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

THE OBJECT OF HIS DESIRES183since they could not herd so many. The troops returned to Mit Ghamr barefoot,having lost their boots in the mud.In early October, the townspeople of the central Delta city of Tanta, site ofthe holy shrine of Sayyid Ahmad al-Badawi, went on a tax strike against theFrench. The Sufi dervishes, in their outrageous state of undress, congregated inthat city and appear to have been involved in the rebellion. 4 (Al-Badawi’s was aSufi shrine, especially revered by the mystics.) General Fugière wrote Bonapartethat he wanted to restrain his men, given the veneration in which the city and itssaints were held, but feared they might be provoked to fire on the dervishes. Hedispatched Gen. Simon Lefebvre with some canal boats to Tanta along withSelim Çurbaci, a high officer in Bonaparte’s reconstituted Janissary Corps. Çurbacibrought out as hostages four overseers of the shrine of Ahmad al-Badawiand it looked as though a crisis would be averted. But when the returningFrench troops neared their skiffs, the townspeople gathered, joining with 150Bedouin, and came after them angrily. The French had to give up their hostagesand flee on the canal, wreaking carnage as they fired into the infuriated crowd.Fugière wrote Bonaparte asking for artillery to punish the city.The commander in chief must have consulted Egyptian clerical adviserssuch as Sheikh al-Bakri, for he wrote back sternly ordering that Tanta not beleveled. “I learned with pain, Citizen General, what happened at Tanta; I desirethat this city be respected, and I would regard it as the greatest misfortune thatcould occur, to see ravaged this place, holy in the eyes of the entire Orient.” Hesaid that Fugière must end the matter by negotiation and that if the generalwanted to subdue the Arabs, he should take hostages from them.Several trade fairs were held every year there in conjunction with commemorationsat the shrine of Sayyid Ahmad al-Badawi, attracting a crowd of merchantsand customers from miles around, even as far away as Cairo. 5 A majorsaint’s tomb made a city such as Tanta sacred ground to Muslims, and the foreign,European Catholic rule defiled it. Local tradition had it that the entombedsaints formed a “spiritual government” that stood in severe judgment of the “apparentgovernment” of this-worldly officials. In Cairo, the French had alreadypunished a Muslim money changer who had expressed confidence that summerthat Tanta’s long-dead saint, “Sayyid Ahmad al-Badawi . . . will kill all the Christiansthat pass by.” 6 Capt. Louis Thurman observed, “In Egypt there are manysaints, the tombs of which one encounters at every step. It is accepted that all,each year, issue from their sepulchers and go to Medina to visit the Prophet.None dare omit the journey.” He said that there was a tomb at Abu Mandur,near Rosetta, where it was said that, on the contrary, the Prophet came to visit