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

THE FERMENT OF THE MIND55governors who feared them as places where sedition might brew in heated conversationsas easily as a thick mocha blend. Ottoman attempts to ban coffee or coffeehouses,however, failed miserably. In the mid-to-late 1600s, a few coffeehousesbegan to be opened in Europe. European monarchs initially dreaded them asmuch as had the sultans. The first was founded in Paris in 1671. The Café Le Procope,set up in the French capital in 1689, later became a center for intellectualdiscussion and revolutionary ideas. Cairo was among the major entrepôts for marketingcoffee in the Ottoman Empire and to Europe. It is tempting to observe injest that, if indeed the rise of the coffeehouse had anything to do with the comingof the French Revolution, it may be that Egyptian coffee merchants inadvertentlyset in train the caffeinated, fevered discussions that overthrew the Old Regimeand ultimately sent a French fleet on its way to Alexandria.The Ottoman Egyptians were increasingly drawn into relations with Europe. Inthe 1720s, one Çerkes Mehmed Bey struggled for control of Egypt with ZülfikarBey. Çerkes lost the fight and set out for Istanbul to intrigue for imperialsupport. He was, however, distracted by another opportunity. He escaped viathe North African coast, reaching Algeria, and then booked passage to Trieste.He attempted to intrigue with Charles VI (1711–1740) of the Austrian Empire,but the Ottoman sultan sent vehement protestations to Vienna. As a result,Çerkes Mehmed Bey was forced to return to North Africa, landing at Tripoli inLibya. He still had ambitions to build an army and invade Egypt. He gatheredhis forces and marched on Cairo, but met defeat at the hands of a rival, Ali BeyQatamish. While trying to get away, he fell into the marsh over which he hadsought to reign, and drowned. 16While the Austrians had declined to pursue the opportunity laid beforethem, other European powers were tempted by an Egyptian alliance. Becausemany of the slave soldiers were captured in Georgia in the Caucasus, some knewRussian and attempted to establish diplomatic and military ties with the governmentof Catherine the Great (1762–1796). For an eighteenth-century Europeancapital to eye the Nile Valley with interest was hardly unprecedented.During the eighteenth century, the Georgian houses of slave soldiers inEgypt grew in importance, proving able to subordinate the seven Ottomanregiments and establishing control over the lucrative coffee trade. An Ottoman-Egyptianslave soldier, Ali Bey al-Kabir, rebelled in the 1760s and1770s, attempting to undermine the sultan’s authority by asserting power inthe Red Sea and opening it to European commerce, as well as by invading