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

THE FLIGHT OF IBRAHIM BEY95intercede, but to no avail. Ibrahim’s men actually began demolition work at thechurch. Fearing for their lives, the merchants were sailing away on French shipsand sending urgent messages to Istanbul. The Ottoman imperial center had forsome time been disturbed by the situation in Egypt, but in that era the threatsfrom Austria and Russia in the Balkans distracted it. This outrage against theEuropeans in Alexandria forced the hand of the new grand vizier, Koca YusufPasha, who took office in February of 1786.Late that spring, a courier arrived from Istanbul with a long list of demands.The beys of Cairo were informed that they had fallen behind egregiously on thetribute that they should have been sending to the sultan in Istanbul. “The lettersdemanded the payment of arrears to the treasury and the expeditious dispatch ofgrain and money allocated to the Two Holy Cities during years past.” The possessionof the Islamic holy cities and pilgrimage centers of Mecca and Medinabestowed honor and authority on the Ottoman sultans. Thousands of Muslimscame on pilgrimage there every year from all over the Old World. The cities,located in the Hejaz of western Arabia, had only desert or hardscrabble land astheir hinterland and could not support much of a local population, much lessthe huge number of pilgrims, without importing food. The Ottomans had endowedenormous estates in Egypt for the purpose of feeding the Hejaz, but thebeys had probably been usurping the grain and its profits for themselves, essentiallystealing from the empire. Rumors flew in Cairo that warships from the imperialcapital were approaching Alexandria, led by naval commodore HasanPasha. As it was, Ahmed Pasha, the governor of Jedda, had arrived in the majorEgyptian port. Jedda was the point of disembarkation for the holy cities, and sohe was in charge of seeing that the missing grain was delivered.The Ottoman-Egyptian beys, alarmed, attempted to bargain for time. Inearly July, another emissary came from Sultan Abdülhamid I, repeating the earlierdemands. The grandees went up to the citadel, an enormous fortress overlookingCairo, to meet with the Ottoman viceroy, Mehmet Pasha. Murad Beyasked for a delay in the payment of the arrears and offered to have the clerics ofal-Azhar Seminary write a pious petition to the sultan begging his indulgence.Sayyid Khalil al-Bakri, Sheikh Mustafa al-Sawi, and other prominent clericslater assembled to draft the petition. But Murad also issued a threat. If the sultanwould not grant the respite, he would refuse to outfit the caravan fromCairo to Mecca for the pilgrimage that year, and would decline ever to pay thetribute. Ibrahim Bey, likely sensing that his partner had gone too far in the presenceof the Ottoman governor, was said by al-Jabarti to have “tried to calm bothof them.” Meanwhile, rumors of imperial troop movements and the arrival of