Napoleon's Egypt: Invading The Middle East - Reenactor.ru

THE FLIGHT OF IBRAHIM BEY89vations of genius, such as liberty under foreign military occupation, the FrenchRepublic of Egypt also appears to have invented the colonial strip club. Thenext stop on the way to Salahiya was al-Qurayn, which also struck Detroye asdesperately poor, the local fare a barely cooked flat bread. He wrote, “Thesevillages [in Sharqiya] do not at all resemble those of the Delta. Every one ofthem is a vast enclosure, partitioned into many others, with uncovered habitations.One sees nothing but trees without houses, and a village really resemblesa forest.”Another group of returning merchant pilgrims had fled at the French approachand found Bedouin who agreed to provide them safe passage to the villageof al-Qurayn. But when they were halfway there, the Bedouin reneged ontheir pledge and looted the pilgrims, even to the extent of taking the clothes offtheir backs. Among the victims was Sayyid Ahmad al-Mahruqi, a man of verygreat property. When the French reached al-Qurayn, they found this remnantof the caravan. 8 Bonaparte remarked on the extensive pillaging of the Bedouin.“One merchant assured me that he had lost, in shawls and other merchandisefrom India, [the equivalent of] 200,000 five-franc silver pieces.” The man had allhis wives with him “in accordance with the customs of this land,” and Bonaparte,eager for an alliance with the class of great merchants, gave the familycamels for transport to Cairo. He remarked that the women were veiled, a localusage “to which the army had great difficulty becoming accustomed.” Al-Jabartiimplied in his account that their chaste veils had not prevented a lot of thewomen of the merchant pilgrims from being raped by the Bedouin: “tears wereshed at their sight.” The commander in chief, said the Egyptian chronicler,scolded them for having put their faith in the emirs and Bedouin. Bonaparte’ssad encounter with the debris of the caravan can only have impressed on himthe importance to the French imperial enterprise now underway of the trade tothe east, and of providing security for it.Al-Jabarti related that Bonaparte then had the village headman of al-Qurayn, Abu Khashaba, brought to him and demanded that he deliver up theplunder taken from the pilgrims. Abu Khashaba showed the French where someof the loot was stored, and they loaded it on their camels. Then he took them toanother storehouse and went in, signaling that he would bring out more treasures.But this was a ruse, and he escaped out the back. The storehouse wasempty, and the French came back to Bonaparte with only one and a half camelloads. Bonaparte is said to have exclaimed, “We must find him without fail!”Disappointed in their quest for caravan loot and warlord treasure, Bonaparteand his units then set out in pursuit of the Ottoman Egyptians again. “We