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

GRAND CAIRO79tians had a superstition about the bad luck that came of mistreating a canine,and thus had let the dogs have the run of their cities. It is more likely that theywere using the dogs as informal guards of neighborhoods and property, feedingthem but leaving them in the streets. If so, the animals impeded the free circulationof the French. Their removal, however, left the Egyptians less secure. Sinceanimal carcasses can be disease vectors, including for plague, the great dog massacremay have endangered public health, including that of the soldiers as well.The medieval Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim Bi Amr Allah had also had Cairo’s canineskilled, in A.D. 1005, and the chroniclers cited it as among their reasons forthinking him insane.As to the humans, Bonaparte had chased away the emirs, but still worriedabout local militias, especially ones capable of raising a cavalry and attractingBedouin allies. He immediately confiscated all saddled horses in Cairo, andthreatened heavy fines against any owners who resisted. 23 He likewise demandedthat all Cairenes who had looted elite villas turn their booty over to theFrench administration.The once humming, wealthy city had taken revenge on its conquerors in midtolate-July by emptying out or declining to carry on business as usual. Bonaparteimmediately suffered from a famine of cash and coin in Cairo. The warlordshad hoarded most of the country’s silver and gold and so Bonaparte had tolook for it in their mansions. He expropriated what he could from what treasureremained in the capital and resorted to having the wives of the exiled beys supporthis army. Once the French had conquered Cairo and many of the OttomanEgyptians were killed or had fled south, the Circassian, Georgian, and Armenianharem ladies continued to play their role as important nobles. The wives ofthe beys were wealthy in their own right and able to take full advantage of theprovisions in Islamic law that gave women rights in property far beyond whatwas common in Europe until the later nineteenth century. 24 Unlike the case inearly modern Western Europe, Muslim women did not lose control over theirproperty to their husbands when they married (a principle the British called“couverture”). Ottoman-Egyptian women endowed important buildings for religiousand charitable purposes, putting their mark on the character of the cityin which they lived. Muslim noblewomen held great estates and sometimes evenengaged in trade through male agents. Despite upper-class Middle Easternnorms of veiling and seclusion, which limited their ability to go out in public orconfined them to ornate palanquins when they traveled, behind the scenes they