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

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL NILE THAT HAS EVER BEEN113to the one or the other.” The Nile’s annual inundation still served as an oraclethat predicted whether life would be good or bad that year. The longest river inthe world, this body of water stretched from headwaters and tributaries in Africathrough Ethiopia and the Sudan, to snake through the Egyptian desert and makehuman habitation there possible. During winter and spring, its waters fell andstayed low. Then the summer monsoon rains began swelling the Blue Nile in theEthiopian highlands, with water levels beginning to rise in Egypt in June. Bymid-August, or early September it began inexorably overflowing its banks.Egyptians had for millennia made their peace with this gentle, natural, annualflood, adjusting their architecture and farming to take advantage of it, livingwith it rather than fleeing. Half the year, Cairo was Venice and parts of the Deltawere the Florida Everglades. Villagers dwelling beside the river put their huts upon stilts throughout the year, so as not to be inconvenienced by the annual rise inthe waters, and they established a system of dikes that allowed them to floodtheir farmland and then, later, to drain it. City engineers constructed canals andurban ponds to accommodate the overflow. Every year, the receding waters leftbehind on farms a thick layer of silt, a natural fertilizer that made the Nile Valleythe breadbasket of the Eastern Mediterranean for a succession of great empires.If the inundation in any year was too low, it would not cover enough land and theharvests would suffer. If it was too high, it would damage crops. A good deal ofanxiety therefore centered every year on reading the Nilometer at Roda, whichwas a good predictor of how the country’s economy would fare that year. The inundationhad to reach at least sixteen cubits for the dikes to be broken, and Bonapartewent out to inspect it as a Muslim ruler would have done. 16On the morning of the Festival of the Nile, Bonaparte ordered the decorationof a river vessel, the ‘Aqaba, and the few beys who had attached themselvesto the French had several other galleons festooned. The commander in chiefcalled on the people, still afraid of insecurity in the new political situation, to goout for walks along the river and on the isle of Roda as usual. Al-Jabarti recalledthat many Cairenes greeted the call sullenly, given “the imposition of new taxeswhich were zealously collected, the looting of homes, the harassment of womenand slave girls, including their abduction and imprisonment” and other such outrages.The chief deputy of the Ottoman viceroy, Mustafa Pasha, descended fromhis mansion and joined Bonaparte. Then the chief Sunni Muslim clerics of thedivan, the aga of the Janissary Corps, and other notables arrived. They all proceededin a parade, their horses richly outfitted, to the dam at al-Sadd Bridge.Bonaparte and the deputy viceroy, the one remaining shred of Ottoman legitimacyin Egypt, were placed beneath a magnificent pavilion. The highest-ranking