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

130 NAPOLEON’S EGYPTprospect, became heroes. “Muhammad was a prince; he rallied his compatriotsaround him. In a few years, his Muslims conquered half the world. He rescuedmore souls from false gods, overturned more idols, and pulled down morepagan temples in fifteen years than the adherents of Moses and Jesus Christ hadin fifteen centuries.”Bonaparte did not give up his attempts to use Islamic rhetoric as part of hisruling strategy. Just a few days after the festival, on 28 August, he wrote a letterto the leading Muslim cleric of Alexandria, Sheikh al-Masiri, whom he hadmet on taking the city, and who later proved cooperative with Kléber as thehead of the divan there. “You know the particular esteem,” he wrote, “that Iconceived for you at the first instant I met you.” He expressed a hope of meetingsoon with “all the wise and learned men of the country” to establish “auniform regime, founded on the principles of the Qur’an, which are the onlytrue ones, and which can alone ensure the well-being of men.” 11 That is, hewas offering al-Masiri a chance at national office and influence and promisingto institute rule by sharia or Islamic canon law. At least, that is how an Egyptianman of the cloth would have taken the offer to govern in accordance withthe Qur’an. Even the Ottoman Empire did not always implement sharia as itwas interpreted by the clerics.Bonaparte, isolated from France by the British blockade and faced with ahostile population and endemic Bedouin and town revolts, adopted the Qur’anas his shield and the promotion of the Muslim clerics as his program. TheFrench Jacobins, who had taken over Notre Dame for the celebration of a cultof Reason and had invaded and subdued the Vatican, were now creating Egyptas the world’s first modern Islamic Republic.In mid-August, Bonaparte wrote to the sharif of Mecca, Ghalib ibn Musa’idal-Hashimi, announcing his arrival in Cairo “as well as the measures that I havetaken to preserve for the holy mosques of Mecca and Medina the revenues thatpertained to them.” 12 Bonaparte had been told by the clerics of al-Azhar aboutthe enormous endowment of farm lands in Egypt and their grain harvest thatsupported the holy cities. He was seeking Islamic legitimacy by supplanting theOttoman sultan, Selim III, as guarantor of foodstuffs to the Muslim holy land.He pointed out to the sharif that he had “protected the imams, the sharifs, andall the men of the law.” He told the Meccan potentate that he had appointedMustafa Bey, the deputy of the (departed) Ottoman viceroy, as the leader of thepilgrimage caravan, and promised that the bey would escort the caravan with