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

70 NAPOLEON’S EGYPTNotable clerics like Abdullah al-Sharqawi and Sayyid Khalil al-Bakri also gatheredup their women and effects and streamed out of the city without havingany idea of their destination. Many alarmed commoners followed them. Theprice of carriage skyrocketed.The panicked city folk carrying all their valuables made easy pickings forthe Bedouin tribes waiting outside the gates, and one result of the French invasionwas surely a vast transfer of movable wealth from the urban economy to thepastoralists. “The money and treasure that left Cairo during this night was certainlytwice as much as what stayed behind. Most of the money was with theamirs [emirs] and the dignitaries and their women folk, and the beduins took itall.” Al-Jabarti described crowds of the naked and destitute, having been pickedclean, moving into the countryside. Others, remaining behind, saw an opportunityin the empty dwellings. Captain Say reported that, freed from “the despotismof the Mamluks,” the “people went to the mansions of the beys, which theyburned or pillaged.” 7 The extent of burning and pillaging was clearly limited,since the French later moved into those mansions quite happily. The contemporaryOttoman chronicler Izzet Hasan Darendeli wrote that Cairo was emptiedof the bulk of its population, becoming little more than a ghost town, makingthe work of the plunderers easier. The looters pillaged the mansions of IbrahimBey and Murad Bey in the posh Qawsun area and then set them afire.Days later, on 24 July, a substantial contingent of the French army flowedinto the subdued capital at noon, passing before the crowds. All eyes went, thejunior cavalry officer Desvernois recalled, to Bonaparte, locally now referred toas “the Great Sultan.” He said that the Cairenes seemed to admire the Frenchcavalry and sappers, with their handsome beards. But, he remarked, they paid noattention to the infantrymen “because of the contempt in which they held... thebulk of the Ottoman infantry.” The French found, as well, over time, that beingclean-shaven signaled slave status. When young Mamluks were manumitted,they were allowed to grow beards, which also signaled their sexual maturity. Togain respect, the French later on had at least to maintain a mustache.Bonaparte took for his residence the mansion of Alfi Bey at AzbakiyaSquare. Auguste Marmont, an aide de camp of Bonaparte, recalled that Cairo“appeared to me very beautiful for a Turkish city. The houses, built of stone,rose high, amid very narrow streets, making it appear densely populated. Thegreat squares, around which the mansions of the principal beys had been constructed,served as embellishments. At length, the entire tableau struck us asmuch superior to the notion we had earlier formed.” 8 The population of thecapital at that time, now estimated at 267,000, was organized into around sev-