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

216 NAPOLEON’S EGYPTrevolt,” according to Bernoyer. He decreed that if they wished to save theirheads, they had to affix their names to a document he had prepared and have itpublished and posted at mosques in the city and throughout the provinces:Inhabitants of Cairo: Pray that the Almighty will preserve you from seditionand that He will protect you from those who seek to wreak evil on earth. Therehave just been great disorders in the city of Cairo, on the part of the populaceand of wicked persons who mixed in with them. They sowed discord betweenthe French troops and the subjects [sic]. This has occasioned the death of manyMuslims, but the beneficent and invisible hand of God came to calm the sedition.By our intercession with the commander in chief Bonaparte, the evils thatwould have ensued were averted. He prevented the troops from burning thecity and from pillaging, for he is full of wisdom, beneficent and merciful towardthe Muslims. He is the particular protector of the poor, and without him, allthe inhabitants of Cairo would no longer exist. 27The proclamation put into the mouths of the clerics went on to warn Cairenesagainst any further turbulence, having already threatened them with genocide.Later on, Bonaparte reconstituted the clerically dominated divan and attemptedonce more to forge a relationship with al-Azhar.Having suffered a setback in his relations with the mainstream, literateSunni clergy, Bonaparte turned to evoking mystical and millenarian themes infolk Islam. Later that fall, he issued a proclamation “to the inhabitants ofCairo.” 28 He gloated that the “perverse men” who had led astray “a partyamong you” had perished. “Sharifs, clerics, sermonizers in the mosques, hearwell that those who, with joyful hearts, declare themselves my enemies will haveno refuge in this world or in the next.” He was claiming supernatural powers todetermine the fates of others even in the Muslim afterlife! “Is there a man soblind that he cannot see that Destiny itself directs all my operations?” The vastuniverse in turn, he reminded them, was subject to “the empire of destiny.”He continued, “Tell the people that, since the world has been the world, itwas written that after having destroyed the enemies of Islam and pulled downthe crosses, I would come from the depths of the Occident to fulfill the taskimposed on me.” He called on them to direct the people to consider “morethan twenty passages” in the “holy book of the Koran” which had predictedand explained his advent. Those, he said, who called down curses on theFrench were simply condemning themselves. “The true believers will makevows for the prosperity of our arms.” He went on to claim even greater occultpowers. “I could demand an accounting of every one of you concerning the