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Apr. 22, 2005 In 1249 or 1250, Mamluks (or Mamelukes) seized power in Egypt. These were a military caste consisting of Kipchaks, Circassians and other Asiatics, and they ruled Egypt in their own right till 1517, when Turkish forces conquered Egypt, incorporating it into the Ottoman Empire. Under the Ottoman Empire, the Mamluks remained in power in Egypt but were subservient to the Sultan, who collected tribute from Egypt year after year without interfering much in Egypt's internal affairs. The Ottomans remained at least nominally in control of Egypt until the end of the First World War, in 1918. However through most of the 19th and early 20th century, their authority was tenuous or merely nominal. The Ottoman decline in Egypt began with the invasion of Napoleon in 1798, which proved to be an almost idiotic little escapade. Napoleon had hoped to lessen English ascendancy in the eastern part of the Mediterranean, but his fleet was easily defeated by the British Admiral, Horatio Nelson, at Alexandria. In the Battle of the Pyramids, Napoleon defeated a numerically superior Mamluk army, thereby upsetting the balance of power in Egypt. Napoleon unsuccessfully besieged Acre, a fortress in Syria (now Israel), withdrawing ignominiously, and finally, sneaking back to Europe, as it were, in 1801. During the next ten years, strife and chaos characterized the situation in Egypt. The British left in 1803. The Mamluks and Albanians, who formed a large contingent in the Ottoman army, allied themselves against the Sultan, Selim III, eventually taking charge in Egypt. In 1805, Selim III was forced to name the leader of the Albanians governor (wali) of Egypt. This man was Muhammad Ali Basha (or Pasha), 'Basha' being his title. Muhammad Ali was born at Kavajë, Albania in 1769, and had served in the Ottoman army. Starting in 1805, there was a tremendous power struggle between Muhammad Ali and the Mamluks, which ended in 1811, when Muhammad Ali, inviting 470 Mamluks--or some other number, depending on which authority you consult--to a banquet in their honor in the still-standing Citadel of Cairo, poisoned the lot of them, after 561 years of their presence and power in Egypt. Muhammad Ali immediately began to introduce economic and political reforms in Egypt, Westernization being the keynote of his activities. He built canals, roads and bridges, adopted public education, introduced cotton culture, still the backbone of the Egyptian economy, and upgraded the Egyptian military machine. Though nominally a subject of al-Bab al- Aali (Ottoman headquarters, in Istanbul), Muhammad Ali was the real ruler of Egypt. In 1821, Muhammad Ali invaded the Sultanate of Sennar, now in south Sudan, capturing 20,000 slaves and assuming suzerainty of the area. There he founded the city of Khartoum, today the capital of Sudan. Sennar was the kingdom of an ethnic group known as the Funj, now assimilated into the general Arabic population. Incidentally, 'Khartoum' is Arabic for 'elephant's trunk' and refers to the geographical shape of the Nile confluence there, while 'Sudan' is short for 'Balad as-Sudan', which means 'Land of the Blacks'. An unfortunate development was that in 1827, when Egypt was lending assistance to Sultan Mahmud II in his efforts to put down the Greek Revolution (1821-1829), the Egyptian fleet was destroyed, and to this day Egypt has not reasserted itself as a major naval power. French, English and Russian navies combined to defeat Turks and Egyptians, the Greek Revolution serving as a pretext for those three powers to combine to curb the Ottoman Empire. In 1831, Muhammad Ali organized an invasion of the Asian provinces of the Ottoman Empire, defying his titular master, Sultan Mahmud II. His forces, which were led by his son, Ibrahim Basha, conquered parts of Arabia (not yet called Saudi Arabia at that time), Palestine and Syria, challenging al-Bab al-Aali itself. However, in 1833, Russian intervention forestalled a direct confrontation between Muhammad Ali and Mahmud II, and a peace was negotiated, with Muhammad Ali left in control of Syria and Palestine. In 1839, Sultan Mahmud II, having reawakened hostilities, was defeated at Konya (now in Turkey), by Ibrahim Pasha, who was thus in a position to assault al-Bab al-Aali itself, which would have put Muhammad Ali at the helm of the Ottoman Empire. But shortly thereafter, a European coalition, lead by Britain, intervened on the side of the Sultan, and the Egyptian forces were defeated. Thus Egypt was obliged to quitclaim to the Sultan its new holdings in Asia, only Sudan remaining in the Egyptian orbit. Britain's thinking was that the Ottoman Empire was a known quantity, with whom an understanding of sorts had been reached, whereas Muhammad Ali was more enigmatic. Muhammad Ali ruled Egypt till 1848 and died in 1849. His son Ibrahim Basha succeeded him, and his other sons and descendants ruled Egypt for decades. The British interference in the Turco-Egyptian conflict is regrettable, for, though Muhammad Ali was only a naturalized Egyptian, he came close to establishing an Egyptian Empire, which today might have included all the Arabic-speaking countries and made them into a monolithic power, a power to be reckoned with. ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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