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

THE FLIGHT OF IBRAHIM BEY93commander in chief had not managed to accomplish his four main objectives inthis campaign: turning Ibrahim Bey into a client of the French, detaining theOttoman governor, capturing the vast treasures he had taken out of the city, orbringing into Cairo unscathed the fortune of the merchant caravan.As Ibrahim Bey disappeared into the sands of the Sinai, his departure drew acurtain over nearly a quarter century of Egyptian history. He, along with hispartner Murad Bey, had ruled Egypt since the mid-1770s. Now he fled east evenas Murad headed south, their palatial mansions suddenly become the homes offoreign officers, their wives taxpayers to the Republic of France or mistresses toher generals, their entourages and slave soldiers scattered, killed, or suborned tonew loyalties. Since the mid-eighteenth century, a small number of Mamlukbeys—manumitted great slave soldiers of high office—had increasingly concentratedwealth and power in their own hands. They were not, however, a unitedelite, and included grandees with no background in slave-soldiery. Their vast“households,” made up of slave soldiers, retainers, clients, and troops, functionedas clans that pursued vendettas with one another. Their internecine disputeshad ravaged the countryside, and their crushing taxes had virtuallycrippled much of the urban economy. They had been forced to turn to the incomefrom their enormous agricultural estates as the Egyptian coffee trade declinedin the face of competition from European colonial plantations in theCaribbean, Brazil, and what is now Indonesia. 11 The Ottoman sultan still botheredto send out a governor every so often, but he wielded little actual powerand sometimes even failed to secure an annual payment of tribute to the SublimePorte in Istanbul.Ibrahim Bey had been in the political wilderness before and survived to returnto power. Mehmet Ebu Zahab, who had been Ibrahim’s owner, died in1775 while campaigning in Syria on behalf of the Ottoman sultan to repress arebellious sheikh of the Galilee at Acre. In the subsequent decade, Ibrahim andMurad established themselves as the paramount beys in Egypt. The GeorgianMamluks retained ties to their homeland, which was increasingly in St. Petersburg’ssphere of influence as Russia expanded into the Caucasus, and theybegan to explore a Russian alliance. Facing difficulties in recruiting enoughMamluks to replenish their ranks, the Mamluk leaders even brought in abrigade of five hundred Russian troops in 1786. In the early 1780s, the Ottomangovernment, or Sublime Porte, became concerned about the loyalty ofthe Qazdaghlis, and in a 1783 communiqué to the governor of Syria, it warned