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

ALI BONAPARTE127posed to the infidels.” The “blessed waters” of the Nile were being coded asMuslim, he was reporting, and the non-Muslim French conquest of them renderedthem ritually polluted. Likewise, the cube-shaped edifice known as theKaaba in Mecca, around which Muslims on pilgrimage circumambulate, hadbeen safeguarded by the Egyptian stronghold. Now, Bonaparte recalled his adversariescharging, non-Muslims held the very key to Mecca itself.The commander in chief was fully aware that any literate Egyptian Muslimwould look, in explaining the French conquest, to the medieval wars of the Crusadesfor a precedent. If the Egyptians decided that the French were just crusaders,and represented a specifically Christian quest for Near East dominance,they would never reconcile themselves to French rule. He recalled the words ofthe Count of Volney, who came to Egypt and wrote in 1788 that any conquerorof Egypt would have to fight three wars. The first would be against the British,the second against the Ottoman Empire, and the third, most difficult of all,would be against the local Muslims. Volney had urged these three as reasons notto attempt an attack on Egypt. Bonaparte took them as a challenge.On 30 July, Bonaparte had written to General Kléber in Alexandria, askinghim to establish a local divan consisting of pro-French loyalists. He had warnedof the dangers if the Egyptian public panicked in terror, observing, “All thesepeople could have thought that we came in the same spirit of Saint Louis, thatthey should comport themselves as though they had entered a Christian state.” 9Saint Louis’s invasion had even failed on its own terms! Certainly, were Egyptiansto decide that Bonaparte’s was a new Crusader state, it would toll the deathknell for Bonaparte’s entire enterprise. He was running away from Christianityas fast as possible.Bonaparte hoped to persuade the imams to say the Friday sermon in hisname. Ordinarily in the Egypt of the time, the sermon would have been said inthe name of the Ottoman Sultan, Selim III, but the commander in chief wantedthe Islamically granted legitimacy that came with this privilege. It was, ofcourse, folly to hope that the Friday prayer sermonizers would say the prayers inthe name of a European Christian ruler. The commander in chief remonstratedwith the clerics of the al-Azhar, whenever he met with them that summer: theywere not doing enough to stop the febrile agitation stirred up by the preachers,and he wanted a fatwa or formal legal ruling from them demanding that imamsadvise obedience to the new state. He said that they paled and seemed seizedwith consternation. Sheikh Abdullah al-Sharqawi at length replied, “You wantto have the protection of the Prophet. He loves you. You want the Arab Muslimsto march beneath your banners. You want to restore the glory of Arabia,