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

THE FALL OF THE DELTA AND THE ARABIAN JIHAD239of Egypt, he dropped everything else and prepared “his horses and camels,”setting out in ships.Jahhaf told a sort of fairy tale about Bonaparte first going to Istanbul to getpermission from Selim III to transit Egypt on the way to India, and being initiallyrefused, until finally the Ottoman sultan’s chief wife relented and permittedit. Bonaparte then, however, conquered Malta out of his enmity with theBritish, which the Qur’an had predicted. And then he subdued Alexandria.Selim III became alarmed at these developments and prepared armies thatwould take the Syrian route in order to oppose this attack on his realm. Despitethe inaccuracies and the Thousand and One Nights folktale elements, such as thesofthearted empress, the narrative captured the dynamics of the conflict wellenough. Some of the inaccuracy derived from Bonaparte’s own tall tale thatSelim III had sent him to Egypt.Al-Jabarti related how news arrived in the Hejaz that the French “had conqueredthe lands around Cairo,” and the people of Mecca went to the holy sanctuary,crying out, and they took down from the sacred Kaaba the drapery withwhich it had been adorned. 37 That drapery (kiswa) was typically made in Egyptand brought to Mecca with the annual pilgrimage caravan. The crowd announcedby this action that the cosmic balance had been upset, that Islam itselfhad been denuded of one of its most resplendent embellishments. Jahhaf explainedthat one Sheikh Muhammad al-Jilani of North Africa began agitatingfor a jihad against the French. He preached to the people who gathered aroundhim. Women came to listen to his speeches about the need for holy war and donatedtheir jewelry, valuables, and even clothing to help fund the effort. He washelped in his preaching by Muhammad Ba Islah al-Hadrami, from southernYemen, and then by numerous other helpers, who provided weapons, includingmuskets. Men from prominent clerical teaching families dedicated themselvesto the cause, such as Muhammad al-Sindhi, grandson of Muhammad Hayat al-Sindhi, the great teacher of the sayings of the Prophet who contributed to therise of eighteenth-century reformist movements in Islam. 38 The sharif ofMecca, Amir Ghalib, whom Bonaparte was then cultivating, and who had begunsome forms of trade cooperation with the French, played both sides by also donatingto al-Jilani.News reached Mecca in December that in Upper Egypt the French werefighting Murad Bey’s forces, just across the Red Sea from the Hejaz, defeatingthem and forcing them to retreat. The army of Desaix had been pursuing theformer ruler of Egypt for months after having inflicted a severe setback on himat Sediman in October. 39 But Murad Bey had not been completely defeated, and