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

80 NAPOLEON’S EGYPTwere political and economic movers and shakers. In one of history’s ironies,Muslim women of the ruling class were the most powerful and wealthy womenin the world in the medieval and early modern period, even though many ofthem lived like reclusive millionaires in the inner apartments of their mansions.The “harem” (enderun) was governed by clear hierarchies, with formalwives the most powerful and wealthy, while concubines had a less favored positionunless they were manumitted and married. Some of the slave girls in aharem served the chief wives and seldom had anything to do with the man of themansion, though legally he could sleep with anyone in his harem. The haremwas a center of power and influence, and male anxieties about its hidden workingshelp account for the Orientalist stereotypes of it as a viper’s nest of intrigues(as though male courtiers did not intrigue!).The wives of the warlords now had the right to dispose of the property theirhusbands left behind. They acted as channels of communication with theirspouses, who had fled, and were still in a position to mobilize networks of loyaltyamong their husbands’ clients. The bodies and the property of these aristocraticwomen became objects of desire for the French officers. On taking Cairo,Bonaparte gave the Ottoman-Egyptian women twenty-four hours to registerand to declare all their goods and jewelry which they received from their master.25 Bonaparte allowed the wives of the beys to remain in Cairo under French“protection,” and decreed that they could only remain in their mansions on paymentof taxes to the French on their assessed value. 26 They also had to reportthe white and black slaves in the household.Despite the guarantees given the wives of the beys, they were made to payimposts, often repeatedly. The wives of the more prominent beys, who were stillfighting the French in Upper Egypt, appear to have been specially targeted.When a squadron chief named Rapp was stabbed in the streets of Cairo, theFrench began to fear that warlords were still hiding out in the capital. Suspicionfell on the mansion of Murad Bey. Bonaparte sent Beauharnais, his stepson, topay a warning visit to Nefise Hanim. “Madame Murad-Bey received me withthe greatest refinement,” he later recalled, “and served me coffee herself.” Sheprotested that she had met all the conditions imposed by the French and attemptedto convince him that her household had not received any suspect person.She insisted that he tour the mansion with her, and he agreed, though “Iwas not without a sort of disquiet, fearing to see a Mamluk skilled in the art ofdecapitation jump up from behind the piles of cushions.” The first story of thebuilding was occupied by odalisques. On seeing him, he said, they leaped up andcrowded in on him, to his embarrassment: “They manifested the most importu-