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

100 NAPOLEON’S EGYPTthe ruling elite as well as their supporters among the commoners and muchweakened the fabric of urban society.Plagues are urban phenomena. They are spread in conditions of urbancrowding and carried by such vectors as fleas that infest rats. The clean, harshdesert and the thin population of pastoral nomads preserve them from outbreaks.One implication of this different susceptibility to epidemics in MiddleEastern societies is that the cycle of plagues weakened cities and opened them toperiodic Bedouin conquest. Ibrahim Bey, Murad Bey, and their troops andBedouin allies in Upper Egypt were left unscathed by the epidemic, while theleading pro-Ottoman bey in charge of the country was killed. They were able tomarch at full strength back into Cairo, reestablishing their beylicate and returningto their old ways, taxing French and other merchants into penury and defyingSultan Selim III’s demand for tribute.Only seven years after the duumvirate’s restoration of 1791, Bonaparte’senormous army arrived in Alexandria in reaction to the predations they hadwrought on the French merchant community and in response to the prospectthat the rebellious Georgians had so detached Egypt from the Ottoman Empirethat it might fall under British or Russian rule. In many ways, Bonaparte’s expeditionresembled that of Hasan Pasha, down to the details of the defensivecamps at Imbaba and Bulaq, Murad Bey’s attempt to make a stand at Rahmaniya,the appeal by both sides to the moral authority of the al-Azhar clerics,the promise of lower taxes (and its subsequent betrayal), the role of Europeanconsuls and merchants in soliciting the invasion, and the cultural revolution attemptedby the new ruler. Likewise, some overthrown beys in both instancessought refuge in Upper Egypt.The difference lay in social policy. Hasan Pasha’s decrees were intended toreestablish conservative Ottoman standards and to reaffirm the social hierarchywhereby loyal, imperial appointees ranked at the top of society. Hasan Pashaclearly did not brook interference from mere Egyptians, even the clerics of al-Azhar, who theoretically were the guarantors of Islamic law. (Ottoman administrativelaw often took precedence over Islamic law in the empire, thoughOttoman thinkers would not have said so outright.) Likewise, even the Janissariesin the barracks were to have a higher status than Arabic-speaking shopkeepersand merchants, and these Muslim Cairenes were to be superior toChristians and Jews, while women were to be controlled and kept out of thepublic sphere. Hasan Pasha’s decrees would have been unnecessary if his visionof the good society was widely shared by Egyptians. A new, Europe-orientedsultan would soon challenge this conservative program even in Istanbul.