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

ALI BONAPARTE131forces sufficient to prevent Bedouin predation. Bonaparte offered to send eitherFrench troops as an escort, or local Egyptian ones. Ghalib then faced a challengefrom the puritan, militant Wahhabi sect based in Najd, and felt that theOttomans had not given him much support in the struggle. He therefore waswilling to consider establishing good relations with the French, especially sincethe economy of the Hejaz in western Arabia, where the holy cities of Mecca andMedina were located, depended profoundly on Egypt, both because of the grainendowment and because of the commerce of the pilgrimage caravan and thecoffee trade. Bonaparte was drawing around himself the mantle of guarantor ofthe fiscal health of this region, and therefore that of key support for the Islamicpilgrimage.On his return to Cairo from Salahiya, Bonaparte appears to have privatelynamed as the leader (amir al-hajj) of the annual pilgrimage caravan one MustafaBey, who had been an aide to the Ottoman-appointed viceroy of Egypt. (Theprevious incumbent had fled to Syria with Ibrahim Bey.) On 2 September, thecommander in chief held a formal investment ceremony. Bonaparte presentedMustafa Bey a superb green cloak in the presence of the divan and the clerics,along with a diamond-studded crest and a richly caparisoned horse. 13 The newlyinstalled official set out from the Citadel with many aides, to a six-gun salute.The annual pilgrimage caravan was a major source of commercial wealth forEgypt, and Bonaparte wished to encourage this trade, which transported cloves,coffee, shawls, oils, balms, and cochineal dye between the Red Sea and NorthAfrica. Naming the leader of the pilgrimage caravan had been a prerogative ofthe Ottoman viceroy, and in assuming it Bonaparte was attempting to claim themantle of legitimate Islamic statecraft.The Great Sultan had the al-Azhar clerics write a letter to the sharif ofMecca on that occasion. They said, “He has assured us that he recognizes theunity of God, that the French honor our Prophet, as well as the Qur’an, andthat they regard the Muslim religion as the best religion. The French haveproved their love for Islam in freeing the Muslim prisoners detained in Malta, indestroying churches and breaking crosses in the city of Venice, and in pursuingthe pope, who commanded the Christians to kill the Muslims and who had representedthat act as a religious duty.” Bonaparte had a copy of the letter sent toKléber to be printed in six hundred copies, with four hundred to be sent to theArabian Peninsula. 14It is not entirely clear that the Muslim notables of Mecca would have beenreassured to hear that the French had destroyed churches or broken crosses. Islamiclaw recognized Christians as “people of the Book,” fellow monotheists