not save the situation. Shortly after, on August 22,
1799, Bonaparte left Egypt for France to dissolve the Direc­
tory and make himself the First Consul. He left secretly
without the knowledge of his troops, or even of General Klé­
ber, who was appointed to command in his absence.
45
 THE COLLAPSE OF THE EXPEDITION. After N a­
poleon’s departure, the situation of the French army in Egypt
became even more critical. The diminishing group of French­
men was surrounded by a hostile people, by the hostile Turkish
army and British fleet. Kléber realised the only recource
left was to withdraw from the country and on January 28,
1800, he signed an armistice at El-Arish with the British and
the Turks, who promised to provide him with transports to
ship his troops to France. But when the order by the British
to disarm the French army was communicated to Kléber, he
decided to fight.
On March 20, 1800, in the Battle of Heliopolis (near Cai­
ro), he routed the Turkish forces despatched from Syria.
W hile the battle raged, the citizens of Cairo once more
rose up in rebellion. They crushed the small French garri­
son which had remained in the city, and throughout the
month-long siege repulsed constant attacks by the French
troops. The insurgents were aided by Ibrahim-bey’s Mame­
luke detachment just back from Syria. Only on April 15,
having turned the suburb of Cairo, Bulak, into a heap of
ashes, destroyed four hundred homes and exterminated sev­
eral thousand insurgents, did the French manage to turn the
tide. Ibrahim-bey surrendered Cairo and returned to Syria.
Kléber hastened to impose a heavy indemnity on the city.
On June 14, 1800, Kléber was murdered by a fanatic
named Suleiman of Aleppo, said to have been incited to the
deed by the Turks. He penetrated into Kléber’s residence
and stabbed him several times with a dagger. The French
military court decreed that Suleiman of Aleppo should have
his hand burnt off and then be impaled on a stake. Four
Moslem sheikhs, accused of complicity, were beheaded. Sulei­
man met his death courageously. He placed one hand on
the fire and did not utter a sound as it burnt. Nor did he
utter a sound during the four and a half hours which it took
him to die impaled upon a stake. The French avenged Klé­
ber’s death by organising pogroms in the city. Crowds of
soldiers overflowed the streets of Cairo, burning homes and
killing the people.
In March 1801, the British landed a 20,000-strong force
in Egypt. They occupied Aboukir, smashed the main French
forces near Rahmania and besieged the remaining French
forces at Alexandria and Cairo. At the same time at Qoseir
46
(on the Red Sea), they landèd a 6,000-strong force of
sepoys, who were to advance on Cairo. Instead of concentrat­
ing all the French forces in one place, the French comman­
der, Menou, did the opposite. A terrible plague began to rage
in the besieged garrisons. In June, Cairo surrendered to the
British and in August, after a four-months siege, Alexandria
capitulated. Menou was there at the time. At the end of Sep­
tember, the remnants of the French expedition were shipped
home and Napoleon’s bid for conquest reached an ignomin­
ious end.
Several days later (on October 9, 1801), France signed a
truce with Turkey. As a result of the war, France lost Egypt,
Malta and the strategically important Ionian Islands, which
she had captured in 1797.

THE RESULTS OF THE EXPEDITION. For France

the only result of the expedition were the brilliant mono­
graphs produced by the savants who accompanied the French
army to Egypt. Among them were geologists, technicians,
mathematicians, astronomers, hydrologists, medical men,
typographers, historians, archaeologists, experts in geogra­
phy, law and art, economists and linguists. They not only
solved practical military problems (e.g., the manufacture of
ammunition by using Egypt’s natural resources, the problems
of water supply, combating epidemics in the army, tax gath­
ering, etc.); they also compiled military maps and made a
thorough study of a country that was as yet little explored.
The result was a twenty-volume Description de VEgypte, in
which is collected the most diverse information on the re­
gime of the N ile, on irrigation, farming, crafts, way of life
and customs, cultural monuments, social relations, folk mu­
sic, state finances, etc. These valuable monographs remain to
this day a valuable source of information, which no student
can ignore. The political results of the expedition, however,
were nil.
During the three years of French occupation, the Egyp­
tians experienced the harsh, yet useful school of the national
liberation movement. They rose in arms to uphold their coun­
try’s independence. The results of their struggle were tan­
gible. Their military experience stood them in good stead
in their struggle both against the British colonialists, who suc­
ceeded the French, and against the Mameluke feudal lords.
47
 CHAPTER III

EGYPT UNDER THE RULE OF MOHAMMED ALI

THE BRITISH OCCUPATION (1801-03). After the

expulsion of the French from Egypt, three armies remained
in the country: the British, the Turks and the Mamelukes.
The occupation forces were made up of over 20,000 British
and sepoys, 40,000 Turks and 4,000 Mamelukes. According
to the chronicler Jabarti, they “looted the merchants’ shops,
made the artisans pay a fourfold tax and raped the women.
Upon entering a village, they imposed an indemnity on the
people, arrested the sheikhs, and words cannot be found to
describe their behaviour to the women.” On the roads they
robbed and murdered lonely wayfarers and looted caravans.
They seized barges loaded with goods on the Nile and threw
the sailors and merchants overboard. “They killed a mule
driver and sold his mules at the bazaar.” Villages were de­
populated and agriculture was abandoned. This fanned the
flames of discontent against the occupying forces.
At the same time discord was growing in the camp of the
enemy. Turkey strove to retain her hold on Egypt. England
wanted Egypt for herself and in her struggle against the
Turks was backed by the Mamelukes. The British general
in command ordered the Egyptian Pasha, a Turkish Govern­
ment appointee, to give the Mamelukes back their estates and
government posts. But the Turkish Pasha had instructions
from Sultan Selim III to exterminate the Mamelukes. The
Sultan was determined to strengthen his rule over the country.
The Turks managed to lure the Mamelukes into a trap,
destroy some of them and take the others prisoner.
The British then induced the Pasha to free all 2,500 Ma­
melukes by threatening to bombard Cairo. They were handed
over to the British command, which met them with military
honours and formed them into new feudal detachments. In

48
the war of words that followed, the British commander or­
dered the Turkish fleet to withdraw from all Egyptian ports
and threatened to put the Turkish admiral in irons and ship
him to London if he did not comply.
However, the British domination soon came to an end.
According to the Treaty of Amiens, concluded on March 27,
1802, between England and France, the British were obliged
to leave Egypt. They tried to prolong the evacuation, but
their main forces were withdrawn by the beginning of 1802
and the last units left Alexandria in March 1803.
The British, however, did not relinquish their aggressive
plans. They took the pro-English Mameluke leader, Moham­
med el-Alfy, to London with them to let him loose again
on Egyptian soil at a propitious moment. Napoleon had not
relinquished his aggressive plans either. In October 1802,
he sent Colonel Sebastiani (in 1803 he became a general) to
Egypt to prepare the way for a new expedition. Sebastia­
ni, an expert on the East, was also a brilliant intelligence
agent and diplomat. He established contact with the Mame­
luke leaders Ibrahim-bey and Osman Bardisi.

THE TURKO-MAMELUKE W AR (1802-04). Upon the

departure of the British, the Turkish Pasha decided to resume
the war against the Mamelukes, and in 1802 he sent his
forces into Upper Egypt, where the Mamelukes had estab­
lished themselves. But the Mamelukes had concluded an al­
liance with the bedouin sheikhs and thus had a large bedouin
army at their disposal. They had also formed several detach­
ments from among the Nubians. The Turks were crushed.
The Mamelukes swept along the river in irrepressible waves,
plundering and burning villages on their way. In the Battle
of Damanhur, the Mamelukes destroyed 5,000 Turks (out of
7,000) with a loss of sixty men. They then joined forces with
the British who were still quartered in Alexandria.
After the evacuation of the British forces from Alexan­
dria (in March 1803) the Mamelukes withdrew to Upper
Egypt. But the disputes among the Turks over the distribu­
tion of war booty brought them back.
Military rebellions continued to break out in Cairo. In the
space of one month three pashas succeeded one another. A
large detachment of the Turkish army (Albanian mercena­
ries) defected to the Mamelukes. In May 1803, Cairo was
4-573 49
seized by the united Mameluke and Albanian forces. Power
passed into the hands of a triumvirate, composed of the Alba­
nian commander Mohammed Ali and two Mameluke beys.
Mohammed Ali, who played an important role in the his­
tory of Egypt, was still young at the time. He was born in
1769 in the Macedonian city of Kavalla. There are many
stories about his childhood. He appears to have been the son
of a small landlord, but lost his parents early in life and
was brought up in a strange family. When he came of age
he started a tobacco business, but at thirty a great change
came about in his life. The Porte ordered that Kavalla send
a small Albanian detachment of about three hundred men
to Egypt and Mohammed A li was made its second in com­
mand. Having distinguished himself in the very first battle,
he was put in command of all the Albanian troops who were
part of the Turkish expeditionary army in Egypt. The first
victories fanned his ambitions and he decided to gain posses­
sion of the whole country. For this purpose he entered into
an alliance with the Mamelukes, then launched a joint war
against the Pasha, which ended in January 1804 with the
utter defeat of the Turks.

CAIRO UPRISING (1804-05). THE A D VENT TO POW­

ER OF MOHAMMED ALI. It seemed as though the Ma­
melukes had once again established themselves in Egypt.
They had regained power and their estates, driven out the
Turks and were once again robbing the people.
The British, who by this time had resumed their war against
France, decided to take advantage of the Mamelukes’
victory. Their agent, the Mameluke bey, Mohammed el-Alfy,
was hastily embarked on a British frigate and sent to A lex­
andria (February 1804).
But Sebastiani’s work had not been in vain. The Mame­
luke clique, led by Osman Bardisi, rebelled against the British
agent. Mohammed el-Alfy’s detachment was destroyed and
el-A lfy fled to the desert.
The jubilant victors returned to the capital, but here they
found themselves confronted by a popular uprising.
The working population of Cairo had decided to take ad­
vantage of the rift in the Mameluke camp and overthrow
the hated Mameluke feudal lords. The uprising was led by
the clergy, particularly El-Azhar sheikhs. On the appointed
50
day, the people refused to pay taxes and began killing the
tax gatherers. Fierce street fighting ensued. The court of the
Mameluke bey, Osman Bardisi, was besieged and destroyed
(March 12, 1804) and Bardisi fled from Cairo.
The people’s wrath was also directed against the Alba­
nians, who were the Mamelukes’ accomplices. Mohammed
Ali, however, was a shrewd politician. Recognising the
power of the growing popular movement, he went over to its
side and promised a gathering of sheikhs at El-Azhar to
abolish taxes. Declaring himself the defender of the Egyptian
people’s rights, he led his Albanian troops against the Ma­
meluke feudal lords. This clever manoeuvre, dictated by a
sober awareness of the balance of forces, secured for Moham­
med Ali power over Egypt. The gathering of sheikhs elected
him qoLvm mcCqam, in other words, the Egyptian Pasha’s
deputy. The Turkish governor of Alexandria, Khorshid, was
elected pasha.
The banished Mamelukes, laid siege to the city. Cairo
withstood the four-month siege and forced the Mamelukes
to retreat to Upper Egypt.
Mohammed A li’s popularity grew. The people regarded
the talented colonel as their leader but the Porte eyed his
elevation with fear and annoyance. The Sultan ordered
Mohammed A li to return home. This caused discontent in
Cairo. As a sign of protest the city shops and stalls were
closed, popular processions began and the Porte was com­
pelled to annul its decree.
Throughout the winter of 1804-05, Mohammed A li and
his troops pursued the Mamelukes through Upper Egypt. In
the meantime, Khorshid Pasha with his janissaries revived
all the horrors of the Mameluke regime. Khorshid imposed
heavy indemnities on the city-dwellers and took hostages.
He collected taxes from the war-ravaged villages a year in
advance. But the people of Egypt, who had driven out the
French and the Mamelukes, had no intention of being humil­
iated by the janissaries. In May 1805, the citizens of Cairo
once more rose in rebellion. They drove out the janissaries
and dethroned Khorshid, and a meeting of sheikhs declared
Mohammed A li ruler of Egypt.
Sultan Selim III was forced to recognise Mohammed A li
as the Egyptian Pasha. He was too occupied with other
events to do otherwise. In 1804, on the Balkan Peninsula,
4*
51
in Serbia, a big national liberation uprising had flared up.
The situation in Bulgaria and Greece was also uneasy and
the old Ottoman army was suffering one defeat after another.
Realising that the Turkish medieval army had lost its punch,
this reforming Sultan made determined efforts to reorganise
it in new regiments, Nizam El-Gaclicl (regiments of the new
order). His own people protested against the introduction
of taxes for the up-keep of the regular units and the reforms
were also opposed by the janissaries, Ulema and Dervishes. A
new movement, directed against the reforms, the new army
and taxes, arose under the slogan “Religion and Old Laws”.
In March 1805, Selim III issued a decree on recruitment
into the regulars. The decision evoked janissary mutinies in
many provinces. The punitive expedition sent by Selim III
was defeated and Selim was compelled to annul the decree.
Naturally, in such circumstances he could not actively in­
tervene in Egypt’s affairs. The Sultan made one more unsuc­
cessful attempt to remove Mohammed Ali from Egypt but,
on meeting the resistance of the citizens of Cairo, beat a hasty
retreat. In 1807, Selim III was overthrown by the rebellious
janissaries and killed.

THE ANGLO-TURKISH W A R OF 1807. THE BRIT­

ISH EXPEDITION TO EGYPT. In August 1805, the
war between England and France was resumed and soon
spread to the East. Both Powers accordingly stepped up their
intrigues in Egypt. In 1806, the Mameluke bey and British
protégé Mohammed el-A lfy turned up in Egypt. H e was
opposed by Osman Bardisi, who was pro-French. Mohammed
A li used the struggle between the Mamelukes to his own
ends. Supported by Osman Bardisi and the citizens of Cairo,
he defeated el-Alfy, who in 1806 died of mysterious causes.
Apparently he had been poisoned. The same fate soon befell
Osman Bardisi. Mohammed Ali had rid the Egyptians of
the Mameluke leaders, but the war against the Mamelukes
went on. Mohammed Ali relentlessly pursued them to Upper
Egypt.
The Ottoman Empire was drawn into the war between
England and France on the latter’s side. In 1806, the French
Ambassador to Istanbul, General Sebastiani, provoked a
conflict between the Porte and Russia, who was England’s
ally. In January 1807, when the main forces of the Turkish

52
 army were deployed on the Danube against the Russians,
England demanded that the Porte banish Sebastiani at once
and surrender its fleet, the Dardanelles and their batteries
to the English. Moldavia and Walachia were to go to the
Russians. The Turkish Government rejected this ultimatum.
The English fleet then entered the Sea of Marmara and
threatened to bombard Istanbul.
The approach of the squadron caused a patriotic upsurge
in the capital. W hile the English fleet waited for a fair wind
in order to enter the Bosporus, the Turks fortified the capi­
tal and the shores of the Dardanelles under the direction of
Sebastiani and French engineers, whereupon the British
admiral decided that any attempt to storm Istanbul would
be hopeless and withdrew his fleet to the Mediterranean.
The British now decided to launch an attack against Egypt.
On March 17, 1807, they landed a 5,000-strong force at Alex­
andria. Mohammed Ali led the Egyptians against the in­
vaders. At the end of March, the 2,000-strong British force
which had penetrated Rosetta was crushed by the Egyptians
in the streets of the city. The British general sent another
detachment to Rosetta twice the size of the first, but it was
also defeated. In the Battle of Rosetta, the fellaheen and
bedouins fought side by side with, professional soldiers.
W hile the English tried to gain possession of Rosetta, the
citizens of Cairo proceeded to fortify the city.
The British never did advance on Cairo. After their
second defeat near Rosetta and the unsuccessful attempt to
instigate a new revolt of the Mamelukes, they withdrew to
Alexandria. W hen Mohammed Ali advanced on Alexandria,
the commander of the British forces asked Mohammed Ali
to sign peace. In September 1807, the remaining British
troops were shipped home and Mohammed Ali entered A lex­
andria. H is popularity had grown immensely and he was
hailed as the heroic defender of Egypt.

AGRARIAN REFORM OF 1805-15. EXTERM INATION

OF THE MAMELUKES. Mohammed Ali came to power
in the struggle against the Mameluke feudal lords. H e con­
tinued the fight against the Mamelukes for four years from
1804 to 1807. During the British expedition of 1807, he
agreed to a truce with the Mamelukes in order to repulse
the British. The truce was not a stable one. Having recog-

53
nised Mohammed Ali as their suzerain, the Mamelukes main­
tained their control over Upper Egypt, which became the
nucleus of continuous plots and mutinies.
After his victory over the British, Mohammed Ali devoted
himself to land reforms which dealt a blow at the holdings
of the multazims and the Mamelukes. In 1808, he confiscated
the estates of the multazims, who were trying to avoid pay­
ing taxes, and in 1809 deprived them of half the faiz. In
1812, he took away all the land owned by the Mamelukes.
In 1814, he completely abolished the iltizam system. Now
the fellaheen paid taxes not to the multazims, but directly
to the state. The personal dependence of the fellaheen on
the multazims was also abolished. A ll that remained in the
multazims’ hands were the usia lands. Alloted lands (atar)
were made state property. True, by way of compensation,
Mohamnied A li ordered that the multazims be paid a faiz
at the treasury’s expense in the form of an annual pension.
But the economic basis of their power was undermined.
Mohammed Ali, however, did not abolish the feudal mode
of production. The liquidation of the Utizams and the shar­
ing out of the common land, begun in 1813, undoubtedly
altered the conditions of the fellaheen. But the fellah was
still exploited by the feudal lords, although he now worked
for the feudal state as a whole, not for an individual lord.
Moreover, it was not long before most of the land which
had passed under thè control of the state was once again
in private hands. In the thirties (the first grant is usually
dated from December 1, 1829), Mohammed Ali distributed
large tracts of land to his kin and members of his suite, to
higher dignitaries and officers of the Albanian, Kurdish,
Circassian and Turkish detachments. Within a short time,
he had given away hundreds of thousands of feddans of
land together with the peasants who worked them. Subse­
quently, after 1854, their owners had to pay the uslir tax
(or tithe), from which they came to be known as ushria (by
the tithe payers). Thus, having deprived the ancient feudal
nobility of its estates and power and having liquidated the
multazim class, Mohammed Ali created in its place a new feu­
dal nobility which became the mainstay of the new dynasty.
Between 1809 and 1815, Mohammed Ali appropriated the
waqf land (rizq) to the state, and the government took upon
itself the up-keep of the mosques and clergy. This measure
54
did not please the clergy and several sheikhs threatened to
“overthrow him whom we have elevated”. But Mohammed
Ali drove these sheikhs out of Cairo and brutally suppressed
their opposition.
The confiscation of the Utizams, the curtailment of the
faiz and other measures caused discontent among the Ma­
melukes, who both in 1809 and 1810 instigated unsuccessful
revolts against Mohammed Ali. Some of the Mamelukes fled
to the Sudan and some recognised the authority of Moham­
med Ali and remained in Egypt. Many of them settled in
Cairo. But they could not forget their former estates and
power and prepared new revolts aimed at restoring Mame­
luke feudalism.
Mohammed Ali decided to put an end to the Mameluke
menace once and for all. In 1811, he was commissioned by
the Porte to send his troops to Arabia to destroy the newly
established Wahhabi government. On the day of his depar­
ture, on March 1, 1811, Mohammed Ali organised a military
parade in Cairo, in which five hundred Mamelukes also took
part. The troops gathered in the citadel, where they started
their march through the city. W hen most of the troops had
left the fortress, the Albanians closed the citadel gates, sur­
rounded the Mamelukes and massacred them. Searches were
made in the Mameluke homes. In Cairo, in the provinces and
in Upper Egypt, everywhere Mohammed A li’s soldiers and
the people hunted down the Mamelukes. Almost all the
Mamelukes were seized and executed. Only a handful es­
caped by fleeing to the Sudan.

THE MILITARY REFORMS OF MOHAMMED ALI.

Mohammed A li’s agrarian reforms paved the way for m ili­
tary reforms and were put into practice during the fight
against the Mamelukes who fiercely opposed his reforming
activities. The sad fate of the Turkish reformers, Selim III
and Mustafa Pasha Bairaktar, who had been killed in 1808
by reactionaries, served as a warning to Mohammed Ali. A
shrewd politician, he realised that in order to create a strong
regular army, he had to get rid of internal reaction. Hence
the reprisals against the Mamelukes (the Egyptian janissa­
ries). Mohammed Ali thus succeeded in avoiding Selim I l l ’s
mistakes. The result was a new and modern Egyptian army.
Mohammed Ali set about the task of creating a regular

55
army the moment he came to power. Due to the lack of men
and weapons, progress was at first slow. The nucleus of the
new army was formed by Albanians. Egyptians were not
recruited, because Turkish-Mameluke traditions were still
strong among them. After the Arabian campaign (1811-19),
however, and especially after the campaign against the
Morea (1824-28), during which the African soldiers, who
comprised the greater part of the Egyptian army, perished
from the cold, Mohammed Ali finally decided to conscript
the native Egyptians (fellaheen). This army was destined
to gain brilliant victories for Mohammed Ali in Syria.
At first, the troops were trained by foreign military ex­
perts. After the campaign against Arabia, Mohammed Ali
set up a large training camp at Aswan, where thousands of
young Egyptians and Sudanese were trained by French and
Italian instructors. These were mainly officers of the empire,
who had left their homeland after the return of the Bour­
bons. An outstanding role was played by the talented French
officer Seve, nicknamed Suleiman Pasha. Mohammed Ali
also set up military schools for Egyptian commanders: an
infantry school in Damietta, a cavalry school in Giza and an
artillery school in Tura (near Cairo). The Academy of the
General Staff was opened in 1826. French military regula­
tions were translated into Arabic. The Egyptian army was
patterned on Napoleon’s army. Its armament included artil­
lery. “This outstanding artillery may be compared to that
of the European armies,’’ wrote one of Napoleon’s marshals.
“You look at it and marvel at the power of the government
that has been able to turn the fellaheen into such first-rate
soldiers.” Weapons were purchased in Europe but often they
were also manufactured in Egypt.
By the thirties of the 19th century, the regular Egyptian
army had grown to considerable proportions. In 1883, it had
36 infantry regiments (3,000 soldiers in each regiment), 14
Guard regiments with an over-all strength of 50,000 men,
15 cavalry regiments with 500 men in each regiment and five
artillery regiments comprising 2,000 soldiers—a total of al­
most 180,000 soldiers. Moreover, irregular units with an
over-all strength of approximately 40,000 men also served
in the Egyptian army.
Mohammed Ali did not limit himself to the creation of
a land force. He studied the reforms of Peter I and would
56
often compare himself with the great Russian reformer. Like
Peter I, Mohammed Ali decided to create a national Egyp­
tian fleet.
He not only purchased ships abroad—in Marseilles, Livor­
no and Trieste. In 1829, after almost the whole Egyptian
fleet had been destroyed in the Battle of Navarino, Moham­
med Ali built a dockyard at Alexandria (“the Alexandrian
Arsenal”). It was completed within a very short time. In
January 1831, the first one-hundred-cannon ship was
launched. At first most of the workers engaged in the ship­
building industry were Europeans, but soon highly skilled
native workers were trained. The Arabs quickly mastered
the technical professions. Almost all the 8,000 workers at
the dockyard were Egyptians. “The Alexandrian dockyard,
where all the work is done by the Arabs and which can easi­
ly compete with all the dockyards in the world, clearly
shows what can be done with these people. The Europeans
would never have obtained such amazing results within such
a short period,” wrote a European observer.
Crews to man the ships were also trained. W ithin a short
space of time, 15,000 Egyptian seamen were ready for ser­
vice. Commanders received their training at the newly estab­
lished naval college. “The Arabs are versatile and have
excellent abilities. They appear to be born sailors,” wrote
the same observer. In addition, Mohammed Ali erected
several new fortresses in Egypt and strengthened the old
ones.

DEVELOPMENT OF INDUSTRY A N D AGRICUL­

TURE. MONOPOLIES. The reorganisation of the army
called for the creation of many workshops and manufactories.
Smelting shops, smitheries, metal workshops, sail-canvas
manufactories and other subsidiary enterprises were built
at the Alexandria shipyard. New factories sprung up in
Cairo and Rosetta. An iron foundry with an annual capac­
ity of 2,000 tons of pig iron, three arsenals along French
lines, saltpetre works and a gun-powder factory were also
built. Cotton, linen, fez and cloth mills as well as rope yards
were erected. Sugar factories and creameries appeared. A ll
these enterprises belonged to the state or to members of the
royal family.
Under Mohammed Ali, the development of agriculture

57
was accelerated, especially the growth of export cotton, rice,
indigo and other crops. The development of agriculture was
furthered by Jumel’s (a Frenchman) introduction of a new
cotton plant and by the implementation of an extensive pro­
gramme for building irrigational projects. Old watering
canals were restored and new ones built. In the Delta, the
transition from basin to perennial irrigation was begun. M o­
hammed Ali lay the foundation of the great barrage across
the N ile at the beginning of the Delta. As a result, the area
of irrigated land increased by approximately 100,000
feddans and the area under cultivation rose from 2 million
feddans in 1821 to 3.1 million feddans in 1883.
A ll Egypt’s industrial, craft and agricultural production
during Mohammed A li’s reign was controlled by the govern­
ment. This control was effected by a system of monopolies,
a peculiar type of centralised regulation of the country’s
economy. The system of monopolies took shape in the period
from 1816 to 1820. The peasant and artisan households were
put under the supervision of officials, and the government
was given the exclusive right to purchase and sell the goods
they produced. Each year, the peasants were told how many
feddans to sow and with what crops. The amount of obliga­
tory deliveries and purchase prices were determined. Along
with agricultural products, the government monopolised the
production and purchase of yam, cloth, kerchiefs, saltpetre,
soap, soda, sugar and other goods.
The agricultural and craft monopolies were supplemented
by trade monopolies, the state being the only supplier of
Egyptian goods on the home market and the only exporter.
The retail dealers in the towns turned into virtual govern­
ment agents for the.sale of state-monopoly goods.

TH E CONDITIONS OF TH E FELLAHEEN A N D THE

WORKERS. Mohammed A li’s military reforms and economic
reconstruction were realised at the expense of the masses.
The setting up of a series of large and quite advanced
industrial establishments brought into being an industrial
proletariat.
The conditions of the Egyptian workers were very bad,
worse than those of their European brothers. The factory’s
internal organisation resembled a Russian feudal manufac­
tory or even a military settlement in the times of Arakche-

58
yev1. The factory workers were organised in platoons, com­
panies and battalions. They had to obey officers and do
military drills. They lived in barracks and were forcibly
recruited to the factory, where they received only meagre
wages. According to the data presented in the 1883 budget, 28
million francs were spent on maintenance of the army,
3.5 million francs for the private expenses of Mohammed
A li and only 2.75 million francs for the up-keep of facto­
ries and workers’ wages.
The peasants were no better off than the workers. Although
the fellah had rid himself of the hated Mamelukes and the
multazims, matters had not improved. As under the Mame­
lukes, he was bound to the land. He had to do sixty days of
corvee a year on the estates of Mohammed A li and his at­
tendants. The taxes he had used to pay to the multazims
were now collected by state tax gatherers at higher rates.
Under the Mamelukes he had been exempt from military
service. Now he was liable to be conscripted for long periods
into the feudal army with its harsh system of corporal punish­
ment. He could not dispose of his products as he liked and
was obliged to sell most of them to state buyers at low
prices.
The peasants and artisans died of hunger while the
monopolies continued to derive large profits, enabling the
government to build up a new army and enriching the mer­
chants who bought the right to buy up monopolised goods
and gather taxes.
Many of the fellaheen and artisans were unable to bear
the yoke any longer. They rebelled and fled to Syria. The
Egyptian Government demanded their return and brutally
suppressed the popular uprisings. (In 1822, an uprising took
place in Cairo, in 1823, in the province of Minufiya, in 1824,
in Upper Egypt and in 1826, in the region of Bilbeis.)

REORGANISATION OF TH E STATE MACHINERY.

Formally Egypt continued to be regarded as a pashalik of
the Ottoman Empire and Mohammed A li as its governor
and pasha, who was subordinate to the Sultan and the Porte.

1 Arakcheyev—the brutal favourite of Russian tsars Paul I and

Alexander I; a period of reactionary police despotism and gross
domination of the military is connected with his activities.—Ed.

59
H e preserved the mask of a vassal, but in reality he exe­
cuted only those of the Porte’s orders which were to his ad­
vantage and sabotaged those that were not. Egypt had, in
fact, become an independent state with its own government,
army, laws and tax system. Mohammed Ali paid an annual
tribute to the Sultan, comprising approximately three per
cent of all budget expenditure, he received investiture from
the Sultan, the latter’s name was mentioned in the khutbahs
and with this ended Egypt’s dependence on the Porte.
Foreigners called Mohammed Ali die viceroy.
In order to strengthen Egypt’s defence potential, Moham­
med Ali carried out an administrative reform. He abolished
the old Mameluke administrative system, which had the
provincial governors’ (kashifs) arbitrary power, and created
a centralised machinery of state. He established a number
of ministries on the European pattern with strictly defined
functions. The War Ministry was in charge of the army
and fleet. The Ministry of Finance gathered taxes. The Trade
Ministry was in charge of monopolies; it also had the monop­
oly of foreign trade. The Ministry of Public Education
founded a number of schools and sent students abroad to
study European sciences. Finally, the Ministries of Foreign
and Home Affairs were formed. Under the ministries a
series of councils and committees were established to deal
with such questions as naval affairs, farming, public health,
etc.
Mohammed Ali divided Egypt into seven new provinces
or mudiriyas , at the head of which stood a governor (??iu-
dir ) who was subordinate to the central government, carried
out administrative duties and collected taxes. He was also
responsible for managing government workshops and manu­
factories, and for seeing that the canals, bridges and roads
were in a good condition. He ensured the timely sowing and
gathering of the crops. The mudiriya was divided into dis­
tricts (marakazes) with a ma'mur at their head. The local
administrative unit was the nahiya with a nazir at its head.
Finally, the governor of the village was its sheikh. This har­
monious strictly subordinated administrative system ensured
the government complete control over all the sections of
the state machinery.
Mohammed Ali invited French doctors, engineers, teach­
ers and lawyers to help Europeanise the administration

60
of the country and, by so doing, formed the basis of a bour­
geois intelligentsia among the Egyptians.

CULTURAL REFORMS. The creation of an army and

a new machinery of state called for educated people. Mo­
hammed Ali, therefore, sent many young Egyptians to Euro­
pe to study military and technical sciences, agronomy,
medicine, languages and law. Specialised literature and text­
books were translated into Arabic. Upon the completion of
their studies, they returned home to take up their posts as
officers and officials or directors and engineers at government
enterprises. Some of them became ministers.
For the first time in Egypt secular schools appeared. Over
6,000 pupils from eight to twelve years old studied the Ara­
bic language and arithmetic at elementary schools. Pupils
from twelve to sixteen also studied the Turkish language,
mathematics, history and geography at secondary schools.
After graduating, they could go to a special school to take
a four-year course. Apart from military schools, other
schools were founded: a medical school, a school for veter-
inaries, polytechnical, engineering and agricultural schools,
a school for linguists and a music school. The
students received a stipend and did not have to pay for their
board.
Military and civilian hospitals were also founded in Egypt.
They were no worse than the majority of European hospitals
at the time.
In 1822, Mohammed Ali opened Egypt’s first printing-
house, which published books in the Arabic, Turkish and
Persian languages. Under Mohammed Ali, the first Egyptian
newspaper El-Vakia El-Misria was founded. Mohammed Ali
himself learned how to read very late in life, at the age of
forty-five. For almost ten years he had ruled Egypt as an
illiterate, mastering the fundamentals of warfare, engineer­
ing and history by sheer innate intelligence. W ith his new
knowledge he studied the details of administering the army
and government enterprises and followed reports in the
foreign press.

GENERAL CHARACTERISATION OF MOHAMMED

ALPS REFORMS. Like the reforms of Peter I, Mohammed
A li’s reforms were of a progressive nature, although they
61
were a burden to’ the people, who were mercilessly exploited
by the feudal state. Like Peter I, Mohammed Ali did not
break the feudal mode of production, but only abolished the
most reactionary survivals of the Middle Ages. At the same
time he built up a state of landowners and merchants, created
a strong army and fleet and state machinery and carried out
a series of reforms which turned Egypt into a strong and
viable state.
Karl Marx thought highly of Mohammed A ll’s reforms.
Marx characterised him as “the only man” to replace a
“dressed up ‘turban’ by a real head”.1 He described Egypt
at the time as the “only vital element”12 in the Ottoman
Empire.
There was also much that was reactionary in Mohammed
A li’s reforms. H e brutally oppressed not only the Egyptian
workers, artisans and the fellaheen but other peoples as well.
He suppressed the Greek liberative uprising, subjugated
Arabia, Syria, the Sudan, Cilicia and Crete. He dreamed of
creating a vast multinational empire for Egypt’s landowners
and merchants. Apart from the Arabs, he ruled the Turks,
the Greeks and the Sudanese. Even in the neighbouring Arab
countries his troops behaved like conquerors in conquered
lands.
This merciless feudal yoke, continuous aggressive wars,
the opposition of the vanquished peoples and the Powers,
especially Britain, undermined Mohammed A li’s might and
in the end led to his downfall.

1 “The Russo-Turkish Difficulty—Ducking and Dodging of the

British Cabinet. Nesselrode’s Last Note—The East India Question.”
New York Daily Tribune, July 25, 1853.
2 “War in Burma—The Russian Question—Curious Diplomatic Cor­
respondence”, N ew York Daily Tribune, July 30, 1853.

62
 CHAPTER IV

PALESTINE, SYRIA AND IRAQ

AT THE BEGINNING OF THE 19th CENTURY

THE FAILURE OF FRENCH PLANS IN SYRIA.

Palestine, Syria and Iraq—remote provinces of the Ot­
toman Empire, brutally oppressed by local despots, who only
formally acknowledged the authority of the Sublime Porte—
were suddenly drawn into the whirl of events that shook
Europe at the dawn of the 19th century. During Napoleon’s
expedition to Egypt and the bitter Anglo-French struggle
in India, they found themselves at the hub of international
politics. Napoleon, who throughout his career never gave
up the idea of a campaign against India, had far-reaching
plans in which Syria and Iraq occupied an important place.
The French expedition to Egypt was to have been followed
up by an advance on India via Syria and Iraq along the
Euphrates Valley.
The Directory, continuing the traditions of the Bourbons
in this respect, had endeavoured to spread French influence
eastwards, with the defence of French trade and Eastern
Christianity as its watchwords. Even then, the necessity of
defending the “rights of Eastern Christians” had been used
extensively by the French bourgeoisie as an excuse for pene­
trating into Syria and Palestine and to cover up its expan­
sionist plans in the East. As in Egypt, the French bourgeoisie’s
aims were purely predatory. France’s concrete plans in this
region closely followed the strategies of Bonaparte’s Egyptian
expedition, and were also designed to realise his dreams of
conquest in India.
When Bonaparte launched a campaign against Syria, in
1799, during the expedition to Egypt, he did so with the
intention of forming an Arabian army with a French nucleus
to be deployed against the Turks and the British. For this he
63
counted on thé help of the Arab feudal lords and the local
Turkish governors. The talks with the Syrian Pasha, Jazzar,
however, were a failure, since the latter already had consid­
erable power, as well as money from the British. For over
twenty years he had exercised absolute control over Syria
and was not now willing to share his power with an inter­
loper.
As for Emir Beshir II of the Lebanon (to whom Colonel
Sebastiani was sent to open negotiations), he cunningly bided
his time, waiting to see which side would win. To Jazzar’s
orders to despatch his troops to Akka he answered that com­
plete anarchy reigned in the mountains, and that the people
would not pay taxes and would not hear of a campaign. But
this did not stop him from supplying both the Turks and
French with provisions. Beshir had to take into account the
fact that in the northern Lebanon, especially in Beirut, the
Catholic priests and monks who had fled from Europe were
stirring up hatred of the French Republic and Bonaparte
among the backward elements of the Maronite population.
Only the Sheikh of Safad, Salih, the grandson of the
famous Zahir ibn Omar, went over to Bonaparte’s side and
helped him rout the Mameluke troops at the foot of Mount
Tabor (on April 16, 1799). Here in Bonaparte’s camp, a
meeting took place between the victors and envoys of Beshir
II and the Maronites, who pledged their support in event of
the capture of Akka.
Yet, in spite of a seventy-day siege and repeated assaults
the French were unable to capture Akka, which was defended
by the guns of the British squadron under Sidney Smith.
On June 14, 1799, Bonaparte returned to Cairo.
Bonaparte’s reckless schemes had failed. The French
conquerors had not been actively supported by the people of
Syria. But the feeling of hatred towards Jazzar was so great
that the Syrian Arabs had not offered any support to the
Turks either.
The French army did not have such a deep effect in Syria
as it did in Egypt. The French got no further than Akka.
They occupied only the Palestine seacoast and the Esdraelon
Plain. They remained in the country for only three months.
But the military operations in Syria complicated the internal
situation and led to fresh outbursts of fighting between the
feudal lords.
64
 THE ANGLO-FRENCH STRUGGLE FOR IRAQ. The
failure of the Egyptian expedition foiled Bonaparte’s plans,
but did not deter him. Soon after the conclusion of the Treaty
of Amiens, the French once again became very active in the
Middle East. In the autumn of 1802, Colonel Sebastiani made
another tour of the countries of the Middle East, establishing
contacts with the local rulers and preparing the way for
a new French expedition.
In 1805, Napoleon invigorated his Eastern policy by
drawing up a plan for a campaign against India. This time
he intended to effect a landing at the estuary of the Orontes
and from there to advance towards the valley of the
Euphrates.
The next step was to ensure the passage of the French
troops through Iraq. Bonaparte’s agents came to an agree­
ment with the Baghdad Pasha, Hafiz Ali, who had seized
power in Iraq after the death of Buyuk Suleiman in 1802
and now, with the help of French instructors, formed a
regular military force along European lines. In August 1807,
he was killed by conspirators, but his nephew, Kuchuk Sulei­
man, who was also connected with France, routed the con­
spirators with the help of the force of regulars his uncle
had built up. On the insistence of General Sebastiani the
Porte made Kuchuk Suleiman the Pasha of Baghdad. At the
same time, France concluded a treaty of alliance with Iran
and a military mission under General Gardane was des­
patched to Iran to reorganise the Shah’s army and make
preparations for the passage of French troops through
the country.
But the position of Iraq on the route to India was in­
creasing Iraq’s importance to Britain and the activities
of French agents there evoked British opposition. The East
India Company had established mail routes through Iraq at
the end of the 18th century, the mail being delivered from
Bombay to Basra by sea and from there by camel to Istan­
bul via Baghdad and Aleppo. Accordingly, the representa­
tives of the East India Company in Basra and Baghdad,
who controlled this route (like the British representatives in
Iran), received instructions to neutralise the activities of
Napoleon’s agents. The plot against the Baghdad Pasha,
Hafiz Ali, in 1807 was, in fact, organised with the aid of
the British.
5 -5 7 3 65
 In 1809, when the events in Spain diverted Bonaparte
from his Indian plans, the British achieved the expulsion
of the French mission from Iraq, but a conflict arose in the
same year between the East India Company and Kuchuk
Suleiman, and the representative of the Company was
forced to leave Baghdad.
Under British influence, in 1810, the Porte deposed Kuchuk
Suleiman and sentenced him to death. The new Baghdad
Pasha promised the East India Company to restore its priv­
ileges and not to interfere in its affairs, but in spite of his
promises he was driven out of Baghdad and killed by
Turkish troops. The trading stations of the East India
Company in Baghdad and Basra were re-established.
Thus, at the beginning of the 19th century France was
defeated in the fierce struggle for supremacy over the Near
East. Everywhere, except for Egypt, which was ruled by
Mohammed Ali, Britain held sway. She had considerably
fortified her positions in Iraq and in the region of the Persian
Gulf.

TH E W AHHABI RAIDS. In the first decade of the 19th

century, the towns and villages of Syria, eastern Palestine
and Iraq (right bank of the Euphrates) became the object
of constant Wahhabi raids.1 The advocates of wahhabism
did not recognise the Sultan’s authority over the Arab coun­
tries and strove to unite the latter on the basis of their reli­
gious doctrine. Lacking the necessary strength to realise
this task, they restricted themselves to systematic raids on
Syria and Iraq, during which they committed outrages,
pillaged towns and gathered tribute.
In April 1801, the Wahhabis stormed Karbala, the holy
city of the Shi9a. For two days they plundered the city, set
fire to homes and made short work of the apostates. They
killed over 4,000 persons and looted countless treasures
from the Shi9a mosque, and then withdrew to the desert.
The Baghdad Pasha sent a force to Arabia in their pursuit,
but it was routed.
In 1803, the Wahhabis turned up in the neighbourhood of
Aleppo. In 1804, they raided Zubair and Basra, but were
repulsed by the troops of the Baghdad Pasha, Hafiz Ali. On

1 For a detailed account of the Wahhabi state see Chapter V.

66
the orders of the Porte, Hafiz A li recruited an army for a
campaign against Arabia, but his expedition (1804-05) was
unsuccessful. The Wahhabis renewed their raids and made
another attempt to seize Basra, Zubair, Karbala and Nejef.
In 1808, a Wahhabi force of some 45,000 men launched
an attack on Baghdad, which was repulsed by Kuchuk Sulei­
man. In the same year, they appeared in the vast area
between Ma’an and Aleppo. In 1810, they turned up in
Hauran.
The Wahhabi raids on Syria and Iraq ceased only on
the arrival of Egyptian troops in Arabia (in 1811) which
threatened to liquidate the Wahhabi state.

TH E GROWTH OF FEUDAL ANARCHY. The extern­

al political complications of the Sublime Porte and the inter­
ference of the rowers, the failure of the 1807-08 reforms,
the death of Selim III and Mustafa Pasha Bairaktar strength­
ened the centrifugal tendencies of the Ottoman Empire.
The separatism of the pashas ruling the Arab provinces of
the Sublime Porte reached unheard-of proportions and
grew into a completely unprincipled struggle for power and
the paslialiks. The central government, which had neither
the strength nor the means for a fight with the rebellious
vassals, tried to find a way out of the complicated situation
by setting one group of pashas against another, but, in doing
so, only increased the general chaos. The European Powers,
followed by Iran and Egypt, actively intervened in the in­
ternecine strife, in which they saw an opportunity of gain­
ing their own ends.
Meanwhile, the French withdrawal from Palestine had
considerably increased the authority and might of Jazzar,
who credited himself with the victory over Napoleon. His
little Akka had withstood the invincible hordes of the
invaders and repulsed the invasion of an advanced Euro­
pean army that had never known defeat.
Intoxicated with success, Jazzar renewed his efforts to
gain control over the whole of Syria and started waging
continuous wars against the pashas of Damascus and Tripoli,
whose domains he dreamed of annexing. This naturally
brought him into conflict with the Porte, which eyed the
growing might of the Akka Pasha with displeasure. Sultan
Selim III, who was waging an obstinate struggle against the
5* 67
separatist tendencies of his deputies, tried to restrict Jazzar’s
power and influence, and at the same time Jazzer found a
new rival in the person of his protégé and vassal, the Leba­
nese Emir, Beshir II.
The heavy hand of Beshir II made short work of the
revolts of his feudal lords, and it was not long before he had
put an end to the old strife between the feudal lords in his
domains and united the whole of the Lebanon under his rule.
Jazzar decided to get rid of his rival, but in_its struggle
against Jazzar the Porte decided to support Beshir II.
Soon after the withdrawal of the French troops in 1799,
Jazzar dismissed Beshir II. The Porte immediately reinstated
him. Selim III confirmed Beshir IPs feudal rights not only in
the area under his control, but also in the provinces of Biqa’s,
Anti Lebanon, Jubeil and Saida. From that time onwards,
Beshir II became directly subordinate to the Porte, by-pass­
ing Jazzar Pasha. That was a severe blow to Jazzar, who
was thus deprived of the control of the Lebanon.
But the Porte’s orders were executed only while the Tur­
kish army was passing through Syria on its way to Egypt.
No sooner had it passed than Jazzar skilfully using the dis­
content among the Lebanese peasants as an excuse, banished
Beshir II and appointed two of his own agents to govern in
his place. In 1800, the outrages of the new emirs led the
Lebanese mountaineers to revolt and gave Beshir II an op­
portunity to regain his former power. He continued the
struggle against Jazzar, for several years until finally, in
1803, he concluded a peace, by which he agreed to pay Jaz­
zar four hundred thousand piastres “for past arrears” and an
annual tribute of 500,000 piastres.1
In 1804, the death of Ahmed Jazzar intensified feudal
anarchy, and bloody internecine strife broke out in every
pashalik. In Akka, after several months of fighting, Suleiman,
the commander of Jazzar’s army, became pasha and ruled
southern Syria for fifteen years (from 1804 to 1819). In
Damascus, the pashas succeeded to power one after the other.
At the same time, they had to fight against the Wahhabis.
Genj-Yusef, a platoon commander, distinguished himself in

1 Piastre (in Arabic—qirish)—a money unit in the Ottoman Empire.

At the beginning of the 19th century, a piastre was worth about a
quarter of a franc.

68
the fighting and eventually gained possession of the pashalik
of Damascus. He then fought not only against the Wahhabis,
but also against the neighbouring pashas from Akka, Tripoli
and Aleppo. These wars led to his downfall and he fled to
Egypt somewhere around 1812. A member of Jazzar’s retinue,
Mustafa Berber, installed himself in Tripoli. Accidentally
appointed the commander of the citadel of Tripoli, he made
himself master of the entire region, collected taxes and refused
to recognise any authority except his own. In Jaffa, power
was seized by a certain Mahmud Bey, nicknamed Abu Nabbut
(“father of the hickory stick”).
The picture was the same in Iraq. The Persian ruler of
Kermanshah, and the Kurdish beks actively intervened in
support of the side they favoured. After the death of Kuchuk
Suleiman in 1810, Abdullah gained possession of Baghdad,
where he was destined to rule for two years. He was replaced
in 1812 by Said Pasha, the son of the famous Buyuk Sulei­
man. The years of his rule (1812-17) were marked by feudal
disorder and the fruitless attempts of the Porte to put an end
to separatism and the stubbornness of the Iraqi Kulemenis.

TH E REFORMS OF BESHIR II IN TH E LEBANON.

During the period of complete feudal disintegration, Beshir
II launched a campaign for the centralisation and reorganisa­
tion of the Lebanon. Although he created neither a regular
army nor new factories or schools, his activities were of a
progressive character and promoted the Lebanon’s economic
development.
Beshir II was often called “the terrible”. The mere men­
tion of his name filled his subjects with awe. Greedy and
arrogant, he possessed indomitable ambition and determina­
tion in pursuing it. Cunning, executions, torture, bribery and
plundering were the feudal methods by which, like other
oriental reformers, Beshir II hoped to end feudal arbitrari­
ness and develop the Lebanon’s economy.
He dedicated himself to the creation of a strong centralised
state and the liquidation of feudal anarchy. W hen Beshir II
succeeded to power in 1795, he exterminated several influen­
tial feudal families in the Lebanon and appropriated their
property. In the 19th century, he continued the struggle
against influential families. He wrested fiefs from rebellious
vassals and gave them to his sons. Soon after Jazzar’s death

69
 he annexed the feudal principality of Jubeil in the northern
Lebanon and then the Biqa’a Valley, which supplied the
Lebanon with wheat.
Beshir II took over estates from the big Druse feudal lords
of the southern Lebanon and settled them with Maronite
peasants from the northern district, who paid him a relatively
small rent, cultivated mulberry trees and spun silk. Some of
these leaseholders grew rich and eventually bought the land.
Beshir II also restricted the arbitrary rule of the Maronite
feudal lords of Kesruan.
Beshir IPs fierce struggle against feudal banditry resulted
in the complete elimination of lawlessness on the highroads
and traders were at last able to take their goods through the
Lebanese mountains, knowing that not a single highway rob­
ber would dare touch them for fear of being punished by
Beshir II. The peasants could also breathe more freely because
feudal taxes were less than in the time of Jazzar.
Beshir II restricted feudal arbitrariness, but permitted
himself the liberty of exploiting the Lebanese peasants. He
surrounded himself with regal luxury. The palace that was
built for him at Beit-Ed-Din is considered one of the greatest
monuments of Lebanese architecture.
Officially, Beshir II was a Moslam, but he and his relatives
“secretly” embraced Christianity and performed Christian
rites at his secret court church. This “conversion” was dic­
tated by political motives—the desire to use the influence of
the Maronite clergy to unite the Lebanon under the Shehab
rule—and Beshir II himself did much to spread this “secret”
among the Lebanese Christians. The Catholic press pictured
him as a devout Christian. Actually he was indifferent to
religion. As the famous French poet Lamartine wrote,
Beshir II was a Druse with the Druses, a Christian with the
Christians, and a Moslem with the Moslems.

ABDULLAH PASHA AN D HIS “REFORMS”. THE

1820 UPRISING IN THE LEBANON. When the governor
of Akka, Suleiman Pasha, died in 1819, a tax-farmer, once in
his service, bought the pashalik of Akka from the Porte for one
of his favourite Mamelukes—Abdullah Pasha, a young man
of about 26 with a flare for poetry, in which he glorified his
imaginary feats of valour. He was also famous for his excel­
lent handwriting and presented the Turkish Sultan, Mah-
70
mud II, a lover of calligraphy, with a handwritten copy of
the Koran, thereby winning the Sultan’s favour. Thinking
he was imitating such reformers as Mahmud II and Moham­
med Ali, Abdullah Pasha recruited a regular infantry bat­
talion from among his Mamelukes, but from these whims
and several unsuccessful, yet unpunished revolts against
Mahmud II, Abdullah did not distinguish himself in any
way. He was completely in the hands of the tax-farmer,
who had bought the pashalik for him and, until he eventually
strangled him, was obliged to execute his orders. To meet
the tax-farmer’s demands Abdullah was forced to levy an
extraordinary tax throughout the Lebanon.
Beshir II, his vassal, set about gathering the tax. In 1820,
the Lebanese fellaheen, foreseeing a return to the times of
Jazzar, rose up in rebellion. Six thousand peasants held a
meeting in the village of Antilyas (the northern Lebanon)
where they announced their decision not to pay taxes. Beshir
II fled from the Lebanon, but the two emirs appointed in his
stead by Abdullah were unable to raise the necessary sum.
Abdullah then returned the Lebanon to Beshir II, who set
off at the head of a small force for Jubeil, where thousands
of insurgents surrounded his camp. Another force, led by
the big Druse Sheikh Junbalat, arrived just in time to help
Beshir II repulse the insurgents and put down the uprising.

THE EXTERM INATION OF THE DRUSE NOBILITY.

In 1822, the fear of incurring the Sultan’s wrath for his part
in the unsuccessful revolts of Abdullah Pasha once again
forced Beshir II to flee, this time to Egypt. In the Lebanon,
ower was seized by the Druse feudal lords headed by Sheikh
S unbalat. They elected one of the Shehabs to the post of the
Emir of the Lebanon. He was a weak-willed man, who
dutifully executed their orders. Ancient customs, the autoc­
racy and arbitrary rule were revived in the Lebanon, but
Mohammed Ali secured Beshir II’s pardon from the Porte
and the Emir returned to his domains. The feudal lords
revolted against the restoration of his authority. Beshir
II brutally dealt with them and the Junbalat’s castle was
destroyed. Sheikh Junbalat was taken prisoner and strangled.
His children were banished and their estates divided among
Beshir II’s sons. The same lot befell the Arslan emirs. Only
a few members of the Arslan family managed to escape.
71
In his struggle against feudal autocracy Beshir II reached
a point when he actually began to wipe out his own relatives
and, having thus strengthened his rule, he reigned until 1840,
when the international situation compelled him to leave the
Lebanon for ever.

THE REFORMS OF MAHMUD II A N D DISTURB­

ANCES IN SYRIA A N D PALESTINE. By the twenties of
the 19th century signs of growing discontent with the reforms
of Sultan Mahmud II began to emerge in Syria and Palestine.
Indignation at the Sultan’s innovations was widespread
among the religious, who branded him as an “infidel”, a trai­
tor to Islam. In an attempt to Europeanise the Ottoman Empire,
the Sultan had ordered his officials to wear European
suits, adopted the fez to replace the turban and reorganised
civil administration. In 1826, he officially abolished
the military-fief system of land tenure and the janissary
corps.
In reply to the decree on the formation of regular military
units the janissaries of Constantinople revolted. On June 15,
1826, they gathered on the square before their barracks and
turned over their messtins as a sign of insubordination to the
Sultan. The Sultan, however, suppressed the mutiny. He
surrounded the square with artillery and ordered the barracks
to be set on fire. Thousands of janissaries were burned to death
and those who tried to escape were shot down by the Sultan’s
guns.
The next step was to slaughter the janissaries in the prov­
inces. Their protectors, the Dervish Bektashi, who greatly
influenced the city-dwellers, were also severely punished.
The Dervish order of the Bektashi was disbanded, and the
guilds connected with the janissaries were completely reor­
ganised.
All this increased the feeling of discontent in the towns.
Moreover, a great deal of money was needed to carry out the
reforms and most of it had to be contributed by the artisans
and the small merchants. Wages fell, while taxes rose. Dis­
content grew into hatred for the Sultan, the “kafir”,1 who,
as rumour had it, went on drinking bouts with the nobles,

1 Kafir;—unbeliever, an apostate of Islam.

72
while the artisans’ children died of hunger. The Dervish
priests would compare the luxurious life of the Sultan with
the meagre existence of the artisans. Ideologists from among
the artisans, especially the Bektashi, attacked the opulence
and debauchery of the Sultan’s court in their sermons and
called for a return to the strict ascetic simplicity of morals,
and the preservation of ancient virtues and ancient, manual
tools. These appeals were usually combined with the preach­
ing of mysticism and civil disobedience.
The steady decline of the economy, the inability to under­
stand the true nature of the reforms, and the Dervish prop­
aganda, all this gave rise to a broad insurgent movement
embracing various towns of the Ottoman Empire. In Syria
the movement reached its peak in Aleppo and especially in
Damascus.
In 1825, big disturbances broke out in Damascus in con­
nection with the publication of a firman on money circula­
tion. “Threatening to kill the governor and slaughter all the
functionaries,” wrote a contemporary, “the people secured
the publication of an order to keep all the money in circula­
tion until the arrival of a treasurer from Constantinople.”
In the same year, an uprising took place in Jerusalem,
Bethlehem and Nablus, where the people refused to pay taxes.
Fresh uprisings flared up in Nablus in 1830 and in Damascus
in 1831.
In Damascus the Turkish Pasha, on orders from the
government, began making an inventory of all the artisan
shops and stores with a view to raising taxes. This served
as a signal for an uprising. The insurgents burnt the Pasha’s
palace and laid siege to the citadel in which he had taken
refuge together with the garrison. The siege lasted for six
weeks. W hen the supply of provisions ran out, the Pasha
made an attempt to break through the encirclement, and was
killed. But though they were victorious on the battlefield the
citizens of Damascus were unable to reap the fruits of their
victory.
These spontaneous uprisings and rebellions, and the gen­
eral discontent in Syria played into the hands of Mohammed
Ali, who had his eye on the Asian provinces of the Ottoman
Empire. When in 1831, the Egyptian troops invaded Syria
and Palestine, the people welcomed them as deliverers from
the tyranny of the infidel Sultan.
73
 THE REFORMS OF DA U D PASHA IN IRAQ (1817-31).
The Sultan’s prestige in Mesopotamia had also fallen to a
low ebb. Cut off by the mountains, Iraq was actually an
autonomous province, where the Porte’s authority was readily
recognised but not respected. Iraq was ruled by the Kule-
menis. Having beheaded his predecessor and brother-in-law
in 1817, Daud Pasha succeeded to power. A Georgian by
birth, he had as a child been sold into slavery to Buyuk
Suleiman. Daud stood out among the Kulemenis for his
literary and diplomatic gifts, and for his excellent knowledge
of Oriental languages and Moslem theology. He became
Buyuk Suleiman’s secretary and married the Sultan’s
daughter. After Suleiman’s death Daud fell into disgrace and
became a mullah in a Baghdad mosque. He established ties
with the clergy and at the same time succeeded in winning
the Kulemenis. to his side, and with their support he became
pasha.
Daud Pasha ruled Iraq despotically for fourteen years. He
imitated the Egyptian Pasha, Mohammed Ali, in many ways.
First, he abolished the capitulations, which had weighed
heavily on the local traders and placed the East India Com­
pany and its compradore agents (chiefly Persians) in a privi­
leged position. On his instructions in 1821, the latter were
deprived of their privileges and placed on the same footing
as the local traders.
The East India Company retaliated by starting a war.
Its fleet sailed up the Iraqi rivers and cut off connections
between Basra and Baghdad. Daud then started confiscating
the Company’s goods, and besieged its Baghdad residence.
The conflict ended temporarily in the closing down of the
Company’s establishments and the expulsion of its em­
ployees. Soon, however, the all-powerful East India Company
induced Daud Pasha to restore its privileges as well as those
of its agents and even compelled him to pay for the confis­
cated goods. Daud’s attempt to secure the interests of the
local traders was a failure.
In his struggle for the centralisation of Iraq, Daud Pasha
had to reckon with feudal and tribal separatism. He sup­
pressed tribal revolts, dismissed the sheikhs who were of
no use to him, and placed his own people at the head of
the tribes. The struggle for the subordination of feudal Kur­
distan was more difficult.
74
 The Kurdish beks had a powerful ally in the person of
the Iranian Shah. During the second half of the 18th cen­
tury feudal Iran had been in a state of decline, but in 1797,
the country was united under the rule of Fatih A li Shah,
who also strove to annex Iraq. The first thing he did was
to contact the beks of Iraqi Kurdistan. The beks acknowled­
ged themselves to be his vassals and started to pay him trib­
ute, and some of them were appointed regional governors
by the Shah. A ll attempts by the Baghdad pashas to restore
their power in Iraqi Kurdistan met with the resistance of the
Persian troops. Daud Pasha decided to put an end to this.
In 1821, he undertook a campaign against the new bek,
governor of Kurdistan, a Persian appointee, but was defeated
by the united Kurdish and Persian forces. Daud then launched
reprisals against the Persians in Iraq. He confiscated
their property and arrested them. He ordered his men to
confiscate the treasures of the Shi a clergy of Karbala and
Nejef. Many Persians, who had sought refuge in the Shi9a
mosques, were exterminated. These measures sharpened the
Turco-Iranian conflict over Kurdistan and resulted in the
war of 1821-23.
The odds were in Iran’s favour. The Iranian army had
been partially reorganised along European lines. The Turks
suffered a series of defeats in both Iraq and East Anatolia.
The Persians occupied Suleimaniya, Kirkuk and Mosul, and
were stopped only by an epidemic of cholera, whereupon
they concluded the Erzurum Peace Treaty (March 1823),
according to which Iraqi Kurdistan was to remain in the
hands of the Turkish pashas.
The war with Iran convinced Daud Pasha of the superior­
ity of European warfare and he set to work to create a
regular army. Unlike his predecessors, Daud employed not
French but British instructors. W ith the help of Colonel
Taylor, the East India Company’s new resident at Baghdad,
Daud Pasha formed regular units fitted out and trained in
the manner of the Anglo-Indian sepoys. Moreover, Daud
bought up-to-date artillery and built an arsenal at Baghdad
that fully answered the technical standards of his day.
To raise money for the reorganisation of the army, Daud,
like Mohammed Ali, exercised the exclusive right to buy up
and export Iraq’s main products: wheat, barley, dates and
salt. He bought sea-going and river vessels for shipping these
75
goods. Following Egypt’s example, he also tried to grow
cotton and sugar cane.
Daud, like Mohammed Ali, decided to use Turkey’s defeat
in the war against Russia in 1828-29 to secure the independ­
ence of Iraq, which was under his control. According to the
Treaty of Adrianople, Turkey was burdened with huge
indemnities. Sultan Mahmud II had demanded money from
his pashas. A special functionary of the Porte was sent to
Iraq to collect the tribute. On Daud Pasha’s orders he was
killed immediately after the lunch reception.
The Porte declared Daud Pasha a mutineer and in 1820,
sent the troops of A li Riza, the Pasha of Aleppo, to fight
against him. But Daud Pasha had long since begun to pre­
pare for the fight against the Porte. He had a well-trained
and well-equipped army and all that was needed for a war.
Having at his disposal regular units, a 25,000-strong ir­
regular infantry and cavalry corps and also a 50,000-strong
tribal levy, he had every reason to expect success. But the
outcome of the war was determined by other circumstances.
A catastrophic flood, crop failure and a fever epidemic under­
mined Iraq’s might. The plague of 1831 almost completely
destroyed Daud’s army. When the epidemic was over, Ali
Riza’s troops entered Iraq and occupied the emptied and
exhausted land, having encountered almost no resistance. In
September 1831, Daud Pasha was deposed and sent to
Istanbul. At the same time, an end was put to the separatism
of the Baghdad pashas and Kulemenis. From then on the
Baghdad pashas were appointed by the Porte and they saw
to it that its orders and policy were put into practice.
 CHAPTER V

THE WAHHABIS AND THE ARAB COUNTRIES

AT THE END OF THE 18th AND BEGINNING
OF THE 19th CENTURIES

ARABIA IN THE 18th CENTURY. Arabia had always

been the most backward country of the Arab world. Feudal
relations here still bore traces of a patriarchal way of life
reminiscent of the times of the prophet Mohammed. In the
18th century, as of old, nomadic cattle-breeding and oasis
irrigatory farming remained the basis of the country’s econ­
omy. Vast though they were, the Arabian steppes with
their meagre vegetation had never been able to satisfy the
needs of the growing cattle-breeding population. From time
immemorial, Arabia had suffered periodical “pasture crises”,
which played havoc with the primitive economy and drove
the surplus population from the peninsula. Besides causing
waves of emigration, the lack of pastures also compelled the
Bedouins to settle on the land, till the fields and cultivate
date palms and other fruit trees. Thus in Arabia arose “a
general relationship . . . between the settlement of one part
of the tribes and the continued nomadic life of the other”,1
which, according to Marx, was characteristic of all Oriental
tribes. Settlements originated in this way in the mountains of
Asir, Yemen, Hadhramaut, Oman, N ejd and in the oases at
the foot of the mountains.
At the beginning of the 18th century, the Arabian Penin­
sula did not have a single state organisation. Its population,
steppe Bedouins and settled farmers of the oases alike,
was divided into a number of tribes. Disunited and at
loggerheads with each other, they waged continuous inter­
necine wars over pastures, flocks, booty and the possession of
wells. And since the tribes were armed to a man the struggles
were extremely fierce and protracted.
1 Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, Moscow, 1965, p. 80.

77
 The feudal and tribal anarchy of the nomadic regions
was supplemented by the feudal disunity of the settled
regions. Almost every village and town had a hereditary
ruler. A ll of settled Arabia was a mass of small feudal
principalities and, like the tribes, they waged endless inter­
necine wars.
The structure of the Arabian feudal society was rather com­
plicated. The sheikhs held sway over the nomadic tribes.
In some tribes the sheikhs were elected to their posts, but
most of them had already become hereditary rulers. Apart
from the desert feudal aristocracy and the so-called free,
noble tribes which it ruled, there also existed vassal tribes,
and also the dependent settled and semi-nomadic popula­
tion. In the towns and farming regions the feudal nobility
(e.g., the sherifs and seyyids) and the rich merchants were
counterposed to the petty traders, artisans and the dependent
peasantry.
In feudal Arabia, class relations were further complicated
by patriarchal and clan relations and the existence of slavery,
which was comparatively widespread among both the nomads
and the settled population. The slave markets of Mecca,
Hufuf, Muscat and other cities provided the Arabian nobility
with a large number of slaves, who were used both as house­
hold servants and as labourers.
The towns and villages of Arabia were constantly raided
and plundered by the Bedouins. Raids and internecine wars
led to the destruction of wells, canals and palm groves, and
it was a matter of urgent economic necessity to the settled
population that they should cease; hence the tendency to
fuse the small principalities into one political whole.
Moreover, the social division of labour between the settled
and nomadic population of Arabia led to the growing ex­
change of the agricultural produce of the oases for the animal
produce of the steppes. Apart from this, both the steppe
Bedouins and the oasis fanners were in need of such imported
products as cereals, salt and cloth. Consequently, caravan
trade between Arabia and the neighbouring countries, Syria
and Iraq, began to grow. On the other hand, however, feudal
anarchy and Bedouin robbery hampered the development
of trade. Thus, the demands of the growing market, and
also the need to develop irrigatory farming, were an incen­
tive to the political unification of the Arabs.

78
 Arabia’s feudal and tribal disunity made it easier for
foreign invaders to seize the peninsula. This, too, was an
important incentive to unification. In the 16th century, the
Turks occupied without encountering much resistance the
Red Sea coast of Arabia: the Hejaz, Asir and the Yemen.
In the 16th century, too, the British, Dutch and Portuguese
began setting up bases on the eastern seaboard of Arabia.
In the 18th century, the Persians seized El-Hasa, Oman and
Bahrein. And it was only Inner Arabia, surrounded as it
was by deserts, that remained impregnable to the invaders.
Thus it came about that the movement for unification in
the coastal towns of Arabia grew into a struggle against
foreign invasion. The movement in the Yemen, led by the
Zaydit Imams ended in the 17th century with the expulsion
of the Turks. The Imams controlled the whole populated
(mountainous) part of the country. In the Hejaz, the Turks
retained only nominal power. The real rulers were the Arab
“descendants of the Prophet”, the sherifs. The Persians were
expelled from Oman in the middle of the 18th century and in
1783, from Bahrein, where the Arab feudal dynasty had firmly
entrenched itself. But it was in Inner Arabia, in Nejd, where
the movement for unity did not have to fight against the in­
vaders, that it was most clearly defined and consistent. This
was a struggle for the unification of the Arab tribes, for the
centralisation of the principalities of Nejd, for the fusion
of the “Arabian lands” into a single whole. This struggle
was based on a new religious ideology called wahhabism.

TH E DOCTRINES OF WAHHABISM. The founder of

wahhabism was a theologian from N ejd by the name of
Mohammed ibn Abd el-Wahhab, who hailed from the settled
tribe of Banu temim. He was born in 1703 at Uyaina in
Nejd. His father and grandfather were Ulema . Like them,
Abd el-Wahhab had travelled widely in the Moslem world
(Mecca, Medina and also Baghdad and Damascus, according
to some reports), studying theology. Everywhere he took an
active part in religious disputes, returning to N ejd in the
forties to preach his new religious doctrines. He sharply
criticised such superstitious survivals as fetishism and totem-
ism, which, to him, were indistinguishable from idolatry.
Formally all the Arabs were Moslems. But, in reality, there
existed many local tribal religions in Arabia. Each Arab

79
 tribe, each village had its fetish, its beliefs and rites. The
variety of religious forms that stemmed from the primitive
level of social development and the lack of cohesion between
the countries of Arabia were serious obstacles to political
unity. Abd el-Wahhab set up against this religious poly­
morphism a single doctrine called tauhid (unity). Formally,
he did not desire a change in the doctrines of Islam, but
merely preached a return to Islam’s former purity as pro­
claimed in the Koran. “Mohammed’s religious revolution,
like every religious movement, was formally a reaction, an
alleged return to the old, the simple,” Engels wrote of the
origin of Islam.1 Abd el-Wahhab’s “religious revolution” was
also “an alleged return to the old, the simple”. But the mean­
ing of the “revolution” lay not so much in a new interpreta­
tion of the tenets of Islam as in an appeal for Arab unity.
The teàchings of the Wahhabis were devoted mainly to
questions of morals. Its followers, who had grown up in
the rigorous conditions of desert life, had to observe a strict
moral austerity bordering on asceticism. They were forbidden
to drink wine or coffee or to smoke tobacco. They rejected
all luxury and forbade singing or the playing of musical
instruments. They spoke out against all overindulgence and
sexual dissoluteness. It is no wonder, therefore, that the
Wahhabis were called “the Puritans of the desert”.
The Wahhabis fought against the survivals of local tribal
cults. They destroyed the tombs of the saints, and forbade
magic fortune-telling. But at the same time their teachings
were directed against official Islam. They denounced mysti­
cism and dervishism, the forms of religious worship practised
by the Turks and formed over the ages. They urged the
people to fight mercilessly against the apostates, in other
words, against the Persian Shi’as, the Ottoman pseudo-Caliph
and the Turkish pashas. The Wahhabis intended to drive out
the Turks and unite the liberated Arab countries under the
banner of “pure Islam”.

THE UNIFICATION OF NEJD. The feudal rulers from

the small Nejd principality of Deroiyeh headed the move­
ment for unity. These were Emir Mohammed ibn Saud (died
in 1765) and his son—Abd el-Aziz (1765-1803). They had

1 Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, p. 79.

80
embraced Wahhabism and had entered into an alliance with
Abd el-Wahhab in 1774. For the next forty years or so, their
followers waged a stubborn struggle for the unification of
Nejd under the banner of Wahhabism. They conquered one
principality after the other. They forced the Bedouin tribes
into submission. Some villages willingly submitted to the
Wahhabis, others were driven on to the “path of truth”
by force of arms.
By 1786, Wahhabism had spread all over Nejd. Small
and once hostile principalities formed a comparatively large
feudal theocratic state headed by the Saudi dynasty. In 1791,
after the death of the founder o f Wahhabism, Abd el-Wahhab,
the Saudi emirs gained both temporal and spiritual power.
The victory of Wahhabism in Nejd and the emergence
of the Saudi state did not lead to the formation of a new
social system or bring a new class to power. The progressive
character of these events lay in the fact that they weakened
feudal anarchy and Arabian disunity.
However, the Wahhabis were as yet unable to create a
centralised state with efficient administrative machinery.
The former feudal rulers were permitted to retain their
posts as the heads of towns on the condition that they em­
braced the Wahhabi faith and recognised the Wahhabi emir
as their suzerain and spiritual leader. In the 18th century,
therefore, the Wahhabi regime was unstable and was shaken
by continuous feudal and tribal revolts. No sooner had the
Wahhabi emirs added one district to their domains, than
a revolt broke out in another, and the Wahhabi rulers had
to rush their troops from one place to another to suppress it.

TH E W AH H ABIS’ STRUGGLE FOR TH E PERSIAN

GULF. At the end of the 18th century, the Wahhabi state,
which embraced all the provinces of Nejd, had shifted from
the defensive to the offensive. In 1786, the Wahhabis made
their first raids on the shores of the Persian G ulf and pene­
trated the region of El-Hasa, which in 1793 they conquered.
This marked the beginning of the Wahhabi conquests beyond
the confines of Nejd. After the death of Abd el-Aziz, they
were led by Emir Saud (1803-14), who created a large
Arab state incorporating almost the entire Arabian Peninsula.
After the conquest of El-Hasa, the Wahhabis spread their
influence over the entire Persian Gulf. In 1803, they occupied
§-573 81
Bahrein and Kuwait, and to these were added the towns of
the so-called Pirate Coast with their formidable fleet. The
majority of the population of the inner areas of Oman also
adopted Wahhabism.
In 1804, when the Muscat ruler, seyyid Sultan, England’s
vassal, led his fleet into a battle against the Wahhabis, he
was soon sunk. But his son, Said, acting on the advice of
the East India Company, continued the struggle.
In 1806, the East India Company sent its fleet to the
Persian G ulf and together with the ships of its Muscat
vassal, blockaded the Wahhabi coast. The fight ended in
the temporary defeat of the Wahhabis, who were compelled
to return the British ships they had captured, and to pledge
respect for the flag and property of the East India Company.
From that time onwards a British fleet was permanently
stationed in the Persian Gulf and regularly sank any W ah­
habi warships it sighted. But England’s command of the
sea could not weaken the Wahhabis’ command of the land.
The entire Arabian shore of the Persian G ulf was still under
their control.

THE W AHHABIS’ STRUGGLE FOR THE HEJAZ.

W hile fighting for possession of the Persian Gulf seaboard,
the Wahhabis also sought to annex the Hejaz and the Red
Sea coast.
Starting from 1794, the Wahhabis continuously raided the
steppe districts of the Hejaz and the Yemen, seizing the
oases near the borders and converting the border tribes to
the Wahhabi faith. In 1796, Ghalib, Sherif of Mecca
(1788-1813), sent his troops against the Wahhabis. During
the ensuing three-year war, the Wahhabis won one victory
after another. They were morally superior, their troops
were well organised and disciplined, and they had a firm
belief in the justice of their cause. Moreover, the Wahhabis
had many followers in the Hejaz. Many of the feudal lords
in 4his region were convinced of the necessity of Arabian
unity. The rulers of Taif and Asir, many tribal sheikhs and
even the sherif’s brother accepted Wahhabism. By 1796, all
the Hejaz tribes except one. had gone over to the Wahhabis’
side and the defeated Sherif Ghalib was obliged to acknowl­
edge Wahhabism as an orthodox trend of Islam and offici­
ally surrender to the Wahhabis the land which they had

82
conquered (1799). But the Wahhabis, who dreamt of a
united Arabia, were not going to stop at this. After two-years’
respite, they renewed the fight against the sherif of Mecca
and in April 1803, they seized Mecca itself. All ceremonies
which seemed in the eyes of the Wahhabis to suggest the
taint of idolatry were forbidden. They destroyed the tombs
of “saints” and stripped the Ka’aba of its relics. The mullahs
who persisted in the old belief were executed. These acts
gave rise to an uprising in the Hejaz, forcing the Wahhabis
to retreat, but their retreat was only temporary. In 1804, they
seized Medina, and in 1806, recaptured and plundered Mecca.
The Hejaz was annexed to the Wahhabi state, which now
stretched from the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf, incorporat­
ing almost all the countries of the peninsula, Nejd, Sham-
mar, Jauf, the Hejaz, El-Hasa, Kuwait, Bahrein, part of
Oman and Yemenese and Asirian Tihama. Even in the parts
of the peninsula they had not occupied, in inner Yemen and
Hadhramaut, the Wahhabis had many followers. Their
influence was decisive.
Having united almost all Arabia, the Wahhabis proceeded
to incorporate other Arab countries in the state. Their pri­
mary objectives were Syria and Iraq.

TH E W AH H ABIS’ FIGHT FOR SYRIA A N D IRAQ.

Abd el-Wahhab, founder of Wahhabism, had in his day
dreamt of liberating Syria and Iraq from the Turkish yoke.
He had disputed and denounced the Caliph’s (the Turkish
Sultan) authority, regarding all Arabs as brothers and urging
them to unite. In those days, when Arabia was an amorphous
mass of tribes and principalities engaged in internecine strife,
the idea of Arab unity had seemed remote, but by the begin­
ning of the 19th century, Arabia was united and it looked
as though the time had come to put Wahhab’s dream into
practice.
W hile raiding the Hejaz, the Wahhabis also began opera­
tions on the borders of Iraq. Here, they had little success.
True, they crushed the troops of the Baghdad pashas each
time the pashas invaded the peninsula. But in Iraq, the
Wahhabis were unable to take a single town or village and
had to content themselves with raids and tribute-gathering.
Even the biggest raid on Karbala (April 1801) ended un­
successfully. Having destroyed the treasures of the. Slii’a

Ô* 83
 mosques in Karbala, the Wahhabis returned to the steppes.
After the unification of Arabia in 1808, the Wahhabis
launched a large attack against Baghdad, but it was repulsed.
The campaigns against Damascus, Aleppo and other Syrian
cities were likewise unsuccessful. The Wahhabis exacted trib­
ute from these cities but were unable to establish them­
selves there. The Wahhabis fought just as well in Syria and
Iraq as they did in Oman or in the Hejaz. They were just as
well organised, disciplined and courageous. They still be­
lieved in the justice of their cause. But in Arabia they had had
the support of the tribes and the progressive elements of the
feudal class; the objective need for unity had stemmed from
the conditions of economic development, and in this lay
the secret of their past victories. The economic and social
prerequisites for a union with Arabia were non-existent
in Syria and Iraq. The people here stubbornly resisted the
Wahhabis, whom they regarded as foreign invaders. In the
days of the Wahhabi campaign against Baghdad and Damas­
cus, Arab unity was as much a utopia as it was when the
Wahhabi movement was first born. But after half a century
of struggle, the Wahhabis’ dream for a united Arabia had
come true at last.
 CHAPTER VI

THE EGYPTIAN CONQUEST OF ARABIA

THE BEGINNING OF THE W AR AG AINST THE

W AHHABIS. Having consolidated his power in Egypt,
Mohammed Ali decided to go further afield and create a
mighty empire. From 1811 onwards, he waged war con­
tinuously and within two decades the Egyptians had con­
quered almost all the countries of the Arab East.
Mohammed Ali fought his first external war against the
Wahhabis as a vassal of the Sultan. The Wahhabi raids had
greatly disturbed the Porte, and the Turkish sultans, Selim
III and Mahmud II, regarded the growing Wahhabi state
as a serious threat to their authority in the Arab countries,
but all their attempts to suppress Wahhabism were unsuccess­
ful. Occupied with internal strife, the uprisings on the
Balkans and the war against Russia, they could not muster
enough men to combat the Wahhabis. Instead, they entrusted
their pashas at Baghdad, Damascus and Jidda to do the job
for them. The pashas, however, merely repulsed the raids,
but did not assume the offensive. In 1811, Sultan Mahmud II
was finally compelled to employ the powerful Egyptian
Pasha, Mohammed Ali, to deal with the rebellious Wahhabis.
Mohammed A li consented all the more readily because the
Egyptian merchants themselves were interested in a campaign
against Arabia. Having incurred great losses through the
cessation of pilgrimages and the trade connected with them,
they contributed generous sums of money to equip the ex­
pedition. Mohammed A li’s immediate aim was to seize Arabia
and her riches, but ultimately he regarded Arabia as the key
to Syria and Iraq. The Wahhabis were Mohammed A li’s
.potential rivals in the struggle for the Arab provinces of the
Ottoman Empire.
Mohammed Ali accordingly despatched his sixteen-year-
old son, Tusun Bey, at the head of a large expeditionary

85
force (eight to ten thousand men) to conquer the Wahhabis.
Tusun Bey’s adviser and the real leader of the expedition
was Ahmed Aga, nicknamed Bonaparte, one of Mohammed
A li’s best generals. A merchant from Cairo by the name of
El-Makhruki also accompanied the expedition. He was the
chief supply officer and political adviser.
In September 1811, the Egyptians set out on their cam­
paign. The infantry went by ship and the cavalry by land.
Caravans loaded with water and provisions followed on their
heels.
In October 1811, the Egyptians occupied Port Yenbo on
the Arabian Peninsula and made it a springboard for their
operations against the Wahhabis.
The war against the Wahhabis was a harrowing experience
for the Egyptians. Many of them perished from the heat and
the lack of water. They died of starvation and disease. The
plague, cholera, malaria and dysentery thinned their ranks.
Many soldiers went blind from the sun, others were swal­
lowed up in quicksands or died from other causes while at­
tempting to cross a desert that for centuries had been con­
sidered impassable.
The Egyptian army was surrounded by a hostile country
and a hostile population. The Bedouin tribes attacked Egyp­
tian patrols and caravans loaded with provisions. They cut
off connections between the army’s front lines and the rear
bases. Every town and village had to be taken by force. The
Wahhabis believed firmly in the justice of their cause and
they also had a considerable numerical superiority. The
Egyptians had only eight to. ten thousand men, while the
Wahhabis had several times more. But the Egyptians had
better weapons. They had modern artillery and skilled gen­
erals, trained in the school of Mohammed Ali. The war was
fought with varying success and lasted for many long and
arduous years.
In January 1812, the Egyptian army withdrew from Yenbo
and proceeded to advance on Medina. In a narrow gorge
near El-Safra, it was surprised by the Wahhabis and utterly
defeated. Five thousand out of eight thousand Egyptians
were killed and only three thousand returned to Yenbo.
Forced to seek a respite, the Egyptians used the time to
demoralise the population in the Wahhabi rear. Their agents
grudged neither money nor false promises to gain the support

86
of the Hejaz towns and the leading Bedouin sheikhs. W ith
their support and the reinforcements sent from Egypt, they
again went into attack. In November 1812, the Egyptians
seized Medina, and in January 1813 captured Mecca, Taif
and Jidda. Thus the Hejaz was conquered. The conditions
of the Egyptian army, however, did not improve. Nearly
eight thousand soldiers died of the heat and disease. The
population was unfriendly. The Wahhabis, who had retained
their main forces, laid siege to Medina and launched a gue­
rilla war on the Egyptian communication routes.

MOHAMMED ALI IN ARABIA (1813-15). At this

crucial moment, Mohammed Ali decided to take over the
expedition himself. In September 1813, he landed at Jidda
with fresh forces. His first efforts were aimed at consolidating
Egyptian positions in the Hejaz. He removed the Meccan
Sherif, Ghalib, and appointed his own protégé in his stead.
H e put down all resistance and gave large sums of money
to the Bedouin sheikhs. All attempts to penetrate deeper into
Arabian territory, however, were unsuccessful.
In May 1814, Emir Saud died. Abdullah, who headed
the opposition in the north, became the new emir. In the
south, numerous Wahhabi forces were concentrated in the
Turaba oasis, which controlled the road from N ejd to the
Yemen. Turaba served as a strong-point and base for W ah­
habi operations in the south of the country.
Mohammed Ali was operating in the south of the Hejaz
and in Asir. He personally led the fight against the southern
Wahhabi forces and undertook many campaigns against them.
On January 20, in the Battle of Basal (east of Taif), the
Egyptians crushingly defeated a 30,000-strong army of
“southerners” under Faisal, Abdullah’s brother, and shattered
the Wahhabis’ strength in the south. The Egyptians occupied
Turaba and Bisha, but in May 1815, Mohammed Ali suddenly
had to leave Arabia for Egypt, having temporarily abandoned
the idea of seizing the Yemen.
The Egyptian forces in the north were commanded by
Tusun Bey. H e waged a persistent struggle against the
forces of Abdullah, who had recruited men from all over
Neid, El-Hasa and Oman. In the spring of 1815, Tusun Bey
inflicted a series of defeats on the Wahhabis and forced
Abdullah to conclude peace.
87
 According to the treaty, Nejd and Kasim were to remain
under the Wahhabis and the Hejaz was to go to Egypt.
Abdullah was forced to acknowledge himself the vassal of
the Turkish Sultan and pledged subordination to the Egyp­
tian governor of Medina. He also pledged to ensure the
safety of the pilgrimages, to return the treasures stolen by
the Wahhabis from Mecca and to abandon religious innova­
tions, and to obey the Turkish Sultan’s summons without
question.
After the conclusion of peace, Tusun Bey stationed garri­
sons in the chief cities of the Hejaz and left for Egypt. The
first stage of the war was over.

IBRAHIM’S CAM PAIGN A N D THE DEFEAT OF THE

W AH H ABI STATE. The Wahhabis, however, could not
reconcile themselves to the humiliating terms of the peace
treaty imposed upon them by Tusun Bey. Nominally, they
had accepted the terms of the treaty, but in reality they were
already making preparations for a new war of liberation.
Mohammed Ali and the Sultan did not confirm the treaty
either. They felt the Wahhabi Emir, Abdullah, was trying
to avoid obeying the terms of the peace treaty, namely the
return of the Meccan plundered treasures and the journey to
pay homage to the Sultan at Istanbul.
The war was resumed in 1816. Egyptian troops, accompa­
nied by French military instructors and a detachment of
mine layers, was sent to Arabia. At their head stood Moham­
med A li’s elder son, Ibrahim, an outstanding general and a
man of iron will. Ibrahim decided to penetrate into the heart
of Wahhabism, Inner Arabia, at all costs and strike at the
heart of the movement. In the course of two years, Ibrahim’s
troops besieged the chief centres of Kasim and N ejd one
after another. They turned blooming oases into deserts,
destroyed wells, cut down palms and burnt homes. The Egyp­
tian soldiers murdered and raped. Those of the local people
who were not killed died of thirst or hunger. Sensing the
approach of the Egyptian troops, the population would aban­
don their homes to seek refuge in the more remote oases.
In 1817, in a war of extermination, the like of which
Arabia had never known before, the Egyptians overran Rass,
Buraida and Anaiza. They entered Nejd at the beginning
of 1818, seized Shaqra and on April 6, 1818, they approached
Deraiyeh, the fortified capital of the Wahhabis. On
September 15, 1818, after a five-month siege, Deraiyeh ceased
to exist. The Egyptians had razed the place to the ground.
The people fled from the ruined city. The Wahhabi Emir,
Abdullah, surrendered. H e was sent to Cairo and then to
Constantinople, where he was beheaded in December 1818.
Having destroyed Deraiyeh, Ibrahim’s troops went on to
conquer Qatif and El-Hasa. The Emir’s relatives and the
most important Wahhabi leaders were taken prisoner and
sent to Egypt. Fortifications were demolished in all the towns
of Nejd. The Egyptians celebrated their victory, and it
seemed as though the Wahhabi state had been destroyed for
ever.
In December 1819, Ibrahim returned to Cairo with the
nucleus garrisons remained in the
towns of ^ „ But the enemy was unable to
suppress the opposition forces, nor were they able to gain
possession of the country. The mountains and deserts of
Arabia served as a refuge for the rebellious and were per­
manent breeding centres of the Wahhabi uprisings.

THE W A H H A BI UPRISINGS (1820-40). One result of

the Egyptian conquest was that the greater part of Arabia
was formally incorporated in the Ottoman Empire. But in
reality, Arabia now belonged to Egypt.
The Hejaz was turned into an Egyptian province under
the administration of an Egyptian pasha, Mohammed A li’s
appointee. The pasha appointed and removed the Meccan
sherifs, who now exercised only illusory power.
The Yemen, the coastal towns of which had been occupied
by the Egyptians in 1819, retained its autonomy. It was
ruled by a Zaydite Imam who resided at San’a. He consid­
ered himself the Porte’s vassal and pledged to pay an an­
nual tribute to Egypt. His power over the country was,
however, nominal.
Many tribes and local rulers openly disobeyed the Imam.
In the period between 1823 and 1826, the Egyptians under­
took several campaigns against the Yemen, but were obliged
to leave the country because of the Morean war. In 1834,
they again occupied Yemenite Tihama and Taiz.
Egyptian deputies ruled Nejd. Everyone ignored the late
Abdullah’s younger brother, Emir Mashar, Ibrahim’s ap-
89
pointée. The country was ruined and in great distress.
Famine and desolation prevailed everywhere. Feudal and
tribal dissensions were growing. In Shammar, Kasim and
other regions, the local dynasties retained a certain degree
of autonomy and manoeuvred between the Egyptian authori­
ties and the insurgent Wahhabi emirs from the Saudi dy­
nasty, who were keeping up the war against the invaders.
No sooner had Ibrahim withdrawn from Nejd than in
1820, a Wahhabi uprising, headed by a relative of the exe­
cuted emir, flared up in Deraiyeh. The uprising was sup­
pressed, but in 1821, the Wahhabis revolted again. This time
they were more successful. The uprising was led by a
relative of the executed emir, Turki (1821-34), who overthrew
the Egyptian appointee, restored the Wahhabi state and
transferred the capital from ruined Deraiyeh to the well-
fortified Riyadh (in about 1822). The Egyptian troops sent
against the Wahhabis perished from hunger, thirst, epidem­
ics and guerilla raids. Mohammed Ali was compelled to
restrict the occupation of Nejd to Kasim and Shammar. The
rest of Nejd was cleared of the Egyptian garrisons.
The Wahhabis restored their former domains and in 1827,
drove the Egyptians out of Kasim and Shammar. In 1830,
they recaptured El-Hasa.
In 1827, the Meccan sherif instigated an anti-Egyptian
revolt, but was unsuccessful. The Egyptians, who had lost
Nejd, managed to suppress the revolt and hold out in the
Hejaz.
Mohammed Ali was too occupied with the events in Greece
and Syria to care about Arabia. However, after the con­
quest of Syria he decided to recapture Nejd. To counter­
balance Turki, he proposed a certain Mashari ibn Khalid as
the pretender to the Wahhabi throne. In 1834, Mashari, with
the support of the Egyptians, gained possession of Riyadh,
assassinated Emir Turki and took over in his stead. His
joy, however, was short-lived. Two months later, Turki’s son
and heir, Emir Faisal, seized Riyadh, made short work of
Mashari and proclaimed himself the head of the Wahhabi
state.
This setback did not deter Mohammed Ali, who decided
to go ahead with his plans to recapture Nejd and obtain
access to the Persian Gulf. In 1836, a large Egyptian force
headed by Khurshid Pasha invaded Nejd. The long, obstinate
90
struggle ended in the victory of the Egyptians. In 1838, Emir
Faisal was sent away captive to Cairo. The Egyptians cap­
tured Riyadh, El-Hasa, Qatif and even attempted to seize
Bahrein.
The second Egyptian invasion of N ejd and the occupation
of El-Hasa aggravated the already strained relations with
Britain and was one of the reasons for the Eastern crisis of
1839-41. Mohammed A li was drawn into a serious interna­
tional conflict and in 1840, he was compelled to recall his
forces from Arabia. The Wahhabis seized the occasion to
overthrow Emir Khalid, the puppet ruler left by Khurshid
Pasha, and restored their authority in Riyadh.

THE BRITISH EX PAN SIO N IN SOUTH ARABIA

A N D ON TH E PERSIAN GULF. The Wahhabis’ defeat
in the southern and eastern parts of Arabia greatly troubled
Britain, who claimed complete supremacy in the waters of
the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf.
The East India Company looked on the area as her domain.
The Company’s residence, its naval bases and fleet were
located here, and it was unwilling to permit a single power­
ful state to gain access to the region. It was quite natural,
therefore, that the Egyptian advance on the Yemen, the
occupation of El-Hasa and Mohammed A li’s plans to unite
Arabia under his rule met with fierce resistance from the
British, who intensified their expansionist activities in South
Arabia and on the Persian Gulf, striving at all costs to
strengthen their hold on the sea routes to India.
In 1819, the British offered Mohammed A li their “collab­
oration” in “pacifying” the regions situated south-east of
San’a, but their offer was rejected. Then they began to act
independently. In December 1820, a British squadron bom­
barded the Yemenite port of Mocha and on January 15, 1821,
imposed a treaty on the Imam. The treaty granted a series
of privileges to British subjects in South Arabian ports. In
1834, the troops of the East India Company occupied the
island of Sokotra, which later (in 1866) was turned into a
British protectorate. Finally, in 1839, during a punitive naval
expedition, the British seized Aden. The capture was given
the guise of a commercial transaction. On the pretext of
establishing a coal station, England “bought” the harbour and
the village of Aden (at the time it had about five hundred

91
inhabitants) together with the adjoining territory from the
Sultan of Lahej.1
England then became engaged in a prolonged struggle
against the local feudal rulers and the tribes of the Pirate
Coast, or Jawassi, in eastern Arabia. The Jawassi were the
Wahhabis’ allies. They engaged in sea trade and piracy. In
the first decades of the 19th century, the East India Com­
pany waged a fierce sea war against the pirates. In 1811,
Emir Saud proposed a peace treaty to the British, but the
latter refused on the grounds that their only serious foe were
the Wahhabis.
The situation changed in 1818, when the Egyptians gained
access to the Persian Gulf, seized Port Qatif and advanced
on Jawassi. The piratical sheikhs hastened to take refuge in
Persia, but found themselves hemmed in on both sides. Ibra­
him’s forces were advancing by land and a large British
squadron turned up at sea. The squadron had the double
task of smashing the pirates and stopping Ibrahim. Immedi­
ately after the capture of Hufuf by the Egyptians, the East
India Company demanded that Ibrahim evacuate El-Hasa.
Ibrahim refused and turned down British claims to the Per­
sian Gulf. England, however, forestalled him, having sent
her warships to the Wahhabi ports of W est Oman and Bah­
rein. In 1819, the British squadron burnt the fleet of the
Wahhabis’ pirate allies and in January 1820, forced the
sheikhs of the Pirate Coast to sign a peace treaty with the
East India Company.
The Jawassi sheikhs retained part of their fleet, but
ed themselves not to attack the ships of the East India
Ö jany. The treaty formally forbade piracy and slave
trade in the Persian Gulf. In reality it placed the Wahhabi
Pirate Coast (renamed Trucial Oman) in complete depend­
ence on England. In the same year, the British forced the
Sheikh of the Bahrein Islands to sign similar treaty and
thus acknowledge his dependence on England.
One of the pirate towns, which had refused to sign the
treaty was destroyed by the British fleet. Between the 1820s
and the 1840s, England imposed a series of new treaties on the
governors of Trucial Oman, Muscat and Bahrein. Claiming

1 The sultanate of Lahej had broken away from the Yemen and
in 1728 had become an independent state.

92
 that the Persian Gulf states had violated the treaties banning
piracy and the slave trade, England seized the opportunity
to interfere in their internal affairs and the Persian Gulf
became little more than a “British lake”.
The intrigues of the British made it impossible for the
Egyptians to gain possession of the Persian Gulf, particularly
as they had no firm base in the rear of the Gulf, in Nejd.
After the Wahhabi uprising of 1821, they gradually with­
drew from Nejd and in 1830, from El-Hasa. It was not
until 1839, after the second conquest of Nejd, that the Egyp­
tians once again occupied El-Hasa, but they did not hold out
for long. Having broken the might of Mohammed A li in
Syria, the British had rid themselves of a dangerous rival
in the Persian Gulf.
 CHAPTER VII

THE CONQUEST OF THE EAST SUDAN

BY MOHAMMED ALL THE EXPEDITION TO MOREA

THE CONQUEST OF THE SUDAN. Mohammed

A li’s second big campaign was the conquest of the East
Sudan. From time immemorial there had been a steady
flow of slaves, gold, gum, ostrich feathers, ivory and valu­
able kinds of wood to Egypt from the Sudan. Mohammed
Ali wanted to lay his hands on the trade, for he saw in
the Sudan a means of replenishing his treasury, exhausted
by the long Arabian war, and a considerable sum of money
was needed to build an army and fleet. Mohammed Ali also
wanted to crush the remnants of the Egyptian Mamelukes,
who had fled from Egypt to the Sudan.
Unlike the war in Arabia, the war in the Sudan offered
no great difficulties. The Sudan was closer to Egypt than
Arabia, and conveniently linked with Egypt by the Nile.
Moreover, the people were not united by common religious
or political views. Tlie country was divided into several
small Moslem states and a host of tribal territories, where
the primitive-communal system still prevailed. The largest
state was Sennar, which was ruled by the Funj dynasty. In
the 18th century, it stretched from the Third Cataract of
the N ile in the north to Fazughli in the south, from the Red
Sea in the east to Kordofan in the west. However, by the
beginning of the 19th century, the kingdom had virtually
disintegrated. Separate states arose on the Atbara, on the
Red Sea coast and in Dongola. The Mamelukes, whom
Mohammed Ali had banished from Egypt, exercised great
influence in Dongola. The one time vassalage of the Funj,
the state of Fazughli (on the Blue Nile) occupied a special
position. The strongest state of the East Sudan at the time
was the Darfur sultanate. In the 19th century, it established

94
relations with the Turkish Sultan, whom it regarded as its
spiritual suzerain.
All these melikates and sultanates were very primitive
state formations, embracing several different tribes. These
were the Arab-Berber tribes in the north and the Arab-
Negroid tribes in the centre. The Nilote tribes lived in the
south. The settled population was small in number. There
were no cities. The Arabs settled in the South Sudan and
engaged in caravan trade and the captivity of slaves.
The Egyptians had no difficulty in capturing the East
Sudan. The Sudanese did not even have firearms, and fought
with spears, pikes and leather shields, while the Egyptians
were well armed and had excellent artillery.
In October 1820, the 5,000-strong Egyptian army led by
Mohammed A li’s son, Ismail Pasha, set out on a campaign
against the Sudan. It encountered almost no resistance and
pushed on further up the Nile. The tribes of North Nubia
and Dongola submitted to the conquerors. In the spring of
1821, the Egyptians reached Cape Khartoum at the con­
fluence of the W hite and the Blue Nile, where they set up
camp. Then they moved on farther and on June 12, 1821,
they captured the Funj capital, Sennar, without firing a
single shot.
Here the army split up. Some of the troops, led by Ismail,
went upstream along the Blue Nile. Having seized Fazughli,
they almost reached 10° N and in February 1822, turned
back north. The other group, led by Mohammed A li’s son-
in-law, Mohammed Bey, the defterdar , conquered central
Kordofan at the end of 1821.
Thus, by the beginning of 1822, the whole of the East
Sudan, excluding Darfur and the outlying regions, had
been seized by the Egyptians. But uprisings began to burst
out in the rear. Ismail was forced to go to Sennar, having
heard of fresh uprisings against Egyptian authority in the
rear. H e killed thousands of people and quickly suppressed
the uprising. But soon he himself was caught in a trap. In
October 1822, one of the local leaders, mek (king) Nair
Mimr, invited Ismail and his chief officers to a feast in his
house, around which he had piled heaps of straw. W hile the
Egyptians were feasting, the mek set fire to the straw and
Ismail and his companions were burnt to death.
Hearing of Ismail’s death, the defterdar , together with

95
 his troops, set out for Sennar and cruelly avenged Ismail’s
death by exterminating over 30,000 in the region where
Ismail Pasha had been assassinated. That was almost the
whole population. Nair Mimr, however,, managed to es­
cape.
Later the Egyptians dealt just as cruelly with the
numerous uprisings which broke out all over the Sudan. At
the same time, they were gradually rounding off their
domains. They advanced southwards along the White N ile
and reached Fashoda in 1828. In the west the Egyptians
reached the borders of Darfur. The Red Sea ports of
Suakin and Massawa came under their control. In 1838,
Mohammed Ali arrived in the Sudan. He fitted out special
expéditions to search for gold along the White and the
Blue Nile. In 1840, the regions of Kassala and Taka were
added to the Egyptian domains.
In 1823, Khartoum had become the centre of the Egyptian
domains in the Sudan and had quickly grown into a large
market town. By 1834, it had a population of 15,000 and
was the residence of the Egyptian deputy. In 1841, the
country was split up into seven provinces: Fazughli, Sen­
nar, Khartoum,'Taka, Berber, Dongola and Kordofan. The
deputies and the provincial pashas were all Turks from
among Mohammed A li’s circle, and the Sudanese people
regarded the invaders as Turks and the Sudan’s annexation
to Egypt as a Turkish conquest.
The Egyptian authorities plundered the Sudan and laid
the population under heavy tribute. Each year they would
drive up to 8,000 head of cattle to Egypt, as well as ivory,
ostrich feathers and other exotic goods, not to mention
slaves. The slave trade, which remained a state monopoly
until 1850, acquired considerable proportions. Tens of
thousands of slaves were exported from the Sudan. Moham­
med A li had achieved his end. H e now controlled the trade
in slaves and in tropical raw materials. He was now
master of almost the whole Nile, and only one fact disap­
pointed him. The Sudan was not as rich in gold as the
Egyptians had expected.

THE GREEK UPRISING. The campaigns against

Arabia and the Sudan opened a whole series of wars in the
struggle for control of the East Mediterranean countries.

96
Mohammed A li kept up a stubborn struggle to realise his
plan for the creation of an independent Arab power. Each
year brought nearer the decisive trial of strength. In the
meanwhile, Mohammed A li strove to gain possession of
Syria and the Morea. In 1821, he began sending money and
gifts to the Porte dignitaries to induce them'to grant him
control of these countries. Although the Porte did not trust
him, Mohammed Ali, afraid of losing his chance, persist­
ently renewed his solicitations.
In 1821, a large national liberation uprising flared up in
Greece, assuming the form of a national revolution against
foreign oppression. The revolution was led by the national
bourgeoisie, which was unable to bear the Sultan’s tyranny
any longer. The Greek merchants had become rich on the
growing sea trade. Their ships plied back and forth along
the Mediterranean Sea, where they controlled almost all
trade, especially the growing wheat exports from Russia.
In Odessa, Taganrog, Marseilles, Livorno, Istanbul, Alexan­
dria and all the Mediterranean and Black Sea ports there
were Greek vessels, Greek commercial offices and Greek
merchants and sailors.
However, the Greek merchants and navigators, who
dreamt of supremacy in world trade, had no rights in their
own country. Any of the Sultan’s satraps could kill a
merchant and seize his riches. Hence the Greek bourgeoisie’s
struggle against Ottoman feudalism, for national independ­
ence and the creation of a bourgeois state of their own.
In their liberation struggle, the bourgeoisie had the sup­
port of the peasants, who hated their oppressors, the Moslem
feudal lords, and longed for national independence, which
would give them back their lands. The Greek uprising was
characteristically an agrarian war, a fierce struggle of the
peasants against the feudal oppressors. In the Morea at
the time there were 20,000 Moslem landowners, chiefly of
Greek origin, almost all of whom were exterminated.
To prepare for the uprising, in 1815, the Greek
Nationalists formed a conspirative organisation Philiki
Etaireia (Alliance of Friends), similar to the carbonari
organisations. It had branches in several European and
Turkish towns. Its centre was in Odessa. The head of the
organisation was Alexander Ypsilanti, son of the former
Walachian hospodar Constantine, who had fled to Russia,
7-573 97
 and a major-general in the Russian service. He was also
Alexander I’s aide-de-camp. The Russian Minister for
Foreign Affairs, Count Capo d’Istria, a Greek by origin,
was also connected with the national liberation movement.
Alexander I, the founder of the Holy Alliance, which was
designed to combat all revolutionary tendencies, at first
supported the Greek nationalists, but later disavowed
Ypsilanti’s claim to his support.
“The Serbian insurrection of 1809, the Greek rising in
1821, were more or less directly urged on by Russian gold
and Russian influence,” Engels wrote.1
On March 6, 1821, Alexander Ypsilanti led a small Greek
detachment across the Pruth into the Danube dependencies
of the Turkish Sultan. The detachment had been formed
on Russian territory and bore the high-sounding title of
“army of deliverance”. Ypsilanti intended to instigate the
local population to revolt against the Sultan, but was unable
to gain a following among the Moldavian and Walachian
peasants, whose hatred for the Greek hospodars was very
strong. The help promised by the tsar was also not forth­
coming.
Deprived of support, Ypsilanti was crushed by the Turks.
In June 1821, he fled to Hungary where Metternich locked
him up in a fortress.
Ypsilanti’s daring campaign acted as a sign for an
uprising of the Greek people. In March 1821, the peasants
of the Morea revolted under the leadership of General
Kolokotronis. His guerilla detachments routed the Turkish
janissaries. In October 1821, in the Battle of Tripolitsa
(Tripolis), the guerillas dealt the janissaries a decisive blow,
when a 3,000-strong peasant levy routed a 5,000-strong
janissary corps. By the end of 1821, all of the Morea was
rid of tne Turks. On January 1, 1822, in an ancient Greek
amphitheatre located in the sacred forest of Epidaurus, a
Constituent Assembly proclaimed the constitutional inde­
pendence of Greece and elected a Provisional Government
headed by Mavrocordato.
The guerillas received energetic assistance from the Greek
sailors. Greece’s entire merchant marine turned into a

1 Frederick Engels, “The Turkish Question’*, New York Daily

Tribune, April 19, 1853.

98
militant armada of the revolution and the Archipelago
became a naval base for the guerilla war. Five hundred
Greek ships and twenty thousand sailors, led by Kanaris,
continuously attacked Turkish vessels and blockaded
Turkish ports.

MAHMUD II’s APPEAL FOR HELP TO MOHAM­

MED ALL For three years the Greek people successfully
repulsed the attacks of the Turkish punitive detachments,
waging a persistent struggle on three fronts : in eastern
Greece, western Greece and the Morea, the stronghold of
the Greek revolution. The Porte, realising that it had not
enough troops to fight against the insurgents on all fronts
and to retain its hold on the islands, turned to Mohammed
Ali for help.
In 1822, the Porte gave him control of Cyprus and
Candia (Crete). On January 16, 1824, on the advice of
Metternich, the sworn enemy of the Greek revolution,
Mahmud II gave Mohammed Ali the Morea pashalik, which
actually no longer belonged to the Porte, and commissioned
him to suppress the Greek uprising.
This was what Mohammed Ali had been waiting for. He
readily accepted the Sultan’s offer. Whatever his official
declarations might have been, Mohammed Ali had his own
interests in mind, and these had nothing in common with
those of the Porte. Mohammed Ali was no mere executor
of the Sultan’s will. Only a year previously, in 1823, he had
flatly refused to send his troops against the Persians since
such a war promised no advantage to Egypt. In the Morea.
as in Arabia, Mohammed had his own political aims, despite
his role of an obedient vassal.
W hat were Mohammed A li’s reasons for starting the
Morean war? First of all, wanted to show the world
Egypt’s military might and its superiority over the Porte.
He had to prove that Egypt was fit to become a Great
Power, capable of influencing the course of history. More­
over, he simply wanted to annex the Morea and the Archi­
pelago to his domains and place the Morea’s resources and
Greek navigation at the service of his emergent empire.
Finally, he dreamt of complete domination over the Eastern
Mediterranean and of turning it into an “Egyptian
lake”.
7* 99
 THE MORE A N WAR. Mohammed Ali equipped a
large army and fleet to fight the Greeks. The expedition
was led by the conqueror of Arabia, Mohammed A li’s eldest
son, Ibrahim Pasha.
In July 1824, Ibrahim’s 16,000-strong army left Egypt
on one hundred troop-carriers under the guard of sixty-
three warships. He was prevented from landing at the
Morea, however, by the Greek sailors, and he and his troops
were compelled to spend the winter on the Island of
Candia (Crete). Here he put down an uprising, organised
the administration of the island and turned it into a base
for further operations.
The situation in the Morea itself now took a favourable
turn for Ibrahim. In 1824, civil war had broken out among
the Greek insurgents. The followers of Kolokotronis were
defeated ánd in January 1825, Kolokotronis was arrested.
In February of the same year, the Egyptians effected a
landing in the south-western part of the Morea and seized
Modon, Coron and Navarino.
The Egyptian landing immediately turned the tide of the
war. On June 23, 1825, Ibrahim seized the capital of the
Morea, Tripolitsa (Tripolis). The Greeks, led once again by
Kolokotronis, resorted to guerilla warfare. Ibrahim’s reac­
tion was to begin a systematic devastation of the country.
The Egyptians burnt villages, destroyed gardens, trampled
down the crops ; thousands of Greek captives were sent as
slaves to Egypt. By the end of 1825, the whole of the Morea
had been conquered and turned into a desert like Nejd.
In 1825-26, Ibrahim received reinforcements from Egypt
and, supported by the Turks, began the battle for central
Greece. The chief centre of Greek opposition was the Mis-
solonghi Fortress, where help flowed in from the Archipe­
lago and the Philhellene committees. For a long time it
had been unsuccessfully besieged by the Turks. In February
1826, having left his deputy, Colonel Sève, in the Morea,
Ibrahim led a 10,000-strong force against Missolonghi. The
weakened defenders of the fortress were unable to offer
serious resistance and on April 22, 1826, the Egyptians and
the Turks burst into the half-ruined fortress.
On June 5, 1827, Acropolis capitulated and Ibrahim’s
troops seized Athens, the “symbol of Greek freedom”. It
looked as if the Greek revolution had been suppressed. All

100
 that was left of the once powerful insurgent army were a
few guerilla detachments scattered here and there in the
mountains and deprived of a united command and political
leadership. But at this point the European powers brought
about a change in the development of the Greek upri­
sing.

THE INTERVENTION OF THE POWERS. The fall

of Athens accelerated the intervention of the Powers. As
far back as March 25, 1823, British Foreign Secretary
Canning had recognised Greece as a belligerent. This meant
that England would in the future acknowledge Greece’s in­
dependence. In 1825, there was also a change in Russian
policy. With the accession of Nicholas I to the throne, the
Russian Government showed an inclination to give the
Greeks more support. England, unwilling to permit the
unilateral intervention of the Russians, hastened to come to
an agreement with them over joint action in Greece.
On April 4, 1826, in St. Petersburg, Nesselrode and W el­
lington signed an Anglo-Russian Protocol on joint interven­
tion in the affairs of Greece. Both Powers pressed the Sultan
to grant Greece autonomy, including the right to trade, reli­
gious freedom and administrative independence. Formally,
Greece was to remain in the Ottoman Empire, but both
Powers, in fact, intended to establish their protectorate
over i t ..
The agreement, however, remained ink on paper. In
Greece at the time the odds were in Egypt’s favour and
Sultan Mahmud II stubbornly rejected the solicitations of
England and Russia. The European Powers were still un­
prepared for a war and could not back up their demands
with an armed intervention.
In March 1827, on the insistence of Kolokotronis, a new
Greek National Assembly elected as president Count Capo
d’Istria, formerly Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs. This
greatly strengthened Russian influence. In order to avoid
the further consolidation of Russia’s positions and unilateral
actions, England once more raised the question of the joint
action of both Powers. On July 6, 1827, one month after
the seizure of Athens, a convention was signed in London
expanding the Treaty of St. Petersburg signed in 1826.
France joined the Anglo-Russian bloc, and the three Powers

101
decided to press for the “civic secession of Greece from
Turkey”.
The text of the convention stipulated that the Porte was
to agree to the convention in a month’s time, otherwise it
would be forced to do so.

NAVARINO. TH E EVACUATION OF THE

EGYPTIANS FROM THE MOREA. The Porte again
rejected the demands of the Powers. Accordingly, on
October 20, 1827, a combined fleet under the command of
Admirals Codrington, De Rigny and L. P. Heiden entered
the Bay of Navarino, where the main forces of the Turkish
and Egyptian fleets lay at anchor. The allies had 26 ships.
Ibrahim had 94. Counting on his numerical superiority and
the support of the shore batteries, Ibrahim was the first to
start the fight, which ended in the complete destruction of
the Egyptian and Turkish fleets. With only one ship and
fifteen small auxiliary vessels left, he found himself in a
position similar to that of Napoleon in Egypt after the
Battle of Aboukir. He was cut off from his main base.
Moreover, the armed intervention of the Powers imparted
new strength to the Greek uprising.
Navarino was a prelude to the Russo-Turkish war, which
began in the spring of 1828 and ended one year and six
months later in the victory of Russia. According to the Treaty
of Adrianople, signed on September 14,1829, Greece received
her autonomy and, soon after, her independence.
Mohammed Ali wisely refrained from taking part in the
Russo-Turkish war. Nevertheless, on the insistence of the
Powers he was forced to evacuate the Morea, where Ibra­
him’s army was in gréât difficulties. On August 9, 1828, at
Alexandria, Mohammed A li signed a convention on the
evacuation of Egyptian forces from the Morea and the
return of Greek prisoners and slaves. In September 1828,
units of the French expeditionary corps landed at Morea
and the evacuation of the Egyptians began. Thus ended
this fruitless war in which Egypt suffered heavy losses
(nearly 30,000 men) and was deprived of her fleet.
 CHAPTER V III

MOHAMMED ALFS STRUGGLE FOR SYRIA

AND PALESTINE. EGYPT'S DEFEAT

THE CONFLICT W ITH THE PORTE. Mohammed

A li’s failure in the Morea acted as a stimulus in his struggle
for Syria and Palestine. He could not realise his plans for
the creation of a great Arab Power without gaining posses­
sion of these two countries. Syria and Palestine protected
Egypt from attacks from the east and served as a shield
against the Turkish menace. The annexation of Syria would
strengthen Mohammed A li’s eastern borders and Egypt’s
independence of the Porte. And Syria itself was a tempting
prize. It was one of the richest provinces of the Ottoman
Empire; it produced raw silk, wheat, wool, olive oil and
valuable fruits, and it could also become a profitable market
for Egypt’s growing industry.
Mohammed Ali was well aware of the Sultan’s weakness
and knew he could force the Sultan to accept any conditions.
With this in view, he began preparing for a struggle against
the Porte. “In consequence of the unfortunate war of 1828-
29,” wrote Marx, “the Porte had lost her prestige in the
eyes of her own subjects. As usual with Oriental empires,
when the paramount power is weakened, successful revolts
of Pashas broke out. As early as October 1831, commenced
the conflict between the Sultan and Mehemet Ali, the Pasha
of Egypt, who had supported the Porte during the Greek
insurrection.”1
The war against the Porte began in 1831. There was a
two-year delay because of the Franco-Egyptian plans for
the conquest of North Africa. Mohammed A li’s relations
with his western neighbours were far from friendly and he
had long nurtured the idea of seizing Maghreb. The condi-

1 See Karl Marx, N ew York D aily Tribune, November 21, 1853.

103
tions for such a conquest in 1829-30 seemed to be ripe. Rela­
tions with France, Mohammed A li’s most important ally,
had been normalised. In 1829, the French offered to finance
a campaign against North Africa, to which the Pasha
agreed. The Egyptians were to seize Tripoli, Tunisia and
Algeria. Mohammed A li formed a 40,000-strong army under
the command of Ibrahim for the campaign against Africa,
but demanded that, besides money, France should give him
four 80-gun ships. The French refused and offered instead
the assistance of their fleet. This arrangement was highly
distasteful to Mohammed Ali, who wished to fight in Magh­
reb under the flag of Islam. In 1830, France put forward a
new plan for a joint campaign. The Egyptians were to seize
Tripoli and Tunisia, while France was to take Algeria. But
Mohammed Ali rejected this plan, too. In the end he com­
pletely refused to participate in the Algerian campaign,
which the French undertook by themselves, while Moham­
med Ali devoted himself wholly to the events in Syria.
A dispute over six thousand Egyptian fellaheen, who had
fled in 1831 to Palestine to avoid recruitment, served as an
excuse for a revolt against the Sultan. The situation by this
time had become quite strained. Mohammed Ali was openly
refusing to obey the Porte. Having refused to participate in
the Russo-Turkish war, he also refused to pay the indemni­
ties agreed on by the Treaty of Adrianople. He felt he had
paid tribute in blood in the Morea for many years in ad­
vance. Crete, he reasoned, could not compensate for the
losses in the Morea, and he insisted on having Syria and
Palestine too.
In the meanwhile, six thousand peasants fled from Egypt and
found refuge in the domains of the Akka Pasha, Abdullah.
Mohammed A li demanded the return of the fugitives. Ab­
dullah refused to give them up, declaring that, being the
subjects of one ruler, they could live in any part of the
Ottoman Empire they liked. Mohammed Ali then began
military operations. In word, he remained loyal to the Sul­
tan. He said he was not declaring war on the Porte, but on
the Akka Pasha. In effect, the campaign against Abdullah
developed into the Turco-Egyptian war.

THE FIRST SYRIAN CAMPAIGN (1831-33). The

superiority of the Egyptians over the Turks made itself felt
104
from the very outset. The Turkish army was in a state of
complete decay. “The Turkish fleet was destroyed at
Navarino,” Marx wrote, “the old organisation of the army
was defeated by Mahmud, and a new one had not yet been
created.”1 The war against Russia weakened the Turkish
army still further. The Egyptian army was well armed and
f . i* i Tj 1 1 2ries of victories to its credit in Arabia,

Moreover, military expenditure and indemnities had

forced the Porte to raise taxes, and this was causing dis­
content among the masses. Peasant uprisings flared up
throughout Turkey. The population of both the Arab and
Turkish regions hailed the Egyptians as deliverers from the
Sultan’s rule.
Turkey was unprepared for the war and showed signs
of hesitation. For six months the Porte took no action. Only
in March 1832, did the Turks really begin to prepare for
the campaign, which had already begun. On April 23, 1832,
the Sultan declared Mohammed Ali a rebel and relieved
him of his duties. This was equal to a declaration of war.
The Egyptians made the best of the time factor. In
October 1831, Ibrahim Pasha launched a campaign. Two or
tree weeks later, not having encountered any serious resist­
ance, Egyptian troops occupied Gaza, Jaffa, Haifa and
at the end of November 1831, advanced on Akka, the for­
tress which had once barred Napoleon’s path. After a six-
month’s siege, (from November 26, 1831, to May 27, 1832)
Akka fell. By this time the main forces of the Egyptians
were far away in the north. The first big battle against the
Turks took place on July 8, 1832, near the city of Homs. In
this battle the Turks, commanded by nine pashas, were
crushed. Over four thousand were killed or taken prisoner.
They lost all their artillery and transports. The Egyptians
lost only 100 men.
H aving triumphed in Homs, Ibrahim occupied Hama and
Aleppo and then headed for the Beilan mountain pass,
situated between Antakiyah (Antioch) and Alexandretta.
The pass was the key to the heart of the Ottoman Empire,
Asia Minor, and here were stationed the main forces of the
Turkish army, under the command of serdar-i-ekram,

1 Marx and Engels, Works, 2nd Russ. Ed., Vol. 2S, p. 257.

105
 Husein Pasha. Ón July 29, 1832, Ibrahim attacked and
shattered, the Turkish forces. Husein Pasha fled to Adana
with the remnants of his army, leaving the whole of Syria to
the Egyptians.
The Egyptian troops entered Anatolia. They occupied
Adana and then proceeded westwards. The Sultan dismissed
Husein Pasha and appointed Mohammed Reshid Pasha
commander-in-chief. But this did not affect the course of
the military operations. The third and last decisive battle
of the war was waged on December 21, 1832, near Konya.
The Turks threw their remaining 60,000 men against 30,000
Egyptians. Ibrahim proved a brilliant leader in the ensuing
battle. Although outnumbered by two to one, he surrounded
the Turks and utterly defeated them.
After the Battle of Konya, the Sultan had no troops left.
The way to the empire’s capital lay open. The Egyptian
advance guard soon entered Bursa. Istanbul was threatened.
The confused Sultan turned to the Powers for help.
France openly supported Egypt and refused to help the
Sultan. Russia openly sided with the Turks. England’s posi­
tion was complicated. She was against Mohammed Ali, but
feared the Turco-Egyptian conflict might lead to Russian
intervention and consequently, to the strengthening of Rus­
sia’s influence or the division of the Ottoman Empire into
two parts: the northern, which would be dependent on
Russia, and the southern under Mohammed Ali, which
would become a sphere of Trench influence. England, there­
fore, did all in her power to iron out the differences and
preserve the “integrity” of the Ottoman Empire, where
British influence was prevalent. England, in fact, bided her
time and avoided rendering any direct aid to the Sultan.
In such circumstances there was nothing left for the Porte
to do but to turn to Russia for help. Mohammed A li’s suc­
cess worried the Russians. According to the Russian Foreign
Minister, Count Nesselrode, the aim of Russian intervention
was to “save Constantinople from the possibility of a coup
d’état, which would be a detriment to our interests and lead
to the downfall of a weak, yet friendly state. W ere they to
substitute it for a stronger state under the French, it would
be a source of all sorts of difficulties”. Russia, therefore,
came out in defence of the empire’s integrity and the Sul­
tan’s sovereignty.
106
 On December 21, 1832, the Russian representative at
Istanbul made an official offer of Russian military aid. Gen­
eral Muravyov set out with a special mission to the shores
of the Bosporus, and from there proceeded to Egypt. He
arrived at Alexandria on January 13, 1833, and communi­
cated the demands of Nicholas I to Mohammed Ali. Mo­
hammed A li agreed to a compromise. H e promised Mura­
vyov to check the advance of his troops on Istanbul, stop
military operations and recognise the supreme authority
of the Sultan.
The panic in Istanbul, however, did not die down. Revolts
instigated by Ibrahim Pasha’s agents flared up in Asia
Minor. On February 2, 1833, the Egyptians occupied Kuta-
hya. On February 3, Mahmud II made an official request
for Russia’s help, and a Russian squadron entered the Bos­
porus on February 20, 1833. The landing of the 20,000-strong
Russian expeditionary corps began on March 23, 1833. Its
headquarters was situated on the Asian shores of the Bos­
porus at Unkiar-Skelessi, near the Sultan’s summer resi­
dence. At the same time, another Russian corps was sent
to the Danube, to advance on the Turkish capital by land.
The Russian intervention seriously alarmed England and
France. They hastened to reconcile Mohammed A li with
the Sultan so as to deprive the Russians of an excuse for
keeping their troops on the Bosporus. To drive the point
home, England and France carried out joint naval demon­
strations off the coast of Egypt. On May 4, 1833, at Kutahya,
a peace treaty was signed between Turkey and Egypt
through the mediation of England and France.
Formally this was not a peace treaty in the legal sense
of the word. T he Sultan issued a unilateral firman, confirm­
ing Mohammed A li’s right to Egypt, Crete, Arabia, and
Sudan, and making him the ruler of Palestine, Syria and
Cilicia. Mohammed Ali had to withdraw from Anatolia
and recognise the Sultan’s suzerainty. By the will of the
Powers, Egypt remained the vassal of the defeated Porte.

THE RESULTS OF THE WAR. THE UNKIAR-

SKELESSI TREATY. Russia’s intervention had saved
Mahmud II. He retained his throne and empire, but he was
still in a critical position. Both sides were dissatisfied with
the Kutahya Treaty and regarded it as a truce. The Sultan
107
was eager for revenge. Mohammed Ali wanted independence.
A new conflict was inevitable, and Russian diplomacy
did not fail to take advantage of this.
On the eve of the evacuation of the Russian troops, July
8, 1833, Turkey signed the famous eight-year Unkiar-Ske-
lessi Treaty, which provided for the creation of a military
alliance between Russia and Turkey. Russia undertook
to send her troops to the Sultan’s aid “should the need arise”.
In this connection Nesselrode remarked: “W e now have
a legal basis for an armed intervention in Turkey’s affairs.”
Turkey undertook to close the Dardanelles to warships of
all nations, whenever Russia demanded it.
The Münchengrätz Convention, signed on September 18,
1833, between Russia and Austria during a meeting of the
emperors in Münchengrätz, was a supplement to the Unkiar-
Skelessi Treaty. The Convention was soon signed by Prussia.
The signatory Powers undertook:
“I. .. .To support the existence of the Ottoman Empire
under the present dynasty, and to use all effective means
at their disposal.
“II. .. .To oppose by common efforts any combination that
may cause detriment to the rights of the supreme government
in Turkey either by the establishment of an interim regency
or a complete change of dynasty.”
Finally, the first secret clause stipulated that “the pro­
visions of Article II should be applied specifically to the
Pasha of Egypt . . . to prevent the direct or indirect spread
of his supreme power to the European provinces of the Ot­
toman Empire”.
In the end, British and French diplomacy paralysed the
practical results of the Unkiar-Skelessi Treaty and the Mün­
chengrätz Convention. These agreements, nevertheless, did
constitute a serious obstacle to the realisation of Mohammed
A li’s plans and deprived him of the fruits of his victory in
the first Syrian campaign.
The Turco-Egyptian war resulted in the formation of two
states within the framework of the formally united Ottoman
Empire. Mohammed A li exercised control over Egypt, the
Sudan, Syria, Palestine, Arabia, Cilicia and Crete, and only
Anatolia, Iraq and a few regions of the Balkan Peninsula
remained in the hands of the Sultan. Mohammed A li’s empire
was more densely populated, vaster, stronger and richer
108
than that of Mahmud II. The situation was fraught with a
new conflict which weis not long in making itself felt.

IBRAHIM’S REFORMS IN SYRIA A N D PALESTINE

(1832-40). The political plans of Mohammed Ali and his son
Ibrahim, the supreme ruler of Syria, went very far. Both
dreamed of creating a large independent Arab state.
“His real design is to establish an Arabian kingdom in­
cluding all the countries in which Arabic is the language,”1
wrote Lord Palmerston about Mohammed A li in 1833.
A French envoy, Baron de Boislecomte, who paid Ibrahim
a visit at the time, related that Ibrahim made no secret of
his intention to revive Arab national consciousness and re­
store Arab nationhood, to instil in the Arabs a real sense of
patriotism and to associate them in the fullest measure in the
government of the future empire. Baron de Boislecomte
added that Ibrahim was active in spreading his ideas of na­
tional regeneration. In his proclamations he had frequently
referred in stirring terms to the glorious periods of Arab
history and had infected his troops with his own enthusiasm.
He had surrounded himself with a staff who shared his ideas
and worked for their dissemination.
However, the conditions for the consolidation of the Arab
nation had not yet matured: the Arab bourgeoisie of Svria
was still very weak; feudalism had not been liquidated. Ibra­
him Pasha, who was a talented politician, made a careful
study of the experience of the advanced countries of the
time. H e saw the tendencies of future development and tried
to accelerate their realisation. H e carried out a series of re­
forms in Syria, which, like the reforms of Mohammed Ali
in Egypt, were aimed at the centralisation of the country, the
liquidation of feudal arbitrary rule and separatism, and
the creation of prerequisites for the development of capitalist
relations.
First of all, Ibrahim tried to turn Syria into a granary of
the future Arab empire. To check the decline of farming, he
ruled that the fellaheen pay a fixed tax. He forbade arbi­
trary feudal extortions and exempted the newly ploughed
land from taxation for many years. He settled Bedouins on

1 George Antonius, The Arab Awakening, L., Hamilton, p. 31.

109
abandoned land, forcing them to give up their nomadic way
of life. Thus new villages were built and close to 15 thou­
sand feddans of virgin land were brought under cultivation
in the steppe between Damascus and Aleppo. During the
first two years of Egyptian rule the area under cultivation
rose from 2,000 to 7,000 feddans in the fertile Hauran Val­
ley. The Turkish army had always been notorious for its
marauding. But Ibrahim sent his troops on a campaign
against the Turkish army, thereby putting an end to the
continuous devastation of the Syrian crops.
The liquidation of the tax anarchy promoted the develop­
ment of industry and trade. Now the merchants and the ar­
tisans had no need to fear for the safety of their property.
They had no need to fear the plundering and blackmail of
the Turkish pashas. They knew the exact amount of the tax
they had to pay and could freely dispose of the remainder
of the surplus value which they had collected. With a bold­
ness hitherto unknown, they circulated and turned into cap­
ital the rotting treasures hidden from the covetous eyes of
the pashas and derebeys. The custom houses were wrested
from the tax-farmers and fixed customs duties were intro­
duced. This policy, which was conducive to economic devel­
opment, led to the growth of Syrian towns and foreign
trade. “The liberty granted to trade by the Egyptians, gave
new life to the seaports. Saida, Beirut and Tripoli became
free markets where the mountaineers could exchange their
silk and olive oil for wheat and European manufactured
goods. Output in the Lebanon increased by at least one-third
and the consumption of overseas goods doubled,” Russian
consul Bazili wrote.
Roads inside the country and caravan routes through the
desert linking Damascus with Baghdad were made safe.
Transit trade expanded. British cloth was sent via Syria to
Mesopotamia and Iran. Goods from India and Iran passed
through Syria to Europe.
Ibrahim waged a fierce struggle against the Syrian feudal
lords. Naturally, he could not destroy the feudal mode of
production and the feudal class domination that went with
it. But he strove to end feudal separatism, restrict the
political rights of individual feudal rulers and replace the
indocile seigniors with men who would obey him absolutely.
In the Lebanon, for instance, he depended on Emir Beshir II,
110
who continued the war against other Lebanese feudal lords
in the name of Ibrahim Pasha. In Nablus, Ibrahim depended
on the Abd el-Hadi sheikhs in his struggle against the other
sheikhs.
Ibrahim consolidated the central authority and reorganised
the administration of the country along Egyptian lines. Sy­
ria, Palestine and Cilicia were divided into six provinces or
mucliriyas headed by mudirs. Deputies of the central power
(imutasallims) were appointed in each town. The sheikhs of
the neighbouring villages were subordinate to the mutasal­
lims. Each mutasallim headed a consultative organ, mejliss ,
or shura, which was formed from among the local landown­
ers, merchants and clergy. The mejlisses were given the
functions of civil courts. The highest judicial authority was
in the hands of Ibrahim, who personally passed sentence on
criminal and political cases after their preliminary considera­
tion by the courts.
Educational reforms were also introduced during Egyp­
tian rule. The first Lebanese printing house was founded in
1834 in Beirut. In the same year, Ibrahim initiated a wide
programme of primary and secondary education. He estab-
( ished primary schools all over Syria and founded secondary
colleges in Damascus, Aleppo and Antioch. The pupils were
boarded at government expense. They wore uniforms and
were given a strict military education as was the custom in
Egyptian schools. The teaching was conducted in Arabic.
The American traveller, George Antonius, related that the
school director, the famous Clot Bey, received instructions
to “inculcate a true sense of Arab national sentiment”.1
Like Mohammed Ali, Ibrahim was known for his religious
tolerance, which was an unusual trait among the Turkish
pashas. Ibrahim freed the Arab Christians, in whose hands
were concentrated the crafts and urban trade, from many
humiliating restrictions forced on them by the Turks.

GENERAL DISCONTENT. UPRISINGS AG AINST

RECRUITMENT. Although the reforms of Ibrahim Pasha
promoted the growth of the productive forces and eased
the conditions of the merchants, artisans and peasants, they
evoked considerable discontent in Syria.*Il

1 George Antonius, op. cit., p. 40.

I ll
 The feudal lords, whom Ibrahim had deprived of
political privileges, were not the only ones in the country
who showed signs of discontent. The Bedouin and mountain
tribes, banned from the practice of highway robbery, were
also dissatisfied. There was a sharp change in the mood of
the peasants, who had also begun to show signs of discon­
tent at Ibrahim’s reforms. It was they who had to bear the
burden of his military plans. Realising that the Sultan had
reconciled himself to the loss of Syria temporarily only and
would attempt to recapture the province in the near future,
Ibrahim undertook a number of defensive measures. He
built fortresses, strengthened the mountain passes with forti­
fications, bought cannons and expanded the army. Ibrahim
used the forced labour of the Syrian fellaheen, recruited from
all over the country, to build the fortifications. Cannons were
acquired at the expense of the same Syrian fellaheen, who
had to pay higher taxes to the authorities each year. Ibrahim
had restricted taxes in the first years of Egyptian rule, but
the preparations for the war against Turkey made him change
his policy. Finally, the ranks of the Egyptian regiments
were swelled by the Syrian fellaheen, whom Ibrahim wearied
with his endless recruitments. The recruitments evoked es­
pecial animosity, causing peasant disturbances and, in some
districts, large uprisings.
In 1834, the first big peasant uprising against recruitments
broke out in Palestine and soon spread almost over the whole
country. The Egyptian punitive expedition sent to the Ju­
daean Hills was wiped out and insurgents besieged Ibrahim
in Jerusalem. Reinforcements from Egypt, led by Moham­
med Ali, came to his help. Mohammed Ali personally su­
pervised the reprisals against the rebels.
A n uprising of the Druse peasants of Hauran and Anti
Lebanon flared up at the end of 1837. For the first five years
of Egyptian rule the Hauranians had been exempted from
military service. When the term expired, the Egyptian au­
thorities demanded recruits. The Hauranians then rose in
rebellion and entrenched themselves in the lava field of El-
Leja, a huge mountainous labyrinth, resembling a natural
fortress. All the attempts of the Egyptians to storm El-Leja
were unsuccessful. Those who managed to penetrate into the
fortress were killed. Ibrahim continued to send greater num­
bers of troops trained in mountain warfare to El-Leja, but

112
they were unable to overcome the small group of Druse peas­
ants. Ibrahim tried to overcome them by starvation, but still
the peasants did not surrender. Ibrahim blew up the wells
and filled the reservoirs with corpses. The Druses drank the
stagnant water. Only when Ibrahim poisoned the wells did
the Druses emerge from El-Leja. Even then, they did not
surrender. They broke through the encirclement and con­
tinued to fight the Egyptians at the foot of Anti Lebanon,
where they were eventually defeated and dispersed in the
autumn of 1838.

THE QUESTION OF INDEPENDENCE. A NEW CON­

FLICT W IT H TH E PORTE. The uncertain and ambiguous
situation created by the Kutahya treaty of 1833 was a source
of serious anxiety to Mohammed Ali. It was necessary to
consolidate his gains legally, ensure the continuity of power
and legalise Egypt’s independence. For many years Moham­
med Ali had pressed for the recognition of his hereditary
rights to his vast domains. In 1834, he turned to the Powers
and in 1836-37, directly to the Porte, requesting a decision
on the question of Egypt’s independence and the rights of his
heirs. This brought no results. As usual, the Powers sided
with the Porte. Feeling their support, the Sultan showed no
inclination to give up the greater part of his empire. At the
last resort he agreed to grant Mohammed Ali his hereditary
rights to Egypt alone on the condition that the Egyptian
Pasha give his other domains back to the Porte.
The Porte’s refusal to come to a peaceful settlement once
again worsened Turco-Egyptian relations. Serious trouble
was in the making. Awakened public opinion in the Arab
countries, especially in Egypt, sided with Mohammed Ali.
In 1838, the Ulema of Cairo declared their full support for
the plans to grant Egypt independence. But the Powers, es­
pecially England, adopted a hostile attitude towards the
question. England eyed the growth of Egypt’s might with
anxiety. Egypt was a serious obstacle to the establishment of
British domination over the coastal regions in the East, a
menace to British positions in the Persian Gulf, and the chief
impediment to the development of Britain’s imperial com­
munications and commerce.
The famous Anglo-Turkish Trade Treaty was signed on
August 16, 1838. It was very advantageous to England and
8-573
113
paved the way for the conversion of the Ottoman Empire
into an agricultural and raw material appendage of the
foreign powers. In exchange for a certain raising of tariffs,
the treaty abolished the monopolies of the Turkish treasury
on the exchange of various sorts of raw material. Thus the
British exporters could buy raw materials at low prices either
directly from the producers or through their commercial
agents, skirting the treasury.
The British bourgeoisie pressed for the extension of the
treaty to cover the entire Ottoman Empire, including Mo­
hammed A li’s domains. By steering round Mohammed A li’s
monopolies, it hoped to buy Egyptian cotton, Syrian wool
and silk at low prices. It wanted to capture the import mar­
kets of Egypt and Syria, which were then dominated by
France. But Mohammed Ali flatly refused to have the con­
ditions of the treaty applied to his domains.
Mohammed Ali was also against England’s plans for the
creation of an English waterway on the Euphrates (for the
transfer of mail and goods from the mouth of the Orontes
to the Euphrates by caravan or a specially built canal and
further downstream along the Euphrates to Basra). He also
objected to various schemes for the construction of a canal
across the Isthmus of Suez.
Mohammed A li’s reconquest of N ejd and the Egyptians’
emergence on the Persian Gulf roused British displeasure,
while Egypt was troubled by British expansion in the Per­
sian Gulf and South Arabia.
H igh policy—the Powers’ struggle for hegemony in the
Near East and, in particular, England’s desire to weaken
French and Russian positions in the East—aggravated the
conflict. England fought against both Mohammed A li and
France. But by this time France had captured the greater
part of Algeria and occupied a dominating position in Syria
and Egypt as Mohammed A li’s ally. By fighting against
Mohammed Ali, the British hoped to consolidate the Sultan’s
position and change the balance of forces in his favour. In
this way they intended to make the Unkiar-Skelessi Treaty
ineffective and at the same time bring to naught Russian
influence in Turkey.
Such were the reasons that prompted England’s decision
to remove Mohammed A li and prevent a settlement of the
Turco-Egyptian conflict. England objected to the recogni-

114
tion of Egypt’s independence and acted as the fourth guar­
antor of the Ottoman Empire’s integrity, although officially
she had not signed the Münchengrätz Convention.
Feeling the support of the four Powers, Turkey began
preparing feverishly for a war. She mobilised a 100,000-
strong army, which she concentrated near the Syrian border.
England backed the Turks and urged them to fight. Her
attitude made an armed conflict inevitable.

TH E SECOND SYRIAN CAMPAIGN. The Turkish

troops crossed the Euphrates and invaded Mohammed A li’s
domains on April 21, 1839. They were utterly defeated,
however, in the first decisive battle at Nezib. The battle began
early on June 24, 1839. The Egyptians, led by Ibrahim Pa­
sha, occupied the heights, overlooking the Turkish positions
and opened fire. After an hour of fighting, the Egyptian
artillery silenced the Turkish batteries and cleared the path
for Ibrahim’s cavalry, whose headlong attack sealed the Tur­
kish army’s fate. For the second time in seven years, the way
to the Turkish capital opened before Ibrahim. On June 30,
1839, six days after the battle at Nezib, Sultan Mahmud II
died. Two weeks later the whole Ottoman fleet under Ahmed
Fauzi Pasha went over to Mohammed A li’s side. In the space
of three weeks Turkey had lost her sovereignty, her army
and her fleet, wrote Guizot. Once again Egypt was victorious.
Ibrahim, however, had no intention of undertaking a cam­
paign against Istanbul. Acting on the advice of his father
and France, Ibrahim restricted himself to the occupation of
Urfa and Marash. Nowhere did the Egyptians cross the
Taurus, for they had no desire to provoke a new Russian
intervention. Ibrahim chose instead to come to terms with
the Porte. He was ready to limit himself to the recognition
of the hereditary rights of Mohammed A li’s dynasty to Egypt
and her domains. The Porte’s defeat made it all the more
willing to accept any terms Ibrahim might propose.
This was certainly not the outcome of the war that Eng­
land and the other signatory Powers of the Münchengrätz
Convention had expected. They had reckoned without the
growing strength of Egypt. On July 27, 1839, they presented
a joint note to Turkey in which they urged her to suspend
all definite decisions made without their concurrence, pend­
ing the effect of their interest in its welfare. The note was
B*
115
signed by the four Powers of the anti-Egyptian bloc (Eng­
land, Austria, Prussia and Russia) and also by France, who
presented herself as “Egypt’s ally and friend”. France de­
cided to operate jointly with the Powers so as to avoid isola­
tion and guard the interests of the French bourgeoisie in
Egypt and Syria.
The talks between the Powers on the fate of Turkey and
Egypt lasted for a whole year. France urged the Powers to
come to a peaceful settlement and give Mohammed Ali the
hereditary pashaliks of Egypt and Syria. Austria and Prussia
agreed to surrender Egypt and part of Syria. Russia, who
was anxious to maintain the status quo and the Unkiar-
Skelessi Treaty, was indifferent to the territorial question.
England proposed to wrest Syria from Mohammed Ali.
The talks continued without a break. The Permanent Con­
ference of Ambassadors sat in London and discussed the
Eastern Question. Diplomats and journalists raised a clamour
over the “Eastern crisis”. But what they forgot to mention
was that the crisis was of their own making, that but for their
interference all the differences between Turkey and Egypt
would have been settled.
France, acting behind the back of the four Powers of the
anti-Egyptian coalition, persuaded Turkey and Egypt to sign
an agreement in May 1840, according to which the Sultan
made Mohammed A li the hereditary ruler of Egypt and
Syria.
The Powers decided to wreck the agreement. They took
advantage of the discontent in Syria and Palestine to in­
stigate several revolts against the Egyptians. The Lebanese
uprising of May 1840 was particularly formidable.
Bazili, an eyewitness of the event, wrote in this connec­
tion: “Mutiny raged throughout the Christian regions of the
Lebanon. A few thousand mountaineers, half of them armed
with weapons and half with shovels and wooden staffs,
descended from the mountains with the intention of capturing
Beirut. They were met by a barrage of fire from the castles,
which, however, caused no damage to the mountaineers, who
took what cover was offered by the terrain. They occupied
the whole neighbourhood and began killing the soldiers, and
looted all state property, but they did not lay hands on pri­
vate individuals___ In their proclamations they pledged
loyalty to the Sultan, poured out their grudges against the
116
Egyptians, and spoke of Mohammed Ali and Ibrahim Pasha
in biblical terms, portraying them as the worthy heirs of the
pharaohs who had oppressed the chosen people.
Ibrahim easily suppressed the uprising, for it was poorly
organised and confined mainly to the Christian areas of the
Lebanon. Mountain villages were pillaged and burnt and
the leaders of the uprising were banished to Sennar (the
Sudan).

THE INTERVENTION OF THE POWERS. The failure

of the Lebanese uprising coincided with the beginning of the
Powers’ open intervention. The London Conference of Am­
bassadors came to an agreement in the summer of 1840 on
the conditions for a settlement of the Eastern Question. Eng­
land, Austria, Prussia, Russia and Turkey signed a conven­
tion on July 15, 1840, which decided the fate of Moham­
med Ali and his domains.
The conclusion of the London Convention of 1840 was a
great success for British diplomacy. Russia was restricted
in her actions. France was completely isolated and England
came near to realising her cherished dream. She had secured
the support of the three Powers and the supervision of the
struggle against Mohammed Ali.
On August 19, 1840, the Powers demanded that Moham­
med Ali accept the conditions of the London Convention,
which boiled down to the following:
1) Mohammed Ali receives the pashalik of Egypt.
2) He receives the administration for life of Palestine (the
pashalik of Akka).
3) He returns all other domains to the Sultan.
4) At the end of ten days if he should remain obdurate
he will be left only Egypt.
5) If at the end of another ten days he is still defiant, he
will be overthrown by the united effort of the Powers.
Mohammed Ali declined the Powers’ ultimatum and de­
clared his intention of “upholding by the sword what had
been won by the sword”. In response, England and Austria
along with Turkey began military operations. British and
Austrian squadrons appeared off Syria. The squadrons in­
cluded steamships, which were being used for the first time
in naval warfare. On September 11, 1840, a British squadron
under the command of Charles Napier, landed a force (1,500

117
British soldiers and 7,000-8,000 Turks) north of Beirut,
where the British and Austrians began to arm the moun­
taineers and supply them with instructors and money. Rebel­
lion against the Egyptians broke out with new force in the
Lebanon. The Egyptian army was in difficulties.
Mohammed Ali had counted on France’s help, but France
did nothing but rattle her sabres. The bellicose campaign
in the French press did not frighten England. The French
Government realised that armed assistance to Egypt would
mean a large-scale European war. Moreover, France would
have had to fight singlehanded against Prussia on the Rhine
and against Britain on the seas. Rather than incur the risk
of a European war, France decided to leave Egypt in the
lurch: In March 1840, the French Government was taken
over by Thiers, an advocate of a union with Egypt and of
resolute actions. On October 8, 1840, Thiers sent a threaten­
ing note to the Powers, warning them that he would not
permit Mohammed A li’s banishment. Three weeks later,
however, on October 29, 1840, he resigned. The new cabinet
of Soult and Guizot did not intend to fight over Egypt and
hastened to come to an agreement with the Powers concern­
ing Mohammed Ali.
In the meantime, the position of Ibrahim’s army was be­
coming increasingly difficult. Ibrahim’s forces, scattered all
over Syria, were suffering from disease and undernourish­
ment. They were trapped by cross-fire. The guerillas had
cut their communication lines. The Anglo-Austrian squadron
was blockading the ports and shelling the Syrian coast, while
on land the British landing party and the insurgents were
dealing heavy blows at the Egyptian army. In the first few
weeks, the insurgents, with the help of the British fleet, oc­
cupied Jubeil, Batrun, Sur, Saida and Haifa on the Syrian
coast. New arms transports flowed into the heart of the
country from the occupied towns.
On October 10, 1840, Ibrahim’s forces were shattered
by the insurgents and Napier’s landing party in a relatively
big battle near Beirut. The Egyptians were compelled to
withdraw from the coastal and mountain regions of the
Lebanon. Beirut, Latakia and Alexandretta went to the
enemy. Emir Beshir II, Mohammed A li’s ally, surrendered to
the British, who banished him to Malta, replacing him with
his own cousin Qassim, who had fought on the British side.
118
 Akka, the chief stronghold of the Egyptians, fell on N o­
vember 3, 1840, after it had been bombarded from the sea.
A small British detachment captured the city and then
marched on Jerusalem. Anti-Egyptian uprisings flared up in
Palestine. They spread to Galilee, Nablus, Hebron and to the
southern parts of Syria, Biqa’a and A nti Lebanon. Further
resistance was useless.

THE CAPITULATION OF MOHAMMED ALL The

British squadron, under the command of Napier, approached
Alexandria in November 1840. Napier offered Mohammed
A li an ultimatum, threatening to open fire on the main base
of the Egyptian fleet.
The Syrian uprising, the defeat of the Egyptian army in
Syria and Palestine, France’s position and the menace to
Egypt itself shook Mohammed A li’s iron will. He realised
that the Egyptians could not stand against the world’s four
biggest Powers and accepted Napier’s terms.
On November 27, 1840, under the muzzles of British guns,
the Egyptians signed the convention proposed by Napier. In
return for a guarantee of the hereditary pashalik of Egypt,
Mohammed Ali undertook to evacuate Syria and Palestine
completely and to restore the captured Turkish fleet.
Mohammed Ali gave the order for the immediate evacua­
tion of Syria and Palestine. Ibrahim Pasha and his forces
left Damascus on December 29, 1840, and headed for the
south, but by this time the British had occupied Jerusalem
and barred the Egyptian army’s retreat. Ibrahim had to re­
treat through the Transjordanian steppes and deserts. Out
of 60,000 Egyptian soldiers, who had started out on the
campaign, only 24,000 reached Gaza. The others died on the
way of hunger, thirst, cold, disease and guerilla raids.
The Egyptian Question was settled on June 1, 1841, by a
special hatti-sherif (the noble rescript) after long talks be­
tween the Powers. Mohammed A li retained the hereditary
pashaliks of Egypt and the Sudan, but gave the Sultan back
Syria, Palestine, Cilicia, Arabia and Crete. He reduced his
army to 18,000 men. H e was deprived of the right to appoint
generals in his army and to build warships. He gave Turkey
back her fleet. He acknowledged himself the Sultan’s vassal
and pledged to pay a large tribute into the Sultan’s treasury.
Having destroyed the Egyptian army and fleet, the Pow-

119
ers, as Marx put it, made impotent “the only m an... to
replace a ‘dressed up turban’ by a real head.”* They dealt
a serious blow to the plans for Egyptian independence and
were responsible for the conversion of Egypt into a British
colony. Formally, Egypt’s dependence on the Porte was
strengthened, but actually the Porte lost Egypt in 1841. It
assed completely under British control. From then on, as
K larx and Engels wrote, “Egypt belongs more to the English
than to anybody else.”12
Having placed the N ile valley under her control, England
simultaneously gained a foothold in the Dardanelles. On her
insistence, the Unkiar-Skelessi Treaty, which had expired in
1841, was not renewed. In its place, five European Powers
and Turkey signed a new Convention on the Straits on
July 13, 1841, in London, according to which the Bosporus
and the Dardanelles were closed to all warships, including
those of Russia.

1 N ew York Daily Tribune, July 25, 1853.

2 N ew York Daily Tr'ünme, April 7, 1853.
 CHAPTER IX

LEBANON, SYRIA AND PALESTINE

IN THE PERIOD OF THE TANZIMATS
(1840-70)

THE ARAB COUNTRIES IN THE WORLD CAPITAL­

IST MARKET. The British intervention and Mohammed
A li’s capitulation in 1840 marked the beginning of a new
period in the history of the Arab countries, a period when
foreign capital was rapidly gaining ground. This period may
be considered the beginning of the colonial and economic
enslavement of the Arab countries. It culminated in the con­
version of the Arab countries into colonies, a process that
took place in the next historical stage—during the formation
and domination of monopoly capital.
The application of the Anglo-Turkish Trade Treaty of
1838 to Egypt and Syria gave British goods and those of
other capitalist countries access to the Arab markets. Be­
tween 1840 and 1850, imports to the Ottoman Empire of
British goods alone increased almost threefold (from
£1,440,000 to £3,762,000). The inflow of European goods
resulted in the decline of the old industrial centres, and the
ruin of handicrafts and the domestic industries. It also im­
peded the development of the national manufactories which
were unable to withstand the competition of European fac­
tory production.
At the same time, the development of foreign trade led to
the rise of trading cities and the strengthening of the com-
pradore bourgeoisie. It also stimulated the growth of the means
of communication (the building of the Suez Canal, a port at
Alexandria and a road between Beirut and Damascus).
Under pressure from foreign capital, farming in the Arab
countries began to assume a commodity character. It began
specialising in the production of a small number of com­
modity crops. In Egypt this was cotton and sugar cane, in
Syria and Palestine it was cotton, cereals and wool, and in

121
the Lebanon—raw silk. The development of commodity
production, however, did not lead to the establishment of
capitalist relations. The peasant became dependent on the
world capitalist market and at the same time retained his
dependence on the feudal lord.
The Arab countries were incorporated iii the world capi­
talist market as an agricultural and raw material appendage
to European industry. Economic relations were based on
unequal exchange, which in itself was a sign of the exploita­
tion of the Arab countries by industrial capital.
In 1856, foreign capital began to enslave the Arab coun­
tries by the export of capital, mainly in the form of loans to
Egypt and Turkey and the construction of means of commu­
nication.

HATTI-SHERIF GULHANE. Signs of the new were ap­

pearing in Turkey itself. A small strata of national bour­
geoisie, as yet mainly commercial, had come into being.
Feudal relations in the village were collapsing. A movement
for national liberation was growing in the Turkish ruled
Balkan provinces, where the development of capitalist rela­
tions had begun earlier than in Turkey. Greece and Serbia
had actually fallen away from the Ottoman Empire. To
prevent the complete collapse of the empire and the fall of
the Sultan’s authority, the more farsighted members of the
feudal and bureaucratic ruling class set to work to draw up
a new plan of reforms. They realised that the reforms of
Mahmud II alone could not save the empire and that new,
resolute changes were needed.
The initiator of the new reforms was Reshid Pasha, liberal
Minister for Foreign Affairs and Westerner. His programme
was a modest one. It did not endanger the feudal mode of
production and fully preserved the absolute power of the
Sultan. In effect, it was an attempt at compromise between
the outlived feudal-theocratic monarchy of the Sultan, on
the one hand, and the growing commercial bourgeoisie and
the liberal-minded landowners, on the other. Based, as it
was, on the interests of the ruling class, it reflected to a
considerable extent the aspirations of the Turkish bourgeois
elements.
The defeat of the Turks by Mohammed A li’s troops con­
vinced the Porte of the urgent necessity of new reforms. On
122
November 3, 1839, four months after the battle of Nezib
and Mahmud IPs death, the new Sultan, Abdul Mejid (1839-
61), called a meeting of higher dignitaries, foreign diplomats
and representatives of the merchant class at his Palace of
Roses (Gul-Han). At this meeting the contents of the manifesto
called hatti-sherif Gulhane were read out. The manifesto
enunciated the programme of reforms known as the
tanzimat el-khairiye (charity reforms), from which the whole
reformative period in the history of the Ottoman Empire
received the name tanzimat.
The manifesto proclaimed: “The whole world knows that
in the first years of the Ottoman Empire the famous laws of
the Koran and the Empire were respected by all. Therefore,
the state grew in strength and grandeur and all its subjects
without exception lived in the highest degree of prosperity.”
Reforms dictated by the new conditions of economic and
social life were portrayed in the manifesto as a return to
the old laws and institutions of the Ottoman Empire, to its
“golden age”. The manifesto also noted that for various
reasons “in the last 150 years, people have ceased to observe
the holy code of laws and the rules proceeding from it. And
the former might and prosperity of the Empire has declined
into weakness and poverty.”
The manifesto then undertook “to extend the blessings of
good administration to all the regions of the Empire by
means of new institutions”.
T he new institutions were to ensure the following:
1. Complete safety of life, honour and property of sub­
jects, irrespective of their religion.
2. A correct method of the assessment and collection of
taxes.
3. A correct method of military recruitment and reduction
of the term of service.
The guarantee of personal immunity and property invio­
lability in the Ottoman Empire, where everyone’s life de­
pended on the unrestricted arbitrary powers of the satraps
and pashas, was of great significance. By its guarantee of
property rights, the liatti-sherif Gulhane created the condi­
tions for bourgeois accumulation. This guarantee applied to
all subjects regardless of their religion. This was especially
important, because the bourgeoisie in the empire was mainly
of another nationality and belonged to the persecuted Chris-

123
tian religion—Armenians and Greeks in Turkey proper, Ar­
menians and Arab Christians in Syria, Maronites in the Le­
banon, Copts in Egypt, and so on.
The manifesto specified concrete measures to ensure per­
sonal immunity and property inviolability, namely, the in­
troduction of public trials,1 banning of the old practice of-
confiscating a criminal’s property,12 and the convening of a
consultative legal council to draw up new laws.
Fixed tax rates and a fixed budget were introduced and
the farming out of taxes (iltizam) and the system of selling
government posts, which had led to the same extortionate
practices as tax-farming, were abolished.
Universal military service and regular conscription were
instituted. A recruiting law was promulgated, reducing the
period of military service to 4 or 5 years and fixing military
conscription in the provinces in proportion to the number of
the population.

THE REFORMS OF THE FIRST PERIOD OF THE

TANZIM AT. Despite its moderation and half-measures, the
hatti-sherif Gulhane encountered strong opposition among
the most reactionary feudal lords, courtiers and religious
authorities. Sultan Abdul Mejid himself, who had been forced
to sign the manifesto, was unable to conceal his disap­
proval of the projected reforms. He regarded the tanzimat
as a compromise to which he had agreed against his will
and whenever the opportunity offered, did all in his power
to hinder its implementation. Most of the contemplated re­
forms, therefore, even the mildest of them, remained ink on
paper, whether they were made law or not.
The tanzimat, however, did have some results. In the first
place, an attempt was made to divide functions, to separate
civil from military administration and create a new legal
procedure. The recruiting law promulgated in 1843 intro-

1 “That is why each defendant will be tried publicly according to

our holy law after the investigation and until the correct verdict has
been passed nobody has the right to kill openly another by poison
or any other means.’*
2 “Each will own all forms of property and w ill dispose of it
freely without hindrance of any kind. Thus, for example, the innocent
heirs of the criminal will not be deprived of their legal rights and the
property of the criminal will not be confiscated.”

124
duced universal military service and reduced its term to 5
years. A radical change was made in the army. The infantry
and cavalry were reorganised along French lines and the
artillery along German lines. From then on the Turkish army
was composed of six corps, two of which were stationed on
the Balkan Peninsula, two in Asia Minor, one (with its
headquarters at Damascus) in Svria and Palestine and one
(with its headquarters at Baghdaa) in Iraq.
In 1840, Sultan Abdul Mejid began the work of instituting
judicial reforms, which dragged on for many years. The
drawing up of a new criminal, trade and civil legislation and
the laying of the foundations of a new judicial system con­
tinued throughout the period of the tanzimat.
Mahmud II himself had made an attempt to regulate tax
gathering. In 1838, he had established a fixed salary for the
officials, and then abolished several government monopolies
which had led to all sorts of abuse. The tax-farming system
was liquidated in 1840 and the provincial pashas were de­
prived of the right to gather taxes. This task was handed
over to special tax collectors, who came under the control
of the central finance department. Actually, this measure
was carried out only in the towns. The attempt to abolish
the farming out of agricultural taxes fell through and the
powerful tax farmers continued their old practices.
The administrative reform, which was linked up with the
division of civilian and military authority, clearly defined
the duties of the wali (governors) and the qa’i?n ma’qams,
who governed the vilayets and sanjaqs respectively. They
were granted only civil powers and could be removed at any
time. The elayets, which had previously been feudal patri­
monies of the pashas, were turned into subdivisions of a
united state body. The departments of state became special­
ised. Special consultative organs were attached to the gov­
ernorships. These were administrative councils (mejliss
idareh) made up of representatives of the bureaucracy, clergy,
landlords and merchants. A special official (idefterdar ), who
was independent of the wali, was entrusted with the col­
lection of taxes and the finances of the vilayet. The malmu-
dirs or ?mihassils, who headed the tax department in the
sanjaq , were independent of the qa’im ma'qam , but depend­
ent on the defterdar.
Greater consideration was given to education during the
125
period of the tanzimat A law was issued in 1845 introducing
free and compulsory education. Although this law, like many
others, remained largely unimplemented, it had favourable
results. The collegiate mosques were placed under the con­
trol of the state. Secular secondary schools were founded
where the pupils studied history, geography and elementary
mathematics. Special medical, engineering, law and military
schools were established at Istanbul. And in 1847 a Minis­
try of Education was founded.
An attempt was made in 1845 to set up special commis­
sions in each elayet “to investigate the causes of the decline
in farming”. These commissions were to discuss agricultural
problems such as the land tax, road building and irrigation.
Their activities, however, were doomed to failure since the
main “cause of the decline in farming”, the feudal system,
remained untouched.
Such were the reforms carried out in the first period of
the tanzimat (1839-56). They gave greater scope for the
development of the local bourgeois elements, but were not
enough to change the social system. They did not under­
mine the feudal mode of production or the feudal state, nor
did they create the conditions for the development of a na­
tional capitalist industry, for repelling the economic aggres­
sion of foreign capital. The reforms gave the bourgeoisie
certain personal privileges but did not give it political rights.
All the power in the empire remained in the hands of the
old bureaucracy.

THE REFORMS IN SYRIA A N D PALESTINE. After

the evacuation of Mohammed A li’s troops, Syria and Pales­
tine again reverted to Turkish rule. The Porte immediately
began to normalise the administration of these far-flung prov­
inces. New laws were gradually introduced despite the op­
position of the reactionaries. The governors of the elayets
in Syria and in other parts of the empire were deprived of
military and financial prerogatives. Special financial offi­
cials, defterdars. and muhassils, who depended directly on
the Ministry of Finance, were appointed. But the tax-farm­
ing system was retained. After the institution of military
reforms, a corps of the new regular army, the Arabistan
ordus, was quartered in Syria. This was a regular army un­
der the command of a field marshal (;mushir), who was

126
independent of the civilian authorities, but subordinate to the
Ministry of Defence.
In 1841, a new territorial division was introduced in Syria.
The pashaliks of Saida and Tripoli were merged into one
elayet and its centre was transferred to Beirut. Palestine was
divided into a special sanjaq of Jerusalem under the control
of the Beirut governor.
A ll these relatively insignificant administrative changes
did not affect the core of the feudal sytem in Syria. How­
ever, they deceived the peasants, who regarded them as a
promise of liberty. The uprisings against Egyptian rule and
the active part played by the Syrians in expelling the Egyp­
tians from Syria and Palestine had given the Syrians more
confidence in their strength. On the other hand, the restora­
tion of Turkish rule did not ease the lot of the Syrian peo­
ple. All this served to create the prerequisites for a new
upsurge of the liberation struggle. A series of anti-feudal
uprisings took place in Syria, the most serious of which were
the Aleppo uprising of 1850 and the Hauranian uprising of
1852-53.

TH E LIQUIDATION. OF TH E LEBANESE PRINCI­

PALITY. The anti-feudal movement was especially strong in
the Lebanon. The big Druse feudal lords returned to the Le­
banon after the dethronement and banishment of Emir Be-
shir II in 1840 and began to solicit for the return of their
former estates and political privileges. The Maronite peas­
ants offered resistance to the Druses, on whose lands they had
settled during the reign of Emir Beshir II. The ensuing
struggle created a tangle of conflicts. The real class differences,
complicated by the conflicts between the Druses and the
Maronites, were supplemented by the rivalry between Eng­
land and France, who backed the opposing religious and
political groups. England supported the Druses and France,
the Maronites.
In October 1841, the British-armed Druse feudal lords
instigated a revolt against the Porte’s appointee, Emir Qas-
sim, who was Beshir II’s cousin. They managed to involve
the Druse peasants, who were dependent upon them. The
insurgents laid siege to the Emir’s palace. They broke into
the Maronite villages, slaughtered the population, burnt
homes and seized lands and orchards. The Maronites organised

127
self-defence detachments and at times successfully repulsed
the attacks of the Druses. Several Maronite detachments
penetrated into the Druse villages, where they organised
pogroms. This mutual extermination continued for six weeks.
The Druses finally gained the upper hand and took over
the southern Lebanon.
The Porte used this as an opportunity to send its troops
to the Lebanon. Emir Qassim was deposed, arrested and sent
to Istanbul and the Lebanese principality was turned into
an ordinary Turkish province with the Turkish general,
Omar Pasha, as governor.
Omar Pasha launched reprisals against the Druse feudal
lords, who prevented him from pursuing his centralising
policy. In March 1842, he summoned eight Druse sheikhs to
his castle at Beit-Ed-Din, arrested them and sent them to
Beirut under heavy guard. After their arrest the Maronites
who had fled from the southern Lebanon during the mas­
sacre of 1841 returned to their home villages, lands and or­
chards.
The actions of the Turks caused disapproval among the
Powers that were striving .to consolidate their positions in
the East. They sharply protested against direct Turkish rule
and demanded that the Lebanon’s autonomy be restored.
France, who supported the Maronites, insisted on the return
of Beshir II (Snehab) and, to back up her demand, sent a
squadron to Beirut. England again sided with the Druse feu­
dal lords who had fought against the Shehab family.
Under pressure from the Powers, the Porte held a referen­
dum in the summer of 1842 in the Lebanon. The results
showed that the Maronites were in favour of restoring the
Lebanese principality with a Christian governor from the
Shehab family. The Druse feudal lords pretended to submit
to the Porte and during the referendum voted for direct
Turkish rule. However, in October 1842, they again rose in
rebellion, demanding the release of the arrested sheikhs and
the resignation of Omar Pasha. But they were defeated once
again. Omar Pasha crushed the Druse irregulars and burnt
the ancestral castle of the Junbalat family.
In 1843, however, the Porte was finally compelled to re­
linquish its plans for the direct rule of the Lebanon. Under
pressure from the Powers it agreed to hand over the admin­
istration of the Lebanon to two qdim mdqams from among
128
the local feudal lords. A Christian was appointed qdim
mdqam over the Maronites and a Druse over the Druses.
The Shehabs were removed for good. This “solution” only
confused matters further in the Lebanon and fanned the
flames of discord between the Druses and the Maronites. A
Turkish pasha aptly termed the solution “an organised civil
war”.

THE DRUSE-MARONITE MASSACRE OF 1845. There

was no uniform religion in the Lebanon. Nearly all the peo­
ple in the north, in Kesruan, were Maronites. The majority
in the central part of the Lebanon, Metn, were also M a­
ronites, but Druse villages were scattered here and there
among the others. The peasant population in the southern
part, Shuf, was mixed, and consisted of both Druses and
Maronites. The feudal claimants to power in Shuf were
Druses. When functions were divided between two qdim
mdqams , Kesruan went to the Maronite qdim mdqam and
the other regions were declared “mixed”.
A new conflict arose between the Druses and the Maro­
nites over the mixed regions. The Christians of the mixed
regions, anxious to retain their lands, felt they should
subordinate directly to a Christian qdim m dqam . The Druse
feudal lords said there could not be two governors in one
district and that the Maronites of the mixed regions of Shuf
should submit to the Druse qdim mdqam . In the end, in
September 1844, they agreed to a compromise suggested by
the French consul, which only widened the “organised civil
war”. Two elders, or wakils , one for the Christian and one
for the Druses, were appointed in each of the mixed villages.
The Maronites of Shuf were subordinate to the Druse qdim
mdqam, but could lodge complaints against him through
their wakil before the Christian qdim mdqam.
The Druse sheikhs returned to their former estates im­
mediately after the southern Lebanon had been handed over
to the Druse qdim mdqam. The Maronite peasants began to
prepare for an uprising. This time the religious form of the
conflict was soon discarded and the uprising acquired a clear­
ly defined class character. Unlike the uprising in 1840-41,
when the Maronite peasants fought under the leadership of
the feudal sheikhs and priests, the insurgent detachments
were now made up entirely of peasants. “The Christians
9-573 129
began to form levies with platoon and company command­
ers, and so on. But not a single sheikh or emir dared com­
mand the levies,” wrote an eyewitness.
A secret committee at Deir El-Kamar, which had branches
in all the big settlements of the southern Lebanon, stood
at the head of the movement. But the peasants did not fully
rasp the class aims of the struggle. Their hatred for the
Í >ruse feudal lords extended to all the Druses in general,
thereby antagonising the Druse peasants and calling forth
a wave of Maronite pogroms.
An uprising began in May 1845 and spread to all parts
of the Lebanon. It was followed by a general slaughter of
the Druse peasants, who in return began slaughtering the
Maronites. Tens of Druse and Maronite villages were sacked
and completely destroyed.
The anti-feudal character of the movement forced the
Turkish authorities to change their policy. Although in the
struggle for the centralisation of the empire the Porte had
come out against the Druse feudal lords, who wanted to
retain their former political rights, it continued to uphold
the interests of the feudal class as a whole. In 1841 and 1842,
the Porte had put down the mutinies of the Druse sheikhs
against the unity of the empire, but in 1845, it helped the
same Druse sheikhs suppress an uprising of the Maronite
peasants against the feudal system. With the help of the
Turkish forces the Druses emerged triumphant. The Druse
qdim mdqam continued to govern the southern Lebanon and
the estates remained in the hands of the Druse sheikhs.
The uprising then spread to the northern Lebanon, where
the Maronite peasants rose in rebellion against the bishops
and nobles of their own sect.
By the autumn of 1845, the Turkish troops had subdued
and disarmed the Lebanon. A new administrative regime
was organised with the help of the foreign consuls. W hile
»reserving the system of dual control, two qdim mdqams
? or the whole area and two wakils for each village, the for­
eign consuls demanded the formation of a council to assist
each qdim mdqam. The council was to have judicial func­
tions and also the right of control over the collection and
assessment of taxes. The council was to be made up of ten
members: two Maronites, two Druses, two Sunnites, two
¡Greek Orthodox and two Melkites (Greek Uniates). This,

130
however, did not do away with the main conflict between
the peasants and the feudal lords. At the same time it deep­
ened religious discord, caused fresh strife between different
religious groups and gave the foreign Powers a permanent
excuse for meddling in Syria’s internal affairs.

THE ACTIVITIES OF THE MISSIONARIES. BRITISH

PLANS FOR JEW ISH COLONISATION IN PALESTINE.
Missionaries provided another means of foreign penetration
in the Arab East. In the 1840s they revived their activities
which had abated at the beginning of the century. The mis­
sionaries opened schools and charity organisations in Syria
and Palestine, zealously spreading Christianity and with it
the influence of the countries they represented.
The first and most active missionaries in the East were
the Lazareths and Jesuits. Supervised by the Vatican and
vigorously supported by France, they had a wide network of
schools and seminaries at their disposal. In 1846, the Pope
restored the Latin Jerusalem patriarchate, which had existed
at the time of the Crusades.
The first Americans, Presbyterians, appeared in Beirut
in 1820. By 1860, they had over 30 schools and a printing
shop and in 1866 they opened the Syrian Protestant College
later to become the American University.
In 1849, Russia set up a Russian Orthodox mission in
Jerusalem. She did not have any directly aggressive plans in
Syria and Palestine, but merely wanted to strengthen her
influence over the Greek Orthodox population of the Balkan
Peninsula.
England, who was eager to make the best of Mohammed
A li’s defeat, was not to be left behind. She staked on two
cards at once. On the one hand, she backed the Protestants
and the plans for German colonisation in Palestine, an Anglo-
Prussian diocese being established in Jerusalem in 1841. On
the other hand, England encouraged the plans for Jewish
colonisation and initiated all sorts of Zionist projects.
The Jewish population of Palestine in the middle of the
19th century hardly numbered 11,000. Many of them were
pilgrims and had settled here for religious purposes. During
the Eastern crisis of 1839-41 the British reverted to Bona-
arte’s plans for the creation of a Jewish state in Jerusalem,
{ n 1838, Lord Shaftesbury and then Gauler and the British

9* 131
consul in Palestine, James Finn, put forward a number of
projects for the transfer of the Jews to Palestine and the
creation there of a Jewish state under British protection.
These plans were welcomed by Lord Palmerston, who re­
garded them as a guarantee of the safety of imperial com­
munications. Sir Moses Montefiore, a British banker related
to the Rothschild family, also supported these plans. Mon­
tefiore visited the East several times and even bought an
orange grove near Jaffa in 1855, but was unable to attract
a single Jewish colonist.
The plans of the Anglo-Prussian diocese also fell through.
The rivalry of the Powers in the East was reflected in
the endless bickering between the various missions over the
“holy places”, the distribution of the money and gifts re­
ceived from pilgrims, and so on. One such seemingly in­
significant conflict, the argument over repairs to the roof
of the Holy Sepulchre and the keys to the Bethlehem shrine,
grew into a serious international crisis and gave rise to the
Eastern war of 1853-56.
Although Turkey was among the victors and included in
the concert of European Powers, the war had a disastrous
effect on the Ottoman Empire. In 1854, to cover its military
expenses, the Porte concluded its first foreign loan, which
marked the beginning of Turkey’s financial enslavement.
Ultimately, the Powers established a kind of joint protector­
ate and dictated a new programme of reforms to the Turkish
Sultan, which completely cleared the way for the penetra­
tion of foreign capital in Turkey.

THE H A TTI-H U M A Y U N OF 1856. THE SECOND

PERIOD OF THE TANZIM AT. Under pressure from the
European Powers, on February 18, 1856, shortly before the
conclusion of peace, the Sultan issued a new imperial re­
script (/hatti-hiimayun). Formally, the imperial rescript con­
firmed the main stipulations of the hatti-sherif Gulhane
(noble rescript) by continuing the tanzimat policy. Actually,
things were different. The Powers regarded the hatti-hu-
mayun of 1856, unlike the hatti-sherif of 1839, as an inter­
national obligation and it was mentioned thus in Article 9
of the Paris Peace Treaty signed on March 30, 1856. Actual­
ly, the Sultan could neither annul nor alter it without the
approval of the Powers. If the first manifesto deprived for-

132
eign diplomacy of an excuse to interfere in the Ottoman
Empire’s internal affairs, the second encouraged it.
In the katti-humayun of 1856, unlike the hatti-sherif Gul-
harte, the stress was on religious equality and various eco­
nomic undertakings. This played into the hands of the Euro­
pean Powers, who demanded that the rights be extended
to cover their subjects and commercial agents, most of whom
came from the Christian (Armenian and Greek) merchant
class.
The Porte made its first concessions to the Powers during
the Eastern war, when it attempted to apply the recruitment
laws to the Christians and with this in view on May 7, 1855,
abolished the kharaj. This move met with opposition both
from the Moslem reactionaries, who were displeased that
“infidels” should be allowed to serve in the army and to
receive arms, and from the “infidels” themselves, who refused
to serve in the Turkish army. In the end the Porte exempted
the Christians from military service, having introduced in
its stead a special tax called bedel el-askari (military exoner­
ation tax), which was really the same as the kharaj only
under a different name.
Apart from the kharaj, in the Ottoman Empire there were
many other medieval taxes, which continued to grow from
year to year. The introduction of state monopolies on salt
and tobacco in 1862 increased the burden and prices of these
products rose. The tax farmers continued to collect the taxes.
The tax-farming system was abolished in 1857, but not for
long.
On April 21, 1858, a land law was issued, legally abolish­
ing the military fief system and the peasants’ dependence on
the former timariots. Actually, the system had been liquidat­
ed long before the law was issued. The peasants, however,
were as usual deprived of land. The new law did not give
the peasants land, it merely granted the leaseholders of the
state lands the right to buy the lands for a large sum. The
land law widened the category of privately owned lands,
promoted the development of private landownership and
made it a part of commodity circulation. At the same time,
the law retained many restrictions on the use of the land,
which hampered economic initiative. In 1867, a new law
was passed granting foreigners the right to acquire and own
land in the Ottoman Empire.

153
 Apart from the land legislation, the laws on the Ottoman
Bank (1856) and the granting of concessions, in the second
stage of the tanzimat, laws were promulgated on the rights
and position of religious communities and on Ottoman citi­
zenship (1869). Criminal and civil codes were compiled. A
law on the secularisation of the waqfs (1873) remained ink
on paper. A law on the elayets was passed on November 8,
1864, introducing a new administrative division of the em­
pire and reorganising local administration.
On the whole, the reforms of the second period of the
tanzimat weakened the Porte and accelerated the penetration
of foreign capital. The European capitalists received bank,
railway and other concessions, the right to buy land, and so
on. Thus, the hatti-hwnayun (imperial rescript) of 1856 and
the laws issued after it turned the Ottoman Empire into a
semi-colony of the European capitalist Powers. It ushered in
the second period of the tanzimat, when Turkey and her Arab
domains were plundered and enslaved by foreign capital.

TH E PEASANT UPRISING IN KESRUAN (1859-60).

Soon after the publication of the hatti-hnmayun of 1856, a
new crisis arose in Syria. The immediate cause was the pub­
lication of the hatti-hwnayun , which the Lebanese peas­
ants interpreted as a sign of their social equality and ex­
oneration from feudal obligations.
The growth of foreign trade and marketable agricultural
produce in the forties and fifties of the 19th century in­
tensified the exploitation of the Lebanese peasants. Discon­
tent in the villages grew. The peasants wrote complaints
against the growing extortions and abuses. At the beginning
of 1858, at a big gathering in the village of Zuk, where
about 300 persons had gathered from different villages of
Kesruan (northern Lebanon), all the complaints were made
up into a single petition, which a special delegation handed
over to the Beirut Governor, Khurshid Pasha. The peasants
demanded the liquidation of all feudal obligations. The Pa­
sha politely, but firmly refused to comply with their de­
mands. The peasants then began to prepare for an uprising.
They fetched the weapons they had hidden twelve years ago
and began to form insurgent detachments.
In January 1859, an armed uprising headed by the village
blacksmith, Taniyus Shahin, flared up. The uprising was
134
of a purely class character. Having driven the Maronite
feudal lords out of Kesruan and seized their land and prop­
erty, the insurgent peasants set up their own rule and the
Porte was compelled to acknowledge Shahim as qa'im
mdqam.
The Kesruan uprising had a revolutionary effect on the
other regions of the Lebanon. The disturbances spread to
Latakia and the central Lebanon and involved the Maronite
peasants of the Druse qa’im mdqamate , where the peasants,
actively supported by the Maronite clergy, began to prepare
for an armed uprising against the Druses. The Druse feudal
lords in their turn began to arm the Druse irregulars.

THE DRUSE-MARONITE MASSACRE OF 1860. In

the spring of 1860, the uprising grew into a new Druse-Ma-
ronite massacre. The provocative actions of the French con­
sul in Beirut were partly to blame for this. Marx noted that
“French agents who were bestirring themselves to bring about
a politico-religious row . . . on the Syrian coast”,1 were in­
volved in the bloody events in Syria.
On May 22, 1860, a group of ten or twelve Maronites fired
on a group of Druses at the entrance to Beirut, killing one
and wounding two. This is all that was needed. Druses and
Maronites began slaughtering each other and fires and po­
groms swept through the Lebanon. In a mere three days
(from May 29 to 31, 1860) 60 villages were destroyed in the
vicinity of Beirut. In June, the disturbances spread to the
“mixed” neighbourhoods of the southern Lebanon and Anti
Lebanon, to Saida, Hasbeiya, Rasheiya, Deir El-Kamar and
Zahle. The Druse peasants laid siege to Catholic monasteries
and missions, burnt them and killed the monks.
In July 1860, in Damascus, with the connivance of the
military authorities and Turkish soldiers, Moslem fanatics
organised pogroms, killing Christians and setting fire to
churches and missionary schools. This lasted for three days
(from July 9 till July 11). But thanks to the popular A lge­
rian hero, Abd el-Kader, who lived as an exile in Damas­
cus, a mass extermination of the Christians was averted. He
defended the Christians during the pogroms and placed his
palace at the disposal of the victims of fanaticism.

1 N ew York D aily Tribunet August 11, 1860.

135
 The bloody events of 1860 cost the Syrian people dear.
Over 20,000 Christians were killed and 380 Christian vil­
lages, 560 churches and 40 monasteries were destroyed. The
Druses and Moslems also suffered heavy losses.

TH E FRENCH EXPEDITION OF 1860-61. The po­

groms and the Druse-Maronite massacre gave the French
Emperor Napoleon III the long-awaited excuse for inter­
vention. The French ruling circles felt that the right time
had come to gain complete possession of Syria. Napoleon I l l ’s
desire to raise his prestige as “the most Christian king”
and internal and foreign policy considerations also played
an important role. In July 1860, he suddenly spoke out in
defence of the Syrian Christians and made known his inten­
tion of sending troops to Syria.
France’s plans put the Powers and Turkey on their guard.
Sultan Abdul Mejid tried to prevent the French expedi­
tion by sending one of the empire’s highest dignitaries, Fuad
Pasha, to Damascus. Having received emergency powers,
Fuad organised an exemplary mass execution in Damascus.
On his orders 111 persons were shot, 57 hanged, 325 sen­
tenced to hard labour and 145 were banished. Fuad Pasha
hoped to please France by punishing only the Moslems. The
Turkish troops quickly “restored law and order” and stopped
the pogroms. But the Bonaparte press continued to rage,
describing Fuad’s repressions as a mere “comedy” and de­
manding that the executions be doubled.
England and Russia, who were reluctant to permit the
capture of Syria by the French, insisted on the convocation
of an international conference to tie Napoleon down. On
September 5, 1860, six Powers, England, Russiá, France,
Austria, Prussia and Turkey, signed an agreement restricting
the size of the French occupation corps to 12,000 men and
its stay in Syria to 6 months. Moreover, the signatory Powers
sent special commissioners to Syria to make an on-the-spot
investigation of the causes of the Syrian events, expose the
culprits, punish them and “prevent a repetition of such events”
by the institution of the Lebanese statute {règlement
organique). After the settingup of an international commission
the French idea of sending troops to Syria lost all meaning.
On the very eve of the signing of the agreement, howev­
er, at the end of August 1860, French troops landed at
136
Beirut. In September, they made a tour of the country sub­
dued by the Turks. Having performed this “feat of arms”,
the French generals then directed their ardour against the
“insurgent” fellaheen of the northern Lebanon. The leader
of the Maronite peasants was forced to flee to the mountains.
Yusef Karam, the feudal leader who with France’s help had
suppressed the uprising in Kesruan and returned the land
to the Maronite sheikhs, became qdim m dqam .
Napoleon III attempted to evade the agreement of Sep­
tember 5, 1860, and keep his troops in Syria under the pre­
text that the situation in the area was still “insecure”. But
England and Austria threatened war and demanded the im­
mediate withdrawal of the French forces. In the end, a with­
drawal date was fixed for June 5, 1861, by which time the
French expeditionary corps was embarked on ships and sent
home. The French attempt to take over Syria had fallen
through.

THE “RÈGLEMENT ORGANIQUE” OF THE LEBA­

NON. In June 1861, after lengthy arguments, the interna­
tional commission worked out a new règlement organique
of the Lebanon. It was drawn up in the form of a conven­
tion and signed by Turkey and the Powers on June 9, 1861,
in Constantinople. The Mountain Region (excluding the sea-
coast) became an autonomous region with a Christian gov­
ernor at its head. The governor was independent of the
Beirut and Damascene pashas but directly subordinate to
the Porte. The system of two qdim mdqams was abolished.
The governor (¡mutasarrif) was chosen and appointed direct­
ly by the Porte. An administrative council composed of 12
men was set up under the governor. Each of the six religi­
ous groups inhabiting the Lebanon (Maronites, Druses, Sun­
nites, Shi’as, Greek Orthodox and Greek Uniates) elected
two members to the council. The council received the right
to distribute taxes, to control their gathering and expendi­
ture; it also had the right to consult on any question. The
region was divided into six mudiriyas with mndirs at their
head. Three of them were Maronites, one a Druse, one a
Greek Orthodox and one a Greek Uniate. The sheikhs of the
nahiyas and villages, the judges and scribes were subordi­
nate to them. The statute determined the degree of power to
be exercised by each religious group. District councils were

137
formed under each mudir. A special police force and judi­
cial system were created for the Mountain Region with Deir
El-Kamar as its centre. The governor had the right to dis­
arm the population of the Lebanon and call in Turkish forces.
The Lebanon undertook to pay an annual tribute to the
Porte.
The règlement organique was introduced preliminarily
for a period of three years. In September 1864, the Powers
and Turkey signed a convention which confirmed the per­
manent character of the statute and made minor changes in
it. Another Maronite district was formed and the council
under the governor was reorganised (it now had twelve
members—four Maronites, three Druses, three Greek Ortho­
doxes and Greek Uniates, one Sunnite and one Shi9a). The
règlement organique of the Lebanon remained in this form
up till 1914.

THE ENLIGHTENM ENT MOVEMENT OF THE

1860s. BUTRUS EL-BUSTANI. The development of
foreign trade led to the emergence in Beirut of a significant
strata of the commercial bourgeoisie. However, feudal op­
pression, the age-long enmity between the tribes and the
feudal cliques, between the numerous religious groups and
sects hindered the development of trade and the formation
of a single national market. In the struggle of the commer­
cial bourgeoisie for Syrian unity many outstanding ideolo­
gists came to the fore. They called for religious tolerance,
the unification of all Syrian Arabs regardless of their reli­
gious or tribal affiliation.
The most outstanding Syrian bourgeois ideologist in the
sixties of the 19th century was Butrus el-Bustani (1819-1883).
A Christian, he had studied at a Maronite seminary and
knew many languages. In 1840, he became acquainted with
the American missionaries and adopted the Presbyterian
faith. He advocated patriotism and called for Syrian unity.
He castigated religious intolerance and fanaticism, religious
strife and enmity, superstitious beliefs, feudal separatism,
the corruption of the Turkish authorities and the enslave­
ment of women. He was a tireless enlightener, teacher, pub­
licist and writer. He founded in Beirut the first national
Arabic school (1863) and published two weeklies in the Ara­
bic language— Nafir Suriya (Clarion of Syria) in 1860, and
138
EUJ anna (Paradise), and the magazine EUJinan in 1870,
publications that for the first time acquainted Syrian read­
ers with political, cultural and literary questions. He worked
a great deal to develop a new literary Arabic language and
to spread the European sciences among Arab intellectuals.
He compiled a big dictionary of the Arabic language and an
Arabic encyclopaedia in seven volumes (Dairat El-Ma’arif).
His cousin, Suleiman el-Bustani, continued the encyclopae­
dia after his death and translated Homer’s Iliad into
Arabic.
Butrus el-Bustani’s closest friend and associate was Nasif
Yazeji (1800-1871), the court poet of Beshir II. He also made
a great contribution to the revival of the literary Arabic
language and Arabic literature. A Christian like Bustani,
Nasif Yazeji opposed religious fanaticism and called on the
Arabs to unite in brotherhood on the basis of their common
heritage.
Bustani and Yazeji rallied the most progressive Syrian
intellectuals of the time. In 1857, their followers founded
in Beirut the Syrian Scientific Society, which for the first
time in Syrian history united Arab intellectuals irrespec­
tive of their religion. But foreign missionaries were not ad­
mitted to the Society. Bustani and Yazeji confined them­
selves to the enlightenment movement and regarded enlighten­
ment as the only means of struggle against feudalism.
Political problems were advanced by the new generation.
At clandestine meetings of the Syrian Scientific Society,
which in 1868 revived its activities that had been interrupted
by the events of 1860, discussions on cultural renaissance
were replaced by fervent calls to struggle for independence.
At one such meeting, Nasif Yazeji’s son, Ibrahim Yazeji,
recited patriotic poems, which had a wide circulation in Sy­
ria and the Lebanon. In his poems Ibrahim Yazeji sang of
the glorious past of the Arabs, castigated fanaticism and
called upon the people to shake off the Turkish yoke. This
was a passionate call to rise in the name of the Arab nation.
“By the sword may distant aims be attained. Seek with it, if
you mean to succeed,” Yazeji said.
 CHAPTER X

IRAQ, 1831 TO 1871. THE TANZIMAT

THE ECONOMIC SITUATION IN IRAQ IN THE

THIRTIES AND FORTIES OF THE 19th CENTURY.
Iraq, one of the most backward regions of the Ottoman Em­
pire, was not under the control of Mohammed A li and was
not affected by his reforms. It continued to be a remote
colony of the East India Company. In the period following
Daud Pasha’s dethronement (1831) the Turkish governors
of Iraq strove to consolidate the Porte’s authority and exec­
uted its orders to the letter. The situation in Iraq became
very critical after the liquidation of the Kulemen dynasty.
The country was ruined and in the grip of an unusually
severe, even for Iraq, economic crisis. The plague of 1831
had carried off most o f the population and dealt a crushing
blow to Iraq’s productive forces. Out of the 150,000 inhabi­
tants of Baghdad only 20,000 were left and in Basra, only
5,000 or 6,000 were left out of 80,000. Many towns and vil­
lages had died out completely. Homes were boarded up.
Stores and workshops were closed. Fields and orchards were
abandoned. The area under cultivation had shrunk and the
fruit trees had perished. Trade had come to a standstill. Feu­
dal anarchy returned with new force and deepened the crisis.
It took the country over twenty years to recover from the
consequences of the plague.

TH E KURDISH UPRISING A N D TRIBAL WARS.

Daud Pasha had forced the Kurdish beks and the Arab
sheikhs into submission. He had known how to keep them
under control. He had fought against the Porte, but united
the whole of Iraq under his own authority. The new pashas
of Iraq were appointed by the Sublime Porte and fulfilled
its every wish. They destroyed the traces of Iraq’s former
140
independence and placed it under the complete control of
the central government. But actually their authority in Iraq
was illusory. They were unable to cope with the tribes, who
were reluctant to pay taxes, or with the opposition of the
feudal lords who did not want to recognise the authority of
the pashas. The country once again entered a period of feu­
dal decline and became involved in continuous tribal upris­
ings and internecine wars.
The Arab tribes of Muntafik, Shammar, Anaiza and others
either fought among themselves or formed alliances and
fought against the Baghdad pashas. For three months in 1833
the warriors of the Shammar tribes besieged Baghdad.
An endless wave of uprisings of the Kurdish feudal lords
swept the north. They were supported by the Shah of Iran
on the one hand, and the Egyptian Pasha, Mohammed Ali,
on the other. Striving to complete the unification of the
“Arab Empire” and gain possession of the strategic trade
route from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, Moham­
med A li pressed for the annexation of Iraq to his domains.
Hence his readiness to support any movement in Iraq which
would weaken the Porte’s authority. For its part, the Tur­
kish Government began sending punitive expeditions to Kur­
distan, which in the period between 1831 and 1842 com­
mitted repeated outrages against the local Kurdish rulers
and liquidated a number of Kurdish principalities. But these
partial victories did not reduce the Kurds to submission. In
1838, it looked as though the Kurdish regions had at last
been subdued. But when the news reached them in 1839 of
the Turks’ defeat at Nezib, the Kurds again rose in rebel­
lion. The Kurdish feudal lords were supported in 1841 by
the advance of Persian forces into Suleimaniye which al­
most led to a new Turkish war.
Russian-English mediation brought about a peaceful set­
tlement of the conflict and led to the conclusion of the second
Erzerum Treaty on May 31, 1847. It settled the boundary
and pilgrimage disputes. According to the Treaty, Persia
relinquished her claims to Suleimaniye and other regions.
To compensate for this the Porte let her have Mohammerah
(now called Khorramshahr) and the left bank of the Shatt-
Al-Arab.
The Turco-Persian settlement, like the defeat of Moham­
med Ali, did not change the general state of affairs in Kur-

141
distan. Any attempts to establish direct Turkish rule in the
Kurdish regions called forth new uprisings. The next Kur­
dish uprising took place in 1843 and lasted till 1846. No
sooner had Turkey put it down than new disturbances broke
out in 1848 and 1849. This went on year after year. From
time to time the Turks gained ephemeral successes in a dif­
ficult war, but their authority in Kurdistan remained illusory.

THE TANZIM AT IN IRAQ. The new, liberal ideas

which inspired the Turkish reformers and were reflected in
the hatti-sherif Gulhane were slow to penetrate into Iraq,
gripped, as it was, by economic dislocation and shaken by
feudal mutinies and tribal internecine wars. The Turkish
pashas exercised full military, civilian and judicial power
and continued to rule the country like real satraps. The
reforms prescribed by the capital of the empire at first had
no effect whatsoever on distant Iraq.
It was only after 1842, when the reforms of the first period
of the tanzimat began to be applied in Iraq, that some changes
occurred. Even these reforms, however, came too late.
They were far from complete and often had the opposite
result from what was intended. The law of universal con­
scription was not implemented in Lower Iraq until 1870.
The division of military and civilian power took place only
in 1848, when the sixth corps of the Turkish army was
formed with its headquarters at Baghdad, thus separating
the functions of the governor from those of the corps com­
mander. Simultaneous reorganisation of state machinery
brought a certain degree of centralisation and specialisation
and the abolition of the tax-farming system. Special clerks
were entrusted with the supervision of financial and tax
questions. A slightly Europeanised Turkish bureaucracy
came into being.
The reforms did not give rise to a social movement in Iraq
and their practical results were nil. The new administra­
tion was not as despotic as it was corrupt. The people still
suffered from the extortions and outrages of the officials, who
often confused their personal interests with those of the state.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF TRADE A N D THE MEANS

OF COMMUNICATION. For a long time the economy of
Iraq remained in complete decline. It was only in the sixties

142
of the 19th century that the first signs of economic progress
appeared. Iraq began supplying the world market with grain
and dates and purchasing foreign manufactured goods. To
meet foreign demands for Iraqi agricultural products the
country restored her fields and orchards and expanded the
sowing area and the date plantations. Iran too was drawn
into the world market. Moreover, a considerable part of its
foreign trade passed through Baghdad and Basra. The li­
quidation of internal customs in Iraq in 1861 considerably
increased the growth of this trade.
The growth of foreign trade and transit called for the
development of communications. As far back as the thirties
of the 19th century, the British traveller Chesney had unsuc­
cessfully attempted to organise regular shipping along the
Euphrates; the route to India through Egypt and the Red
Sea was more profitable. Iraqi trade at the time was too in­
significant to justify spending so much money on the devel­
opment of a new waterway, but in the sixties increased trade
led to a revolution in the means of transport. In 1862, the
Turkish Government established regular shipping lines along
the Tigris between Baghdad and Basra. In the same year,
the British Company of Lynch also established regular ship­
ping lines along this route. Basra had regular sea communi­
cations with the ports of the Persian Gulf and India. In
1864, a telegraph was set up connecting Baghdad with Istan­
bul, Tehran, Basra and India.

M IDH AT PASHA IN IRAQ. The final reformation of

Iraq was entrusted to the outstanding Turkish statesman,
Midhat Pasha (1822-1883). Midhat Pasha was the leader
of the Turkish constitutional movement and author of the
Ottoman Constitution of 1876. The Turkish Government
granted him full authority. In 1869, he was appointed gov­
ernor of Baghdad and also Commander-in-Chief of the
Sixth Corps, thus acquiring absolute military and civil
authority in Iraq.
W ith characteristic energy Midhat Pasha set to work to
carry out reforms and reorganise the entire life of Iraq. He
gave considerable attention to the construction of transport
routes. He expanded steam navigation on the Tigris and
founded a state steamship company. After the opening of
the Suez Canal, he organised snipping lines linking Basra

143
 with Istanbul and London. He drew up a project to extend
navigation further upstream along the Tigris to Mosul and
along the Euphrates up to Aleppo, entailing considerable
excavation work. On his initiative a dockyard was built in
Basra. Midhat Pasha also intended to organise the extrac­
tion of oil in Mosul and build railways all over Iraq. He
worked enthusiastically on the project of the “Euphrates
railway”, but he was only able to complete the 12-kilometre
Baghdad-El-Kazimiyah line, which was used for steam
trams. He gave great consideration to the expansion of the
sowing area and plantations.
Midhat Pasha also carried out a number of administrative
and cultural reforms. As early as 1864, a law was passed in
Turkey on the vilayets , which separated the judiciary from
the administration, established elective courts and drew the
population into local government. By 1868, the law had been
applied to all the provinces with the exception of Iraq and
the Yemen. Midhat Pasha implemented the law in Iraq. He
created new courts, instituted municipal councils (baladiah)
and founded new schools. Baghdad’s first newspaper ap­
peared under Midhat Pasha.
Midhat Pasha considered it his chief duty to subordinate
Iraq completely to the central government and liquidate tri­
bal and feudal separatism. He introduced military conscrip­
tion in Iraq and demanded recruits from the tribes. He also
taxed them and insisted on regular payments. W hen his poli­
cy evoked a big uprising of the Arab tribes in 1869, it was
ruthlessly suppressed.
Midhat Pasha realised, however, that repressions alone
could not break the resistance of the tribes. He therefore
decided to win over the feudal and tribal leaders to his side
by interesting them “in the peaceful exploitation” of the
peasants. W ith this aim in view, following the example of
some of his predecessors, he encouraged the tribes to settle
on the land and began selling the state lands to the tribal
sheikhs. As part of the plan to implement the land law of
1858, he sold state lands at a comparatively low price (offi­
cially without granting the right to private ownership) to
the former holders of the timars and zia?nets9 to the mer­
chants and, above all, to the tribal sheikhs. A ll these figures
often became owners of large tracts of land called miri tapu.
The state remained the supreme owner of these lands. Upon

144
 sale the state gave the new owners a document (tapu) grant­
ing them the right to use the land.
Midhat Pasha’s seizure of Kuwait and El-Hasa (1871) was
aimed at consolidating Turkish authority in Iraq. These
regions were formed into a special administrative unit (san-
jaq Nejd), which was dependent on the Turkish rulers of
Iraq.
The conquest of El-Hasa and Midhat Pasha’s brutal
reprisals against the rebellious Bedouins showed that even the
progressive representatives of the Turkish ruling class were
the suppressors of the popular movements in the Arab coun­
tries. Even while carrying out reforms, the Turks acted as
the oppressors of the people. The reforms of Midhat Pasha,
"like those of the first period of the tanzimat, strengthened
the Turkish domination in Iraq. Arabs were removed from
the government and Turks placed in all the important posts.
Iraqis were admitted only to minor positions. The highest
position they could hope for was that of mutasarrif.
The reforms of Midhat Pasha completed the reorganisa­
tion of the administration of Iraq, which from then on be­
came closely connected with the neighbouring provinces and
the centre of the empire. Iraq’s former isolation became a
thing of the past. The successors of Midhat Pasha, who was
transferred in 1871 to Adrianople, attempted to follow in
his footsteps, but most of their reforms remained unimple­
mented.
 CHAPTER XI

THE ARABIAN COUNTRIES DURING

1840 TO 1870

ARABIA AFTER 1840. After the Egyptians had with­

drawn from the Arabian Peninsula, the country was again
spilt up into a number of regions. These, however, were not
city-states (such a degree of disunity existed only in Had-
hramaut and in some parts of the Persian Gulf), but com­
paratively large feudal formations such as the Hejaz and
the Yemen on the Red Sea and Wahhabi Nejd, Kasim and
Shammar in Inner Arabia and Oman on the Persian Gulf.
A ll these regions, with the exception of Oman and southern
Arabia, were formally under Turkish control. Turkey,
however, stationed garrisons only in the chief towns of the
Hejaz and the port of Tihama, and the Turkish pashas’
authority was restricted to these towns. Actually, the Ara­
bian feudal estates were independent of the Porte.
In the Hejaz, power belonged to the Meccan sherifs, as
it had been in ancient times. In the Yemen the Zaydite
Imams held the reins of power. Turkey’s attempt (in 1849)
to place the Yemen under her direct control fell through.
The Wahhabi state was restored in Nejd and embraced al­
most all Inner Arabia, including El-Hasa. Only the feudal
lords and the merchants of Kasim strove to uphold their
independence. Meanwhile, in the north of Nejd the new
emirate of Shammar was formed and, gradually gaining
strength, began to compete with Nejd for hegemony in
northern Arabia.
Oman was divided into two parts. One came under the
control of the Muscat seyyid Said (1807-1856), who also
retained his hold on a number of islands in the Indian Ocean
(Zanzibar and others), and other territories on the coast of
Iran and East Africa. The other part, Trucial Oman, was
split up into a number of small “pirate” sheikhdoms. Both
parts were under the control of the British resident and the
146
guns of the British squadron stationed in the area ensured
British domination all along the coast. The British resident
used force to put down popular uprisings, appointed and dis­
missed governors and continued to impose new agreements
on the coastal sheikhs. Southern Arabia was a conglomera­
tion of small sultanates and sheikhdoms. England possessed
the colony of Aden, which was a breeding ground of strife
and uprisings in the southern part of the peninsula.

W AHHABI NEJD. After twenty years of Egyptian rule,

the Wahhabis had restored their state in Nejd. In 1843, Emir
Faisal became the head of state. Since 1838, he had been a
war prisoner in Egypt, but had then fled to Damascus, where
he masqueraded as a theological student. When the Egyp­
tians withdrew, he returned to Riyadh and with popular
support regained power.
Within a comparatively short time, Faisal restored the
emirate, which had virtually begun to disintegrate. True, it
was still far from being as powerful as it had been in the
past. In 1846, it even acknowledged Turkish suzerainty and
undertook to pay an annual tribute of 10,000 thalers. Nor
were the former boundaries of the Wahhabi state restored.
The Riyadh Emir controlled only N ejd and El-Hasa.
The attempt of the Saudi dynasty to regain power in Ka­
sim led to a protracted struggle with the Hejaz. The pros­
pect of Wahhabi domination in this important trade centre
of Arabia did not appeal to the Meccan sherifs. The mer­
chants of Kasim were also opposed to Wahhabi power. They
had gained control of a significant portion of the increasing
trade between various regions of Arabia and the neighbour­
ing Arab countries, and were rapidly enriching themselves.
Kasim’s “commerce with Medina and Mecca on the one hand,
and with Nejd, nay, even with Damascus and Baghdad, on
the other hand,” wrote the distinguished British traveller
Palgrave, who visited Inner Arabia in 1862-63, “has gath­
ered in its warehouses stores of traffic unknown to any
other locality of Inner Arabia, and its hardy merchants were
met alike on the shores of the Red Sea and of the Euphra­
tes, or by the waters of Damascus.”1

1 Palgrave, Personal Narrative of a Y ears Journey Through Central

and Eastern Arabiaf London, 1869, p. 117.

10 * 147
 The merchants of Kasim were oppressed by feudal extor­
tions and the rigorous customs of the Wahhabi state, and
wanted their city-states to be independent. With the help
of the Meccan sherifs the inhabitants of Kasim successfully
repulsed all the Wahhabi campaigns. In 1855, Faisal even
acknowledged the independence of Anaiza and Buraida.
Further attempts by the Saudi dynasty to conquer the towns
of Kasim achieved almost nothing. Only occasionally were
they able to exact a certain amount of tribute.
In eastern Arabia, the Wahhabis met with British opposi­
tion. Twice they attempted to regain their former positions
on the Persian Gulf (1851-52—western Oman, 1859—Qa­
tar), and twice they were repelled by the British fleet. After
the conclusion of the Anglo-Nejd Treaty in 1866, the Sau­
di family abandoned its attempts to extend its power to
Trucial Oman and Bahrein and restricted its activities in
these areas to tribute gathering.
An atmosphere of bellicose fanaticism pervaded the W ah­
habi state. Religious intolerance had reached its highest
pitch. A special tribunal of zealots was set up in the middle
of the 19th century in Nejd to mete out strict punishment
upon all who violated religious laws. The guilty were fined
and subjected to severe corporal punishment.
The new Wahhabi state lacked internal cohesion; the cen­
tral power was weak. The tribes fought not only against
one another, but also against the Emir. After Faisal’s death
in 1865, feudal and tribal separatism was aggravated still
further by the continuous strife between the dynasties. Fai­
sal had divided Nejd among his three eldest sons and on his
death a fierce struggle ensued between them for supreme
power.
The struggle for the throne and internecine strifes further
weakened the already tottering foundations of the W ah­
habi state. The emirs of Shammar, who were competing with
the Saudi family for supremacy in northern Arabia, did not
fail to take advantage of the critical situation. The Turks
followed their example by seizing El-Hasa.

TH E GROWTH OF TH E SHAMMAR EMIRATE. The

Shammar emirate acquired especial significance among the
Arabian feudal states after the withdrawal of the Egyptians.
Hail was its capital. The new Rashid dynasty, which had
148
firmly established itself in the emirate as far back as the
thirties of the 19th century, used N ejd’s decline to consoli­
date its power. The Rashids had been the vassals of Nejd,
but in the middle of the 19th century their dependence be­
came purely nominal. Shammar, like Nejd, was a Wahhabi
state. But unlike Nejd, the rulers of Shammar pursued a
policy of religious tolerance.
The emirs of Shammar, Abdullah (1834-47) and especial­
ly his son Talal (1847-68), did much to develop trade and
the crafts. Talal built markets and workshops in Hail. He
invited merchants and artisans both from the neighbouring
Arabian regions and from Iraq. H e granted them various
privileges. Religious tolerance attracted the merchants and
pilgrims. Caravans from Iraq changed their usual routes and
began passing to Mecca via Hail, steering clear of fanatical
Nejd. Talal ensured their safety. H e completely stamped
out highway robbery, subdued the Bedouin tribes and forced
them to pay taxes. He also conquered a number of oases
(Khaibar, Jauf and others), removed rebellious feudal lords
and everywhere appointed his own governors. The growth
of trade and the policy of Emir Talal led to the centralisa­
tion and strengthening of Shammar.
The Riyadh emirs watched with anxiety the growing
might of their vassal. In 1868, Talal was summoned to Riy­
adh, where he was poisoned. His state, however, continued
to exist and with the help of the Turks entered the struggle
against Riyadh for supremacy in Inner Arabia.

BRITISH COLONIES IN ARABIA (1840-70). After the

withdrawal of the Egyptians from Arabia, the British be­
came the absolute rulers of the Persian Gulf coast and Aden.
Apart from Oman, which had lost its independence in 1798,
seven sheikhdoms of Trucial Oman and Bahrein had been
under British control since 1820. England left power in these
tiny states in the hands of the local rulers and restricted
herself to establishing what was known as relations of alliance
with them.
These relations, which tied the sheikhs of Trucial Oman
and Bahrein hand and foot, were constantly ratified and
renewed. Thus, with each new treaty (1839, 1847, 1853,
1856) on the surface claiming peace and concord “for all
time , the rights” of the British political resident in Bender-

149
Bushir, who was" the virtual ruler over all these territories,
were extended. The local rulers were deprived of the oppor­
tunity to pursue an independent foreign policy. England
always managed to find an excuse for interfering in the in­
ternal affairs of Trucial Oman and Bahrein. The British
merchants received various rights and privileges.
In 1861, England imposed a new convention on Bahrein,
by which she undertook to “defend” Bahrein from foreign
attacks and became entitled to send her troops there when­
ever she wished. The convention actually meant the estab­
lishment of a British protectorate over Bahrein.
The British expansion in the Persian Gulf met with the
open resistance of Turkey and Iran, who laid claim to a
number of territories. In 1868, England came near to estab­
lishing “relations of alliance” with Qatar, but three years
later was compelled to yield the sheikhdom to Turkey.
France threatened British positions in Oman. England’s
most reliable “ally” in Arabia was the Muscat seyyid ,
whom the British political agent had well in hand. Under
the pretext of joint suppression of piracy and the slave trade,
England imposed on him a number of new unequal
agreements (1839 and 1845), which strengthened the “rela­
tions of alliance” between England and Oman. As far back
as 1834, the British had forced the Muscat seyyid Said to
surrender to them the Kuria Muria Islands. In 1857, they
seized Perim Island which was annexed to the colony of
Aden.
In 1856, Said, the governor of Muscat, died. The British
intervened in the ensuing dynastic conflict and in 1861, at
the proposal of the viceroy of India, Lord Canning, they
divided the huge domains of the Muscat seyyid between his
two sons. Oman1 went to the eldest son Thuwaini and the
coast of East Africa and Zanzibar, which had been a part
of Muscat ever since the end of the 18th century, went to
the youngest son, Mejid. This division weakened Oman
and later facilitated the British seizure of Zanzibar and con­
trol over Oman.
In the middle of the 19th century, Oman became the ob­
ject of Anglo-French rivalry. In 1846, France concluded a

1 Oman gradually lost its domains on the coast of Iran. In 1868,

Bender-Abbas with the adjoining coastal strip went to the Persians.

150
commercial agreement with Oman, similar to the Anglo-
Oman Trade Treaty of 1839. In 1861, she objected to the
partition of Oman into two parts. The Anglo-French con­
flict ended in a compromise. On March 10, 1862, in Paris,
England and France signed a joint declaration, granting
“independence” to Muscat and Zanzibar. Thus France had
reconciled herself to the factual partition of Oman. England
acknowledged the illusory “independence”, but her actions
belied her words. In the space of ten years (1862-71) a wave
of uprisings swept Oman. The great mass of the people were
rebelling against the new Muscat Sultan Thuwaini
(1858-66), whom they regarded as a British protégé. They
were supported by the Wahhabis, who strove to restore their
former power in Oman and even collected a regular tribute
from many towns and districts of Oman. England openly
interfered in Oman’s affairs despite the Declaration of 1862.
She supplied Hiuwaini with guns and ships to deploy against
the people and her fleet shelled the hostile towns. She
ordered the sheikhs under her control to support the Sultan
and, when Thuwaini was killed, she rendered the same as­
sistance to his son. W hen Thuwaini’s son was banished from
the country, she helped his younger brother to suppress the
popular uprisings and install himself at Muscat.
The British troops in Aden lived almost in a state of siege.
A series of uprisings flared up in southern Arabia against
the interference of the British authorities. In 1840, an upris­
ing, backed by the Lahej Sultan, took place in Aden. It was
put down, but in 1846, the Arabs attacked again. Upon his
accession to power in 1849 in Lahej, Sultan Ali demanded
the return of Aden. In 1858, he sent his troops to fight the
British, but was defeated in a battle near Sheikh-Othman
and compelled to acknowledge British rule in Aden. In 1867,
the British undertook another expedition against the rebel­
lious tribes of southern Arabia, who refused to acknowledge
the seizure of Aden.
 CHAPTER XII

EGYPT IN THE MIDDLE

OF THE 19th CENTURY (1841-76)

EGYPT AFTER THE CAPITULATION OF 1840.

Mohammed A li’s capitulation opened the way to foreign
capital. In 1842, the terms of the Anglo-Turkish Trade
Treaty of 1838 were applied to Egypt. The system of monop­
olies was abolished. Henceforth British merchants and in­
dustrialists could freely buy Egyptian cotton from the pro­
ducers, either directly or through their compradore agent,
while they had to pay hardly any customs duty on the goods
they exported to Egypt. By 1845, England was predominant
in Egypt’s foreign trade. She accounted for a quarter of
Egypt’s imports (£242,000 out of £1,000,000) and over a third
of Egypt’s export (£626,000 out of £1,747,000).
From being a great eastern power, Egypt had become a
vassal of the weakening Porte. The Turks, who could hardly
cope with their own affairs, could not, of course, exercise
effective control. Their tutelage was, in fact, a mere cover
for the domineering policy of the foreign consuls. In real­
ity, Egypt was under the joint protection of England and
France and only the rivalry between the two Powers made
it possible for her to retain a degree of independence.
Within the country a struggle was being waged between
the two rival groups of the ruling class. One of them was
composed of retrograde landlords of the old society, who
strove to maintain their contacts with Turkey. They took
their cue from the British, whose influence was prevalent in
Constantinople. The other group consisted of merchants and
liberal landlords, who had embarked on the capitalist path
of development. They were in favour of a continuation of
the reforms and relied on the French.
The struggle between the two groups was reflected in the
activities of Ibrahim Pasha and his successor Abbas Pasha.
152
At first, the odds were in favour of the Francophiles headed
by Ibrahim Pasha, who was the real ruler of the country in
the forties. Mohammed Ali was aging. The capitulation had
affected his intellectual faculties. He grew old overnight and
soon withdrew from the conduct of state affairs.
The reins of power were taken over by his son and suc-
cesor Ibrahim Pasha. The new ruler gave considerable atten­
tion to Egypt’s economic development, he tried to improve
the corrupt and hidebound civil service. He improved the
country’s finances, which had been disrupted by the events
of 1840, and introduced a regular state budget. In 1842, the
rights of the landowners were expanded, permitting them to
sell their lands. In 1845-46, Ibrahim accomplished a long
journey to Europe. In Paris, a big parade was organised on
the Champs de Mars in honour of the victor of Konya and
Nezib.
In 1848, Ibrahim Pasha became the official governor of
Egypt, but died three months later, on November 10, 1848.
Mohammed Ali died soon after, on August 2, 1849. Power
passed to his grandson, Abbas Pasha, who turned out to be
the exact opposite of his grandfather.

ABBAS PASHA (1849-54). Abbas Pasha officially accepted

the reins of government on December 24, 1848, while Mo­
hammed Ali was still alive. He was extremely reactionary
and seemed to set himself the aim of destroying as far as
lay in his power all the work of his father and grandfather.
He liquidated manufactories founded by Mohammed Ali,
gave orders to stop work on the construction of the Great
N ile Dam and to destroy what had already been built. He
closed factories and schools and greatly reduced the army.
The Egyptian army had gradually begun to acquire a nation­
al character during Mohammed A li’s reign. Under Abbas
it became little more than a personal bodyguard, as it had
been under the old beys. Moreover, his actual bodyguards
consisted of elements alien to the population, mainly Alba­
nians and slave Mamelukes. Abbas found support in the big
feudal landowners, Albanian, Circassian and Turkish pa­
shas, who had acquired extensive latifundia under Moham­
med Ali. Abbas lavished new lands on them. He himself was
the biggest landowner in Egypt and shamelessly robbed the
fellaheen. Mohammed Ali and Ibrahim had dreamt of full
independence for Egypt. But such dreams were alien to
Abbas. On the contrary, he always emphasised his submis­
sive loyalty to the Turkish Sultan and the old Turkish cus­
toms. H e openly scorned Western culture and despised
Europeans, which, however, did not prevent him from
obeying directives from England.
In 1851, Abbas granted the British concessions to build
a railway from Alexandria to Cairo and Suez, which would
have great strategic importance as one of the main links
connecting England with India. The Suez Canal had not
yet been built. But since the early years of the 19th century
England had been trying to replace the route round Africa
with a shorter one through Egypt. British ships sailed from
England to Alexandria, from India to the Suez. Camels were
used to transport passengers and mail back and forth be­
tween the two ports. Egypt became the most important trans­
shipping base on the British route to India. The construction
of the railway line Alexandria-Cairo-Suez, which was car­
ried out between 1853 and 1857, enhanced Egypt’s impor­
tance as a transshipping base. In 1858, the British used the
line to transport troops to suppress an uprising of the sepoys
in India.
The French capitalists, who had had a decisive say in
matters during the reign of Mohammed Ali and Ibrahim,
were forced into the background. But they had no intention
of giving up. On the contrary, they redoubled their efforts.
In opposition to the British plan for a railway, they sub­
mitted a project for a canal linking the Mediterranean with
the Red Sea.

THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE SUEZ CANAL. As

far back as the beginning of the 19th century, Napoleon had
assigned one of his engineers, Lepère, to draw up a project
for a canal. But Lepère wrongly concluded that the level
of the Red Sea was higher than that of the Mediterranean,
making the construction of a canal almost a technical im­
possibility. Although Fourier and Laplace soon discovered
Lepère’s mistake, all attempts by the French to raise the
question of the Suez Canal again always met with the resist­
ance of Mohammed A li and England. Mohammed Ali did
not want to create a second Dardanelles. He was fully aware
of the canal’s strategic significance. He realised that the
154
European Powers would fight over the Suez Canal just as
they had over the Dardanelles. He resolutely opposed the
construction of the Canal to safeguard Egypt’s independ­
ence. England was also against the canal as long as French
influence prevailed in Egypt.
In the fifties of the 19th century, the French capitalists
submitted a new project for the Suez Canal. Its ardent advo­
cate was the biggest financial tycoon of the 19th century, the
French diplomat, Ferdinand de Lesseps (1805-1894). As
usual, England and Abbas Pasha were against the scheme.
Abbas was preventing not only the construction of the
canal but also the economic development of Egypt as a
whole. The nation, which had once known the reforms of
Mohammed Ali, could not be reverted to the old Turkish
rule. Egypt had become part of the world capitalist economy.
The productive forces had developed, as had the market
and also commodity production. Capitalist relations had
begun to form and a bourgeoisie was gradually coming into
being. The economic needs of Egypt as well as the interests
of France urgently called for Abbas Pasha’s removal.
One hot night in July, an official communication declared
that Abbas Pasha had died of a stroke. In reality, he had
been murdered by his own bodyguards. History has not yet
determined who was behind the assassination, but France
was the first to profit by his removal.
On July 14, 1854, Said Pasha (1854-63), one of Moham­
med A li’s youngest sons, became the viceroy of Egypt. He
was a liberal, Westerner and a personal friend of Ferdinand
de Lesseps. As soon as he came to power, he immediately,
on November 30, 1854, granted de Lesseps concessions for
the construction of the Suez Canal. This step increased
Egypt’s dependence on the European Powers and hastened
its conversion into a colony.
In 1855, de Lesseps made a preliminary survey and on
January 5, 1856, he obtained a new firman, which specified
the terms of the concession. Under this firman the Egyptian
Government granted the canal company without compensa­
tion all the land and quarries needed for construction of the
canal. It also undertook to construct a fresh-water canal
from the N ile in order to provide the construction zone with
drinking water and exempted the company from the pay­
ment o f customs duties. Most important of all was the Egyp-

155
tian Government’s undertaking to supply at least four-fifths
of the labourers needed for the work free of charge. The con­
cession was to last for 99 years from the date of the opening
of the canal and share capital was to be 200,000,000 francs.
In November 1858, de Lesseps opened the subscription
lists for his company, the capital of which was 400,000 shares
of 500 francs each; 207,000 shares (52 per cent) were
subscribed in France. Said Pasha subscribed for 64,000 shares
at a total value of 32,000,000 francs. Moreover, de Les­
seps put down to Said Pasha’s account large shareholdings
(112,000 shares worth 56,000,000 francs), which were meant
for Turkey, England, Russia and the United States. In order
to meet his obligations in connection with the purchase of
176.000 shares, Said Pasha was compelled to conclude
foreign loans. In 1860, he concluded a private loan in Paris
for 28,000,000 francs and in 1862, he concluded the first
state loan for 60 million francs (£2,400,000). Thus, apart
from the land, the labourers, the water supply and quarries,
Said Pasha had to give de Lesseps about half (44 per cent)
of the share capital. The Egyptians built the canal with
their own hands using chiefly their own natural resources.
But the canal only brought Egypt huge losses, not to speak
of its negative effect on her political life.
On April 25, 1859, the construction work was formally
begun. Said Pasha was true to his word. He rounded up
hundreds of thousands of fellaheen from all over Egypt.
With almost no wages and poor nourishment, the fellaheen
had to work from dawn till dusk under the broiling sun to
dig the canal with their own hands. No machines were used.
The manual labour of free workers was much more profi­
table and 25 to 40 thousand fellaheen were permanently
engaged at the construction site. As soon as one batch had
served its time, others took their place. Many of them were
unable to bear the hard working conditions and up to
20.000 workers perished before the canal was built. One of
the greatest structures of 19th century capitalist civilisation
was erected with the help of the compulsory, semi-slave
labour of the Egyptian fellaheen. It was erected over their
bones.
The virtual enslavement of hundreds of thousands of fel­
laheen awakened hatred for foreigners and stirred up a wave
of popular protest against foreign domination in Egypt. The
156
feeling of hatred extended to the Egyptian ruling classes,
who were incensed by the arbitrariness of the company, its
disregard for the laws of Egypt and her interests. The gener­
al discontent was skilfully exploited by England and a
campaign was launched in the British press against the sys­
tem of forced labour used in digging the canal. Under pres­
sure from England, the Porte announced that the Egyptian
Pasha had no right to hand out concessions and demanded
their annulment. A serious political crisis threatened to
upset de Lesseps’ undertaking.
Said Pasha did not live to see the outcome of the Suez
affair. He died on January 18, 1863. His successor, Ismail
Pasha (1863-79), like Said, had received his education in
France and was a Westerner to the marrow of his bones. He
wanted to make Egypt “a part of Europe” and continued the
reform policy of his predecessor. He did not oppose the con­
struction of the Suez Canal, but considered that de Lesseps’
excessive privileges were a burden to Egypt.
On January 30, 1863, Ismail Pasha issued a firman, pro­
hibiting the use of forced labour on the canal. His actions
were immediately supported by the Porte, who was backed
by England. The Turkish Government sent two notes, one
after the other, in which it made confirmation of the con­
cessions conditional on the banning of the use of forced
labour on the canal, demanded the return of the lands alienat­
ed for the benefit of the company, and so on. Otherwise, the
Porte threatened to stop the undertaking by force.
Difficult times began for de Lesseps. However, he man­
aged to extricate himself from this embarrassing situation,
and even used it as an opportunity to plunder Egypt anew. He
appealed against the actions of Ismail Pasha and forced him
to submit the case for consideration by a court of arbitration.
The Emperor of France, Napoleon III, who was married
to de Lesseps’ cousin, was elected the “impartial” arbitrator.
In July 1864, he suggested that Ismail should pay the Gen­
eral Company of the Suez Maritime Canal 84,000,000
francs. This included not only an indemnity for the aboli­
tion of the corvée. According to the new terms of the conces­
sion, the General Company of the Suez Maritime Canal was
allowed to retain the land along both banks of the canal to
a distance of 200 metres from its course, and the remaining
lands had to be returned to Egypt. For the land it returned
157
 the company had not paid Egypt a single piastre. All the
same, Ismail had to pay de Lesseps 30,000,000 francs to get
it back. This was open robbery! Said had undertaken to
build a fresh-water canal for the construction site. The canal
served the needs of construction; however, when it became
Egyptian property, Egypt had to pay de Lesseps 14,000,000
francs for a canal which had not cost him a penny and had
been built completely at Egypt’s expense.
In order to satisfy these wild claims, Ismail, like Said
Pasha, was forced to appeal to the European banks. The
loans were granted on the most outrageous terms and Egypt
was soon trapped in debts.
The new terms of the concession were confirmed by the
convention of February 22, and on March 19, 1866, they
were ratified by the Porte. British intrigues had not achieved
their aim. H aving lost its supply of free manpower, the
company began inventing machines to do the digging. In
1860, the French engineer Couvreux invented a multiscoop
mechanical shovel and the construction of the Suez Canal
forged ahead. The formal opening of the canal was cele­
brated on November 17, 1869. Scores of crown personalities
and hundreds of statesmen from all over the world partici­
pated in the festivities held in honour of this event. At Ismail’s
request, the composer Verdi wrote the opera Aida especially
for the occasion. Luxurious palaces and yachts were built
for the guests. The celebrations lasted several weeks and
were paid for by the Egyptian treasury.
The construction of the canal, including the value of
shares, forfeit, expenses of the opening ceremony, and so on,
cost Egypt 400,000,000 francs. Six years later, the Egyptian
Government sold its shares of the canal for 100,000,000
francs. The net loss amounted to 300,000,000 francs, apart
from the thousands of lives sacrificed in the construction
work and the political harm the Suez Canal caused
Egypt.

THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF EGYPT IN

THE MIDDLE OF THE 19th CENTURY. During the
fifties and especially during the sixties of the 19th century,
there was a significant economic upsurge in Egypt. It was
called forth mainly by the increased demand for Egyptian
cotton owing to the Civil War in the United States, during

158
which the European textile industry experienced an acute
shortage of raw materials. In those years, cotton plantations
were expanded. For this purpose the old network of irriga­
tion canals was modernised and a great number of new ones
were built (with an over-all length of 21,000 kilometres).
The system of year-round irrigation was extended to U p­
per Egypt and the area of land under cultivation increased
from 4,100,000 feddans in 1852 to 4,700,000 feddans in
1877.
Most of the cotton grown on the estates of the semi-feudal
landlords were exported. The export of cotton during the
cotton boom (1861-65) increased fourfold, from 500,000
cantars in 1860 to 2,000,000 cantars in 1865. After the Civil
W ar in America, the export of Egyptian cotton declined
somewhat, but it still remained on a relatively high level.
In 1870, it rose again to 2,000,000 cantars and in 1876, it
reached 3,000,000 cantars.
The rapid growth of cotton cultivation led to a reduction
in the cultivation and export of other crops, and Egypt was
in real danger of becoming a one-crop country. To restore
the balance, Ismail tried to speed up the sugar-cane crop. In
1872, 1,500,000 cantars of sugar were produced in Egypt,
out of which 500,000 cantars were exported.
The cotton boom was followed by a sharp rise in foreign
trade. The over-all value of Egyptian cotton exports grew
from 200,000,000 piastres in 1860 to 1,000,000,000 in 1870 and
1.500.000. 000 piastres in 1872. Imports to Alexandria rose
from 185,000,000 piastres in 1843 to 400,000,000 in 1863 and
600.000. 000 in 1872. In thirty years (1843-72), the total vol­
ume of Egyptian overseas trade increased fivefold.
The growth of trade was accompanied by the growth of
navigation. In 1845, 62 steamers called at the Port of Alexan­
dria while in 1865, the number rose to 1,145. The number
of sailing vessels that called at Alexandria in the same period
increased from 1,338 to 3,138. In 1850, 26 steamers passed
through the Suez and in 1865, before the inauguration of
the canal, 216 steamers.
In the year 1870, after the opening of the canal, 570
steamers passed through the Suez. The tonnage of' trading
vessels calling at Alexandria grew from 907,000 tons in 1863
to 1,238,000 tons in 1872. In the same period, the tonnage
of trading vessels passing through the Suez Canal grew from

159
 170,000 to 666,000, and the tonnage of trading vessels cal­
ling at Port Said increased from 52,000 to 857,000 tons. In
1847, 1,000 passengers disembarked at Alexandria. In 1867,
the number rose to 45,000 and in 1872, to 68,000. Alexandria
became one of the biggest international seaports in the world.
In 1875, freight turnover at Alexandria reached 1,925,000
tons, thus rivalling Marseilles.
Egypt acquired her own commercial fleet. In 1873, there
were 55 sea steamers and 58 river vessels in Egypt, apart
from a large number of sailing vessels. Regular shipping
lines were established along the N ile and in the Mediterra­
nean. Most of the ships belonged to Ismail Pasha personally.
One of the foremost maritime Powers of the time, France,
which had a population seven and a half times the size of
Egypt’s, had a steam fleet that was only three times larger
than the Egyptian. Moreover, the Egyptian fleet, being the
younger of the two, was technically superior. The average
tonnage of one French sea-going steamer was 350 tons, while
the tonnage of one Egyptian steamer was 1,000 tons. The
French fleet had only 15 per cent steamers to 85 per cent
sailing vessels. The British fleet had 25 per cent steamers to
75 per cent sailing vessels. Whereas over 60 per cent of the
Egyptian fleet’s over-all tonnage were steamers and less than
40 per cent were sailing vessels. Between 1865 and 1875
fifteen light-houses were set up on the Mediterranean and
Red Sea coast for the development of navigation.
In the same period, Egypt acquired a wide network of
railways belonging to the state. U ntil 1860, Egypt had only
one railway, Alexandria-Cairo, 210 kilometres long (with a
branch line to Zagazig 35 kilometres long).1 Then in fifteen
years (1861-75) of intensified railway construction in Egypt,
1,590 kilometres of railway were laid. In this respect Egypt
outstripped several advanced capitalist countries. In France,
for instance, in 1876, there were 37.5 kilometres of railway
per 1,000 square kilometres of land, while in Egypt there
were 55 kilometres of railway per 1,000 square kilometres
of populated territory.12

1 The line between Cairo and the Suez, which had been built in
1856-57, was unfit for use.
2 Not counting deserts, which were uninhabited and without rail­
ways.

160
 Modem means of communication grew. Up to 1863, Egypt
had 582 kilometres of telegraph lines. By 1872, she had 6,450
kilometres, outstripping several advanced countries. In 1878,
France had 77 kilometres of telegraph lines per 1,000 square
kilometres of land. Egypt had 216 kilometres. France had
11.33 kilometres of telegraph lines per 10,000 of the popula­
tion; Egypt had 12.25 kilometres.
Towns sprang up. Not less than 20 per cent of the Egyp­
tian population lived in 113 urban centres. Cairo had a
population of 350,000, Alexandria—212,000, Tanta— 60,000
and Zagazig—40,000. Gas and water mains and sewers were
laid in Cairo.
Egyptian industry moved ahead. Ismail Pasha, the ruler
of Egypt, owned two weaving mills near Cairo, in which over
400 workers were employed, and 22 big sugar refineries with
a capacity of 150,000 tons of sugar a year, where about
10,000 workers were employed. In addition, Ismail Pasha
owned four arms factories, two dockyards, employing 500
workers, and saltpetre mines. Many private industrial enter­
prises were founded in Egypt, most of which were small tex­
tile mills, foundries and repair workshops, tanneries, cream­
eries, cotton-cleaning mills and wood-working plants, steam
mills and salt works.
The technical level of the Egyptian enterprises, however,
was lower than the European. The products of the small
Egyptian weaving mills and foundries could not compete
with the goods of the large British textile and metallurgical
industry, which flowed into the Egyptian market without
encountering any customs barrier on the way. On the strength
of the Anglo-Turkish Trade Treaty of 1838, the Egyptian
industry had been deprived of tariff protection. On the
whole, at the height of her economic development, from the
fifties to the seventies of the 19th century, Egypt continued
to remain an agrarian country. Raw materials—cotton—
were her main product, not industrial goods. She supplied
more and more cotton to the world market and in return
purchased more and more foreign manufactured goods.
Thus, the growth of overseas trade deepened Egypt’s eco­
nomic dependence on the European countries. Egypt was
becoming an agrarian and raw material base of the industrial
Powers.
Another contradiction in the Egyptian economy at the
11-573
161
time of Said and Ismail was that Egypt had embarked on
the capitalist path of development without having first li­
quidated by revolutionary means the numerous and power­
ful survivals of the Middle Ages. The mainstay of capitalist
relations in agriculture were the landlords, who combined the
new methods of economy with the old methods of exploita­
tion. They introduced machines on their estates (the steam
plough was used for the first time in Egypt, not in Europe),
they expanded the areas planted with such export crops 21s
cotton and sugar cane. They conducted wide-scale commer­
cial operations and built factories on their estates. But at
the same time they continued to exploit the fellah, to impose
medieval extortions on him, to force him to do corvée, and
so on. The first such half-feudal and half-capitalist land-
owner, financial manipulator, merchant, factory-owner and
speculator, who ably made use of the market situation, and
at the same time a feudal lord, was Ismail Pasha himself,
the ruler of Egypt. Other big landowners from the Turco-
Albanian-Circassian nobility followed his example.
The domination of feudal survivals in the countryside
hampered the genuine development of agriculture and in­
dustry. The starved Egyptian countryside, exploited as it
was by semi-feudal landlords, was a bad market for industry.
The reverse side of Egypt’s economic development was
the influx of Europeans to the country. Only a few of them
were specialists—agronomists, mechanics, doctors, teachers,
workers, people who were prepared to work. The overwhelm­
ing bulk of them were parasitic elements of the worst kind
such as dealers, speculators, stock-jobbers, money-lenders,
smugglers, brothel owners, swindlers, thieves, corrupt jour­
nalists, prostitutes, and others. Operating under the protec­
tion of the capitulations and foreign consuls, these scum of
Europe, who regarded themselves as the representatives of
“high culture”, exploited the working people of Egypt and
poisoned the atmosphere in the towns, especially in the beau­
tiful town of Alexandria, which they had turned into a
veritable bog. Alexandria became an international centre of
the drug traffic. Whole blocks were turned into brothels, dens
and taverns. In 1840, there were only 6,150 Europeans in
Egypt, whereas by 1871, their number had risen to 80,000,
34.000 of whom were Greeks (who engaged chiefly in usury),
17.000 French, 14,000 Italians, 6,000 British and 7,000 Ger-
162
mans. About 50,000 foreigners lived in Alexandria (they
comprised nearly a quarter of the urban population) and
about 20,000 in Cairo.

THE REFORMS OF SAID AN D ISMAIL. Unlike Abbas,

Said and Ismail were clearly aware of the demands of
Egypt’s economic development and carried out a number of
much-needed socio-economic and political reforms.
Under Said Pasha slavery and the trade in slaves were
prohibited in Egypt; the import of slaves was forbidden and
the slaves living on Egyptian territory were set free. A land
law was issued in 1858, granting the peasants who owned
plots of land (atar), or kharaj, the right to sell freely, pur­
chase, mortgage or hand down their lands by right of suc­
cession. In other words, it granted them the same right to
private landownership as the owners of the ashr lands. The
corvée and other obligations stemming from the social ine­
quality of the fellaheen were formally abolished. All land
became a commodity. This created conditions for the devel­
opment of capitalist relations in the countryside, making it
possible for the merchants and the rich peasants to purchase
land. Considerable areas of land passed into the hands of
the usurers and foreign capitalists.
The land reform was followed by a reform in taxes.
Money tax took the place of taxes in kind. The collective
taxation of whole villages by means of mutual guarantee was
substituted by the individual taxation of separate peasant
familes. Tax gathering, which previously had been carried
out by the village sheikhs, came under the control of special
functionaries.
Said abolished the last survivals of the monopoly system,
liquidated internal customs and granted full freedom of trade.
Each peasant could now sow the land with what crops he
saw fit, freely sell his harvest and transport it without gov­
ernment control.
Big changes took place in the army. Said Pasha abolished
a number of restrictions, which had been introduced in 1841.
In 1856, he received the Porte’s permission to increase the
Egyptian army from 18,000 to 30,000 men. Like Mohammed
Ali, he attempted to give the army a national character and
began to recruit the fellaheen. For the first time in the his­
tory of Egypt, Egyptians were promoted to the rank of of fi­
ll* 163
cers. The most capable were given a military education and
were appointed to key posts. One of them, Arabi, quickly
rose to the rank of lieutenant-colonel and became Said Pa­
sha’s aide-de-camp.
Unlike Said, Ismail promoted not national Egyptian per­
sonnel to key posts in the army, but representatives of the
feudal nobility such as Albanians, Turks and Circassians.
The Egyptian officers from among the fellaheen were
pushed into the background. This resulted in a conflict in the
army between the democratic national elements among the
officers, who called themselves “fellaheen” and the aristo­
cratic pashas, who were nicknamed “Circassians”. The con­
flict played an important role in the further development of
the Egyptian national movement.
Said and especially Ismail pressed for Egypt’s independ­
ence from the Porte. Actually, Egypt already enjoyed full
internal autonomy and in spite of the restrictions of 1841
pursued an independent foreign policy. Egypt had her own
army, government and laws. The Turkish legislation, and
in particular the tanzimat, did not apply to Egypt. Said and
Ismail wanted to consolidate this position legally. The firmans
of 1866-67 occupied an important place in these plans. The
firman issued on May 27, 1866, changed the order of succes­
sion to the throne. Instead of the old Turkish order of suc­
cession practised until now, by which power passed to the
eldest in the family, now it passed from father to the eldest
son, as was the custom of the European monarchies.
The finnan of June 8, 1867, granted Ismail the hereditary
title of khedive, which meant ruler in Persian but lacked any
particular sense. Now, however, the title began to single out
the Egyptian ruler, who was no longer an ordinary pasha,
a governor of one of the many provinces of the Ottoman
Empire. According to the firman, the khedive received the
right to conclude commercial and other agreements of a non­
political character with the foreign Powers.
In 1866, in imitation of the Western constitutional
monarchies, Ismail established a semblance of a parliament,
the House of Representatives (Mejliss Niyabi) or House of N o­
tables. According to the 19th century Russian philosopher
and writer Herzen, Egypt had entered the era of parliamen-
tarianism on a camel. The House of Notables was composed
of seventy-five delegates, who were elected for a term of

164
three years by the village sheikhs and the notables of Cairo,
Alexandria and Damietta. It had consultative functions and
reviewed the state budget. The House was an obedient tool
in the hands of the khedive and played no part in the
administration of Egypt.
In 1873, Khedive Ismail induced the Sultan to issue a
firman on Egypt’s financial autonomy. Egypt gained the
right to conclude loans without the permission of the Porte.
The firman was of a dual nature. On the one hand, it weak­
ened Egypt’s dependence on the Porte. On the other, it
made it easier for foreign banks to enslave the country by
means of loans, thus increasing its dependence on foreign
capitalists.
The legal reform carried out by Ismail was also of a dual
nature. By trying to limit the functions of the consular courts,
which existed by virtue of the capitulations, Ismail decided
to establish mixed courts composed of both foreign and
Egyptian judges. The preparations for the reforms, including
the talks with the Powers, took several years. The courts
began to function on February 1, 1876. They considered or­
dinary cases of conflict between the Europeans and the Egyp­
tians, between Europeans of different nationalities and also
criminal cases, which concerned the Europeans. Actually,
not only did the mixed courts not restrict the privileges
which had been granted to foreigners by the capitulations,
but they also became supplementary tools of foreign domina­
tion over Egypt.
Said and Ismail continued the cultural reforms initiated
by Mohammed Ali. Under Said, the Arabic language became
the only official language of Egypt. Public education, to
which much attention was devoted, developed in Arabic.
The old schools, which had been closed at the time of Ab­
bas, were reopened, and many new ones were set up too.
Under Ismail the number of schools increased from 185 in
1863 to 4,685 in 1875, when about 100,000 pupils were en­
rolled. The number of secondary and specialised educational
establishments also increased. The Egyptian National Lib­
rary, a museum, scientific societies and the Cairo Opera were
founded. A new interest in Arab history and literature arose.
Translations and original works by Egyptian poets, writers
and dramatists appeared. The well-known poet and states­
man, Mahmud Sami el-Barudi, the talented writer and pub-

165
licist Ibrahim el-Muveilikhi, the pedagogue and literary
historian, Husein el-Matsafi, greatly contributed to the Arab
renaissance. Between 1865 and 1875, many newspapers and
magazines were issued in Arabic and French, such as W adi-
El-Nil (1866), Le Progrès Egyptien (1868), Nuskhat El-Af-
kar (1869) and Al-Alirarn (1875). Scientific and literary ma­
gazines began to be published.
Many writers portray Ismail as a lazy and ignorant Orient­
al pasha, who out of a desire for gain became involved in
various shady undertakings. Cromer reproached Ismail for
“preferring the company of his coachmen and lackeys to that
of European diplomats”. In reality, Ismail was an educated
and energetic Egyptian statesman, a pioneer of capitalist
development in Egypt. In the cultural sense he was far su­
perior to the European diplomats and merchants who sur­
rounded him. He was, however, first of all, a representative
of his class, the class of semi-feudal landowners who had
turned to capitalist enterprise. In the meanwhile, the social
development of Egypt in the seventies of the 19th century
gave birth to new and more progressive democratic elements
of the national bourgeoisie. This bourgeois-democratic move­
ment was ultimately to sweep the semi-feudal landowners
of Egypt headed by Ismail from the historical scene.
 CHAPTER XIII

THE FRENCH CONQUEST OF ALGERIA

AND THE LIBERATION WAR OF THE ALGERIAN
PEOPLE UNDER THE LEADERSHIP
OF ABD EL-KADER

ALGERIA ON THE EVE OF THE FRENCH CON­

QUEST. At the end of the 18th century, Algeria, which
formally continued to be one of the domains of the Otto­
man Empire, was suffering a sharp decline. Economic de­
velopment was on an extremely low level. The population
was engaged chiefly in nomadic cattle-breeding. Only the
inhabitants of the valleys and the oases did any sort of farm­
ing. They sowed wheat, barley, cultivated olive trees and
date palms. A few towns were famed for their artistic crafts
and for their trade.
The native Algerian population consisted of Arabs and
Berbers. Nearly the whole population, with the exception
perhaps of the urban dwellers and a number of settled re­
gions, was organised in clans and tribes. The most wide­
spread form of landownership was communal ownership of
the land. In the nomad regions the land belonged to the
clans and in the settled regions, to the village communes. In
some places collective tillage of the land and the gathering
of the harvest still prevailed as well as joint consumption
within the framework of the large families into which the
clans were divided.
The feudal system in Algeria seriously hindered her so­
cial progress. Apart from the communal land in Algeria,
there was the state and the kh a b iis (w a q f ) land as well as
the estates. These last were the personal property of the feu­
dal lords, who exploited the enslaved k h a m m a se s and robbed
and ruined the nomads and the free farmers. The janis­
sary leaders, who ruled Algeria, stirred up hatred between
various tribes. It was by taking advantage of the internecine
strife between the clans and the tribes and the feudal lords

107
that the janissaries retained their domination over Algeria.
They endowed a few tribes with special privileges. These
tribes, which were known ás Makhzen, helped the Turks collect
taxes and offered military service, for which they were
exempted from taxation. Many sheikhs and tribal chiefs
exercised absolute power by right of inheritance.
The yoke of the Turks and the local feudal lords called
forth popular, chiefly Bedouin, movements, which inevitably
acquired a religious taint. The movements were headed by
religious brotherhoods, which were closely linked with the
tribal mass. Quite often their leaders, the marabouts, who
headed the popular uprisings, later became feudal despots
themselves. The religious brotherhoods carried on a tireless
struggle against the Turks and exercised great influence
over the people. The most important of these brotherhoods
were the Kadiria and Rahmania.

THE SEIZURE OF ALGIERS BY THE FRENCH. As

the weakest link in North Africa, Algeria became the first
victim of French expansion in Maghreb. At the same time
this was the first colonial conquest in the Arab countries to
take place in the pre-monopolistic stage of capitalist devel­
opment.
French plans for the conquest of Algeria had matured
long before the famous “blow of the fly-whisk”. Napoleon I
had once regarded Algeria as an indispensable foreign mar­
ket for the industrial development of France. In his talks
with Alexander I in Tilzit (1807) and Erfurt (1808), when­
ever the question of the partition of the Ottoman Empire
arose, Napoleon I never failed to include Algeria in his
future domains. To prepare for the conquest of the country
in 1808, he sent the military engineer, Major Buten, to A l­
geria and Tunisia to make a topographical survey and work
out a plan for the expedition. Although the defeats in Spain
and Russia prevented Napoleon I from putting his plans
into practice, Buten’s material was to come in handy during
the preparations for the expedition of 1830.
Charles X recalled Napoleon’s plans in the last days of
the collapsing Bourbon monarchy. The greed for new mar­
kets was the primary reason for the conquest of the Algerian
regency, as the country was called in the official documents
of the time. Of no little importance was the desire of the
16S
French landowners, who had lost their lands during the
Great Revolution, to acquire new estates. By conquering
Algeria, the Bourbons hoped to strengthen their own totter­
ing throne. Charles X and his Prime Minister, Polignac, cal­
culated that the military adventure would stir up a wave of
nationalist feelings and delay the revolution. Tsarist Russia
supported the aggressive plans of the Bourbon monarchy.
Although England objected, she offered no resolute opposi­
tion.
As a propaganda pretext for the Algerian adventure,
France raised the question of “piracy and the sufferings of
prisoners in Algeria” as well as the financial account of the
dey government. It must be noted, however, that as far back
as the 18th century and especially after the punitive expe­
ditions of the European squadrons and the United States at
the beginning of the 19th century, Maghreb piracy had fal­
len into decay and had long since ceased to serve as a profit­
able business for the ruling clique of Algeria. The A lge­
rians’ opposition to the decisions of the Aix-la-Chapelle con­
gress, however, made it possible for France to brand the dey
government as the protector of the pirates.
The question of financial accounts was equally fictitious.
During the revolution the dey had sent supplies of wheat,
salt-beef and hides to France, which was under a blockade
at the time. He also supplied Bonaparte’s army with pro­
visions during the Italian and Egyptian campaigns. The ma­
jority of the deliveries were made on a credit basis and the
dey received nothing in return. The agreement on the re­
payment of debts and settlement of mutual claims concluded
later through the mediation of the Algerian Jewish mer­
chants, Bakri and Busnach, did not satisfy the dey. He felt
that the French had deceived him, and cheated the Algerian
treasury of several million francs. The dispute over the debts
lasted for several years and irritated the dey and his men.
Moreover, a conflict arose over the stronghold at La Calle,
which the French had begun to fortify in spite of the formal
prohibition of the dey.
The differences were considerably aggravated by the
French consul in Algeria, Pierre Deval. According to a
French historian, in Algeria he was regarded as a person of
questionable reputation, a rascal and unprincipled intriguer.
He played a dirty and provocative role in the money con-
169
flict. Deval plotted, lied and exorted bribes from the dey.
One hot morning on April 29, 1827, during one of their
countless squabbles, Deval gravely insulted the dey, who in
his indignation struck Deval with his fly-whisk.
This provided France with the long-awaited excuse. She
immediately severed all relations with Algeria and blockaded
the Algerian coast. At first she decided to act through the
Egyptians. In 1829, Mohammed Ali, the governor of Egypt
and one of France’s chief allies in the East, had almost agreed
to attack Algeria, but then refused to bargain with France
because of the insignificant reward that was offered.
In such circumstances the Polignac government and Char­
les X decided to operate independently. On June 14, 1830,
the 37,000-strong French army under General de Bourmont
landed at Sidi-Ferruch (23 kilometres west of Algiers). Op­
position was strong, but fruitless. In the fight for Algiers,
the French lost 400 men and the Turks lost 10,000. On
July 4, 1830, Fort de l’Empereur fell. In the evening, the
dey signed an unconditional surrender and on the following
day, July 5, the French entered Algiers. On July 23, 1830,
the dey was deported, the janissaries left for Turkey, the
enemy plundered the Algerian treasury (about 48,000,000
francs) and also seized the homes, land and property of many
Algerians.
Two weeks later, a revolution took place in Paris and
Charles X ’s shaky throne collapsed. General de Bourmont
tried to send his troops to save the Bourbons, but met with
the resistance of the soldiers. Having abandoned the army,
he fled to Portugal.
The July monarchy of Louis Philippe de Orleans accepted
the Algerian heritage of the Bourbons and after some hesi­
tation decided to continue fighting in the name of the self-
interest of the new rulers of France—knights of the money
bag and easy profit. In 1834, in conformity with the recom­
mendations of the “Commission on Africa”, Louis Philippe
formally proclaimed Algeria’s annexation and organised the
civil administration of the “French possessions in North
Africa” under a governor-general. By that time France had
occupied only the coastal towns of Algiers, Oran, Mostaga-
nem, Arzeu and Bougie as well as the Algerian Sahel and
Metija. The rest of the country would not surrender to the^
French authorities.
170
 THE W AR OF LIBERATION. ABD EL-KADER. H ay­
ing seized Algiers, de Bourmont arrogantly announced in
his report: “The whole kingdom will surrender to us within
fifteen days without firing a single shot.” But he was mistak­
en. The French subdued Algeria only after forty years of
bloody fighting against her people.
No sooner had the news of the capital’s fall spread
throughout the country than the tribes rose in arms against
the enemy. The Algerians used scorched earth tactics and
the French troops, who were dependent on their own supply
lines, often found themselves in difficulties. The extortion
and plundering by the French army further roused the pop­
ulation who united to repel the aggressor. In the western
part of Algeria, the movement was headed by the national
hero, Abd el-Kader, and in the eastern, by Ahmed, the dis­
trict bey of Constantine.
Abd el-Kader was born in 1808 in the marabout family
of Muhi ed-Din. His father headed the religious brotherhood
of Kaderiya in West Algeria and for many years he fought
against the Turkish conquerors and then against the French
occupation forces. Abd el-Kader had received his religious
education before the French invasion and had made a pil­
grimage to Mecca, visited Baghdad and then travelled to
Egypt where he was impressed by the reforms of Moham­
med Ali.
Abd el-Kader was no ordinary marabout. He was above
all a courageous soldier, a skilled horseman, a good marks­
man and a talented general. He was an eloquent orator,
an outstanding writer and poet and a brilliant organiser.
In 1832, the tribes who were fighting against the occupa­
tion forces elected Abd el-Kader as their leader. He was
confronted with the difficult task of combating feudal and
tribal disunity, subduing the endless strife and uniting the
whole population in the one common desire to defend the
independence of their country. Because of his closeness to
the people and because he symbolised their hopes, Abd el-
Kader went a long way towards achieving this end.
Once he took over the command of the W est Algerian
tribes, Abd el-Kader inflicted merciless blows on the French
troops, using the classical tactics of guerilla warfare. Having
suffered a number of defeats and some bad luck, the French
finally agreed to negotiations and in February 1834, he con-

171
eluded with them the Desmichel Treaty. Abd el-Kader wil­
lingly agreed to the French proposal since he felt an urgent
need for a peaceful respite to reorganise his troops and gain
strength for a renewal of the war against the invaders.
Moreover, the treaty acknowledged all western Algeria, with
the exception of three coastal towns, as the territory of the
new sovereign Arab state under Abd el-Kader, who adopted
the title of “sovereign of the believers” (emir el-mtime -
?iee?i).
Having become the ruler of a large state, Abd el-Kader
continued to lead a humble way of life. He ate simple food,
drank only water, wore no ornaments and, true to the no­
madic customs, preferred to live in a tent. His only property
consisted of a small flock of sheep and a plot of land, which
was ploughed by a pair of oxen. His only wealth was a won­
derful library. He did not use a single penny for his personal
needs from the revenues, which were paid into his treasury
by the Algerian tribes.
His chief concern was for the army—his main weapon in
the struggle against the enemy. Apart from the irregular
tribal levies, numbering approximately 70,000 men, Abd el-
Kader formed a regular army consisting of 10,000 men. The
aga el-askari was entrusted with the command of the regu­
lar army, which was divided into thousands (battalions),
hundreds (companies) and platoons with an aga, saif or
reis es-saf respectively at their head. The artillery of Abd
el-Kader numbered 36 pieces (true, only twelve of them were
fit for use). Abd el-Kader invited instructors from Morocco
and Tunisia to train and'organise regular army units. There
were also several European instructors, especially French.
Abd el-Kader received considerable help from Morocco in
equipping his troops. Close ties existed between him and the
Moroccan Sultan, who supplied him with weapons and mo­
ney. Abd el-Kader built barracks and fortresses, a foundry,
two powder-mills and a weaving manufactory.
Abd el-Kader used the old, traditional methods as well
as new, extreme methods to gain money for the upkeep of
his army and for military construction. He collected ushr,
zakat for each head of cattle and extraordinary taxes from
his dependencies. Apart from this, he used the subsidies of
the Moroccan Sultan and incomes from the state lands and
monopolies. He also replenished his treasury with the spoils
172
seized during raids on hostile tribes who had refused to join
his movement or had defected to the French.
Abd el-Kader found support among the Moslem clergy
and Bedouins, who comprised the main bulk of his troops.
The social structure may be characterised as early feudal.
Strong survivals of the primitive-communal system existed
within the feudal mode of production. Without changing the
basis of feudal production, Abd el-Kader, nevertheless, real­
ised the necessity of reducing feudal oppression and carried
out a number of reforms curtailing feudal tyranny. He also
carried out an administrative reform, dividing Algeria into
nine regions with caliphs—vicegerents, subordinate to the
central power—at their head. He abolished the selling of
posts, struggled against the embezzlement of public property
and tried to defend the nomads and peasants from the tyran­
ny of the feudal lords and tribal chiefs.
Abd el-Kader was unable to eliminate feudal relations in
Algeria, nor did he set himself the task of doing so. But he
curtailed the absolute rule of the feudal lords andthus aroused
their hate. “The time of the shepherds and the marabouts
has come,” they would say angrily. The feudal leaders of
eastern Algeria refused to obey him. Under their bey, Ah­
med, they fought the French independently of Abd el-Kader.
Nor would the Kabylia feudal lords and sheikhs of the
Sahara oases obey him. H e usually assigned marabouts as
his deputies and only in rare cases did he give the post to
the feudal leaders. But even the feudal lords who collaborat­
ed with Abd el-Kader were ready to give him up to the
French. Their interests, their ambitions and self-interest
came before the interests of their country. The acts of treason
and the. mutinies of the feudal lords weakened the state
founded by Abd el-Kader more than the doubtful successes
of the French generals.
In 1835, the French generals, having treacherously violated
their agreements with Abd el-Kader, invaded his territory.
The peaceful respite had ended. After two years of fierce,
yet fruitless fighting, France consented to a new agreement
with Abd el-Kader. It was signed on May 30, 1837, in T a i­
na. This time the French were compelled to acknowledge
Abd el-Kader’s power not only in western, but also in cen­
tral Algeria. They agreed to this so as to be able to con­
centrate all their efforts on the campaign against Constan­

ts
tine, where the second breeding ground of anti-French op­
position was located.

TH E SEIZURE OF CONSTANTINE. THE NEW

W AR AG AINST ABD EL-KADER. In the winter of 1836,
the French had attempted to seize Constantine, but had been
rebuffed by the Arabs and had retreated with the loss of
1,000 men. Now, a year later, having concluded peace with
Abd el-Kader and having received an assurance of his
neutrality, the French attacked Constantine with powerful
forces. In October 1837, they finally succeeded in capturing
the city, which was situated on high cliffs and had seemed
inaccessible. The population offered fierce resistance. A battle
was waged in the narrow streets for each corner and each
roof. In the end Ahmed Bey was forced to retreat deep into
the country, to the remote mountains, where resistance con­
tinued for some time.
The seizure of Constantine and the eastern part of A lge­
ria was followed by savage colonial plundering. The French
took over the land and property of the vanquished, and this
resulted in a fresh outbreak of disturbances. The tribes of
eastern Algeria began a guerilla war against the enemy.
They acknowledged Abd el-Kader’s leadership and re­
quested him to send his deputies to Constantine. On this
basis, the French accused Abd el-Kader of violating the
Peace Treaty of 1839 and unleashed a new war against him.
In his turn, Abd el-Kader declared a holy war on France,
which lasted several years.
By 1839, France had concentrated 70,000 men in Algeria
and was still sending in reinforcements. The French soldiers
died by the thousands of disease, of the unbearable heat,
marsh gas and hunger, and fell in battle. But the French
army continued to grow. In 1837, it had 42,000 men whereas
by 1844, the number had reached 90,000. It was twice the
size of Abd el-Kader’s army and was equipped with weapons
that the Arabs could not even dream of. Abd el-Kader could
oppose this force only with the moral superiority of his men
and their skilful guerilla tactics. “When your army attacks,
we shall retreat,” he wrote to a French marshal. “Then it
will be forced to retreat and we shall return. W e shall fight
when we feel it is necessary. You know we are not cowards.
But we are not so foolish as to expose ourselves to defeat
174
by your army. W e shall exhaust your army, torment and
destroy it piece by piece and the climate will finish it off.”
By employing these tactics, Abd el-Kader was able to keep
up a steady resistance for a number of years.
One of France’s top generals, Marshal Bugeaud, was made
commander-in-chief of the occupation army. He bribed the
Algerian feudal lords, who became the vassals of France
and were appointed deputies in the most backward regions
of Algeria. In the battles against Abd el-Kader, Bugeaud
adopted new mobile column tactics. He singled out nine to
twelve columns, which moved simultaneously along the
western routes, each combing its own sector, and seizing for­
tresses and towns where Abd el-Kader’s bases and maga­
zines were located. This was more like bilateral guerilla war­
fare than regular military actions. The battles and raiding
dragged on for several years. The French resorted to the
most barbarian methods to terrorise the Algerian population
and exterminated entire tribes which had sided with Abd
el-Kader. According to the testimony of participants in the
campaign, the French cut off the prisoners’ ears and took
away the Arabs’ wives, children and flocks. They exchanged
women prisoners for horses and auctioned them off like pack
animals. “It cost them nothing to behead a prisoner in pub­
lic, so as to command the Arabs’ respect for their authority,”
wrote a contemporary.
The barbarous war, inter-tribal strife and the acts of
treason by many feudal lords culminated in Abd el-Kader’s
expulsion from Algeria and the subjugation of his territory
by the French after a four-year struggle. Abd el-Kader did
not give up. In 1844, together with a group of faithful fol­
lowers he took refuge in Morocco, which had been helping
him all these years, and began preparing for new battles.

THE FRENCH-MOROCCAN W AR OF 1844. Bugeaud

made a demand in the form of an ultimatum that the Mo­
roccan Sultan, Mulai Abd er-Rahman, should give up Abd
el-Kader. When he was refused, he invaded Morocco. W hile
the French squadron under Prince de Joinville was bom­
barding Tangier (August 6) and Mogador (August 15), Bu­
geaud crushed the Moroccan Sultan’s semi-feudal army in a
large-scale battle at the River Isly (August 14, 1844). Only
the threat of British intervention restrained the French and

175
saved Mulai Abd er-Rahman. The French had to withdraw
from Morocco. But according to the Tangier Peace Treaty of
September 10, 1844, Mulai Abd er-Rahman declared Abd
el-Kader an outlaw, undertook to refuse all aid to the Alge­
rian uprising, to withdraw his troops from the borders and
to punish the officers “guilty” of having helped the insur­
gents. The treaty fixed the exact borders between Algeria
and Morocco, but only on a comparatively narrow coastal
strip. No demarcation line was drawn further south, so there
was always the danger of new conflicts.

THE BEGINNING OF COLONISATION. THE U P ­

RISING OF 1845-46. Immediately after the conclusion of
the Tangier Peace Treaty, Abd el-Kader returned to Algeria
and waged guerilla warfare as he moved about in the desert.
In the meanwhile, a new popular uprising headed by the
goatherd Bu Maza (“the goat man”) flared up in the northern
part of Algeria in the region between Oran and Algiers.
The uprising was called forth by the French plundering
of the land. In the very first years of French occupation, the
authorities had begun a wide-scale confiscation of the lands.
On September 8, 1830, all the state lands (beyliks) and those
of the Algerian Turks were declared the property of France.
On March 1, 1833, a law was issued on the expropriation
of lands, the ownership of which had not been legalised by
title deeds. In 1839, the lands of the rebellious Metija tribes
and the Algerian Sahel were confiscated. A ll these lands
either passed into the hands of the French colonists or be­
came the object of desperate speculation. Land speculators,
adventurers and nobles who had lost their estates in France
came to Algeria in pursuit of easy profit and set up new feu­
dal patrimonies on the fertile plains surrounding Algiers.
They turned the landless Arab peasants into their serfs,
khammases. Many of the colonisers surrounded themselves
with Oriental luxury, erected palaces and acquired harems.
The French generals and dignitaries participated in all these
shady deals, grew rich and appropriated huge estates.
The “agrarian reform” carried out by the colonisers in­
creased land plunder. In 1843-44, the French authorities
issued decrees which ensured the rapid growth of French
colonisation. On March 24, 1843, a decree was issued on
the confiscation of the public kliabiis (waqf), the religious

176
lands. On October 1, 1844, the Europeans were permitted to
buy private waqfs (on the basis of the new enzel). The
decree of October 1, 1844, which was confirmed on July 21,
1846, declared as state property all land known as “no man’s
land” (all uncultivated land, for which no title deeds had
been issued up to June 1, 1830). On the basis of these “laws”
all the Algerian tribes were requested to present documentary
>roof of their land rights. Most of the tribes, which owned
f and on the basis of the usual rights, had no such documents,
which was exactly what the colonisers counted on. Mass ex­
propriations began. In the Algiers district alone the French
authorities expropriated 168,000 hectares, out of which the
Arabs received 30,000 hectares and the French colonialists
— 138,000 hectares. The same thing happened in other parts
of Algeria.
The wholesale plundering of the land exhausted the local
people’s patience and in 1845 the whole of western Algeria
rose in rebellion against the French. The leader of the up­
rising, Bu Maza, appealed to Abd el-Kader and offered him
the leadership of the popular struggle. The French hastened
to raise the strength of the occupation army to 108,000 men.
Eighteen punitive detachments again slaughtered the popu­
lation and destroyed villages. The French generals, Pelissier
and Saint Arnaud broke the record of barbarism in this
campaign. Pelissier drove thousands of Arabs into the moun­
tain caves, where he suffocated them with smoke. Saint Ar­
naud bricked up in caves 1,500 Arabs, including women and
children. Nor did Cavaignac, who was serving in the occupa­
tion army at the time, lag behind them.
The brutal repressions and the decree of July 31, 1845,
on the confiscation of land as a punishment for “associating
with the enemy” achieved their aim. The uprising began to
wane. French detachments pursued Abd el-Kader, trying to
surround him, but he withdrew to the oases of the Sahara
Desert and from there continued to wage guerilla warfare.
It was only at the end of 1847, following the treachery of
the Moroccan Sultan, that the French captured Abd el-Kader
and sent him away to France. In 1848, Ahmed bey was also
taken prisoner. After spending five years in France, Abd el-
Kader was permitted to return to the East. Having lived for
a few years in Bursa, in 1855 he settled in Damascus, where
12-573 177
he spent the rest of his life. Abd el-Kader died in 1883, at
the age of 75.

POPULAR UPRISINGS IN THE FIFTIES. After the

capitulation of Abd el-Kader, almost all Algeria, except for
the remote oases in the south and the mountainous Kabylia,
came under French control. Several years were to pass before
the latter regions were conquered. In 1849, the French un­
dertook a campaign against the south and captured a num­
ber of oases in the Algerian Sahara. The rebellious oasis of
Zaatcha, where the French had to take each hut by force,
was wiped off the face of the earth. Bu Zian, the leader of
the popular struggle, was executed. The “civilisers” behead­
ed him and put his head on display on the fortress wall.
In 1851, a large tribal uprising under the leadership of
Bu Baglà (the “mule man”) broke out in the mountainous
regions of Kabylia. A punitive, expedition destroyed and pil­
laged 300 villages, but it was unable to capture the leader
of the uprising.
In 1852, a big uprising flared up in the Laghouta oasis and
in 1854, in the Tuggurt oasis.
In 1854, as soon as the Eastern war had begun, the strug­
gle in Kabylia once again acquired greater scope. For three
years (1854-57) the people, headed by Bu Bagla, successfully
repelled the French punitive expeditions. The leading role
in the struggle was played by the religious brotherhood of
Rahmania. It was only in July 1857, that the French generals
were able to subdue Kabylia.
The Algerian war served as a school for the hangmen of
the French working class such as Cavaignac, Saint Arnaud,
MacMahon and many others. Later they were to apply the
same bloody methods of reprisal against the revolutionary
proletariat of Paris that they had used against the freedom-
loving Arabs in Algeria.

ALGERIA UN D ER TH E FRENCH BOURGEOISIE.

Algeria was an agrarian country and, having captured it,
the French capitalists gave no thought to its industrial de­
velopment. They regarded it as a market for their goods and
as a source of raw material and food. Their main concern
was to make as much profit as possible by selling their goods
on the Algerian market for the highest price possible and
178
receiving in return agricultural raw material at the lowest
possible price. The degree of their success can be seen from
the following table of Algeria’s imports and exports (annual
average in millions of francs) :
Im ports Exports

1 8 3 0 -4 0 15 2 .1
1 8 4 1 -5 0 7 1 .9 3 .7
1 8 5 1 -6 0 8 0 .8 3 1 .1
1 8 6 1 -7 0 1 7 2 .6 8 1 .6

Before the French conquest of Algeria, the domestic in­

dustry (peasant and Bedouin) and the handicrafts (in the
towns) were widely developed, but after the conquest they
fell into decline.
The occupation authorities actively catered to the demands
of the metropolitan capitalists and guaranteed wide oppor­
tunities for the unrestricted import of manufactured goods
to Algeria. This, naturally, led to the ruin of wide masses
of artisans and to the aggravation of the conflicts between
the working strata of the Algerian people and the French
colonialists.
French capital went on pumping raw material out of
Algeria in increasing quantities. By importing manufactured
goods, French capital was destroying industrial production
in Algeria, while by exporting raw material, it was exercising
active control over the production of raw materials and
foodstuffs, over agriculture and the mining industry of A l­
geria.
In what form was this control expressed? First of all, in
the acquisition of land. After the defeat of Abd el-Kader
and the popular uprisings of the fifties, this process was ac­
celerated. Under Napoleon III, land plundering assumed
considerable proportions. The law issued on February 26,
1851, having codified all the previous French “agrarian” laws
issued in Algeria, included even woodland in the land cate­
gories that could be confiscated by the French authorities.
The expropriation of large tracts of wooded country, in­
cluding a considerable amount of bush, gave the colonialists
2,000,000 hectares of land for agricultural exploitation and
deprived the Arabs of game reserves, pastures, fuel and
building materials. The same law granted the right to con-
12 * 179
elude transactions, i.e., the purchase and sale of land, with
the exception of the tribal lands, which could be surrendered
only to the state. Since the tribes did not give up their lands
voluntarily, a new measure known as cantonisation was in­
troduced in 1861. It was announced that the tribal lands
were only for use, not for ownership. In view of this, the
tribes were ordered to return the “surplus land” to the state,
which only after this recognised them as the owners of the
remaining land. According to this decree, only those lands
which the Arabs and Berbers had cultivated in the two years
preceding 1861, as well as their pastures, were left in their
possession. Out of 343,000 hectares affected by the “cantoni­
sation” in 1861, 61,000 hectares were confiscated by the state.
“Cantonisation” aroused discontent in Algeria and by a
senatus-consulte, signed on April 23, 1863, the French were
compelled to acknowledge all land in the use of the tribes
as the latter’s property.
The decree pointed out that the right of common owner­
ship could not be sold but it also proposed dividing common
property first among the clans and tribes, then among indi­
vidual families. This decree made it easier for the French
colonisers to acquire land and gave the state the opportunity
to take over part of the tribal lands. Thus, for example, in
seven years alone (1863-70) out of 7,000,000 hectares of land
that had been divided up, 1,000,000 hectares were confiscated
by the colonisers.
How was the land that had been seized by the state used?
A considerable part was either leased or granted to French
settlers as part of the process of “formal colonisation”. By
1871, the colonial settlers had been given 480,000 hectares
of the best land. Ninety per cent of this land fell into the
hands of the big proprietors, who owned over fifty hectares
each. Since, however, the smaller proprietors, who possessed
less than fifty hectares, frequently cultivated their land in­
tensively (grapes, vegetables, and so on) they actually owned
rich enterprises. The claim that the French colonisation was
done by working folk was groundless. There were; of course,
some French peasants among the colonial settlers, mainly
rich farmers, but these were few, not more than 10,000 in
all, and their share of the land was negligible.
Apart from the land that had been taken over during the
process of “formal colonisation”, huge tracts of land were

ISO
bought up by French colonisers from the local landowners.
Under Napoleon. I ll, the embezzlement of the land (mainly
from the state fund) by the big. French capitalist companies,
which acted as concessionaires, acquired extensive propor­
tions. Between 1851 and 1861, the big concessionaires received
70,000 hectares of land, out of which 20,000 hectares
were appropriated by the Compagnie Genevois alone (i.e.,
over 250,000 hectares were handed out in this period as part
of the process of “formal colonisation”). Between 1861 and
1871, the concessionaires seized 400,000 hectares (not count­
ing the 116,000 hectares “presented” for purposes of “for­
mal colonisation”). The following figures speak of the scale
of operations. Between 1862 and 1863 alone 30 big conces­
sionaires acquired 160,000 hectares of woodland; in 1865,
the Société Générale Algérienne received 100,000 hectares
and the Société du Khabra et Makta—25,000 hectares.
Thus, on the one hand, there was the process of concentrat­
ing the land in the hands of the French capitalist societies
and big settlers. On the other hand, wide masses of the A l­
gerian peasantry were being deprived of their lands; pre­
viously free members of peasant communes were being
turned into enslaved métayers and brutally exploited farm
labourers.
Does this mean that big changes took place in the mode
of production, that a big capitalist economy came into being?
By no means, although it would be incorrect to deny the
beginnings of such a capitalist economy. Even in those years
the use of hired labour developed together with grape cul­
tivation. But up to 1870, the vine-growing areas were negli­
gible and were restricted only to the region of Metija. In
grain farming, which continued to be the main form of agri­
culture in Algeria, the use of hired labour in big production
was an exception. Agriculture was still based on the small-
scale production of. the fellaheen. Significant changes, how­
ever, had taken place in the conditions of small-scale pro­
duction.
Prior to the French conquest this was an economy of either
free members of peasant communes or dependent feudal mé­
tayers. The majority of the free communers had large fami­
lies. The economy was mainly of a natural character (al­
though the landlords had acquired comparatively large quan­
tities of marketable grain).

18]
 Following the expropriation of the peasants and the seizure
of communal land by the French capitalists, the number of
free communers sharply decreased, but the number of en­
slaved métayers increased. The national economy began to
acquire a commodity character. The exploitation of the mé­
tayers by the money-lenders was intensified. Usurers (kliam-
mases) were active everywhere. It is known, for example,
that the Compagnie Genevois leased lands that it had seized
to the khammases. The same went for the Société Algérienne,
which, according to the decree, was obliged to lease part of
its domains to the French settlers but, in fact, leased most of
the land to the khammases. When the Société Algérienne was
reorganised as the Compagnie Algérienne (1878) it was as­
signed 70,000 hectares, out of which 59,000 hectares were
leased to the khammases, 6,000 were taken on lease by the
settlers and only 5,000 hectares comprised the personal
property of the company. Individual French settlers, especi­
ally in the grain-growing regions, also made extensive use of
the khammas system.
The seizure of the land by the French colonisers, capitalists
and concessionaires’ societies, the expropriation of scores of
thousands of Algerian peasants, their brutal exploitation as
métayers and farm labourers, all this gave rise to fresh
popular uprisings. In western Algeria in 1859, the Banu
Snassen tribes revolted. In 1864, rebellion flared up among the
tribes of Walid-sidi-Sheikh. Finally, in 1871, a great nation­
al liberation uprising began headed by Mokrani.
 CHAPTER XI V

THE FINANCIAL ENSLAVEMENT OF TUNISIA

AND ITS CONVERSION INTO A SEMI-COLONY

THE ANGLO-FRENCH STRUGGLE FOR TUNISIA .

The seizure of Algeria by the French in 1830 predetermined
the fate of Tunisia. Occupying a strategic position on the
Mediterranean Sea and bordering Algeria on the east, it
naturally attracted the attention of the French colonialists,
who had set about building a colonial empire in North Afri­
ca. The short-sighted Tunisian rulers, however, were not
only unaware of the threat; they even rejoiced over the
adversities that befell their age-old enemy—the Algerian
dey. Taking advantage of the enmity between the Algerian
and Tunisian feudal lords, France succeeded in getting the
Tunisian bey to supply bread for the French army in Algeria.
To facilitate the coming seizure of Tunisia, France de­
clared that Tunisia was a state in its own right and inde­
pendent of Turkey and that she intended to defend Tunisia’s
independence. Mahmud II, the Turkish Sultan, was pursu­
ing a policy of centralising the Ottoman Empire and trying
to establish effective control by the central government over
the remote provinces. He had decided, in particular, to
strengthen the Porte’s authority in its African domains. In
1835, the Turks occupied Tripoli, overthrew the ruling dy­
nasty of janissary beys and turned the region into an ordi­
nary province of the Ottoman Empire. In 1836, it was Tuni­
sia’s turn. The Turkish fleet was despatched to Tunisia, but
France objected to the Turkish plans and sent her own fleet
to meet that of the Turks. Confronted with the threat of
war, the Turkish fleet retreated. Thus, the status-quo in
Tunisia was preserved.
No sooner had the Turkish fleet left Tunisian waters than
France attempted to invade the region. In 1837, French
troops attacked Tunisian territory, pillaged several villages
183
and burnt crops. Border disputes, which had arisen in the
course of the Algerian-Turkish demarcation and also the
question of tribute, which the Tunisian bey had formerly
paid to Algeria, served as an excuse for this barbarous at­
tack. Under pressure from England, however, the French
troops were finally compelled to withdraw from Tunisian
territory.
England, who had rather easily reconciled herself to the
French occupation of Algeria, put up serious opposition to
the French plans in Tunisia. This was due chiefly to Tuni­
sia’s strategic position. Her ports, Bizerta and Goletta, were
situated on the narrow strait between the western and eastern
Mediterranean. The British energetically set about fortify­
ing their positions; they seized Malta and were reluctant to
permit the establishment of French bases in that area. The
conflict of 1837 exposed the tense Anglo-French rivalry
over Tunisia, which continued for more than forty years.
The Anglo-French struggle for domination in Tunisia
acquired various forms. First of all, the British and the
French were competing for the Tunisian market. Secondly,
they were competing for concessions on land, mines, the con­
struction of communication routes, the means of communi­
cation, ports and other undertakings. Thirdly, they were
competing for political influence over the Tunisian bey and
his administration; among the bey’s high officials were French
and British agents. Finally, they were competing for finan­
cial control over Tunisia, It must be noted that this struggle
for hegemony in Tunisia developed against a background of
reforming activities by the Tunisian beys, which ultimately
cleared the way for the European bankers, who planned the
conquest and enslavement of Tunisia.

TH E REFORMS IN TUNISIA. The threat of a French

and Turkish conquest induced the Tunisian beys to modern­
ise their country and in the first place the army. The chief
reformer was Ahmed bey (1837-55), who pursued a policy
of manoeuvre between the British and the French. An ad­
mirer of Napoleon and his strategies, this “enlightened des­
pot” founded a military school, abolished slavery, purchased
ships, cannon and equipment from abroad, built barracks,
fortifications and palaces. The reorganisation of the army
and the building programme required huge sums of money,
184
especially since the European military instructors and out­
fitters shamelessly robbed the bey. Apart from the great sums
spent on the army, a considerable amount was wasted on
the upkeep of the court. Moreover, the state treasury was
plundered by the bey’s courtiers and especially by Mustafa
Khaznadar, who for forty years was the actual ruler of
Tunisia. In order to defray expenses, the government raised
taxes and was finally compelled to ask for loans.
Most of the money that was borrowed was squandered.
Instead of being used for the development of Tunisia’s pro­
ductive forces, it was embezzled by the ruling clique, spent
on extravagances and luxuries, on the construction of pal­
aces, on the millions of presents which the beys gave to their
favourites and on the grotesque Tunisian army. Mohammed
Ali, the Egyptian Pasha, had always regarded a modern
army as a serious weapon of political struggle, but his con­
temporary, Ahmed Bey, regarded it merely as a form of
amusement. True, the army served as a means to suppress the
popular uprisings, but in its former state it had also success­
fully coped with this task. In other words, the military reform
was useless. The modernised army was incapable of doing
anything apart from fighting against the unarmed people.
Huge sums of money were squandered aimlessly. From
the French and British the Bey purchased guns that did not
shoot, ammunition that did not explode and ships that sunk
even before they got out to sea. In other words, he spent
huge sums on spoiled goods that the British and French fac­
tory-owners could not dispose of elsewhere, on trash, dis­
carded by the British and French armies. The burden of
these expenses weighed heavily on the people, and this in
turn aroused serious discontent in Tunisia. In 1840, a popu­
lar uprising took place in Tunis, in 1842, there was one in
Goletta, followed by an uprising in Béja in 1843.
T he French and British instructors and military advisers
invited by the Bey to serve in his toy-like army and fleet
spent much of their time spying and interfered in Tunisia’s
internal affairs. The representatives of France and England
extolled the military reforms of the Bey, encouraged his re­
formatory itch to place Tunisia in the clutches of the Euro­
pean banks.
In 1856, at the end of the Eastern war, the Turkish Sul­
tan, Abdul Mejid, issued a hatti-humayun, which granted a
185
 number of rights and privileges to foreign capital. England
and France demanded the same rights and guarantees from
the Tunisian Bey. In 1857, Mohammed Bey (1855-59) is­
sued the Ahd El-Aman (the Security Pact), which repeated
the main stipulations of the hatti-sherif Gulhane of 1839 and
the hatti-humayun of 1856. The pact proclaimed the equali­
ty of all subjects before the law irrespective of their reli­
gion, and also personal immunity and inviolability of prop­
erty. In 1858, a municipal council was founded in Tunis
and in 1861, during the reign of Mohammed es-Sadik Bey
(1859-82), the Tunisian Constitution was promulgated, which
proclaimed, in particular, the establishment of a consultative
organ—the Supreme Council. Moreover, it envisaged the
construction of railways, ports, telegraphs, and a reorgani­
sation of the tax system and the army.
Foreign businessmen were quick to take advantage of these
reforms. The British received concessions for the construc­
tion of the first Tunisian railway between Tunis and Golet-
ta; the French received concessions for the construction of
a telegraph and for the restoration of the Zaghwan aque­
duct. This meant that foreigners were granted the right to
own land in Tunisia. On October 10, 1863, England im­
posed an agreement on Tunisia, the first clause of which
pointed out that henceforward British subjects would be per­
mitted to acquire immovable property of any kind in the
Tunisian regency and to own it. The same rights applied to
the French subjects on the strength of the Franco-Tunisian
Treaty concluded as far back as 1824 and ensuring France
the most favoured nation treatment. Later France secured
more substantial legal guarantees and in 1871, achieved the
publication of the Bey’s decree, which granted French citi­
zens the right to acquire land in Tunisia. The same rights
were granted to Italian, Austrian and Prussian subjects.

THE FINANCIAL ENSLAVEMENT OF TUNISIA.

The penetration of foreign capital into Tunisia brought finan­
cial enslavement just as it was doing in Turkey and Egypt.
Immediately after the Eastern war, the European banks
began to impose unfair loans on Tunisia, which quickly en­
tangled her in the net of financial dependence.
By 1862, the promissory debt of the Tunisian Bey had
reached 28,000,000 francs. This was a considerable sum for
186
Tunisia and brought her to the verge of bankruptcy. Taking
advantage of this, a consortium of French banks offered the
Bey a loan of 35,000,000 francs. The Bey accepted the pro­
posal and the agreement was signed on May 6, 1863. It
turned out that out of the 35,000,000 francs about 10,000,000
(9,772,000 francs, to be exact) were deducted by the bankers
and out of the remaining 25,000,000 about 20,000,000 francs
were paid in the deliveries of old stocks. A ll that the Bey
received was a mere 5,640,000 francs, which were immedi­
ately handed over to discharge the floating debt. For all this
Tunisia undertook to repay within fifteen years 63,000,000
francs (i.e., the original sum of 35,000,000 and 28,000,000
in interest) plus an additional 13,000,000 for commission
payments.
Far from curing her bankruptcy, Tunisia had merely
fallen out of the frying pan into the fire. The French banks
reaped the profits without a thought for the fate of the Tuni­
sian people. How could Tunisia accept such harsh terms?
Unfortunately, the Tunisian people did not ask that ques­
tion. Everything was decided by the Bey and his ministers
headed by Mustafa Khaznadar, who had been bribed by the
French banks and on their behalf ruined his own country.
The situation in Tunisia grew worse day by day. The
feudal yoke was supplemented by foreign enslavement. The
reforms had not touched the core of Tunisian feudalism,
which was fully preserved. The payment of foreign debts
called for ever greater sums of money. In search of funds, the
state doubled, and in some regions trebled, the poll-tax—
rnejba. In reply to this, in 1863, a popular uprising under the
leadership of A li ben Gadakhum broke out. All Tunisia rose
in rebellion against the feudal clique, which had ruined the
country in the interests of foreign capital. The uprising of
1863-64 was put down and the conditions of the people
remained just as unbearable as they had been before. Up to
nine-tenths of the Tunisian budget went on the payment of
debts.
In search of a way out, the Bey once more turned to the
foreign banks, from which he received a new loan of
25,000,000 francs in 1865. As security for the loan, the for­
eign usurers received access to the revenue of the state cus­
toms. This loan, like the previous one, turned out to be a
swindle. Tunisia received hardly anything out of the
187
25,000,000 francs. The banks retained a considerable sum for
commission, emission, and so on; the rest was used to pay
the interest on the previous debt. Only 3,500,000 francs were
left for the Tunisian Government, but even this was not paid
in cash but in “kind”—for 2,500,000 francs Tunisia received
one frigate and for 1,000,000 francs the promise of cannons.
After the new loan, the situation became catastrophic.
Plundering exceeded all bounds. To pay the foreign debt,
the Tunisian treasury wrang everything it could out of the
peasants and the handicraftsmen. The people were beaten,
tortured and executed. To add to all this a terrible famine
swept the region. People ate grass, roots and human ilesh,
an epidemic of cholera broke out and the people began flee­
ing by the thousands to neighbouring Tripolitania. Uprisings
flared up in a number of localities. In such circumstances
the Tunisian Government was compelled to stop the pay­
ment of foreign loans.
The Bey government went bankrupt in 1867, eight years
before the same fate overcame Turkey and Egypt. Taking
advantage of this, the European Powers established finan­
cial control over Tunisia. In 1869, an International Finan­
cial Commission was formed to control the income and ex­
penditure of the Tunisian Government. Representatives of
the French, Anglo-Maltese and Italian usurers participated
in the work of the commission. France played the leading
role. The over-all sum of the Tunisian debt was determined
at 125,000,000 francs. Tunisia undertook to pay five per cent,
or 6,250,000 francs per year, which was half of all state ex­
penditure. The International Financial Commission took
over control of all Tunisia’s customs revenue. Should this
turn out to be insufficient, the government was obliged to
pay the deficit.
Tunisia had become a patrimony of the foreign banks,
their semi-colony. But which group of capitalists would gain
supremacy and turn it into its colony was not clear. Fierce
rivalry developed between England and France, a struggle
in which Italy was soon to take an active part.
 CHAPTER XV

THE FINANCIAL ENSLAVEMENT OF EGYPT

FOREIGN LOANS. The tremendous expenditures con­

nected with the construction of the Suez Canal and other
projects forced the Egyptian Government to have recourse
to foreign loans. These loans were granted to Egypt on the
most outrageous terms.
The public debt was begun by Said Pasha. Since he had
no right to contract foreign loans without the approval of
the Porte, Said Pasha overcame the ban by issuing Treas­
ury bonds, which were realised on the European exchange.
Thus there came into being Egypt’s so-called floating debt,
which at the time of Said’s death exceeded £ 6,000,000.
But Said went on to contract even larger loans. A fatal
role here was played by the notorious financial manipulator
Herman Oppenheim, who “fixed” the majority of Said’s and
Ismail’s loans. Oppenheim, originally from Prussia, was con­
sidered a British subject and owned banks in Paris and A l­
exandria. He had close connection with the banking com­
pany of Frühling and Göschen in London and served the
interests of the British.
In 1862, Oppenheim helped Said conclude the first Egyp­
tian state loan which was needed to meet commitments con­
nected with the construction of the Suez Canal. Because of
what they termed the “difference in exchange value”, the
creditors actually paid out far less than the nominal sum of
the loan, but insisted on repayment terms based on the whole
amount.
In 1864, Oppenheim arranged a loan from Messrs. Früh­
ling and Göschen for £5,700,000 of which the Egyptian Treas­
ury actually received only £4,860,000, the remainder being
once again withheld by the banks as a “difference in exchange
value”. Most of what Egypt did receive went to discharge

189
 the floating debt. As a guarantee for the loan, Ismail gave
up the state revenues from the three richest provinces of the
Delta.
In 1865, Ismail contracted a “private” loan from the
Anglo-Egyptian Bank. Of the nominal sum of £3,387,000 he
received in cash only £2,750,000. H alf of this was used to
purchase estates and half to build sugar refineries.
In 1866, Ismail contracted several new loans. H e borrowed
money from Messrs. Frühling and Göschen to build railways.
To obtain the loan, however, Egypt’s existing railways had
to be mortgaged. Out of t ie nominal sum of £3,000,000, the
Egyptian Treasury received only £2,640,000.
In 1867, the Khedive concluded a “private” loan with the
Imperial Ottoman Bank (Anglo-French) with a view to buy­
ing lands for the organisation of sugar-cane plantations.
Out of £2,080,000 of the nominal sum, the Khedive received
only £1,700,000.
In 1868, the Khedive contracted a loan with Oppenheim for
£11,890,000, of which Egypt received only £7,195,000 in cash.
In 1870, the Khedive contracted a new “private” loan for
£7,143,000 with the bankers of Bishofsgeim and Goldsch­
midt, but actually received only £5,000,000.
On June 11, 1873, the Khedive signed an agreement with
Oppenheim for a huge loan of £32,000,000 to pay off the
floating debt. Egypt received only £20,000,000 in cash and
for this she undertook to pay Oppenheim £3,500,000 interest
per annum, i.e., approximately 20 per cent of the actual
sum received.
In a matter of eleven years, the British banks had con­
trived to saddle Egypt with a debt amounting to about
£68,000,000, having paid out in cash only £46,000,000 and
expropriated over £20,000,000 for “differences in exchange
value” and commission. Meanwhile Egypt’s floating debt had
reached £26,000,000, on which she had to pay up to 15 per
cent and even 25 per cent annual interest.
By 1876, Egypt’s total foreign debt came to £94,000,000.
What had the money been used for? Some apologists of im­
perialism have suggested that it was squandered on the ex­
travagant whims of Ismail Pasha—on his palaces, harems,
on luxury and ostentation. Others have asserted that Ismail
began a country-wide campaign for the construction of rail­
ways, bridges, ports, telegraphs, factories and canals, without
190
 taking into consideration the real state of Egypt’s natural
resources, and that it was this “speculative company promot­
ing” that drowned Egypt in debt. It can indeed be stated
that the Khedive overpaid huge sums to the European build­
ing firms. Thanks to the contractors, Egypt had to pay 325
million francs for railways that had actually cost only 75
million francs to build. The Egyptian Treasury had paid a
European building firm over £2,500,000 for the Port of A l­
exandria, while the real cost was only £1,500,000. Other con­
struction works had also cost Egypt two or three times their
actual worth. The European building firms robbed the coun­
try shamelessly. The greater part of the funds expended on
building, however, had been acquired without the help of
the European banks. In the final analysis, the cost was
borne by the Egyptian people. The British finance expert,
Cave, asserted that the state revenue of Egypt for 1864-75
comprised £94,000,000, while expenditure, including con­
struction, the expenses of the Khedive’s court, bribes for the
Turkish Sultan and his attendants, the cost of the Sudanese
and Ethiopian wars, amounted to an over-all sum of
£97,000,000. The entire real deficit for twelve years thus
comprised only £3,000,000.
How was it that Egypt came to owe the European bankers
nearly £100,000,000? The debt was made up of the follow­
ing items: (1) £16,000,000 spent on the Suez Canal;
(2) £22,000,000, which Egypt never actually received, went
to the bankers as “differences in exchange value”, commis­
sion, and so on, but was included in the nominal sum of the
debt; (3) no less than £50,000,000 had been paid by Egypt
up to 1876 as interest on the basic loans and promissory
debts; (4) £5,000,000-6,000,000 spent on public works. Thus
it can be seen what a small portion of the loan actually
benefited Egypt.
The criminal intrigues of de Lesseps, Oppenheim, Früh­
ling and others were responsible for the greater part of
Egypt’s debt. The Egyptian people, who had to bear the
burden of the debt, received no return on the loans they
were forced to pay back threefold.

M URABALA. RUZNAMEH. The policy of the Euro-

m bankers had a fatal effect on Egypt’s financial position,
K e state railways, tax revenues and the estates of the Khe-

191
dive were mortgaged up. to the hilt. The amount of interest
Egypt had to pay her creditors increased every year. By
1875, it came to approximately £8,000,000 annually.
This meant annual tax increases. Within a short period
of time the land tax had increased fourfold—from 40 to
160 piastres per feddan. Egypt’s budget income grew from
£2,000,000 in 1861 to £10,500,000 in 1875. Nevertheless,
Egypt was forced to spend about 80 per cent of these funds
to discharge interest and other commitments on the loans.
There was not enough left to meet the current needs of the
state and the Khedive was compelled to find new sources of
income.
Ismail decided to resort to internal loans. In 1871, the
first internal loan, mukabala (reimbursement), was con­
tracted. By the law of mukabala, all landowners who for a
period of 12 years from 1873 paid six times the amount of
land tax to which they were liable, in regular instalments,
thereby obtained remission of half the tax for ever after.
This law was supported by the landlords and the richer
farmers, who had just begun to emerge as a class and who,
in exchange for future riches, immediately gave the Treas­
ury approximately £7,000,000 and later over £8,000,000
bringing the total to £15,700,000 in the period between 1871
and 1878.
There was still not enough money, however, and in 1874,
the Treasury was compelled to issue the second internal
loan, called ruznameh\ for £5,000,000. Iii spite of the fact
that contribution to this loan was made compulsory, it did
not justify the government’s expectations and yielded the
Treasury less than £2,000,000.

ENGLAND’S PURCHASE OF SHARES IN THE

SUEZ CANAL. At the end of 1875, in order to meet the
payments due on the foreign loan, Ismail decided to sell
Egypt’s shares in the Suez Canal. Proposals were made to
England and France. W hile France hesitated, the British
Government acted quickly and decisively. Without notifying
Parliament or even the members of his cabinet, Disraeli
(Lord Beaconsfield), the British Prime Minister, borrowed
£4,000,000 from his friend, Rothschild, and bought on behalf
of his government 176,000 shares in the Suez Canal. The
transaction was made on November 25, 1875. The shares

192
passed into the hands of the British Government and on
December 8, 1875, de Lesseps invited British representa­
tives to take their seats on the Administrative Council of the
General Company of the Suez Maritime Canal.
Egypt’s interest in the canal, which had cost her £16,000,000
to build and had led to her being saddled with a debt of
£100,000,000, that cost the Egyptian people £300,000,000
in principal and interest paid on to foreign bankers, was
sold for only £4,000,000. Subsequently, the Suez Canal
yielded its owners unusually high profits; the shares that had
been purchased in 1875 for £4,000,000 were worth
£35,000,000 by 1910.
But this was only the commercial side of the case. The
political aspect of the deal was far more important. En­
gland, as we have seen, had tried to seize Egypt at the begin­
ning of the 19th century and in 1840, made another attempt
to place the country under her control. But each time she
had encountered the resistance of the Egyptian people and
that of her rival, France. French influence prevailed in
Egypt. Right up to the eighties of the 19th century, with the
exception of the years 1849-54, Mohammed Ali, Ibrahim,
Said and Ismail were swayed by French policy. The Egyp­
tians had even participated in the Mexican adventure of N a­
poleon III. During the time of de Lesseps, the Suez Canal
became a key position of French capital. The French bank­
ers held the greater part of the promissory debt. French spe­
cialists, professors and advisers predominated in Egyptian
institutes, factories and educational establishments. Young
Egyptians were sent to France to study. Khedive Ismail him­
self had graduated from the French military academy school
at Saint Cyr.
In the seventies of the 19th century the British decided to
effect a radical change in the situation. “The construction of
the canal,” wrote the British historian Young, “changed for
the worse the relations between the British Empire and Egypt
by shifting the main objective of British sea-power, and the
main interest of British imperialism in the Near East from
Constantinople to Cairo.”1 In the past the British had done
everything they could to counteract French influence; now

1 G. Young, Egypt, London, 1930, p. 73.

13-573 193
 they adopted a new policy aimed at completely ousting France
from Egypt.
“Until then,” Young writes, “the British had been content
to keep the French from dominating Cairo, as they had kept
the Russians from dominating in Constantinople. But there­
after [after the opening of the Suez Canal— V.L.) it became
of vital interest to them to control Cairo to the exclusion of
other Powers. It was, indeed, some time before this new im­
perialist point of view penetrated our policy towards Egypt.”1
This “new point of view” had its roots in the new econom­
ic and political conditions in Europe after 1870, when capi­
talism had begun to enter into its last stage—the stage of
monopoly capital, of imperialism. The transition was con­
nected with the growing struggle for the division of the world,
with the unprecedented activisation of the capitalist Powers’
colonial policy.
By that time the British had already taken over the con­
trol of Egyptian cotton exports. They were supreme on the
Egyptian import market and had seized a number of conces­
sions. The London bankers, Messrs. Frühling, Göschen,
Bishofsgein and Oppenheim, had entangléd Egypt in a net of
ruinous loans. Nearly all the bonds of the Egyptian public
debt were in their hands. In 1875, Disraeli bought Egypt’s
Suez Canal shares on behalf of the British Government. This
was a fresh blow to French influence. Henceforth, the British
Government became the biggest stockholder of the Suez Ca­
nal, which up to 1875 had been mainly a French company.
True, the French capitalists still retained the greatest num­
ber of shares and seats on the Administrative Council of the
General Company of the Suez Maritime Canal. The canal
was still directed from Paris. But while the French shares
had been divided among a large number of shareholders, the
British Government alone, without the participation of any
other shareholders, owned holdings which comprised approxi­
mately 45 per cent of the entire share capital.
Ismail’s hopes that the “canal would be in Egypt, but not
Egypt in the canal”, quite obviously had not been realised.
The British Government’s acquisition of shares in the Suez
Canal paved the way for the British occupation of Egypt.

1 Ibid., p. 68.

194
“Henceforth,” wrote Sabri, “the politician and money-lender
perform a common duty and their unification accelerates the
ominous development of events.”

EGYPT’S FINANCIAL BANKRUPTCY. In the autumn

of 1875, the world exchange reacted to the bankruptcy of
Turkey with a sharp decline in the exchange rate of all Egyp­
tian securities. The capitalists of Europe predicted that the
bankruptcy of the Porte would inevitably entail the ban­
kruptcy of Egypt as well. At the end of 1875, the British
Government forced Egypt to accept a special commission to
inquire into her finances. This marked the beginning of for­
eign control over Egypt’s finances. Not to be left behind her
rival, France also immediately sent her own financial com­
mission to Egypt.
On April 8,1876, the Khedive suspended payment of his
Treasury bills. The government declared itself bankrupt and
the creditors immediately took advantage of this to impose
real financial control on Egypt. On M ay 2, 1876, the Powers
set up a Commission to Control the Khedival Debt, the staff
of which included representatives from France, Austria and
Italy. The members of the commission were called debt com­
missioners and had to ensure the timely payment of debts.
England at first declined to appoint a British commissioner
because her creditors could not come to an agreement with
the French on the conditions for the consolidation of the
Egyptian debt. The British bondholders had control of the
bonds of the main Egyptian loans, while the French and
other creditors’ share consisted mainly of coupons of the
floating debt.
On M ay 7, 1876, the Khedive issued a decree, consolidat­
ing the public debt of Egypt. All Egypt’s basic loans and
promissory debts were incorporated into a Consolidated
Debt to be discharged over a period of 65 years at a rate
of 7 per cent interest per annum. In exchange for bonds of
the old basic loans the holders received the same number of
bonds of the Consolidated Debt, while the holders of pro­
missory notes received in addition a bonus of 25 per cent
(100 units of the new bond were given for 80 units of the
old). As a security for the Consolidated Debt, the land tax
from the four richest provinces of the Delta was surrendered
as well as the revenue from the custom houses of Cairo and
13* 195
Alexandria, the tobacco excises and the revenue from the
khedival Daira Sanieh estates. All these revenues came
under the supervision of the Khedival Debt Commission.
In October 1876, a compromise between the British and
French holders of Egyptian shares resulted in the despatch
of a new Anglo-French financial commission to Egypt. Gö­
schen, the Egyptian Government’s biggest creditor, repre­
sented the interests of the British bankers, and Joubert—the
interests of the French. On November 18, 1876, on the basis
of the conclusions drawn by the Göschen-Joubert Commis­
sion, the Khedive issued a new decree, consolidating the
Egyptian debt. The Consolidated Debt was split up into
four separate parts: (1) the loans of 1864, 1865 and 1867, in
which Göschen had a personal interest, formed the subject
of a special arrangement with increased payment; (2) the
personal debts of the Khedive also formed the subject of a
separate arrangement known as Daira Sanieh and were
defrayed by the revenues from the Khedive’s estates on
which the loans had been secured; (3) a 5 per cent preference
stock, in security for which the revenues from the rail­
ways and from the Port of Alexandria were ceded. A spe­
cial commission of two Englishmen, one Frenchman and two
Egyptians was set up to administer the debts; (4) the other
loans that remained after the division of the above-men­
tioned debts. They comprised the basic debt of £59,000,000
with a 7 per cent interest rate per annum. This debt re­
mained under the control of the Debt Commission, which
had been formed in May 1867 and was soon joined by
Major Baring of Britain (later Lord Cromer). Colonial
administrator, finance expert and relative of one of the
richest bankers in London, Lord Cromer was the British
banks’ natural choice as their leading agent in Cairo. Before
his appointment to Egypt, Baring had for four years been
the private secretary to the viceroy of India. Six years later
he became the absolute ruler of Egypt.
Göschen and Joubert also secured from the Khedive the
appointment of a British official as the general controller of
Egypt’s revenues and a French official as the general con­
troller of expenditure. This was termed Dual Control (An­
glo-French) over Egypt’s finances. A third official, an En­
glishman, was appointed director of the budget department
in the Egyptian Ministry of Finance, a fourth, a British
196
general, was appointed director of Egypt’s railways. This
small group of foreign functionaries began to dictate its
orders to the Egyptian people as though they owned the
country. The Egyptian Minister of Finance, Ismail Sadik,
who tried to protest against the decisions of the Göschen-
Joubert Commission, drowned mysteriously in the Nile.

D U A L CONTROL. The foreign controllers and the debt

commissioners made it their chief task to squeeze out of
the Egyptian people the funds needed to meet the coupons
on the ruinous loans.
In order to redeem the coupon of January 1877, the taxes
levied on the population, especially on the fellaheen, were
collected nine to twelve months in advance. The govern­
ment sent punitive detachments to the villages to put these
measures into practice. Taxes were extorted by torture, for
which the notorious Egyptian kurbash, a whip with five lashes
made of rhinoceros hide, was used. W ith the tax gath­
erers and punitive detachments came the local money-lend­
ers, Copts and Greeks, who bought up the peasants’ crops
for next to nothing, and even that little the peasants imme­
diately gave to the tax gatherers. These extraordinary mea­
sures enabled the Egyptian Government to pay the interest
on its debts, but it stopped paying salaries to its own Egyp­
tian functionaries and officers.
In the summer of 1877, there was a low N ile followed by
a crop failure. Thousands of fellaheen died of hunger and
disease. People ate grass and leaves; women and children
went begging from village to village, but no one gave them
bread. Even under such circumstances the foreign money­
lenders managed to squeeze their spoils from the Egyptian
countryside. In a statement of almost unparalleled cynicism
the French Government declared: “The distress alleged to
exist in Egypt is fictitious and the arguments based on the
impoverishment of the country have been fabricated in order
to throw dust in the eyes of the public and to excite humani­
tarian sympathy where no sympathy is deserved.”1 When
the time came to pay for the debt, which fell due in April
1878, punitive detachments were once again sent to the Egyp­
tian countryside, once again the kurbash was put to use and

1 L. Cromer, Modem Egypt, Vol. I, London, 1908, p. 36.

197
once again the army of money-lenders descended on the vil­
lages like a swarm of locusts. They bought the growing
wheat from the fellaheen for 50 piastres an ardeb when it
was actually worth 120 piastres an ardeb. Great were the
sufferings of the Egyptian people, but the coupon was paid
for in full. The British and French bankers celebrated their
victory.
At the beginning of 1878, the bankers demanded that
Ismail should form a commission to inquire into the state of
Egypt’s finances. Ferdinand de Lesseps, the designer of the
Suez Canal, was appointed President of the Commission, but
he was merely a figurehead and took no active part in the
roceedings. The real President was the Vice-President,
S ivers Wilson, a British Treasury official. The other Vice-
President was Riaz Pasha, a reactionary Egyptian working
for the British. The debt commissioners were members of the
Commission of Inquiry and among them was Major Baring.
The Commission of Inquiry immediately adopted an ar­
rogant tone and it treated Khedive Ismail and his ministers
as though they were on trial. It summoned the Minister of
Justice, Sherif Pasha, to give testimony and, when he refused
to attend and offered instead to present the evidence in writ­
ten form, the Commission demanded his resignation. In its
reports the Commission denounced the forms and methods
of Egyptian administration and brought action against the
Khedive. It held him personally responsible for the situa­
tion prevailing in Egypt and the state of her finances. The
Commission of Inquiry decided to force the Khedive to ac­
cept a Civil List and to hand over his estates to the London
banker, Rothschild, as a security for a new loan.
Finally, the Commission demanded that the Khedive re­
linquish his control over state affairs in favour of a “relia­
ble” cabinet composed largely of foreigners.

THE FORMATION OF THE “EUROPEAN CABINET”.

Obliged to agree to the demands of the Commission of In­
quiry, the Khedive ceded his estates and, on August 28, 1878,
appointed a new cabinet, consisting primarily of European
officials. It was headed by the local Armenian compradore,
Nubar Pasha, who was well known for his connections with
the banks of London and Paris. According to Cromer, the
Pasha “carried but little weight with the population, with

198
whom, moreover, owing to his ignorance of Arabic, he was
unable to communicate in their own language. H e could only
rely on persuasion and on the support of two foreign govern­
ments.”1 In reality, the cabinet was run by Rivers Wilson,
the effective President of the Commission of Inquiry, who
occupied a key post in the Ministry of Finance. The commis­
sioner of debts, the Frenchman Blignières, was appointed
Minister of Public Works. The Austrian and Italian rep­
resentatives were made controllers-general and assistants to
the Minister of Finance. Riaz Pasha’s subservience to Wilson
and Baring was not forgotten and he was appointed Minis­
ter of the Interior.
This government, appropriately called the “European
cabinet” by the Egyptians, was universally hated. The Euro­
peans now controlled the whole of Egypt, as well as her
finances. Deprived of any independence she might previously
have possessed, Egypt was transformed into a colony of the
Anglo-French bankers. In reply to the growing aggression
of foreign capital there began to mature in Egypt a national
liberation movement that was soon to bring about the
overthrow of the “European cabinet”.

1 L. Cromer, op. cit., p. 72.

 CHAPTER XVI

THE NATIONAL LIBERATION MOVEMENT

IN EGYPT (1879-81)

GROWTH OF THE SPIRIT OF OPPOSITION. The

domination of foreigners, the financial enslavement of
Egypt, and the establishment of Dual Control and the “Euro­
pean cabinet”, evoked considerable discontent among all
classes of the Egyptian society. A ll of them, in one way or
another, suffered from the tyranny imposed by the foreign
money-lenders.
The first to suffer were the Egyptian fellaheen, who had
to bear the excessive burden of the Egyptian debt. They paid
four times more tax than before and in order to pay the tax
collectors they had to sell their crops, even before they were
harvested, to the money-lenders at a half or a third of their
actual worth. During the tax-gathering operations, the fel­
laheen were humiliated, beaten and tortured. W hile they
starved, scores of millions of francs, extorted with the help
of the kurbash, poured into the coffers of the foreign banks.
In 1879, Cairo was flooded with peasant petitioners, who
came on foot to complain to the Khedive about the unbear­
able tyranny of the authorities.
The domination of foreign capital was also felt by the
urban population of Egypt. The merchants and craftsmen
were heavily taxed while trade came to a standstill and the
market in handicraft wares dwindled.
Dissatisfaction penetrated into various strata of the rul­
ing class. This applied especially to the Egyptian officers,
who occupied middle commanding posts in the army. The
various economy measures that had been introduced meant
that the officers were not paid for months and their fami­
lies went hungry while the representatives of the feudal
nobility, the “Circassian” pashas and beys, retained their
high salaries.
200
 The government officials were also displeased because
their salaries were held back. Signs of discontent could also
be observed among the landlords, on whom the European
money-lenders had decided to place part of the burden of the
foreign debts. Khedive Ismail himself, the first landowner in
Egypt, disapproved of the foreigners, especially of the “Eu­
ropean cabinet”, which had deprived him of his estates and
left him only illusory power.
The spirit of opposition spread throughout Egypt; study
groups and secret societies were formed. The first secret
society to be formed by Egyptian officers came into being in
1876, after the unsuccessful Ethiopian war. It was headed
by Lieutenant-Colonel Ahmed Arabi (1839-1911), a man of
remarkable eloquence and profound devotion to the cause
of the Egyptian people. Arabi’s followers called themselves
wataneun (Nationalists). At first they opposed Khedive Is­
mail and sought to achieve only national equality in the
army; they campaigned only for their professional interests.
Later their struggle acquired a national liberation character.
They were the first to advance the slogan “Egypt for the
Egyptians”. They declared the Egyptians a nation, which
had the right to exist as an independent state entity. They
relied for support on the soldiers and the peasants.
The wataneun leaders were close to the Egyptian people.
In his proclamations Arabi referred to himself as a “fellah”
(peasant). He really was the son of a fellah from the village
of Khariya-Ruzna in Lower Egypt. Many bourgeois histo­
rians have described Arabi as an ignoramus. Actually, he
joined the army after having studied at El-Azhar and later
continued to read a great deal. A person of considerable
intellectual curiosity with a lively and receptive mind and
a fervent patriot, he showed a great interest in the
experience of the French revolution, the Napoleonic wars
and the Italian national liberation movement. During Said’s
rule, Arabi quickly made a career for himself. He became
Said’s aide-de-camp, but under Ismail he fell into disgrace
and was promoted only twelve years later, in 1875, during
the Ethiopian war.
Arabi enjoyed well-deserved prestige and influence among
the officers and soldiers of the Egyptian army, as did his
closest associates, the wataneun officers, Ali er-Rubi, Abd
el-Al, Ali and Mahmud Fahmi and others.

201
 Besides these military leaders of the wataneun movement
there was also a group of its ideologists. Among them was
the erudite Sheikh Mohammed Abdu, a theologian who
dreamt of “reforming Islam” by adapting it to the bour­
geois conditions of life. There was the Syrian writer and
journalist, Adeb Iskhak, who had settled in Egypt in 1876;
the talented speaker and journalist, Abdullah Nedim and
many other intellectuals, mostly teachers and students of
El-Azhar, who had studied under the well-known religious
and political figure, Jamal ed-Din el-Afghani (1839-1897).
The founder of the Pan-Islam movement, Jamal ed-Din
el-Afghani, after wandering for a long time in the East,
had settled in Cairo in 1871. A teacher at El-Azhar and an
active participant in the social and political life of Egypt,
he spoke out in favour of the reform of Islam and the uni­
fication of the Moslem peoples in the struggle against Europe.
He called on Moslems to master the European sciences
and technology, to beat the Europeans with their own weap­
ons. His teachings, although very contradictory in essence,
were wármly received in Egypt and greatly influenced
the outlook of Egyptian intellectuals in the seventies of the
19th century. Arabi and his friends regarded themselves as
the followers of Jamal ed-Din el-Afghani. In September
1879, Jamal ed-Din was banished from Egypt, but the wata­
neun leaders continued to feel his ideological influence.
At first the spirit of opposition was directed against Khe­
dive Ismail, then against the “European cabinet”. In 1877,
it came to the surface. Egypt acquired its first opposition
press. Adeb Iskhak and Selim Nakkash began to publish the
magazine Misr (Egypt) and then the newspaper At-Tigara
(Trade), which carried articles by Jamal ed-Din el-Afghani
and his associates against the Khedive and the foreign
enslavement of Egypt.
In 1879, the spirit of opposition spread to the Chamber
of Notables, which was composed primarily of landowners
and members of the Moslem clergy. It was dominated by
liberal landlords, who represented the moderate wing of the
national liberation movement. They were under the influ­
ence of the kind of liberal and constitutional ideas advocated
by Midhat Pasha and spoke out in favour of Egyptian inde-.
pendence, an Egyptian constitution, a parliament and a re­
liable government. When the regular session of the Chamber

202
of Notables opened on January 2, 1879, the delegates
turned it into a platform, from which they criticised the
“European cabinet”. The Khedive, who had a personal ac­
count to settle with the “European cabinet”, secretly sup­
ported these actions.

THE MILITARY DEM ONSTRATION OF FEBRU­

ARY 18, 1879. In February 1879, the “European cabinet”
decided, as an economy, to discharge 2,500 officers from
the army, to halve the salaries of the others and not to pay
the arrears due. This meant starvation for the discharged
officers and they decided to revolt against the “European
cabinet”. The soldiers of the Cairo garrison, most of whom,
were fellaheen in military uniform, supported their plans.
On February 18, 1879, a crowd of officers mobbed Nubar
Pasha and Rivers Wilson on their way to their offices,
dragged them out of their carriages and placed them under
guard in the Ministry of Finance. Riaz Pasha was also taken
there. The Khedive then arrived on the scene. At the de­
mand of the British Consul, he commanded the officers to
disperse and, on their refusal to do so, called in troops and
ordered them to open fire. The troops, however, fired in
the air and only by promising the officers that he would “sat­
isfy their demands* was Ismail able to obtain the re­
lease of the “prisoners”.
These events forced the government to make concessions.
It rescinded the order on army dismissals and lower salaries
and also refunded the officers’ arrear of pay, another
£400,000 being borrowed from Rothschild for this purpose.
On March 9,1879, Ismail dismissed Nubar Pasha and Ismail’s
eldest son, Tewfik, became the head of government. The
foreigners, Wilson and de Blignières, retained their posts.
At their demand, the authorities arrested the instigators of
the demonstration, but soon released them. “Indeed, under
the circumstances which then existed, it would have been
difficult to have subjected them to any punishment without
incurring serious risks,”1 Cromer remarks.
The actions of the officers against the “European cabinet”
encountered general support throughout Egypt. The Egyp­
tians realised that a successful struggle could be waged

1 L. Cromer, op. cit., p. 78.

203
against the European oppressors and with added persistence
began to campaign for the ejection of the European minis­
ters from the government.

W ILSO N’S FINANCIAL PLAN. In the meanwhile, the

short-sighted British and French officials regarded the inci­
dent as closed. They would continue to rule Egypt as they
had in the past. They stated to the Khedive that they were
determined to act in concert in all that concerned Egypt
and that they could not lend themselves to any modification
in principle of the political and financial arrangements. It
was to be clearly understood, they told the Khedive, that
the resignation of Nubar Pasha had, in the eyes of both
governments (British and French— V.L .], only importance
so far as the question of persons was concerned, but that it
could not imply a change of system. Having agreed to the
resignation of Nubar Pasha, they demanded, nevertheless,
that the Khedive should not on any account be allowed to
attend cabinet meetings, and that Wilson and de Blignières
be given the right of veto over any measure proposed by the
government.
When Ismail accepted these demands, Wilson decided
that all resistance had been quelled, and advanced his finan­
cial plan, the guiding principle of which was that to “de­
mand sacrifices” from the creditors was wrong and that this
could be expected only of the debtors. He proposed (1) that
the Khedive’s renunciation of his estates in favour of the
Khedival Debt Commission be affirmed by law, (2) that the
Khedive’s Civil List be reduced to £300,000, (3) that the
land tax on the peasants’ lands (kharaj) and landowners’
(iishr) likewise be raised and (4} that the internal loans,
ruznameh and mukabala, should oe cancelled, thus robbing
holders of the internal loans in the interests of foreign loan-
holders; and finally, that the interest on the Consolidated
Debt and the Daira Sanieh Debt be reduced to 5 per cent, lea­
ving the payment of the preferential debt on the previous
terms.
The internal loans were to be liquidated in the crudest
possible way. According to W ilson’s scheme, the ruznameh
was declared a tax, thus making the funds loaned to the
Treasury by the Egyptians under this loan non-repayable.
As for the mukabala, out of the £15,700,000 worth of bonds

204
which the Egyptians had contributed to the Treasury, W il­
son acknowledged only £9,500,000 worth as genuine, and
cancelled the rest. The Treasury undertook to reimburse the
holders of the acknowledged bonds in annual payments
of 1.5 per cent of the total mukabala over a period of 50
years, i.e., 75 per cent of the total debt would be discharged
in that time. W ilson’s plan envisaged only partial reimburse­
ment of the capital paid to the state by the mukabala
holders and stretched out the payment of the money over a
period of fifty years. At the same time, it deprived the mu­
kabala bondholders o f all their privileges, and the mukabala
holders now had to pay the land tax in full. This meant that
they had to pay an additional sum of £ 1,150,000 annually,
while the state paid them an annual sum of only £150,000 as
reimbursement of the mukabala. This measure meant serious
losses to nearly all the landowners and to a considerable sec­
tion of the Egyptian peasants. The mukabala had been paid
in full on 240,000 feddans of kharaj land and on 480,000
feddans of ushriya land, i.e., on 15 per cent of all the land
in Egypt. Moreover, the mukabala had been paid in part on
725,000 feddans of only ushriya land, apart from the nu­
merous kharaj land.
On March 28, 1879, Wilson forced the Khedive to sign the
law of the mukabala. This measure aroused general indigna­
tion in Egypt, especially among the Egyptian landowners.

RESIGNATION OF THE “EUROPEAN CABINET”.

Protest meetings against the European ministers and their
financial policies swept Egypt. The Khedive received petitions
from all over the country, demanding the dismissal of the
“European cabinet”, the formation of a national government,
the introduction of a constitutional system and the abolition
of the law of the mukabala. Members of the Chamber of
Notables, the Ulema and important functionaries and offi­
cers spoke out against the financial policy of the European
ministers. The Chamber of Notables began to prepare its
own financial plan to counterbalance W ilson’s.
On April 7, 1879, the Khedive convened members of the
diplomatic corps and Egyptian notables at his palace at Ab-
din. In this grand setting he declared that the discontent
in Egypt had reached its climax and that the nation was
calling for the establishment of a purely Egyptian cabinet,

205
 which would be responsible to the Chamber of Notables. “As
the head of the government and as an Egyptian,” he said,
“I consider it my sacred duty to heed the opinion of my
country, to give full satisfaction to its lawful expectations.”
He then informed the assembly of the dismissal of the “Eu­
ropean cabinet” and the formation of a new government of
“genuine Egyptian elements”, and promised to introduce the
parliamentary system in Egypt. The “electoral system and
the rights of the . Chamber,” Ismail declared, “will be
regulated in accordance with national expectations.” At the
same time he announced his readiness to adopt the financial
plan of the Chamber of Notables.
The manifesto of Khedive Ismail may be regarded as a
contribution to national liberation. It was the first official
formulation of the view that the Egyptians were a distinct
nation. The new Egyptian government was national as well
as parliamentary in character. It was headed by the liberal
landowner, Sherif Pasha, who not so long previously had
been the Minister of Justice, and who had won popularity
in Egypt by refusing to appear before the Wilson Commis­
sion of Inquiry. In that period, at the dawn of the Egyptian
national movement, some of the landowners under the
leadership of Ismail Pasha and Sherif Pasha were still par­
ticipating in the national liberation struggle and had even
headed the struggle. On the other hand, the activities of the
people were still very weak.
On April 22, 1879, the National Government published
its financial plan. It confirmed all the coupons on the inter­
nal loans and temporarily reduced the interest on the Con­
solidated Debt to 5 per cent a year. As for the rest, the
government pledged itself to honour the terms of the Gö­
schen-Joubert settlement, which were expressed in the Decree
of November 18, 1876. The National Government dismissed
a number of European officials who had been in charge of
various sections of the state administration, decided to bring
up the strength of the army to 60,000 men and set to work to
draw up the first Egyptian Constitution. By May 17, 1879,
Sherif Pasha had submitted drafts of the Organic and Elec­
toral laws to the Chamber of Notables. On June 8, they were
ratified by the Chamber and sent to the Khedive for consid­
eration. Before Ismail could sanction them, however, he was
overthrown by the united efforts of the Powers.
206
 THE DEPOSAL OF ISMAIL PASHA A N D THE RE-
SIGNATION OF SHERIF PASHA. W hile Khedive Ismail
helped the foreign capitalists enslave Egypt by contracting
one loan after another, they extolled him as an enlightened
and progressive ruler. But no sooner did he openly oppose
the tyranny of the European bankers than he became an
“Oriental despot” to be got rid of at all costs.
Immediately after the dismissal of the European ministers
and the publication of the new financial plan, the Powers
began threatening to depose Ismail. On April 25, 1879, the
British Foreign Secretary, Salisbury, wrote to the British
Consul in Cairo: “But if he [the Khedive— V.L.] continues
to ignore the obligations imposed upon him by his past acts
and assurances and persists in declining the assistance of
the European ministers whom the two Powers may place at
his disposal, we must conclude that the disregard of engage­
ments, which has marked his recent action, was the result of
a settled plan and that he deliberately denounces all preten­
sion to their friendship. In such a case, it will only remain
for the two cabinets to reserve to themselves an entire liberty
of appreciation and action in defending their interests in
Egypt and seeking the arrangements best calculated to se­
cure the good government and prosperity of the country.”1
The British Consul communicated this threat to Ismail.
Ismail, however, displayed some firmness and refused to
reinstate the European ministers. Diplomatic pressure was
then used. England used Bismarck, who in his efforts to
arouse Anglo-French differences and isolate France, willing­
ly supported the solicitations of the British in Egypt. In May
1879, the German and Austrian governments unexpectedly
protested against the actions of Ismail. The German creditors
declared the April 22nd plan of financial regulation to be ille­
gal and submitted the case to the M ixed Court. Early in June,
the British and French governments entered a similar protest.
In “private” communications, agents from various consulates
urgently “advised” Ismail to abdicate and leave Egypt.
On June 19, 1879, England and France presented Ismail
an ultimatum demanding his abdication. If Ismail abdicated
voluntarily, the Powers promised to pay him a pension and
transfer the throne to his son Tewfik. If the Khedive showed

1 L. Cromer, op. cit., p. 133.

207
 signs of resistance, the case would be referred to the Turkish
Sultan and Ismail would be deposed by force. The threat was
backed by other Powers. The consuls of Germany, Austria,
Russia and Italy gave similar “advice”.
Ismail himself, not waiting for the Powers to transfer his
case to Istanbul, submitted it to the consideration of Sultan
Abdul Hamid II. This was a false step. Fearing conflict with
the Powers, Abdul Hamid II hastened to execute their will
and on June 26, 1879, sent a telegram to Ismail informing him
of his déposai and the appointment of Tewfik as his successor.
“A crowd had collected in the streets of Cairo, but the
whole transaction had been so expeditiously concluded that
the mass of the population were unaware of the deposition
of Ismail Pasha until they heard the guns of the citadel
thundering in honour of his successor.”1
At first Ismail intended to resist, but he lacked the neces­
sary self-control and persistence and on June 30 left Egypt
for Italy. Not a single European diplomat attended his de­
parture, but a popular demonstration was organised in his
support. The Egyptian people did not like Ismail, rightly
regarding him as one of those chiefly to blame for their
misfortunes. At this moment, however, Ismail was a victim
of the struggle against the foreign oppressors; he had attempt­
ed to head the national liberation struggle, and the people,
forgetting his recent past, spontaneously expressed their ap­
proval of his attempt to establish national government, to
conduct a policy independent of the European bankers.
The departure of Ismail Pasha sealed the fate of his as­
sociate, Sherif Pasha. Tewfik, a weak-willed and worthless
individual and a mere puppet in the hands of the British,
refused to sign the draft Constitution submitted by Sherif;
on September 4, he restored Dual Financial Control and on
September 21, 1879, dissolved the National Government.
Riaz Pasha, a British protégé, became the new Prime Min­
ister of Egypt. This marked the beginning of the period of
reaction. According to the Egyptian historian, Sabri, “a re­
gime of despotism, terror and espionage prevailed in Egypt”.

THE MINISTRY OF RIAZ PASHA. REACTION. The

ministry of Riaz Pasha was merely a screen to bar from view

1 L. Cromer, op. ci t. p 141.

208
¿he arbitrary rule of the Khedival Debt Commission and
especially that of the British representative, Major Baring.
Later, when he became Lord Cromer, Baring himself ad­
mitted that Riaz’s “trust” in him was so great that he signed
important state acts and documents approved by Baring
without even reading them. Under pressure from the Powers,
the Porte restricted the rights of the Egyptian Government.
As early as August 7, 1879, it abolished the fir??ian of 1873.
Egypt was once again deprived of the right to conclude
foreign loans without the Porte’s approval. The strength of
the Egyptian army was again restricted to 18,000 men.
The foreign controllers and the members of the Khedival
Debt Commission became Egypt’s real government. But they
themselves were unable to guarantee the receipt of money
needed to meet the payments on the next coupons. In spite of
the violent acts of the punitive detachments which were sent
to the countryside to collect the taxes, plundered poverty-
stricken Egypt simply could not meet their demands. By the
end of 1879, only two-thirds of the next coupon payments
on the Consolidated Debt had been liquidated. N o tribute at
all was given to the Porte. “If there is no money for the
payment of the tribute, all the worse for the Porte,” the
controllers declared.
W ilson’s financial plan was put into operation in January
1880. The law of mukabala was repealed. An extra tax was
levied on the ushriya lands. A ll the remaining taxes in kind
were replaced by money taxes. New dates were fixed for the
payment of the taxes. A salt monopoly that caused great
hardship to the people was introduced. The revenues for
1880 were fixed at £8,500,000, out of which only half was
allocated to meet the expenses of the Egyptian Government.
The other half went to the foreign creditors. Even these
measures, however, could not secure the sums demanded by
the foreign money-lenders and the payment of the coupons
on the Consolidated Debt was reduced to 4 per cent per
annum.
In April 1880, a Liquidation Commission headed by Rivers
Wilson was set up to solve the problem of the Egyptian debt.
The commission comprised all the former members of the
Commission of Inquiry of 1878 (except for de Lesseps), rep­
resenting England, France, Italy and Austria, plus a dele­
gate from Germany. On July 17, 1880, at the proposal of
14-573 209
the commission, a Law of Liquidation was promulgated,
fixing the sum of the Egyptian debts at £98,000,000 and
laying down a deadline for their payment, consolidating for
this purpose a certain part of the state revenues of Egypt.
The floating debt was divided into three parts: one part was
paid to the creditors in full, the other, half in cash and half
in bonds of the Preference Stock; the third part was paid
on the basis of special agreements with individual creditors.
“Its main defect,” Lord Cromer, one of the compilers of
the law, wrote later, “was that too large a proportion of rev­
enue (66 per cent) was mortgaged to the loanholders, whilst
the balance left at the disposal of the government was in­
sufficient.”1
Olice more the kurbash lashed the backs of the fellaheen
and once more the Egyptian officers went without their
salaries. Favouritism in the army flourished more than ever
with “Circassians” being promoted to the commanding posts
in preference to the Egyptians proper. The national libera­
tion wave once again began to mount.

THE MILITARY COME TO THE FORE. In 1880, new

forces appeared in the vanguard of the national movement.
In addition to liberal landowners like Sherif Pasha, radical
and democratic officers like Ahmed Arabi came to the leader­
ship. True, between 1880 and 1881, there was no clear dis­
tinction between the two groups inside the national move­
ment. Both Sherif and Arabi called themselves wataneun. In
1881, Sherif’s followers, liberal landowners and merchants
who resented the dominance pf foreign capital, formed the
National Party (Hizb El-Watan) with Mohammed Sultan
Pasha as its president. Arabi’s followers, radical officers and
intellectuals who became associated with them, formed their
own National Party in the same year. At first the two parties
were not opposed to each other, but basic differences soon
arose between them. Sherif and Mohammed Sultan favoured
an agreement with the European capitalists, whereas Arabi
and his followers called for a resolute struggle against them.
Sherif and Mohammed Sultan stood for the establishment in
Egypt of a moderate constitutional monarchy, which would
ensure the domination of semi-feudal landowners, while

1 L. Cromer, op. cit., p. 173.

210
Arabi and his followers stood for the liquidation of the
Khedivate and the dominance of the Turco-Circassian
feudal nobility, and the establishment of democratic forms of
government. Sherif and Mohammed Sultan struggled
against the agrarian claims of the Egyptian peasantry; Ara­
bi and his followers supported these protests. With the fur­
ther development of the popular movement Sherif and Mo­
hammed Sultan moved into the reactionary camp and helped
the British to conquer Egypt; Arabi and his followers landed
up at the head of the popular movement and upheld Egypt’s
independence in the battles against the British.
In 1880-81, when both parties were still fighting against
the reactionary cabinet of Riaz Pasha and the financial plans
of Wilson and Baring, this deep-rooted difference had not
yet come to the surface. Arabi and his followers still regarded
Sherif Pasha as one of their own men, their advocate in the
struggle for the national independence of Egypt, although
Sherif himself had a lordly contempt for the “rebellious
soldiery” and feared them at the same time.

THE STRUGGLE OF THE NATIONALISTS AG AINST

THE CABINET OF RIAZ PASHA. In May 1880, a group
of wataneun officers (Nationalists) submitted a protest to Oth-
man Rifki, the Minister of W ar, against the non-payment of
salaries and against sending soldiers to do forced labour on
the khedival estates. The protest remained unanswered. On
the contrary, Othman Rifki ostentatiously promoted a num­
ber of officers of the Turco-Circassian nobility in preference
to Egyptian officers.
On January 15, 1881, Arabi Bey, the commander of the
4th Infantry Regiment, along with two other Nationalist
colonels, Abd el-Al and Ali Fahmi, approached the Prime
Minister, Riaz Pasha, and presented a new petition accus­
ing the Minister of War of passing over distinguished Egyp­
tian officers and giving preference to members of his own
clique. Arabi demanded an inquiry into the latest promo­
tions and the dismissal of Othman Rifki. Riaz accepted the
petition and then asked the foreign controllers for advice.
They counselled him to arrest those who had presented the
petition. On February 1, 1881, the three colonels were sum­
moned to the War Ministry, where everything had been
prepared for dealing with them. No sooner had Arabi and
14* 211
his comrades arrived at the Ministry than they were arrested
and handed over to a waiting military tribunal. The care­
fully prepared drama, however, was frustrated. Scenting
treachery, the soldiers and officers of the Cairo garrison
hastened to the rescue of their leaders. Two regiments sur­
rounded the Ministry of War. They were joined by another
regiment quartered in the outskirts of Cairo. The soldiers
broke into the courtroom and stopped the mock trial. War
Minister Othman Rifki fled through the window. The “ac­
cused” were carried shoulder-high out of the Ministry and
marched at the head of the 2,000 soldiers to the Khedive’s
palace to demand equality in the army and the imme­
diate removal of Othman Rifki. The frightened Tewfik,
seeing that resistance was out of the question, agreed to all
their demands and the hated Minister of War was immediately
dismissed. His place was taken by the well-known poet Mah­
mud Sami el-Barudi, a moderate Nationalist and constitution­
alist, closely connected with Sherif Pasha. The soldiers and
Nationalist officers warmly welcomed his appointment. La­
ter Mahmud Sami was to justify their trust. As a loyal N a­
tionalist, he soon broke away from Sherif Pasha’s group and
sided completely with Arabi.
Tewfik was compelled to make a reluctant declaration to
the effect that “for the future every class of officer, whether
Turk, Circassian, or Egyptian, would be treated on the same
footing”.1 A special commission, including Arabi, was set
up to inquire into the promotions that had been made by Oth­
man Rifki.
However, although the Nationalist officers thought they
had gained complete victory, the battle was only half won.
With the odds in their favour, they confined themselves to
purely professional demands and did not advance a single
political claim, leaving power in the hands of Riaz and his
entire reactionary camarilla, who preserved the preroga­
tives of the foreign controllers and in no way restricted the
tyranny of Khedive Tewfik.
Reaction was quick to avail itself of the Nationalists’
mistake. As soon as the excitement of the soldiers had died
down, Khedive Tewfik dismissed Mahmud Sami el-Barudi
and began preparing reprisals against the Nationalist leaders.

1 L. Cromer, op. cit., p. 181.

 CHAPTER XVII

THE ARABI PASHA UPRISING

THE REVOLT OF SEPTEMBER 1881. Early in Sep­

tember 1881, the situation in Egypt flared up into a crisis.
The wataneun (Nationalist) officers were preparing new
moves against the Riaz Pasha government. The Khedive,
in his turn, had decided to get rid of all the revolutionary-
minded regiments of the Cairo garrison at one blow. On
September 9, 1881, he issued a decree transferring these
regiments to the provinces. They were to be accompanied
by Arabi, Ali Fahmi and the wataneun leaders. Besides be­
ing a disguised form of exile, this was an attempt to disperse
the armed forces of the ripening national revolution, which
had concentrated in Cairo.
Without further delay, the wataneun leaders decided to
attack. They mutinied on September 9, 1881, the very day
the khedival decree was issued. Led by Arabi himself,
2,500,000 soldiers of the Cairo garrison lined up on the
square outside the Abidin Palace and presented the following
demands to the Khedive: (1) the immediate dismissal of the
Riaz cabinet, (2) a constitution, (3) an increase in the army.
These were not narrow professional demands, but polit­
ical ones.
Tewfik was taken aback by the news of the armed upris­
ing. He sent for Auckland Colvin, the British official who
had succeeded Baring as Controller-General in Egypt after
the latter’s departure for India. Colvin suggested that the
Khedive immediately bring what forces he could muster to the
palace. Ignoring the frightened Khedive’s objections to the
effect that Arabi had cavalry and artillery and that they could
shoot, the British Controller placed him in a carriage and
they set off together to maxe the rounds of the Cairo
barracks.
213
 The journey accomplished nothing, except to convince
them that not a single military unit supported the Khedive,
that he had been deprived of all military support.
When he was fully aware of this fact, the Khedive returned
to his palace. But Colvin took him over to the rebellious
soldiers on the square and ordered him personally, without
any military support, to arrest their leader Arabi.
“Act!” the Englishman said.
“W e are between four fires,” the fear-stricken Khedive
replied.
“Have courage,” the Englishman said.
“W hat can I do?” the Khedive asked. “W e are between
four fires. W e shall be killed!”
W hile this exchange was going on Arabi came up and set
forth the demands of the insurgents.
“The army has come here on the part of the Egyptian
people to enforce their demands and will not retire until
they have been conceded,” Arabi said.
Since the Khedive had by now lost all self-control, Colvin
allowed him to return to the palace and took over the
negotiations himself. Colvin offered Arabi a compromise.
Sherif Pasha would be appointed the new Prime Minister
and Riaz would be dismissed. Regarding Arabi’s other two
claims, Colvin suggested that they should be left in abey­
ance until reference could be made to the Porte. Arabi
agreed to these terms.
This again was only a partial victory. The reins of power
had been handed to Sherif Pasha, an aristocrat who was
extremely hostile to the popular movement. He objected to
becoming Prime Minister “as the nominee of a mutinous
army”.1 Under pressure from Britain and France he accept­
ed the post, but only on the condition that the “rebellious”
regiments be removed from Cairo. On September 13, hoping
to restrain Sherif, Arabi convened the Chamber of Nota­
bles in Cairo. Still unaware of the class differences within
the Egyptian national camp he hoped to find support among
the Notables. He did not realise that Sherif merely shared
the general fear of the popular movement common to all
landowners.

1 L. Cromer, op. cit., p. 187.

214
 The Chamber of Notables supported Sherif against Arabi.
Arabi was forced to agree to the withdrawal of the mutinous
regiments from Cairo. When Sherif came to power, he
preserved dual control. Britain and France, in turn, declared
that they would support the Sherif government.
Nevertheless, the unquestionable result of the September
revolt was that it enhanced the prestige of the wataneun
(Nationalists) in Egypt. Before, Arabi had been the leader
of a military group; now he had become the leader of the
entire Egyptian people. A British historian wrote that within
a few weeks Arabi had acquired considerable authority. All
those who suffered from injustice referred their complaints
to him. He acquired the reputation of a defender of the
fellaheen from the tyranny of the Turkish ruling class. He
was a friend of the fellaheen who served in the army. W hy
not become a friend of the fellaheen in the country as a
whole? Soon his popularity became widespread among the
village sheikhs and then among the fellaheen themselves.
Throughout the ages the fellah had not dared to raise his
voice against the tyrannical yoke of his lord. But now, Arabi,
the son of a village sheikh, loudly voiced the complaints of
the fellaheen soldiers, defended their rights before the
country’s authorities and did so with success. The Egyptians
began to realise that the situation in the army differed little
from the country’s general predicament. Arabi became their
idol. They appealed to this prophet, who was one of their
own, who inspired them with hopes of freedom from eternal
slavery, and who encouraged them to rise and resist, some­
thing the fellaheen had hitherto never dared dream of.

™ E ^ A T A N E U N STRUGGLE A G A IN ST SHERIF
PASHA. In reply to the September revolt, the European
Powers prepared for armed intervention. Anglo-French
differences, however, considerably delayed these plans,
trance opposed Britain’s separatist activities and insisted on
joint action. In September 1881, at the time of the revolt in
Cairo, the French Foreign Minister, Barthélemy Saint-
Hilaire, proposed to Lord Granville, the British Foreign
Secretary, that they should establish “dual” Anglo-French
military control over Egypt. Britain rejected this plan (as
well as the Italian plan for the joint intervention of the six
Powers). France, in turn, rejected the plan for Turkish

215
 intervention, which was backed by Germany and served the
interests of the British. Britain was thus forced to join
France in promising Egypt that they would exert influence
on the Porte “with the aim of preventing the occupation of
Egypt by the Ottoman army”. Even the despatch of two
Porte representatives to Egypt aroused objections on the
part of Britain and France, who in a note dated October
6, 1881, informed the Sultan that they had “learnt with
surprise and regret of his decision to send envoys to Egypt”.1
This note was confirmed by the despatch to Alexandria of
an Anglo-French force of two warships, which were recalled
only after the departure from Egypt of the Turkish envoys
(on October 20, 1881).
Taking advantage of the arrival of the Anglo-French
force, Sherif Pasha decided to suppress the revolutionary
regiments. A few days after the September revolt, Colvin
had proposed (1) to disperse the revolutionary units among
the provincial garrisons, (2) to use the moderate landowners,
and Notables, against the revolutionary officers, (3) to support
the demands of the Notables in as much as they would not
oppose British financial control and financial plans.
This was, in fact, the programme that the Sherif Pasha
government adopted. In October 1881, on Sherif Pasha’s
orders, the regiments of Arabi and Abd el-Al were with­
drawn from Cairo, one to Damietta and the other to Tel-
El-Kebir. The withdrawal of the regiments, however, had
the very opposite result from what had been expected.
Arabi’s departure from Cairo sparked off a mighty popular
demonstration against the government of Sherif Pasha.
Scores of thousands of Cairo citizens came out to bid fare­
well to Arabi and his soldiers, openly expressing their
solidarity with them. The regiments were greeted with
enthusiasm wherever they went. Arabi’s progress through
the provinces was a march of triumph and British officials
were forced to report with regret: “Arabi is the real ruler
of the country.”
Under such circumstances Arabi had no intention of
remaining in the provinces. U sing his w ife’s illness as a
pretext, he returned to Cairo, where he continued the struggle
against the government of Sherif Pasha. Nor did the

1 L. Cromer, op. cit., p. 197.

216
Powers succeed in “dispersing” the revolutionary units;
even after the relief of the units, the soldiers and officers
of the Cairo garrison continued to support Arabi.
Arabi openly opposed the tyranny of the khedival cama­
rilla and the Turco-Circassian nobility. He declared that
the khedival dynasty was as oppressive as the government
of the Mamelukes had been. “There is no immunity of per­
son or property,” he said. “The Egyptians are imprisoned,
exiled, strangled, drowned in the Nile, starved and robbed.
The most ignorant Turk is preferred to the best Egyptian!”1
Taking into account Arabi’s influence, Britain, who had
failed to reach agreement with France on the kind of inter­
vention required, decided to change her tactics. The British
representatives in Egypt made an attempt to achieve a
settlement with the wataneun. On November 1, 1881,
Auckland Colvin, the British finance controller in Egypt,
received a delegation of Egyptian Nationalists headed by
Arabi. On November 15, a despatch, which Lord Granville
had sent on November 4, 1881, to Malet, the British diplo­
matic agent in Cairo, was published in Egypt. In the
despatch Lord Granville declared that Britain was not seek­
ing a biased government in Egypt. Speaking against the
formation of a government based on the support of a foreign
Power or a foreign diplomatic agent in Egypt, he stressed
that the aspiration of the Nationalists for liberation corre­
sponded to British national traditions and that England
would not undermine them. Nevertheless, Granville left a
diplomatic loophole for intervention, when he added “the
only circumstance which would force Her Majesty’s Govern­
ment to depart from the course of conduct which he [Gran­
ville] had mentioned would be the occurrence in Egypt of a
state of anarchy”.2
The matter, however, did not progress further than prelim­
inary contacts. In December 1881, the British Government
received a secret memorandum from Auckland Colvin warn­
ing them that the Egyptian Nationalists were threatening
not only the Khedive, but also the positions of France and
Britain. Colvin maintained that there were two dangers to
be guarded against in the situation in Egypt: (1) Egypt’s

1 L. Cromer, op. cit., p. 209.

I,. Cromer, op. cit., p. 203.

217
refusal to meet her financial obligations, (2) Egypt’s refusal
to let the Europeans interfere in.her administration.
In light of this, Britain decided not to remove the question
of intervention from the agenda and diplomatic prepara­
tions for intervention continued. Moreover, in the face of
the growing Egyptian national liberation movement, Britain
agreed to a deal with France.
On December 14, 1881, Gambetta, the French Prime
Minister, requested Britain to work out a common course
of action in Egypt. “Both governments,” he said, “must be
closely united; their union must be completely manifest.”
Granville accepted Gambetta’s proposal and agreed to send
a joint Anglo-French note.
In the meanwhile, Sherif Pasha decided to convene the
Chamber of Notables in order to deprive the army of the
character which it had arrogated to itself at the last moment.
H e said the Chamber of Notables would become a represen­
tative body, on which the Khedive and his government
would be able to lean for popular support against “military
dictation”.
Wishing to make the Chamber as reactionary as possible,
Sherif refused to introduce the very constitution which he
himself had drawn up two years before. W hile Arabi and
the wataneun insisted that Sherif’s constitution be put into
effect, Sherif himself preserved the Electoral Law of 1866,
by which the members of the Chamber were elected at pro­
vincial meetings of the nobility.
The Chamber was convened on December 26, 1881, and
there were indications that it would justify Sherif’s hopes.
It was composed of moderate landowners. Its president,
Mohammed Sultan Pasha, was a close friend of Sherif
Pasha. The session of the Chamber began by expressing its
loyalty to the Khedive. According to Malet, the British
Consul-General in Cairo, “the Khedive spoke with much
satisfaction of the apparently moderate tendencies of the
delegates”.1
No sooner had the Chamber turned to the question of its
functions, however, than the idyllic picture was spoiled. The
Chamber declared its right to vote on the Egyptian Budget
or, at least, that part of it which was allocated for the main-

1 L. Cromer, op. cit., p. 224.

218
tenance of the Egyptian Government. This “encroachment”
on the rights of the Financial Control immediately evoked
protests from the Powers.
On January 8, 1882, Britain and France communicated a
joint note to Egypt. It read as follows: “. . . The English and
French Governments consider the maintenance of His
Highness on the throne on the terms laid down by the
Sultan’s Firmans, and officially recognised by the two
Governments as alone being able to guarantee, for the pres­
ent and future, the good order and development of general
prosperity in Egypt, in which France and Great Britain are
equally interested. The two Governments being closely
associated in the resolve to guard by their united efforts
against all cause of complication, internal or external, which
might menace the order of things established in Egypt, do
not doubt that the assurance publicly given of their formal
intentions in this respect will tend to avert the dangers to
which the government of the Khedive might be exposed,
and which would certainly find England and France united
to oppose them.”1
This note evoked general indignation in Egypt and even
temporarily brought the Notables and the wataneun together.
On February 1, 1882, the British and French consuls
informed Sherif Pasha “that the Chamber could not vote on
the Budget without infringing the Decree establishing the
Dual Control, and that an innovation of the nature proposed
by the Chamber could not be introduced without the assent of
the English and French governments.”12
Sherif accepted the Powers’ note. He proposed in the
Chamber that negotiations should be started with Britain
and France, but the Chamber indignantly retorted that its
right to vote the Budget was not for discussion with foreign
Powers. At the Chamber’s demand, the Sherif Pasha’s cabi­
net tendered its resignation. On February 5, 1882, a new
cabinet was formed, which was dominated by the wataneun.
Mahmud Sami el-Barudi, who had been War Minister in
the government of Sherif Pasha became Prime Minister.
Arabi Bey, the leader of the wataneun , was appointed War
Minister in his place.

1 L. Cromer, op. cit., p. 223.

2 Ibid., p. 242.

219
 THE MAHM UD SAMI-ARABI GOVERNMENT
(FEBRUARY-MAY 1882). On February 7, 1882, immediate­
ly upon coming to power, the new government promul­
gated the Organic Law, which had been compiled by the
Chamber of Notables and guaranteed its rights, thereby
actually putting an end to Dual Control. De Blignière, the
French Controller, demonstratively left Egypt as a sign of
protest. The government of Mahmud Sami-Arabi went even
further and set about compiling a new and more democratic
Electoral Law; it also prepared a number of progressive
draft laws, especially laws abolishing the corvée, setting up
an agricultural bank and reforming the Mixed Courts. The
government prohibited the use of the kurbash and began an
energetic struggle against official abuse of privilege, espe­
cially against the foreign advisers and experts who practised
bribery and embezzlement on an extensive scale.
The formation of a new government brought about a
political awakening among the Egyptian people. The mudirs
(governors), who had been appointed by the former cabinets,
lost all authority in the province. In Lower Egypt, especially
in the region of Zagazig, an agrarian-peasant movement
was beginning to gain momentum. Peasant detachments
attacked and looted the landowners’ estates. Appealing to
the people at Zagazig, the wataneun agitators told them
that the acres held by their landlords belonged to the
fellaheen by right. Everywhere the peasants demanded the
abolition of usurious debts and the return of the mortgaged
land. Moreover, they demanded the liquidation of the
Public Debt, the curtailment of taxes and the renewal of the
law of mukabala.
The growth of the agrarian movement drove to the Right
many liberal landowners who, along with the wataneun,
had participated in the national cabinet.
Already in May 1882, Sultan Pasha, the leader of the
National Party, told the British Consul that “in overthrow­
ing Sherif Pasha, the Chamber had acted under pressure
from Arabi, and that the very deputies who had then insist­
ed on the course taken, finding that they had been deceived,
were now anxious to overthrow the Ministry”.1

1 L Cromer, op. cit., p. 265.

220
 THE CONFLICT BETWEEN THE GOVERNMENT
A N D THE KHEDIVE. The development of the agrarian-
peasant movement activised those sections of the feudal class
which from the very outset had adopted a hostile attitude
towards the government of Sami-Arabi. These sections
rallied round the Khedive and the court camarilla. The
“Circassian” officers were employed as shock detachments
of feudal reaction and a terrorist conspiracy against Arabi’s
life and that of his associates ripened in their midst. When
the plot was exposed on April 11, 1882, some 50 terrorists
from among the “Circassian” officers, including the former
Minister of War, Othman Rifki, were tried by a court-
martial. The sentence, however, was extremely mild, the
conspirators being degraded and exiled to the ¡Sudan. The
main plotters, Khedive Tewfik and Slierif Pasha, were not
even summoned to court. The verdict merely contained a
reference to the instiga tory role played by the former
Khedive Ismail. Nevertheless, at the suggestion of the British
and French consuls, on May 9. 1882, the Khedive commuted
the sentence to exile from Cairo to the provinces. This was
a challenge to the wataneun and the government likewise
and the wataneun interpreted it as a signal for open
struggle.
The wataneun decided to get rid of the Khedive. With
this in view, they summoned the Chamber of Notables on
May 13. Arabi demanded Tewfik’s déposai and an end to
the dynasty of Mohammed Ali. The Chamber, however,
vacillated. The delegates sympathised with the Khedive, but
Arabi was the real ruler of Egypt and the Notables, fearing
the soldiers, did not venture to support the Khedive openly.
They therefore took an intermediary stand and attempted
to reconcile the Khedive with the wataneun.
The Khedive declared the convention of the Chamber
illegal and demanded that it be dissolved immediately.
Mahmud Sami resigned in protest. It might have seemed this
was exactly what the Khedive and Britain, who was back­
ing him, had been working for. But quite unexpectedly they
found themselves in difficulties. None of the Khedive’s
agents dared to form a government while the army was still
in the hands of the wataneun. The wataneun declared they
would not resign until the Chamber of Notables demanded
It, and the Chamber hesitated to make such a demand. On
221
May 16, the Khedive was forced to accede and keep
Mahmud Sami in office.
On May 20, 1882, an Anglo-French squadron arrived in
Alexandria and on the day before, May 19, the British
Consul Malet had received instructions “to advise the
Khedive to take advantage of a favourable moment, such,
as, for instance, the arrival of the fleets, to dismiss the pres­
ent ministry and to form a new cabinet under Sherif Pasha
or any other person inspiring the same confidence”.1
On May 25, 1882, Britain and France officially demanded
from the Khedive: (1) the temporary retirement from Egypt
of Arabi Pasha; (2) the retirement into the interior of Egypt
of Ali Pasha Fahmi and Abd el-Al; (3) the resignation of
the ministry of Mahmud Sami el-Barudi. The Khedive
accepted this ultimatum and announced the dismissal of the
cabinet.
On learning of the dismissal, the officers of the Alexan­
dria garrison sent a telegram to the Khedive on May 27, say­
ing “they would not accept the resignation of Arabi Pasha
and that they allowed twelve hours to His Highness to
consider, after which delay they would no longer be respon­
sible for public tranquility”.12 This was a threat to rise.
The fear-stricken Khedive appealed for Sultan Pasha’s
mediation. At a meeting in Cairo on May 27, Sultan Pasha
called the wataneun to obedience. The wataneun, in turn,
demanded the déposai of the Khedive, a traitor, who had
openly collaborated with the foreign Powers as their agent.
“The only thing left for the Khedive to do was to pack his
suitcase and move into Shepherd Hotel like any other
foreigner,” said Mustafa Fahmi, the Foreign Minister. A
wave of meetings and demonstrations swept Egypt. The
demonstrators demanded the Khedive’s déposai and the
reinstatement of Arabi and other wataneun ministers.
Once again convinced of his helplessness, the Khedive
gave in, but agreed to reinstate only Arabi as minister. This
manoeuvre, however, failed. Arabi became the sole absolute
minister in Egypt. The Powers and the Khedive were again
defeated. They had reached a deadlock. On May 30, France
proposed the convention of an international conference to

1 L. Cromer, op. cit., p. 271.

2 L. Cromer, op. cit., p. 276.

222
discuss the Egyptian question. Britain fell back on the plan
of Turkish intervention and without France’s knowledge
advised the Khedive to appeal to the Sultan for help.

THE DERVISH MISSION. At the Khedive’s request, the

Turkish Sultan despatched his envoys, Dervish Pasha and
Sheikh es-Said, to Cairo to settle the conflict between the
Khedive and Arabi in a spirit of reconciliation. Both envoys,
who arrived in Egypt on June 7, 1882, were immediately
bribed. The Khedive gave them a sum of several thousand
pounds and the British purchased Dervish’s small estate at
a fabulous price. Thereupon Dervish suggested to Arabi that
he should go to Istanbul, promising him a high post in the
central government of the Ottoman Empire. Arabi, however,
replied: “I cannot strive for power. The authority which I
enjoy now was not usurped by me. The people invested me
with it and I ought to be with the people and lend their
complaints an attentive ear.”
The Dervish mission was a failure.

DISTURBANCES IN ALEXANDRIA. Several days

after the May events, the British Consul, Malet, warned that
a collision might at any moment occur between the Moslems
and the Christians; in this case foreign intervention might
become a necessity. The hint was immediately taken by
Khedive Tewfik, who decided to provoke disorder in
Alexandria to hasten armed intervention.
There was no difficulty in stirring up disorder. The Egyp­
tians hated the foreign money-lenders, profiteers and
compradores, who comprised the “pick” of the European
population of Alexandria. The arrival of foreign warships
in Alexandria had only deepened this hate. The atmosphere
was so tense that the slightest brawl would be enough to
spark off clashes in the city.
On June 11, 1882, a Maltese, who worked as a lackey for
the British Consul, hired an Arab cabman and set off for
a pub; when they reached it, the cabman demanded the fare.
Instead of paying, the Maltese treated him to abuse. A fight
broke out and the Maltese killed the Arab. Some suspi­
ciously looking Europeans surrounded the Maltese and
opened fire on the excited crowd of Arabs who had gath­
ered. The next to arrive were Bedouins from the neighbour-

223
ing desert, who had been specially hired by the Khedive to
participate in the disorders. Their despatch to Alexandria
was well timed. Soon the entire city was involved in the
slaughter in which some 50 Europeans and 140 Egyptians
were killed.
Arabi, however, managed to stop the rioting which had
broken out and expose the provocation, depriving the insti­
gators of an excuse for intervention.
After the trouble in Alexandria, the division of forces
inside Egypt became more clearly delineated. On June 13,
Khedive Tewfik fled from revolutionary Cairo to Alexandria
under the protection of the British fleet. Together with him
fled the most reactionary top statesmen of Egypt—Nubar,
Riaz, Sherif and Sultan. The British Consul, Malet, the Turk­
ish envoy Dervish Pasha and many representatives of the
Egyptian feudal-bureaucratic nobility also came to Alexan­
dria, where, on June 20, 1882, a government directly respon­
sible to the Khedive was formed under Ragheb Pasha.
Alexandria became the centre of the Anglo-Khedival align­
ment. In Cairo power was in the hands of the wataneun and
Arabi, who was still listed as the Khedive’s Minister of War.
Thousands of foreigners fled from Egypt in fear of the
people’s wrath. They were followed by the local landowners
and money-lenders. At the end of June, the British agent in
Cairo reported the mass flight of Europeans, Turks and
“honourable Arabs”. Arabi’s only reaction to this was to
order the confiscation of the property of Egyptian émigrés
who had left the country of their own accord.

THE CONSTANTINOPLE CONFERENCE. In the

summer of 1882, the threat of British intervention loomed
large on the Egyptian horizon. The French Chamber of Depu­
ties had denounced the colonial policy of Jules Ferry and
in January 1882, the new French Government, under de
Freycinet, rejected plans for joint Anglo-French interven­
tion. This was just what British diplomacy had been waiting
for. Confronted by the Triple Alliance, France could not
afford to aggravate her relations with Britain because of
Egypt. At the same time, the last thing she wanted was for
Britain to take over Egypt single-handed.
De Freycinet felt the only way out was to summon an
international conference on the Egyptian Question. Under
224
the existing circumstances, he reasoned, the best thing would
be to preserve Egypt’s independence and keep her from fall­
ing into Britain’s hands. He was even ready to support
Arabi. As de Freycinet saw it, the conference was to settle
pressing problems and hamper British intervention.
The Powers backed France’s initiative. The conference on
the Egyptian Question opened at Constantinople on June
23, 1882. It was attended by Russia, Austria, Germany,
Britain, France and Italy. Turkey refused to participate in
the conference, regarding it as a violation of her sovereign
rights.
At France’s proposal, the Powers taking part in the confer­
ence undertook “not to seek any territorial acquisitions in
Egypt, nor concessions with exceptional privileges or com­
mercial advantages for their subjects”. Another resolution
was passed to the effect that while the conference was in
session, the Powers were to refrain from any unilateral
activity in Egypt. But Lord Dufferin, the British representa­
tive, suggested the reservation, “If there is no force
majeure*', which was added to the resolution. This provision
brought to naught the decisions of the conference.
A ll Britain had to do was to create a force majeure and
then confront the Powers with the accomplished fact.

THE BOMBARDMENT OF ALEXANDRIA. The con­

flict over the Alexandria coastal fortifications was used as
a force majeure. The fortifications, which had been built
during the reign of Mohammed Ali, were completely out of
date and of little use for defence, especially against a
squadron of British battleships. They were, moreover, in a
bad state of repair. After the arrival of foreign fleets in
Alexandria the Egyptians, on Arabi’s orders, set about
repairing the coastal forts. In response to a demand from
Britain, the Porte ordered the cessation of all repair work
on the fortifications. In July, however, the repair work was
resumed and England immediately used this as an excuse
for intervention.
On July 6, 1882, Admiral Seymour, who commanded the
British squadron in Egypt, presented an ultimatum to the
head of the Alexandria garrison and demanded that he stop
the fortification works. The Egyptians replied that in
face of the external threat they had the right to defend their
15-573 225
borders and to set up any erections they liked on their own
territory. The reply, however, stressed that the Egyptians
were merely carrying out repair work; they would not erect
any new fortifications, they would not install any new bat­
teries, and so on. On July 10, 1882, Admiral Seymour sub­
mitted a second ultimatum calling for the surrender of
Egypt’s coastal fortifications within twenty-four hours. H av­
ing received a resolute refusal, he launched military opera­
tions. On July 11, 1882, British ships bombarded Alexan­
dria and reduced the city to a heap of ruins.
Richards, a British Member of Parliament, characterised
Admiral Seymour’s actions in the following way: “I find,”
he said, “a man prowling about my house with obvious
felonious purposes. I hasten to get locks and bars, and to barri­
cade my windows. He says that this is an insult and threat
to him and he batters down my doors, and declares he does
so only as an act of strict self-defence.”1
On July 12, 1882, Arabi ordered his troops to withdraw
from the burning city. Thousands of Alexandria inhabit­
ants left with them. Four days later, the British landing
party occupied the deserted city.

THE ANGLO-EGYPTIAN W AR OF 1882. The bom­

bardment of Alexandria marked the beginning of the Anglo-
Egyptian war of 1882. On July 27, the House of Commons
voted credits for a British expedition to Egypt. The com­
mand of the British expeditionary corps was entrusted to
Sir Garnet Wolseley.
The Khedive and his functionaries, who had defected to
the British, remained in Alexandria and sat out the bom­
bardments in their country villas and palaces, having
received timely warning from Seymour.
As soon as Arabi quitted Alexandria, the Khedive ordered
him to cease the military actions against the British at once.
Arabi refused and in an appeal to the Egyptian people
announced that “an irreconcilable war existed between the
Egyptians and the English and all those who proved traitors
to their country would . . . be subjected to the severest
punishment in accordance with martial law___ ”1 2

1 Theodore Rothstein, Egypt's Ruin, London, 1910, pp. 214-15.

2 L Cromer, op. cit., p. 300.

226
 On July 22, the Khedive declared Arabi an outlaw and
formally dismissed him from the post of Minister of War.
In reply Arabi charged the Khedive with treachery.
“The Khedive is close to the British,” Arabi said in an
address to the people on July 25, 1882, “and whatever he
says is in the interests of the British. The Khedive is sacri­
ficing the interests of his country and the people___ As for
us, we shall not abandon the people as long as we are alive.”
Without further delay, Arabi set about organising the
defence. Thousands of peasants and urban dwellers volun­
teered for the army. The fellaheen donated their meagre
savings with the utmost willingness, enabling Arabi to
purchase enough arms to supply all the volunteers. By
autumn Arabi expected to have at least 100,000 trained men
under arms.
New organs of revolutionary power, the Emergency
Council and the Military Council, were formed in Cairo in
place of the government of Ragheb Pasha, which had
remained at Alexandria and which the wataneun had
declared a traitor government. The Military Council was
composed of wataneun generals and officers. The Emer­
gency Council was made up partly of wataneun and partly
of the ’ Ulema, sheikhs and notables who had remained in
Cairo. The latter continued to vacillate between Arabi and
the Khedive. Some of them later fled to Alexandria while
others remained in Cairo, demoralising the rear of the na­
tional army. Arabi applied revolutionary terror to the trai­
tors. Approximately 1,000 Cairo notables who were shown
to have connections with the Khedive’s secret service were
arrested.
The outbreak of hostilities in Egypt displeased the Powers.
As a sign of protest, Russia recalled her delegates
from the Constantinople Conference. Germany and Austria
granted Britain freedom of action provided she acted at her
own risk and not on instructions from Europe. There was
a divergence of views in France. Gambetta, the advocate of
French colonial expansion in Africa, insisted on joint in­
tervention with Britain. Clemenceau, who considered prep­
arations for revenge against Germany to be the primary
aim of French foreign policy, was against participating in
the Egyptian adventure. De Freycinet took an intermediary
stand. His proposal was to despatch French troops to Egypt,
15 * 227
 but to limit their duty to the “protection*’ of the Suez Canal.
The Chamber of Deputies, however, refused to vote credits
for a campaign against Egypt and, on July 29, 1882, de
Freycinet resigned. Duclerc, who succeeded de Freycinet as
Prime Minister, shared Clemenceau’s objection to France’s
interference in the Egyptian Question and virtually granted
Britain freedom of action.
To hamper British intervention in Egypt, however, the
Powers who had attended the Constantinople Conference
decided to organise a Turkish intervention. As early as
July 6, 1882, they had suggested to the Sultan that he des­
patch troops to Egypt under certain conditions (preservation
of the status quo, non-interference in Egypt’s internal af­
fairs and restriction of the period of occupation to three
months). On July 20, the Sultan consented to these condi­
tions and despatched his representatives to the internation­
al conference. On July 26, Turkey announced her readi­
ness to send troops to Egypt. Britain replied that while she
accepted Turkey’s co-operation, she would continue the
operations she had already begun. Actually, Britain did
everything in her power to avoid “Turkey’s co-operation”.
Lord Dufferin, British Ambassador to Constantinople,
dragged out the talks on an Anglo-Turkish Military Con­
vention for a month and a half, proposing one set of terms
after another. Only on September 13, 1882, the day of the
battle at Tel-El-Kebir, which ended in the victory of the
British and their occupation of Cairo, did Granville (the
British Foreign Secretary), allow Dufferin to sign the Anglo-
Turkish Military Convention. Later, however, he telegraphed
to Lord Dufferin that he “presumed that, the emergency
having passed, His Majesty and Sultan would not now
consider it necessary to send troops to Egypt”.1 The Anglo-
Turkish talks were broken off and the Turkish intervention
did not take place.
A month before this, the Powers, convinced that the Con­
stantinople Conference was powerless to prevent British in­
tervention in Egypt and therefore useless, decided to close
it on August 14, 1882. British diplomacy thereby managed
to ensure that the intervention was effected only by British
troops and that they alone occupied Egypt.

1 L. Cromer, op cit., p. 320.

228
 W hat happened on the military side? The British could
attack Egypt from the direction of the Mediterranean Sea
in the north or from the direction of the Suez Canal in the
east. The northern route was blocked by swamps and in the
passages between the swamps Arabi had set up strong de­
fences. A British attempt to break through at Kafr Ed-Dawar
(near Alexandria) ended in failure.
The situation was less favourable as far as the defence
of Egypt’s eastern boundaries was concerned. True, the
British forces would have had to disembark at the Suez Canal
Zone, and this would have violated the principle of the
canal’s neutrality adopted by the Powers and Turkey. More­
over, the British would have had to cross the desert. But
the Egyptians had amassed their best troops in the Delta.
To protect the right flank of the Egyptian army, the chief of
staff, engineer Mahmud Fahmi, proposed putting the Suez
Canal out of operation and closing the fresh-water canal.
These two measures would have secured Egypt’s eastern
boundaries and would have made it possible for the Egyp­
tians to hold out against the enemy for a long time. Ferdi­
nand de Lesseps, however, the Suez Canal’s chief engineer,
objected to Mahmud Fahmi’s plan. Anxious to maintain the
Company’s high dividends, he insisted that the canal should
function regularly. He gave his word of honour to Arabi
not to permit the landing of British troops in the Canal
Zone, and Arabi, trusting de Lesseps, rescinded the mea­
sures which Mahmud Fahmi had contemplated. By so doing,
Arabi committed a grave military and political mistake.
W olseley had, in fact, decided to attack from the east,
thus outflanking the Mediterranean line of the Egyptian
fortifications. On August 2, the British occupied Suez without
firing a single shot. Early in August, they provoked an en­
gagement near Alexandria to deceive Arabi as to the di­
rection of the main attack. Despite de Lesseps’ assurances,
on August 20, the British landed their troops at Port-Said
and Ismailia. The N ile valley was thus exposed in the east,
where the worst units of the Egyptian army stood guard.
Most of these were poorly trained recruits and Bedouin ir­
regulars. By the time the British offensive began, the Be­
douin army had already been corrupted by Sultan Pasha,
who, on the instructions of the British, had penetrated into
the Bedouin regions and bribed a number of sheikhs.

229
 For three weeks the British prepared for the decisive en­
gagement. On September 13, 1882, after a night’s march,
they unexpectedly attacked the Egyptian positions near Tel-
El-Kebir. It was all over in a matter of twenty or thirty
minutes. The Bedouins took to their heels without offering
any serious resistance. Arabi rushed to the battlefield to
rally the fleeing troops and appealed to the Bedouins to con­
tinue fighting. The Bedouin sheikhs, however, only flung
stones at him.
Realising that further persuasion was useless, Arabi im­
mediately left for Cairo, where, at a session of the Emer­
gency Council, he insisted on continuing the struggle and for­
tifying Cairo without delay. He was backed by Abd el-Al,
Abdullah Nedim and Mahmud Sami, who suggested flood­
ing the region around Cairo. The landowners in the Emer­
gency Council, however, voted in favour of surrender and
Arabi committed his second mistake by giving in to the
Council’s decision. The Egyptian national army, whose best
units were deployed in the north, was still intact. The enemy
had occupied only Alexandria and the Suez Canal Zone;
the remainder of Egypt’s territory was still in Egyptian
hands. Resistance was possible, but none was offered. The
Egyptian army was defeated not by British arms, but by
the treachery of the Bedouin sheikhs and the Cairo Nota­
bles as well as by the vacillation of Arabi Pasha himself,
who at a critical moment had not dared to assume dictato­
rial powers and had failed to dissolve the Emergency Coun­
cil, which had defected to the enemy.

THE VICTORY OF REACTION. In the evening of

September 14, the Anglo-Indian cavalry approached Cairo
and Arabi surrendered to the British. The troops at Kafr
Ed-Dawar, Aboukir and Damietta also lay down their arms.
On September 24, 1882, Khedive Tewfik and his “minis­
ters” arrived in the capital. The imprisoned counter-revolu­
tionaries were released and the reactionaries celebrated their
victory.
The conquerors disarmed and disbanded the Egyptian
army. Punitive detachments were thrown against the units
that continued to resist. An indemnity of £9,000,000 was
imposed on the Egyptian people. A special commission un­
der Lord Dufferin, the British Ambassador to Istanbul, ar-

230
rived in Cairo to supervise the reprisals against those who
had taken part in the struggle for independence. In Decem­
ber 1882, Arabi and his associates were sentenced to death
but, realising that Arabi’s execution might entail a fresh
uprising, DufFerin commuted the sentence to perpetual exile
to Ceylon. Six leaders of the rebellion were exiled along
with Arabi. Scores of wataneun fled from Egypt. Many of
the rebels were treated as criminals by the British and tor­
tured by British interrogators. Court-martials sentenced
some of them to death and exiled others to remote oases.
In his report Lord DufFerin wrote that what the enslaved
pepple needed was an iron hand, not a constitutional regime.
In accordance with this principle Lord DufFerin estab­
lished a regime of colonial despotism and arbitrary rule
in Egypt. Major Baring (Lord Cromer), whom the British
appointed absolute ruler of Egypt in 1883, was a worthy
representative of this regime.
 CHAPTER XVIII

EGYPT UNDER BRITISH RULE (1882-1914)

THE QUESTION OF THE TERM OF BRITISH OC­

CUPATION. A few days after the British had entered
Cairo, Duclerc, the Prime Minister of France, asked Gran­
ville, the British Foreign Secretary, about his government’s
intentions with regard to Egypt. Granville replied that the
occupation, was of a temporary nature and would end as
soon as Egypt’s affairs had been straightened out. British
statesmen made frequent public declarations to the effect
that the evacuation of British troops from Egypt would take
place as soon as order had been restored. A case in point
was Prime Minister Gladstone’s declaration in the House
of Commons in 1884, that the question of the evacuation of
British troops from Egypt was a matter of honour for Britain.
Britain had not annexed Egypt since such a step might
have led to a serious international crisis. She realised that
France would be opposed to annexation and that France
would have Russia’s backing in this question. Turkey would
also be opposed to annexation, although, truth to tell, Brit­
ain would have paid little enough attention to Turkey had
it not been for France’s and Russia’s stand on the Egyptian
Question.
In 1884, the French demanded of Granville the with­
drawal of the British troops from Egypt. Granville promised
to do so by the beginning of 1888.
In 1885, under pressure from France, Britain began talks
in Constantinople on the evacuation of her troops from
Egypt. The British dragged out the negotiations for as long
as possible and proposed the despatch to Egypt of two emis­
saries, one British and one Turkish. An Anglo-Turkish
agreement was not drafted until 1887. The British undertook
to evacuate Egypt three years from the time of the agree­
ment’s coming into force, if within this period no new
233
internal or external threat to Egypt’s security had arisen.
This reservation made the entire agreement unusually pre­
carious. Even so, Britain further demanded that the agree­
ment should guarantee her the right to reoccupation, if any
internal or external threat should again arise. The Sultan
categorically objected to the draft agreement.
What was the attitude of the Powers to the draft agree­
ment? In 1882, while preparing for a war against France
and Russia, Germany had knocked together an imperialist
bloc known as the Triple Alliance, which, besides herself,
included Austria-Hungary and Italy. On the other hand, the
German threat had brought about a French-Russian rap­
prochement. Britain tried to play the role of arbitrator
between those two blocs pursuing what became known as a
policy of “splendid isolation”. She joined neither of the
blocs and maintained the role of arbitrator in order to domi­
nate European politics. Her sympathies, however, were with
the Triple Alliance. Britain took a stand of friendly neu­
trality towards the countries of the Triple Alliance and one
of hostile neutrality towards the Franco-Russian bloc. The
main feature of Britain’s relations with France at the time
were the contradictions in Africa, while Britain’s relations
with Russia were largely determined by the contradictions
in the Middle East. Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy
supported the British occupation of Egypt, which Britain
highly appreciated. On the other hand, France and Russia
backed the Sultan and demanded the evacuation of British
troops from Egypt. Under these circumstances the Sultan
rejected the British plan.
No agreement was reached and the British army remained
in Egypt.
Egypt was still regarded as part of the Ottoman Empire
and the British continued to give assurances of their inten­
tion to evacuate Egypt some time in the near future.
In January 1888, a British statesman told the French
diplomat, de Laboulaye, that only the Egyptian Question di­
vided them, but that they were mistaken in France if they
thought the British wanted to stay in Egypt for ever. He
added that there was no politician in England who would
include the permanent occupation of Egypt in his pro­
gramme. He said the British intended to leave, but could do
so only after establishing definite order.

233
 Such was the British stand on the Egyptian Question.
Technically they meant to evacuate Egypt, but practically
they did everything in their power to stay where they were.
After 1887, French and Turkish diplomats repeatedly
broached the subject of the evacuation of British troops
from Egypt. The British responded with all sorts of verbal
assertions, but stayed on. It was not until 1904, that a far-
reaching change occurred.
On April 8, 1904, Britain and France concluded a num­
ber of agreements which marked the beginning of the
Anglo-French Entente. Among these, the principal agree­
ment was the Anglo-French Declaration on Egypt and Mo­
rocco, which consisted of public and secret clauses. The
public part of the Declaration stated: “His Britannic Maj­
esty’s Government declare that they have no intention of
altering the. pplitical status of Egypt [i.e., Egypt remains
a part of the Ottoman Empire, under British occupation
— V.L.).
“The Government of the French Republic, for their part,
declare they will not obstruct the action of Great Britain
in that country by asking that a limit of time be fixed for
the British occupation or in any other manner.”1Thus France
granted Britain freedom of action in Egypt, in exchange for
which she received freedom of action in Morocco.
The secret clauses of the Declaration envisaged the pos­
sibility of changing the British policy on Egypt, i.e., the
possibility of annexing Egypt in one form or another.
Moreover, a pious stipulation was made to the effect that this
would happen only if Britain were compelled to do so by
force of circumstances. Naturally, they could always create
the circumstances themselves.
In 1904, the Anglo-French differences over the occupa­
tion of Egypt were settled. Simultaneously, other Anglo-
French contradictions over the Egyptian Public Debt and
the regime of the Suez Canal were also settled.

THE SUEZ CANAL REGIME. For twenty years the

question of the Suez Canal regime was a source of conflict
between Britain and France. Fearing that the occupation
of Egypt would threaten the freedom of navigation in the

1 L. Cromer, op. cit., Vol II, p. 391.

234
Suez Canal, France insisted on the formation of a body of
international control. On her initiative, in 1885, an interna­
tional commission was founded to work out measures to
secure the free use of the Suez Canal. After a prolonged and
stubborn struggle, the commission worked out a draft Con­
vention to guarantee free navigation in the canal. On Octo­
ber 29, 1888, the Convention was signed in Constantinople
by the representatives of France, Russia, Germany, Austria-
Hungary, Italy, Spain, Holland and Turkey.
The Constantinople Convention of 1888 stipulated that
“the Suez Maritime Canal should always be free and open,
in time of war as in time of peace, to every vessel of com­
merce or of war without distinction of flag”. According to
the Convention, warships could not linger in the Canal Zone
more than twenty-four hours. Britain was thereby deprived
of the opportunity to keep her fleet within the limits of the
Suez Canal. Furthermore, the Convention prohibited the
construction of fortifications, the stationing of troops and the
setting up of ammunition depots in the Canal Zone, which
also affected Britain’s interests.
The British Government opposed the Convention of 1888
and did all it could to hamper its practical implementation.
And when she eventually signed the Convention, Britain
formulated a reservation, which rendered her signature
completely invalid and amounted to a refusal to join the
Convention. Only in 1904, along with the general adjust­
ment of Anglo-French relations was the reservation removed
from the text of the Convention, and only then did Britain
actually join the Constantinople Convention of 1888 and
agree to put it in force.
Summing up this brief review of Egypt’s position in the
international political situation, it must be noted that in
1906, Britain annexed the Sinai Peninsula to the territory
of Egypt and occúpied it. This evoked futile objections on
the part of the Porte, and since France no longer interfered
in these matters, Britain acquired a zone for the defence of
the Suez Canal and a springboard for an attack against
Palestine in the coming world war.

THE QUESTION OF EGYPT’S FINANCES. On Sep­

tember 20, 1882, immediately after the British troops had
entered Cairo, Britain notified France that Dual Control
235
over Egypt’s finances had ended. Since she was out to estab­
lish her complete domination over Egypt, Britain did not
wish to permit the presence of French finance controllers
alongside the British authorities. Instead she offered France
the presidency of the Commission of the Public Debt. This
the French declined, saying that “it was not consistent with
the dignity of France to accept as an equivalent for the
abolition of Control, a position which was simply that of
cashier”.1
Having taken over Egypt, the British set about turning
her into a cotton base for British industry. This called for
the wide-scale construction of irrigation canals, which Brit­
ain was quite willing to realise at Egypt’s expense. More­
over, the British pressed Egypt for the payment of the indem­
nity (compensation to the British for losses incurred during
the military operations in Alexandria). Finally they could
not balance the Egyptian budget without a deficit. To solve
these problems, the British drew up a plan of financial mea­
sures, the main points of which were the following:
(1) the abrogation of the law on the liquidation of a
part of the assigned and non-assigned revenue; the transfer
of the surplus on the assigned revenues to the Egyptian
budget,
(2) the partial and temporary reduction of payment on
former loans,
(3) a new loan of €9,000,000 for Egypt at an interest
rate of 3 per cent per annum,
(4) the right to sell the state and khedival estates,
(5) the right to tax foreign residents in Egypt.
Britain could not carry out this plan without the approval
of all Egypt’s creditors. France, however, categorically
objected to the measures contemplated by the British. Brit­
ain then proposed an international conference in London
on the Egyptian Public Debt. The conference, which lasted
from July to September 1884, yielded no results. Only after
further prolonged talks, in March 1885, did the French
agree to adopt the British plan on the condition that the new
loan would have an international guarantee, i.e., if the
French were given the right to participate in the control
over the loan.

1 L. Cromer, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 340.

236
 An international convention on the Egyptian Public Debt
was signed in London, on March 18, 1885, and Britain’s
demands were satisfied. On the insistence of France, however,
the following provision was added to the convention: if
Britain in the course of three years does not reach a balance
in the Egyptian budget, the supervision of Egypt’s finances
will pass into the control of the international commission.
This stipulation was a serious threat to the British and
they did everything they could to put Egypt’s finances in
order. They carried out a currency reform (1885); they
eliminated the difference between the ushriya and kharaj
lands and raised taxes; they economised in a number of
branches of government administration at Egypt’s expense,
particularly by cutting expenditure on public education. The
proportion of indirect taxes increased sharply. The result
was that by 1888, the British had balanced Egypt’s budget
and had deprived France of an excuse to interfere in
Egypt’s financial affairs.
Having strengthened Egypt’s financial position, in 1890,
the British converted the Egyptian Public Debt and reduced
the interest rates on the state debts. When the agreement
on the Entente was signed in 1904, France agreed to the
conversion of the debt and supported other measures taken
by the British authorities in Egypt, such as the liquidation
of foreign control over Egypt’s custom houses and railways,
the revenues from which had been used to pay off the debt;
the suspension of the practice of dividing the Egyptian
budget into two parts; the modification of the functions of
the Caisse de la Dette , and so on.
In 1898, the British founded the National Bank of Egypt.
In spite of its name, the bank was not national, but private,
and not Egyptian, but British. Unlike the other British banks
in Egypt, however, the National Bank was empowered
with the functions of a central bank of issue. It issued the
Egyptian banknotes and looked after all the Egyptian Go­
vernment’s cash.
The British financial policy in Egypt safeguarded the
interests of the European banks. Revenues from the Egyp­
tian Public Debt flowed regularly into their coffers. The
aggregate sum of the debt was stabilised at a level of about
£100,000,000. The foreign creditors received £4,500,000
annually as payment on the debt. Moreover, Egypt paid
237
the Porte between £600,000 and £700,000 tribute annually.
This tribute formed a guarantee for one of the Turkish
loans and also profited the European money-lenders. In all,
Egypt paid the foreign bankers over £5,000,000 annually,
which comprised at first 50 and later 30 per cent of the
Egyptian budget.

BRITISH ECONOMIC POLICY IN EGYPT. The eco­

nomic policy pursued by the British banks and their repre­
sentatives in Egypt reflected the attempt of British finance
capital, on the one hand, to exploit Egypt by purely usurious
means and, on the other, to turn her into a cotton base for
British industry. This can be seen by the economic measures
and the trends of foreign capital investments during the
period of British occupation.
The new capital investments were relatively small in
the first years of the occupation. Between 1883 and 1897,
they comprised (excluding the General Company of the
Suez Maritime Canal) £E6,600,000. Then they rose sharply.
During the financial boom of 1897-1907, which preceded
the international economic crisis of 1907, foreign capital
investments in Egypt comprised the colossal sum of
£E73,500,000. After the crisis, they were again curtailed
and in 1907-14, dwindled to £E13,000,000.
The proportion of industrial investment was insignificant.
In 1883-97 it accounted for 29 per cent of the total sum and
in the boom years (1897-1907) even less—9.3 per cent. What
happened to these huge sums of foreign capital? They were
invested mainly in commerce, in banks, mortgage banks
and land companies and concessionary enterprises in the
public utilities. According to the figures given for 1914, out
of £E210,000,000 (the total sum of foreign capital invest­
ments in Egypt), 166,300,000 or 79 per cent was accounted
for by non-productive investments (public debt, mortgage
and banks), 26,500,000, or 12.6 per cent, by transport and
trade and only 10,500,000 or a mere 5 per cent by industry
and construction.
Foreign capital in Egypt was of an openly usurious char­
acter and did not promote the development of Egypt’s pro­
ductive forces. Cotton-growing was the only branch of the
Egyptian economy that interested the British capitalists and
the occupation authorities. During the British occupation,

238
the entire economic life of Egypt was geared to one aim—
the production of raw cotton for British industry.
W ith a view to developing cotton-growing, the British
authorities carried out wide-scale irrigation works. In the
period between 1890 and 1914, several dams and irrigation
networks were built, in particular, the old Aswan Dam
(1902), which after additional building in 1912, made it
possible to store up to 2,300,000,000 cubic metres of water.
The system of year-round irrigation was expanded in Low­
er Egypt and also applied in Central Egypt. As a result,
the area of land under cultivation rose from 4,472,000 fed-
dans in 1877 to 5,503,000 feddans in 1913.
Cotton production was virtually monopolised by British
capital.
The main cotton producer was the Egyptian fellah. Most
of the cotton was cultivated on small plots of land which
were tilled by the fellaheen, but only an insignificant share
of the land belonged to them. In 1914, 2,397,000 feddans,
i.e., 44 per cent of the entire area of the privately owned
land, belonged to 12,500 landlords, while only 1,954,000
feddans or 35.8 per cent fell to the share of 1,491,000 peas­
ants (who owned up to ten feddans). The process of parcel­
ling out the peasants’ land rapidly gained momentum. W ith­
in twenty years (1894-1913), the number of peasants who
owned less than five feddans increased threefold.
The majority of the cotton plantations of Egypt were
controlled either directly or indirectly by foreign capital.
In 1910, the foreigners owned 700,000 feddans or 13 per
cent of the entire area of the privately-owned lands. The
foreigners, however, controlled not only the land which
belonged directly to them. They also controlled, indirectly,
through mortgage, 27 per cent of the land which had been
hypothecated in mortgage banks and companies.
The irrigation system was the key factor of British
domination in the cotton industry. The chief dams and the
main canals were built at the expense of the Egyptian peo­
ple, but were controlled by the British irrigation inspectors.
A ramified network of peripheral canals and small irriga­
tion ditches which supplied water to the fields branched out
from the main canals. The peripheral irrigation network
had been built by private British irrigation companies which
charged the cotton-growing Egyptian fellaheen large sums

239
 for their use. Not only was the land and water under British
control, but also most of the primary cotton-processing and
cotton-cleaning industry of Egypt.
Cotton was exported by railway, by boat along the rivers
and canals, and so on. Tne steamship lines which transport­
ed the cotton from the interior of Egypt to Alexandria were
also British owned. The main railways belonged to the
Egyptian state, but were in the hands of the British inspec­
tors. Moreover, the British and some French companies had
built a number of peripheral narrow-gauge railways and
shipped cotton from the interior to the main roads and from
there to Alexandria. The entire cotton trade, both internal
and external, was also in the hands of the British. Their
banks in Egypt had special cotton departments which grant­
ed credits for home and foreign trade. The cotton buying
was done by local merchants, they were all agents of their
respective British banks and export companies. The export­
ing of cotton was handled almost entirely by British firms.
Cotton was transported from Egypt to Britain by British
steamship lines. The Alexandria cotton exchange was un­
der British control. In other words, the entire mechanism of
the cotton industry, from the cultivation of the cotton to
its processing and export, was concentrated in the hands of
the British capitalists.
Egypt was turned into a one-crop country. The area un­
der cotton increased from 495,000 feddans in 1879 to
1,723,000 feddans in 1913. Within this period, the propor­
tion of land under cotton grew from 11.5 to 22.5 per cent
in spite of the significant over-all growth of the sowing
areas. Between 1910 and 1914, cotton yielded 43 per cent
of the total value of agricultural output. Cotton export in­
creased from 3,500,000 cantars in 1884 to 7,400,000 cantars
in 1913 and accounted for an average of 85 per cent of the
value of Egyptian exports.
The British authorities developed cotton cultivation and
strangled all the other branches of agriculture. Between
1879 and 1913, wheat decreased from 20.6 to 16.9 per cent
and barley, from 11.1 to 4.8 per cent. At the beginning of
the 20th century, Egypt began to import grain and flour.
The area under sugar cane and flax was also reduced. In
1883, the cultivation of tobacco was forbidden in Egypt so
that the entire area could be switched over to cotton cul-

240
tivation. The tobacco mills of Egypt began to work on raw
products imported from Turkey and the Balkans.
England stifled the development of Egyptian industry.
The cotton-cleaning and, to some extent, the mining indus­
tries were the only exception. The industrial processing of
cotton, separating the fibres from the seeds, was carried
out on the spot for the sake of economy, but all the other
stages of cotton processing were done in Britain. Egypt,
who grew the best cotton in the world, who occupied second
or third place in the world in cotton production, Egypt, the
land of the cotton crop, did not have a single cotton mill
and exported all her cotton abroad, mainly to Britain. The
cotton was processed in other countries and entered the
Egyptian market as a ready-made product. Egypt met one-third
of the requirements of the British industry in raw cotton.
Power engineering plays an important part in the in­
dustrialisation of any country. There were no coal fields in
Egypt and in such circumstances water power was of vital
importance. The Egyptian dams offered numerous oppor­
tunities for building hydroelectric power stations. As early
as 1902, a project had been drawn up for the construction
of a power station on the site of the old Aswan Dam, but it
got no further than the paper stage. Keeping Egypt as an
agrarian and raw material appendage of the metropolitan
country, Britain neglected Egypt’s industrial development,
which she regarded as unprofitable for herself.

THE STATE STRUCTURE OF EGYPT (1882-1914).

In 1882, Egypt became a British colony, but no changes
took place in her international legal status until 1914. Be­
cause of the contradictions between the imperialists, Britain
hesitated to announce the annexation of Egypt or the estab­
lishment of a protectorate over the country. Formally, Egypt
was still regarded as part of the Ottoman Empire and
Britain merely acted as a “temporary occupation Power”.
The former organs of power headed by the Khedive were
retained in Egypt and the reins of government were held by
Tewfik till 1892. After his death, he was succeeded by his
son, Abbas II Hilmi, who ruled Egypt from 1892 to 1914.
Under Khedive Abbas a cabinet of six ministers was formed.
On May 1, 1883, the Khedive promulgated the Organic
Law, establishing two Houses of Parliament in Egypt: a
16-573 241
Legislative Council and a General Assembly. The Legisla­
tive Council was composed of thirty members. Of these,
fourteen were appointed, while sixteen were elected by the
Provincial Councils. The General Assembly was composed
of eighty-two members and included all the ministers, the
thirty members of the Legislative Council and, in addition,
forty-six delegates who were elected on the basis of an
extremely high property qualification. Both Houses met once
in two years. They had no legislative initiative and discussed
only bills introduced by the government. Their decisions
had no binding force. The assent of the General Assembly
was required only for the introduction of direct taxes. In
all other matters, the Legislative Council and the General
Assembly were powerless.
The cabinet and the Khedive himself were in the same
position. Actually, all power in Egypt was in the hands of
a British administrator. H e had no high-sounding title and
was merely regarded as the diplomatic representative of
Britain, her consul-general, or general agent, but all real
authority was concentrated in his hands. Backed by the
British army of occupation, he wielded absolute power over
Egypt. From 1883 to 1907, the Consul-General was Major
Baring, who had been a British commissioner in the Caisse
de la ¡Dette (Commission of the Public Debt) and had now
received the title of Lord Cromer. The colonial laws he had
introduced, known as the Cromer regime, signified com­
plete impotence for the Egyptian Government and no rights
whatever for the Egyptian people. He established in Egypt
a dictatorship of British finance, capital and ruthlessly sup­
pressed the Egyptian national liberation movement.

TH E NA TIO NA L MOVEMENT. MOHAMMED AB-

DU. ABD ER-RAHM AN EL-KAWAKEBI. M USTAFA
KAMIL. After the defeat of the Arabi revolt in the eight­
ies, there was no organised national movement in Egypt.
The core of the movement had been dispersed or driven
underground. Emergency courts meted out punishment on
captured guerillas from detachments still operating in Egypt.
In the nineties, however, the national organisations and
societies in Egypt reappeared and the ideologists of the
Egyptian national bourgeoisie renewed their activities.
In those years, the Egyptian bourgeoisie did not believe
242
in the possibility of a mass popular movement, considering
that any movement of the kind would be suppressed by
Britain. Moreover, some sections of the Egyptian bourgeoi­
sie even denounced the struggle against the British invad­
ers, regarding their activities as a “blessing” for Egypt
and her future. They felt their main task was to struggle
for reforms and for the alteration of the internal structure
of Egyptian life.
The most brilliant advocates of these moods were Moham­
med Abdu and his followers, who laid the foundations of
Moslem reform in Egypt. Abdu was born in 1849 in a peas­
ant family and later received his education at El-Azhar.
In 1872, he became friends with Jamal ed-Din el-Afghani,
who greatly influenced him. Abdu was banished from Egypt
for his part in the Arabi revolt and lived in Beirut, Paris
and Tunis. In 1889, he returned to Egypt and in 1899, with
the backing of the British authorities, he was appointed the
Mufti (expounder of the canon law) of Egypt, thereby occu­
pying the highest religious post in the land. Abdu died in
1905. His teachings were propagated by the magazine £Z-
Manar {Beacon), which was founded by Ridah Pasha in
1898 and had become the principal organ of Moslem reform.
Abdu and the Moslem reformers fought against the po­
litical and ideological supremacy of the feudal lords and
the conservative Moslem clergy connected with them.
Abdu and his followers accused them of “corrupting” Islam
and held them responsible for Egypt’s backwardness and
enslavement. They called for the revival of Islam, which
they portrayed as a return to the original and true religion.
Actually, they favoured the adaptation of Islam to bour­
geois relations. In his capacity as Mufti, Abdu passed a
fetwa (a formal pronouncement made by the appropriate
theological authority on matters involving the interpreta­
tion of the canon law) authorising the lending of money on
interest. He advocated the adoption of Western, capitalist,
civilisation and the diffusion of enlightenment and tech­
nical knowledge in the Arab countries. Genuine Islam, he
felt, was not incompatible with science. H e called for the
acknowledgement of elementary bourgeois rights and priv­
ileges on the basis of the principles of Islam, which he
regarded as a democratic religion.
The activities of Abdu and the Moslem reformers exer-
16* 243
Egyptian independence, particularly when his tactics of uti­
lising the Anglo-French contradictions had proved ineffec­
tive. The operations in Fashoda had deeply discouraged him
and he wrote to his French friends that he was disappointed
in France, who, instead of defending Egypt’s independence,
had chosen to compromise with Britain.
In 1898, Mustafa Kamil opened a national school in
Cairo and in 1900, he took over the newspaper El-Liwa
{Banner) in which he began to criticise not only British
policy in Egypt, but also that of the imperialist Powers as
a whole. He attacked British policy in South Africa, French
policy in Morocco and German policy in China. At this stage,
he tried to make friends with the Khedive, Abbas II Hilmi.
The Khedive was the same age as Mustafa Kamil. Abbas
II had ascended to the khedival throne at the age of eigh­
teen and, déspite his youth, endeavoured to pursue an
independent policy, which entailed many conflicts with the
British. In 1893, no sooner had Abbas succeeded to power
than he decided to appoint Mustafa Fahmi Pasha to the
ministerial post he had held in Arabi’s cabinet. Lord Cro­
mer protested against the Khedive’s decision and had a pro-
British candidate appointed to the post. A fresh conflict
arose in 1894, when Abbas II Hilmi objected to Kitchener’s
appointment to the post of sirdar (commander-in-chief).
The objections were ignored and Kitchener was made sir­
dar , but relations with the British had been spoiled.
In 1904, Abbas II Hilmi became close friends with Mus­
tafa Kamil and supported his activities. In the same year
this induced Lord Cromer to order a search to be made oi the
Khedive’s palace, where the police hoped to find all kinds of
illegal literature and material compromising Mustafa Kamil.
Besides making friends with the Khedive, Mustafa Ka­
mil placed hopes on his friendship with the Turkish Sultan,
Abdul Hamid. He reasoned that should France betray him,
and should he find himself in need of outside support, he
could depend on Turkey and her allies in Europe—Germany
and Austria-Hungary. Mustafa Kamil did not call for
Egypt’s full independence, but fought for her reincorpora­
tion in the Ottoman Empire, in light of which he propagat­
ed the doctrines of Pan Islamism. In 1904, the Sultan awar­
ded him the title of pasha. This policy of rapprochement with
the Sultan yielded no further results.
246
 TH E DENSH AW A I INCIDENT (JUNE 13, 1906). U p
till 1905, Mustafa Kamil Pasha confined his activities to
propaganda, enlightenment and various forms of diplomatic
negotiations. There was no mass national movement in
Egypt at the time. This came into being only in 1906 in
connection with the general international trend of the era,
the era of the awakening of the Asian continent, when under
the influence of the Russian revolution (1905-07), a number
of bourgeois-democratic movements arose in the East, in­
cluding Egypt.
The Denshawai incident spurred the development of the
Egyptian national liberation movement. Denshawai is a
small village near the city of Tanta in the N ile Delta. One
hot day, on June 13, 1906, a party of British officers set
out for the village to shoot pigeons. As often happens in
such cases, the officers trampled the crops underfoot and
the indignant fellaheen asked them to leave. In reply the
Englishmen opened fire, wounding several peasants, and
started a fight, in which the peasants used their wooden
staffs. One of the British officers was slightly hurt and it
was decided to send him to the railway station. The temper­
ature that day was 42°C and the officer died of a sunstroke
on the way. The cause of his death was confirmed by a
doctor. Nevertheless, the Denshawai peasants were charged
with the murder of British officer. They were arrested and
tried. Four of them were sentenced to death by hanging,
nine to penal servitude and the others were flogged at the
foot of the gallows.
The Denshawai execution had a serious effect on Egypt.
Demonstrations and protest meetings swept the country. The
Egyptian press was full of indignant articles and poems
were written in honour of the Denshawai martyrs. People
everywhere demanded an amnesty for the peasants who
had been sent to prison.
The Denshawai incident was so scandalous and had such
international repercussions that in the end the British were
forced to agree to a compromise. In 1907, the Denshawai
peasants were pardoned. Lord Cromer summoned Mustafa
Kamil, whom he had described as “England’s worst enemy”,
and asked him to recommend someone from among his
friends for the new ministry. One of the many named by
Mustafa Kamil was Saad Zaghlul, the future president of

247
 the Wafd Party. Saad Zaghlul (born in 1860), a member of
the Arabi movement and a qualified lawyer, practised at
the bar and later served on the bench. In 1906, Cromer
appointed him Minister of Education.
In April 1907, Cromer resigned. The new British resident
in Egypt was Sir Eldon Gorst, who had served under Cro­
mer as an Assistant Under-Secretary of State for Foreign
Affairs of the British mission, i.e., the civil servant who is
charged with the supervision of the local national move­
ment. Unlike Lord Cromer, who had lived in Egypt for
twenty-five years without learning Arabic or establishing
relations in the Egyptian society, Gorst had been obliged by
the very nature of his work to acquire a knowledge of the
language and Egyptian contacts.

THE N A TIO N A L MOVEMENT IN 1907-08. THE

EMERGENCE OF POLITICAL PARTIES A N D TRADE
UNIONS. Eldon Gorst decided to begin by splitting the
ranks of the Egyptian national movement. On his initiative,
in 1907, a group of Egyptian anglophiles founded the Hizb
El-Islah (Party of Reform), which was comprised of Egyp­
tian dignitaries, bureaucrats and intellectuals, who favoured
co-operation with the British. The party was backed by the
British mission and it controlled the biggest Egyptian news­
papers, El-Mukattam, El-Ahram, and others.
In 1907, to counterpoise the Party of Reform, Mustafa
Kamil founded his own political party which, as Arabi’s had
been, was called Hizb El-Watan (National Party). The
Party’s first congress was held on December 7, 1907, and
was attended by 1,017 delegates, representing petty-bour­
geois democratic elements of the national liberation move­
ment.
The Hizb EMJmma (People’s Party), which was founded
in 1906 and represented the bourgeois and feudal elements
of the national movement, occupied an intermediary posi­
tion between the two other parties.
Workers’ trade unions and the political parties arose
simultaneously in Egypt. The first attempt to form a trade
union had been made in 1899 during a strike of the tobacco
workers, but had failed. In October 1908, the Nationalists
set up a trade union of manual workers, which opened
branches in various towns of Egypt and headed the workers’
248
movement. By 1911, there were already eleven trade unions
in the land with an over-all membership of over 7,000.
The death of Mustafa Kamil was a severe blow to the
national liberation movement. His health had been under­
mined by the increased pressure of his political activities
after the Denshawai incident. H e had travelled tirelessly
about Egypt, addressing several meetings a day. Simulta­
neously, he published a newspaper, wrote proclamations and
supervised the work of the party. The result was that he
contracted tuberculosis and died in February 1908, at the
age of thirty-four. His funeral became a huge anti-imperial­
ist demonstration. Tens of thousands of people followed his
coffin. Soon after his death, however, the popular movement
began to wane.
The Turkish revolution of 1908 and the restoration of
the Constitution of 1876 was widely welcomed in Egypt and
revived the movement for a time. Fresh demonstrations
against British imperialism broke out in Egypt. A ll the
political parties of Egypt demanded a constitution and in­
sisted that the Legislative Council and the General Assem­
bly be replaced by real representative institutions. The Hizb
El-Watan Party led the constitutional movement. The party
was connected with the Young Turks and took its cue from
them. Although the other parties also demanded a constitu­
tion, they opposed the Young Turks.
The weakness of the constitutional movement lay in the
fact that it developed during the decline of the mass na­
tional liberation movement. The political parties had chan­
nelled the movement into a legal struggle for constitutional
reforms. Even the petty-bourgeois democratic party, Hizb
El-Watan, restricted its work to propaganda, enlightenment
and the organisation of intellectual study groups.

THE PERIOD OF REACTION (1909-14). Taking advan­

tage of the decline of the mass movement in Egypt, the
British mission adopted a hostile attitude towards the N a ­
tionalists. As early as in 1907, the reactionary Copt, Butrus
Ghali, the president of the Denshawai court, became the
Prime Minister of Egypt. He was an obedient tool of British
policy and took violent measures against the national lib­
eration movement. The emergency laws of 1909 which were
directed especially against the Nationalists provided the
249
“legal” basis for mass persecutions. The Law of March 25,
1909, on the press, virtually deprived the Egyptian papers
of all opportunity to criticise the British authorities. The
Law of July 4, 1909, on suspicious persons, permitted the
authorities to exile without trial or investigation anyone
suspected of sympathy with nationalism.
The emergency laws of 1909 caused panic among the N a­
tionalists and some of them emigrated in order to continue
their activities. Two congresses of the Hizb El-Watan Party
were held abroad, one in Geneva (1909) and one in Brus­
sels (1910). The rest of the Nationalists remained in Egypt
and went underground.
During their underground activities, the Nationalists lost
contact with the masses and switched over to tactics of
individual terror. On February 20, 1910, one of the Nation­
alist terrorists,. Ibrahim Wardani, assassinated the Prime
Minister, Butrus Ghali, and although Wardani’s associates
declared him a national hero, although poems were written
in his honour and meetings were organised, this terrorist
act, far from changing things, actually enabled the British
authorities to step up their reprisals. Wardani was executed.
Working on the Indian pattern, Gorst used the assassina­
tion to whip up hostility between the Copts and Moslems,
by turning the incident into a question of strife between the
two religious communities.
In 1911, Eldon Gorst died. He was succeeded by General
Kitchener, the conqueror of the Sudan and South Africa and
later (in 1914) Britain’s War Minister. Kitchener continued
Gorst’s policy in Egypt.
He tried to come to an agreement with the bourgeois and
landlord circles of the Nationalists and, as a means to that
end, in 1913, he reformed the Egyptian Constitution. In­
stead of the former two Houses of Parliament, the Legisla­
tive Council and the General Assembly, a one-house Legis­
lative Assembly, composed mainly of elected members (sev­
enteen appointed and sixty-six elected), was formed. The
Legislative Assembly, however, had the same restricted
functions as the former Houses established by the Organic
Law of 1883. Saad Zaghlul, who was later to play an im­
portant part in the history of the national liberation move­
ment in Egypt, was elected Vice-President of the Legisla­
tive Assembly.
 CHAPTER X IX

THE MAHDI STATE IN THE EAST SUDAN

EUROPEAN PENETRATION INTO THE EAST SU-

DA N . After the death of Mohammed Ali, the East Sudan re­
mained under Egyptian rule. Power was wielded by the
Turco-Egyptian pashas and beys. They seized huge estates,
established monopolies on Sudan’s main export items and
robbed the people by excessive taxation. The slave trade was
practised extensively, although in 1857 the ruler of Egypt,
Mohammed Said, had officially declared its abolishment.
Whole regions in the Sudan were becoming the domains of
the big slave traders.
In the seventies, to the yoke of the Turco-Egyptian pashas
and slave-traders was added that of the European colonial­
ists.
The seventies and eighties of the 19th century were marked
by the colonial annexation of Africa. In a mere decade
or two the European Powers had divided almost the entire
African continent between themselves.
Naturally, the Europeans also coveted the East Sudan
with its natural resources and its extremely profitable trade
in tropical goods. Another reason why they wanted to take
over the East Sudan was because it offered an important
means for penetrating into Central Africa. The N ile was a
natural route leading into the interior. Moreover, the
occupation of the Sudan was closely linked with the Egyptian
question. Any Power which gained control over the flow of
the N ile in the Sudan would automatically dominate Egypt.
H ow was the division of Africa accomplished? Individ­
ual European adventurers acted as the vanguard of the
capitalist Powers in Africa.
South-West Africa was seized single-handed by the Ger­
man adventurer and trader Liideritz. East Africa was ruled

251
 by the German conquistador Peters. Nigeria was conquered
by a handful of enterprising Britishers, who founded the
Nigerian Company. The Congo was seized by the explorer
Stanley, who was backed by the King of Belgium, Leopold
II. If their schemes failed, they were forgotten. If they
succeeded, their governments took them under their wing,
despatched a fleet or army to their “domains” and declared
the captured land their colony.
The initiative came from individual enterprising colo­
nial profit-seekers. The picture was the same in the Sudan. In
the seventies, not a single European state undertook ope­
rations in the Sudan in its own name. The direct struggle
between the Powers began in the Sudan after 1881, follow­
ing the British occupation of Egypt.
How did the adventurers penetrate into the Sudan? They
took advantage of the desire of the Egyptian Khedive Is­
mail, which was prompted by his cotton policy, to gain
possession of the entire N ile Basin. Ismail was setting up
cotton plantations in Egypt and expanding the irrigation
system. He realised, however, that he could keep the Egyp­
tian irrigation system fully supplied only by laying hands
on the N ile Basin and all its tributaries. Hence, Ismail’s
wars in Ethiopia and in Equatorial Africa. The Khedive’s
aggressive policy attracted a number of European adventur­
ers. The first of these was the Englishman Samuel Baker.
In 1869, Ismail gave Baker the administration of the Equa­
torial Province of Sudan,and the city of Lado, which he
came to regard as his own private domain. His seizure of
the ivory trade, which passed through the province, yielded
him considerable profits. From here he undertook a series
of campaigns against the regions south of the Sudan—Lake
Albert and Unioro—and added them to his territory. Alto­
gether he operated in this area for five years.
In 1874, Baker was succeeded by another Englishman—
General Gordon. On becoming Governor of the Equatorial
Province, Gordon continued Baker’s expeditions, reached
Lake Victoria, sent a mission to the ruler of Uganda and
took over the entire region of the W hite N ile sources. He
was accompanied by a large group of European explorers,
the Italian, Romolo Gessi, the German, Eduard Schnitzer
(Emin Pasha), the Frenchman, Linan de Beifont, the
American, Long, and others.
252
 Simultaneously with the expansion in the region of the
White Nile, competition began for possession of the Blue
N ile sources, i.e., for Ethiopia. In 1874, the Swiss, Muntsen-
ger, left the port of Massawa (now Eritrea), which was in
the hands of the Egyptians, and set out for the Ethiopian
interior. He managed to seize Keren and penetrate into the
eastern part of Ethiopia, in the region of Harrar, which he
added to the Egyptian domains. In 1875, the Egyptians took
over the cities of Zeila and Berbera (in present-day Northern
Somalia).
In 1875-76, Egyptian forces under the Dane, Anderup,
penetrated into the mountainous regions of Ethiopia and
occupied Adua. But the Ethiopians repelled their attacks
and the Egyptian-Ethiopian War of 1874-76 ended less
successfully for the Egyptians than the war in the Equatorial
Province. They were forced out of the Ethiopian interior
and retained only certain coastal districts.
Simultaneously Egypt expanded in a third direction,
towards Darfur. The region of Darfur, which was situated
in the western part of the Sudan, had been an independent
sultanate till 1874, when the Egyptians launched their
campaign, entrusting Zobeir, the ruler of Bahr El-Ghazal,
with the task of conquest. Zobeir carried out his assignment
and was afterwards summoned to Cairo, where he was
awarded the title of pasha and accorded all sorts of honours.
He was not allowed to return to Sudan, however, and a
European was sent to Darfur to take his place. This evoked
big uprisings in Darfur and Bahr El-Ghazal, led by the Sul­
tan of Darfur and Suleiman, Zobeir Pasha’s son. The actions
of the two feudal lords lacked co-ordination, however, and
Gordon Pasha, who worked on behalf of the Egyptian
authorities, put down both uprisings.
In 1877, General Gordon was appointed Governor-Gene­
ral of the Sudan. He kept the German, Eduard Schnitzer,
as Governor of the Equatorial Province, and appointed his
European collaborators as governors of the other provinces.
The Italian, Romolo Gessi, who had defeated Suleiman ibn
Zobeir, became Governor of Kordofan, the Austrian, Slatin
Pasha, became governor of Darfur; the Englishman, Lup-
ton, became the ruler of Bahr El-Ghazal and the German,
Gigler, became Gordon’s immediate assistant. In this way,
Sudan, though formally under the control of the Egyptians,
253
became the property of a handful of extremely enterprising
and greedy international adventurers. They levied such
heavy taxes on the people (both in cash and in kind) and
robbed the population to such an extent that a wave of
uprisings against the Europeans and European-Egyptian
rule soon swept the Sudan.

THE UPRISINGS OF THE MAHDISTS. In 1881, a

popular uprising flared up against European rule. It was
headed by the roving Dervish monk, Mohammed Ahmed,
who declared himself the Mahdi, i.e., the Messiah.
Mohammed Ahmed was born in 1843 on an island in the
N ile near Dongola. His father was a carpenter. His brothers
were engaged in the same trade. With his father and broth­
ers, Mohammed Ahmed had roamed the N ile Valley and
the Sudan since childhood and was thoroughly familiar with
the ways and manners of the people. After his father’s
death, Mohammed Ahmed entered the Moslem brotherhood
of Samaniya in the city of Berber in the northern part of
the Sudan to study theology. After graduating from the
madrasah (collegiate mosque), he became a mendicant Der­
vish, until he finally settled on the large Abba Island, south
of Khartoum on the White Nile, where his brothers were
engaged in various crafts. The island became a centre, from
which wandering Dervishes spread his teachings to all
corners of the Sudan. His disciples advocated asceticism. They
held the Turks, Egyptians and Europeans jointly responsible
for the corruption of morals in the Sudan. They described
the Turks and Egyptians ás false Moslems and apostates and
called on the people to restore the former purity of early
Islam, to restore universal equality and fraternity, to share
out property, estates and land on an equal basis and to
confiscate the landed estates from the Turco-Egyptians and
the Sudanese feudal lords. They also called for an uprising
to end European plunder and the tyranny of the Tur co-
Egyptian pashas. “Better a thousand graves than to pay
a single dirham (Arabic coin) of the tax,” they would
say.
Thus, Mohammed Ahmed’s preaching, though based on
moral and religious postulates, called for national liberation
and class struggle, and was a product of the entire economic
and political situation in the Sudan.

254
 In August 1881, during Ramadan, Mohammed Ahmed
proclaimed himself Mahdi, the Messiah, and summoned the
Sudanese people to rebel. The situation was ripe for an
uprising. A political crisis was brewing in Egypt. The
Powers and Egypt herself were preoccupied and there was
a real opportunity for decisive action in the Sudan.
The outbreak of the uprising has been described by
witnesses and contemporaries as follows. In August 1881,
an official o f the Egyptian Government arrived on Abba
Island from Khartoum. He presented himself to Mohammed
Ahmed and told the Mahdi that he was charged with plan­
ning opposition to the government, and that he must go to
Khartoum to justify himself before the ruler of the country.
Mohammed Ahmed replied that by the grace of God and
the Prophet he himself was the master of the country and
that he would never go to Khartoum to make excuses to
anyone. The official left for Khartoum but, soon after his
departure, a punitive expedition consisting of two companies
and armed with only one cannon arrived on Abba Island.
The complement of the expedition indicated that the
Mohammed Ahmed movement was not being taken
very seriously. The mahdists completely destroyed the expe­
dition.
After the defeat of the expedition, Mohammed Ahmed
decided to cross over to Kordofan together with his follow­
ers. In Kordofan the ranks of his detachment were swelled
by numerous new supporters and became a rebel army many
thousand strong.
Who were the Mahdi’s followers? What were the driving
forces of the mahdist uprising? Most of his followers were
peasants, nomads, slaves and artisans. The Mahdi’s right-
hand man, Abdullah, related that while the poor flocked to
them in crowds they were shunned by the wealthy, whose
concern for their property, for that earthly filth prevented
them from enjoying and partaking of the true bliss of
heaven.
Mahdi urged his followers to wage a holy war. Like the
Prophet Mohammed, he called them his ansars (helpers),
and promised eternal bliss for those who fell in battle and
four-fifths of the captured booty for the survivors.
Slatin Pasha, who left a detailed account of the uprising,
wrote that for over 60 years the Sudan had belonged to the

2 55
Turks and Egyptians. True, during this period there had
been cases when some tribes had refused to pay tribute, for
which they had been punished, but nobody had yet dared to
rebel against the country’s authorities or declare actual war
on them. But now a beggar, an unknown fakir (hermit) with
a handful of hungry, poorly armed adherents had appeared
and was winning one victory after another.
W hen the Mahdi pitched camp in the mountains of Kor-
dofan, the poor came flocking to him from all over the
Sudan, bringing with them their wives and children. Here
they formed guerilla detachments, chose their leaders and
ambushed . government posts, tax-gatherers and armed
detachments which had been sent out to collect the taxes.
Slatiii Pasha wrote that the poor hoped the revolt would
improve their conditions. Throughout the country tax-
gatherers, government officials and armed posts were
attacked and either wiped out or forced to turn back.
The national element played an important part in the
Mahdi uprising. Slatin Pasha wrote in this connection that
their vanity was flattered by the fact that a Sudanese had
become the Mahdi, and that, consequently, the Sudan would
be ruled by one of their own people, and not by foreigners.
For the most part the Sudanese feudal lords and rich slave
traders were hostile to the uprising. The preaching of the
equal sharing of property and land was deeply opposed to
their interests. But they often had to reckon with the insur­
gent forces. None of them were consistent in their support
of the Mahdi, but some of them either compromised with
him or tried to work themselves into his favour to prevent
the redistribution of their property or to use the Mahdi
for their own ends.
Soon all of Kordofan had joined the Mahdi and several
European and Egyptian punitive expeditions were repelled.
In the autumn of 1881, Gigler, who was now the
Governor of Kordofan, sent an expedition against the Mahdi
under the command of Said Mohammed Pasha. The expe­
dition, however, did not achieve its goal and its command­
er, fearing defeat, turned back.
In December 1881, the Governor of Fashoda, Rashid
Bey, despatched a fresh expedition under the German
Bergchoff to fight the Mahdi in Kordofan. This expedition
was utterly defeated.
256
 In March 1882, a 6,000-strong expeditionary corps from
Khartoum under Yusef Pasha Shelali set out for Kordofan.
In June of the same year it was completely destroyed.
In September 1882, the mahdists besieged El-Obeid, the
capital of Kordofan. The city fell on the 18th of February,
1883, culminating the conquest of Kordofan. From here the
uprising spread to all the other regions of the Sudan.
1883 was a year of decisive victories for the mahdists. In
the spring of the same year, a large Anglo-Egyptian force,
under the British general, Hicks, arrived in Kordofan. After
operating in the area for eight months, it was utterly
defeated. The insurgents employed scorched earth tactics
in their fight against Hicks. They drove away the cattle,
burnt settlements and filled up the wells. In a battle north
of El-Obeid, on November 5, 1883, Hicks’s exhausted army
was finally routed and General Hicks himself was killed.
Some of his men went over to the insurgents. It must be
admitted that Hicks’s detachment included many of the
Egyptian soldiers who only a year ago (1882) had served in
Arabi’s army against the British. As a form of punishment,
they had been despatched to the Sudan. From the political
point of view, this force was unfit for punitive operations
and Cromer himself described how these soldiers exclaimed
in battle: “Oh Effendina Arabi! If you only knew the position
Tewfik has placed us in!”1—and threw down their arms.
In August 1883, the uprising spread to the Red Sea prov­
inces, where the mahdists inflicted a series of defeats on
the Anglo-Egyptian forces led by General Baker. By the
close of 1883, all the provinces of Sudan were in the hands
of the insurgents. In December 1883, Slatin Pasha, the
Governor of Darfur, gave up further resistance. At the
outset of 1884, Lupton, the Governor of Bahr El-Ghazal,
surrendered. Thus the entire country, both east and west of
the Nile, was controlled by the Mahdi, except for a narrow
strip of land in the N ile valley that remained under Anglo-
Egyptian rule. Here the position was hopeless because the
Mahdists could at any moment cut off the valley and disrupt
communications with Egypt.
Meanwhile, the British authorities in Egypt resorted to
the following manoeuvre. Since the uprising was directed

1 Lord Cromer, Modern Egypt, London, 1908, Vol. I, p. 354.

17-57 257
against Egyptian domination, they decided to declare the
Sudan independent of Egypt, but to appoint the Englishman,
Gordon, Governor-General of the Sudan. In other words,
they wanted to come to an understanding with the
Mahdi and, with his support, rule the Sudan as a British
colony.
On February 18, 1884, Gordon and his aide Stewart
arrived in Khartoum, where he began to conduct this new
policy. He proclaimed the Sudan independent of Egypt,
wisely keeping for himself the post of Governor-General,
and appointed the Mahdi Sultan of Kordofan. Furthermore,
Gordon abolished all the arrears of the past and pardoned
the imprisoned defaulters. A huge number of peasants had
been imprisoned for not paying their taxes. Gordon released
them. He felt that by so doing he could achieve a compro­
mise with the Mahdi, but the mahdists saw through his trick.
They had no intention of letting the Sudan pass under
British control and in March 1884, replied to Gordon’s
proposals by besieging Khartoum.
In the fall of 1884, a 7,000-strong army under General
Wolseley, the conqueror of Egypt, set out to Gordon’s rescue,
but failed to reach Khartoum. On January 23, 1885, all
resistance stopped in beleaguered Khartoum and the mah­
dists occupied the city. Gordon was killed during the assault,
as were the other Englishmen with him. Wolseley and his
army withdrew to Egypt. In the remaining months of 1885,
the mahdists completed the conquest of the N ile valley.
Thus within a period of four years the Mahdi State, which
embraced the whole of the eastern Sudan (with the excep­
tion of a small region north of Dongola and the Equatorial
Province), was formed.

THE INTERNAL SYSTEM OF TH E M AH DI STATE.

The Mahdi died soon after the conquest of Khartoum and
leadership passed to his right-hand man, Abdullah, who had
adopted the title of caliph.
This newly arisen state, which in spite of everything,
continued to exist for 13 years, right up to 1898, was an
armed camp besieged on all sides by the enemy and con­
tinuously blockaded. The chief task of the Mahdi State was
the organisation of defence. As a means to this end, Caliph
Abdullah built primitive arsenals, factories and dockyards.

258
H e also repaired ships left behind by the Egyptians and
even set up a printing shop. He used captured Europeans as
experts for the organisation of the army and the war indus­
try. Among the Europeans in his service were Slatin, Romolo
Gessi and Lupton. Slatin openly describes the acts of sabo­
tage they resorted to, their negligence, and how they
dragged out the ship repairs, ruined the equipment at the
war factories and so on.
Surrounded on all sides by hostile forces (not to mention
the enemy within), the state always had to use terror against
the traitors. This was the second most important function
of Abdullah and the Mahdi State.
At first the state had certain democratic features. The
army consisted of peasants, nomads and slaves. Many of
its commanders were men of humble birth. Taxes were
considerably reduced and the officers and functionaries of
the state adhered to an ascetic way of life. The chief cadi
(judge) of the Mahdi State received forty talers a month,
i.e., the average wage of an artisan. Other officials received
from twenty to thirty talers a month.
The mahdists were against individual wealth and aspired
to universal equality. Marauders and robbers were strictly
punished. The Mahdi forbade his followers to ride horses
and called on all true believers to please Allah by going
about on foot. Orders were given to hand over articles of
gold and jewels to the Beit El-Mal (Treasury), which
supervised the economic life of the Sudan. Only one sheep
could be slaughtered for a wedding feast and bride money
(kalini) was reduced to ten talers for a girl and five talers
for a widow.
Despite all its levelling, democratic tendencies, this
movement, basically peasant in nature, did not lead to the
liquidation of the existing feudal relations in the Sudan.
The natural laws characteristic of many peasant movements
had their effect. Many peasant movements are known to
history. They have usually ended in defeat because of their
spontaneous character, because they have lacked a clear-cut
programme, a clear understanding of their aims, carefully
thought out tactics, and the like. The peasant movement in
the Sudan was victorious, but it was unable to liquidate the
feudal relations against which it had fought.
Engels clearly stressed this aspect of Sudanese mahdism.
17 * 2 59
He spoke of it in connection with the religious popular
movements in Africa in the Middle Ages. He regarded these
movements as conflicts between the poor nomads and the
rich townspeople. “The townspeople,” he wrote, “grow rich,
luxurious and lax in the observation of the ‘law’ (the canon
law— V.L.). The Bedouins, poor and hence of strict morals,
contemplate with envy and covetousness these riches and
pleasures. Then they unite under a prophet, a Mahdi, to
chastise the apostates and restore the observation of the
ritual and the true faith and to appropriate in recompense
the treasures of the renegades. In a hundred years they are
naturally in the same position as the renegades were: a new
purge of the faith is required, a new Mahdi arises and the
game starts again from the beginning. That is what happened
from the conquest campaigns of the African Almoravids
and Almohads in Spain to the last Mahdi of Khartoum who
so successfully thwarted the English----- All these move­
ments are clothed in religion but they have their source in
economic causes; and yet, even when they are victorious,
they allow the old economic conditions to persist untouched.
So the old situation remains unchanged and the collision
recurs periodically.”1
This is the key to the comprehension of the Mahdi State,
where everything remained as of old. Much less than a
hundred years were to elapse before the feudal degeneration
of the leaders of the movement took place. Feudal degenera­
tion developed extremely rapidly and, five years after the
occupation of Khartoum, the same chief justice who had
originally led the life of an ascetic and monk was the owner
of vast estates and a multitude of slaves. It is characteristic
that the Mahdi State did not do away with slave-holding.
A number of measures to restrict the slave trade were
adopted and that was all. The trade in male slaves was
forbidden. Captive males were not sold, but were used for
work on the estates of the caliph and his associates. The
caliph gave the prisoners away as slaves to other tribes on
which he depended. But the trade in female slaves continued
and slave ownership itself as an institution was preserved.
The mahdists did not grant freedom to the slaves, although
they had taken part in the mahdist movement in hope of

1 K. Marx and F. Engels, On Religion, Moscow, 1966, p. 282.

260
liberation. This gave rise to a number of slave uprisings
against the Mahdi State.
As long as the mahdists waged victorious wars during
the uprising, the moral and political upsurge furthered the
cohesion of the tribes but, after victory, signs of discord
appeared in their ranks. Some tribes, especially those of
Kordofan, where Caliph Abdullah came from, were in a
privileged position, while others, especially those of the Nile
valley, where Mahdi Mohammed Ahmed came from, were
worse off. Most of the booty was usually handed over to the
Kordofan tribes. The N ile tribes were displeased and waged
a struggle against their privileged counterparts.
The Mahdi’s relatives, the sherifs, provoked a rebellion
in Khartoum. This was an uprising of the democratic ele­
ments in the movement against the degenerate feudal
leaders. This was an uprising of the tribes of the N ile valley
and also of carpenters and the sailors of the Sudanese N ile
Fleet.
Weakened internally by the intertribal and class strug­
gle, the Mahdi State had to meet continuous attacks by its
external enemies.

THE STRUGGLE OF THE POWERS A G A IN ST THE

M AHDI STATE. The Mahdi State had to wage a persis­
tent struggle against its external enemies. The fight against
the Anglo-Egyptian army, which was still holding the
regions of Suakin and W adi-Halfa, went on from 1885 to
1886. Between 1887 and 1889, the mahdists fought the
Ethiopian Negus (sovereign) in the east and the Darfur
Sultan in the west. In 1891, they had to fight the Anglo-
Egyptian army on the Red Sea coast and the insurgents in
Kordofan and Darfur.
In 1896, the struggle of the Mahdi State against the
European Powers entered the crucial stage.
Having conquered Egypt, the British began to expand the
cotton plantations; in the nineties, work began on the
construction of a big reservoir near Aswan. In light of this,
the British decided to gain a foothold in the region of
the N ile sources and annihilate the Mahdi State at all
costs.
France also sought possession of the N ile sources and the
Anglo-French contest in the partition of Africa reached a
261
new pitch of intensity. On the one hand, the French wanted
to fortify their position in Ethiopia (i.e., the region of the
Blue N ile sources), whëre they had acquired consider­
able influence over the new Negus, Menelik. On the other
hand, while gaining a foothold in the West and Central
Sudan, they also intended to spread their influence to the
East Sudan, i.e., to the region of the White Nile sources.
The French expansion in East and West Africa forced the
British to speed up their campaign against the Sudan.
The British planned to use other powers in their fight
against the French. They supported the Italians in the
struggle against French expansion in Ethiopia. Italy, a weak
state at the time, offered no threat to Britain, who readily
exploited Italian-French differences to prevent French ex­
pansion in Ethiopia. She also encouraged Belgian expansion
(from the direction of the Congo) to counterpoise that of the
French in the region of the White Nile sources.
Between 1893 and 1894, the Italians, having gained a
foothold in Eritrea (on the Red Sea coast), invaded the
Sudan and took over Kassala.
In 1895, the Italians started a war against Ethiopia,
which evoked a big upsurge of patriotic feelings in the area.
The people rallied their forces to repel the Italians and
defeated them near Adua on March 1, 1896. Ethiopia was
helped in this war by France and Russia, particularly by
France, who after the war, strengthened her influence in
that region.
In 1894, Britain concluded an agreement with Belgium
on the division of the spheres of influence in the upper
reaches of the White Nile. Britain leased the Equatorial
Province of the Sudan, the Lado Enclave, to the Belgian
“Association of the Congo”. This region was owned by the
Belgians till 1910, when it was reincorporated in the Anglo-
Egyptian Sudan. Having received this region on lease, in
1894, the Belgians invaded the Mahdi State and thus the
Mahdi State, which was already fighting the Italians in the
east, had to fight the Belgians in the south.
After the Battle of Adua, France decided to use her
fortified position in Ethiopia to organise a campaign against
the Sudan. In the meanwhile, France had received conces­
sions for the construction of a railway from Jibuti to Addis-
Ababa. The railway was to be extended beyond the confines
262
of Ethiopia so it would cross the entire African continent
from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic. Simultaneously,
Colonel Marchand, the French Commander in Africa, was
instructed to thrust forward with his army from the Central
Sudan to the upper reaches of the Nile. In March 1896,
Britain, in turn, decided to despatch an Anglo-Egyptian
expedition under Kitchener to the East Sudan.
Thus in 1896, Britain and France were operating directly
against the Mahdi State. Britain proceeded with her troops
from the north, under the command of Kitchener, and
France from the west under the command of Marchand.
On July 10, 1898, Marchand reached Fashoda and
stopped here. On September 2, 1898, Kitchener marched on
Omdurman, the capital of the Mahdi State, which was
situated opposite Khartoum, on the other side of the Nile.
Here a decisive battle took place between the Anglo-Egyp-
tian forces and the mahdists. In this battle Kitchener used
a new weapon, the machine-gun. The mahdists, armed with
outdated rifles, spears and daggers, advanced in a solid
body, defying death, and Kitchener mowed them down with
machine-gun fire. Over 20,000 mahdists perished in the
fighting. This was the complete defeat of the mahdist army,
the remnants of which retreated westwards, into Kordofan.
Kitchener did not pursue them for the time being, but
quickly moved his troops to the south and on September 19,
1898, he advanced on Fashoda (now Kodok).

FASHODA. In Fashoda the British found themselves

face to face with the French. This event led to the famous
international Fashoda Crisis. Lenin wrote in his chronicle
of events that Britain was “on the verge of war with France.”1
Later France invented a story to the effect that she
had expected help from Menelik, the Ethiopian Negus.
Despite his promises, however, the Negus had not sent rein­
forcements and France was compelled to order Marchand to
retreat.
Matters, however, had been decided not by the balance
of forces in Africa, but on an international scale. In the
meanwhile, Britain had been negotiating an alliance with
Germany, and France, fearing a war on two fronts, did not

1 Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 39, p. 686.

263
venture to act "against Britain. After lengthy talks, on
November 4, 1898, the French government ordered Mar­
chand to retreat from Fashoda. The Fashoda conflict ended
in France’s capitulation.
Several months later, in March 1899, an agreement was
concluded between Britain and France on the delimitation
of spheres of influence in Africa, according to which the
East Sudan passed completely under the British sphere of
influence. The agreement put an end to the age-old struggle
between Britain and France over the partition of Africa.
Anglo-French contradictions had reached their climax in
Fashoda.
The Fashoda events marked the beginning of a rapproche­
ment between Britain and France, which led to the Treaty
of the Entente. The emergence of a new rival (Germany)
was another .reason for the rapprochement.

THE ANGLO-EGYPTIAN CONDOMINIUM. After

Britain had gained a foothold in the East Sudan, it only
remained to find a valid excuse for the conquest of the
country. This involved considerable difficulties since East
Sudan formally belonged to Egypt and, consequently, to
Turkey, for Egypt was still a part of the Ottoman Empire
and a direct conquest might entail a whole series of inter­
national complications. Britain legalised the seizure by
means of the so-called Anglo-Egyptian condominium.
On January 19, 1899, an agreement was signed in Cairo
by Lord Cromer, for Great Britain, and by Butrus Ghali, for
Egypt. In the Preamble to the Agreement the reason given
for the condominium was that Egypt had lost the Sudan in
consequence of her misrule. The Egyptian Government
“consented” to give Britain access to the administration of
the country in return for the aid she had rendered with
regard to the Sudan.
According to this agreement, the supreme authority in
the Sudan was the governor-general, who wielded absolute
civil, military, legislative and executive power. The gover­
nor-general was nominated by the British Government and
appointed by a khedival decree. His dismissal also had to
be sanctioned by the British Government. No Egyptian
laws could be instituted on the territory of the East Sudan
without the permission of the governor-general. He received
264
the consuls of the foreign Powers in the Sudan and had the
right to reject their candidacies.
What part did Egypt play in the administration of the
Sudan? Apart from the British forces, Egypt also kept a
battalion in the Sudan. A number of second-rate official
posts were given to the Egyptians. Egypt had to bear the
entire financial burden of the occupation and engaged to
ive the Sudanese administration £750,000 sterling annually
f or the occupation expenses of the Sudan and for admini­
stration of the country, which was no small sum, especially
for the Egyptian budget.
British governors were placed at the head of all the
provinces of the Sudan. The only exception was Darfur in
the westernmost part of the country, where power remained
in the hands of the local sultans who had pledged vassal
loyalty to the British colonial government. The Darfur
sultanate existed till 1916, when a sultan instigated an anti-
British uprising, after which it was abolished and Darfur
became a province of the Sudan directly subordinate to the
British Governor.
In 1899, the Sudan was officially renamed the Anglo-
Egyptian Sudan.
Having established this joint regime, Britain set about
wiping out the last remnants of the Mahdi forces, which had
retreated to the steppes of Kordofan.
In November 1899, Kitchener despatched his troops to
Kordofan and on November 25 routed the remnants of the
mahdists at Jedid, Caliph Abdullah himself being killed in
the battle. El-Obeid, the capital of the mahdists, fell on
December 17, 1899. The uprising was defeated, although
isolated mahdist detachments continued to offer resistance
in various parts of Sudan for some time to come.
The British had great difficulty in exercising control over
the Sudan. From 1900 till 1927, not a single year passed in
the Sudan without an uprising, none of which, however,
embraced more than separate regions or separate tribes. They
were all of a local and isolated character and, accordingly,
doomed to failure.
 CHAPTER XX

ALGERIA IN 1870-1914

REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION IN ALGERIA. The Paris

Commune had an immediate impact on Algeria, a long-
suffering land oppressed both by Bonaparte militarists and
the big bourgeoisie. The uprising of the Paris Communards
was closely linked with the revolutionary events in Algeria
of 1870-71, and coincided with the big national liberation
uprising of 1871. This coincidence was not accidental. The
collapse of the Second Empire showed the Algerian Arabs
and Berbers just how weak and corrupt the French bour­
geois state had become. They seized up the situation and
launched another attempt to shake off the hated foreign rule.
The course of events in these turbulent years was some­
what complex. The first news of the events in France, of the
French army’s capitulation and surrender of the Emperor,
and of the proclamation of a republic on September 4, 1870,
reached Algeria on the same night. The Arabs and Berbers,
who comprised the main bulk of the population (2,100,000),
were still unprepared for immediate action and the first
reaction to the events in Paris came from the French popu­
lation of Algeria, which numbered approximately 270,000.
The social make-up of the French population of Algeria
was not uniform. Groups of French workers and intellectuals
had come into being in the midst of the French bourgeoisie
and colonists. All sections of the French population of
Algeria, with the exception of a handful of bankers and
concessionaires, were against the Bonaparte regime. More­
over, the overwhelming majority of bankers and concession­
aires lived in Paris, not in Algeria. W hy were the local
French colonists and bourgeoisie opposed to the regime of
the Second Empire? The reason lay in the struggle for the
monopolistic exploitation of Algeria, for the seizure of her

266
natural resources. Napoleon III had been handing out
concessions to the big metropolitan bourgeoisie and Parisian
financiers and openly cheating the Algerian group of French
capitalists out of their share. The whole system of the
French colonial rule in Algeria was designed primarily to
serve the interests of the big Parisian concessionaires.
The local bourgeoisie could take no direct part in A lge­
ria’s administration, and in 1852, was even deprived of the
right to send its deputies to the French Parliament (a right
which it had been granted in 1848 under the Second Repub­
lic). The post of governor-general was usually given to high
ranking French militarists such as Marshal Pelissier, Marshal
MacMahon and others and the colonists’ and French bour­
geoisie’s discontent was directed mainly against the “dicta­
torship of the epaulettes”. These circles demanded that the
“military regime” be abolished, that Algeria’s administra­
tion be entrusted to the local French bourgeoisie and that a
settlers’ colony on the American model (with complete
expulsion and extermination of the native population)
should be set up in Algeria. Some colonists even maintained
that Algeria (not Arab Algeria, of course, but a French
Algeria with its native population completely enslaved)
should secede from France altogether.
Most of the French colonists were Orleanists or legitimists,
i.e., they favoured the preservation of the monarchy, but
with the possibility of changing the dynasty. The others
were so-called moderate Republicans.
These bourgeois colonists decided to take advantage of
Napoleon I ll ’s overthrow by seizing power in Algeria. They
were afraid to get rid of the Governor-General Duroc, an
appointee of the Second Empire, but they did secure the
replacement of several Bonaparte officials by liberal Repub­
licans. The representatives of this group filled nearly all
the key posts in the local'administration.
Apart from this group, however, the Revolution of 1871
brought democratic emigré circles on to the political scene.
It must be borne in mind that Algeria served as a place
of exile for all the opposition elements in France. Between
1848 and 1849, 20,500 Parisian workers, participants of the
July uprising of 1848, had been banished to Algeria. After
the Bonaparte coup of December 2, 1851, 9,530 active
Republicans, mainly petty-bourgeois revolutionaries, were

267
sent there. The exiles lived a hard life and many of them
died of poverty, disease and the heat.
These French Democrats naturally had no intention of
being left out of political events. On September 5, 1870,
thousands of French workers and petty-bourgeois democrats
organised a mass demonstration, pulled the imperial eagles
down from all the buildings and hoisted a pole topped by
a Phrygian cap, the symbol of the Revolution, in the court­
yard of the governor-general. Democratic organisa­
tions were set up—defence committees, the Republican
Association of Algeria, the national guards and municipa­
lities.
Defence committees were formed in all the French-
populated cities of Algeria. They were headed by the
Algiers Defence Committee, which was supervised by bour­
geois Republicans and petty-bourgeois democrats. The
committee demanded that it be given a part in the admini­
stration of the colony, that the institutions be purged of
Bonapartist elements, and that the military regime be
abolished. The native population was not represented on
any of these committees. The bourgeois Republicans, how­
ever, sabotaged the defence committees’ attempts to establish
control over the prefects and sub-prefects. The leader of the
Republican bourgeoisie—the prefect of Algiers, Warmer—
left the old mechanism of power untouched and even
secured the removal of working-class representatives from
the defence committees. .
The Republican Association of Algeria was a political
organisation of revolutionary workers and petty-bourgeois
democrats with branches in all the cities of Algeria. It
organised general meetings and published newspapers. The
organisation was comprised of workers, members of the
Algerian section of the International (not Marxists, but
mainly Proudhonists). The Republican Association felt that
all power in Algeria should be vested in the elective muni­
cipalities— communes, and that Algeria should be a federa­
tion of such municipalities—communes. It goes without say­
ing that in both the Republican Association and in the
communes contemplated by the Association the hopes of
the Arab-Berber population were completely ignored. The
petty-bourgeois democrats and Proudhonists were chauvi­
nists like the big French bourgeoisie.
268
 True, individual Arabs as well as Jews and Europeans
of non-French origin were admitted to the Association.
Although the members of the Republican Association ad­
mitted Arabs to their ranks, however, at best they remained
indifferent to the native population’s struggle for national
liberation. As for the followers of Proudhon with their
“national nihilism”, they were apt to regard the conver­
sion of all Arabs into French as the solution to the national
question. In October 1870, the newspaper Algérie Fran­
çaise, which was connected with the Republican Associa­
tion of Algeria, defined the tasks of the national guards,
which had been formed with the active participation of the
Association members, in the following way: 1) struggle
against the external enemy, 2) struggle for an independent
Republic in Algeria if the monarchy were restored in
France, 3) struggle against local popular uprisings.
The national guards, whose commanders were elected by
the people, were made subordinate to the defence commit­
tees and to the elective municipalities, in which the petty-
bourgeois Democratic Party had a majority. Its leader was
the lawyer Romuald Vuiermoz, who in the early days of
the Revolution had been elected the head of the Republican
Defence Committee and the mayor of Algiers.

THE ALGERIAN COMMUNE. On October 24, 1870,

General Walsin-Esterhazy, a monarchist who had stained
his reputation by bloody reprisals against the workers of
Oran in September 1870, was appointed the interim gover­
nor-general of Algeria. After the new governor-general’s
arrival (on October 28, 1870), the European workers of
Algeria along with the Arab poor besieged the governor’s
palace. The general relinquished his post and escaped to
safety in a warship, while the workers, with the help of the
national guards, seized his palace. Prefect Warmer also
resigned. The workers and 4,000 national guardsmen began
preparations for an assault on the Admiralty, the last bul­
wark of the counter-revolution, which was defended by only
200 sailors. Vuiermoz, however, who had entered into
negotiations with the admiral, foiled the attackers and thereby
helped preserve the bastion of reaction.
W hen news reached Algeria on the 30th of October, 1870,
that Metz had surrendered and Marshal Bazaine had capit-

269
ulated, fresh demonstrations were held in Algiers, Oran
and other towns, to demand the use of revolutionary terror
against the traitors. On November 7, the Republican Asso­
ciation of Algeria required that the entire administration
of Algeria be handed over to the Republican defence com­
mittees. In keeping with the Association’s decision, how­
ever, on the next day the Algerian municipality and the
Defence Committee met to elect Vuiermoz the interim
Extraordinary Commissioner of Algeria, i.e., ruler of the
country. The meeting proclaimed “the commune the pri­
mordial basis of all democracy” and announced that the
whole country would be a federation of communes.
This outburst, however, led to nothing. Having branded
the decision of the Algerian commune as an “illegal act of
usurpation”, the French Government appointed the reac­
tionary Chàrles de Buzer as its Extraordinary Civil Com­
missioner in Algeria (with the rights of governor). Vuier­
moz immediately ceded power to him (November 11, 1870).
At de Buzer’s demand the national guards were placed under
his control and all revolutionary elements were removed
from the command. Thus, disrupted by small bourgeois
conciliators, the movement began to decline.
What caused the failure of the democratic elements? Of
course one may speak of Vuiermoz’s treachery, but that is
beside the point. The narrow democratic strata did not have
the solid backing of the masses, certainly not of the native
population. This was the Reason why the colonial bourgeoi­
sie was later able to suppress all attempts by the Algerian
commune to regain power and control of the national guards.
The promulgation of the Paris Commune in March 1871
occasioned a new upsurge o f the revolutionary movement
in Algeria. Demonstrations were held throughout the coun­
try under the slogans “Long Live Paris! Down with Ver­
sailles!” The revolutionary press published detailed reports
on the activities of the Paris Commune. The Republican
Association of Algeria sent delegates to France. On their
arrival in the capital, men like Alexandre Lambert joined
the Paris Commune and became its active builders and
defenders. The question of taking over power was once
again raised in the Republican Association. But this time,
under the influence of the petty-bourgeois conciliators, the
Association declined all further struggle.
270
 This decision was prompted by the outbreak of an Arab-
Berber insurrection. The French petty-bourgeois democrats
and even the proletariat in Algeria did not understand the
revolutionary significance of the Arab national liberation
movement. The French revolutionaries’ chief mistake was
their neglect of the national question. They forgot that
victory over the counter-revolutionary French bourgeoisie
in Algeria could be won only in alliance with the native
population. They did not realise that a people who oppresses
others cannot be free itself, and that they themselves had
a vital interest in Algeria’s national emancipation.
When, consequently, a massive liberation uprising of
the native, population flared up in Algeria in March 1871,
the local Frenchmen with their Great Power prejudices
sowed considerable strife and disorder in the working-class
movement. As for Vuiermoz and the other petty-bourgeois
leaders, their kow-towing to French reaction became more
marked as their fear of the Arab uprising grew. In April
1871, a new French governor-general by the name of Guey-
don, an ardent monarchist and clerical, who had been in­
structed by the Versailles leaders to put down the uprising,
arrived in Algeria. Taking advantage of the cowardice of
the petty-bourgeois politicians and their fear of the "Arab
danger”, Gueydon had no trouble in disbanding the Algerian
municipality and the national guards.

THE NATIO NAL LIBERATION UPRISING OF 1871.

Colonial oppression brought economic ruin to the Algerian
villages. Between 1868 and 1870 a terrible famine raged
in the land. People ate grass and frequent cases of canni­
balism were recorded. Cholera, the handmaid of famine,
took toll of thousands of lives. Algeria’s native population
which in 1866 had numbered 2,652,000 fell by 1872 to only
2,125,000. Over 500,000 (i.e., a nearly fifth of the entire
population) had perished from hunger, disease and from
the atrocities of the French punitive expeditions.
Year in and year out uprisings had flared up in various
regions of the country. These uprisings, however, had been
local and quite often of a spontaneous character; the strug­
gle had not been organised on a national scale and was
easily suppressed by the French authorities.
271
 Towards the close of 1870, however, the situation
changed. New horizons opened up for the Arab Algerians.
They were aware that France had displayed military
weakness in the war of 1870-71 and that the French gen­
erals had proved ineffective. They knew about the Sedan
catastrophe, about the fall of Metz and about the class
struggle in France and among the Algerian French popula­
tion. The Arabs realised, the time had come for a decisive
struggle. Their representatives in the urban centres, espe­
cially in Algiers, actively supported the French workers.
Since July 1870, the villages and nomadic regions had been
in a state of ferment.
Resentment increased when the people learned of the
plan to transfer power in Algeria from the generals and
Parisian bankers to the big French colonists, who had bru­
tally oppressed the native population. These were the
immediate and real oppressors and the Algerian peasants
especially hated them. A decree issued at the end of 1870
granting the Algerian Jews the full rights of French citi­
zens evoked considerable discontent, only stressing as it
did the people’s complete lack of rights. Moreover, reports
of the impending transfer of refugees from Alsace-Lorraine
to Algeria and of France paying indemnities to the Prussians
deeply affected the Algerian peasants, who connected both
events with new expropriations and taxes.
The Arab and Berber tribal uprising headed by Moham­
med el-Mokrani, the ruler of the Kabyle region of Medj ana
(near Setif), began on March 14, 1871. A descendent of the
old feudal nobility, Mokrani could not reconcile himself
to the fact that from an almost independent ruler, France
had turned him into a mere civil servant. Nor could he
forget that France had reduced the size of his land and
his revenues, countermanded his orders and forced him to
accept her agents as his assistants. Mokrani had thirty tribes
under his control and could muster 25,000 men.
The peasants and nomads, however, were the main force
of the uprising, not the feudalists who had joined Mokrani.
On April 8, 1871, the religious fraternity of Rahmaniya,
which exercised influence over approximately 250 tribes,
i.e., about 600,000 peasants and nomads (nearly a third of
Algeria’s native population), took action. The brotherhood
had over 100,000 men at its disposal. Its agitators went
272
round the villages, bazaars and nomad camps, summoning
the people to a holy war against the enemy.
After the religious brotherhood of Rahmaniya had joined
the uprising, all of eastern Algeria became the scene of a
great war of liberation. Mokrani’s plan, which he submitted
to the insurgent leaders’ military council, did not call for
the expulsion of the French from Algeria. It merely pro­
posed forcing them to make concessions to the Arab and
Kabyle chieftains. This plan, however, was not endorsed
and it was decided to fight for the complete expulsion of
the French from Algeria. Against Mokrani’s advice, the
insurgents took the French fortress of Bordj bou Arreridj
(in Kabylia) by storm. In the course of later battles between
April and May, the insurgents gained one victory after
another and liberated almost the entire eastern part of the
country from the French. After a mere ten months they
already had 340 battles to their credit. Mokrani was killed
in battle in May 1871. His place was taken by his brother,
Ahmed Bu Mezrag.
The insurgents won one victory after another, while the
Paris Communards held out heroically against the onslaught
of the Versaillists, thereby making it impossible for the
Thiers government to despatch troops to Algeria. But when
the Versaillists, having routed the Communards, brought
up the size of the occupation army to 85,000 men, the situa­
tion changed. By July 1871, the main forces of the uprising
had been defeated and the leaders of the religious brother­
hood of Rahmaniya under Sheikh Haddad surrendered.
The French punitive detachments burnt villages, drove
away the cattle, destroyed wells and murdered women and
children. The guerillas of Kabylia, however, courageously
continued the unequal fight for another six months. After
their resistance had been broken, Ahmed Bu Mezrag with­
drew to the south, where he fought the last rear-guard
actions of the uprising. In January 1872, the last two
centres of resistance, the oases of Tuggurt and Wargla, fell.
Ahmed Bu Mezrag was taken prisoner and the uprising was
suppressed.
The Versaillists cynically admitted that they had dealt
with the Algerian insurgents in the “Parisian manner”.
Thousands were executed, thrown into prison or exiled to
New Caledonia to do penal servitude. The rebellious tribes
1 8-573 273
paid 36,000,000 francs indemnities and 500,000 hectares of
their best land were confiscated. To save the rest they had
to p a y t h e c o n q u e r o r s a n o th e r 2 7 ,0 0 0 ,0 0 0 fr a n c s .
The Paris Communards and Algerian peasants had a
common enemy—the French bourgeoisie. They fought this
enemy simultaneously, but were unable to combine their
forces in united action, thus making it easier for the French
bourgeoisie to defeat both the one and the other.

ALGERIA U N DER THE FRENCH IMPERIALIST

YOKE. The defeat of the 1871 uprising marked a turning
point after which the French felt quite secure in Algeria.
The nomad uprisings in the towns of Aures (1879) and the
Walid-sidi-Sheikh uprisings in western Algeria (1881) were
the Algerian people’s last armed outburst in their struggle
for freedom. Under the Third Republic, there could no
longer be any question of large popular uprisings in a land
crushed and enslaved by force of arms. Colonial exploita­
tion and the imperialist plundering of Algeria reached their
highest pitch.
The invaders’ main policy was, as usual, seizure of the
land. According to the law of 1873, which introduced the
French land legislation in Algeria, all clan and communal
lands were liable to forced partition and became private
property. According to this law, any member of a commune
could demand the conversion of his allotment from the col­
lective ownership by the clan and tribe into private freehold.
By destroying the commune, the law made it easier for the
money-lenders and the rich colonists to buy the land. A n­
other law, passed in 1887, further facilitated the transfer
of peasant communal property to the hands of the European
colonists since it renewed the division of the tribal lands
between the clans and the households and also allowed the
Europeans to buy the communal lands even before they
had been made private property.
All these measures left the Arab peasants at the mercy
of ruthless European swindlers and money-lenders. During
the seventies of the 19th century the French colonists
acquired 400,000 hectares of land which had been confis­
cated from the Arabs, and in the next forty years they
acquired another 500,000 hectares. By 1917, the French
owned 55 per cent of all the country’s registered land.
274
Moreover, French colonisation still gave priority to large
estates. Only 10 per cent of the colonised land fund went
to the small and middle colonists, while the remaining
90 per cent went to the big colonists (about 10,000 persons).
Viniculture continued to develop rapidly. A considerable
part of the land which had been expropriated from the
Arabs was set aside for this purpose and developed under
a capitalist-type economy. The rest of the colonists’ land
was split up into small plots and leased out to the Arab
métayers on the basis of the onerous khammasat.
The French “civilisers” ’ barbarous policy of seizing the
land ruined the Arab peasants’ farms. In their attempts to
suppress the rebellious tribes, the conquerors destroyed
wells, turning the blooming oases into a desert. The best
pastures were taken over by the colonists. Forced into
Algeria’s barren and rugged hinterland, the nomads could
find no fodder for their flocks, which perished from hunger
and thirst, from the summer heat and the winter cold.
Algeria’s rich deposits of iron ore and phosphorite were
seized by French companies.
The exploitation of the iron-ore deposits, which had been
discovered prior to 1871, was carried out at first on a rela­
tively small scale. In 1879, 438,000 tons of ore were mined.
But by 1913, after the deposits had been handed over in
the form of concessions to Messrs. Schneider & Kreso and
several other metallurgical companies, the extraction of ore
had risen to 1,230,000 tons. Phosphorite deposits were dis­
covered in 1873 on the Algerian-Tunisian border. Their
exploitation was taken over by four French joint-stock com­
panies. Some 967,000 tons of phosphorite were extracted in
1913. Copper and zinc mines were also put into operation.
A new feature in the exploitation of Algeria after 1871
was the participation o f monopolies connected with the
French banks. Several banks were set up on the territory
of Algeria. The biggest was the Compagnie Algérienne,
which also controlled the Banque d’Algérie of issue, the
land bank Crédit Foncier d’Algérie and others.
In the seventies, in view of the growing demands of
internal and foreign trade and also for military and stra­
tegic purposes, work was launched on the construction of
railways. In 1870, the line from Constantine to Philippville
was completed, in 1871, the Algiers-Oran line, and in 1875,
18* 275
three lines—Bône-Tebessa, Bône-La Calle and Algiers-
Constantine—were built in one year. In 1881, the Oran rail­
way was built, which penetrated deep into the interior in
the south. A ll told, 2,030 kilometres of track had been laid
in Algeria by 1885.
In overseas trade the situation retained the trends of
1830-70. The increase in foreign trade in 1871-1914 was
a sign of Algeria’s growing importance as a market and a
raw material base for French industry. The following table
of Algeria’s imports and exports speaks for itself (annual
average in million francs):
Im ports • Exports

1871-1880 180.0 172.4

1881-1890 2 5 5.8 158.6
1891-1900 2 7 0.3 250.8
1914 527.0 3 7 5.0

Algeria imported mainly industrial goods from France.

In 1874, out of 270,000,000 francs of the overall value of
Algeria’s imports from France, 90,000,000 francs, i.e., one-
third, were accounted for by cloth and 22,000,000 by ma­
chines, metalware and other articles. This meant that the
very means of creating a national manufacturing industry in
Algeria was undermined and the country was doomed to
play the part of an agrarian and raw material appendage
of the French capitalist economy.
Nevertheless, the construction of roads, ports and various
other projects, the use of hired labour in agriculture and
in transport as well as the emergence of a number of small
enterprises of local significance (mainly for processing agri­
cultural produce) contributed to the formation and develop­
ment of the local proletariat. Originally, these were almost
exclusively French or European by birth. In the seventies,
these were printers, railway workers, builders, miners, and
the like. Gradually, however, Arab workers were taken oft
at the docks, in construction and in agriculture (somewhat
later in the mining industry). The absence of exact statis­
tical data makes it rather difficult to determine the number
of workers in Algeria in the seventies and nineties of the
19th century. All that can be said is that they were rela-.
tively small in number.
276
 The Algerian working class did not play a significant
part in the social and political life of the country at the
time. The only exception was 1870, when the French work­
ers took an active part in the movement of the Algerian
commune, and 1871, when the Arab agricultural workers
fought together with other participants in the Algerian
national liberation uprising. For many years there were no
workers’ organisations in Algeria. They came into being
later than in France and were comprised mainly of French­
men. As a rule, these organisations adopted a paternal and
assimilative attitude towards the Arabs and Berbers. In
essence, the working-class movement in Algeria first arose
as a social factor only after the Great October Socialist Rev­
olution of 1917 in Russia.
The numerous differences between the French and A lge­
rian workers stood in the way of working class unity in
Algeria. Most of the Algerians did not know French at
the time, which in itself prevented the establishment of
contacts with the European proletariat. The Europeans
enjoyed certain privileges. They received higher wages and
were given lighter and “cleaner” work. Moreover, they
also had political rights, which the Algerian workers did
not. The French colonial administration and the local
French bourgeoisie always tried to use these factors to set
the Algerian and French workers against each other, to
split the ranks of the proletariat in Algeria.
The alpha and omega of the French colonial policy in
Algeria was support for the privileged French minority
and oppression of the rightless Arab-Berber majority. The
whole Algerian population was divided into “citizens” (the
French) and “subjects” (the Algerians). The “citizens”
elected their deputies to the French Parliament, the munic­
ipalities and, beginning with 1898, to the Financial Delega­
tions, a body of autonomous administration, which dealt
with the local Algerian budget. One of the delegations was
comprised of French colonists, one of non-colonist French­
men and one (the smallest and partly appointed by the
governor-general) of native feudal leaders, who were the
obedient tools of the colonialists. Many of the feudalists
received French citizenship, ranks and decorations in return
for having betrayed the people’s national interests.
As for the “subjects”, they were deprived of the right to

277
vote and had to obey the arbitrary rule of the French
officials and officers without demur. The ttcitizens,, paid the
same taxes as in France, while the “subjects” were heavily
taxed by the colonial authorities. The “citizens” were tried
according to French laws, whereas a strict “native code”
was drawn up for the “subjects”. The colonial authorities
could throw them into prison without trial, flog them, banish
them to remote regions in the Sahara and confiscate their
property. “Subjects” were not allowed to put out newspapers
in their native tongue, to form their own political parties
or trade unions or to assemble without the permission of
the authorities. For the slightest misdemeanour against the
laws laid down by the French, collective fines were imposed
on whole villages, tribes and regions. Even worse were the
conditions of the “subjects” in the southern part of Algeria,
which had remained under the administration of the War
Ministry, and in which power was wielded by French mili­
tarists. Here the “subjects” were watched over exclusively
by “Arab bureaus” headed by “native affairs” officers.

THE ALGERIAN ARABS’ DEMANDS. In reply to the

land plunder, the brutal exploitation and the tyranny of
the colonial authorities, the native Algerians waged a per­
sistent struggle throughout the last quarter of the 19th cen­
tury and during the 20th century for the abolition of the
shameful “native code” and for the démocratisation of the
country’s political system.
National organisations came into being in Algeria for
the first time at the beginning of the 20th century, in con­
nection with the general upsurge of the bourgeois-democ­
ratic liberation movements in the Fast in the period of the
Asian people’s awakening. They encountered almost no
support among the masses, however, not only because of
the working class’ weakness, but also because of the national
bourgeoisie which had only begun to develop at the time,
and was restricting its activities almost exclusively to trade.
Most of the local intelligentsia was connected with the
bourgeoisie and had been almost completely assimilated, or
in any case, considerably Frenchified. Algeria’s first na­
tional organisations did not strive for independence. They
merely demanded equality between Algerian Arabs and
French and the abolition of the “native code”. They also
278
demanded that Algerians should have the rights of French
citizens, or, at most, Algeria should become autonomous
through the creation of local bodies of self-government with
broad representation of the native population.
The most moderate movement was that of the Miisiilfranks
(short for Moslem-French), who, having adopted the French
language and having received a French education, pressed
for equality within the framework of the French colonial
empire. They formed the Franco-Native Union and
others of its kind, but they lacked any definite form of or­
ganisation. Of a more resolute nature were the demands
of the Maghreb Union and the Algerian and Tunisian
Liberation Committee, which pressed for Algeria’s autonomy
in the name of what they called the Maghreb nation. There
was also a small group of feudal lords who placed their
hopes on the Turkish Sultan. Pan-Islamic propaganda
spread among all these elements, but it evoked no serious
response from the masses.
In 1912, in Algeria, there were isolated outbursts against
the colonial regime, mainly in the form of protests in the
press and passive civil disobedience. Owing to their restricted
and cliquish nature, however, these outbursts did nothing
to shake French supremacy in Algeria or bring about any
serious changes.
 CHAPTER XXI

THE SEIZURE
OF TUNISIA BY FRENCH IMPERIALISM

ITALY’S CLAIMS. Tunisia was the first Arab country to

be made a colony during the period of imperialism. It was
seized by France in 1881, i.e., a year before the British
conquest of Egypt. The French bourgeoisie, however, had
little by little been preparing for the take-over throughout
several decades of fierce struggle against its rivals in col­
onial plunder. For a long time Britain had been its chief
rival. In the seventies of the 19th century, however, a new
actor appeared on the Tunisian scene—Italy.
No sooner had Italy emerged as a national state than she
began to grow into an imperialist power with an enormous
colonial appetite. According to Bismarck, Italy had the
appetite of a jackal, only with rotten teeth. Italy was a
small, weak beast of prey, ousted at every step by stronger
beasts. In Tunisia, however, she achieved a certain degree
of success by availing herself of Britain’s support. The
Italians managed to secure a lead-mining concession in
Jebel-Recas, to forestall France in obtaining a telegraph
concession, and to buy thé concession for the Tunis-Goletta
railway from Britain. The Italian colonisation of Tunisia
and the founding of agricultural settlements there also
began in the seventies.
Taking advantage of France’s defeat in the war against
Prussia, in 1871, Italy attempted to impose an agreement
on Tunisia, which envisaged special privileges for the Italian
residents. The Bey decided to resist. The Italians then began
to prepare a naval expedition against Tunisia and only a
joint British, French and Turkish demarche forced them
temporarily to relinquish their plans.

PREPARATIONS FOR THE T U N ISIA N TAKE­

OVER. France opposed Italy’s claims and kept Tunisia for

280
herself. In fierce competition with rival firms, French
investors seized lands and concessions. They obtained con­
cessions for the construction of a railway from Tunis to the
Algerian border, for lead extraction, for the construction
of a port in Tunis, and so on. The French Société Marseilles
bought the huge estate of Enfida, covering about 90,000
hectares, i.e., nearly 350 square miles, which was intended
to be a kind of French strong point inside Tunisia.
French capitalists became more and more persistent in
demanding Tunisia’s complete conversion from a semi­
colony into a French colony. The practical aspect of
Tunisia’s annexation was raised at the Berlin Congress in
1878. Actually, what took place at the congress was that
the Ottoman Empire was divided between the Powers, and
France claimed her share.
France agreed to recognise the British and Austrian con­
quests (Cyprus and Bosnia, Herzegovina), and also Russia’s
expansion in the Balkans, under the condition that she be
given the appropriate compensation, which she was. The
compensation was not reflected in the Treaty of Berlin, but
France received the Powers’ unofficial permission to seize
Tunisia. Addressing Waddington, the French representa­
tive, Bismarck declared that the fruit was ripe and all they
had to do was pluck it. Germany was especially insistent
in encouraging French expansion in Tunisia, since Bismarck
felt this would bring a double advantage to Germany. In
the first place, it would distract France from plans of re­
vanche in Europe. Once she got tied up in African affairs,
France would be forced to abandon her preparations for a
European war. In the second place, the French clashed with
Britain and Italy over the African question. This played
into Bismarck’s hands, for while France remained hostile
towards Britain she could not fight in Europe, and an
offended Italy would be compelled to seek support in Ger­
many and Austria-Hungary.
In 1878, however, Britain did not bother to object to
French expansion in Tunisia. Britain, Salisbury declared,
had no special interests in Tunisia which could make her
regard the legitimate and increasing French influence with
apprehension or mistrust. At the time, Britain was preparing
to take over Egypt and had no objections to giving up
Tunisia to pay for this acquisition and for Cyprus.

281
 Turkey and Italy were France’s sole enemies in Tunisia,
but these France could afford to ignore.

T H E FRENCH PROTECTORATE. The actual seizure

of Tunisia was carried out three years later, in 1881. As
usual, a border incident was provoked and the French ad­
vanced into Tunisia under the pretext of maintaining order.
A 30,000-strong French army crossed the Algeria-Tunisian
border on April 12, 1881. A few days later, 8,000 troops
disembarked at Bizerta and advanced rapidly on the capi­
tal. On May 12, the French army surrounded Kasr-Said, the
Bey’s palace in Bardo (a suburb in Tunis) and forced the Bey
to sign a treaty which became known as the Treaty of Kasr-
Said (the name of the palace) or the Treaty of Bardo (the
name of the place where it was signed).
The word-protectorate” was not used in the Bardo Treaty
but, in effect, this was an agreement on Tunisia’s colonial
enslavement. According to this treaty, the Bey assented to
Tunisia’s occupation by French troops under the pretext of
“restoring order and security on the border and coast”.
France took upon herself the conduct of Tunisia’s foreign
relations and guaranteed to carry out the agreements con­
cluded between the Tunisian Government and the European
Powers. France also obtained the right of regulating Tuni­
sia’s financial organisation in such a way as to ensure the
payment of the public debt and guarantee the rights of
Tunisia’s creditors. To supervise the implementation of the
treaty, France appointed a minister-resident who became the
sole negotiator between the French Government and the Tuni­
sian authorities. Finally, France pledged her aid to the Tuni­
sian Bey should he, personally, or his dynasty be threatened.
A ll the Powers, except Turkey and Italy, recognised the
French seizure of Tunisia. The Italian and Turkish govern­
ments protested, but in vain. The Turks declared that the
Tunisian Bey was a Turkish functionary and, as such, was
not competent to conclude international agreements. The
Turkish Sultan continued to regard himself as the Tunisian
sovereign right up to World War I and only on the basis
of international legal agrëements concluded after the war
did he give up his rights to Tunisia.
The Tunisian people were the only ones who offered any
real resistance to the French. Soon after the conclusion of
282
the Bardo Treaty, a fresh uprising flared up in Tunisia and
for a long time the French had to fight for every inch of
land. The insurgents lacked clear-cut political organisa­
tion. They were led by representatives of a religious brother­
hood whose actions were guided by the medieval slogans
of the crusades. The struggle lasted for several months and
on July 15, 1881, after a ten-day bombardment, the French
captured Sfax. In October, they occupied Kairouan and on
November 19, Gafsa. It was not until November 30, 1881,
that the French, having occupied Gabès, finally managed
to suppress the uprising and take over the entire country.
Having conquered Tunisia, the French set about creating
a colonial state and legal superstructure to ensure the
domination of French monopoly capital there. On June 9,
1881, in elaboration of the Bardo Treaty, the Bey had
signed a decree making the French representative the sole
official intermediary in Tunisia’s mutual relations with
other Powers. The Bey had thus formally declined all inde­
pendence in foreign affairs. On June 8, 1883, a Franco-
Tunisian Convention was signed in La Marsa, depriving
him of independence in domestic affairs as well. It was
in this convention that the word “protectorate” first ap-
eared in print. The La Marsa Convention confirmed the
Î reaty of 1881 and compelled the Bey to put into effect any
administrative, legal and financial reforms which the French
Government might deem useful. The convention fixed the
sum of the basic debt (125,000,000 francs) and the floating
debt (17,000,000 francs). France herself undertook to satisfy
the creditors’ claims. On October 2, 1884, the International
Finance Commission was dissolved and all Tunisia’s finan­
cial affairs passed into the French resident-general’s con­
trol. According to a decree issued by the President of France
on November 10, 1884, the resident-general was empowered
to ratify and implement “all the decrees issued by His
Highness the Bey”. On June 23, 1885, the resident-general
was invested with “the full authority of the Republic”
within Tunisia’s boundaries. A ll the French ground and
naval forces in Tunisia were placed under his control as
well as all the administrative bodies supervising the affairs
both of the European and local Tunisian population.
In the provinces, the resident-general exercised his
authority through the agency of the French civil controllers,
283
which was set up on October 4, 1884. The civil controllers
were subordinate to the resident-general and could be
appointed and dismissed only with his approval. The entire
country, with the exception of the southern territories, which
had been placed under the immediate control of the French
military, was divided into thirteen districts of civil control.
Each district was comprised of one or several kaidats (ad­
ministrative and territorial divisions) headed by kaids, local
Tunisian officials, who were appointed by the Bey on the
orders of the French authorities. Formally, the kaids were
responsible to the Bey government. Actually, they were
wholly dependent on the French civil controllers, who, ac­
cording to the circular of July 22, 1887, had the right to
“supervise the native chiefs’ administrative activities
and to give them orders either orally or through correspon­
dence”.
In this way, by a series of decrees, a colonial state and
legal superstructure which ensured the French monopolies’
dictatorship and served their interests was set up in the
first years of the protectorate. In effect, the French resident-
general wielded absolute power. Although the Tunisian
feudal state had not been destroyed (herein lies the differ­
ence between a protectorate and an ordinary colony), it
was turned into an auxiliary apparatus of foreign power.
At the head stood the French resident-general and under
him, powerful administrative bosses, all of them French,
who supervised each separate branch of state administra­
tion. The Bey remained on the throne, but he no longer
exercised any power, having no right to issue decrees or
orders without the French resident-general’s approval. True,
he retained two ministers (the First Minister and the
Minister of the Pen) and several departments, but these
were controlled by French advisers. A ll the state revenues
were handled by the French resident-general. As a reward
for having betrayed Tunisia’s national interests, the Bey
received 1,250,000 francs annually for the upkeep of his
family, court and government.

ITALY A N D THE FRENCH PROTECTORATE.

France had taken over Tunisia in the teeth of vehement but
futile protests from Italy. But Italy had no intention of
renouncing her claims. In spite of everything, the Italian
284
Government continued to send its agents to Tunisia and to
encourage Italian colonisation. Italian farmers and merchants
settled in Tunisia and Italian firms and land societies
appeared. Driven by need, many Italians emigrated to
Tunisia in search of work and formed a rapidly growing
colony there.
On the foreign scene, Italy concluded a whole series of
treaties and agreements against France and French colonial
expansion in North Africa. In reply to the establishment of
a French protectorate over Tunisia, on May 20, 1882, Italy
signed the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria-
Hungary. In 1887 and 1891, she concluded the Madrid
agreements with Spain against French claims in Maghreb,
to which Austria-Hungary also adhered.
At the end of the 19th century, however, Italy began to
reconsider her foreign policy and agreed to a compromise
with France on colonial questions. In 1896, she recognised
the French protectorate over Tunisia, having received a
number of advantages for herself. According to the agree­
ment of 1896, France recognised the Italian residents’
special position in Tunisia. The Italians received the right
to settle in Tunisia, to buy real estate and to build their
own schools and hospitals.
The Italians’ numerical superiority and their fairly im­
portant positions in Tunisia was a constant source of anxiety
to the French colonialists, who did all they could to limit
Italian immigration and assimilate the Italian immigrants.
Nevertheless, up till 1931, the Italian population invariably
outnumbered the French in Tunisia, a fact which was
widely used by Italian nationalistic propaganda and
diplomacy.

TU N ISIA UN DER THE FRENCH IMPERIALIST

YOKE. The French protectorate cleared the way for un­
restricted exploitation of the Tunisian people and the
plunder of their national resources by the French mono­
polies. People came to Tunisia in search of easy profit, seiz­
ing lands, concessions and contracts.
Land plunder in Tunisia was as widespread as in Algeria,
but developed faster. The colonial authorities did all they
could to encourage and even organise French colonisation.
In the very first years of the protectorate, a number of
decrees were issued ensuring the mass expropriation of the
Arab lands. Already by July 1, 1885, a land law was pro­
mulgated, introducing land immatriculation according to
the Torrens system, which entailed the public examination
of land tenure rights by a special Land Tribunal. It also
entailed the registration of the land with the annulment of
the rights which had been declared null and void. Imma­
triculation offered scope for legalised land seizure and for
the “protection” of the French colonists’ rights against the
former owners’ claims. The French land legislation was
applied to the immatriculated lands and the banks readily
handed out loans on the security of the immatriculated
lands.
The French bought most of the land privately without
any direct help from the authorities (“unofficial colonisa­
tion”). However, the communal lands belonging to the
tribes and especially the waqfs (inalienable property dedi­
cated to pious aims) could not pass to new owners. To put
an end to this and to make it easier for the French to buy
any land they wanted, new laws passed in the protectorate
(the decrees of 1885, 1898 and 1905) permitted long-term
leases and the exchange and purchase of the waqf land. In
this way, although waqf land tenure was not abolished, the
French colonists were given ample opportunity to buy this
land.
In 1892, the protectorate government began the process
of official colonisation, as already practised in Algeria.
Official colonisation may be described as the twofold re­
distribution of land tenure. At first the colonial authorities
confiscated the land from the Arab proprietors, concen­
trated it in their own hands, and then sold it for next to
nothing to the French colonists. A special colonisation fund
was set up in 1897 for the purchase of land for colonisation
purposes. In 1898, the public waqf administration was
obliged to allot up to 2,000 hectares annually to the state
“in fairly large plots suitable for cultivation”. The decrees
of 1890, 1896 and 1903 on the woodland and the “dead
lands” (mawat) abolished collective tribal landownership
without even acknowledging the Tunisian tribes’ rights of
ownership over their communal land. The Tunisian nomads
and semi-nomads became mere users of land they had for­
merly owned. At the same time, part of the communal land
286
was confiscated from the tribes under the pretext of its
being “excess land”, and handed over to the colonisation fund.
A small group of French businessmen and speculators
grew fabulously rich on the mass expropriation and sale of
land “in the Algerian manner”, which ruined the Tunisian
peasantry and deprived it of its property. French land-
ownership in Tunisia increased from 107,000 hectares in
1881 to 443,000 hectares in 1892 and 882,000 hectares in
1912. Moreover, by 1912, 135,000 hectares were owned by
the Italians and other Europeans. Unlike Algeria, in Tuni­
sia there were no small colonists except for the Italians,
who, as a rule, owned small farms. French colonisation was
openly speculative in character. “Many hectares, but few
people”, as Jean Jaures described it. The French colonists
and joint-stock companies bought huge estates and then
resold them to other colonists or even to Tunisians. Large
tracts of land accrued to capitalist companies such as the
Société Franco-Africaine, Compagnie de Phosphate et de
Chemin de Fer de Gafsa, Société de Ferme Française and
Omniom Immobilière Tunisienne. Among the “colonists”
there were Parisian bankers, capitalists and concessionaires
who had never seen Tunisia and who managed their estates
through their agents or through dummies. Huge latifun-
diums were purchased by generals who had participated in
Tunisia’s conquest and by diplomats who had helped estab­
lish a protectorate over Tunisia. It was enough for a bour­
geois newspaper to expose these laws and the editor would
be given an estate in Tunisia to keep him quiet. It was
enough for the deputies and senators to demand that the
abuses practised in Tunisia be investigated and the mem­
bers of the investigating Parliamentary Commission were
also provided with estates and, naturally, the Commission
proved these claims to be groundless. This was how many
bourgeois statesmen, deputies, senators and newspaper
editors acquired large estates in Tunisia.
Under this type of colonisation most of the colonised
land was leased to the big Tunisian leaseholders, who
administered their estates by traditional feudal methods.
On the colonists’ land as well as on the Tunisian feudalists’
estates such forms of exploitation as the khammasat, mé­
tayage, and mugaras, were widespread. Capitalist produc­
tion relations developed extremely slowly. True, individual

287
colonists attempted to organise farms with the use of hired
labour for growing grain and other agricultural produce.
Prior to World W ar I, these farms, except in the sphere of
viniculture and wine-making, were not extensively devel­
oped. Hired immigrant workers (mainly from Italy) were
employed in wine-making. In 1913, vineyards covered an
area of 17,942 hectares and approximately 300,000 gallons
of wine were produced.
Having seized Tunisia, the French monopolies turned it
into a market for French industry and a raw material base.
The influx of French goods dealt a severe blow to Tunisian
craft production. In the first twenty-five years of the pro­
tectorate’s existence, the number of artisans in Tunis
dropped from between six and seven thousand to a mere
two thousand. The only branch of the Tunisian economy
that developed rapidly under the French protectorate was
mining. Lead ore began to be exported in the very first
years of occupation. In 1899, the Compagnie de Phosphate
et de Chemin de Fer de Gafsa launched the commercial
exploitation of the phosphorite deposits that had been dis­
covered in 1885. The mining and export of iron-ore was
begun in 1908.
The mining of ore and phosphorite was carried out by
several French companies which were closely linked with
the monopoly capital of the metropolis. Relatively large
capital investments were also made by Germans, Italians
and Belgians. As for the national bourgeoisie, it had no
hand whatsoever in the exploitation of Tunisia’s mines.
Forced into the background by its financial and technical
weakness, the national bourgeoisie owned mainly small
enterprises, most of which were engaged in processing agri­
cultural produce.
Railways were built in Tunisia to meet the needs of
colonisation and the mining industry. Within a relatively
short time Tunisia’s railway lines increased in length from
224 kilometres in 1881 to 1,375 kilometres in 1909. Ports
and highways were also built.
The gradual growth of the colonists’ capitalist farming,
of railway and port construction, the development of the
mining industry and transport contributed to the emergence
and formation of the Tunisian working class. The workers
were very badly off. Legislation to protect them was non-
2SS
existent. The organisation of labour at nearly all the fac­
tories was typically colonial in nature. Foreign workers
and administrative staff received a “colonial bonus” and
enjoyed a number of rights that placed them in a privileged
position in comparison to the local workers. The Tunisian
workers had no trade union organisations. Politically they
remained under the influence of the national bourgeoisie
and backed its anti-imperialist demands.
The native population was deprived of all rights. The
French filled all the more or less important posts in the
state apparatus. Colonial bureaucratic tyranny, racial dis­
crimination and national oppression prevailed throughout
the country. The Constitution of 1861 had lost all meaning
and was not renewed. What political and civil rights the
Tunisians had once possessed were flagrantly violated by
the colonial administration. The Decree on the Press issued
on October 14, 1884, forbade newspapers on pain of strict
punishment to criticise “His Highness the Bey, the princes
of his dynasty and the religious cults”. It also forbade them
to criticise “the French Republic’s rights and authority in
Tunisia”. The Decree of September 15, 1888, stipulated that
“no association could be formed other than with the govern­
ment’s permission”. According to the Decree of March 13,
1905, meetings could be held “freely” only on the condition
that they were not for the purpose of discussing political or
religious questions.
For a long time there were no representative institutions
in Tunisia. It was only in 1891 that the Consultative Con­
ference (a quasi-representative body of Tunisia’s French
population) was formed. It consisted of representatives of
French economic organisations (the chambers of commerce
and agriculture). Some were appointed by the government,
others were elected. Only the French colonists had the right
to vote during the elections to the Consultative Conference.
In 1907, however, sixteen Tunisian delegates appointed by
the protectorate government were admitted. In 1910, the
Consultative Conference was divided into two sections—
French and native—like the Algerian Finance Delegations.

TH E NATIO NA L LIBERATION MOVEMENT. THE

YOUNG TUNISIANS. Colonisation, national oppression
and the absence of political rights evoked widespread dis-
19-573 289
content in Tunisia, affecting the national bourgeoisie, some
feudal circles and also . the working class and peasantry.
Even at the end of the 19th century, there had been peasant
disturbances in Tunisia and the first Young Tunisian or­
ganisations and societies had been formed to oppose the
protectorate and bring about Tunisia’s national revival.
The upsurge of the national movement in Tunisia coin­
cided with the general awakening of Asia. The year 1905
marked the formation of the Republican Party which in­
cluded the French petty-bourgeois democrats and the Tuni­
sian nationalist intellectuals. Soon the Party split and the
Arab nationalists, headed by Abd al-Aziz Taalbi, withdrew
from its ranks and in 1909, joined the Tunisian Party (Hizb
Tunisi), which had been formed in 1907 by Ali Bash Hamba
and Beshir Sfar. The split had been caused by differences
over the question of nationalities. The Republican Party
favoured the assimilation of Tunisians and restricted itself
to demands for equality, while the Tunisian Party advo­
cated large-scale constitutional reforms and, in the final
analysis, independence. The Tunisian Party advanced the
slogan of the “Algerian-Tunisian Nation” and strove to
secure statehood for this nation.
In .1911, the Tunisian Party carried out an extensive
political campaign in connection with Italian aggression in
Tripolitania. The Tunisians collected money and medica­
ments. In various towns there were clashes between the
Arabs and Europeans, which in some places grew into big
demonstrations. The culminating point was the Jallaz inci­
dent of November 7 and 8, 1911. Jallaz was a Moslem
cemetery in Tunis. The local authorities’ decision to imma-
triculate the cemetery led to a protest demonstration of
several thousand, which was shot down by French troops
and police.
In February 1912, a group of Tunisians demanded that
the Tramway Company put an end to the discrimination of
the Arabs, that it hire them on an equal basis with the
Europeans and give them equal pay for equal work. When
the administration refused to comply with these demands,
the urban population launched a boycott. The affair began
to take a serious turn. The frightened authorities declared
a state of siege in Tunisia, closed down a number of news­
papers, banned the Tunisian Party and arrested its leaders.
290
In March 1912, Abd al-Aziz Taalbi and Ali Bash Hamba
were arrested and banished from the country.
In 1913, Taalbi returned to Tunisia and renewed his
campaign, while Ali Bash Hamba carried on his activities
abroad.
The Young Tunisian leaders had had hopes of coming
to a “mutual understanding” with the French Government,
which they tried to persuade into making concessions to the
national-liberation movèment and also into helping Turkey
and Kaiser Germany. The Germans, in turn, were nothing
loathe to make use of the Tunisian national liberation move­
ment. A secret memorandum drawn up by the German Gen­
eral Staff at the beginning of 1914 pointed to the need for
giving all possible support to the North African Moslems’
struggle against French domination and also the need for
normalising relations with them and assisting the Moslem
national societies’ activities. Such relations were actually
cultivated during the war, when several German agents
were sent to North Africa to prevent the French from using
Algeria and Tunisia as a source of strategic raw material
and manpower.
Counting on the Young Turks’ and Germans’ assistance
during World War I, the Young Tunisian leaders prepared
for an anti-French uprising in North Africa. These hopes
for help from abroad led to a certain underestimation of
the forces and potentialities of the mass political movement
in Tunisia itself and, consequently, to a certain degree of
isolation from the masses.
 CHAPTER XXII

THE FRENCH CONQUEST OF MOROCCO

THE CAPITULATIONS. Throughout the entire 19th

century, unlike Algeria and Tunisia, Morocco retained for­
mal independence. In reality, however, she had already
become a semi-colony of the European Powers. Morocco
was too weak and backward not to be taken over and only
the rivalry between them delayed her conversion into a
colony proper for so long.
The end of the 18th century saw the rapid development
of capitalism in Europe. Morocco, on the contrary, was still
wallowing in a state of medieval stagnation and feudal
anarchy. She lagged far behind the European Powers and
was incapable of withstanding their onslaught. Having lost
a number of wars to the European Powers, she was forced
into unequal agreements with them. Back in 1767, a treaty
had been concluded between France and the Moroccan Sul­
tan according to which consular jurisdiction, unlike the
treaty of 1631, became the unilateral privilege of the French
subjects in Morocco and did not apply to the Moroccan
subjects in France. The capitulations for the French mer­
chants and residents were considerably expanded by the
agreement of 1767. They began to enjoy not only judicial
but also tax immunity.
The protégé, an institution which even the Turkish capi­
tulations had not possessed, was also exempted from
taxation. The protégés were natives, subjects of the Moroc­
can Sultan, who worked in the service of French residents.
Each French merchant could hire the Moroccans to serve him
and they were automatically affected by the capitulations.
They stopped paying taxes (although this was not envisaged
in the agreements) and enjoyed virtual judicial immunity.
They could be tried only by French consuls, not by

292
the Moroccan court. This kind of tax and judicial immunity
was so attractive to the Moroccans, especially the Moroccan
feudalists and merchants, that they often had recourse to
French “protection” in order to avoid taxation and unfair
judges and declared themselves the consuls’ and residents’
employees. In this way France built up inside Morocco a
wide network of agents drawn from among the local feudal­
ists and merchants, which was not dependent on the Moroc­
can Sultan and eluded his sovereignty. The capitulations
applied to all Moroccans connected with the French mer­
chants, and even to the métayers. Most of the French mer­
chants in Morocco engaged in agriculture, mainly in live­
stock breeding. They had no land and put the cattle in the
care of peasants on the basis of the métayage system. Even
these herdsmen did not pay taxes to the Moroccan Sultan
and did not come under the jurisdiction of his courts. These
capitulations, which were an inferior copy of the Ottoman
Empire’s capitulations, later extended to a number of other
Powers.
Spain had also concluded an agreement with Morocco in
the same year as France (1767) and had already become a
capitulation Power by then. Other Powers received capitula­
tions in the 19th century. Some of them concluded direct
capitulation agreements, others concluded agreements of most­
favoured-nation treatment and thus received capitulations.
Besides France and Spain, Austria, Sardinia (later Sar­
dinia’s rights were ceded to Italy), the United States of
America, Britain, Holland and Belgium all acquired capit­
ulations in Morocco. In 1880, the capitulations became the
subject of a special international convention. An interna­
tional conference which was summoned in Madrid in the
summer of 1880 worked out a universal convention on the
capitulations and on the protégé system in Morocco. On
the basis of this convention, apart from the above-mentioned
states, the capitulations were extended to the other members
of the Madrid Conference, namely, Germany, Sweden, Nor­
way, Denmark and Portugal. Moreover, in 1881, the Madrid
Convention was joined by Russia, who had also received
capitulations.
Besides capitulations, the Europeans pressed for the right
to buy land and to own other real estate in Morocco. Spain
was the first to achieve this on the basis of a peace treaty

293
in 1799. She was followed by England, on the strength of
an agreement concluded in 1856. Other Powers enjoyed
this right by virtue of the most-favoured-nation treatment
granted to them. Finally in 1880, the Madrid Convention
granted this right to all the capitulation Powers of Europe.
Unequal agreements were concluded not only on capitu­
lations, but also on such questions as customs-tariffs. In
particular, the Anglo-Moroccan Treaty of 1856 introduced
tariffs in Morocco which made it possible for British mer­
chants and, later, for other European merchants, on the
basis of the most-favoured-nation treatment, to import their
goods into Morocco without hindrance of any kind. In
1890, Germany concluded an even more profitable commer­
cial agreement which considerably reduced (by as much as
a half in some cases) the former customs-tariffs. Once again
on the basis of the most-favoured-nation treatment the
terms of the treaty were extended to other European states.

TERRITORIAL SEIZURES. At the dawn of the new

era the Europeans had seized a number of territories in
Morocco. Between the 15th and 17th centuries the Portu­
guese owned the entire western coast of Morocco, Spain held
a number of military posts, presidios, on the Northern coast,
and the British had Tangier. By the beginning of the 19th
century, the Portuguese had been forced out of Morocco,
but Spain still retained her presidios. These were Ceuta
Melilla, the islands of Alhucemas and Penon-de-Velez.
These presidios served as bases for Spain’s economic and
political penetration into the Moroccan interior and as
springboards for the Spanish campaigns against the neigh­
bouring Moroccan tribes. In 1848 the Spanish took over
the Zafran Islands. During the Spanish-Moroccan war of
1859-60, which was described in some detail by Engels
in his military despatches published in the New York
Daily Tribune, the Spanish seized Tetuan. But the British
intervened in the peace talks and prevented the Spanish
from reaping the fruits of victory. Tetuan was restored to
the Moroccans and Spain received only the region of Ifni.
During the 19th century, France also invaded Moroccan
territory on more than one occasion. In 1844, the French
violated the Moroccan borders in pursuit of Abd el-Kader.
Marshal Bugeaud was supported by the French fleet, which

294
bombarded Tangier and Mogador. Under pressure from
Britain, France was unable ot use her victories for immedi­
ate territorial seizures, but she deliberately refused to draw
up a definite boundary line between her Algerian domains
and Morocco. According to the Lalla-Marnia treaty (1845),
the borderline was fixed only on a small strip of land in
the north. Further south, a process of delimiting the nomad
tribes rather than the territory took place. Some of the
tribes passed under French, others under Moroccan control.
During the 19th century, France took advantage of this
vague definition of frontiers to seize a number of Moroccan
oases adjacent to Algeria and at the outset of the 20th
century, she placed the border zone under her direct rule.
On July 20, 1901, France concluded a border treaty with
Morocco for the formation of a mixed Franco-Moroccan
Commission, which was to set up French and Moroccan
posts all along the border and to hold an option among
the population of the border regions. The activities of this
commission resulted in the conclusion of a new border treaty
in Algiers on April 20, 1902, between France and Morocco.
According to the new treaty, the Moroccan Government
undertook to “consolidate its authority” in the border re­
gions and France pledged her aid, which consisted in send­
ing her troops and police in to the Moroccan border region.
France set up her own military posts and customs houses
and also gained the right to arrest and try criminals on
Moroccan territory. French border commissars, who took
over complete control in the Moroccan border regions, were
introduced.
The result of the treaty was that in 1902, French troops
under General Lyautey entered the Moroccan border re­
gion and annexed the Moroccan oasis of Colomb-Bechar to
Algeria. This was the beginning of the gradual occupation
of Morocco by French troops.
But France could not quietly take over Morocco while the
imperialists were competing fiercely for the partition of
the world. This could only be done with the Powers’ ap­
proval and appropriate diplomatic preparations had to be
made. Accordingly, at the beginnig of the 20th century,
France concluded a series of secret agreements with the
European Powers, promising them all sorts of compensa­
tions for freedom of action in Morocco.

295
 FRENCH AGREEMENTS W ITH ITALY (1900), BRIT­
A IN (1904) A N D SPAIN (1904). The first agreement of
this kind was concluded in Rome between France and Italy
in the form of letters dated December 14 and 16, 1900 (rati­
fied in 1902). Under this agreement, France promised Italy
the vilayet of Tripoli, which belonged to Turkey. She
declared that she had no claim to the vilayet and would
leave it outside her sphere of influence. In other words, she
was offering Italy a free hand in Tripoli. Italy, in turn,
declared that she did not object to “French actions in Mo­
rocco, which ensued from her neighbouring position with
regard to this Empire”. Furthermore, it was stipulated that
“in event of an alteration of the political and territorial
status of Morocco”, i.e., in event of open annexation, “Italy
reserves the right, on the basis of reciprocity, to spread
her influence in Tripolitania and Cyrenaica”.
Thus Morocco was “exchanged” for Tripoli. Morocco did
not belong to France nor did Tripoli belong to Italy, never­
theless, they concluded a deal at the expense of nations
weaker than themselves.
The next agreement, similar in character, but far more
significant, was the famous Anglo-French agreement of
1904, which laid the foundation for the Entente. It was
signed in London on April 8, 1904. According to this agree­
ment, Britain and France executed a “mutual absolution of
their sins”. France pledged not to “obstruct the action of
Great Britain in that country by asking that a limit of time
be fixed for the British occupation or in any other manner”.1
Britain, in turn, recognised “the right of France as a Power
bordering on Morocco over a large expanse of territory, to
supervise the tranquillity of Morocco and render her aid
in all reforms, administrative, economic, financial and
m ilitary. . . ”. In other words, Britain left Morocco at the
mercy of France, entrusting her with economic, financial,
military and police control over that country. In a public
declaration Britain and France stated that they had no
intention of altering Egypt’s or Morocco’s status, but in the
secret clauses which were added to the treaty they en­
visaged the time when “owing to the force of circumstances,
they would be compelled to change their policy with regard

1 L. Cromer, op cit., Vol. II, p. 391.

296
to Egypt or Morocco”. This was another typical dead of
the era of imperialism concluded at the expense of the
weaker nations. France “bartered” Morocco for Egypt and
received from Britain freedom of action in Morocco.
A vital feature of the Anglo-French treaty was the divi­
sion of Morocco into spheres of influence. This was laid
down in the secret part of the agreement. North Morocco
became a sphere of Spanish influence and Tangier passed
under international control. Moreover, Britain demanded,
and this demand was accepted by France, the complete
demilitarisation of the Mediterranean and the northern part
of Morocco’s Atlantic coast. France and Spain promised
to abstain from the erection of any fortifications in this
area.
Having insisted on the partition of Morocco and the incor­
poration of the northern part of Morocco in the Spanish
zone, Britain encouraged France to negotiate with Spain.
In October 1904, France concluded an agreement with
Spain in Paris which, like the Anglo-French agreement, fell
into two parts, public and secret. In the public part of the
declaration, which was published in the press, France and
Spain announced that they favoured the integrity of the
Moroccan Empire under the Sultan’s sovereignty. This was
sheer hypocrisy, since in the secret part of the agreement
the so-called integral empire was divided into two spheres
of influence: French and Spanish. The secret part stipulated
that if the political status of Morocco and the Sherifian
government proved incapable of existence or if the further
maintenance of the status quo proved impossible, due to
the weakness of this government and its complete inability
to establish law and order, or for any other reason ascer­
tained by common assent, Spain could freely realise her
actions in the given region, which henceforth formed the
sphere of her influence.
Spain, in turn, guaranteed France a free hand in her
sphere of influence. True, she did so in a somewhat hidden
form, not directly. Spain joined the Anglo-French treaty,
thereby giving France full freedom of action.
Germany’s position gave the French diplomats serious
cause for anxiety. In 1904, they explored the ground, trying
to discover Germany’s attitude towards Morocco and, just
in case, to reach some sort of agreement. The Germans

297
replied that, strictly speaking, they had no interests in Mo­
rocco and the French felt they were safe in this respect. As
for Russia, she was France’s ally and indeed did not display
any special interest in Morocco.

THE LOAN OF 1904 A N D THE MISSION OF

TALANDIER. Regarding the diplomatic preparations as
finished, France set about conquering Morocco by the usual,
well-tried methods.
First of all, in June 1904, the French banks granted
Morocco a crippling loan. The Moroccan Sultan, Abd al-
Aziz, had a weakness for bicycles, gramophones, cabarets
and other attributes of “civilisation”, on which he spent a
considerable part of the state budget. Great sums were also
needed for the continuous struggle against the rebellious
tribes. In short, the sultan became entangled in floating
debts and France offered him a loan of 62,500,000 francs.
Sixty per cent of the revenues from the Moroccan customs
houses were taken as a security for the loan. A special debt
administration was set up to supervise the Makhzan loan (the
central government was known as makhzan, an Arabic word
that originally meant storehouse).
At the beginning of 1905, a French mission headed by
René Talandier arrived in Morocco. Talandier had been
instructed to hold talks on administrative, police, financial
and economic “reforms” in Morocco and a plan of “re­
forms” was soon drafted. The proposals were as follows:
1) to organise a Moroccan police force under French
supervision (under Spanish supervision in the Spanish
sphere of influence);
2) to set up under the French banks’ control a Moroccan
state bank which would issue Moroccan currency, safeguard
the funds of the Moroccan Treasury, subsidise French con­
cessions in Morocco, in particular, the construction of a
railway line from Tangier to Fez, and to grant loans;
3) to encourage in every possible way the issue of con­
cessions (railway, port, forest, mining and many others)
to French trusts.
The realisation of these “reforms” would have meant
Morocco’s conversion into the semblance of a French pro­
tectorate. Seeing no other way out, Abd al-Aziz was about
to accept the Talandier mission’s plan, when something
298
quite unforeseen happened. Kaiser Germany intervened
in Morocco’s affairs.

THE TANGIER CONFLICT OF 1905. On March 31,

1905, Kaiser Wilhelm II’s yacht approached Tangier. W il­
helm II disembarked and set out for Tangier on a white
horse, where he made a speech to the crowd of Moroccans
that had gathered round him. He said he had come to pay
a visit to his friend, the Sultan, whose sovereignty he would
defend, and that he intended to uphold the interests of
Germany in Morocco. He then returned to his yacht and
sailed away. The visit had a tremendous effect. What it
amounted to was that Germany would either take over
Morocco herself or would place it under her influence.
Incidentally, W ilhelm II himself, whose dream was the
Baghdad railway and the plans connected with it, had a
certain distaste for the whole Moroccan adventure. From
his correspondence with the Imperial Chancellor, Bülow, it
is evident that Wilhelm made the trip to Tangier under
pressure from the chancellor and on his insistence. He even
reproaches Bülow for having made him ride on a white
horse, of which he was physically afraid, and complains
of the crowd of tramps and rogues which surrounded him
in Tangier.
After the Kaiser’s visit, the Moroccan Sultan, inspired
by the German diplomats, declined the Talandier mission’s
proposals. He declared that he could not accept the pro­
gramme of reforms on his own, that the question was of
international significance and should therefore be referred
to an international conference. Germany formally sup­
ported the Sultan’s demand. France flatly rejected it. The
Tangier conflict arose.
It did not last long. France was forced to capitulate for
two reasons. The French army was still not prepared for
a war with Germany and, secondly, her ally, Russia, was
preoccupied with the war in the Far East and with inci­
pient revolution. The French Foreign Minister, Delcassé, an
advocate of an active policy in Morocco and one of the
organisers of the Entente, was compelled to resign, and
the banker Rouvier, a financier closely connected with the
German banks, and even described by some French journal­
ists as a German agent, became Foreign Minister and Prime
Minister of France. Rouvier concluded an agreement with
Germany and consented to take part in an international
conference, having recognised in advance the following four
principles:
1} the Moroccan Sultan’s sovereignty and independence;
2) the integrity of his empire;
3) the economic freedom and equality of the Powers in
Morocco;
4) police and financial reforms in Morocco on the basis
of an international agreement.
These four principles dealt a severe blow to French
plans. True, Germany pledged to recognise France’s “lawful
interests and rights in Morocco” as long as they did not
contradict the above-mentioned principles, but this declara­
tion did not change matters.

THE ALGECIRAS CONFERENCE OF 1906. The inter­

national conference on the Moroccan question met in the
small Spanish town of Algeciras (near Gibraltar) on Janu­
ary 15, 1906. Apart from France and Germany, it was
attended by Britain, Russia, the U.S.A., Italy, Spain, Aus­
tria-Hungary, Belgium, Holland, Sweden, Portugal and
Morocco. The conference lasted nearly three months and
did not end until April 7, 1906. As the length of the con­
ference indicates, the diplomatic struggle with the balance
of forces unfavourable to Germany was intense.
France’s demands were backed by Britain, Russia, the
U.S.A., Italy and Spain. France had special agreements on
Morocco with Britain, Italy and Spain and an alliance with
Russia. Because of their dependence on France or Britain,
such states as Belgium and Portugal also joined the bloc.
Germany was virtually isolated and even Austria-Hungary,
Germany’s ally, saw no reason to support her. If the fact
of the summoning of the conference had been a diplomatic
success for Germany, the General Act adopted by the
Algeciras Conference was a diplomatic defeat for her. For­
mally, the General Act was based on the four principles
on which Germany had insisted. Actually, at the conference
France received a mandate for the control of the Moroccan
state and economy.
What actually happened at the Algeciras Conference
was that the French plan of reform was adopted and France
300
was charged with its execution. Despite the fact that the
Algeciras Conference officially declared the independence
and integrity of the Sherifian Empire, its results were
regarded by the French as a signal to begin the seizure and
division of Morocco.
The General Act of th< ^ r 'aimed
a number of Moroccan were
manned by police forces under European supervision. In
the Spanisn zone, the police were under Spanish supervision,
and in the French zone, they were under French supervision.
The two ports of Tangier and Casablanca, where the police
force was set up under mixed Franco-Spanish control,
formed an exception.
The Algeciras Conference also provided for the institu­
tion of the Morocco State Bank. Any Power that had
participated in the conference could claim a hand in the
running of the bank. It was decided that for every bank
share granted to one of the participating Powers France
should receive three such shares. Making use of false partic­
ipants and also of her three-to-one advantage, France
gained absolute predominance in the bank.
The conference at Algeciras worked out regulations on
the struggle against the illegal import of arms into Morocco
and against smuggling and on the customs system. The
application of these regulations on the Algerian border was
entrusted to France, in the area bordering on the presidios,
i.e., in the Spanish zone, to the Spanish, and in the ports—
to the entire diplomatic or consular corps.
The conference established that all the Moroccan rail­
ways, ports, means of communication and so on were to
belong to the Makhzan, i.e., the Moroccan Government, and
were to be impartially adjudicated irrespective of the ten­
derer’s nationality. The wording of this point seemed to cor­
respond to the principle of “economic liberty and equality”.
It was France, however, that acquired the concession for
the construction of a port in Casablanca, as well as the deci­
sive role in building a railway from Tangier into the
Moroccan interior.

TH E FRENCH A N D SPANISH OCCUPATION

(1907-08). THE UPRISING OF 1907. Immediately after
the Algeciras Conference, France began the occupation of
301
 the main regions of Morocco. At the end of 1906, she dis­
patched her fleet to Tangier for the ostensible purpose of
protecting the Europeans there. Spain, who had been
watching every move made by France in Morocco with
extreme jealousy, also dispatched a fleet to Tangier. In
March 1907, a French doctor, Emile Mauchamp, was mur­
dered at Marrakesh. In the future the secret archives will
throw light on this murder. It may even have been instigated
by the French. To occupy a considerable part of Morocco
it was worth sacrificing the life of one French doctor. In
any case, as a reprisal for the murder the French took over
the whole of East Morocco including the town of Oujda.
In August 1907, a new provocation was organised. The
French Compagnie Morrocaine, which had received conces­
sions for the construction of a port in Casablanca, proceeded
to build a narrow-gauge railway through a Moslem cemetery,
desecrating the graves. The population was already sensi­
tive to foreign encroachment and in this case Europeans
were actually violating a Moslem cemetery. Outraged by
this sacrilege, the Moroccans attacked the builders, killing
several workers, including six Frenchmen. France promptly
used this incident as an excuse for occupying Casablanca
and the Chaouia district.
Spain in turn occupied a cape in the Melilla area.
The French landing evoked agitation throughout Mo­
rocco. The Moroccan tribes were especially furious with
Sultan Abd al-Aziz, whom they regarded as a traitor, to be
blamed for all the calamities which had overtaken the coun­
try. At their gathering in Marrakesh on August 16,
1907, i.e., a few days after the occupation of Casablanca,
the tribal chiefs deposed Abd al-Aziz and declared his
brother, Mulai Hafid, Sultan.
A civil war broke out in Morocco between Abd al-Aziz’s sup­
porters and those of Mulai Hafid. However, it had more the
character of a national liberation movement of the Moroccan
tribes against the Sultan, who had taken the enemy’s side,
than of a contest between two claimants to the throne.
In July 1908, Abd al-Aziz’s troops were routed. Abd al-
Aziz fled to the French and the entire country was placed
under the new sultan’s control. The French, however, took
advantage of the disturbances to occupy a number of other
regions both in the western and eastern parts of Morocco.
302
 THE CASABLANCA CONFLICT ÔF 1908 A N D THE
FRANCO-GERMAN AGREEMENT OF 1909. In Septem­
ber 1908, a new Franco-German conflict arose. The Foreign
Legion, which the French maintained for service in the col­
onies, was recruited from declassed elements from all over
the world, including many gamblers and criminals. A unit
of Legionaires was stationed at Casablanca and two Ger­
mans who served in it had deserted and taken refuge in
the home of the German consul. Despite his protests, the
French police broke into the house, made a search and ar­
rested the deserters. Germany protested against France’s
action. The conflict was referred to the arbitration of the
Hague International Tribunal, which made a Solomon-like
decision, declaring that both sides were guilty and therefore
no one should be punished. France was guilty of having
violated the immunity of the consulate, and Germany, of
having protected the deserters.
This decision of the Hague Tribunal did not, of course,
normalise Franco-German relations, which once again
exacerbated. Franco-German talks on the Moroccan ques­
tion were reopened and on February 9, 1909, an agreement
was concluded in Berlin which, having confirmed the four
principles of the Algeciras Act, inserted a new formula
to the effect that France acknowledged the economic in­
terests of Germany in Morocco, while Germany acknowl­
edged France’s political interests in Morocco. At the same time
Germany declared that she herself had no political interests
whatever in Morocco. This formula was fundamentally mis­
leading, since it is almost impossible to separate political in­
terests from economic ones. It also contained a strong element
of hypocrisy, since it did not reflect the true intentions of
Germany, who had quite definite political interests in Morocco.
Finally, both Powers undertook to promote the co-opera­
tion of French and German capitalists in Morocco. On the
basis of this agreement, which in literature is sometimes
described as the Franco-German economic condominium
over Morocco, a number of mixed Franco-German com­
panies were founded. They all turned out to be abortive,
however, and none of them made any progress.

THE p o w e r s ; r e c o g n i t i o n o f m u l a i h a f i d
After Sultan Mulai Hafid’s victory, the Powers had to decide

3 03
what attitude to adopt towards him. Mulai Hafid himself,
wishing to put an end to the occupation of Casablanca and
Oujda by French troops, entered into negotiations with the
Powers, which accordingly agreed to recognise him as Sul­
tan under the following conditions: (1) he was to pay an
indemnity to France and Spain; (2) France and Spain would
keep their troops in those parts of Morocco which were
already occupied; (3) he would accept responsibility for all
the international obligations undertaken by Abd al-Aziz,
i.e., the border agreements with France, the obligations on
the loans and those under the Algeciras Act. Mulai Hafid
accepted these terms and in January 1909, the Powers
recognised him as Sultan.
In 1910, the French imposed a new loan of 100,000,000
francs on him on even more ruinous terms than the loan
of 1904. The new loan went, in the first place, to liquidate
the floating debts which had accumulated once again, in
the second place, to organise a police force in the free
ports and, thirdly, to pay the indemnity. As a guarantee
of the loan the administration of the Makhzan debt received
the customs and other important revenues of the Moroccan
Government.
Mulai Hafid was compelled to seek additional sources
of income. He levied new taxes on the tribes. This evoked
general discontent and they began to regard him as a traitor,
who was actually continuing Abd al-Aziz’s policy. In 1911,
a fresh big tribal uprising flared up serving as a pretext
for the French invasion, of the Moroccan hinterland.

THE OCCUPATION OF FEZ A N D THE AGADIR

CRISIS. The first act of the French was to advance on Fez,
the capital of Morocco and the seat of Sultan Mulai Hafid.
Officially it was stated that Fez was besieged by rebellious
tribes and that the French troops had been despatched to the
city to save the life of the Sultan and the European residents.
Actually, the foreign consuls’ reports indicate that when
the French troops approached the capital it was not in a
state of siege, and that neither the Sultan nor the Europeans
were exposed to any immediate danger. The excuse had
obviously been invented. France’s next step was to occupy
Meknes. Not to be left behind, Spain occupied Larache
and Ksar-es-Sagir.
304
 Spain had been egged on by German diplomacy, which
sought to provoke a Franco-Spanish conflict. Not content with
this, the Germans decided to intervene personally in Moroc­
can affairs and to reply to the occupation of Fez by taking
over Mogador and Agadir. With this in view the German
gunboat Panther set off for the shores of Africa and on July
1,1911, arrived at Agadir. This “pouncing of the Panther”, as
it was dubbed by the press, marked the beginning of a big
international conflict, on which Lenin commented: “Ger­
many on the verge of war with France and Britain. Mo­
rocco plundered (‘partitioned’).”1
In an official memorandum which Germany distributed
on July 1, 1911, to all the Great Powers she declared that
the despatch of the gunboat to Agadir had been due to
three different factors:
(1) to German merchants’ persistent requests for the de­
fence of their life and property. This statement was all the
more surprising, since there was not a single German mer­
chant in Agadir. Soon, however, it turned out that the Ger­
man firm of Manesmann Bros, had received a mining con­
cession in Agadir and had demanded the seizure of this
territory. In simple terms, Germany had merely decided to
participate in Morocco’s partition and had chosen the south­
western part of the country for herself;
(2) to the indignation of German “public opinion” at
Germany’s exclusion from a part in the solution of the
Moroccan question;
(3) to the actions of France and Spain, who had made
the Algeciras Act illusory. At the same time Germany
declared she would recall her gunboat from Agadir only after
the French and Spanish forces’ withdrawal from Morocco.
However, Germany had no objections to holding more
talks if this meant she could seize a piece of Moroccan
territory or some other large colonial compensation. The
German diplomat, Kühlmann, told the Russian diplomat, Ben­
kendorf, that day: “W e shall bargain.” And indeed, the
Franco-German negotiations which began in Berlin on
July 10 were described by experienced diplomats as “un­
precedented bargaining”. But Germany was asking too
much. At first she demanded a part of Morocco, but France

1 Lenin, Collected Works, VoL 39, p. 686.

20-573 3§5
refused. Next she demanded the entire territory of the
French Congo. France again refused and the talks reached
a deadlock.
During the negotiations both sides rattled their sabres. The
German press openly called for a war against France, say­
ing that “history should be written not in ink, but with a
chisel of cold steel”. The French press, in turn, called for
an end to the talks and proposed “other means of solving
the conflicts”.
During the Agadir crisis Britain sided wholly with France.
She also rattled her sabre, and brought military and
diplomatic pressure to bear on Germany. The annual
manoeuvres of the British fleet were cancelled and the
ships remained at their bases. Lord Kitchener, who had
been appointed the British Resident-General in Egypt, was
detained in London since he was to be put in command
of the British army in event of military operations.
Britain’s position was one of the main factors in Ger­
many’s retreat. The collapse of the Berlin stock exchange
which had been engineered by the French banks was also
of considerable importance. To top all this, anti-war pro­
letarian demonstrations broke out in Germany. In the end,
the German diplomats were forced to make concessions and
on November 4, 1911, Germany concluded a new agreement
with France, under which Germany sanctioned the French
protectorate over Morocco. France undertook to observe
the Powers’ freedom to trade and economic equality in
Morocco and also ceded 275,000 square kilometres of terri­
tory in the Congo to Germany.
As for Russia, she favoured a peaceful solution of the
conflict. The reorganisation of the Russian army was moving
very slowly and Russia was still unprepared for a war with
Germany and Austria-Hungary. Finally, the tsarist govern­
ment felt that a war for the sake of French colonial interests
would be unpopular in Russia.
The Berlin Agreement of November 4, 1911, was, as it
were, the culmination of a whole series of earlier secret
and non-secret agreements. Now Germany, too, had granted
France freedom of action in Morocco. The Congo had been
“exchanged” for Morocco, completing yet another deal at
the expense of weaker nations. The way now lay open for
the establishment of a French protectorate.
306
 T H E TREATY ON THE PROTECTORATE. The
Franco-German agreement of 1911 untied France’s hands
and she immediately set to work to realise her expansionist
aims. On March 30, 1912, under strong pressure from
France, Sultan Mulai Hafid signed a treaty in Fez on the.
protectorate on terms dictated by the French envoy, Renault.
The French troops which had been about to leave Fez turned
back and suppressed the outbursts of popular resistance.
The Treaty of Fez reaffirmed the main provisions and
principles of the Bardo treaty of 1881 and the La-Marsa
convention of 1883 that had established a French protectorate
over Tunisia. The Sultan retained his throne and the out­
ward attributes of power, which, however, lacked any real
substance. All power passed into French hands.
The new treaty brought into being a “new regime” in
Morocco which preserved “the Sultan’s religious position,
his traditional prestige and respect”. The Sultan, in turn,
agreed to carry out any administrative, judicial, school,
economic, financial or military reforms which France
deemed necessary.
France acquired the right to the “military occupation of
Moroccan territory” and to undertake “any kind of police
measures” in Morocco.
The French Government promised the Sultan its aid in
repelling “any danger, which would threaten him person­
ally, or his throne or violate the peace in his domains”.
The French resident-general became the sole intermediary
between Morocco and the foreign Powers. The resident-
general was actually a commissioner in whom was vested
the absolute power of the French Republic on the territory
of Morocco. All the Sultan’s decrees were submitted to him
for endorsement.
The French diplomatic and consular agents abroad repre­
sented Morocco and were instructed to “protect Morocco’s
subjects and interests in other countries”.
The Treaty of Fez envisaged “a financial reorganisation
of the country aimed at ensuring the repayment of foreign
loans”. The Sultan was forbidden to contract state or private
loans or to grant any concessions without the French
Government’s permission.
The treaty on the protectorate applied to the entire
territory of Morocco, but France reserved the right to
20* 307
negotiate with Spain on her interests in Morocco and to
separate Tangier into a special zone.
Thus the Treaty of Fez deprived Morocco of her inde­
pendence and her territorial integrity. On November 27,
1912, an agreement based on this treaty was signed in
Madrid between France and Spain, fixing the borders be­
tween the northern and the southern zone, which had
become part of the Spanish protectorate. Thus, having es­
tablished a protectorate over Morocco, France ceded or sub­
leased part of the country, which she had conquered, to
Spain in accordance with the interimperialist agreements.
Talks between Britain, France and Spain on the Tangier
regime began immediately after the establishment of the
protectorate. They revealed so many contradictions that
they still had not ended by the outbreak of World War
I and were ultimately concluded only in 1923.
France appointed General Lyautey, who had considerable
colonial experience, her Resident-General in Morocco. He
occupied this post for thirteen years running, till 1925, and
is rightly known as the “builder” of French Morocco.
Sultan Mulai Hafid, who attempted to pursue an inde­
pendent policy, was regarded by France as an unsuitable
person for his position and was deposed in August 1912.
His place was taken over by his younger brother, Mulai
Yusef, a completely spineless person and an obedient tool
of France.
In September 1912, French took over Marrakesh, thereby
completing the occupation of the flat regions of Morocco.
For another twenty years, however, they had to wage a
colonial war in the mountains and steppes of Morocco,
overcoming the fierce opposition of the freedom-loving
Moroccan tribes, who continued to uphold their liberty.
Only twenty years after the establishment of the protec­
torate did the French succeed in completing the process
of “pacification” and subduing the country.
 CHAPTER XXm

THE ITALIAN CONQUEST OF LIBYA

DIPLOMATIC PREPARATIONS. The seizure of Mo­

rocco coincided with the conquest of Libya. The modern
use of the term “Libya” was coined by the Italians, who
borrowed it from ancient geography. The ancient Greeks
had called the entire territory of North Africa “Libya”; the
Italians used it in reference to the regions situated between
Tunisia and Egypt, i.e., Tripolitania (Tarablus El-Charb),
Cyrenaica (Barca) and Fezzan. In the Middle Ages each
of these regions had its own historical connections. Cyre­
naica gravitated towards Egypt; Tripolitania was closely
linked with Tunisia. It was only after the Turkish conquest,
in the 16th century, that these areas were united into a
single administrative unit—the pashalik of Tripoli.
In 1835, the Turkish Sultan Mahmud II, who had pur­
sued a policy of centralising the Ottoman Empire, des­
patched Turkish troops to Tripoli, removed the janissary
dynasty of the Karmanlians from power and completely
subjugated the pashalik of Tripoli. The pashalik was made
into a Turkish elayet and then into a vilayet , which was
administered by governors appointed by the central govern­
ment.
The Turkish penetration into the hinterland of the coun­
try and the Turks’ attempts to station their garrisons there
and gather taxes encountered fierce resistance on the part
of the local tribes, who repeatedly provoked uprisings
against the Turkish authorities. The struggle was led by the
religious Senussite Brotherhood named after its founder—
Mohammed es-Senussi. An Algerian of Berber origin,
Mohammed es-Senussi was educated in Mostaganem and
Fez and, after a long sojourn in Mecca and Cairo, went
to Cyrenaica, where he founded several zawias (monaste-

3 09
ries), including one in the Jiarabub oasis (1855), which be­
came his residence and the centre of the Senussi movement.
After es-Senussi’s death in 1859, the brotherhood was led
by his son Mohammed el-Mahdi (1859-1901). In 1895,
Mohammed el-Mahdi transferred his seat to El-Jewf in the
oasis of Kufra. Leaning on the numerous zawias (100 in
1884) for support, he formed a strong military and religious
organisation which secured the power of the Senussi nobility
over the Libyan tribes and the oases. The Senussi chiefs
settled the land adjacent to the zawias with nomads and
forced them to till the land in their interest. The Senussites
encouraged trade, spreading their influence to the interior
of the African continent.
EI-Mahdi’s successors (especially Mohammed Idris) had
to fight a new enemy—imperialist Italy. At the end of the
19th century, when Africa was being partitioned, two
Powers claimed Tripoli. One of these was France, who,
using her Tunisian springboard, gradually annexed Tri-
politania’s frontier oases to Tunisia. The other was Italy,
who felt she had been cheated of her share in the partition
and sought compensation in Tripoli.
It is unlikely that Italy made her claims out of economic
considerations. No valuable raw materials of any kind had
yet been discovered in Tripolitania. All that country had
to offer was dates, camel hair, fish and sponge. On the other
hand, Tripolitania was a convenient base for further con­
quests in Africa, a wedge and springboard from where
Italy could thrust forward in all directions. By gaining
possession of Tripolitania it would be possible to threaten
French Tunisia, the area around Lake Chad, British Egypt
and the East Sudan.
Italy began preparations for the seizure of Tripolitania
in 1880. First came a series of diplomatic manoeuvres.
In 1887, Italy concluded an agreement with Britain and
Austria-Hungary on the status quo in the Mediterranean.
It was directed against France and French claims on Tripoli
and Morocco. According to this agreement, Britain, Austria
and Italy pledged to observe the status quo in the Mediter­
ranean, but stressed that should the status quo change they
would not allow any other Power to gain a foothold on the
North African coast. In other words, Britain, Austria-Hun­
gary and Italy brushed aside France’s claims to Libya and

310
Morocco. Moreover, Italy promised to support Britain’s
cause in Egypt and demanded that Britain should back
Italy on any other part of the North African coast, es­
pecially in Tripolitania and Cyrenaica.
In the special German-Italian agreement of 1887, which
was added to the treaty on the renewal of the Triple A lli­
ance, the following reservation was made. Germany and
Italy would not permit France’s consolidation in Morocco
and Tripoli and should France undertake any actions in
that region, Germany would back Italy in her war against
France. Simultaneously, a secret Italian-Austrian treaty was
concluded to the effect that in event of violation of the
status quo in the Mediterranean, the Mediterranean coun­
tries should not be partitioned other than by mutual agree­
ment on the basis of mutual compensation. An analogous
secret agreement between Italy and Spain was concluded
in 1887. Thus, in 1887, Italy had gained the sanction of
Britain, Germany, Austria and Spain for the seizure of
Tripoli.
In 1900, Italy concluded an agreement with France on
delimitation of spheres of influence in the Mediterranean.
Under this agreement, France renounced all claims on Tri-
>oli in Italy’s favour, in return for which Italy granted her
? reedom of action in Morocco. The agreement was ratified
in 1902 and renewed in October 1912, when France and
Italy recognised each other’s claims to the annexed terri­
tories.
There was one more European Power from whom Italy
received diplomatic sanction for Tripoli’s seizure—Russia.
In accordance with the agreement of October 24, 1909,
which was concluded in Racconiji (near Turin) in the form
of notes, Italy recognised Russia’s claims to the Dardanelles
zone and Russia recognised Italy’s claims to Tripolitania
and Cyrenaica.
Public opinion and the press in Russia, France, Britain
and Germany opposed Italy’s expansionist moves in Tripoli.
The papers wrote of her piratical actions and brazen viola­
tion of international law. The governments of the above
countries, however, adopted an attitude of non-interference
in the Turco-Italian conflict. When the conflict finally came
out into the open and the Turkish ambassadors in St. Pe­
tersburg, London, Paris, Berlin and Vienna appealed for

311
 mediation by the European governments, all the foreign
ministers coldly stated that this affair was no concern of
theirs. “This is your personal conflict with Italy,” they
said, in effect. “Settle it as you wish.”
Italy safeguarded her invasion in Tripoli by secret agree­
ments and deals at the expense of the weaker peoples.
Britain supported Italy because she preferred to have this
feeble country next to Egypt, reasoning that Italian expan­
sion would be a counterpoise to French and German expan­
sion in Tripoli (in 1911, the Germans proposed a plan for
setting up a naval base in Tobruk). Germany and Austria-
Hungary were rewarding Italy for her participation in the
Triple Alliance, France was rewarding Italy for her virtual
renunciation of the Triple Alliance and for her non-inter­
ference in Moroccan affairs, and Russia was rewarding Italy
for promising to support her actions in the Straits.
Apart from diplomatic preliminaries, Italy also made
adequate preparations inside Tripolitania. In 1901, an
Italian parliamentary delegation visited Tripolitania. Ital­
ian naval officers dressed themselves up as fishermen, caught
sponge off the shores of Tripoli and at the same time photo­
graphed the Tripolitanian coast.
In 1900, the Italian press had begun calling on the
government to take over Tripolitania on the grounds that
this region “naturally belonged” to the Italians. It was at
this stage that an Italian geographer took the word “Libya”
from ancient history and, began using it in reference to the
vilayet of Tripoli. One of the biggest Italian banks opened
branches in Tripoli. Italians bought lands there through
non-existent persons and set up agricultural establishments.
Italian steamship lines monopolised the traffic between
Tripolitania and Europe. Italian engineers planned the
construction of a railway from Tobruk to Alexandria.
In Tobruk, the most convenient natural harbour on the
Libyan coast, Italy intended to set up her own naval base.
Italian catholic missions and Italian schools were opened
in Tripolitania. Extensive literature appeared in Italy on
Tripolitania; Italian geographers began calling it “our
Promised Land”.

TOE ITALO-TURKISH W AR OF 1911. In 1911, Italy

decided to take advantage of the international crisis which
312
had arisen in connection with the “pouncing of the Panther ’
to assume direct possession of Tripolitania. Her excuse for
the invasion was ridiculous. On September 28, 1911, Italy
presented Turkey with an ultimatum in which she declared
that she was interested in providing Tripolitania with the
blessings of progress, but that her “legitimate” actions had
encountered the Porte’s opposition and that she, Italy, would
not waste time on useless talks with the Porte. To protect
her dignity and her interests she had decided to go ahead
with the military occupation of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica.
Turkey should, therefore, order her officials not to offer
resistance to the Italian occupation. Turkey was given
24 hours in which to concede this demand.
Turkey immediately placed the question of mediation
before the European Powers, but encountered no support.
Faced with the Powers’ tacit consent to Italy’s action, Tur­
key replied in extremely peaceful terms. She declared that
the new Young Turk government could not be held
responsible for the situation brought about by the former
government and that it bore no hostility towards Italy’s
plans for Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. The Turkish Govern­
ment would be prepared to take action to meet Italy’s
demands that was consistent with Turkey’s dignity and
interests, but categorically objected to Italian occupation.
Italy received Turkey’s reply and declared war on Tur­
key on the very same day (September 29, 1911).
The war took Turkey unawares. Neither the Turkish
governor nor the commander-in-chief were in Tripolitania
at the outbreak of the war and Turkey’s armed forces in
the vilayet of Tripoli consisted of one division (7,000 men).
The country was soon in a state of famine. The Italian fleet
blockaded Tripoli by sea, preventing Turkey from sending
reinforcements and foodstuffs. The blockade was, in effect,
completed on land by Britain, who refused to let Turkish
troops pass through Egypt. The Italian expeditionary corps
consisted of 34,000 men and was brought up to 55,000 men
in 1912. It was equipped with mountain, field and siege
artillery, wireless and also with aircraft, which was being
used for the first time in the battle. W hile the Italian fleet
shelled the Turkish coast and landed troops on the Dode­
canese Islands, the vilayet of Tripoli was occupied. On
October 5, 1911, the Italian landing party seized the city

313
 of Tripoli, on October 18, Derna, on October 19, Benghazi
and on October 20, Homs.
On November 5, 1911, though still in possession of only
these four coastal towns, the Italian Government announced
the annexation of Tripoli, which henceforward was to be
called “Libya” and to remain under Italy’s complete and
absolute sovereignty.
In view of the all-round superiority of their forces, the
Italians counted on speedy conquest. Matters, however, took
a different turn. The Libyan tribes put up a stout resistance.
By October 23, 1911, the Arabs had destroyed most of the
landing party that had disembarked in Tripoli and begun
the long and difficult struggle for independence. The Ital­
ians passed the winter of 1911-12 in the four above-men­
tioned towns. In the summer of 1912, they occupied several
more coastal posts (Misurata, July 8, Zuara, August 6, and
Zenzur, September 20). Even when Turkey surrendered in
October 1912 and made peace with Italy, the Italians had
not yet captured the whole coastal area and had not made
a single move to penetrate the country’s internal regions.
“Italy has ‘won’ the war, which she launched a year ago
to seize Turkish possessions in Africa,” Lenin wrote at the
end of the Italo-Turkish war. “From now on, Tripoli will
belong to Ita ly .. . . W hat caused the war? The greed of
the Italian moneybags and capitalists___ W hat kind of
war was it? A perfected, civilised bloodbath, the massacre
of Arabs with the help of the ‘latest’ weapons.”1 In his
article Lenin described the atrocities of the Italian im­
perialists who massacred whole families, women and
children included. A total of 14,800 Arabs were slaugh­
tered, 1,000 being hanged. Lenin concluded: “Despite the
‘peace’, the war will actually go on, for the Arab tribes in
the heart of Africa, in areas far away from the coast, will
refuse to submit. And for a long time to come they will be
‘civilised’ by bayonet, bullet, noose, fire and rape.”12
Lenin’s prediction proved to be absolutely correct. The
Arab tribes in the heart of Africa did not surrender. For
twenty years after Turkey’s defeat, they continued to wage
war against Italy.

1 Lenin, Collected W orks, Vol. 18, p. 337.

2 Ibid., pp. 337-38.

314
 THE LAUSANNE PEACE TREATY OF 1912. Turkey
was prevented from continuing the war with Italy by the
outbreak of war in the Balkans. On October 15, 1912, she
concluded a preliminary (secret) treaty and on October 18,
a final peace treaty in Lausanne. Formally, Turkey never
recognised Italian sovereignty over Libya. She merely
undertook to withdraw her troops from Libya and recall
her officials.
According to the secret Italo-Turkish treaty of Octo­
ber 15, 1912, Italy deemed it impossible to abrogate the law
proclaiming her sovereignty over Tripolitania ánd Cyre-
naica. Turkey, in turn, declared it was impossible for her
to formally recognise this sovereignty. Consequently, Turkey
undertook to issue a firman of the Sultan granting the
population of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica full and complete
autonomy which would bring them under the “new laws”.
Italy undertook to decree an amnesty, to grant freedom to
the Moslem religion and to preserve the waqfs. She also
undertook to receive a Turkish representative and to
appoint a commission with the participation of the local
notables to work out the civil and administrative organisa­
tion of these regions. Turkey promised not to despatch her
troops to Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. It was decided that
the Sultan’s representative in Libya and the religious
leaders of the Moslems who were subordinate to the Tur­
kish Sultan as their caliph would in future have to be
approved by the Italian Government.
These provisions of the preliminary peace treaty of Octo­
ber 15, 1912, which established a kind of Italo-Turkish
condominium over Libya, were actually ignored and Italy
merely regarded Libya as her colony. Turkey did not fully
agree to this and it was only after World War I, by the
Lausanne Treaty of 1923, that she completely renounced
her rights and sovereignty over Tripolitania and Cyrenaica.
The European Powers recognised the Italian sovereignty
over these regions soon after the Italo-Turkish war and the
Lausanne treaty of 1912.

ITA LY’S W AR AG AINST THE ARAB TRIBES. Peace

had been concluded but the fighting in Libya continued. On
December 18, 1912, the Italians captured Tarhuna and by
the end of 1912, they had occupied the western coast of the

3 15
Gulf of Sirte. In April 1913, Italian troops entered the
coastal mountains and held the region for three months.
Simultaneously, they invaded Jebel El-Akhdar (mountains
in Cyrenaica), but were seriously defeated on several occa­
sions by the guerilla detachments organised by the Senus-
sites.
The Senussites declared a holy war on Italy and the
Italian forces were compelled to retreat from the Cyrenaican
interior and to restrict themselves to the occupation of the
coastal towns. On April 29, 1913, they occupied Tokra and,
in August 1913, the coast of Sirte south of Benghazi.
In 1914, the Italians were about to conquer Fezzan and
occupied Murzuk, the Fezzan capital. With the outbreak
of World War I, however, they were forced to withdraw
and, by the beginning of 1916, held only the towns of
Tripoli and Homs, the entire eastern part of Libya having
passed under the Senussites’ control.
The Senussites’ struggle against Italy was backed by the
German-Turkish command. In December 1915, German-
Turkish forces used the Senussites to attack the British
bridgehead in Egypt from the direction of Salum. By Febru­
ary 1916, the British had thrown back the attackers and in
July of the same year, Britain concluded an agreement with
Italy for a joint struggle against the Senussites, to which
France adhered in March 1917. In April 1917, Britain and
Italy concluded an agreement with one of the Senussite^
leaders—Mohammed Idris es-Senussi—whom they recog­
nised as Emir (prince). He was promised food and arms in
return for an undertaking to withdraw from the struggle
against Britain and Italy and to counteract German-Turkish
plans. But most of the East Libyan Senussites under the
leading chief of the brotherhood—Ahmed Sherif es-Senussi
(1901-25), and also the Senussi tribes of W est Libya under
Mohammed Abd el-Abid, continued the struggle against
Britain, Italy and France. The Italian contribution was
feeble. Eventually, in January 1917, they recaptured Zuara
and by the end of the year, had gained possession of the
entire coast between Tripoli and Zuara, but this was the
sum total of their success.
In November 1918, after the cessation of military opera­
tions in Europe, Italy landed an 80,000-strong army in Tri­
poli and initiated talks with the West Libyan Bedouin
316
leaders, pressing for their surrender. The talks, however,
were a failure and in February 1919, Italy renewed hos­
tilities.
It took the Italians another thirteen years before they
were able to break down the resistance of the tribes. The
Libyan people’s persistence and heroism were the outstand­
ing feature of the fighting that went on all over the country.
Only in 1932, at the cost of mass killings and savage repri­
sals against the freedom-loving tribes, were the Italian
militarists able to subdue the country and complete the
colonial conquest of Libya.
 CHAPTER XXIV

SYRIA, PALESTINE AND IRAQ AT THE END

OF THE 19th CENTURY

TURKEY’S FINANCIAL ENSLAVEMENT. At the

close of the 19th century, Syria, Palestine and Iraq were
still provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Unlike Egypt or the
Sudan, their connections with the Porte were by no means
a matter of formality. During this period, the history of
the Arab countries of Asia Minor was closely bound up
with Turkish history and cannot be analysed separately
from the general history of the Ottoman Empire.
Towards the end of the 19th century, the development
of capitalism in Europe and North America brought capi­
talism into its final stage—imperialism. On the other hand,
the first rudiments of capitalism were only just beginning
to appear in Turkey and her Arab domains, where the
decline of feudal society was extremely slow. The transi­
tion from feudalism to capitalism had begun, but it was
proceeding in extremely contradictory circumstances.
Turkey was turned first into a sales market and then into
a semi-colony of the European capitalist Powers. The
second period of the tanzimat, introduced by the hatti-
humayun of 1856, which by virtue of the Paris Peace Treaty
acquired the form of an international obligation, paved the
way for foreign capital. Turkey undertook to issue railway,
bank, mining and other concessions to foreign investors;
she gave them the right to buy land in the Ottoman Empire
and granted their local agents (Armenian, Greek and
Christian Arab merchants) a number of privileges. The Paris
Peace Treaty of 1856 thus initiated the conversion of
Turkey and her Arab domains into a semi-colony controlled
by foreign capital.
The Eastern War of 1853-56, which was concluded by
the Paris Peace Treaty, laid the foundation for Turkey’s
financial enslavement. During the war, in 1854, Turkey
318
concluded her first foreign loan to cover military expen­
diture. The loan was granted on the most onerous terms.
Out of the nominal sum of 75,000,000 francs, the Turks
received only 60,000,000 francs, the tribute paid by Egypt
being offered as a guarantee for a loan. A second loan was
contracted in 1855 for a sum of 125,000,000 francs, which
was also meant to cover military expenditure and was
guaranteed by the customs revenues of Smyrna (Izmir) and
Syria. This was followed by the loan of 1858 for a sum of
125.000. 000 francs, out of which Turkey actually received
only 95,000,000 francs. This loan was guaranteed by the
revenues of the Istanbul customs houses. Then came eleven
more loans in 1860, 1862, 1863, 1865 (two loans), 1869,
1870, 1871, 1872, 1873 and 1874. Thus we observe the same
process that took place in Egypt only on a broader scale.'
By 1874, the total sum of the loans had reached 5,300,000,000
francs, out of which Turkey received only 3,012,000,000
francs or 56.8 per cent of the nominal sum. The banks
(chiefly French and partly British) retained over
2.000. 000.000 francs or 43.2 per cent of the nominal sum
as interest, commission and the like.
The Ottoman Bank, which was founded in 1856 as a
British Bank and was turned into an Anglo-French Bank
in 1863, played an important part in Turkey’s financial
enslavement. The bank itself granted ruinous loans and
mediated in the receipt of loans from other banks. It also
founded a number of branch companies which received
highly remunerative concessions on the territories of the
Ottoman Empire.
W hy did Turkey contract a series of new loans after the
first military loans? The reasons were the same as in Egypt.
The only difference was that in Egypt the money was used
chiefly for the construction of the Suez Canal, while in
Turkey it was used for railways which were built on the
basis of kilometric guarantees. This meant that when the
Porte distributed concessions on railway construction, it
guaranteed the concessionaires fixed revenues from each
kilometre of the line. The difference between the actual sum
received and the guaranteed sum of the revenues was met
by the Treasury. These kilometric guarantees became one
of the chief means for the usurious plunder of Turkey and
her Arab domains by foreign capital.

319
 To pay for the kilometric guarantees colossal sums were
needed, which the Turkish Government sought by contract­
ing foreign loans. The state revenues had to be mortgaged
as security for the loans. First the Egyptian tribute and the
revenues from the customs houses were mortgaged, then
the proceeds from the agnam tax (tax on sheep), the re­
venues from the salt and tobacco monopolies and the like.
The more revenue Turkey had to spend to pay off the
interest on the loans, the more she needed new loans.
Despite the fact that the taxes in the empire were raised,
the peasant economy was completely ruined and the petty
officials, officers and clergy failed to receive their salaries.
In 1875, Turkey’s total revenues came to 380,000,000
francs, out of which 300,000,000 francs alone had to be
used to meet the payments on the loans. Under these condi­
tions, on October 6, 1875, the Porte declared itself bankrupt
and announced that only half of the obligations on the loans
would be paid in cash; the other half would be paid in
bonds.

THE NEW OTTOMAN COUP AN D THE CONSTI­

TU TIO N OF 1876. As in the case of Egypt, Turkey’s bank­
ruptcy put the Ottoman Empire into difficulties both at
home and abroad. Even before Turkey had declared herself
bankrupt, the yoke of the European bankers and the Tur­
kish State, which had become a servant of the foreign
money-lenders, had evoked deep discontent among broad
sections of the population. A peasant movement, which was
especially powerful in the Balkan provinces óf Bosnia, Her­
zegovina and Bulgaria, developed in the Ottoman Empire.
In the summer of 1875, the peasants of Bosnia and
Herzegovina rose in rebellion against the Moslem feudalists
and demanded agrarian reforms. The uprising tended
towards national liberation and had Serbia’s and Russia’s
backing. The insurgents demanded Bosnia’s and Herze­
govina’s secession from Turkey and their incorporation in
Serbia. In July 1876, Serbia and Montenegro started a war
and inflicted a number of defeats on the Turks, which again
aggravated the situation in Turkey. Everywhere there were
marked signs of discontent with the line of action taken by
Sultan Abdul Aziz, who was accused of betraying Turkey’s
interests to the foreigners.
320
 In May 1876, popular demonstrations broke out in
Constantinople. On May 22, a crowd of several thousand su-
fists (members of the collegiate mosques) marched to the Sul­
tan’s palace, where they were joined by artisans, traders
and minor officials. The frightened Sultan promised to pay
the salaries that had been withheld and to introduce a con­
stitution. Several days later, however, it was discovered
that the Sultan had entered into secret negotiations with the
foreigners. A group of officers then brought out the troops
and on the night of May 29, 1876, arrested Abdul Aziz
and announced his déposai. Abdul Aziz’s feeble-minded
brother, Murad V, was placed on the throne.
The active participants of the coup were a group of
Turkish officers, liberal officials and intellectuals who called
themselves “yeni-osmanlar\ i.e., the “new Ottomans”, a
roup that had been formed back in the sixties. The “new
g Ottomans” were dissatisfied with the situation in the Otto­
man Empire, with the miserable results of the tanzimat,
and with the penetration of foreign capital. Their pro­
gramme may be summed up under three headings:
1) The development of national capitalism. “Let the Otto­
mans themselves be the ones to set up all the commercial
and industrial companies in Turkey; let them build the new
railways”, one of the documents read.
2) The establishment of a constitutional and parliamen­
tary system.
3) The deyelopment of a bourgeois culture and opposi­
tion to the medieval Turkish way of life and customs.
At first the “new Ottomans” restricted themselves wholly
to enlightenment. In 1860, they founded Dar El-Funun, a
kind of lecture bureau, which arranged talks by writers,
scholars and public men. In 1865, they founded a secret
political society, but it had two serious drawbacks.
In the first place, as representatives of the dominant
nationality in the Ottoman Empire, the “new Ottomans”
regarded the entire Ottoman Empire as a market for the
Turkish bourgeoisie. They maintained that the Ottoman
Empire should continue to rule over its subject peoples, and
they adopted a hostile attitude towards movements which
aimed at freeing these oppressed peoples from the Ottoman
yoke. To justify this chauvinist policy, they invented the
absurd theory of the existence of a “single Ottoman nation”,
21-573 321
which denied all national distinctions between the peoples
of the Ottoman Empire, including the Turks themselves.
This theory is known in Europe as “Pan-Osmanism”.
Secondly, the “new Ottomans” were isolated from the
masses of the people. Consequently, they advocated palace
revolution tactics. In 1867, the “new Ottomans” made their
first attempt at a palace revolution. But the plot was
uncovered by the police and members of the secret society
were arrested. Some of them managed to escape abroad.
In 1873, they returned to their native land, but were im­
mediately banished to various regions of Turkey.
Midhat Pasha, a staunch advocate of constitution and
reform and the Governor of Iraq between 1869 and 1871,
was closely linked with the “new Ottomans”. In 1872, he
was appointed Great Vizir, but soon resigned because of
his differences with the Sultan. In 1876, he took an active
part in the May revolution as one of the leaders of the
“new Ottoman” movement.
Upon their succession to power, the “new Ottomans”
continued to act by means of high-level intrigue. Three
days after the revolution, they did away with Sultan Abdul
Aziz, who was murdered on the night of June 1. The official
version of his death read: “His Highness, the padishah, in
a fit of insanity lay hands on himself to the great sorrow
of his loyal subjects.”
In August 1876, the sultan was changed again. Murad V,
who suffered from persecution mania, was too far gone to
remain on the throne any longer. Midhat Pasha and his
supporters made arrangements with Murad V ’s brother—
Abdul Hamid—and on August 31, they proclaimed him
Sultan. Abdul Hamid II, who represented the interests of
the most reactionary sections of the Turkish feudal class,
temporarily supported the “new Ottomans”. He appointed
Midhat Pasha Great Vizir and entrusted him with the task
of drawing up a new constitution.
Midhat Pasha’s constitution, which was slightly altered
by Abdul Hamid, allowed the Sultan to retain considerable
rights. He had the power to appoint and dismiss ministers,
declare war and conclude peace, dissolve Parliament, annul
civil laws and banish politically unreliable persons without
trial. The Parliament was divided into two Houses: the Senate,
which was appointed by the Sultan, and the Chamber of
322
•eputies, which was elected on the basis of property and
age qualifications. A ll the Sultan’s subjects, irrespective of
language and religious differences, were declared “Otto­
mans” and had equal rights and obligations. The Turkish
language, however, was made the official language of the
Ottoman Empire and Islam, the official religion.
The promulgation of the constitution coincided with the
opening of the International Conference at Constantinople
on the reforms in Turkey’s Balkan provinces. On Decem­
ber 23, 1876, when the delegates were assembling in con­
ference, they heard a cannonade. The Turkish delegate
explained to the gatherers that the salute was in honour
of the constitution. “I feel,” he said, “that in view of this
great event our labours are unnecessary.”
This manoeuvre, however, did not achieve its aim. More­
over, the Porte’s refusal to show any willingness to meet
the Balkan peoples’ demands aggravated Russo-Turkish
relations and led to the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78.

ZULUM (HAM DANIAN DESPOTISM), 1878-1908.

The situation which had arisen both at home and abroad in
connection with the Russo-Turkish War made it possible
for Abdul Hamid II to get rid of the constitution and the
“new Ottomans”. The existing constitution did not suit him
at all. He had used it in the diplomatic game and had no
further use for it.
In February 1877, he dismissed and banished Midhat
Pasha from the capital (first to Syria, then to Hejaz, where
he was killed in 1883). On February 13, 1878, he even
suspended indefinitely the feeble Parliament elected at the
beginning of 1877, which had obeyed him without demur.
Formally, the constitution was not abolished. Throughout
Abdul Hamid II’s reign it was published annually in the
official Turkish calendar as the chief law of the state.
After the Parliament and the constitution had been sus­
pended, the Sultan introduced a strict autocratic regime
known as Zulum (Hamdanian despotism). Abdul Hamid II
became the absolute ruler of the Ottoman Empire.
Lenin made an important contribution to the under­
standing of Zulum in his article “A New Chapter of World
History”, in which he wrote: “In Eastern Europe (Austria,
the Balkans, Russia), the powerful survivals of medievalism,
21* 323
which terribly hamper social development and the growth
of the proletariat, still have not yet been abolished. These
survivals are absolutism (the unlimited autocratic power),
feudalism (landlordism and feudal privileges) and the
suppression of nationalities.”1
These three points characterise the Ottoman Empire’s
social and political system during the period of Zulum.
Landlordism still formed the basis of society. The big
feudalists were Abdul Hamid II’s main supporters and
occupied all the leading posts in the Turkish Government.
The period of Zulum was a time of brutal national oppres­
sion and mass pogroms. Abdul Hamid drowned in blood
the national liberation movement of the Armenians in East
Anatolia in 1894-96, made short work of the Greek uprising
on the island of Crete in 1896 and suppressed the Macedo­
nian Christians’ aspirations to freedom.
During the period of Zulum , the country was run not so
much by the government, 1 , 1 1 Sultan’s court. Abdul
Hamid had surrounded feudalists from the
most backward provinces—Arabia and Kurdistan. The
Kurds under the command of reactionary Arab and Cir­
cassian officers constituted the backbone of the irregular
cavalry, the kamdieh, which instilled terror in the Christian
population of the Empire. The Circassian, Albanian, Kur­
dish and Arab feudalists played the leading role in the
court. They constituted the country’s real government. Any
of the Sultan’s odalisques exercised greater influence than
his ministers. The whole court camarilla was thoroughly
corrupt and foreign capitalists could not only buy any
Turkish dignitary, but even the Sultan himself.
Denunciation and mutual espionage thrived in the Otto­
man Empire in the period of Zulum. The Sultan’s digni­
taries kept close watch over and informed against each
other. The entire social life of the Ottoman Empire was
supervised by the vigilant eye of the police and their
numerous agents.
Abdul Hamid II even banned electricity and telephones
in his palace for fear that someone might kill him with the
wires.
Pan-Islamism was the official ideology of Zulum in a

1 Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 18, p. 368.

324
reactionary interpretation. Abdul Hamid II adopted Jamal
ed-Din el-Afghani’s teachings on the unity of the Moslem
peoples to his own ends. His ideal was an all-Moslem state
with himself as the ruler, the sovereign of the faithful.
Abdul Hamid II wanted to extend his power to all the
Moslems of Egypt (who were under British control), the Mos­
lems of North Africa, who were under French rule, the
Moslems of British India and the Moslems of the Caucasus,
Central Asia and the Volga, which were part of Russia.
These wild imperialist plans were backed by Kaiser W il­
helm II, who wished to use Turkey in the struggle against
the Entente Powers.

THE DECREE OF MUHARREM. The regime of Zulum

was the most convenient form of statehood for the penetra­
tion of foreign capital into Turkey and the Arab countries
and for their economic enslavement. During the period of
Zulum , the semi-colonial exploitation of Abdul Hamid II’s
domains was effected in two ways. On the one hand, Turkey
and her Arab vilayets were utilised as a sales market and
a source of raw materials. On the other hand, they were
plundered by means of onerous loans and kilometric
guarantees during railway construction.
At the end of the 19th century, Turkey’s importance as
a sales market and raw material supplier increased, as can
be seen from the growth of the Ottoman Empire’s foreign
trade turnover. Turkish foreign trade rose more than two­
fold within the thirty years preceding World War I. The
following table shows Turkey*s imports and exports (annual
average in million lires):
Im ports Exports

1880 1 7 .8 8 .5
1900 2 3 .8 1 4 .9
1913 4 0 .8 2 1 .4

Syria, Iraq and Palestine accounted for about a quarter

of the Ottoman Empire’s imports and about a fifth of its
exports.
The increase of foreign trade drew Turkey and her Arab
domains into the world capitalist economy not as equal

32$
 members, but as an agrarian and raw material appendage
of the European capitalist economy. Turkish trade was
based on unequal exchange and bore a specific colonial
character. Cloth and yarn were Turkey’s main import items
while her main export items were raw wool and silk as
well as hides, tobacco and all sorts of subtropical fruits.
British capital still played the major role in Turkish trade.
In the eighties and nineties of the 19th century, however,
the situation began to change. Although Britain continued
to dominate the Turkish market, she was beginning to be
forced out by the Germans, who had considerably increased
their exports to Turkey. In 1882, Germany exported
6,000,000 marks’ worth of goods to Turkey, whereas in
1895, the value of her exports rose to 35,000,000 marks.
The growing export of capital was the main feature of
the imperialist, era. This did not promote the Ottoman
Empire’s economic development. Foreign capital invest­
ments were not used for industry, but for state loans and
railway construction. During the reign of Zulum , in
1890-1908, to be more exact, Turkey received twelve new
loans of 45,000,000 lires. All told, by the outbreak of World
War I, the Porte’s foreign debts had reached 152,300,000
lires. The public debt was the main foreign capital invest­
ment sphere in Turkey. Other foreign capital investment
spheres were banking and railway construction. By 1914,
foreign investments in Turkey, apart from loans, were
estimated at £63,400,000.. Of these, £39,100,000 were ac­
counted for by railway construction and £10,200,000 by
banks. Industrial investments comprised £5,500,000, i.e.,
only about 8 per cent of foreign capital investment (exclud­
ing the public debt).
Turkey’s usurious exploitation by foreign capital ex­
hausted her finances and led to her complete financial
collapse. The first bankruptcy of 1875 was followed by
another one in 1879. At the Powers’ demands, in 1881, the
Sultan issued the decree of muharrem, establishing foreign
control over the Ottoman Empire’s finances. It was called
the decree of muharrem because it bore the date, Turkish
style, of the 28th of muharrem (December 20, 1881, accord­
ing to the Moslem calendar). The decree of muharrem con­
solidated the Ottoman Empire’s general debt, which was
fixed at 2,400,000,000 francs. The debt was reduced by
326
more than half, but it still exceeded the Porte’s actual debt
by 300,000,000 francs.
A special Administration was formed to supervise the
Ottoman public debt. Formally, it was regarded as a Turkish
institution. Actually, the Administration of the Ottoman
Public Debt was in the hands of foreigners who represented
the French, British, Italian, German and Austria-Hungar-
ian banks. Russia was not represented on the Council of
the Administration of the Ottoman Debt, but the payment
of 300,000,000 rubles (802,000,000 francs) of war indemni­
ties to Russia was executed through the Administration of
the Debt. As for Turkey, her representative on the Council
of the Administration of the Ottoman Debt merely had the
right to a deliberative vote.
The Administration of the Ottoman Debt became the second
Finance Ministry of the Ottoman Empire. It had over
5,000 officials, who operated parallel to the Turkish state
machinery and were entrusted with greater powers.
The most important items of the Ottoman Empire’s state
revenues passed under the Administration’s control. The
revenues from the tobacco and salt monopolies, from stamps,
spirits, the tithe from specified vilayets and also the Bul­
garian tribute, the revenues from Eastern Rumelia and
Cyprus, the surplus from the customs (in event of their
increase) and the like, all flowed into the Administration’s
treasury.
The Administration’s extortions and its perfected methods
of plunder only intensified the tax oppression in the Otto­
man Empire. A number of branch societies, which also
engaged in usurious plunder and were controlled by the
same group of foreign capital, germinated from the Otto­
man Debt Administration. In 1883, the highly profitable
tobacco monopoly was made into an independent concession
Regie cointeressée des tabacs Ottoman, which was known as
Regie. The concession received the exclusive right to manu­
facture, purchase and sell tobacco. The Regie’s tyranny
seriously affected thè tobacco growers’ position, especially
in Syria.

GERMAN PENETRATION. At the end of the 19th cen­

tury, railway construction, which the foreign capitalists used
as a means of extracting fabulous profits, acquired an out-
right political character. It became one of the means of
political penetration into the Ottoman Empire and the ob­
ject of intense rivalry between the imperialists.
Count Moltke, one of the biggest theoreticians and
practicians of German militarism, was one of the first to
realise the new significance of railway construction. In an
article written in the middle of the 19th century, he had
proposed laying a railway across the whole Ottoman Em­
pire. He wrote that the shoulder from which this iron arm
would stretch should be a United German Empire. This
arm would then cut across Asia Minor and extend its
fingers to the borders of the Caucasus, Iraq and India.
By the sixties of the 19th century, German economists
and sociologists were regarding the Ottoman Empire as
their future colony. The German economist Rodbertus wrote
that he hoped to live to see the day when the Turkish
inheritance would pass to Germany and regiments of Ger­
man soldiers would be stationed on the shores of the Bos­
porus.
After Germany’s reunification, the German junkers and
capitalists set about carrying out these expansionist plans.
The Ottoman Empire was to be turned into a region of
German colonisation, while Iraq was to become the Ger­
man Empire’s granary and cotton plantation. German
diplomacy counted on Turkey’s coming completely under
Germany’s control and flatly refused to have anything to
do with the various plans for the partition of the Ottoman
Empire.
German penetration proceeded through military, economic
and political canals.
In 1882, Baron von der Goltz’s military mission was in­
vited to Turkey, where it spent fourteen years. Colonel von
der Goltz became a Turkish pasha and reorganised the
army. The Turkish military schools were placed under the
mission’s supervision. German military traditions were
introduced in the Sultan’s army. Many Turkish officers
were sent to Germany for training and to complete their
military education.
Simultaneously, the Germans began putting von Moltke’s
railway plans into practice. On October 4, 1888, the Ger­
man capitalist Alfred Kaulla, acting on instructions from
the Deutsche Bank and. the Wurtemberg Bank, received a
328
concession for the construction of a railway from the Bos­
porus to Ankara. The line was to begin at Haidar-Pasha
Station in Scutari, a district of Constantinople situated on
the Asian shores of the Bosporus. Part of the line up to
Izmir had already been built by an Anglo-Greek company.
The Turkish Government bought this line from the British
ancT handed it over to the Germans. Alfred Kaulla took over
the task of continuing the line. As yet there were no plans
for extending it to Baghdad, but the foundation for the
construction of the Baghdad Railway, which played an
important part in the history of international relations
during the era of imperialism, had been laid.
To strengthen German influence, Kaiser Wilhelm II paid
two spectacular visits to the Orient. The first took place
in November 1889, soon after W ilhelm II’s accession to
the throne. The whole affair was arranged with great
pomp. The Sultan himself welcomed the Kaiser with an
artillery salute on the embankment in front of his palace.
On the Sultan’s orders, a special medal was stamped in the
Kaiser’s honour. In a telegram to Bismarck, Wilhelm wrote:
“My sojourn in Constantinople is a heavenly dream.”
The German diplomats made skilful use of the differences
between the Porte and the other European Powers, always
stressing the hostility of the great European Powers towards
Turkey. Britain had seized Egypt and Cyprus, France had
seized Algeria and Tunisia, and Russia had annexed Kars
and Ardagan and freed the Balkans. German diplomats
alleged that only Germany was not interested in territorial
seizures and in weakening Turkey, while frightening the
Sultan in every possible way with talk of the Powers’ real
and imaginary plans for aggression.
This policy played a definite role in the German-Turkish
rapprochement, in establishing German political control
over Turkey. In the eighties and nineties of the 19th cen­
tury, there was a shift from the former pro-British orienta­
tion to a new pro-German orientation. Germany became the
Porte’s “friend and ally”.
Kaiser Wilhelm II’s second visit to the Orient in October-
November 1898 ensured German diplomacy’s success. This
visit was arranged with even greater pomp than the first.
The Kaiser toured not only Constantinople, but also Jeru­
salem and Damascus. Claiming to be the Moslems’ defender

329
and protector, he made a pilgrimage to the burial place of
the Moslem saints and laid a wreath oil the tomb of Saladin.
“His Majesty the Sultan and the three hundred million
Moslems who revere him as the Caliph may rest assured that
they will always have a friend in the German Emperor,”1
he declared at Saladin’s tomb.
The Kaiser’s second visit coincided with an intensification
of the struggle over railway concessions. In 1892, after the
line to Ankara had been completed, the Germans asked
for a concession to continue the line. Before reaching
Ankara, the line was to branch off to the south and then
turn to the east in the direction of Konya. This concession
evoked protests from Britain, Russia and France. The Ger­
mans insisted on the concession and threatened to oppose
Britain in the Egyptian question. Britain was forced to
change her position and the German company received the
concession.
W hen the railway was extended to Konya in 1894, the
question arose whether to continue the line to Baghdad.
An intense diplomatic struggle ensued. Since Turkey
intended to grant kilometric guarantees, but lacked the
money to do so, the Germans proposed she should increase
import duties from 8 per cent to 11 per cent ad valorem.
This, however, meant securing Britain’s, France’s and
Russia’s sanction, with whom Turkey was connected by
commercial treaties.
Britain agreed to the .duty increase, but demanded by
way of compensation that British capital be invited to
participate in the construction of the Baghdad railway.
France took the same stand and the question arose of
internationalising the Baghdad railway. Russia categori­
cally objected to its construction.
In 1899, the German capitalists agreed to make the
construction an international undertaking. French and
British capital would be invited to participate but the Ger­
mans would keep the controlling shares and the whole
management of the railway in their own hands. A lengthy
argument then arose over the distribution of shares and
the managerial and administrative posts. The upshot was
that the French Government was unable to reach an under-

1 George Antonius, The Arab Awakening L., p. 77.

m
Standing with the Germans and refused to take part in the
railway’s construction.
Having failed to reach agreement with the Powers, the
Germans decided to build the first 200 kilometres of the
line. In 1903, a final concession for the construction was
contracted, but it was only in 1911 that the Germans won
the Powers’ approval for the increase of duties and the
extension of the railway.

BRITAIN’S A N D FRANCE’S POSITIONS IN THE

ARAB PROVINCES OF TURKEY. Despite Germany’s
intensified penetration, British and French capitalists con­
tinued to hold important positions in the Ottoman Empire,
especially in the far-flung Arab provinces. Syria and the
Lebanon were the main spheres of French influence and Iraq
and, to some extent, Palestine were influenced by the
British.
France turned Syria and the Lebanon into a source of
cheap agricultural produce. By the opening of the 20th
century, she had captured approximately a third of Syria’s
exports. French investors virtually controlled the manu­
facture and sale of Syrian raw silk and used nearly all
of it for the textile mills of Lyons. The primary processing
of silk was monopolised by French capital and its com-
pradore agents. The Syrian tobacco growers depended
wholly on the Regie, wdiere French capital had the upper
hand.
To speed up the process of pumping out raw material,
the French fitted out a large port in Beirut and laid a
number of railway lines (from Jaffa to Jerusalem and from
Beirut to Damascus) connecting the interior with the coast.
Branches of French banks such as the Crédit Lyonnais,
which played a leading role in the country’s economic en­
slavement, were opened in the chief towns of Syria and
Palestine.
British capital had the dominating influence in Iraq,
which had become a market for British goods and a sup­
plier of agricultural products. A t the outset of the 20th
century, Britain account 1 r ’ itely two-thirds of
Iraq’s imports. About exports went to
Britain and to Britain’s domains in India. The manufacture
and sale of Iraq’s agricultural products depended wholly
331
on the British exporters in Basra and Baghdad. Ever since
1861, the British had controlled the concession for the
organisation of river transport along the Tigris and
Euphrates.
It must be noted, however, that the British and French
capitalists were not the sole bosses in the Porte’s Arab
provinces. They had to compete with the Belgian, Austria-
Hungarian and Italian capitalists, but, as everywhere else
in the Ottoman Empire, their main rival was German capi­
tal. The German Deutsche Orient Bank and the Deutsche
Palestina Bank had branches in many Syrian and Palestin­
ian towns. Paul Rohrbach, a theoretician of German im­
perialism, wrote that Germany’s future in the Orient lay
in Asia Minor, Syria, Mesopotamia and Palestine. “One of
the richest oil sources in the world is to be found right next
to Nineveh, where the Baghdad railway runs. There are
huge deposits of copper and other metals in the heart of
the Taurus Mountains. The plains of Babylon could become
the greatest supplier of wheat and cotton in the world. In
Mesopotamia there are pastures for millions of sheep. Here
we have most of the raw material we need. Moreover, it is
all concentrated in one place.”

TH E ARAB PEOPLE’S STRUGGLE AG AINST THE

REIGN OF ZULUM. The penetration of foreign capital
and the harsh police regime of Zalum evoked widespread
discontent. The peoples of the Ottoman Empire suffered
dual oppression—that of the foreign capitalists and that
of the Turkish pashas. The people, however, regarded the
regime of Zulum , its oppressive feudal-bureaucratic and
tax-paying system as the main cause of their troubles. This,
they felt, was what was chiefly to blame for their foreign
enslavement.
The growing dissatisfaction with the regime spread to
the representatives of the national bourgeoisie and intel­
ligentsia and likewise to the broad masses of the people—
peasants, artisans and the emergent working class. The
discontent was reflected in the diffusion of anti-government
feelings among the Arab intellectuals and in the people’s
spontaneous outbursts.
In 1886, a peasant uprising headed by Shibli Atrash, a
representative of one of the noble Druse clans, flared up
332
in the Jebel Druse (the Druse Mountains). Shibli Atrash
was called the friend of the fellaheen and in the struggle
against the Turks he gained the Druse peasants’ whole­
hearted support. The uprising waned only when the Turkish
authorities agreed to a compromise and appointed Shibli
Atrash Emir of the Druses.
In 1896, in reply to the Turks’ attempt to introduce com­
pulsory military service, a fresh uprising flared up in the
Jebel Druse. It was renewed in 1899, when the Turkish
authorities began building barracks in Suweida, an admin­
istrative post in the centre of the Jebel Druse. The Turks
lost about 500 men in subduing the uprising. But in 1906
fresh disturbances broke out in this area.
The major disorders and disturbances among the urban
population took place in Aleppo (1895) and Beirut (1903).
They were of a spontaneous and local character, however,
and offered no serious threat to the Turkish authorities,
who had no trouble in suppressing the masses’ uncoordi­
nated activities.
In 1875, the same deep-rooted feeling of discontent led
to the formation of a secret society of Arab intellectuals
in Beirut. It was headed by Ibrahim Yazeji and Faris Nimr
and had branches in Damascus, Tripoli and Suweida. The
society circulated leaflets advertising its tasks and aims.
Its programme, drawn up in 1880, called for Syria’s and
the Lebanon’s independence, the acknowledgement of
Arabic as the official language, the abolition of censorship
and other restrictions on freedom of speech, and a ban on
the use of local military contingents beyond the Syrian
and Lebanese borders. Gradually, however, the society’s
activities, isolated from the masses, began to abate and
somewhere around 1885 it virtually broke up.
Brutal police repressions and the large-scale spying ham­
pered the formation and diffusion of national liberation
ideas. Many representatives of the Arab intelligentsia fled
to Egypt, Europe and North America, seeking refuge from
Abdul Hamid II’s persecutions. They could express their
views, their compatriots’ hopes, more freely in exile. Faris
Nimr, Abd ar-Rahman el-Kawakebi and others continued
their activities in Egypt.
Many Arab Nationalists relied on the Turkish revolu­
tionaries’ (the Young Turks) support in the struggle against

333
the despotic regime of Z td u m . In alliance with the Young
Turks they planned to depose Abdul Hamid II and realise
the Arabs’ national aspirations within the framework of
the Ottoman Empire. Others favoured the Arab countries’
secession and complete independence. To achieve this they
looked to the European Powers for aid.
In 1904, the Christian Arab Najib Azuri founded the
L ig u e d e la P a tr ie A r a b e in Paris. He was almost the only
member of the organisation, but he was extremely active,
and published several appeals on the League’s behalf. In
1905, he published a book in French called T h e A w a k e n in g
o f th e A r a b N a tio n {L e R é v e il d e la N a tio n A r a b e ) and in
1907, he began the publication of a monthly review entitled
U I n d e p e n d e n c e A r a b e . His slogan was “the Arab countries
for the Arabs.” In his appeals he called on the Arabs to
rise in revolt and form their own state from the Porte’s
Arab provinces. Egypt and the North African countries
were not included in his plans for a united Arab state.
Azuri did not wish to spoil his relations with the Powers.
Moreover, his scheme reflected the Syrian bourgeoisie’s
aspirations to Arab leadership. Azuri promised to respect
the interests of foreigners and counted on their co-operation
in the struggle against the Turks. Najib Azuri’s programme
fell short of the demands of the bourgeois-democratic rev­
olution; his Arab League was isolated from the masses and
had no faith in the forces of the mass popular movement.
This isolation from the people and the absence of all
contact with them was a characteristic feature of Arab
nationalism at the turn of the 19th century, and one of the
main reasons for its weakness. Most of the Arab national­
ists lived abroad and restricted their activities to the prop­
agation of nationalist ideas. Despite their weakness and
shortcomings, however, their activities paved the way for
the Arabs’ national awakening and were one of the factors
which brought about the upsurge of the national liberation
movement in the Arab countries in the period of the general
awakening of Asia.
 CHAPTER XXV

THE YOUNG TURK REVOLUTION

AND THE ARAB COUNTRIES

THE REVOLUTION OF 1908 IN TURKEY. In July

1908, an armed uprising flared up in Turkey. It was organ­
ised by the Committee of Union and Progress (Ittihad we
Terrakki), which was founded in 1894. The members of
the committee were progressive officers and intellectuals
who represented the interests of the Turkish bourgeoisie and
favoured the Ottoman Empire’s conversion into a bourgeois-
constitutional state. Their chief demand was to restore the
constitution.
At first, the committee’s leaders confined themselves to
conspiratorial tactics, but provocateurs helped Abdul
Hamid’s detectives to expose some of the Young Turks’
underground organisations and arrest the leaders. The trial
of the committee members went on from 1897 to 1899.
Many of the committee’s supporters emigrated.
A split took place in the Young Turk movement abroad.
In 1902, at the Paris Congress of the Committee of Union
and Progress a group of Ottoman liberals under Prince
Sabah ed-Din, who founded the League of Decentralisation
and Private Initiative, came to the fore. Sabah ed-Din
regarded himself as an anarchist and a follower of P. Kro­
potkin and E. Reclus. Attempting to apply the anarchist
theory to Turkish history, Sabah ed-Din advocated the
development of private initiative. He felt that the root of
the evil lay in Turkey’s medieval economy and in the
absence of private enterprise. Another radical evil of the
Ottoman Empire which, according to him, was the cause
of all disturbances and disorders was the oppression of
nationalities and the Turkish State’s multinational struc­
ture.
Sabah ed-Din and his supporters drew the Turkish revolu­
tionaries’ attention to the question of nationalities and were

335
 the first to establish contacts with the national minorities’
olitical organisations. There was a divergence of views,
P owever, among the Young Turks on this question. One
trend, which was headed by Sabah ed-Din and his League
of Decentralisation and Private Initiative, was in favour
of settling the nationalities question by creating autonomous
provinces on the basis of decentralisation. This trend was
actively supported by representatives of the Greek and
Armenian bourgeoisie and also by feudalists of other
nationalities—Arabs and to some extent the Albanians.
Sabah ed-Din, however, who advocated broad autonomy
for the national regions, did not play a leading part in the
Young Turk movement and later completely withdrew from
politics. His supporters, who had formed a break-away party,
later opposed the Young Turks and then drifted over to the
counter-revolution.
Most of the Turkish revolutionaries who rallied round the
Committee of Union and Progress favoured the formation
of a single centralised Turkish state. They proceeded from
the assumption that the Turks were the predominant nation­
ality in Turkey. But since their primary aim was to over­
throw the Hamdanian regime of Zuhim they felt it was
possible to form a bloc with the national minority organisa­
tions for the joint execution of this task.
The Russian Revolution of 1905-07 stimulated the revolu­
tionary developments in Turkey. It had a great impact on
the Turkish intellectuals and on the revolutionary-minded
officers. In 1906, a group of Turkish officers sent a letter
to the relatives of Lieutenant Schmidt, who had headed the
Sevastopol uprising of 1905, vowing to fight for “sacred
civil liberty” and for the “right to live as human beings”.
In 1906, the Committee of Union and Progress shifted
its headquarters to Salonika and set about creating a wide
network of revolutionary organisations. The Young Turks
chose Macedonia, a permanent breeding ground of anti-
feudal struggle, as their movement’s main centre. At the
same time, they decided to unite all the revolutionary forces.
With this aim in view they convened in Paris, at the end
of 1907, a congress of all the opposition parties and groups
in the Ottoman Empire. Apart from the Committee of
Union and Progress this congress was attended by repre­
sentatives of Sabah ed-Din’s League of Decentralisation
336
and Private Initiative, by the Internal Macedonian Revolu­
tionary Organisation, by the Armenian Dashnaktsutyun and
by the Arab Nationalists.
At the Paris Congress, a united front of national-revolu­
tionary forces was formed on the basis of common and
immediate aims. The Young Turks and the representatives
of the national minorities made mutual concessions. The
Young Turks agreed to the principle of political and cul­
tural self-determination, while the representatives of the
national minorities declared that they would be content to
receive autonomy within the framework of the Ottoman
Empire. The participants in the congress worked out specific
forms and methods of struggle such as refusal to take the
oath of allegiance in the army, provoking disturbances among
the civilian population, strikes of officials and police aimed
at disorganising the machinery of state, refusal to pay taxes,
armed resistance to the authorities and an armed uprising.
The resolutions passed by the congress stressed that the
uprising should be carried out mainly by the armed forces.
The date of the uprising was fixed for October 1908.
International events spurred the outbreak of the insur­
rection. On July 3, 1908, Niazi, the commandant of the
Resna fortress in Macedonia, initiated an uprising and
retreated to the mountains, where he was joined by Enver,
Mustafa Kemal, Jemal and others together with their de­
tachments. Soon the revolutionary detachments had
occupied Monastir (Bitolj), where the headquarters of
the First Army was situated and from there they
threatened to march on Constantinople. Thinking that
the troops in the capital and in Asia Minor had also sided
with the Young Turks, Sultan Abdul Hamid agreed to a
compromise. On July 24, 1908, he restored the constitution
and appointed elections. He then issued decrees instituting
freedom of speech, freedom of the press and the right to
assembly. He also abolished censorship and pardoned
political prisoners.
The Young Turk Revolution was victorious.
This, however, was only a partial victory. The Young
Turks feared the masses’ revolutionary initiative and tried
to come to an understanding with the former government.
Instead of forming a new cabinet, they allowed power to
remain in the hands of the Sultan and his cabinet from
22-573 337
which only the1most compromised members were removed.
.. It is only half a victory,” Lenin wrote of the first
successes of the Young Turk Revolution, “or even less, since
Turkey’s Nicholas II has so far managed to get away with a
promise to restore the celebrated Turkish constitution.”1

THE ARABS A N D THE YOUNG TURK REVOLU­

TION. The news that the Revolution had been victorious
and that the constitution had been restored was jubilantly
received in the Porte’s Arab provinces. The Arabs regarded
the Revolution as their own victory. There was celebrating
and merry-making everywhere. An eyewitness wrote that
this event evoked general enthusiasm throughout Syria.
Christians and Moslems, even priests and mullahs (Moslem
priests) fraternised at public meetings. Writers hailed a
new era of freedom, equality and fraternity.
Another eyewitness wrote that it was impossible to
describe the people’s enthusiasm. “A ll barriers immediately
fell and the age-old religious enmity died away. People
fraternised in the streets. Youths who only yesterday had
been strangers to the crowd climbed up on improvised
rostrums and stirred the people with their fiery speeches.
Their courage knew no bounds___”
The Revolution gave full scope to the initiative of the
masses. The people opposed their oppressors. A mass move­
ment began in Beirut against the mutasarrif, who had his
seat at Beit-Ed-Din (the centre of the mountainous Lebanon),
for the annexation of Beirut and the valley of Biqa’a to the
autonomous Lebanon. The movement was headed by Selim
Ammun, a highly educated man of noble origin, who liked
to repeat that the highest ambition one could have was to
be a good peasant of one’s country. In September 1908, he
became the president of the Administrative Council; he
carried out a number of reforms and founded the Demo­
cratic Society. But in 1909, on receiving news of the April
coup d’état in Constantinople, he died, and the Lebanese
democratic movement was defeated.
In 1909, the peasant movement broke out in another
district. The Druse peasants once again rose in rebellion.
The movement’s centre was Hauran. The insurgents laid

1 Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 15, p. 183.

338
siege to and took over the town of Busra and entered the
valley of Biqa’a. For two years they waged guerilla war­
fare, seizing transports and ambushing trains, small gar­
risons and Turkish troop columns. The Turks killed
6,000 Druses, i.e., almost one-tenth of the entire population of
Jebel Druse, before they managed to suppress the uprising.
The peasant movement in Iraq began later than in other
parts of the Ottoman Empire. It acquired considerable
dimensions in 1913-14 in connection with the Turkish au­
thorities’ decision to sell state lands to foreigners. Cases of
peasants refusing to pay their taxes became more frequent
and the authorities had to send punitive expeditions to the
countryside to suppress the disturbances.
The main reason for the democratic movement’s weak­
ness in the Arab countries was that there was no link
between the peasant uprisings and the actions of the urban
population. The peasants often acted under the leadership
of feudal lords or tribal sheikhs. On the other hand, the
small democratic groups which existed in the towns (es­
pecially in Syria and the Lebanon) were still unable to find
a common language with the peasants; they could not de­
pend on the popular masses and yielded the leadership of
the national liberation movement to the national bourgeoisie
and the feudalists.

“ARAB-OTTOM AN FRATERNITY”. In the early days

following the Revolution broad sections of the Arab na­
tional bourgeoisie had illusions about the possibility of
radical reforms and the national emancipation of the Arabs
within the framework of a renovated Turkey. The Arab
Nationalists counted on the Young Turks’ co-operation and
hoped to solve the Arab countries’ problems with their help.
After the Revolution, the centre of the Arab national
movement shifted from exile to Constantinople, where the
most active elements among the Arab people—officers,
students and officials—were concentrated.
At a large meeting of the Arab colony in Constantinople,
held on September 2, 1908, they founded the first more or
less mass organisation under the name of El-lkha El-Arabi
El-Uthmani (The Ottoman Arab Fraternity). The fraternity
began to publish its own paper and opened branches in
nearly all of the Porte’s Arab provinces.
22* 339
 The Arab Öttoman Fraternity adopted the Young Turks’
attitude. Its Constituent Assembly was attended by mem­
bers of the Committee of Union and Progress. The frater­
nity’s leaders proceeded from the Pan-Osmanic theory and
acknowledged the existence of the Ottoman nation. They
said that the single Ottoman nation was divided into a
number of millets and the Arabs, one of the most impor­
tant elements of the Ottoman people, constituted one of
these millets. Their programme did not contain a single
word about a separate Arab nation. Not only was there no
mention of independence, but, what is more, there was no
mention of the Arabs’ right to self-determination and to
organise autonomous bodies. On the contrary, the Arab
Ottoman Fraternity felt its main task was to assist the Com­
mittee of Union and Progress. The only national points
in the programme were the demands for national equality,
for the spread of education in the Arabic tongue and the
observance of Arab customs.
The Arab Ottoman Fraternity’s leaders were Arab mem­
bers of the Young Turk Party. The fraternity’s president
Sadik Pasha el-Azm, one of the Committee of Union and
Progress’s organisers, was a former officer of the Turkish
General Staff and a diplomat. He had been living in exile,
where he edited a Young Turkish newspaper in the Arabic
language. After the 1908 Revolution, he returned to Con­
stantinople and became one of the leaders of the Young
Turkish movement.

THE ARAB DELEGATION TO THE PARLIAMENT.

THE YOUNG TURKS’ POLICY ON NATIONALITIES.
The elections to the Turkish Parliament and the Young Turks’
programme, published in the fall of 1908, and far more
moderate than all their previous programmes and pledges,
were a serious blow to the Young Turk illusions held by the
Arab Nationalists. “The Young Turks are praised for their
moderation and restraint.” Lenin wrote in October 1908, “i.e.,
the Turkish revolution is being praised because it is weak,
because it is not rousing the popular masses to really indep­
endent action, because it is hostile to the proletarian struggle
beginning in the Ottoman Empire.”1

1 Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 15, p. 222.

3 40
 An example of this “restraint” and “moderation” were
the elections to the Turkish Parliament, which were held
in two stages. Real popular representatives were not ad­
mitted to the electors’ meetings in the sanjaqs. The entire
electoral machine was in the hands of the committees of
the Union and Progress Party, which nominated candidates
and secured their passage into the Parliament. The results
were a disappointment to the Arabs. Out of a total of
245 deputies, 150 were Turks and only 60 were Arabs,
whereas the very opposite was the case with regard to the
population of the Ottoman Empire, which had a population
of approximately, 22,000,000, of which 7,500,000 were
Turks and 10,500,000, Arabs.
The Arab delegation showed no initiative in Parliament.
It sided with and supported the Young Turks. The majority
of the Arabs, however, were dissatisfield. By the end of
1908, many Arab feudalists and even Nationalists were in
favour of forming a Liberal Party (Hizb El-Ahrar). This
party, which actually expressed the interests of feudal-
compradore circles, took a reactionary stand, but had
inherited the traditions of Sabah ed-Din’s League of Decen­
tralisation and Private Initiative in the question of national­
ities.
With the help of this party and of the Moslem clergy, the
students of the madrasahs and the Guards, Sultan Abdul
Hamid II engineered a coup d’état. On April 13, 1909, the
insurgents seized a number of government buildings and
launched represssions against the Young Turks. Mohammed
Arslan, a prominent figure of the Arab movement, was
among those killed. The Young Turks, however, quickly
managed to organise a rebuff. The “army of the movement”
under Mahmud Shevket Pasha and Mustafa Kemal sup­
pressed the rebellion after fierce fighting in the streets. On
April 27, 1909, Abdul Hamid II was overthrown. The
Young Turks proclaimed the new Sultan, sixty-four year
old Prince Reshad, Abdul Hamid II’s younger brother, who
took the name of Mohammed V. After the rebellion had
been suppressed, the Young Turk leaders decided not to
restrict themselves to control of the government apparatus
and formed a government themselves.
Upon their succession to power, the Young Turks com­
pletely degenerated and broke away from the masses. They
341
were conciliatory towards Turkey’s reactionary chauvinist
circles and began an open struggle against the revolutionary
movement. On the domestic scene they preserved feudal
land tenure, abandoned tax reforms in the peasants’ favour
and took a number of measures against the workers, partic­
ularly the strike law of 1910. On the international scene the
Young Turks refused to free the country from all forms of
foreign influence and conspired with the German imperial­
ists. They adopted Abdul Hamid II’s pro-German orienta­
tion and turned the country into a vassalage of Kaiser Ger­
many. In their struggle against Britain, France and Russia,
the German diplomats made skilful use of the Young Turks’
adherence to the principles of Pan-Islamismand Pan-Turk-
ism, adventurous theories which regarded all peoples who
spoke Turkish as a single nation.
The Young Turks’ national policy was especially reac­
tionary. They went back on the promises they had made
to the national minorities at the Paris Congress of 1907.
The Armenian pogroms continued, as they had under Abdul
Hamid II. Arab, Albanian and other non-Turkish societies
were closed. In April 1909, the Arab Ottoman Fraternity
was banned. The Young Turks armed themselves with the
doctrines of Pan-Osmanism in its Turkish interpretation
and pursued a policy of compulsory Turkisation of the non-
Turkish nationalities. National schools were closed, the
Turkish language was made the only official language of
the Ottoman Empire.

THE LITERARY CLUB A N D THE Q AHTANIYA.

The Young Turk government’s policy evoked opposition
among the national minorities and compelled the Arab
nationalities to oppose the Young Turkish regime. The
Arab-Ottoman honeymoon had ended and the national
movement acquired an openly anti-Turkish character.
The banning of legal organisations forced the leaders
of the Arab movement to change their tactics. They began
to combine legal struggle with underground work and
intensified their activities abroad. In the summer of 1909,
in place of the banned Arab Ottoman Fraternity they
founded the Literary Club (El-Muntada El-Arabi) in Con­
stantinople. Its official objectives were not avowedly polit­
ical and the Young Turks tolerated it as a cultural and

342
educational organisation. The Literary Club’s social basis
was the same as that of the Ottoman Arab Fraternity, but
its leaders were completely different. These were people
who had devoted themselves wholly to the struggle against
the Turkish yoke. Four out of the Club Committeevs six
members were hung by the Turks during World War I.
The Club had several thousand members, most of them
students. There were branches in many Syrian and Iraqi
towns.
The Club and its branches became centres where progres­
sive Arab intellectuals could meet. Illegal literature was
smuggled in from Egypt and the United States. Above all,
the Club provided a cover for thé Arab Nationalists’ illegal
organisations.
At the end of 1909, Karim el-Khalil, the president of the
Club, founded a secret political society which operated
parallel to the legal organisations. The new society was
named El-Oahtaniya, after Qahtan, one of the Arabs’
legendary ancestors. The society was comprised mainly of
Arab officers serving in the Turkish army, among whom
Aziz Ali el-Maisri played the leading role. An Egyptian by
birth, he had served in the Turkish army and had taken
part in the Young Turk Revolution. In 1909, he entered
this secret anti-Turkish society and was soon in virtual con­
trol of all its affairs.
The Qahtaniya's tasks and aims were worded in extreme­
ly vague terms: “To spread the principles of truth among
the sons of the people, to gather their efforts, to unite their
ranks,” and so on. The society’s members rejected the Arab
Ottoman Fraternity’s Pan-Osmanic principles and regarded
the Arabs as a nation apart. Their idea was to reorganise
the Ottoman Empire and the dual Arab-Turkish state on
the lines of Austria-Hungary. The Turkish Sultan would be
simultaneously King of the Arabs. The Arab provinces were
to form a separate kingdom within the framework of the
Arab-Turkish Empire with its own parliament and local
government, and with Arabic as the official language.
The secret society’s centre was in Constantinople; it also
had branches in five other towns. In spite of enthusiastic
beginnings, however, it never really got down to active
work. Traitors turned up in its midst and it was decided
to disperse before police action was taken.

343
 THE YOUNG ARAB SOCIETY. In Paris, in 1911, a
group of students, members of the Literary Club who were
pursuing their studies in France, founded the secret Young
Arab Society (Jam’iyat El-Arabiya El-Fatat), which played
an important role in the history of the Arab national libera­
tion movement. Many of its members perished at the hands
of the. Turkish executioners during World War I. Others
lived to become outstanding politicians and statesmen of
the Arab countries (Jamil Mardam, Rustum Haidar, Auni
Abd al-Hadi).
The society’s founders set themselves a concrete aim.
They wanted to be what the Young Turks were for Turkey.
Gradually there emerged a more concrete programme based
on the principles of Arab independence. A t first the Young
Arabs spoke in general terms of the Arab people’s renais­
sance and favoured the decentralisation of the Ottoman
Empire. Later they demanded independence for the Arab
countries and struggled for the Arabs’ liberation from Turkish
and all other forms of foreign domination.
The Young Arab Society was strictly conspiratorial. Its
members were divided into three groups: (1) an administra­
tive group of six leaders; (2) an active group formed from
among members who had gone through a preliminary pro­
bation period; (3) a group of candidates who had been
tried and proved and were ignorant of each others’ iden­
tity. In their documents the Young Arabs resorted to all
sorts of secret ciphers and symbols. They called each other
“my brother”, wrote about the sunrise and sunset, about love
and faith and used Masonic terminology.
This, however, was no mere pretence of conspiracy. On
their return to their homeland, the secret society’s members
took an active part in the political struggle. In 1913, they
took the lead in uniting the actions of all the Arab national
parties and organisations.

FRENCH CLAIMS ON SYRIA A N D TH E LEBANON.

France and Britain supported the separatist tendencies in
the Porte’s Arab provinces. Operating in their respective
spheres of influence, they tried to win the Arab Nationalists
over to their side and thereby strengthen their positions for
the time when the Ottoman Empire would be partitioned.
France was especially active. The French consulates in
344
Damascus and Beirut established ties with several Arab
Nationalists and financed the publication of several Lebanese
newspapers. The French Government allotted considerable
sums for the upkeep of French schools in Syria and the Leba­
non, which had 25,000 pupils, and encouraged all kinds of
scientific, cultural, educational and charity organisations.
In 1912, during the Italo-Turkish war, Italian warships
appeared off the shores of Beirut and shelled the Turkish
ships at anchor in the port. The shelling caused considerable
excitement in Syria and the Lebanon and gave the French
an excuse to come forward openly with their claims. In
December 1912, the Prime Minister of France, Raymond
Poincaré, declared in the Chamber of Deputies that France
had special interests in Syria and the Lebanon and that she
would never renounce her traditional positions in these
countries, the local population’s “sympathies” or her right
to defend these positions and interests. Simultaneously, in
December 1912, France secured the conclusion of a new
protocol on the Lebanese question by which the Lebanon’s
former autonomy established by the conventions of 1861
and 1864 was considerably expanded.
On behalf of the British Government Grey, the British
Foreign Secretary, immediately backed Poincaré’s state­
ment. True, later by way of “clarification” Grey declared in
Parliament that the British assurances given in 1912 applied
only to railway construction, and that Britain was in favour
of preserving the Ottoman Empire’s unity and integrity.

THE DECENTRALISATION PARTY. Between 1912

and 1913 the international situation developed favourably
for the Arab Nationalists. The uprisings in Yemen and
Albania, the Turks’ failures in the war against Italy
(1911-12) and the coalition of the Balkan states (1912-13)
weakened the Ottoman Empire and led to the liberation of
the Balkans’ Greek and Slav population from the Turkish
yoke. In 1912, Albania won her independence. A ll these
events were of exceptional significance in the oppressed
peoples’ struggle for liberation. Lenin regarded the first
Balkan war as “one link in the chain of world events mark­
ing the collapse of the medieval state of affairs in Asia and
East Europe”.1
1 Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 19, p. 39.
345
 The Young Turks’ failures abroad, their reactionary
policy on nationalities and their complete neglect of the
common people’s interests evoked considerable discontent
in Turkey, which became apparent among both Right and
Left wingers. In 1911, the Right-wing opposition forces
merged in the Freedom and Concord Party (H u r r iy e t w e
I ttila f ) , which reflected the Turkish feudal-compradore in­
terests and, unlike the Young Turks, took its cue from the
Entente countries in foreign policy. With regard to the
national question it continued Sabah ed-Din’s traditions and
took a progressive stand. The Party of Freedom and Con­
cord was in favour of decentralisation of the empire. It
supported the slogans “The Balkan countries for the Balkan
peoples”, “The Arab countries for the Arabs”, “Armenia
for the Armenians” and “Kurdistan for the Kurds.”
Its members, the I ttila f is ts , demanded autonomy for these
regions inside the Ottoman Empire. In July 1912, the
I ttila fis ts came to power through a coup d’état. They were
unable, however, to solve Turkey’s pressing domestic and
foreign problems and they themselves became victims of
a coup. On January 23, 1913, the Young Turks regained
power. In effect, the reins of government were held by a
Young Turk triumvirate, Enver, Talaat and Jemal, who
turned the country into a patrimony of German imperialism.
The Germans jokingly referred to the Ottoman Empire
as “Enverland” after the leading pro-German.
All these events, the Turks’ military defeats, the Balkan
peoples’ liberation, the accession to power of the Party of
Freedom and Concord, and also the pressure of the Powers,
caused an upswing of the national movement in the Arab
countries in 1912-14. These developments showed that the
Ottoman Empire was near to collapse. The series of coups,
particularly, was a sign of a top-level crisis in Turkey. The
revolutionary spirit continued to expand in the Arab
provinces. New political and revolutionary societies arose. The
national demands became part of the people’s life.
During the first Balkan war in December 1912, the Arab
Nationalists founded the Ottoman Administrative Decentral­
isation (Party (H izb E l- L a m a r k a z iy a E l- I d a r iy a E l- U th -
m a n í) in Cairo. This party was closely linked with the
Turkish Party of Freedom and Concord and its programme
had much in common with that of the I ttila fists.

346
 The Decentralisation Party had approximately 10,000
members and had branches in nearly all the towns of Syria
and Palestine and in many regions of Iraq. The Party was
headed by a central committee of twenty members and an
executive body of six of their own number. The party’s pre­
sident was Rafik el-Azm, a prominent Arab publicist, socio­
logist and philosopher and a member of Kawakebi’s Cairo
circle. The Vice-President was another of Kawakebi’s pupils—
Sheikh el-Zahrawi, an outstanding Arab publicist from the
town of Hama and a deputy to the Turkish Parliament.
The party pressed for maximum Arab participation in
the government of the empire, in the senate and in parlia­
ment. It demanded that Arabic be recognised as the official
language and that it be introduced in Arab schools as a
compulsory subject. The Decentralisation Party pressed for
the Arab v ila y e ts 9 separation into special autonomous
provinces with local governments and provincial assemblies.
The autonomous provinces were to be granted extensive
rights, such as the right to invite foreign advisers at their
own discretion, to contract foreign loans and to grant
concessions. The Decentralisation Party placed high hopes
on the Western Powers’ intervention. They evenNagreed to
the establishment of French control over Syria and the
Lebanon and British control over the greater part of Pales­
tine and Iraq.
The Decentralisation Party and its local branches
launched a vigorous campaign. They put out leaflets,
organised meetings and demonstrations and distributed
songs and poems.
Very close contacts were maintained with the Literarv
Club and with other Arab national societies, especially with
the Syrian and Iraqi reform societies.

THE SYRIAN AN D IRAQI REFORM SOCIETIES. A

number of legal societies and committees in favour of
reforms within the framework of the Ottoman Empire arose
in Syria, the Lebanon and Iraq on the basis of the autonom­
ous principles proposed by the Decentralisation Party. The
most important of these were the Beirut Committee of
Reform (E l- J a m iy a E l-I s la h iy a ), the Lebanese Awakening
Society (A n - N a g d a E l-L u b n a n iy a ), the Baghdad National
Scientific Club (A n N a d i E l- W a ta n i E l-I lm i), the Basra
3 47
Reform Society (El Jamiya El-Islaliiyd) and the Basra branch
of the Beirut Committee of Reform.
The powerful influence of the compradore elements of
the Syrian and Lebanese bourgeoisie made itself felt in
the Syrian reform societies, especially in the Lebanese
Awakening Society. The Beirut Committee of Reform and
the Lebanese Awakening Society were in constant contact
with émigré centres in Egypt, the U.S.A. and France and
collaborated closely with the French consulates. In 1913,
they even wrote a letter to the French Government, request­
ing France to occupy Syria and the Lebanon and to establish
a protectorate over these countries. Unlike the Syrians, the
Iraqi reformists, who were even more strongly influenced
by the feudal-compradore elements, took their cue from
Britain. Seyyid Talib, a leading Iraqi reformist, advocated
British supervision of the reforms and even a British pro­
tectorate over Iraq.
The reform programmes of these societies were somewhat
similar. The programme of the Beirut Committee of Re­
form, the most influential of them, was the most significant.
It demanded that all questions of local administration be
handed over to the autonomous government of the Beirut
vilayet . The central government was only to retain control
over matters relating to defence, foreign relations, imperial
communication routes and state finances. Recruits from one
vilayet were not to be sent to other vilayets for service. The
Arabic should be recognised as the official language and
should be used in Parliament and in official documents on
an equal footing with Turkish.
The committee published its reform plan in the middle
of February 1913. It was endorsed at mass meetings in
Damascus, Aleppo, Akkra, Nablus, Baghdad and Basra. In
January 1913, however, the Young Turks, who succeeded
the Ittilafists in the government, adopted a completely
different attitude towards the Arab Nationalists. They
flatly rejected the Beirut reformers’ demands and on
April 8, 1913, they even banned the Committee of Reform
and arrested its leaders. These measures caused much excite­
ment in Beirut. The Beirut population responded to the
Nationalists’ call for a general protest strike. Bazaars, stores
and artisan shops were closed and the Arabic newspapers
came out in black borders.
348
 The disturbances spread to other regions of Syria, where
solidarity demonstrations were held. This outburst of indig­
nation compelled the Young Turks to make concessions.
They released the arrested committee leaders and promised
to carry out the reforms of vilayet administration.
On May 5, 1913, the Young Turk government promul­
gated a new Law of the Vilayets giving increased powers
to the former vilayet councils, but falling short of the reform­
ists’ and Decentralisation Party’s demands. By many it
was regarded as a veiled step towards the further centralisa­
tion of the Ottoman Empire.
The Law of the Vilayets evoked a fresh wave of demon­
strations and protest meetings in many Syrian and Iraqi
towns, where an extensive campaign to reform vilayet
administration had also been launched.

THE FIRST ARAB CONGRESS. W hile these events

were unfolding, a group of Arab students in Paris (as the
leaders of the Young Arab Society called themselves for
the sake of conspiracy) made a move for unity of all the
national forces with a view to bringing pressure to bear on
the Turkish Government. On April 4, 1913, the group
appealed to the Decentralisation Party to summon the First
Arab Congress in Paris. The proposal was accepted and
the Decentralisation Party began making preparations for
the congress.
The French Government adopted an extremely favour­
able attitude towards the idea of convening a congress, since
this coincided with its own demands and made it easier for
the French to penetrate into Syria and the Lebanon. The
French Government furnished the Arab Nationalists with
premises for their congress and ensured the publication of
its documents. The government’s semi-official organ, the
newspaper Temps gave detailed reports of the congress and
printed the delegates’ speeches. Khairullah, an Arab publi­
cist and a secretary of the congress, collaborated directly with
the newspaper Temps and, as one of its contributors, pub­
lished all the congress’s documents.
The congress was held in June 1913. The official
sittings took place between June 18 and 23, 1913.
Twenty-four delegates attended the congress (nineteen from
Syria and the Lebanon, two from Iraq and three from the
349
Arab communities of the U.S.A.) and there were over
200 guests. The resolutions were based on the programmes
of the Decentralisation Party and the Beirut Committee of
Reform. The congress called for recognition of the Arabs’
national rights and affirmed their demand, first for greater
participation in the Ottoman Empire’s central government
and, second, for the autonomy of the Arab provinces. The
resolutions of the congress were communicated to the French
Minister of Foreign Affairs, to the Powers’ ambassadors in
Paris and to the Turkish Government.
The French Government, which in the meanwhile was
holding talks with the Turks on the possibility of a loan
and, therefore, possessed a strong lever of pressure on Tur­
key, summoned to Paris Midhat Bey, the Secretary of the
Committee of Union and Progress. On behalf of the Young
Turk Party, Midhat Bey concluded an agreement with
the chairman of the First Arab Congress, el-Zahrawi. By
this agreement the Young Turks undertook to carry out all
the congress’s resolutions. Meanwhile, in the summer of
1913, an agreement was concluded between France and
Turkey under which the Porte granted France a number of
railway and port concessions. Neither the first nor the sec­
ond agreement were implemented.
The Young Turks did everything in their power to wreck
the Arab-Turkish agreement. For two months they kept
up a pretence. On August 15, 1913, they ceremoniously
welcomed the delegates of the congress who had come to
Constantinople. A series of meetings were arranged as a
sign of “Arab-Turkish rapprochement” with the participa­
tion of Young Turkish ministers. On August 18, 1913, the
Young Turks issued a decree on Arab rights, which came
nowhere near to satisfying the Arabs and was interpreted
as an act of deceit. In an attempt to delay the inevitable
breach, the Turks began distributing ranks and decorations
to various Arab personalities. They appointed five Arab
senators, all of whom, except for el-Zahrawi, were big
feudalists and merchants and had no connection with the
national movement.
Neither these two-faced manifestations of “Arab-Turkish
rapprochement” nor the scanty reforms, which were not
even carried out, yielded any tangible results. The situa­
tion remained unchanged.
350
 EL-AHD (COVENANT). PREPARATIONS FOR A N
ARAB UPRISING. After the failure of Arab-Turkish con­
tacts in the summer of 1913, the Nationalists lost all hope of
coming to an agreement with the Young Turks. True, some
of them attempted to renew the talks, but most of the
Nationalists began to look on them as traitors. The young
members of the Literary Club even organised a demonstra­
tion in protest against Sheikh el-Zahrawi’s acceptance of the
post of senator.
After August and September 1913, the Arab Nationalists
made no further serious attempts to reach agreement with
the Turks and began preparing for an armed uprising.
On October 28, 1913, Major Aziz Ali el-Misri founded a
Secret society called E l- A h d (the Covenant) in Constanti­
nople. E l- A h d was formed on the basis of the other secret
society E l- Q a h ta n iy a and was somewhat similar to it both
in structure and aims. Unlike the Q a h ta n iy a , however, this
was a purely military association, embracing Arab officers
of the Turkish army, mainly Iraqis, of feudal birth. The
.new society had approximately 4,000 members and founded
several branches in Baghdad, Mosul, Aleppo and Damascus.
Such persons as Nuri as-Said and Jamil Madfai were con­
nected with the society. Many of E l-A /u V s members, includ­
ing Aziz Ali el-Misri, had ties with the British Intelligence
and took their cue from Britain.
E l- A h d renounced all hopes of a peaceful evolution and
an agreement with the Young Turks. It called for the forced
overthrow of the dominating Turks and made preparations
for an uprising, the centre of which was to be in Iraq.
Early in 1914, the Turkish authorities caught wind of
the military plot and arrested Aziz Ali el-Misri, charging
him with treason. His trial by a military tribunal in March
1914 evoked a storm of protest in the Arab countries, especial­
ly in Egypt. The tribunal sentenced Aziz Ali to death, but
the sentence was not carried out thanks to the British Em­
bassy’s intervention. On April 21, 1914, Aziz Ali el-Misri
was pardoned and departed for Egypt.
A number of other smaller societies whose aims were to
organise an armed struggle against the Turks arose parallel
to E l - A h d . The Banner’s Society (J a m 'iy a t E l- A la m ) was
founded in Mosul, and the Society of the Arab Revolution
( J a ir iiy a t E l- T h a w r a E l- A r a b iy a ) , in Cairo. The Society of

351
 the Arab Revolution put the question of full independence
for the Arab countries and an armed anti-Turkish uprising
point blank.
By 1914, most of the political Arab organisations and
secret societies had abandoned their conciliatory tactics of
reform and begun preparations for an armed insurrection.
The Young Turks’ chauvinist policy had dispelled the last
illusions oi the possibility of any settlement. In January
1914, frightened by the growth of separatist tendencies
among the Arabs, the Young Turks decided to close all the
Arab political organisations and to scatter the Arab officers
among different garrisons and military units. The only
result was to strengthen the revolutionary-minded people’s
positions, since it forced them to abandon propaganda for
concrete action.
To prepare for the uprising, the Arab Nationalists estab­
lished contacts with representatives of the Western embas­
sies and with the British and French intelligence services.
At the outset of 1914, on behalf of the Decentralisation
Party, Shafik el-Muaiad held talks with the French Ambas­
sador to Constantinople Bompard to obtain French finan­
cial and political support for the Arab uprising. Shortly
before the outbreak oi World War I, the Decentralisation
Party concluded an agreement with France for the delivery
of 20,000 rifles, provision of instructors and so on. Similar
contacts were established by the British residents in the
Orient. In April 1914, Abdullah el-Hashimi had meetings
with Kitchener, the British Consul-General in Egypt, and
with other British officials. Abdullah requested the British
to supply the Arabs with machine-guns and to support the
uprising that was to take place in the Hejaz.
Thus, by the outbreak of World War I, two opposite
tendencies were to be observed in the Arab movement. Most
of the Arab Nationalists were in favour of an anti-Turkish
uprising and went so far as to conspire with the Entente.
The others still hoped to reach an agreement with the
Turks. They felt that an uprising would entail the no less,
and perhaps even more, dangerous possibility of the occupa­
tion of the Arab countries by the British and French.
 CHAPTER X X VI

ARABIA IN 1870-1914

A GENERAL REVIEW. At the turn of the 19th century,

the countries of the Arabian Peninsula were one of the most
backward regions of the Arab world. The Arabian coun­
tries’ development was extremely slow. They were split up
into a host of minor states and were dependent on Britain
and Turkey.
The feudal mode of production prevailed throughout
Arabia. Natural economy predominated in the interior.
Notwithstanding the considerable growth of caravan trade
and money-commodity relations within the framework of
the feudal socio-economic formation, the internal market
took shape very slowly. Inner Arabia was still a mediaeval
country in the full sense of the word and external influences
(trade with Damascus, Baghdad and Aden, and the pil­
grimage caravans) were still so weak that they could not
change the course of social and economic development.
Strong survivals of primitive-commual relations and of
the slave-holding society still continued to exist within the
predominantly feudal mode of production. In the northern
part of the peninsula, in Nejd, the Hejaz and Shammar,
slavery bore a domestic character. Slaves were used as ser­
vants or as the bodyguards of the feudal chiefs. In the
south, in the Yemen, Hadhramaut, Oman and Bahrein,
slave labour was used extensively in agriculture and in
pearl-diving (for the underwater work).
At the end of the 19th century, the Arab countries were
once again caught up in the whirlwind of international
politics and became the target of imperialist expansion by
the great Powers. Britain was endeavouring to strengthen
and expand her influence over the greater part of the Arab­
ian Peninsula; she was making a bid for absolute supremacy
in these vast expanses and on the Arabian coast. Germany,
23-573 353
as well as France and Russia, were trying to hamper British
expansion and to gain a foothold in Arabia. Turkey was
making feverish efforts to consolidate her power and pres­
tige in the Arabian countries.
In contrast, forces inside Arabia were stepping up their
activities to centralise the peninsula. As a means to this
end, they made extensive use of the rivalry between the
Powers and their struggle to gain possession of Arabia.

ADEN A N D HADHRAM AUT. The colony of Aden was

one of Britain’s key positions on the Arabian Peninsula.
The opening of the Suez Canal (1869) had greatly enhanced
its strategic and commercial significance. Aden had become
one of the most prominent coaling stations on the sea route
between Europe and India and a big centre of transit trade.
The British had declared Aden a free port, and from here
their goods were sent to all corners of South Arabia and
to the African shores of Bab-El-Mandeb.
After the opening of the Suez Canal, Britain’s expansion­
ist policy in the hinterland of Aden blossomed forth. In the
seventies and eighties, the British considerably enlarged
their South Arabian domains. They conquered one region
after another, drowning the shores and islands of South
Arabiá in blood, bombarding unarmed towns and villages
and bribing the corrupt feudal princes.
In 1869, the British occupied the sultanate of Lahej and,
shortly after, subdued all the nine South Arabian principali­
ties adjacent to Aden. The local proprietors were forced to
sign unequal treaties and accept the British protectorate. In
1873, Britain forced the Porte to give official recognition
to her conquests and, in 1905, concluded a special agree­
ment with the Porte on the boundary line between the
Turkish domains in the Yemen and the British domains in
Aden. The Yemenese, however, especially the Yemen ese
Government, which had come to power through the uprising
of 1904-11, refused to recognise the Anglo-Turkish boun­
dary line. They regarded Aden and the adjacent territories
as having been illegally wrested from the Yemen and sup­
ported the South Arabian tribes’ struggle against British
domination.
Simultaneously, Britain began the conquest of Hadhra-
maut. British warships constantly patrolled the waters of
354
Hadhramaut. Under cover of the philanthropic slogan of
suppressing the slave trade, they organised punitive expedi­
tions and deposed any rulers who were not to their liking.
One after another, under the muzzles of the British cannon,
the sultans and sheikhs of Hadhramaut accepted the British
protectorate. In 1886, the British had seized the Island of
Sokotra and annexed it to their domains. In 1888, the Sul­
tan of Mukalla from the Kuwaiti dynasty, the governor of
the biggest feudal estate in Hadhramaut, signed a treaty on
the protectorate.
By the outbreak of W orld War I, the British had imposed
unequal treaties on twenty-three petty sultanates and sheikh­
doms of South Arabia, establishing a protectorate over
their territories and uniting them under the rule of Aden’s
colonial authorities.

OMAN. In 1871, in Oman, the oldest British colony on

the Arabian Peninsula, the British finally managed to sup­
press a massive popular uprising which had lasted for
nearly ten years. W hen the insurgents’ leader, Azzan ibn
Kais, fell in battle the British took over Muscat and placed
their puppet Sultan Turki (1871-88) on the throne. With
the help of the British fleet and sepoy bayonets, he meted
out reprisals against the rebellious tribes and opposition ele­
ments which were working for their country’s independence.
In 1886, a fresh uprising flared up in Oman. The insurgents
laid siege to Muscat. Turki again appealed to the British and
with their help managed to put down the uprising.
Turki was Britain’s “loyal” ally and granted her many
new rights and privileges. Despite the Anglo-French decla­
ration of 1862, Britain exercised what amounted to a pro­
tectorate over Oman. This protectorate was consolidated
during the reign of Turki’s son and successor Sultan Feisal
(1888-1913) by the conclusion of a new treaty of friendship,
trade and navigation of March 20, 1891. According to this
treaty, Feisal promised on his own behalf and on behalf of
his heirs not to alienate his territory to any third Power.
France, who was backed by Russia, was opposed to the
British protectorate. She accused Britain of violating the
1862 declaration on the grant of “independence” to Oman
and demanded that Britain respect France’s rights. In 1893,
the French attempted to set up a coaling station in Sur,
23* 355
but encountered Britain’s resolute opposition. The French
Chamber of Deputies was indignant. To show their deter­
mination, French and Russian warships began making fre­
quent appearances in the Ottoman waters. In 1893, the
Russian cruiser Nizhny Novgorod arrived in Oman, where
the crew was welcomed by the Sultan. In 1894, France es­
tablished a consulate in Muscat and began supplying the
Ottomans with arms. The French consul opened a register
of “protégés” and began handing out French flags to the
captains of the Ottoman feluccas.
A serious conflict was in the making. Sultan Feisal found
himself between two fires. In 1898, with a French cruiser’s
guns trained on him, the Sultan granted the French a con­
cession for a coaling station. Britain’s response was to accuse
Feisal of violating the treaty of 1891. In February 1899, a
British squadron appeared off the shores of Oman and
trained its guns on the Muscat Sultan’s residence. Frightened
out of his wits, the Sultan hastened to submit. On Febru­
ary 16, he annulled the concession he had granted to the
French and did everything else the British ordered. “Cor­
dial relations” were restored between Britain and Oman.
France and Russia, however, would not give in. In 1900,
the French cruiser Drome and the Russian gunboat Gilyak
arrived in Muscat. Close on their heels came the Russian
cruisers Varyagy Askold and Boyarín . In 1903, the French
cruiser Inferne and the Russian cruiser Boyarín paid a
second visit to Muscat to “impart courage to a people who
live under the constant threat of an attack from the British”.
The British fleet, however, continued to remain in Oman.
Moreover, in reply to the joint Russian-French naval
demostration, the British shelled and captured an Ottoman
felucca which was sailing under the French flag. As in
Fashoda, the threat of a serious armed clash forced France
to retreat. The dispute over the concession was referred to
The Hague International Tribunal and in 1904, after the
conclusion of the treaty on the Entente, it lost its edge and
passed into the background. The Hague Tribunal decided
in Britain’s favour. France relinquished her claims on Oman
and instead of the coaling station in Muscat, she received
the right to use the one in Mukalla. In 1916, she also relin­
quished her rights to this coal station and, in 1920, closed
her consulate in Muscat.
356
 The Muscat Sultan’s servility to the British evoked wide­
spread discontent in the region. In 1913, taking advantage
of Feisal’s death and the succession to the throne of his
son Taimur, another British puppet, the Ottomans rose in
rebellion. The uprising was headed by the religious Moslem
sect of ibadits (or abadits). The insurgents chose Selim ibn
Rashid el-Harusi as their Imam and formed an indepen­
dent state with the town of Nazwah as its capital. Within
a short time the insurgents liberated the entire territory of
Oman with the exception of Muscat and the coastal regions,
which were defended by the British fleet, and began a pro­
longed and persistent struggle against British domination
and the Muscat Sultan. In 1920, the Muscat Sultan was
compelled to sign a peace treaty and recognise the inde­
pendence of the Oman imamate.

BRITISH DOMAINS IN THE PERSIAN GULF. At

the close of the 19th century, Britain did all she could to
expand and fortify her positions in the Persian Gulf. W ith
the help of her fleet she maintained “allied relations” with
Bahrein and the principalities of Trucial Oman (the Pirate
Coast). In 1871, the Bahrein Governor, Sheikh Isa, a British
puppet, confirmed all obligations incurred under former
treaties. The British promised to “defend” him against his
own subjects and also against the Turkish and Iranian
governments, which claimed sovereignty over the Bahrein
Islands.
In 1880, Britain imposed the First Exclusive Agreement
on Bahrein, which actually meant a protectorate although
there was no mention of the word “protectorate”. Accord­
ing to this agreement, the Sheikh of Bahrein engaged not
to grant concessions of any kind to other Powers, not to let
them set up coaling stations, not to conduct diplomatic
negotiations with them, not to establish consular relations
and not to conclude treaties with any other Power except
Britain.
In 1882, the British took over the Quatar peninsula and
forced its governor to establish “allied relations” with
Britain. Qatar passed under Britain’s control and, in 1916
was officially proclaimed a British protectorate.
In 1892, a Final Exclusive Agreement was concluded
with Bahrein on the lines of the Anglo-Oman treaty of
357
 1891. According to this agreement, the Sheikh of Bahrein
engaged not to lease a single part of his territory to anyone
but Britain. In the same year, the sheikhs of Trucial Oman
concluded an analogous agreement.
In the middle of the nineties, fearing Russian and Ger­
man plans to exit to the Persian Gulf, Britain shifted her
attention to Kuwait, a barren strip of desert land adjoining
Shat-al-Arab and Basra in the south. Kuwait was under
the Porte’s sovereignty although there were no Turkish
forces in the region. In 1895, the British suggested that the
Sheikh of Kuwait, Mohammed ibn Sabah, establish “allied
relations” with Britain like the other principalities of the
Persian Gulf. Sheikh Mohammed declined Britain’s solicita­
tions, upon which the British organised a plot. In May 1896,
Mohammed and his retinue were assassinated and the reins
of government were taken over by Sheikh Mubarak ibn
Sabah, Mohammed’s brother.
Mubarak established ties with the powerful chief of the
South Iraqi tribe muntafik, Sa’adun Pasha, and virtually
ceased to obey the Turkish governor of Basra. On Janu­
ary 23, 1899, he concluded a secret agreement with Britain.
It was secret in the sense that, as a mutasarrif, Mubarak
had no right to enter into negotiations, to say nothing of
the right to conclude international agreements. Mubarak
exceeded his authority and secretly signed an agreement
not to alienate his territory to anyone except Britain.
Having established control over Kuwait, Britain closed
the ring of her domains in the Persian Gulf. This was the
last link in the chain which turned the Persian Gulf into
a “British lake”.

THE KUW AIT CONFLICT. Kuwait’s transfer to British

control sparked off a fresh international conflict. In 1899,
the Germans received a preliminary concession for the
Baghdad railway and sent an investigatory mission to Iraq
to map the route of the railway. It had been planned to
make ICuwait the terminus, and early in 1900, the German
investigatory mission arrived on the scene.
Britain regarded the German mission’s arrival as a threat
to her positions in the Persian Gulf. The British Ambas­
sador to Constantinople, O’Connor, warned the Turks that
the extension of the railway line to Kuwait would cause
358
“local difficulties” and even lead to “intervention by foreign
Powers”. Lord Curzon, the Viceroy of India, said in all
earnestness that the western borders of British India were
on the Euphrates. In one voice the Anglo-Indian Press, in­
spired by Curzon, suddenly began demanding a British
protectorate over Kuwait.
The German press, in turn, and not only the German
press, but German diplomacy also, protested at British
plans to establish a protectorate over Kuwait. Germany
declared that Kuwait was Turkish territory and, therefore,
came under the Sultan’s sovereignty.
In April 1900, O’Connor informed the German Ambas­
sador Marschall that Britain had concluded an agreement
with the Sheikh of Kuwait, Mubarak, which would prevent
him from granting concessions to the subjects of a third
Power. An analogous statement was made in June 1900, by
the British Ambassador to Berlin, Lascelles. The Germans
decided that it was a question of some “private legal agree­
ment”, some kind of British concession, and that the
Deutsche Bank would buy this concession from British
businessmen. W hen Germany learned the true state of
affairs, she ordered her ambassador to Constantinople to
“undertake all measures to consolidate Turkey’s rights to
Kuwait”. “The settlement of any foreign Power in Kuwait,
be it Britain or Russia, is unfavourable for us,” wrote the
Deputy German Minister of Foreign Affairs, Baron Richt­
hofen. “It threatens the entire German plan for the exten­
sion of the Anatolian Railway to the Persian Gulf. The first
prerequisite for this project is Turkey’s command over the
whole stretch from Haidar-Pasha to Kuwait. It is of impera­
tive necessity, therefore, to demand a declaration from
Sheikh Mubarak to the effect that he will not grant foreign­
ers any territory or economic concessions until he supplies
them with land, docks and so on for the Baghdad Railway.”
In other words, Germany was pressing for the same exclu­
sive rights in Kuwait that Britain had acquired.
In August 1901, Germany declared that she did not
recognise Britain’s claims on Kuwait, to which Britain
replied that she would settle matters with Turkey herself
and that the question of Kuwait’s status did not concern
Germany. The British were surprised that the Germans were
more Turkish on this issue than the Sultan himself. More-

359
over, the British Foreign Secretary stated that there was not
and never could be any mutual understanding between Britain
and Germany on the Kuwait question. The two govern­
ments, he said, had opposite points of view on this matter.
W hile the talks were going on, the following events took
place in Kuwait itself. In August 1901, at Germany’s de­
mand, the Turks despatched troops to Kuwait to affirm the
Sultan’s sovereignty. They were despatched by sea. When
the transports with the troops arrived in Kuwait, they found
a British cruiser at anchor there. The cruiser’s commander
warned the Turks that if they dared even to put a single
Turkish soldier ashore, the British would open fire and sink
the transports. The Turkish ships turned back.
On September 6, 1901, Britain and Turkey signed an
agreement on Kuwait. The ternis of the agreement were as
follows: Britain acknowledged Turkey’s sovereignty over
Kuwait, but only on the condition that Turkey sent no troops
to that country. Turkey, in turn, recognised Britain’s special
interest in Kuwait and the Anglo-Kuwait agreement of
1899. In this way, Turkey’s vanity was satisfied since
Kuwait formally remained under Turkish sovereignty and
Britain’s claims were also satisfied since Kuwait virtually
passed imder British control.
In the meanwhile, Germany decided to withdraw to the
background and play on Anglo-Russian differences over
Kuwait.
Russia pressed for a compromise between Britain and
Turkey on the Kuwait question. On the one hand, she shared
Britain’s reluctance to let the Germans gain access to the
Persian Gulf but, on the other hand, the Russians were
displeased with the establishment of a direct British pro­
tectorate over Kuwait.
In December, 1901, an incident took place which aggra­
vated Anglo-Russian differences. A mere three months after
the conclusion of the compromise Anglo-Turkish agreement
of September 6, the British suddenly violated the status quo.
The commander of one of the British warships which regu­
larly called at Kuwait ordered that the Turkish flag should
be taken down from Sheikh Mubarak’s residence and that
a new and unknown one, which they called the flag of
Kuwait, should be hoisted in its place. Simultaneously, a
British protectorate was proclaimed over Mubarak’s domains.
360
 Britain’s actions evoked a storm of protest in the Russian
press. The Russian Ambassador to Constantinople, I. A. Zi­
novyev, advised the Porte to appeal to The Hague Interna­
tional Tribunal. Early in 1902, the Russian cruiser Varyag
and the French cruiser Inferne arrived in Kuwait. The Rus­
sian consul in Baghdad paid a visit to Sheikh Mubarak and
presented him with a Russian decoration and gifts. Under
pressure from Russia, Britain repudiated the action of her
naval officer and declared that she intended to adhere
strictly to the agreement with Turkey and to preserve the
status quo.
Britain, however, had no intention of abandoning her
plans in Kuwait. At the close of 1903, Lord Curzon made
a demonstrative tour of the Persian G ulf countries, includ­
ing Kuwait. The purpose of his trip was to show Britain’s
determination to defend her positions in the Persian Gulf
at all costs. The Entente Treaty of 1904 and the agreement
with Russia in 1907 finally gave her the freedom of action
which she had been waiting for so long. In 1904, a British
political agent was installed in Kuwait and in 1907, Britain
imposed a new agreement on Mubarak, making Turkey one
of the foreign Powers.
In the end, the Turks were forced to acknowledge this
as an accomplished fact. On July 29, 1913, they signed an
agreement on the Persian Gulf with Britain, by which
Kuwait was recognised as an autonomous kaza (type of
territorial administration) with its own flag. Turkey en­
gaged not to interfere in Kuwait’s internal affairs and
recognised the Anglo-Kuwait agreement. Simultaneously,
Turkey renounced her rights to Bahrein and Qatar. In ex­
change for this, Britain recognised Turkey’s rights to El-
Hasa, which was occupied by the Wahhabis at the time.
Soon after the outbreak of World War I, in November
1914, Britain declared Kuwait an “independent principality
under British protection”.

STRUGGLE o f t h e r a s h i d i s a n d t h e
^ U D I S T H E RESTORATION OF THE W AH H ABI
ö l A i ü . Ihe Powers struggle for Kuwait was closely inter­
woven with the struggle of the Wahhabi dynasties, the
Rashidis and the Saudis for hegemony in North Arabia.
1 ne Germans and the Turks were counting on the Rashidis,

361
the rulers of Shammar. With their help, they hoped to get
rid of the Saudis and the Sheikh of Kuwait, Mubarak, who
was backed by the British.
By the end of the 19th century, Shammar had become
the most powerful state in North Arabia. The Shammarite
Emir Mohammed (1871-97), called “the Great”, had put
an end to dynastic internecine strife and united both Jebel-
Shammar and Kasim under his rule. In 1876, he declared
himself a vassal of the Turks and with their support began
a fierce struggle against the Riyadh emirs of the House of
Saud. In 1884, the Shammarites routed the Nejd troops
and seized Riyadh, where they installed their own deputy.
The Saudi Emir, Abd ar-Rahman, Feisal’s younger son,
acknowledged the Shammarites’ sovereignty and remained
in Riyadh as the ruler of Arid (a central province of Neid).
In 1890, an uprising flared up in Nejd and Kasim. The
insurgents took over Riyadh and moved on farther to join
the Kasim feudalists. These were the Emir of Anaiza, Zamil,
and the Emir of Buraida, Hasan. In January, 1891, the
Kasim levies were utterly defeated in a battle near Mulayda
and Emir Abd ar-Rahman, who was on his way to help
them, fled to El-Hasa and later to Kuwait. The Saudi
emirate was completely liquidated1 and Nejd became a
province of the large Shammar state.
At the height of the Kuwait crisis, the Turks decided to
use the Shammarites to seize Kuwait. The British retaliated
by forming an anti-Shammarite Bedouin coalition comprised
of the Sheikh of Kuwait, Mubarak, the South Iraqi tribe
rmmtafiq under the leadership of Sa’adun Pasha, and the
Wahhabi tribes of mutair and barm marra , who had re­
mained loyal to the Saudis. The Wahhabis were headed by
Emir Abd ar-Rahman’s son, Abd el-Aziz, better known by
his family name Ibn Saud. After the Shammarites had
established their rule in Riyadh he and his father left their
country. Ibn Saud had been seven years old at the time,
but by 1900, he was a young man and his father felt the
time had come for him to lead the struggle.
In the autumn of 1900, the 10,000-strong allied army
headed by Sheikh Mubarak launched a campaign against
1 The Shammarites left the Saudi Emir Mohammed, who had
devoted himself to flower growing, as the nominal religious head of
Wahhabi Nejd.

362
the Shammarite Emir, Abd el-Aziz (1897-1906). Ibn Saud
was entrusted with the task of making a feint in the direc­
tion of Riyadh. In February 1901, the Shammarites routed
the allies and Ibn Saud, learning of their defeat in the
desert, raised the siege of Riyadh and returned to Kuwait.
In the summer of 1901, the Shammarites reached Kuwait,
which was guarded by British warships. W ith the British
guns trained on them the Shammarites turned back. They
passed through Nejd and Kasim, where anti-Shammarite
uprisings, backed by British arms and money, kept flaring
up. In December 1901, the British armed and sent to Riyadh
a small force under Ibn Saud. The Riyadh population,
which was oppressed by the Rashid feudalists, was ready to
support any act which would liberate them from the Sham­
marites, and Ibn Saud’s small detachment had no trouble
in capturing the city. (January 15, 1902.)
Describing the seizure of Riyadh, Philby relates a fan­
tastic story that Ibn Saud is supposed to have told. It has
the ring of an Oriental legend in the style of the tales from
the Arabian Nights .
Philby writes that Ibn Saud took sixty Bedouin daredevils
with him, leaving thirty horsemen on the hills near Riyadh
with orders to hasten to Kuwait for help if there were no
news from Ibn Saud within twenty-four hours. Another
twenty horsemen were left in a grove on the outskirts of
the Riyadh oasis. The remaining ten riders dismounted and
penetrated into the city at night. T hey approached the
citadel where the Rashid ruler of Riyadh, Ajlan, was stay­
ing. Ibn Saud knocked at the door of a house right next to
the fortress gates. It was opened by a woman, whom they
ordered to keep quiet on pain of death. Ibn Saud and his
companions then herded all the tenants into a back room
and took up their posts near the window, drinking coffee,
and telling battle stories and reading the Koran all night
long to keep awake. At dawn they saw the citadel gates
swing open as Ajlan and his entourage came out to pray
at the mosque. The Bedouins pounced on them from the
window, slaying the whole entourage, including Ajlan.
Taking advantage of the open gates they then seized the
citadel and announced the renewal of the Saudi dynasty.
Having captured Riyadh, Ibn Saud fortified the city and
began a struggle against the Shammarites. Between 1902
363
and 1903, he won back the entire southern part of Inner
Arabia (Khardj, Al-Ailaj, Wadi-Dawasir) and by the summer
of 1904, he had subdued Washim, Sudair and Kasim, thus
restoring the Wahhabite Saudi emirate to its former borders.
Ibn Saud became such a powerful force that in 1904, the
Rashidis appealed to Turkey for help. In May 1904, eight
Turkish battalions under Ahmed Faizi Pasha arrived in
Nejd. Most of the. Turkish soldiers, however, died in the
desert of the heat, of thirst, hunger and disease. At the end
of 1904, the commander of the expeditionary corps himself
and the remnants of his army were transferred to the
Yemen. Left alone, the Shammarites continued the struggle
for a time, but, in April 1906, were badly beaten by the
Saudis; The Rashid Emir, Abd el-Aziz, was killed in.the
fighting. His successor, Mitab, hastened to conclude peace
and acknowledged the Saudis’ right to Nejd and Kasim.
The Turkish Sultan, Abdul Hamid, confirmed this agree­
ment in an exchange of notes. The Saudis’ Wahhabi state
was restored.

IBN SAUD’S HOME AN D FOREIGN POLICY. The

Turks and their Shammarite allies were Ibn Saud’s chief
enemies and he fought them till the Rashidis’ Shammarite
emirate was completely liquidated. Although the British
supported him, the Wahhabi state’s rapid growth and suc­
cess began to worry them. The British were against the
unification of the Arabian Peninsula and fell back on their
traditional “divide and rule” policy. Everywhere they sup­
ported the small princes; and provoked tribal and feudal
separatism. To rule the peninsula they had to take the weak
princes into account. Ibn Saud was becoming a powerful
force and he made no attempt to conceal his desire to see
Inner Arabia united and the Shammarite emirate destroyed.
A n odd situation arose when the British began backing all
sorts of feudal mutinies inside the restored Saudi state.
The feudal sheikhs and emirs who had marched with Ibn
Saud when he began the struggle to restore the Saudi state
now turned against him and formed mutinous coalitions.
There were British agents in both camps. A British Intel­
ligence agent, Captain Lichman, had ties with Ibn Saud
and supported him. Another representative of British Intel­
ligence, Gertrude Bell, later to play an important part in
36i
 Mesopotamia and to rise to the rank of colonel in 1920,
was connected with and supported the Emir of Shammar.
The British intrigues, the anti-Wahhabi coalition and
the revolts did not destroy the Saudi state, but constant
wars and uprisings hampered its development. Ibn Saud
was unable to cope with the Shammarite emirate till after
World War I. Jebel-Shammar was conquered only in 1921.
On the other hand, with British approval Ibn Saud man­
aged to expand his domains in the East on the shores of
the Persian Gulf. El-Hasa, which had been under Turkish
occupation since 1871, was seized by the Wahhabis in
1913 and annexed to the Saudi state.
The British had two reasons for supporting the Wahhabi
campaign against the Turks. First, a world war was in the
offing. Turkey, who was ruled by the Young Turks, was
siding with Germany. The arrival of Turkish forces at El-
Hasa also meant the appearance of German forces. This
centre of German-Turkish influence in the Persian Gulf had
to be destroyed and Ibn Saud was the man to do it. Sec­
ondly, Ibn Saud offered the British a fairly high price for
the conquest of El-Hasa. He agreed to a British protectorate
and promised to support Britain in the war. In December
1915, a treaty was signed according to which Ibn Saud
engaged to refrain from all action against Britain, to co­
ordinate his foreign policy with her, not to alienate his
territory to other Powers, and to respect the integrity of
Britain’s possessions on the Arabian Peninsula. Wahhabi
Nejd remained under British protection until the treaty
expired in 1924.
The British protectorate did not especially trouble Ibn
Saud, who aimed at setting up a united and centralised
feudal state in Inner Arabia. The British did not interfere
with the Saudi emirate’s internal affairs. As though to make
up for lost time, the Wahhabis with renewed energy set
about inculcating their dogmas of tauhid (unity) and found
a ready supporter in the person of Ibn Saud, who regarded
them as an obedient tool for dealing with feudal and tribal
separatism, and for the radical reorganisation of Arabia’s
traditional feudal and nomadic society.
In his home policy, Ibn Saud deliberately opposed prim­
itive-communal survivals. He believed the nomadic tribes
were the most destructive element standing in the way of

365
Arabian unity. In 1911, on the Wahhabi teachers’ advice,
he launched the ikhwan (brothers) movement against the
nomadic tribes. He forced them submit to a strict discipline
and forbade them to make predatory raids and to extract
feudal tribute from dependent tribes. He pulled down the
barriers between the free and the subordinate tribes and
treated them all as equals, as ikhwans.
Simultaneously, Ibn Saud began creating communities for
the nomads, whom he forced to settle on the land. This
policy was conducted on a very broad scale after World
War I. The first few communities had been set up prior
to 1918. W hen they abandoned their former way of life,
the nomad ikhwans broke off ties with their tribe. New ties
were èstablished inside the ikhwan communes based on
mutual economic interests instead of blood relationship.
A spirit öf religious intolerance prevailed in the ikhwan
communes and later in the Wahhabi state. Wahhabis were
not allowed to maintain close ties with non-Wahhabis, not
even if these were their relatives. They could not mingle
with foreigners and had to abide strictly to the moral and
ethic rules of Wahhabism. The Wahhabi society gradually
shut itself off from outside influences and drifted into a
kind of isolationism.
The ikhwans together with their teachers became the
main instrument of Ibn Saud’s home and foreign policy.
The ikhwan settlements formed the base on which Ibn Saud
built his new army. W ith their help he suppressed revolts,*
exposed plots and disarmed rebellious tribes. With their
support he campaigned for a united Arabia and the forma­
tion of a single Wahhabi Saudi state.

UPRISINGS IN THE YEMEN A N D ASIR. After the

opening of the Suez Canal, the Turks restored their author­
ity in the Yemen and Asir. Prior to this, the extended lines
of communication stretching across the Arabian steppes
and deserts had made it virtually impossible for Turkey to
support and supply her troops in southern Arabia. Turkish
garrisons were stationed in only a few coastal regions of
Tihama. The Yemen and Asir were virtually independent.
The opening of the Suez Canal made it possible for the Turks
to establish sea communications. In 1869, the Turks sent an
366
expeditionary corps to the region and subdued Yemenese
and Asirían Tihama.
Taking advantage of this, A li ibn Mahdi, the San’a Imam
the religious and secular head of the zaydites), who had
Í>ecome quite incapable of coping with the insurgent tribes,
appealed to the Turkish troops for help. In 1872, Turkish
troops penetrated into the mountain region of the Yemen,
occupied San’a, the capital, and set up Turkish garrisons
everywhere. The Yemen was declared a Turkish vilayet
and the Turkish pasha arrived in San’a. Thus, 230 years
after the first expulsion of the Turks, the Yemen again lost
her independence and became a Turkish province. W hile
they were at it, the Turks also seized Asir, whose ruler gave
himself up and was executed.
In 1891, a big national uprising against Turkish domina­
tion flared up in the Yemen. It was headed by Imam
Mohammed, a representative of the ruling zaydite dynasty
of the Racites. The insurgents besieged San’a and encircled
the Turkish garrisons in a number of other cities. The
Turks were forced to despatch strong reinforcements under
the command of Ahmed Faizi Pasha, who fought his way
into San’a and raised the siege. Hoping to demoralise the
insurgents, Faizi Pasha bribed the tribal sheikhs and prom­
ised them an amnesty, ruthlessly killing all who refused
to obey him. W hile putting down the uprising the Turks
destroyed about 300 settlements with all their inhabitants.
Between 1891 and 1897, Ahmed Faizi “pacified” the coun­
try with a policy of sheer terrorism.
In May 1904, after Mohammed’s death, his son Yahya
became the zaydite Imam. No sooner had he succeeded to
the throne than he summoned the people to a fresh uprising.
The zaydite tribes, who were suffering from drought, famine
and the Turkish officials’ extortions, responded enthusiasti­
cally to his call and rose as one man, besieging and capturing
the towns and villages where the Turkish garrisons were
stationed. San’a, the capital, also surrendered to Imam
Yahya, but he made a grave mistake by releasing the
Turkish garrison there.
W hile Yahya was trying to settle the tribal disputes, the
Turkish Government despatched reinforcements to the
Yemen under the command of Faizi Pasha. Faizi reached
Manakha without trouble, joined forces with the Turkish

367
troops who had been released from San’a, and then occupied
the capital without having fired a single shot. The Turkish
Pasha, however, was suddenly faced with a new and unex­
pected fact. The Arab soldiers of the Turkish army refused
to fight against their Yemenese brothers. Instead, they
fraternised with the insurgents and began going over to
their side. Uprisings flared up in the Arab units which had
been sent to fight against the Yemen. Add to this the de­
vastation wrought in the Yemen by war, drought, locusts
and the terrible famine which took the lives of at least half
the urban population and also struck the Turkish army,
and one can understand why the Turks were forced to
implore the Imam for peace.
A peace treaty was signed in 1908. The Porte accepted
the basic terms dictated by Imam Yahya and virtually
agreed to the. Yemen’s internal autonomy. Two years later,
however, military operations were resumed. In 1911, Yahya
recaptured San’a and once again forced the Turks to consent
to a peace treaty. But with the outbreak of the Italo-Turkish
War, the Turks were unable to devote much attention to
the Yemen and wrote all further struggle as useless. They
recognised the Yemen’s full autonomy and engaged not
to interfere in her internal affairs. Yahya acknowledged
the Sultan suzerainty and agreed to the presence of the
Turkish Pasha and a small contingent o f Turkish forces
in the Yemen. The compromise profited both parties. Rely­
ing on the Turks’ support, Yahya began a struggle against
the British intrigues on the Yemen’s southern borders. The
treaty was also of some advantage to the Turks. The Yemen
was one of the few Arab countries which supported Turkey
in World War I.
Things turned out differently in Asir. After the Turkish
occupation of 1872, it was made into a sanjaq (mutasarri-
fiya) constituting part of the vilayet of the Yemen. In 1909,
with Imam Yahya’s backing, an uprising flared up in Asir.
It was headed by Emir Mohammed el-Idrisi, by birth a
member of the Moroccan dynasty, which had ruled Asir
since the end of the 18th century. In 1910, the insurgents
completely cleared Tihama of the Turks and then advanced
on Abha, the capital of mountainous Asir, which fell after
several months of siege. In the summer of 1911, the Turks
managed to subdue Asir, having resorted to Husein
368
Il*s (the Meccan Sherif) help. In the autumn of the
same year, however, with Italian support, Idrisi once again
provoked an uprising. His detachments continued to operate
right up to the outbreak of World War I and actively sided
with the British, with whom Mohammed el-Idrisi concluded
a treaty of “friendship and alliance” in 1915.

THE HEJAZ. After the expulsion of the Egyptians, the

Hejaz became a Turkish province. This was a remote area
of the Ottoman Empire, but the Turks felt more secure
here than in any other region of the Arabian Peninsula.
Turkish officials and garrisons were posted in the Hejaz.
The local feudal rulers under the Grand Sherif, the theo­
cratic ruler of the “holy cities” of Islam, were fairly loyal
in their co-operation with the Turkish authorities. The
Turks had preserved the Meccan sherifate, but had placed
it in a subordinate position. The Turkish governors {wall)
appointed and dismissed the sherifs as they saw fit.
W hile keeping up a show of obedience, the sherifs tried
to fortify their own positions in the Hejaz. W ith this end
in view they secretly opposed the Turks and supported the
tribal uprisings against the Turkish authorities. Several
regions of the Hejaz were actually controlled by the Bedouins,
making the Turks’ presence in these regions unsafe.
In 1900, the Turks decided to undertake the construction
of the Hejaz railway to consolidate their power in the
Hejaz. The line was to begin in Damascus and pass through
Transjordan to Medina and Mecca. The Turks planned to
extend the line further south to San’a. Officially, the Hejaz
railway was built for the convenience of the pilgrims and
was presented as a holy deed. Donations towards its con­
struction were collected in all the Moslem countries. The
railway was regarded as waqf property, but it was built
by German engineers. The chief constructor was engineer
Meissner, who was known as Meissner Pasha in the Hejaz.
The Hejaz railway pursued definite strategic aims and
resulted in the consolidation of German influence in the
Hejaz, the Yemen and on the Red Sea.
The British were fully aware of the Hejaz railway’s signi­
ficance and did everything in their power to hinder its
construction. The Bedouins and the Meccan Sherif, Aun
ar-Rafik (1882-1905), fiercely opposed the construction works
24-573 369
that began in 1904. The British secretly supported Aun’s
intrigues and the Bedouin uprisings. One of the insurgents’
chief demands was that the works be abandoned. In 1905,
Sherif Aun ar-Rafik died. Most likely he was deliberately
removed. His successor, Sherif Ali (1905-07), continued his
predecessors’ obstructionist policy, for which the Turks dis­
missed him from his post and banished him to Cairo.
In 1908, the Turks extended the Hejaz railway to M e­
dina, but they were never able to take it as far as Mecca,
to say nothing of San’a. The new Meccan Sherif, Husein II,
did all in his power to stop the construction.
Husein II el-Hashimi became Sherif in 1908 at the age
of sixty. He had spent his earlier years among the Hejaz
Bedouins, but most of his life had been spent in Constanti­
nople, where he had been the Sultan’s hostage. Husein II
dreamt of becoming the Hejaz’s independent ruler and of
extending his authority to other regions of the Arabian
Peninsula. His scarcely controllable desire for indepen­
dence irritated the Turks and was the cause of frequent
conflicts between them that became more acute as time
passed.
In the struggle against the Turks, Husein II decided to
rely on the Arab Nationalists and British for support. In
1914, one of Husein’s sons, Feisal, established ties with the
Young Arabs and the Damascene reformists. On the other
hand, the representatives of the Decentralisation Party
>aid a visit to Husein II and several other Arabian rulers,
?n the spring of 1914, in Hail, the capital of the Shammar
emirate, a meeting of representatives of the Arab Nation­
alists and Arabian rulers took place, during which an
attempt was made to form a united Arab front to prepare
for an anti-Turkish uprising.
Between February and April 1914, Abdullah, another of
Husein IPs sons, held talks with the British Consul-General
in Egypt, General Kitchener, and the British diplomatic
agent, Storrs. Although the British refrained from any con­
crete promises, the very fact of such contacts laid the foun­
dation for the Anglo-Hashimite rapprochement that was
to play a vital part in World War I and in the great Arab
uprising.
 CHAPTER XXVII

THE ARAB COUNTRIES

IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR (1914-18)

THE ARAB COUNTRIES’ STAND IN THE IM­

PERIALIST WAR. In 1914, all the Arab countries were
drawn into the imperialist war, a war for the redivision of
the world and its spheres of in luence. One of the causes
of World War I was the struggle for possession of the
Arab countries. Germany wanted to gain a foothold in the
Turkish Sultan’s domains and was threatening Britain’s
positions in the Middle East. France was trying to wrest
Syria and Cilicia from Turkey. Britain wanted to seize
Iraq and Palestine and gain a firm foothold in Egypt.
In 1917, Lenin wrote: “The war was brought on by the
clash of two most powerful groups of multimillionaires,
Anglo-French and German, for the redivision of the world.
“The Anglo-French group of capitalists wants first to
rob Germany, deprive her of her colonies (nearly all of
which have already been seized), and then to rob Turkey.
“The German group of capitalists wants to seize Turkey
for itself and to compensate itself for the loss of its colonies
by seizing neighbouring small states (Belgium, Serbia and
Rumania).”1
Both sides made use of the territory, bases, communica­
tions, natural resources and manpower of the Arab countries
that were dependent on them. The Anglo-French bloc used
the territory and resources of Egypt, the Sudan, Algeria,
Tunisia, Morocco and the British domains in Arabia. The
German-Turkish bloc placed at its own disposal all the
natural resources and manpower of Palestine, Syria, the
Lebanon, Iraq and part of Arabia.
The Arab countries’ formal participation in the war,
however, whether on one side or the other, still did not

* Lenin, Collected ZUorks, Vol. 23, p. 335.

24* 371
determine the peoples’ real stand. Actually, they were hostile
to both belligerents and both the Anglo-French and Ger-
man-Turkish rear were unstable. The Arab people hated
their foreign oppressors, and this hatred was skilfully used
by one imperialist bloc against the other.
Each belligerent supported the national movements and
the uprisings in the enemy’s rear and spurred them on,
using them for their own needs. A struggle against the
imperialists of Britain, France and Italy began in Egypt,
the Sudan and other North African countries. The struggle
was particularly acute in Morocco and Libya. The French
often referred to Morocco, where the Arab and Berber
tribes had forced them out of the mountain regions, as their
“second front” (the main one being the Western front). By
1915, the Italians held only isolated posts on the coast of Li­
bya. Moreover, Germany and Turkey were using the Libyan
Arabs in the struggle against Britain and had organised a
series of Bedouin raids from Libya on Egyptian territory.
Britain and France used the national movement in the
Arab countries subservient to Turkey for the struggle
against Turkey and Germany. The Arab Nationalists con­
ducted reconnaissance work and sabotage in the Turkish
rear and provoked anti-Turkish uprisings.

THE ECONOMIC A N D POLITICAL SITUATION IN

TURKEY’S ARAB PROVINCES. On October 29, 1914,
Turkey entered the world war that was to have such fatal
consequences for the Ottoman Empire. Turkey’s military
plan, endorsed by the German command, provided for
offensive operations in the Caucasus and in the Suez Canal
Zone. The Turks’ reckless scheme was to seize Egypt and
shift military operations to North and Central Africa.
The troops which had been detached to take part in the
offensive against the Canal Zone comprised the 4th Army
under the command of Ahmed Jemal Pasha, one of the Young
Turk triumvirs. Actually, the military operations were super­
vised by a batch of German officers belonging to Liman
von Sanders’ military mission. The chief of the 4th Army
headquarters was the German military attaché to Damascus,
Colonel Kress von Kressenstein. In practice, he was the
army’s commander. Ahmed Jemal was engaged mainly in
“securing the rear”.

372
 T he 4th Army was based in Syria and Palestine, who
were completely unprepared for a long war. They suffered
from the lack of good roads. Jemal Pasha, who had prom­
ised his friends he would sail back to Istanbul via A lex­
andria, began his journey through a sea of mud. At the
railway station in Aleppo he had to be carried out of the
train on the soldiers’ backs. The situation was equally
disheartening elsewhere.
Syria’s and Palestine’s economy was unable to withstand
the trials of war. Under the pretext of military necessity,
the Turkish authorities immediately began fleecing the
civilian population. The peasants’ cattle and food were
requisitioned on a mass scale. In 1915, nine-tenths of the
rain harvest in Syria and the Lebanon was commandeered.
Î rees everywhere, including fruit trees, were cut down for
fuel and the irrigation system was neglected. Forced labour
was used extensively. Thousands of peasants were taken
away from the land and forced to work on all sorts of
military projects.
Agricultural and industrial production dropped sharply.
Even before the war there had been a shortage of home­
grown wheat in Syria and now wheat imports were almost
completely suspended. The Turkish authorities took no
measures to ward off the approaching famine and even
organised food exports to Germany.
Prices of essential goods rose steeply and many articles
dropped out of sale. The flourishing kings of the “black
market” made huge fortunes.
Between 1915 and 1916, hundreds of thousands of people
in the Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Iraq, especially the
inhabitants of the big cities, were on the verge of starva­
tion. Epidemics of typhus and other diseases broke out here
and there. In the spring of both 1915 and 1916, tens of
thousands of people died in Syria and the Lebanon. In
Syria, in 1917, one-tenth of the population died of hunger
and disease. No less than 100,000 people died in the Leba­
non alone. Tens of thousands died in the Moslem and
Baghdad vilayets.
The war, economic difficulties and economic dislocation
gave rise to a wave of spontaneous discontent throughout
the country. The Turkish Government feared and mis­
trusted the Arab population of the empire. In November
 1914, the government invested Jemal Pasha with special
powers. Apart from the command of the 4th Army, he
received the rights of Commissioner Extraordinary and
wielded absolute military and civil power. He introduced
martial law in the Arab provinces, abolished the vilayet
councils and the civil court, destroyed the Mountain
Region’s autonomy and liquidated all the rights and
privileges which had been granted to various religious com­
munities on the basis of international agreements. Jemal
Pasha persecuted the Arab national liberation movement
and conducted a shameful policy of Turkisation and ruth­
less suppression of Arab culture.
Most of the Arab population adopted a hostile attitude
towards the war. They hated the Turks and remained in­
different to the Sultan’s leaflets proclaiming the jihad , i.e.,
holy Moslem war. The Arabs openly rejoiced at the Turco-
German army’s defeat and readily responded to the calls
from émigré centres to sabotage the Turks’ military efforts.
Jemal Pasha had to keep nearly half his troops in the
rear, since they might be needed in event of an uprising.
But the troops themselves were unreliable. Of three divi­
sions, two were comprised of Kurds and Arabs from Mosul
and one, of Syrians. Jemal Pasha demanded the despatch
of Turkish contingents. Feeling against the war spread
quickly among the Arab soldiers of the Turkish army. Cases
of mass desertion, voluntary surrender and refusals to take
part in the fighting became common. Mutinies took place in
a number of towns. In April 1916, a Mosul garrison and
several other Arab garrisons mutinied.
In 1915, there were disturbances in several Syrian and
Palestinian towns, where the people were demonstrating
for bread and peace. Spontaneous uprisings continued to
flare up here and there. In 1916, in Jebel-Druse, the north­
ern Lebanon and Damascus, guerilla detachments began an
armed struggle against the Turks. Anti-Turkish uprisings
that had flared up in the sacred Shi9a cities of N ejef and
Karbala broke out afresh in the spring of 1916.

THE ARAB NATIONALISTS’ ATTITUDE TO THE

WAR. When the war broke out, the Arab Nationalists split
into two camps according to their attitude towards the bel­
ligerents. They had two alternatives: either to accept the
374
Entente’s support and the possibility of an Anglo-French
occupation or to participate in the war on Turkey’s side
with a view to satisfying national demands within the frame­
work of the Ottoman Empire.
The majority of the Nationalists sided with Britain and
France and only a relatively small, but influential group of
Nationalists (Abd er-Rahman Shahbandar, Mohammed
Kurd A li and others) clearly apprehended the danger con­
nected with an Anglo-French occupation and chose to
support Turkey under the Pan-Islamic slogans of “holy
war”. Jemal Pasha established close contacts with this group
and promised them broad autonomy after the war. Some­
thing like an Arab-Turkish bloc was formed on the basis
of the campaign against Britain and France. The Arab
press supported the slogans of jihad (holy war) and gave
the Turks favourable publicity.
By the spring of 1915, however, cracks appeared in the
Arab-Turkish bloc. The defeats at the front, the Turks’
chauvinist policy, the spread of famine and anti-war feeling
among the masses dispelled the illusions of Shahbandar and
his friends. They began to question Jemal Pasha’s and the
Turkish Government’s sincerity. They were also disheart­
ened by Turkey’s helplessness and her rapid transformation
into a German colony.
The vacillations of this group and the anti-Turkish feel­
ings harboured by the majority of the Nationalists were
used by British Intelligence, which relied on the Decen­
tralisation Party’s local branches and on anti-Turkish secret
societies. The Decentralisation Party’s leaders in Cairo
called for immediate and complete secession from Turkey
and began preparations for an uprising. They sent their
agents and propaganda literature to Syria and Palestine.
British planes dropped leaflets urging the Arabs to desert,
to abstain from the payment of taxes and the like.
Anti-Turkish propaganda met with a growing response
among the Arab population, which began to heed the
reports from Cairo. The final blow to Ottoman illusions
was struck by Jemal Pasha himself. In the spring of 1915,
he launched mass repressions against the Arab Nationalists.
At the beginning of the war, the Arabs had been afraid
of choosing the wrong side. W hen they finally made their
choice, it was not in Turkey’s favour.

m
 Even in the early months of the war, Jemal Pasha had
had Arab intellectuals and officers shadowed. He had
searched the French consulates and had found material
incriminating many prominent members of the Arab na­
tional movement. In June 1915, when it became clear that
the jihad slogan had completely failed and that the Arabs
were ready to support an anti-Turkish uprising, Jemal
Pasha began a bloody struggle against the Arab National­
ists, closing down a number of newspapers and organising
mass arrests of members of the Arab national societies. In
1916, Jemal Pasha dealt ruthlessly with the Arab national
liberation movement.
Between 1915 and 1916, several Arab Nationalist groups
appeared before a military tribunal. The leaders of the
Decentralisation Party, the Young Arab Society, the
Lebanese Awakening ¡Society and other outstanding mem­
bers of the Arab movement were charged with high treason,
with having connections with Britain and France and with
having incited the people to rebel. During the investigation,
the accused were tortured and threatened. The judges
ignored all laws of legal procedure, following only Jemal
Pasha’s instructions. The courts sentenced hundreds of
Nationalists to death and others to various terms of impris­
onment. Abd el-Karim Khalil, Ridah es-Sulh, Mohammed
Mihmisani, Sheikh el-Zahrawi, Shafik el-Mu’aid, el-Ureisi,
Selim el-Jazairi, and many others were hung on the squares
of Beirut and Damascus. All told, by the middle of 1916,
the military tribunals had sentenced over 800 activists of
the Arab national liberation movement to death.
Apart from legal punishment, the Turkish authorities
organised the mass deportation of Arabs suspected of dis­
loyalty to the Turkish Government. Tens of thousands of
people, especially representatives of the Arab intelligentsia,
the Christian and Sin a clergy and the families of prominent
Nationalists were banished to concentration camps in the
desert. Banishments were attended by robberies, killings
and other acts of violence. In the camps the exiles perished
from hunger and disease.
By these means Jemal Pasha succeeded in crushing the
Arab national societies, destroying their leaders and terroris­
ing the population of the Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and
Iraq. The blow which the Turks dealt against the Arab

376
national liberation movement in 1916 was a severe one. They
wiped out its cadres and organisation, thereby delaying the
general anti-Turkish uprising in the Porte’s Arab provinces.

THE BRITISH PROTECTORATE OVER EGYPT. The

British rear in Egypt, the main British base in the Middle
East, was as unstable as the German-Turkish rear in Pales­
tine, Syria and Iraq. Egypt was considered a part of the
Ottoman Empire and was only “temporarily” occupied by
the British. Nevertheless, Britain drew her into the war
like her other colonies. On August 5, 1914, the British
forced the Egyptian Prime Minister, Husein Rushdi Pasha,
to announce complete rupture of relations with all Powers
hostile to Britain. This declaration forbade the Egyptian
population to correspond or to maintain commercial or any
other relations with the subjects of states hostile to Britain.
It also forbade Egyptian ships to call at enemy ports. At
the same time the Egyptian population was called on to
render all possible aid to Britain, and the British army and
navy were granted the right to use Egyptian territory and
ports for military operations.
According to the British writer Lieutenant-Colonel El-
good, who served in the British occupation corps during the
war, the result of this declaration was that the deep feeling
of mistrust towards the occupying Power, common to all
classes of the Egyptian population, grew into a feeling of
widespread but as yet concealed hatred. Egypt’s forced
ties with Great Britain had drawn her into a war, the origin
and aims of which she knew nothing about.
Having entered the war, Britain violated the Convention
of 1888 by occupying the Suez Canal Zone and instituting a
number of emergency political measures. By the Decree of
October 18, 1914, the government postponed for two months
the convention of the Legislative Assembly, which in time
of war could become a means for expressing popular dis­
content. Similar postponements were ordered on several
other occasions and the Assembly did not* meet once
throughout the war.
On October 20, 1914, the government issued a decree on
“illegal gatherings”. If more than four Egyptians assembled
without the authorities’ permission, they could be punished
as criminals.
 On November % 1914, martial law was declared in Egypt.
Supreme authority in Egypt passed into the hands of Gen­
eral Maxwell, the commander-in-chief of the British forces.
The regime of military dictatorship was combined with in­
creased terrorism. Thousands of participants in the national
movement, bourgeois intellectuals, doctors, lawyers, teach­
ers, officers and students, were thrown into prison or con­
centration camps, exiled to remote oases or banished to
Malta. The leader of the Hizb El-W atan Party, A li Kamil,
was interned and the Nationalist newspapers were closed.
All the other newspapers were heavily censored.
Taking advantage of the war, Britain decided to legalise
Egypt’s seizure. On December 18, 1914, the British Foreign
Secretary announced Egypt’s secession from Turkey and
her consolidation as a British protectorate. A high commis­
sioner was placed at the head of the colonial administration
in place of the British consul-general, who was listed as
“diplomatic” representative, although he ruled the country
as an absolute satrap. McMahon was appointed to this post
in 1914. In November 1916, he was replaced by Wingate.
But since martial law was in force, these officials were
actually subordinate to the commander-in-chief and were
mere tools in the hands of the military dictatorship. On
December 19, 1914, the British deposed the Egyptian
Khedive, Abbas II Hilmi, who was in Constantinople and
had f adíen out of favour with the colonial authorities. They
installed their stooge Husain Kamil Pasha in his place,
investing him with the title of sultan. W hen Husain Kamil
died in 1917, his son Kemal ed-Din, unwilling to become a
British puppet, refused to occupy the throne. The British
then sought out a certain Prince Ahmed Fuad, Ismail’s
younger son, who had grown up in Italy and had served in
the Italian army. On the eve of the war, Italy had nomi­
nated Ahmed Fuad as the King of Albania. On October 9,
1917, Britain offered him the Egyptian throne. Valentine
Chirol writes that Ahmed Fuad was hastily elected by the
British Government not because he possessed any unusual
qualities, but because, having very few friends in Egypt,
he was forced to rely on British support.

THE WAR AND THE EGYPTIAN ECONOMY. When

Britain entered the war against Turkey, she officially de-
378
dared that she was taking the “burden of the present war
on herself” and would not resort to Egypt’s help. The reality
proved quite different, Britain made extensive use of
Egypt’s natural, resources and manpower. In the very first
days of the war, the British sent Egyptian artillery to defend
the Suez Canal. Throughout the war they used the Egyp­
tians in the auxiliary forces and in the labour corps.
Egyptians were recruited to the labour corps two or
three times a year. Each time, up to 135,000 men were
called up. Officially, the recruitment was supposed to be
voluntary. In fact, however, there was considerable admi­
nistrative pressure and corruption. In return for bribes the
Omdis (village elders) would exempt the peasants from
recruitment, while sending away anyone who was not to
their liking. In 1917, the voluntary system was abolished
and the British recruiting agents began working in the open.
What were these labour corps like? W hy did the entire
adult male population of the villages flee to the desert at
the sight of the recruiting agents? W hy did thousands of
starving people avoid the doubtful honour of becoming
“volunteers”? W hy did soldiers and police comb the land
for these “volunteers” who had fled, and deliver them under
guard to the barracks? Because service in the labour corps
was the worst kind of penal servitude. A ll the dirty work
of the war was assigned to the labour corps. They dug
trenches, built fortifications, laid water mains and railways
across the desert and carried heavy loads on their backs.
They were often the first to come under enemy attack. When
the British advanced across the Sinai Desert into Palestine
the Egyptian labour corps went in the fore, paving the way
with their bodies as well as their work. “From the point
of view of bodily security,” writes Lieutenant-Colonel
Elgood, “frequently in the Palestine campaign there was
not much to choose between service with those units and
with British troops in the front line. Both were bombed and
shelled impartially by the enemy.”1 Losses in the labour
corps exceeded 30,000. All told, over one million Egyptian
fellaheen and workers passed through this hell. The term
of service in the labour corps was six months. Recruits

1 P. G. Elgood, Egypt and the A rm y, Oxford University Press,

1924, pp. 86-87.

3 79
were soon crippled and exhausted to such a degree that the
British preferred to exchange them for fresh manpower.
The British used the Egyptian labour corps not only on
the Suez front. Egyptian fellaheen with shovels in their
hands could be seen in Gallipoli, in Mesopotamia and in
far-off Lorraine. According to official data, in 1916 alone,
over 10,000 fellaheen were sent to France and over 8,000 to
Mesopotamia.
Egyptian ports, means of transport, industry and agri­
culture were all placed at the British army’s disposal.
Egypt’s economy was organised along completely new lines.
The authorities took a number of emergency measures to
feed the population and the 275,000-strong British army
stationed in Egypt. On August 2, 1914, the authorities for­
bade the export of essential goods and introduced control
over prices: The war made it difficult to import wheat and,
faced with the threat of a food shortage, the British authori­
ties speeded up the production of the grain crops. In 1915,
they forcibly restricted the area under cotton to expand
the area under wheat and rice. The cotton plantations were
reduced from 1,755,000 feddans in 1914 to 1,186,000 fed-
dans in 1915.
Soon, however, the British began to run short of cotton
for the war industry and were forced to abolish all restric­
tive measures. Cotton production soared again and cotton
prices almost trebled: from 14 reals a cantar in 1913 to 38 reals
a cantar in 1917. Cotton growers, traders, swindlers and all
sorts of middlemen waxed rich on the cotton boom.
The war and the ruptüre of foreign trade ties stimulated
the development of local Egyptian industry. The war was
a successful substitute for the protection that domestic
capital needed. Industrial goods were no longer being
imported from abroad and to fill the gap, national capital
swung into action. Scores of hundreds of small domestic
and semi-domestic craft enterprises were opened in the
textile, sewing, leather, shoes, sugar, spirits, furniture and
other industries. The number of people engaged in industry
rose from 376,000 in 1907 to 489,000 in 1917; 231,000 of
these were hired workers.
The war enriched the Egyptian landowners, merchants
and businessmen as never before and considerably strength­
ened the positions of Egyptian national capital,

.380
 The Egyptian bourgeoisie^ enrichment, however, did not
free it from the tutelage of British finance capital and the
colonial authorities. On the contrary, in the war years
Egypt’s financial and economic dependence increased. On
August 2, 1914, the British authorities stopped the exchange
of bank notes issued by the National Bank of Egypt for
gold and forcibly introduced paper money. The National
Bank’s gold reserves were handed over to the British Trea­
sury. The British authorities withdrew all the gold and
silver coins from circulation and replaced them with notes.
In October 1916, the gold backing of Egyptian bank notes
was withdrawn and instead they were backed by British
Treasury bonds and pound sterling notes. The Egyptian
pound was thus made dependent on the British pound, which
actually meant Egypt’s incorporation in the sterling
zone. Britain was now able to pay her military expenses in
Egypt in notes without having to waste a single gram of
gold.
During the war, the amount of paper money in circula­
tion sharply increased. A t the close of 1914, there were only
£8,250,000 notes in circulation. By the end of 1919, this
figure had increased more than eight times. Inflation led
to a rise in prices, especially of primary goods. The index
of wholesale prices rose from 100 in 1913 to 211 in 1918.
The Egyptian working people were the first to suffer
from the rise in prices. An official British report noted the
unheard-of and constant rise in prices, especially of such
essential goods as bread, clothes, and fuel, which laid a
particularly heavy burden on the lower classes whose wages
were quite inadequate to the increased cost of living. The
subsistence minimum was a good deal higher than the aver­
age wage level.
The peasants were very badly off. In the first months
of the war, the British began comandeering grain and
fodder from the peasants. The confiscated products were
paid for at prices that were lower than the market prices
and after much delay. Corruption also played its part. The
government collectors extorted more wheat from the peas­
ants than was fixed by the tax and sold it at the market for
speculative prices. The confiscation of draught animals,
donkeys and camels was a disaster for the peasants. It was
almost impossible to secure compensation. And what corn-

381
pensation could be obtained after long ordeals was not
enough to buy a new animal.
The forced collections for the Red Cross and Red Cres­
cent were particularly hateful to the fellaheen. Every British
official tried to break the record for blackmail, and the sums
that were extorted usually did not reach the Red Cross, but
finished up in the blackmailers’ pockets.

THE EGYPTIAN NATIO NA L LIBERATION MOVE­

M ENT DURING THE W AR. The commandeering of
wheat and animals, the extortions, mobilisations, the plunder
of the Egyptian countryside, the terrorist regime and mili­
tary dictatorship evoked profound discontent.
This feeling, however, could not find an outlet in organ­
ised political struggle. The Egyptian national liberation
movement was in the grip of a serious crisis. The big
Egyptian bourgeoisie and feudalists were growing rich on
the war and sided with Britain. Temporarily, at least, their
newspapers and political parties reconciled themselves to
British domination and abstained from any struggle against
the occupation forces. Neither the government nor the mem­
bers of the Legislative Assembly even attempted to protest
against the British protectorate over Egypt.
It was chiefly the petty bourgeoisie and the nationalist-
minded intellectuals that united round the National Party
and continued the anti-imperialist struggle. The military-
terrorist regime, the arrests, the exiles and the closure of
the Nationalist newspapers considerably restricted the
scope of the wataneuris activities. Actually, they confined
themselves to propaganda abroad (Geneva and Berlin)
and to organising terrorist acts. On April 8 and July 9,
1915, they made two attempts on the life of the British
puppet, Sultan Husain Kamil. On August 10, 1915, an
attempt was made on the life of the Prime Minister, Husein
Rushdi Pasha, and on September 4, 1915, on the life of the
waqf minister.
This series of unsuccessful terrorist acts changed abso­
lutely nothing in Egypt. The Nationalists withdrew further
into their shell, isolating themselves from the people and
their everyday needs. Spontaneous manifestations of dis­
content received no real guidance and were not used in the
interests of the anti-imperialist struggle.
382
 Spontaneous discontent, however, fed the fires of national­
istic feeling, which reached threatening dimensions in the
final years of the war. According to the British historian
Young, every educational establishment and every college
became a centre of fierce anti-British propaganda. The
Egyptians, he wrote, began to realise that the war that had
been declared for the freedom of the minor nations was
actually being waged to divide the minor nations between
the Western Powers. Egypt was not even promised freedom
for her loyalty. On the contrary, the protectorate only
stressed her dependence.
The British intelligence service founded an Arab Bureau
which was to combat the Egyptian national movement in
Cairo. The Arab Bureau was made up of such notorious
British intelligence officers as Colonel (lieutenant at the
time) Lawrence, the former Times correspondent in Istan­
bul, Phillip Graves, who on the eve of the war used his
close ties with the Young Turk ruling circles to supply
British Intelligence with detailed information about the
Turkish army; Lord Lloyd, Winston Churchill’s close friend
and later the British High Commissioner for Egypt; the
arabist Hogarth and Major Newcombe, who on the eve of
the war had made topographical surveys of southern Pales­
tine, which was to become a theatre of military operations.
At the head of this nest of spies stood Colonel Clayton.
W hile persecuting the Egyptian Nationalists, the Arab
Bureau actually conducted subversive activities in the Turk­
ish rear through its ties with the Syrian and Palestinian
Nationalists. It even entered into negotiations with the
Meccan ruler Sherif Husein el-Hashimi, and in 1916, or­
ganised an uprising of the Hejaz Arabs against Turkey.

MILITARY OPERATIONS (1914-16). Military opera­

tions in the Middle East began in November 1914. On
November 7, 1914, two days after the declaration of war
between Britain and Turkey, British and Indian troops landed
at the mouth of Shatt-al-Arab and launched an attack
against the north. On November 21, they seized Basra and
on December 9, 1914, Al-Qurna, thereby completing the
occupation of southern Iraq. But with that the British suc­
cesses came to an end. Their attempts to thrust forward to
Baghdad in 1915 failed completely. In November 1915,

m
they were defeated at Ctesiphon and in December 1915, the
Turks surrounded General Townshend’s 10,000-strong
detachment at Kut El-Imara. On April 29, 1916, after a
five-month siege, Townshend surrendered. The British
rapidly recovered from their defeat, however, and in the sec­
ond half of 1916, they again switched over to the offensive.
On the Sinai front the initiative was in the hands of the
German-Turkish command. After thorough preparations,
the Turks launched a broad offensive on the Suez Canal
Zone. On January 10, 1915, eight Turkish divisions began
to advance in two columns across the Sinai Peninsula in
the direction of Gaza-Qantara and Ma’an-Suez. They cov­
ered 400 kilometres on foot and sixteen days later, took up
positions on the eastern bank of the canal.
The British opposed the Turks with a 50,000-strong army
consisting of their own, New Zealand, Australian ana
Anglo-Indian units, supported by the British and French
warships and seaplanes. Rather than attempt to defend the
Sinai Peninsula the British had adopted the plan of im­
mediate defence on the Suez Canal line.
On the night of February 2, 1915, the Turks launched
their assault on the canal, which ended in their complete
defeat. The Turkish landing party which had crossed to the
western bank of the canal was routed. The Turks’ supply
of ammunition and foodstuffs ran low and two weeks later
they retired to their starting bases in Gaza and Ma’an.
After the first attack against the canal had failed, the
German-Turkish command organised Bedouin raids on
Egypt from the east and the. west, but the military results
of the raids were nil. Even in the political sense they served
little purpose. The Bedouins who made up Jemal Pasha’s
4th Army fought with extreme reluctance and encountered
no support in Egypt. The Turks’ gamble on Arab support
had failed.
The British built up the fortifications of the Suez Canal
Zone and by 1916, they had amassed 275,000 men in the
area. Between April and August 1916, the Turkish com­
mand made two more attempts to attack the Suez Canal.
German officers under the command of Kress von Kressen­
stein supervised the operations and German-Austrian troops
took a direct part in the campaign. These attacks, however,
were also rebuffed by the British.

3 84
 Turkey was equally unsuccessful at sea. The Anglo-
French fleet cruised the Syrian coast and put small
diversionary groups and detachments ashore. British ships
sealed off the Red Sea coast of Arabia.
On the Arabian Peninsula, in 1915, with the support of
their fleet the British successfully repelled all the attempts
of the Turco-Yemenese troops to seize Aden. Mohammed
el-Idrisi’s insurgent detachments operating in Asir helped
the British considerably by holding down two or three
Turkish divisions and harassing the Yemen from the north.
British operations in North Arabia were also effective. By
stirring up internecine strife they managed to neutralise
the Rashidis of Shammar and thereby protect the left flank
of the British expeditionary corps in Iraq.
The Sinai front was vital to the British. Originally they
had intended to influence the outcome of the battle for the
Suez Canal by landing troops in the region of Alexandretta
and instigating an uprising in Syria. Jemal Pasha, however,
dealt ruthlessly with the Nationalist leaders and France
vehemently protested against the British unilateral occupa­
tion of the French spheres of influence. The British com­
mand thereupon chose the other alternative of launching
an offensive across the Sinai Peninsula. In view of this deci­
sion, the Hashimites’ stand in favour of an uprising in the
Hejaz acquired special significance. Besides diverting the
Turkish forces, the uprising would protect the British army’s
right flank and would greatly ease matters in the event of
a campaign against Palestine.

PREPARATIONS FOR THE ARAB UPRISING IN

TH E HEJAZ. Between 1915 and 1916, British intelligence
agents and diplomats stepped up their preparations for an
uprising in the Hejaz. The first contacts between the British
and Abdullah el-Hashimi had been established before the
outbreak of war and were renewed soon after. The British
urged the Hashimites to avail themselves of the situation
by provoking an uprising. The conditions in the Hejaz were
favourable to Britain. Tension between the grand Sherif
Husein el-Hashimi and the Turkish Government was mount­
ing rapidly. Husein was nothing loath to use the war to
realise his ambitious plans. He refused to proclaim a jihad
(holy war) and sabotaged all attempts to carry out defen-
25-573 3S5
sive measures. He was backed by the Hejaz tribes, who
in 1915 launched a guerilla war against the Turks.
Husein however, vacillated. He saw through the selfish
plans of the British and did not trust them. What was more
he realised he was between the hammer and the anvil. Com­
paratively large Turkish units were stationed in the Hejaz,
but in the Red Sea there were British warships ready at a
moment’s notice to blockade the ports of the Hejaz and
stop the supply of foodstuffs. Husein, therefore, bided his
time. For eighteen months he conducted an evasive policy,
bargaining with the British and at the same time sending his
emissaries to the tribal leaders and the Syrian Nationalists.
In the spring of 1915, one of Husein’s sons, Emir Feisal,
arrived in Damascus. He was received by Jemal Pasha. At
the same time Feisal secretly established contacts with the
Syrian Nationalists and, in particular, had talks with repre­
sentatives of the Young Arabs and the officers’ secret society
El-Ahd (the Covenant), which he joined. By the irony of
fate, however, this distinguished Nationalist was invited to
attend the execution of a group of Syrian Nationalist lead­
ers as an honoured guest.
The Syrian Nationalists urged Feisal to side with Britain
against the Turks. They had drawn up a protocol defining
the terms of Anglo-Arab co-operation. This document,
known as the Damascus Protocol, was drafted in May 1915.
According to the Damascus Protocol, Britain was to recog­
nise and guarantee the independence of the Arab state
within its “natural borders”. This meant the territory which
was bounded on the north by the 37th parallel and included
Syria, Palestine, Iraq and the entire Arabian Peninsula
with the exception of Aden. Britain was also to guarantee
the abolition of the capitulations. In return for this the
Nationalists agreed to conclude a defensive alliance between
Britain and the future independent Arab state and to grant
economic privileges to Britain for a term of fifteen years.
The Damascus Protocol was an important landmark in
the history of the Arab national liberation movement. It
signified an alliance between the Arab feudalists and the
Syrian, Iraqi and Palestinian bourgeoisie. This alliance
consolidated the Hashimites’ positions in the Arab world
and provided them with additional trump cards in the
diplomatic game with Britain.

386
 As soon as Feisal returned to the Hejaz and reported on
his visit to Damascus, Husein resumed negotiations with
Britain, which took the form of an exchange of letters
between himself and the British High Commissioner for
Egypt, McMahon. In his letter of July 14, 1915, Husein
offered the co-operation of the Arabs on the terms stipulated
by the Damascus Protocol. The British, who at the time
were holding talks with their allies on Turkey’s post-war par­
tition, were taken aback by Husein’s demands, especially by
his territorial claims, and their reply was a diplomatic refusal.
Husein insisted on an Anglo-Arab agreement and
demanded the recognition of the borders of the future Arab
state as an indispensable condition of this agreement. At
the end of 1915, the situation on the Middle East fronts—
the blockade of Aden, the defeats in Mesopotamia and the
Dardanelles—developed unfavourably for Britain. This
made the Arabs’ co-operation and help extremely valuable
and the British decided to meet several of the Hashimites’
demands half way. On October 24, 1915, after consultations
with London, McMahon sent another letter to Husein,
which later became known as the McMahon-Husein agree­
ment. In this letter, McMahon promised to recognise the
independence of the Hashimite Arab state within
the borders proposed by Husein, i.e., in accordance
with the Damascus Protocol, but with the exception of the
following territories: (a) the British protectorates in the
Arabian Peninsula, (b) the territories west of the line
Aleppo-Hama-Homs-Damascus, i.e., western Syria, the
Lebanon and Cilicia, to which France had a claim. The
territories of the Basra and Baghdad vilayets were to re­
main under the sovereignty of the Arab state, but came
under British control. Finally, Britain insisted on the exclu­
sive right to send foreign advisers to the Arab state and to
“defend” it from external attacks.
McMahon’s letter of October 24, 1915, did not satisfy
Husein, who continued to insist on the solution of contro­
versial issues (the borders of the Arab state and its future
relations with Britain), but finally he was forced to give
in and postpone their discussion till after the war. The
British engaged to supply Husein with weapons and equip­
ment and to pay him and his sons a monthly subsidy of
£60,000.
25« 387
 Turkish action put an end to the Hashimites’ vacillations.
The Porte refused to recognise Husein as the independent
hereditary ruler of the Hejaz and declined his request to
pardon the Arab Nationalists. In April 1916, the Turkish
military court passed another series of death sentences. It
would soon be Husein’s turn. The Turks were preparing to
despatch large reinforcements to the Hejaz and with them
a new Grand Sherif of Mecca.

TH E 1916 UPRISING IN TH E HEJAZ. These circum­

stances forced Husein to overcome his last hesitations and
summon the Arabs to an anti-Turkish uprising which began
on June 5, 1916. Led by Husein’s sons, the emirs Ali, Abdul­
lah, Feisal and Zaid, tribal insurgent detachments quickly
seized Jidda and also the ports of Yenbo and Umm Lejj.
In Mecca they drove the Turks into the citadel, which sur­
rendered three months later. The Turkish garrison of Taif
fell in September 1916. By that time part of the Turkish
force was blockaded in Medina and the others were engaged
in guarding the Hejaz railway. The Turkish troops in Asir
and the Yemen were completely cut off.
Surprise was the main factor in Husein’s first success.
W ith no more than 10,000 men in the Hejaz to pit against
50,000 Bedouin insurgents, the Turks were taken unawares,
but the insurgents were poorly trained and organised; they
fought only on horseback, knew nothing about bayonet fight­
ing and were helpless against artillery and machine guns.
Their discipline was non-existent. They had no infantry or
artillery; 10,000 outdated muskets were all the arms they
had. Many of them would fight only in their own localities
and several of the tribes refused to take any part in the
uprising.
Consequently, the first victories were followed by a stale­
mate. The Turks drove the insurgents from Medina which
stood firm all through the war. Reinforcements were moved
in from Syria to the Hejaz railway and out of these the
Turks began to form a special Hejaz corps, counting on
lengthy trench warfare. In light of this Husein appealed to
the British. The British, however, did not hasten to his help,
for they felt that their purpose of the uprising was to divert
Turkish not British troops to the Hejaz. Moreover, Britain
was against the insurgents acquiring real strength, which

388
would later compel her to reckon with the Arabs’ national
demands.
Husein’s request for planes, artillery and for an infantry
brigade was turned down. All the Hejaz received by way
of weapons was small consignments of light outdated arms,
and this only after considerable delay. At the end of 1916,
there was only one rifle among five men in Feisal’s and
Zaid’s forces. Instead of arms came British and French
military instructors and advisers, who reached the conclu­
sion that the Arabs were capable of nothing but guerilla
warfare. These advisers drew up a plan for regular guerilla
raids on the Hejaz railway and the original plan to seize
Medina was abandoned. The Turkish command saw through
this manoeuvre and ordered its troops to withdraw from
the Hejaz and retreat to Palestine. But the commander of
the Turkish garrison in Medina, Fakhri Pasha, did not obey
the order and things remained as they were.
The Hejaz uprising did not relieve the political friction
between Britain and Husein. Acute differences arose
between them only a few days after its outbreak. On
June 27, 1916, Husein issued a manifesto to all the Moslems
of the world, proclaiming Arab independence and promul­
gating a programme of his own. Britain feared the mani­
festo might evoke an upsurge of liberative aspirations,
especially in her domains, and forbade its circulation. But
Britain’s fears were unjustified. In essence, Husein’s mani­
festo was extremely reactionary and alien to the Arab
national liberation movement. The Grand Sherif accused
the Turks of spreading “innovations” supposedly hostile to
the spirit of Islam and promised to restore the traditional
Moslem institutions which were based on the shariat (legis­
lature).
After this, Husein tried to put into practice the idea of
setting up an Arab state. Without waiting till the end of
the war, on November 2, 1916, in Mecca, he convened a
meeting of Arab feudal leaders, who proclaimed him the
king of the Arab nation. An Arab Government was formed
with its seat at Mecca. According to tradition, the main
posts were occupied by Sherif’s sons. Ali became Prime
Minister; Abdullah, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Feisal,
Minister of the Interior.
The declaration of an independent Arab kingdom and the
389
formation of an Arab Government placed the British in a
difficult position. McMahon sent Husein an indignant mes­
sage and forbade the press to publish any information on
the Arab Government or anything related to it. The British
and French governments declared that they did not
recognise Husein’s new title, thus giving him to understand
that they were not inclined to regard the Hashimite govern­
ment as representative of all the Arabs of the Ottoman Em­
pire.
The conflict was finally solved by the compromise. Brit­
ain and France acknowledged Husein as the king of the
Hejaz, which did not really matter since the backward
Hejaz .with its population of 600,000 was no menace to them.
The new kingdom did not include 95 per cent of the Porte’s
Arab subjects and could not exist without close ties with the
other Arab regions. On the other hand, by recognising
Husein as king and as their ally, the British and French
governments ensured his participation in the war on the side
of the Entente.
In the meanwhile, on the fronts the scales tipped in
Britain’s favour. The main Turkish forces were diverted to
the Caucasus and to the Balkans. The British army gradu­
ally moved forward, occupying almost the entire Sinai
Peninsula. The soldiers of the Egyptian labour corps laid
a railway and water main through the desert. On Decem­
ber 21, 1916, the British entered El-Arish and began prepa­
rations for a broad offensive on the Palestinian front.
The Turks had built up a powerful defence line between
Gaza and Beersheba (Bir Es-Seba). Twice, in March and
April 1917, the British tried to break through, but to no
avail. To make it easier for the British troops at the front,
the British command decided to shift the Arab guerilla war
from the Hejaz to Palestine and Transjordan in the north.
As a means to this end, the British Intelligence officer
Lieutenant T. E. Lawrence arrived on a visit to Emir Feisal.
Lawrence won Feisal’s confidence and became his chief
military and political adviser. In fact, Lawrence commanded
the entire northern group of the Hejaz troops. Between May
and June 1917, he carried out a deep raid across the desert
and on July 5, 1917, took Aqaba from the rear. This was
both a convenient port and an important strategic position
protecting the right flank of the British offensive against
390
Palestine. W ith the occupation of Aqaba the Arabs
completely cleared the Red Sea coast of the Turks and joined
fronts with the British army.
It is significant that the Arab Nationalists suggested that
Lawrence should immediately march on Damascus, feeling
that this would lead to a general anti-Turkish uprising in
Syria and to the country’s liberation from the Turkish yoke.
The Arabs would thus free themselves by their own efforts
and avoid having the country occupied by foreign troops.
But this was not what the British politicians or the British
military command wanted and Lawrence voiced his objec­
tions. Acting on behalf of British Intelligence he turned the
Arab insurgent army into an auxiliary corps which operated
on the flank of the British army.

SECRET TALKS ON THE PARTITION OF THE

ARAB COUNTRIES. W hile the Arab insurgents fought for
recognition of their right to form an independent Arab state,
secret talks were going on in the cool comfort of the
Entente’s ministerial offices on partition of the Arab coun­
tries. There was nothing very new about the claims made
by the Great Powers, the only difference being that with
the outbreak of the war they felt the need to come to an
agreement between themselves on these claims and on con­
crete commitments between the Allies.
From the very outset of the war, the British Government
had deemed it necessary to inform the Russians of its readi­
ness to solve the Straits question in Russia’s favour. Upon
receiving this statement on March 4, 1915, the tsarist
Minister of Foreign Affairs, S. D. Sazonov, wrote a letter
to the British and French ambassadors in St Petersburg
suggesting that they give their written approval on the
handing over of the Straits to Russia. This suggestion was
gladly taken up by the Allies, especially by the French. On
March 8, the French Ambassador, Paleologue, announced
the French Government’s consent to Russia’s claims on the
condition that France’s rights to Syria, the Lebanon and
Cilicia be recognised by Russia. Russia was ready to accept
this compromise, but made a reservation about the
Armenians’ claims on Cilicia and also raised the question
of the “holy places” in Palestine. Britain acted more warily,
demanding that provisions be made in the future for the
391
formation of an "Arab state, the borders of which were to
be determined at some later period.
On April 10, 1915, an agreement was concluded between
Britain, France and Russia giving the Straits to Russia and
providing for the formation of an independent Moslem state
in Arabia. But the question of Syria’s and Palestine’s fate
was not solved. At the end of 1915 and the beginning of
1916, additional talks were held between Britain and France
on the subject. At the outset of 1916, the talks were speeded
up in view of the Russian offensive in the Caucasus. Britain
agreed to concede to France the territory west of the line
Aleppo-Hama-Homs-Damascus. The French insisted that
this region be regarded as a future French colony and east­
ern Syria as a sphere of French influence.
By this time Russia, who had received information about
conflicts between Jemal Pasha and the central government
in Istanbul, proposed a new plan for the solution
of the Arab question, which boiled down to the follow­
ing: to demand that Jemal Pasha should break completely
with the Porte and open the front to the Allies. In exchange
for this it was proposed to place Jemal Pasha at the head
of an independent sultanate of six autonomous provinces
(including four Arab ones). This was the basis S. D. Sazonov
suggested for holding secret talks with Jemal Pasha, but
the Western Powers had absolutely no intention of handing
over the Arab countries to Jemal Pasha. France, therefore,
declared that the plan should be carried out only on the
condition that the regions meant for France were not given
to Jemal Pasha. Britain stated a similar reservation with
regard to Mesopotamia and Arabia. Objections by the
Western Powers made the plan unworkable.
In March 1916, special British and French representatives
(Sykes and Picot) arrived in Petrograd for talks that resulted
in the famous Sykes-Picot Agreement, which was expressed
in notes exchanged between France and Russia (May 9,
1916) and France and Britain (May 15, 1916). The agree­
ment envisaged the seizure by France of western Syria, the
Lebanon and Cilicia together with a portion of south-east
Anatolia (the so-called Blue Zone), and the seizure by Brit­
ain of southern and central Iraq plus the Palestinian ports
of Haifa and Akka (the Red Zone). The remaining area (the
rest of Palestine) (the Brown Zone) was reserved for a spe-

392
cial international regime of its own in agreement with
Russia and the other countries. Eastern Syria and the district
of Mosul came under the French sphere of influence
(Zone A) and Transjordan and the northern part of the
Baghdad vilayet , under the British sphere of influence
(Zone B). The agreement gave France and Britain in these
zones priority rights in trade, railway construction and
arms export and the exclusive right to supply the future
Arab administration with whatever foreign officials, advisers
and the like it might need.
Although Russia, who exchanged notes with Britain only
in the autumn of 1916, had no claims on the Arab coun­
tries, the Allies promised her Turkey’s Armenian vilayets
and northern Kurdistan in exchange for her adherence to the
agreement, and also confirmed her “rights” to Constanti­
nople and to defend the interests of the Orthodox in Pales­
tine. Accordingly a Yellow Zone, Lake Van, appeared on
the map.
Somewhat later, Italy learned of the agreement and this
led to the appearance of the Green Zone (south-western Ana­
tolia) and Zone C (a portion of western and central Ana­
tolia). On April 20, 1917, notes were exchanged between
France and Italy. Britain stipulated that Italy’s adherence
to the agreement must first be ratified by Russia.
One of the sayings of British diplomacy is that you can
promise anything you like because the situation is bound
to change. Britain’s generous concessions in the partition
of the Porte’s Arab provinces may be taken as an example
of adherence to this rule.

OCCUPATION OF IRAO. ANGLO-FRENCH CON­

FLICTS IN TH E MIDDLE EAST. British calculations that
it would be possible to go back on the secret Allied commit­
ments rested on the fact that the British army was slowly
but surely occupying one Arab territory after the other.
In December 1916, in Mesopotamia, the British switched
over to the offensive. They broke through the Turks’ strongly
fortified positions in the region of Kut El-Imara and
destroyed the Turkish river flotilla. They routed the Turkish
troops on the Tigris and began advancing rapidly north­
ward. On Feburary 25, 1917, the British seized Kut El-Imara
and on March 11, they entered Baghdad. In September they

393
 resumed the offensive. On September 28, 1917, the British
forces occupied Ramadi on the Euphrates and on the
November 6, Tikrit on the Tigris was theirs.
The offensive brought almost all Mesopotamia under
British control. This act of occupation showed that the British
imperialists had merely talked of their desire to liberate
the Arabs from the Turkish yoke. Actually, they were con­
ducting a policy of colonial annexation. Having conquered
Iraq, the British set about holding down their new territory
by force. Absolute power was wielded by the British military
command and civil service, which was subordinate to the
Anglo-Indian government. The administration was headed
by Percy Cox, a veteran official of the British colonial ser­
vice in India and the British Resident for the Persian Gulf.
In 1917, he was succeeded by Arnold Wilson, an officer
of the Anglo-Indian army ana a British Intelligence agent.
These civil commissioners, as Cox and Wilson were called,
were in charge of the British “political officers” who exer­
cised power in the provinces.
Former Turkish officials were replaced by officials of
the Anglo-Indian civil service. Turkish currency was with­
drawn from circulation and replaced by Anglo-Indian
currency. The administrative system and the shipbuilding
industry were also arranged along Indian lines. In
other words, Iraq virtually became a province of British
India.
The Iraqi feudalists and compradore bourgeoisie imme­
diately went over to the British, collaborating with them
and actively supporting all their measures.
With a view to consolidating their political positions, the
British drew representatives of the feudal and tribal nobility
as well as the Moslem clergy (especially Shi’a) into the
administration, tempting them with subsidies, decorations
and sinecures. Only a handful of representatives of the
higher Sunnite clergy and a few feudal chiefs remained in
opposition.
The British gave especial consideration to the tribal
policy. The Bedouins lacked unity. Some were British orien­
tated and some, Turkish. The sheikhs often changed their
politics. The British would despatch punitive expeditions
against the rebellious tribes and the expeditions often devel­
oped into real battles between the British forces and the
394
Bedouins. But on the whole the British Intelligence Service
was able to ensure the Iraqi tribes’ loyalty throughout
the war.
The transfer of the occupied Arab territories to British
control caused serious alarm in French ruling circles, who
feared that the British would ignore their obligations to
the Allies and seize Syria. The French therefore took hur­
ried steps to show their interest in the affairs of the Levant,
even before the Anglo-Arab troops entered Syria and
Palestine.
The French residents in the East—Bremond, the head of
the French mission to the Hejaz, and Picot, who arrived in
Cairo as the “High Commissioner for the French Republic
in the Orient”—insisted on the despatch of French troops to
Palestine. Picot demanded that an expeditionary corps of
at least 10,000 men be sent to the East. “Otherwise they
will leave us nothing,” he remarked.
Apart from this, the French began an intense political
campaign among the Syrian and Lebanese immigrants. A
Syrian Central Committee was set up in Paris under the
Lebanese immigrant Dr. Michelle Samner, who worked
to bring about a Franco-Syrian rapprochement. In April
1917, Picot summoned a meeting of Lebanese immigrants in
Cairo and informed them of France’s intention to establish
a protectorate over the Lebanon.
These measures, and rumours of the despatch and landing
of French troops in the Lebanon, seriously alarmed the Arab
Nationalists. On learning of the French plans, Emir Feisal
gloomily declared that when the Arabs had finished fighting
the Turks, they would have to fight the French. The leaders
of the Arab uprising began demanding explanations.
The Allies, who had by this time started preparations for
a decisive offensive on Palestine, did everything they could
to reassure the Arabs. In May 1917, Sykes and Picot arrived
in the Hejaz for talks with Husein and Feisal. In strict
secrecy they discussed the fate of Palestine, Syria and Iraq.
Many interesting details which threw light on the Anglo-
Franco-Hejaz talks are cited in Bremond’s bosk. It turns
out that Husein and Feisal were given false information
about the Anglo-French treaties and agreements on the
Arab question. Husein received false assurances and decided
to continue the war on the side of the Allies.

395
 THE PALESTINE OFFENSIVE OF 1917. THE BAL­
FOUR DECLARATION. In July 1917, Allenby took com­
mand of the British troops in Palestine and was also put in
charge of the Feisal-Lawrence units of the Arab army.
Allenby’s plan of operation envisaged a joint Anglo-Arab
offensive on a broad front. With the support of the ships
and planes of the British and French fleets, the British were
to operate west of the River Jordan while the Arabs oper­
ated to the east. The Arab army, which protected the British
right flank, was to clear Transjordan jointly with the local
guerilla detachments, occupy Hauran and open the road to
Damascus.
The British were numerically superior. They had con­
centrated 95,000 bayonets, 20,000 sabres and 500 guns on
the Gaza-Beersheba (Bir Es-Seba) front. The Turks had
50,000 bayonets, 1,500 sabres and 300 guns. The Turkish army
was starving and almost completely demoralised. Steps had
been taken to send crack Turkish units of the Ildirim (Light­
ning) Army and the German Asiatic corps to the
Palestinian front. But the lack of roads and the confusion
in the rear considerably delayed the transfer of these units.
Allenby decided to push ahead with the offensive before
the fresh Turkish troops arrived. On October 31, 1917, the
British broke the front in the region of Beersheba
and soon overwhelmed the Turkish defences on the
Gaza-Beersheba line. With their superior numbers, better
arms, far better organisation of supplies and a reliable
communications system, the British completely routed the
Turks, turning the tide of the battle on the Palestinian front,
and began the thrust northwards. On November 16, the
British occupied Jaffa and on December 9, 1917, they en­
tered Jerusalem.
The British breakthrough and occupation of Palestine
made the question of Palestine’s future a matter of great
urgency. The British were bound by two different commit­
ments to their Allies. Under the McMahon-Husein agree­
ment of 1915, the British had promised to incorporate
Palestine in the Arab state. Under the agreement with Rus­
sia in 1916, they had undertaken to establish international
control in Palestine. But now, having occupied Palestine, they
had no intention of fulfilling either promise and did every­
thing in their power to keep the country under their control.
396
 To evade her earlier commitments, Britain decided to
take advantage of the Zionist movement, which had become
more widespread at the end of the 19th century. Back in 1882,
a group of Russian-born Jews had founded the first Jewish
agricultural colony near Jaffa. In Jaffa, in 1908, a Zionist
agency was set up to provide for immigrants sent by vari­
ous Zionist societies and organisations. Despite the generous
subsidies from Rothschild and from various Zionist funds,
however, despite the favourable neutrality of the Turkish
authorities, who did nothing to hamper Jewish colonisation,
the Zionists had achieved no significant results in the thirty
years before the war. In Palestine, on the eve of the war,
there had been only forty-three Jewish settlements with a
population of 13,000. Between 1882 and 1914, some 45,000
immigrants had entered the country and in 1914, the entire
Jewish population of Palestine was scarcely 90,000.
In 1897, the World Zionist Organisation became the
organising and political centre of the Zionist movement. In
search of a protector, the organisation tried to establish
contacts with the governments of several big Powers. Prior
to World War I, the Zionists had leaned towards Kaiser
Germany in the hope of realising their plans for colonising
Palestine with her help. A small group of Zionists under
Dr. Weizmann took their cue from Britain and counted on
the collaboration of British imperialism.
At the beginning of 1917, while preparing for the seizure
of Palestine, the British Government recalled the Zionists’
claims and decided to enlist their services to justify the
separation of Palestine from the Arab state. On the British
Government’s instructions, in February 1917, Sykes estab­
lished contacts with the Zionist leaders. In the summer of
the same year, negotiations were resumed. The talks re­
vealed that both sides held identical views and on Novem­
ber 2, 1917, the British Government issued a declaration
on its policy in Palestine, which was published in the form
of a letter from the British Foreign Secretary Balfour to the
Anglo-Jewish banker Rothschild. The declaration stated
that “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the es­
tablishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish
people and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the
establishment of this object.”
The Balfour Declaration received the immediate support
397
of the United States Government, which in many ways con­
tributed to the success of the Anglo-Zionist negotiations.
In 1918, the French and Italian governments adhered to
the Balfour Declaration.

TH E EXPOSURE OF TH E SECRET NEGOTIATIONS.

The Balfour Declaration evoked tremendous indignation
among the Arabs, who were staggered by Britain’s treachery.
Their indignation knew no bounds when they learned the
whole truth about the partition of the Arab countries. In
November 1917, the Government of Soviet Russia published
the secret treaties on the partition of the Ottoman Empire,
including the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Naturally, the Arabs
could not reconcile themselves to the plans to transform their
lands from Turkish vilayets into colonies of the European
imperialist Powers. On December 3, 1917, the Government
of Soviet Russia issued an Appeal “To A ll the Working
Moslems of Russia and the E ast’. This call to all Moslems
of the East to take their destiny in their own hands also had
a great impact on the Arabs.
N ew s of the Balfour Declaration and the Sykes-Picot
Agreement encouraged. anti-British feelings among the
insurgent army. Feisal’s guerillas and soldiers began refus­
ing to take part in the war on the Entente’s side. Their
officers openly expressed indignation at Britain’s double­
dealing and the leaders of the Arab uprising entered into
negotiations with Turkey and threatened to conclude a
separate peace with her.
The first Arab-Turkish contacts were made in November
1917. Acting on behalf of the Porte, Jemal Pasha des­
patched his emissary to Aqaba and invited Feisal to Damas­
cus for peace talks. In the summer of 1918, the talks were res­
umed, but came to nothing because of Turkish insolence in
refusing to recognise the Arabs’ national demands. It was
only in September 1918 that the Turkish Government
accepted the Arabs’ terms for a separate peace, but by this
time, it was too late. The Turkish fleet was being defeated
and the Entente’s victory was becoming an accomplished fact.
To drown the voice of truth, the imperialist rowers once
again resorted to the diplomacy of deception and sweeping
declarations. Immediately after the Soviet Government had
published the Sykes-Picot Agreement, Balfour called it a

39S
“figment of a malicious Bolshevik imagination”. Soon after,
on December 4, 1917, President W ilson declared in Congress
that the peoples of the Ottoman Empire would be granted
the right to self-determination. On December 27, 1917, the
French Minister of Foreign Affairs Pichón also spoke of
self-determination and of sympathy for the oppressed peo­
ples of Turkey—Armenians, Arabs and the like. On Janu-
áry 5, 1918, the British Prime Minister Lloyd George made
a speech on the “war aims”, in which he also spoke at length
about the specific national conditions for the Arabs and
Armenians. On January 8, 1918, in a Message to Congress
Woodrow Wilson formulated his famous “fourteen points”.
The twelfth point of W ilson’s peace terms provided for
Turkish sovereignty only over the territory inhabited by the
Turks. President Wilson also mentioned the creation of a
League of Nations which would safeguard the rights of
smaller nations.
In 1918, Professor Hogarth of Oxford University, an
expert on Arab affairs, arrived in Jidda to allay Husein’s
fears and to “explain” Britain’s policy on the Middle East
to the Arab leaders. On January 4, 1918, Hogarth handed
over a British memorandum to Husein in which Britain de­
clared that the Entente countries intended to grant the Arabs
an opportunity to occupy a worthy place in the world and
to set up their own state. Britain also declared that a special
regime of control would be created in Palestine and that
no nation would be subordinate to another. Nevertheless,
Hogarth urged Husein to co-operate with the Zionists and
announced that the British authorities would not impede
Jewish immigration in a measure conforming to the eco­
nomic and political freedom of the existing population. Actu­
ally, the eloquent flow of words in Hogarth’s memorandum
was meant to sugar the pill and to conceal Palestine’s seces­
sion from the Arab state.
Hogarth’s memorandum and other declarations made by
the Allies achieved their aim. The Arabs did not abandon
the field of battle, but they were left with a deep feeling
of discontent and mistrust with regard to Britain’s policy.
In June 1918, in Cairo, a group of Syrian Nationalists under
Rafik el-Azm and Abd er-Rahman Shahbandar demanded
a final definition of Britain’s policy towards the Arab coun­
tries. The British Government was compelled to reply and

399
 on June 16, 1918, it published a declaration on its policy
in the Arab East, dividing the Arab lands into three catego­
ries: (1) the territories liberated by the Arabs themselves
(the Hejaz), (2) the territories liberated by British troops
(southern Palestine and Iraq) and (3) the territories still
under Turkish rule (Syria, the Lebanon and northern Iraq).
Britain promised to respect the independence of the terri­
tories included in the first category, to decide the future of
territories of the second category in accordance with the
wishes of the local population and to work for the libera­
tion of territories of the third category. This meant that
Britain actually refused to guarantee the unity and the
independence of the Arab territories which she had
occupied.
Britain’s declaration came nowhere near to satisfying
the Arab Nationalists, who wanted Husein to proclaim an
independent Arab state incorporating all the Arab lands
east of the Suez Canal. On August 30, 1918, Husein asked
the Britsh High Commissioner for Egypt, W ingate, for a
confirmation of the McMahon pledge to set up an Arab state
after the war and to guarantee its borders. Simultaneously,
he asked for a denial of the “slanderous” rumours to the
effect that he was acting in collusion with Britain. He com­
plained and threatened at the same time, alluding to the
possibility of an anti-British uprising if his agreement with
McMahon was not confirmed.
Husein’s complaints, however, had very little effect. This
was largely due to Husein himself and to Feisal, who,
though they did not trust the British, forced other Arabs
to believe in Britain’s friendly attitude towards them.

TURKEY’S MILITARY COLLAPSE A N D THE

ANGLO-FRENCH OCCUPATION OF THE ARAB
COUNTRIES. Thanks to the subterfuges of British diplo­
macy, the Arabs remained on the Allied side till die very
end and played an important part in the final stage of the
war. By 1918, the Turks were on their last legs. Jemal
Pasha’s déposai (December 1917) and the placing of all
military and political power under direct German control
could no longer change anything. The Turkish rear had
fallen to pieces. Arab guerilla detachments operated every­
where. They ambushed the Turkish troops in Hauran, Huta
400
and in the region of Baalbek. By the summer of 1917,
practically all the tribes o f Syria and Transjordan were up in
arms against the Turks. Arab soldiers deserted from the
Turkish army and joined the guerillas en masse. In Iraq,
Arab and Kurdish irregulars abandoned the front and turned
their guns against the Turks. The tribes of the upper and
middle reaches of the Euphrates made incessant raids on
the Turkish communications. Hunger and devastation
reigned throughout the country. The Turkish army, which
was still trying to hold the front, was unclothed and un­
shod in the full sense of the words. Its supply organisation
was useless. The British historian Liddell-Hart wrote that
Allenby had only to put out his hand and the Turkish army
would fall at his feet like a ripe fruit.
In the middle of 1918, the Lawrence-Feisal Arab army
occupied Ma’an, and Feisal was about to shift the operations
to Syria and provoke a general uprising there. But he was
resolutely opposed by the British, who feared more than
anything the liberation of the Arab countries by the Arabs
themselves. It was finally decided to combine the uprising
in Jebel-Druse with the entry of British troops into Syria.
Feisal’s emissary, Bakri, and the prominent Druse sheikh,
Sultan el-Atrash, had been preparing for the uprising for
several months. It began in ¡September 1918 and coincided
with a general offensive launched by all the Entente forces
on the Salonikan and Palestinian fronts.
The Turks had three armies and units of the German
Asiatic corps in Palestine. The 8th Turkish Army was hold­
ing the western sector of the front, the 7th Army under
the command of Mustafa Kemal was stationed in the centre
and the 4th Army in Transjordan. The German general,
Liman von Sanders, was in over-all command of operations.
The German-Turkish forces were opposed by two British
army corps with cavalry and air forces and by Feisal’s
Arab army in Transjordan. The over-all balance of forces
was three to one in the Entente’s favour. Not content with
this, however, Allenby built up the maximum strength on
the decisive western sector of the front. By causing some
of the Turkish forces to be diverted to Transjordan he
managed to give himself an advantage of five to one on the
decisive sector.
On September 19, 1918, the British attacked and broke
26-573 401
 the front south of Nablus. Twenty-four hours later, the
British advance guard entered Nazareth, the headquarters
of the German-Turkish command, and nearly captured
Liman von Sanders. The Turkish units began a disorderly
retreat to the north. Feisal’s Arab troops emerged in the
region of Dera’a (between Amman and Damascus) and cut
off the 4 th Turkish Army’s retreat. The scattered Turkish
formations and units were surrounded. The British cap­
tured 72,000 Turks and approximately 4,000 Germans.
Small detachments and separate Turkish groups were
destroyed by the British air force and Arab guerillas while
they were trying to break through to the north.
British and Arab troops advanced swiftly to the north in
pursuit of the defeated Turks. On September 30, 1918, Fei-
sal’s detachment entered Damascus, just one day ahead of
the British. On October 8, the British occupied Beirut, on
October 18, Tripoli and Homs, and on October 26, 1918, the
British entered the largest city in northern Syria—Aleppo.
On October 30, 1918, representatives of the Porte went
aboard the British warship Agamemnon at Mudros (a port
on the. Island of Limnos in the Aegean) and signed an
armistice dictated by a British admiral. Article sixteen of
the Mudros Armistice envisaged the surrender of all the
Turkish forces to the Allies and the complete abolition of
Turkish rule in the Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, the
Hejaz, Asir and the Yemen. The 400-year old Turkish
domination in the Arab countries had come to an end.
The Arabs, however, were unable to reap the fruits of
victory. On September 30, 1918, the day the Arab troops
entered Damascus, an Anglo-French agreement was signed
in London establishing an occupation regime in the Arab
East. Field-Marshal Allenby was given supreme authority
over the occupied Arab territories, where British martial
law was to remain in force until a peaceful settlement was
reached. The civil administration of the occupied terri­
tories was divided between the Allies. The Lebanon and
western Syria (the Blue Zone according to the Sykes-Picot
Agreement) came under the control of the French High
Commissioner, Picot. Eastern Syria and Transjordan, which
constituted zones A and B under the Sykes-Picot Agree­
ment, came under the control of Emir Feisal, who acted
on behalf of King Husein. The civil administration of the

402
remaining territories, including the Brown Zone (Palestine),
was left in the hands of the British. The Hejaz remained
under Husein’s control.
The Arabs were dissatisfied. Particularly were they in­
dignant at the French authorities, who had pulled down all
Arab flags in their zone, expelled the Arab governor from
Beirut and forced the Arabs to evacuate Latakia and the
northwestern regions of Syria which had been liberated by the
Arab troops. In the hour of victory the Arabs realised that
the Allies had no intention of fulfilling the McMahon-
Husein Agreement or of setting up a united Arab state.
Though free at last from the Turkish yoke, they had
been cheated of their long-awaited independence and fallen
under the influence of the British and French colonialists.
The end of World War I opened a new period in the his­
tory of the Arab people, a period of struggle against British
and French imperialism for the complete national liberation
of the Arab countries.
 NAME INDEX

Abbas II Hilmi—241, 246, 378 Ajlan, Rashid ruler of Riyadh—

Abbas Pasha— 152, 155, 163 363
Abd al-Aziz, Moroccan Sultan— Alamaddins—33
298, 302, 304 Alexander I—97, 98, 168
Abd ar-Rahman, Saudi Emir—362 Ali ben Gadakhum—187
Abd el-Al—202, 211, 216, 222, Ali-bey, el-Kabir—27, 34, 35
230 Ali Fahmi—201, 211, 213, 222
Abd el-Aziz (1765-1803)—80, 81 Ali ibn Mahdi, imam—367
Abd el-Aziz Ibn Saud, founder of Ali, Meccan Sherif—370
Saudi Arabia—362-67 Ali, son of Husein II al-Hashi-
Abd el-Kader—135, 171-79, 294 mi—388, 389
Abdu, Mohammed—202, 243, 244 A li, Sultan—151
Abdul Aziz, Turkish Sultan— Allenby—396, 401, 402
320-22 Anderup—253
Abdul Hamid 11—209, 246, 322- Antonius, George—109, 111
25, 333, 341, 342, 364 Arabi, Ahmed—164, 201, 202,
Abdul Mejid— 123-125, 136, 185 211-27, 229-31, 243, 246, 248,
Abdullah, Caliph of the Mahdi 257
State—255, 258, 259, 261 Arslan, Mohammed—341
Abdullah, Emir of Shammar—149 Arslans, emirs—71
Abdullah Nedim—202, 230 Aun ar-Rafik, Meccan Sherif—
Abdullah, Pasha of ' Akka—70, 369, 370
71, 104 Auni Abd al-Hadi—344
Abdullah, Pasha of Baghdad—69 Azzan ibn Kais—355
Abdullah, son of Husein II el-
Hashimi—352, 370, 385, 388, Baker, Samuel—252, 257
389 Bakri, Feisal’s emissary—401
Abdullah, Wahhabi Emir—87-89 Bakri, merchant—169
Abu’l-Dhahab—35 Balfour, Lard—397, 398
Adamov, A.—7 Baring, see Cromer
Adan, Juliette—245 Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire—215
Adeb Iskhak—202 Bash Hamba, Ali—290, 291
Ahmed, the district bey of Con­ Bazaine, marshal—269
stantine— 171, 173, 174, 177 Bazili, K. M.—7, 15, 110, 116
Ahmed, ruler of Tunisia—184, Bell, Gertrude—364
185 Benkendorf, Russian diplomat—
Ahmed Aga (Bonaparte)—86 305
Ahmed Bu Mezrag—273 Bergchoff—256

404
Beshir II, Lebanese Emir—36, Disraeli, Lord Beaconsfied—192,
64, 68-71, 110, 127, 128 194
Beshir Sfar—290 Duclerc, French Prime Minis­
Bismark—208, 280, 281, 329 ter—227, 232
Boislecomte, de, head of the Dufferin, Lord—225, 228, 230,
French mission to Ibrahim— 231
109 Duroc, Governor-General of A l­
Bourbons—56, 63, 168-70 geria—267
Bourmont, de— 170
Bremond, head of the French Elgood, lieutenant-colonel—377,
mission to the Hejaz—395 379
Bu Bagla— 178 Engels, F.— 18, 22, 24, 42, 98,
Bugeaud, French Marshal—175, 259, 294
294
Bülow—299 Fahmi, Mustafa—222, 246
Bu Maza—177 Faisal, Wahhabi Emir—90, 147,
Busnach, merchant—169 148
Buten, French military engi­ Faizi Pasha, Ahmed—344, 367
neer—168 Fakhr ed-Din, the Lebanese
Butrus el-Bustani—138, 139, 244 Emir—15, 32, 33
Butrus Ghali—249, 250, 264 Fakhri Pasha—299
Buzer, de. Civil Commissioner Faris Nimr—333
in Algeria—270 Fatih Ali Shah—75
Buyuk Suleiman—26, 37, 65, 69, Fauzi Pasha, Ahmed, admiral—
74 115
Bu Zian— 178 Feisal, son of Husein II el-
Hashimi—370, 386,388-90
Capo d’Istria—98, 101 395, 396, 398, 400-402
Catherine II—35 Feisal, Sultan of Oman—355-57
Cavaignac—178 Ferry, J.—224
Charles X —168-70 Finn, James— 131
Chirol—378 Francis I—20
Churchill—383 Freycinet, de—224
Clayton, colonel—383 Frühling—189, 191, 194
Clot Bey—111 Fuad, Ahmed, prince—378
Codrington—102 Fuad Pasha—136
Colvin, Auckland—213,214,216, Funj, dynasty—94
217
Couvreux, French engineer— 158 Gambetta—218, 227
Cox, Percy—396 Gen j-Y usef—68
Cromer, Lord (Major Baring)— Gessi, R.—252, 253, 259
166, 196, 198,203,209-11,213, Gigler-Pasha—253, 256
231, 242, 246-48, 257, 264 Ghalib, Sherif of Mecca—82, 87
Curzon, Lord—358, 359, 361 Gordon, general—252, 253, 258
Gorst—248, 250
Daud Pasha—73-76, 146 Granville, Lord—215, 217, 218,
Daudet—245 228, 232
Delcassé, French Foreign Minis­ Graves, Ph.—383
ter—299 Grey—345
Dervish Pasha—223, 224 Gueydon—271
Deval R, French Consul in A l­
geria—169, 170 Haddad, sheikh—273

405
Hafiz Ali, the Baghdad Pasha— el-Kawakebi, Abd er-Rahman—
65, 66 244, 245, 333, 347
Haidar Shehab—33 Kemal ed-Din Husain—378
Hasan, Emir of Buraida—362 Khair-ed-Din Barbarossa—9
Hasan Pasha—26 Khairullah—350
Heiden, L. P.—102 Khalid, the Wahhabi Emir—91
Herzen—165 Khalil, Abd el-Karim—343, 376
Hicks, general—257 Khorshid Pasha, Turkish Go­
Hogarth, an expert on Arab vernor in Egypt—51
affairs—399 Khurshid Pasha, Egyptian gene­
Homer—139 ral—90, 91
Husain Kamil Pasha—378, 382 Khurshid Pasha, the Beirut go­
Husein II el-Hashimi, Slier if of vernor—134
Mecca—369, 370, 383, 385-90, Kitchener, Lord—246, 250, 263,
395, 396, 399, 400, 402, 403 265, 306, 352, 370
Husein el-Matsafi—145 Kléber, French general—45, 46
Huss—31 Kochi-bey Gömürji—25
Hussein bey ibn Ali—27 Kolokotronis, Greek general—
98, 100, 101
Ibrahim, Egyptian general, Mo­ Kress von Kressenstein— 372,
hammed A lfs son—88-90, 92 384
99, 100, 102, 104-07, 109, 110, Kropotkin—335
111-13, 115, 116, 118, 119, Kuchuk Suleiman—65-67, 69
152-55, 193 Kühlmann, German diplomat—
Ibrahim, Mameluke bey—27, 305
43, 46, 49 Kurd Ali, Mohammed—375
Isa, sheikh, ruler of Bahrein— Kurkmas, father of Fakhr ed-
357 Din 11—32
Ismail Pasha, Khedive—157-166,
190, 192-94, 198, 201-04, 206- Laboulayé, de—233
OS, 221, 252, 378 Lamartine, French poet—70
Ismail Pasha, Mohammed Ali's Lambert, A.—270
son—95, 96 Laplace, engineer—154*
Ismail Sadik—197 Lascelles, British Ambassador to
Berlin—359
Lawrence, British intelligence
Jabarti—42 officer—383, 390, 391, 396, 401
Jamal ed-Din el-Afghani—202, Lenin—263, 305, 314, 323, 338,
243, 244, 324 340, 371
Jaurès, J.—287 Leopold II—252
Jazzar—35, 36, 45, 64, 67-71 Lepère, engineer—154
Jemal Pasha, Ahmed—337, 346, Lesseps, de, F.—155-58, 191
372-76, 384, 386, 392, 398, 193, 198, 209, 229
400 Lichman, British intelligence
Junbalat, sheikh—71 officer—364
Junbalats—71, 128 Liddell-Hart, British historian—
401
Kamil, Ali—378 Liman von Sanders—372, 402
Kara Yazici—31 Linan de Beifont—252
Karamanli, dynasty—27 Lloyd, Lord, British High Com­
Kaulla, A., German capitalist— missioner for Egypt—383
391, 392 Lloyd George—399

406
Long—252 Midhat Pasha—143-45, 202, 322,
Loti, P., writer—245 323
Louis Bourbons de Orleans—170 Mihmisani, Mohammed—376
Lüderitz—251 el-Misri Aziz A li—343, 351
Lupton—257 Mohammed V (Prince Reshad)—
Lyautey, general—295, 308 341
Mohammed, imam—367
Mohammed, Prophet—77, 80,
Ma’anid, dynasty—15, 32, 33 255
MacMahon, French marshal— Mohammed the Great, Shamma-
178, 267 rite Emir—362
Madfai, Jamil—351 Mohammed, Tunisian Bey—186
Machiavelli—32 Mohammed Abd el-Abid—316
Mahdi (Mohammed Ahmed)— Mohammed Ali—49-62, 66, 71,
254-58, 261 74, 75, 85-91, 93-97, 99, 102-
Mahmud 11—70, 72, 85, 99, 101, 09, 111-19, 121, 123, 126, 131,
105, 107, 109, 115, 123, 125, 140, 141, 152, 153, 164, 165,
183, 309 170, 171, 185, 193, 221, 225,
Mahmud Bey (Abu Nabbut)— 251
69 Mohammed el-Alfy—49, 50, 52
Mahmud Fahmi—201, 229 Mohammed Bey, Mohammed
Mahmud Sami el-Barudi—166, A li’s son-in-law—95
212, 219-22, 230 Mohammed el-Idrisi, Emir of
el-Makhruki, merchant—86 Asir—368, 369, 385
Malet, British Consul-General Mohammed el-Mahdi, es-Senus-
in Cairo—218 si’s son-310
Marchand, colonel—245, 262, Mohammed es-Senussi—310, 311
263 Mohammed ibn Abd el-Wahhab
Mar dam, Jamil—344 —79, 80, 83
Marschall, German Ambassador Mohammed ibn Saud, Emir of
to Constantinople—359 Deraiyeh—80
Marx, K.—14, 61, 77, 103, 105, Mohammed Idris es-Senussi—
119, 120, 135 310, 316
Marshar, Wahhabi Emir—89 el-Mokrani, Mohammed— 182,
Marshari ibn Khalid—90 272, 273
Mauchamp, French doctor—302 Moltke, count—327, 328
Mavrocordato—98 Montefiore, banker—132
Maxwell, general—378 Mubarak ibn Sabah, sheikh of
McMahon, British High Com­ Kuwait—358-63
missioner for Egypt—378, Muhi ed-Din—171
387, 389, 396, 400, 403 Mulai Abd er-Rahman, Moroc­
Medjid, son of the Muscat scyy- can Sultan—175, 176
id Said— 150 Mulai Hafid, Moroccan Sultan—
Meissner, engineer—369 302-04, 307, 308
Menou, Jacques (Abdullah)—44, Mulai Yusef, Moroccan Sultan—
46, 47 308
Menelik, Ethiopian Negus—261, Muntsenger—253
263 Münzer, T.—31
Metternich—99 Murad V—321, 322
Midhat Bey, Secretary of the Murad, Mameluke bey—27, 41-
Committee of Union and 43, 45
Progress—350 Mustafa Berber—69

407
Mustafa Kamif—242, 245-49 Renault, French envoy—307
Mustafa Kemal—337, 341, 401 Reshid Pasha—122
Mustafa Khaznadar—185, 187 Riaz Pasha—198, 199, 203, 208,
Mustafa Pasha Bairaktar—55, 209, 211-14, 224
67 Richthofen, baron—359
el-Muveilikhi, Ibrahim—166 Ridah es-Sulh—376
Ridah Pasha—243
Najib Azuri—334 Rodbertus, German economist—
Napoleon 1-38-40, 42-45, 49, 328
56, 63-67, 102* 105, 131, 154, Rohrbach, P.—332
168, 169, 184 Rothschild—192, 198, 203, 397
Napoleon III—136, 137, 157, Rothschilds—132
179, 186, 193, 267 Rouvier, French Prime Minis­
Nelson, admiral—39, 43 ter—299
Nesselrode—101, 106, 108 er-Rubi, Ali—201
Newcombe, mayor—383 Rustum Haidar—344
Niazi, commandant of the Res-
na fortress—337 Sa’adun Pasha—358, 362
Nicolas I—101, 107 Sabah ed-Din, prince—335-37,
Nubar Pasha— 198, 203, 204, 341, 346
224 Sabri M.—195, 208
Nuri as-Said—351 es-Sadik, Mohammed—186
Said Mohammed Pasha—256
O'Connor, British Ambassador Sadik Pasha el-Azm—340
to Constantinople—358, 359 Said, Pasha of Baghdad—69
Omar Pasha—128 Said Pasha, Mohammed A li’s
Oppenheim H.—189-91, 194 son—155-58, 162-65, 189, 193,
Orlov, A. G.—34, 35 201, 251
Osman II—33 Said, seyyid, ruler of Muscat—
Osman Bardisi—49, 50, 52 82, 146, 150
Othman Rifki—211, 212, 221 es-Said, sheikh—223
Saint Arnaud— 178
Salih, sheikh of Safad—64
Paleologue, French Ambassador Salisbury, British Foreign Sec­
to St. Petersburg—391 retary—207, 281
Palmerston, Lord—109, 132 Samner, M.—395
Pelissier, French marshal—267 Saud, emir—81, 87, 92
Peter I—56, 61 Saudi dynasty—90, 147, 148
Peters—254 Sazonov, S. D.—391, 392
Picot—392, 395, 398, 402 Sebastiani, colonel—49, 65
Poincaré R.—345 Schmidt, P. P., lieutenant—336
Ptolemeis—17 Schnitzer E. (Emin Pasha)—252,
253
Qassim, Beshir IPs cousin—127, Shafik el-Muaiad—352, 376
128 Shaftesbury, Lord—131
Rafik cl-Azm—347, 399 Shahbandar, Abd er-Rahman—
375 399
Ragheb Pasha—224, 227 Shehab family—15, 33, 36, 70,
Rashid dynasty—147, 149 128, 129
Rushdi Pasha, Husein, Egypti­ Sherif Pasha—198, 206, 208,
an Prime Minister—377, 382 210-12, 214-22, 224
Reclus E.—335 Shevket Pasha, Mahmud—341

40S
Shibli Atrash, emir of the Dru­ Townshend, general—383
ses—332 Turki, emir—90
Selim I (the Cruel), Turkish Sul­ Turki, Sultan of Muscat—355
tan—9, 32 Tusun Bey—85-88
Selim III—43, 45, 48, 51, 52, 55, Tyler, W .—31
67, 68, 85
Selim Ammun—338 el Ureishi—376
Selim el-Jazairi—376
Selim ibn Rashid el-Harusi, Verdi, composer—139
Imam of Muscat—357 Vuiermoz, R.—269, 270
Selim Nakkash—202
es-Senussi, Ahmed Sherif—316 Walsin-Esterhazy—269
Sève, colonel—See Suleiman Wardani, Ibrahim—250
Pasha Warmer, prefect of Algiers—
Seymour, admiral—225, 226 268, 269
Siab family—37 Wilhelm 11—299, 325, 329
Simawi, Badr ed-Din—31 Wilson, A.—394
Slatin Pasha—253, 255-59 Wilson, R.—194, 199, 203-06,
Smith, A.—18 209, 211
Smith, S.—45, 64 Wilson, W., President of the
Storrs, British diplomatic agent U.S.A.—399
—370 Wingate—378, 400
Suleiman I (the Lawgiver), Wolseley, general—226, 229,
Turkish Sultan—9, 17, 20, 22 258
Suleiman el-Bustani—139
Suleiman ibn Zobeir—253 Yahya, imam—367, 368
Suleiman of Aleppo—46 Yazeji, Ibrahim—139, 333
Suleiman Pasha, ruler of the Yazeji, Nasif—139
Southern Syria—68, 70 Young, British historian—193,
Suleiman Pasha (Sève)—56, 100 194, 583
Sultan, seyyid—82 Ypsilanti, A.—97, 98
Sultan el-Atrash—401 Yusef Karam—137
Sultan Pasha, Mohammed—210, Yusef Pasha Shelali—256
211, 218, 220, 222, 224, 229 Yusef Shehab—35, 36
Sykes—392, 395, 398, 402
Zaçhlul, Saad—248, 258
Taalbi, Abd al-Aziz—290 Zahir ibn Omar, ruler of Safad
Taimur, Sultan of Muscat—357 —15, 34-36, 64
Talal, emir of Shammar—149 el-Zahrawi, sheikh, publicist—
Talandier, R.—298 347, 350, 351, 376
Talib, seyyid—348 Zaid, son of Husein II el-Has-
Taniyus Shahin—134 himi—388, 389
Tewfik, Khedive—203, 207, 212, Zamil, Emir of Anaiza—362
213, 221, 223, 224, 230, 241 Zinovyev, I. A., Russian Ambas­
Thiers—118 sador to Constantinople—361
Thuwaini, son of Said, Muscat Zobeir, ruler of Bahr El-Gha-
seyyid—150, 151 zal—253
 INDEX OF GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

Abba Island—254, 255 Alhucemas—294

Abha, capital of Asir—368 Algiers district—177
Aboukir Bay—43 Algiers, city—21, 170, 176, 270,
Aboukir—45, 46, 230 295
Adana—106 Alsace-Lorraine—272
Aden—91, 147, 149-51, 353-55, Al-Qurna—383
385-87 * America—159
Addis-Ababa—262 Amman—402
Adrianople—145 Anaiza—88, 148, 362
Adriatic Sea—30 Anatolia—106, 107, 108, 392, 393
Adua—253, 262 Ankara—328, 330
Aegean Sea—402 Anti Lebanon—68, 112, 113, 119,
Africa—104, 154, 170, 233, 251, 135
259, 261, 310, 314, 372 Antilyas—71
Agadir—305, 306 Antakiyah (Antioch)—105, 11
Ain-Dar—33 Appenine Peninsula—38
Aix-la-Chapelle—169 Aqaba—391, 398
Akka—23, 34-36, 45, 64, 67, 68, Arabia— 11, 24, 55, 56, 62, 66, 67,
105, 119, 392 77-80, 82-85, 87-92, 94, 96, 100,
A l-Aflaj—364 105, 107, 108, 119, 146, 147,
Albania—345 150, 324, 353, 354, 365, 371,
Albert, lake—255 385
Aleppo—15, 17, 19, 20, 23, 65-67, Arab East—85, 131
73, 84, 105,,110, 111, 144, 244, Arabian Sea—91
333, 348, 351, 373, 387, 392, 402 Arabian Peninsula—9, 77, 86,
Aleppo elayet—12 146, 353, 354, 355, 364, 365,
Alexandretta—105, 118, 385 369, 370, 385, 387
Alexandria—40, 46, 47, 49, 51, Armenia—346
53, 57, 97, 107, 121, 154, Archipelago Islands—28, 34, 98,
159-63, 165, 189, 196, 216, 99
222-27, 229, 230, 236, 240, 312, Ardagan—331
373 Arid (a central province of
Algeciras—300 Nejd)—362
Algerian Sahel—170, 175 Arzeu—170
Algeria—9, 10, 23, 24, 27, 30, Aures—274
104, 114, 167-81, 183, 184, Austria—28, 30, 38, 108, 116, 117,
266-79, 285-87, 291, 292, 295, 136, 137, 195, 208, 209, 225,
329, 371 227, 293, 310, 311, 323
Algerian Sahara—17S Austria-Hungary—233, 246, 281,

410
 285, 300, 306, 310, 312, 343 Bethlehem—73
Asia—290, 346 Bilbeis—59
Asia Minor—31, 39, 105, 107, Biqa’a—68, 119, 338
126, 318, 328, 332, 337 Bisha—87
Asir—77, 79, 82, 87, 366-69, 385, Bizerta—184, 282
388, 402 Black Sea—30
Asirian Tihama—83 Blue N ile—94, 95, 262
Aswan—56, 262 Bombay—65
Atbara—94 Bone—275
Athens—100, 101 Bordj bou Arreridj, fortress in
Atlantic Ocean—262 Algeria—273
Azov—28 Bosnia—281, 320
Bosporus—30, 53, 107, 120, 328
Baalbek—400 Bougie—170
Bab-El-Mandeb—354 British India—325, 359, 394
Babylon—332 Brussels—250
Backa—28 Bulak—46
Baghdad— 19, 20, 25, 26, 31, 65, Bulgaria—51, 320
66, 67, 74-76, 79, 83-85, 110, Buraida—88, 148, 362
140-44, 147, 170, 330, 332, 348, Bursa—106, 177
351,353,383, 393
Bahrein—79, 83, 91, 92, 148-50, Cairo—19, 21, 25, 35, 40-44,
353, 357, 361 46-57, 59, 64, 89, 90, 154, 160,
Bahr El-Ghazal—253, 257 161, 163, 165, 193-96, 200, 202,
Balkan Peninsula—12, 30, 38, 51, 207, 212-18, 222-24, 227, 228,
108, 125, 131 230, 232, 236, 244-46, 253, 263,
Balkans—31, 281, 323, 329, 390 264, 309, 346, 347, 352, 370,
Banat—28 375, 383, 395, 399
Bardo, suburb in Tunis—282 Cape of Good Hope—10
Basal—87 Casablanca—3 01-03
Basra—19, 37, 65, 66, 67, 74, 114, Caucasus—325, 328, 372, 390, 392
140, 143, 144, 331, 348, 358, 384 Central Asia—325
Basra, district of—37 Central Iraq—392
Batrun—118 Central Lebanon—135
Bay of Akka—45 Ceuta—294
Beersheba (Bir Es-Seba)—390, Ceylon—231
396 Chad, lake—310
Beirut—33, 35, 36, 64, 110, 111, Chaouia district—302
116,118,121,127,128,131, 135, China—246
137, 138, 139, 243, 331, 333, Cilicia—62, 107, 108, 111, 119,
338, 344, 345, 348, 376, 402, 371, 387, 391, 392
403 Colomb-Bechar, oasis—295
Beit-Ed-Din—128. 33S Congo—252, 262, 306
Béja— 185 Constantine—171, 173, 174, 275
Belgium—262, 293, 300, 371 Constantinople (Istanbul)—9, 19,
Bender-Bushir— 149-50 23, 26, 30, 32, 33, 53, 65, 72,
Benghazi—314, 316 73, 88, 97, 106, 107, 115, 126,
Berber (in Northern Somalia)— 128, 137, 143, 152, 193, 194,
253 208, 223, 225, 228, 230, 232,
Berber (in Northern Sudan)—254 235, 320, 321, 323, 328, 329,
Berlin—303, 305, 311, 359, 382 337-40, 342, 343, 350-52, 358,
Bessarabia—30 359, 361. 370, 378, 383, 392

27* 411
Coron—100 106-109, 112-22, 124, 143,
Crete (Candia)—62, 99, 100, 104, 152-66, 170, 171, 186, 188,
107, 108, 119, 324 189-211, 213, 215-53, 255,
Crimea—28 257-58, 261, 264, 280, 281, 296,
Ctesiphon—383 297, 309-13, 316, 318-20, 325,
Cyprus—99, 281, 327, 329 329, 333, 334, 343, 348, 351,
Cyrenaica—296, 311, 313, 315, 352, 370-72, 377, 384, 400
316 El-Arish—45, 46
El-Hasa—9, 79, 81, 83, 90-93,
Damanhur—49 144, 146-48, 362, 365
Damascus—15, 19, 21, 23, 25, 35, El-Jewf—310
36, 67, 68, 73, 79, 83-85, 110, El-Leja—112, 113
112,119,121,125,135,136, 147, El-Obeid—257, 265
177, 329, 331, 344, 348, 351, El-Safra—86
353, 369, 372, 374, 376-78, 386, England—30, 38, 39, 48, 49, 52,
387, 391, 392, 396, 398, 402 62, 65, 66, 82, 91, 92, 101,
Damietta—56, 165, 216, 230 106-08, 113-18, 121, 127, 128,
Danube—52, 107 131, 136, 137, 147-52, 154-57,
Dardanelles-^30, 52, 53, 108, 120, 169, 184-86, 188, 192, 193, 196,
154, 387 207, 209, 214-19, 221-25, 227,
Darfur—19, 94-96, 253, 257, 261, 228, 232-37, 240, 241, 243, 245,
265 246, 250, 262-65, 280, 293, 294,
Deir el-Kamar—130, 135, 137 296, 297, 300, 306, 308, 310-13,
Delta—17, 35, 44, 57, 58, 190, 326, 329-31, 342, 344, 345, 348,
195 351, 353-61, 365, 372, 375-79,
Denmark—293 381, 382, 387-90, 392, 393, 397-
Denshawai—247 400
Dera’a—402 Epidaurus—98
Deraiyeh—80, 88-90 Equatorial Province of Sudan—
Derna—314 252, 253, 258
Dodecanese Islands—313 Erfurt—168
Dongola—94-96, 254, 258 Eritrea—253, 262
Esdraelon Plain—64
East—63, 114, 128, 132, 170‘ 177, Ethiopia—252, 253, 261, 262
202, 395 Euphrates—37, 63, 65, 66, 114,
East Africa—146, 150, 251 115, 143, 147, 331, 359, 394,
East Anatolia—31, 75, 324 401
East Morocco—302 Europe—18, 20, 21, 28, 30, 56, 60,
East Sudan—94, 95, 251, 258, 63, 110, 153, 157, 162, 194, 281,
262, 264, 310 312, 318, 333, 354
Eastern Arabia—91, 148
Eástern Europe—28, 323, 345 Faiyum Valley—17
Eastern Mediterranean—96, 99, Far East—299
184 Fashoda (Kodok)—96, 245, 256,
Eastern Palestine—66 263, 356
Eastern Rumelia—327 Fazughli—94, 96
Eastern Syria—392, 393, 402 Fez—21, 298, 304, 307, 309
Egypt—9, 10, 12-14, 17, 20, 21, Fezzan—309, 316
24, 27, 30, 31, 34-36, 38-41, Florence—33
43, 45, 48-53, 55, 56, 58-61, France—30, 33, 38-40, 43, 47, 49,
63, 64, 66, 68, 71, 75, 85, 50, 52, 63, 65, 101, 104, 106,
87-89, 94, 96, 99, 100 102, 103, 107, 116-19, 127, 131, 136, 137,

412
 150-52, 155, 157, 160, 168-70, Hungary—28
173-77, 183, 185, 186, 188, 192- Huta—400
207, 209, 214-19, 222-25, 232-
37, 245, 262-64, 266, 267, Ifni—294
270-72, 277, 280-85, 292-301, India—10, 39,43, 63, 65, 91, 110,
303-05, 308, 310, 311, 329, 330, 143, 150, 154, 196, 328, 354, 358
342, 344, 345, 350, 354-56, 371, Indian Ocean—146, 262
372, 375, 376, 380, 387, 390, Inner Arabia—9, 79, 88, 146, 147,
392, 393, 395 149, 353, 364, 365
Ionian Islands—47
Gabes—283 Iran—9, 65-67, 74, 75, 110, 146,
Gafsa—283 150
Galilee—45, 118 Iraq—9, 10-12, 16, 21, 26, 30, 31,
Gaza—45, 105, 119, 384, 390, 396 36, 37, 63, 65-67, 73-76, 78,
Geneva—250, 382 83-85, 10S, 125, 140-45, 149,
Genoa— 19 318, 325, 331, 339, 347, 348,
Germany—208, 209, 216, 225, 350, 351, 358, 371, 373, 376,
227, 233, 235, 236, 264, 281, 377, 385, 386, 400-02
285, 291, 293, 294, 297-300, Iraqi Kurdistan—75
303-06, 311, 312, 326, 328, 329, Ismailia—229
342, 354, 359, 360, 369, 371-73, Italy—32, 33, 38, 195, 208, 209,
397 225, 233, 235, 280-82, 284, 285,
Gibraltar—300 288, 296, 300, 310-17, 372, 393
Giza—43, 56 Izmir—328
Goletta—184-86, 280
Greece—31, 51, 97-99, 101, 102, /a ffa —35, 45, 105, 132, 296, 397
105, 122 "auf—83, 149
awassi—92
Haidar-Pasha Station (in Scutari) ’ ebel-Druse—332, 339, 374, 401
_328 359 ^ebel El-Akhdar—316
Hadhramaut—77, 83, 146, 353, Jebel-Recas—280
355 ; edid—265
Habash—24 Jerusalem—24, 73, 112, 118, 119,
Haifa—45, 105, 118, 392 131, 329, 331, 396
Hail— 149, 370 Jerusalem (sanjaq of) — 127
Hama— 105, 347, 387, 392 Jiarabub, oasis—310
Harrar, region in Ethiopia—253 ibuti—262
Hasbeiya—135 , idda—19, 85, 87, 388, 399
Hauran—67, 110, 112, 339, 396, Jordan, river—396
400 Jubeil—68, 71, 118
Hebron— 118
Hejaz—9, 24, 34, 79, 82-84, 87, Kabarda—28
88, 90, 146, 147, 323, 352, 353, Kabylia— 173, 178
369, 370, 385, 386, 388, 389, Kafr Ed-Dawar—229, 230
395, 400, 402, 403 Kairouan—283
Heliopolis—46 Karbala—66, 67, 75, 83, 374
Herzegovina—281, 320 Kars—329
Holland—235, 293, 300 Kasim—87-90, 146-48, 362-64
Homs, city in Syria—105, 387, Kassala—96, 262
392, 402 Kavalla—50
Homs, city in Libya—314, 316 Kerch—28
Hufuf—78, 92 Keren (city in Ethiopia)—253

413
Kermanshah—69 Maghreb—103, 168, 169, 285
Kesruan—15, 70, 129, 134, 135, Malta—39, 43, 47, 118, 184, 378
137 Manakha—367
Khaibar—149 Marash—115
Khardj—364 Marrakesh—21, 302, 308
Khariya-Ruzna—201 Marseilles—56, 97, 160
Khartoum—95, 96, 254, 256, 258, Massawa—96, 253
260, 261, 263 Mecca—78, 79, 82, 83, 87, 88, 147,
Kinburn—28 149, 171, 244, 309, 369, 370,
Kirkuk—75 388, 389
Konya—105, 153, 330 Medina—79, 83, 86-88, 147, 369,
Kordofan—94-96, 253, 255-58, 370, 388, 389
261, 263, 265 Mediterranean Sea—10, 38, 39,
Ksar-es-Sagir—304 53, 97, 141, 154, 160, 183, 228,
Kuban—28 310,311
Kufra—310 Medjana (region in Algeria)—272
Kurdistan—74, 75, 141, 142, 324, Meknes—304
346 Melilla—294, 302
Kuria Muria Islands— 150 Mesopotamia—73, 110, 332, 365,
Kutahya—106 380, 387, 392-94
Kut El-Imara—383, 393 Metija—170, 176, 181
Kuwait—81, 83, 144, 358-63 Metn—15
Metz—269, 272
La Calle—169, 275 Middle East—233
Lado—262 Minufîya—59
Laghouta— 178 Missolonghi—99
Lahej—91, 151, 354 Misurata—314
Lalla-Marnia—295 Mocha—91
La Marsa—283 Modon—99
Larache—304 Mogador—175, 295, 305
Latakia— 118, 135, 403 Mohammerah (Khorramshahr)—
Latakia (principality)—15 141
Lausanne—315 Moldavia—52
Lebanon— 14, 15, 21, 24, 32-33, Monastir (Bitolj)------337
36, 68, 71, 72, 110, 116-18, 122, Montenegro—320
124, 127, 130, 135-37, 139, 331, Morea—28, 56, 97-99, 101-03
333, 338, 339, 344, 345, 347-50, Morocco—9, 172, 175, 176, 234,
373, 376, 391, 395, 400, 402 246, 292-308, 311, 371, 372
Levant—395 Mostaganem— 170, 309
Libya—309, 310, 314-17, 372 Mosul—9, 21, 75, 143, 351, 374,
Limnos—402 393
Livorno—56, 97 Mosul, pashalik—24
London—49, 101, 116, 117, 120, Mudros—402
143, 198, 237, 296, 306, 311, Munchengratz—107
387 Mukalla—355, 356
Lorraine—380 Mulayda—362
Lower Egypt— 13, 201, 220, 239 Murzuk—316
Lyons—331 Muscat—78, 82, 92, 146, 150, 151,
355-57
Ma’an—67, 384, 401
Macedonia—336, 337 Nablus—73, 11, 118, 348, 401
Madrid—293, 308 Navarino—100, 102, 104

414
Nazwah—357 Pirate Coast (Trucial Oman) —
Nazareth—402 81, 92, 357
Near East—30, 65, 66, 193, 233, Pisa—19
383 Podolia—28
Nejd—77, 79-81, 83, 87-93, 114, Poland—28
146-49, 353, 362-64 Port Said—160, 229
Nejef—67, 75, 374 Portugal—170, 293, 300
New Caledonia—273 Prussia—108, 115-18, 136, 189,
Nezib—115, 123, 141, 153 280
Nigeria—252 Pruth—98
Nile— 17, 42, 43, 47, 48, 58, 95,
96, 120, 155, 160, 197, 229, 251, Qantara—384
252, 254, 257, 258, 261,262, 263 Qatar—148, 150, 357, 361
Nineveh—332 Qatif—89, 90, 92
North America—318, 333 Qoseir—46
North Africa—11, 16, 21, 39, 103,
104, 168, 170, 285, 291, 309, 372 Racconiji—311
Northern Arabia—146, 148 Rahmania—46
Northern Kurdistan—393 Ramadi—394
Northern Lebanon—64, 71, 130, Rasheiya— 135
134 137 374 Rass—88
Northern Syria—14, 31, 402 Red Sea—9, 46, 143, 146, 147,
North Morocco—297 154, 160, 257, 261, 262, 369, 391
North Nubia—95 Resna (fortress in Macedonia)—
Norway—293 337
R hine-118
Odessa—97 Riyadh—90, 91, 147, 149, 362, 363
Oman—9, 77, 79, 83, 87, 92, 146, Rosetta—53, 57
149-51, 353, 355-57 Rumania—371
Omdurman—263 Russia—28, 30, 34, 38, 76, 85, 97,
Oran— 170, 269, 275 101, 102, 105-08, 115-17, 131,
Orontes—65, 114 136, 156, 168, 169, 208, 225,
Oujda—303 227. 232, 233, 235, 262, 281,
293, 298-300, 306, 311, 312,
Palestine—9, 15, 23, 32, 34, 36, 320, 323, 325, 327, 329, 330,
63, 64, 66, 67, 72, 73, 103, 104, 342, 354-56, 359-61, 391-93,
107, 108, 111, 112, 116-19, 396, 39S
122, 125-27, 131, 235, 318, 325,
331, 332, 347, 371, 373, 376, Safad—15, 34, 64
377, 379, 383, 386, 389, 390, Sahara—173, 177, 278
392, 395-97, 399-401 Saida—15, 23, 36, 68, 110, 118,
Paris—151, 156, 170, 178, 189, 127, 135
194, 198, 243, 266, 270, 297, Salihia—35
311, 336, 343, 349, 350, 395 Salonika—336, 401
Paros, island—34 Salum—316
Penon-de-Velez, islands—294 San’a—89, 91, 367-69
Perim Island—150 Sardinia—293
Persia—92, 141 Sea of Marmara—53
Persian Gulf—9, 66, 81-83, 91-93, Sennoar—19, 94-96, 117
113, 114, 141, 143, 146, 148-50, Setif—272
357-61, 365 Serbia—23, 28, 31, 51, 122, 320,
Philippville—275 371

415
Sfax—283 T*cikci^^“96
Shatt-A l-Arab—141, 358, 383 Tangier—175, 294, 295, 302, 308
Shammar—83, 89, 90, 146, 148, Tanta—161, 249
149, 353, 361, 362, 365 Tarhuna—315
Sheikh-Othman—151 Taurus Mountains—332
Shuf—15, 129 Tebessa—275
Sidi-Ferruch—170 Tehran—143
Sinai Desert—379 Tel El-Kebir—216, 230
Sirte, Gulf—315 Tetuan—294
Slavonia—28 Tigris—143, 331, 393, 394
Smyrna (Izmir)—319 Tihama—146, 366, 367, 368
Spain—66, 168, 235, 260, 285, Tikrit (on the Tigris)—394
293, 294, 297, 300-02, 304, 305, Tilzit—168
308, 311 Tlemcen—21
South Africa—246, 250 Tobruk—312
South-West Africa—251 Tokra—316
Southern Arabia—91, 114, 147, Toulon—39
151, 354, 355 Trabizond—19
Southern Iraq—9, 37, 383, 392 T ranscaucasia—32
Southern Lebanon—128-30, 135 Transjordan—119, 369, 390, 393,
Southern Palestine—15, 400 396, 401, 402
Southern Syria—15, 68 Transylvania—28
Sokotra—91, 355 Trieste—56
St. Petersburg—100, 311, 391 Tripoli (in Lebanon)—23, 36, 110,
Suakin—96, 261 127, 333, 402
Sudan—55, 62, 94-96, 105, 107, Tripoli, Tarablus El-Gharb—9,
108, 117, 221, 250-59, 262, 264, 10, 24, 26. 104, 183, 296, 309-
265, 318, 371, 372, 14, 316.—See also Tripolitania
Suez—39, 154, 159, 229, 384 Tripolitania, see also Libya—188,
Suleimaniye—75, 141 290, 296, 309-13, 315
Suez Canal—39, 121, 143, 154, Pripolitsa (Tripolis)—98, 99
155, 157, 158, 160, 189, 191-94, Trucial Oman—92, 146, 148, 150,
198, 227-29 234, 235, 319, 354, 357, 358
366, 372, 377, 379, 384, 385, 400 Tuggurt—178, 273
Sur—36, 118 Tunis—21, 185, 186, 243, 280-82,
Sudair—364 288, 290
Suweida, administrative centre of Tunisia—9, 10, 23, 24, 30, 104,
the Jebel-Druse—333 168, 172, 183-88, 280-85, 287-
Sweden—293, 300 92, 309, 329, 371
Syria—9, 10, 14, 15, 21, 23, 30-32, Tura—56
35, 36, 46, 56, 59, 62-68, 72, 73, Turaba—87
78, 83-85, 90, 93, 97, 103, 104, Turin—311
107-12, 114, 116, 118, 119, Türkev—9, 19, 20, 24, 28, 30, 31,
121, 124-27, 131, 134-39, 318, 34, '35, 37, 44, 47, 48, 75, 76,
319, 323, 325, 327, 331-33, 338, 105, 107, 108, 115-17, 119, 120,
339, 343, 345, 347-49, 371, 373, 122, 124, 132, 134, 136, 137,
375-77, 385-88, 395, 400-03 144, 146, 150, 152, 156, 170,
183, 188, 195, 228, 232, 246,
Tafna—173 264, 282, 291, 296, 313, 314,
Taganrog—97 318-23, 325-31, 335, 336, 339,
Taif—82, 87, 388 342, 344, 346, 350, 353, 354,
Taiz—89 359, 361. 364, 366, 368, 371,

416
 372, 375, 378, 383, 384, 387, Wargla—273
393, 398, 399 Wash im—364
West Libya—316
Uganda—252 West Sudan—261
Umm Lejj—388 Western Mediterranean—184
Unioro, lake—252 Western Oman—92, 148
United States of America—156, Western Syria—387, 392, 403
158, 169, 293, 300, 343 White N ile—95, 96, 252, 254, 262
Unkiar-Skelessi—107 Yemen—9, 10, 24, 77, 79, 82, 83,
Upper Egypt—13, 35, 43, 45, 49, 87, 89, 91, 144, 146, 345, 353,
51-53, 59 354, 364, 366-69, 385, 388, 402
Urfa—115 Yemenese Tihama—83, 89
Uyaina—79 Yenbo—86, 388
Ycnikale—28
Van, lake—393
Vatican—33, 131 Zaatcha (oasis)—178
Venice—19, 28 Zafran Islands—294
Victoria, lake—252 Zagazig—160, 161, 220
Vienna—311 Zahle—135
Volga—325 Zanzibar—146, 150, 151
Zeila (city in Somalia)—253
W adi-Dawasir—364 Zenzur—314
W adi-Half a—261 Zuara—314, 316
Walachia—52 Zubair—66, 67
 SUBJECT INDEX

aga—chief. Any officer from the cadi—Moslem judge

grade of major up in the Ot­ cadi-askari—military judges in
toman Empire; battalion com­ the Ottoman Empire
mander in Abd-el-Kader’s caliph—lit. “deputy”; in partic­
army ular, heir of the prophet;
aga el-askar—commander of spiritual head of all Moslems
Abd-el-Kader’s regular army cantar—Egyptian weight meas­
aghnam—sheep tax ure, about a hundredweight
akche—silver coin, about a chift—allotment given to the
quarter of a dirhem peasant by the feudal lord
ardeb—dry measure containing
198 litres defter dar—inspector of taxes
asnaf—artisan guilds derebey—feudal lord, sovereign;
atar—allotted land in the Egyp- literal meaning, “ruler of the
tain commune; in the iltizam valley”
ayan—feudal lord, a notable dervish—member of Moslem
brotherhoods or religious or­
baladiah—municipal council der; Moslem monk
barrani—an extra tax exacted dey—Algerian ruler prior to
by the multazims from the French conquest
peasants in addition to the dirhem—the principal silver
mal el hurr coin which was equivalent to
bedel el-askari—payment for one-tenth of a dinar
exoneration from military diwan—council of higher digni­
service. It applied to the taries
Christians of the Ottoman Druse—Moslem religious sect,
Empire in the second half of offshoot of Ismailism
the 19th century duar—village (in Algeria)
Beit-El-Mal—the treasury, the
department that handled emir (“sovereign”)—prince; feu­
state property dal title
bek—see bey emir el-mumeneen (“sovereign of
Bektashi—Dervish order the faithful”)—title of the ca­
bey—feudal title literally mean­ liph
ing ruler enzel—a form of alienating
beylik—state land in Algeria waqfs
and Tunisia eiyalet—see pashalik

418
 faiz—portion of the mal-el-hurr kashifia—payments for the up­
(q.v!) that remained in the keep of the provincial admin­
multazims’ hands; interest, istration (in Egypt)
profit kaza—smallest adminstrative and
fakir—poor dervish, hermit; see territorial division in the Ot­
dervish toman Empire
feddan—Egyptian unit of area khabus—see waqf
equal to 1.038 acres khammas—propertyless peasant
fetwa—formal pronouncement who cultivated the land on the
made by the appropriate the­ basis of the khammasat
ological authority on matters khammasat—a medieval form of
involving the interpretation holding land on lease for one-
of the canon law fifth of the crop yield
firman—decree kharaj—exorbitant land tax,
amounting sometimes to half
gafir—village watchman (in of the harvest
Egyptian commune) kharaj ra’asi—see jizyah
hadi—pilgrimage to the holy kharajiya—peasant lands in
places of Islam Egypt that were affected by the
hatti-humayun—sultan's res­ kharaj
cript khas—large estates for the pri­
hatti-sheriff Gulhané—noble vate use of the Sultan, mem­
rescript, same as the hatti- bers of his dynasty, ministers
humayun and other important dignita­
ries
khauli—land surveyor (in Egypt’s
Iltizam—feudal estate in Egypt communal administration)
based on tax farming khedive—sovereign, seignior
Imam—(1) the spiritual head of
(Persian); in 1867 khedive be­
the Moslems in several Mos­ came the hereditary title of
lem countries and religious
the ruler of Egypt
communities; (2) Moslem min­
ister of religion khutbah—Friday sermon in
which the ruling sovereign’s
name was mentioned
janissary—Turkish soldier, mem­ kiakhya—estate manager, butler
ber of a privileged professional kibar—feudal lord, a magnate
infantry corps formed in the kulemenis—white slaves in Iraq
14th century forcibly converted to Islam
jihad—holy war waged by Mos­ and given a military training;^
lems the same as the Mamelukes in
jizyah—(kharaj ra’asi) poll tax
exacted from non-Moslems kuSEE —five-tail whip
of rhinoceros hide
made

Kafir (gaur)—infidel, apostate of

Islam liwa—sanjaq
Kaid—chief, the governor of a
district (kaidat) in Tunisia madrasah—collegiate mosque
kaidat—administrative and ter­ mahmal—palanquin or litter
ritorial division in Tunisia used to carry the presents that
kasida—verse or poem were sent daily to Mecca with
kashif—provincial or district rul­ the pilgrimage caravan
er in Egypt makhzen—privileged tribes in

419
 the government’s service in mudir—head or ruler of prov­
Maghreb ince (mudiria) in Egypt
mal-el-hurr—money rent, the mudiria—administrative and ter­
combined payments exacted ritorial division in Egypt since
by the multazim from the the time of Mohammed Ali;
peasants province
malmudir (muhassil)—official in Mufti—expounder of the canon
charge of the finance and tax (Moslem) law; head of the
department in the sanjaq Moslem clergy of a province
(during the tanzimat period) mugaras—agreement by which
Mamelukes—white slaves in one person undertook to plant
Egypt, especially bought and and cultivate fruit-trees on
trained for military service another person’s land; when
mamleket (miri)—state land prop­ the term of agreement expired
erty belonging to the treas­ the plantation was divided
ury in the Ottoman Empire muhassil—see malmudir
ma’mur—ruler of a markaz mukabala—reimbursement, com-
marabout—leader in North Af­ Ê ensation; according to the
rica, head of a religious gyptian law of kukabala of
brotherhood 1871, all landowners could
markaz—territorial division in redeem one half of the land
Egypt tax to which they were liable
Maronites—followers of one of by payment of the six years*
the Eastern Christian chur­ tax, either in one sum or in
ches as a separate Monothelete instalmets spread over a pe­
organisation riod of twelve years
mashhad—village policeman in mulk—privately owned lands
mediaeval Egypt multazim—feudal lord, owner of
mawat—“dead land“, according iltizam
to Moslem law mutasallim—governor, district
mejba—poll-tax in Tunisia head in Syria and Iraq
mejliss—council, assembly mutasarrif—(1) governor of
mejliss idaroh—administrative autonomous Lebanon according
council under governor (wali) to the “règlement organique” of
in the Ottoman Empire (du­ 1861; (2) head or governor of
ring the tanzimat period) a district in the Ottoman Em­
mek (melik)—leader, ruler or pire
king (in East Sudan)
melikat—the jurisdiction of the nahiya—the smallest administra­
mek (melik) tive and territorial subdivision
melkiti—members of Greek Uní­ in Egypt
ate Church nazir—governor, head of a nahiya
millet—nationality, national
group; according to the pan- Nizam -li-Jadid—regiments of
Ottoman theory, one of the the “new order”; Turkish
elements or components of the name for the regular forces
single “Ottoman*1 nation founded by Selim III
miri—see mamleket
miri tapu—state lands handed omdah—village elder,, head of a
over to private owners for use village administration in Egypt
on the basis of special docu­
ments (“tapu”) padishah—official title of the

420
Turkish sultan, the supreme Ali, Mohammed’s son-in-law,
authority in the Ottoman Em­ as the first rightful successor
pire of Mohammed; and those who
pasha—feudal title; deputy, do not recognise the sunna as
governor of a province any part of the law
pashalik (eiyalet)—province or sirdar—commander-in-chief (in
territory under the pasha’s Turkey and Egypt)
jurisdiction sirdar-i-ekram—Supreme Com-
piastre—monetary unit in the Ot­ mander-in-Chief in the Otto­
toman Empire man Empire
sipahi—horsemen, knights
qa’im ma’qam—deputy; head of Sufist—member of a madrasah in
the sanjaq in the Ottoman Turkey
Empire sultan—sovereign; title of hered­
itary ruler in many Moslem
raya—tax-paying population, countries
who had to give nearly half sultanate—territory under the
their harvest to the feudal lord sultan’s jurisdiction
reis-es-saf—platoon commander Sunnites—followers of Orthodox
in Abd el-Kader’s army Islam; one of a Moslem sect
rizq—see waqf that acknowledges the first
four caliphs to be the right­
Sadr Azam—title of the Grand ful successors of Mohammed
Visier, head of the govern­
ment of the Ottoman Empire
sanjaq, or liwa (banner)—dis­ Tanzimat—the name of a period
trict, the knights (sipahi) of of reforms in the Ottoman
which formed a military unit Empire that began in 1839.
of the Ottoman cavalry; later The term comes from the name
an administrative and terri­ of the reforms tanzimat-cl-
torial division in the Otto­ khairiye
man Empire tanzimat-el-khairiye (“charity re­
sanjaq bey—governor of a dis­ forms”)—an expression used
trict and commader of the in the hatti-sherif Gulhané of
knights (sipahi) of the district 1839 in reference to certain
sarraf—money-changer; tax col­ projected reforms
lector timar—military fief with a reve­
sayaf—platoon commander in nue of up to 20,000 akchas
Abd el-Kader’s army timarji (timariot)—sipahi, own­
seyyid (also sherif)—(1) a des­ ers of the timar
cendant of the prophet; (2) title
of the ruler of Oman (Mus­
cat) Ulema—Moslem theologians,
sheikh—elder, tribal leader learned men
sheikh-el-Islam—head of the ushr—tithe (one-tenth)
Moslem clergy ushriya—various categories of
sherif—the hereditary ruler of feudal land in Egypt from
Mecca; also see seyyid which after 1854 a tithe was
Shi’as—followers of one of two collected
trends in Islam; that branch usia—originally land, allotted
of the Moslems who reject the to serve the community’s needs;
first three caliphs and consider later, a landlord’s estate

421
vilayet—administrative and ter­ zaim—sipahi, owner of a zia-
ritorial division; province met
Vizier—minister zakat—cattle tax
zawia—hermitage, dervish mona­
stery
wakil—representative, agent zaydites—religious Moslem sect,
wali—governor; head of vilayet offshoot of Shiism; not so far
administration removed from the Sunnites as
waqf (khabus)—land and other other Shi’s orders
property of Moslem religious ziamet—military fief with reve­
institutions nue exceeding 20,000 akches
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