Red Nile: The Biography of the World’s Greatest River

by Twigger, Robert

  14 • Muhammad Ali – from taxman to king of the Nile

  Don’t ask news of an old person, ask it of a traveller. Egyptian proverb

  It’s 1805. Napoleon’s navy is getting its final drubbing at Trafalgar where Nelson will be shot once too often and die. Meanwhile, Egypt is up for grabs. The Mamluks are still running things but their credibility has been destroyed by Napoleon’s invasion. Into the vacuum steps a determined Albanian tax collector – Muhammad Ali, a man who will leave an indelible mark on the Nile from Cairo as far as the great Sudd swamp.

  Muhammad Ali was, like Alexander the Great, born in Macedonia, though of Albanian parents. It is strange to think of Alexander, Napoleon and Muhammad Ali all linked not just by their overweening ambition and similarity in personality but also by the fact of Egypt being the focus of their ambitions. Without Napoleon’s example and the opportunity afforded by his invasion of Egypt, Muhammad Ali would have remained a bolukbashi, or tax collector, in Macedonia. Though his father was a tobacco trader, Muhammad Ali was taken under the wing of his uncle, through whose connections he became first an efficient tax collector and later leader of the Kavala volunteer regiment, one of many that went to Egypt in 1801 to reoccupy the country for the Ottoman Turkish regime. In the power vacuum left by the departure of Napoleon the Ottomans did battle with the much weakened Mamluks, the military power in Egypt since the ninth century. By carefully playing for both sides but always with an eye on both the people and the sheikhs of Al-Azhar mosque, Muhammad Ali presented himself as an able ruler. So much so that by 1805 the ulema (Muslim scholars) asked Ahmed Khushid Pasha to stand down as wali, or governor, of Egypt and allow Muhammad Ali to take over.

  His personality and character were suited to the great tasks ahead of him. James Augustus St John, who visited Egypt later on in Muhammad Ali’s rule, spent some time with the wali, observing him:

  Mohammed Ali is a man of middling stature, robust and stout in his make, exceedingly upright, and, for a man of sixty-five, hale and active. His features, possessing more of a Tartar cast than is usual among European Turks, are plain, if not coarse; but they are lighted up by so much intelligence, and his dark grey eyes beam so brightly, that I should not be surprised if I found persons familiar with his countenance thought him handsome.

  St John reports that Muhammad Ali Pasha slept little and that Europeans who shared his tent while on a journey complained of being asked questions at all times of the night, and of his conversation going on long after they wished to sleep. He rose before daybreak and quickly rode to his divan or office where all petitions, letters and despatches awaited his opinion. These were read out to him as he paced the floor and dictated his replies. Muhammad Ali’s habit of having most letters read to him gave rise to the persistent rumour, held now by many Egyptians, that a mere illiterate had gained power over them. Apart from its being a requirement for a tax collector, there is ample evidence that Muhammad Ali could read in Turkish if not in Arabic. St John states that one of his pastimes was to retire to the banks of the canal, have a carpet thrown down for him to sit on, and there while coffee was being prepared read and seal his despatches. He would then enjoy his coffee and a shisha, before returning to the palace. In his harem, the private part of the palace frequented by eunuchs and women alone, he read or had books read to him, or ‘amused himself by conversing with the abler part of his eunuchs’. At other times of leisure he dictated his autobiography or played chess, to which he was addicted. ‘In fact, his active restless temper will never suffer him to be unoccupied; and when not engaged with graver and more important affairs, he descends even to meddling.’ His interest extended to the seemingly minute. An educated Egyptian teacher of mathematics, engaged in instructing a group of young officers in Alexandria, was made to give an exact account of how each one was advancing in his studies. When his fleet was being prepared he was rowed out each day to observe the shipwrights at work, urging them on by his presence. Though he would often go to bed late he would rest, or at least withdraw, from about 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. in his harem. Then he would be back at his divan dealing with business until 11 at night or even later.

  The accidents of the weather never interfered with his business. Rainfall, which most Cairenes deplore, never deterred him, and, indeed, making a journey in a torrential downpour had once caused him a very serious illness. Everywhere you see evidence of his will to initiate, pursue, complete. His movements were known to be sudden and unexpected. He could be in Cairo and a few days later in Alexandria, arriving unannounced; it maintained the agents of government in their vigilance better than admonitions from the centre. Others said it was an affectation or a caprice; nevertheless it worked.

  To regain his composure there was a small alcove in the Shubra Palace where the Pasha would sit at about eleven or twelve o’clock at night, sometimes for an hour, sometimes less. As St John relates, ‘From this alcove two long vistas, between cypress, orange and citron trees, diverge, and extend the whole length of the grounds; and in the calm bright nights of the East, by moon or star light, when the air is perfumed by the faint odours of the most delicate flowers, a more delicious or romantic station could hardly be found.’

  Muhammad Ali had one wife, whom he treated, it is said, with profound respect. She was known as an energetic woman who had a great deal of influence over him. When she died he never remarried, though he did keep a number of female slaves in his harem.

  John Barker, the British Consul-General in Egypt, related that at his first meeting with Muhammad Ali to present his credentials he handed over the Imperial firman, or decree, from Turkey, the nominal ruler of Egypt. The Pasha did not deign to look at the document. Instead he spoke of the fine new frigates he was building. The Pasha praised the new Consul’s predecessor for never opposing his will or disrespecting his opinions. Muhammad Ali concluded, though, that this was easy as his words and actions were founded in reason and justice. ‘I will tell you a story,’ the ruler added.

  I was born in a village in Albania [sic], and my father had ten children, besides me, who are all dead; but while living not one of them ever contradicted me. Although I left my native mountains before I attained my manhood, the principal people in the place never took any step in the business of the commune, without previously inquiring what was my pleasure. I came to this country an obscure adventurer, and when I was yet a bimbashi, a captain, it happened one day that the commissary had to give each bimbashi a tent. They were all my seniors, and naturally pretended to a preference over me; but the officer said – ‘Stand you all by: this youth, Mohamed Ali, shall be served first.’ And I was served first; and I advanced step by step, as it pleased God to ordain; and now here I am.

  He glanced again at the Imperial decree: ‘You see, I have never had a master.’

  Above all, the Pasha was a simple man. (You hear the same said about Franco and Stalin.) When St John interviewed him about his life he was treated to a long exposition on his victorious expeditions to Sennar, Nubia, Kordofan, the Hejaz and Syria. St John writes, ‘I observed however, that, in the enumeration of his achievements, no mention was made of the destruction of the Mamluks. Doubtless, as he ran back over the track of memory, the recollection of that bloody day [when Muhammad Ali had 499 Mamluks killed] presented itself among his brighter reminiscences, like Satan among the sons of God; and conscience may, moreover, have whispered that his hearers also remembered the event.’

  Muhammad Ali could never, however, be drawn to comment on the fate of the Mamluks. He had excised them from memory, and from history.

  15 • Napoleon and Muhammad Ali

  Embers, the child of fire, can also burn a person. Nubian proverb

  Every Nile ruler from Cleopatra to Sadat has been fearful of poisoning. Napoleon, exiled after his defeat at Waterloo and writing feverishly in St Helena, was no exception. He believed himself the victim of poisoning, slow poisoning (there is controversial evidence from his hair that he was poisoned with arsenic). However, even while worrying
about his health, he did not cease thinking of Egypt. He wrote in his prison diary, ‘The day will come when work will be put in hand to dam the two branches of the Nile at the head of the delta, so that all the waters of the one branch can flow through one and then the other alternately, and the flood can be doubled.’

  Muhammad Ali, sitting in Cairo, had everything written by Napoleon translated and read to him. The Frenchman was Muhammad Ali’s role model – Napoleon, after all, had not only given him Egypt, he had inspired him in his campaigns to conquer the entire region. It made sense to listen to his hydrological advice too, albeit in a simplified form. At first Muhammad Ali wanted to stop up the Rosetta branch and let it all be diverted to the other branch at Damietta. Louis Linant, his French water engineer, who would later lay the groundwork for the Suez Canal, objected on the grounds that it would deprive Alexandria of fresh water. The Pasha’s next plan was to dismantle the Pyramids, which he considered a heathen distraction, and use the stone to dam both the branches of the Nile. This plan was half adopted: the dam or barrage was built, but the seventh wonder of the world was not the source of masonry for the expedient reason that it was too costly (that is, heavy and cumbersome) to transport. It gives us some idea of the feat of the ancient Egyptians that they managed to construct a monument so massive that it resisted destruction through sheer weight and bulk.

  Despite plague and a war in Sudan, Muhammad Ali conscripted a corvée to build the barrage, the first of the Nile dams. In point of fact a barrage is a subspecies of dam proper in the sense that a barrage never blocks the river – its purpose is simply to raise the level of the water behind itself. There is no sense of a reservoir lake being built, something in which there is no current. A barrage simply backs the river up, slowing it down but not stopping it. By raising its level it can be drawn off for longer into the canals upstream of the barrier. The barrage, once its teething troubles had been fixed, which it has to be said took many years, was hugely successful in increasing cotton production.

  The barrage du Nil meant that cotton could at last be grown in quantity, since cotton cannot survive inundation but needs regular watering throughout the summer. With the barrage backing up the Nile towards Cairo, with canals and pumps and syphons installed, it was possible to water a vast area of land previously allowed to be fallow in the summer.

  When he was over seventy, the man who owed his reign to the invasion of Napoleon, who was inspired by Napoleon, was visited in turn by Napoleon’s son, Count Walewski. One suspects that the son was jealous to maintain his father’s reputation when he wrote of Muhammad Ali: ‘His genius is greater in civilising than in organising. He has neither the eagle eye which sees men and things from above, nor the superior intelligence which permits a man to take decisions which at first sight seem surprising, but he has a keen intelligence, perseverance, a strong will, and astonishing dexterity. Had he been born in our country he would have become a Metternich or a Talleyrand rather than a Napoleon.’

  Though Muhammad Ali was an avid reader of Napoleon’s work, it was only because Napoleon demonstrated his knowledge through deeds as well as words. When Machiavelli was read to Muhammad Ali he remarked after forty pages that ‘I can learn nothing from this man. And as regards cunning, I know far more about it than he.’ He returned to reading, or having read to him, the works of Bonaparte.

  That the student failed to outdo his master in grandiosity and sweep is evident. But Muhammad Ali lived until he was eighty, and had, quite probably, a more lasting impact on Egypt and the Nile than even Napoleon did. His legacy was certainly bloodier.

  16 • The killing of the 499

  They don’t praise the army going to war, they praise it on returning.

  Egyptian proverb

  There were 500 – and 500 were called. One stayed in bed and then there were none, none except him. All 499 dead, cleaved into pieces, grapeshot and musket fire tearing their bodies to pieces, scattered in the ditches of the Citadel, where Shajarat al-Durr’s body had been left, the traditional dumping ground of the Mamluks themselves.

  Muhammad Ali planned a feat of treachery that not even Machiavelli would have conceived. Rightly the Albanian had little time for the Italian fox. The plan was quite simple: lure the troublesome Mamluks, who still thought they should have power, to a single spot. And then kill them all.

  The River Soldiers knew their time was up, but they sought a new role with Muhammad Ali. They clung to their power, as all do, because power is the hardest thing to give up. The British, a century and a half later, would have to give up their power over the Nile and it broke the heart of Churchill, who as a young man had been in the battle of Omdurman and helped win that power.

  So the Mamluks suspected but they did not suspect. The River Soldiers who still rode out with swords and armour battered by Napoleon’s victories, with red and green banners, these Mamluks came from all over Egypt to be honoured by their Albanian ruler.

  All 499 of them. One stayed in bed. It’s like a cautionary tale in reverse. The late bird doesn’t just get the worm, he gets off scot free and gets to live the rest of his life in the Levant. Which is what happened. The rest were slaughtered.

  It is not an easy job to kill 499 men, mounted on fine Arabian horses, attended by servants, all trotting along the lengthy defile that runs to this day around the foot of the Citadel. You can see it as you speed past on the autostrade heading to the airport or downtown.

  No machine guns. No gas. No depleted-uranium bombs to fulfil the order. Single-shot muskets and grapeshot did the job, or most of it. The worst part, hacking down the survivors and killing the wounded, was done by Anwar the Druze and his crack squad of murderous subordinates. Anwar was a giant of a man, bursting his tunic at chest and belly, huge blacksmith’s arms, though in truth he had never done a day’s honest work in his life. His arms were the legacy of a youth spent on smuggling ships on the Syrian coast. Now he was the trusted killer, wielding a curved sword that was soon blunt from cutting off heads. ‘It is better to stab than cut,’ he told his men, ‘because it is quicker and blunts the sword less.’ But he could not help cutting, and cutting and cutting. The ditch was soon ankle deep in the blood of horses, Mamluks and their servants.

  And the one that got away? He awoke late and decided not to leave his estate in the delta. But the news reached him that not a single Mamluk had returned home. It was enough. He was slipped under cover of darkness onto a trading barge going downstream to Rosetta. From there he was smuggled on a fishing boat to Cyprus and then to Jaffa. His family lived there until 1948, when they escaped again, strangely, back to Egypt. I know this story because the sole descendant of the one who escaped told me.

  17 • Death(s) on the Nile

  Who learns about the leopard lives. Ethiopian proverb

  Blood flowed freely – not only in the ditches of the Citadel, but on the banks of the Nile, in Egypt and Sudan. There were many funerals. Muhammad Ali craved control of the entire river; he was the first ruler to see that control of the Nile meant controlling all the wealth of Africa – slaves, ivory and gold.

  Muhammad Ali made many expeditions up and down the Nile, subduing the last remnants of the Mamluks, Baiburs’ descendants, outmanoeuvred by this wily Albanian who, we have seen, is said to have tricked those 499 into attending a gathering in Cairo. But others, including Muhammad Ali (but why should we trust him?), claim he was not so careless. In another story it is related that, over a few years, he picked off the Mamluk leaders one at a time all over the country. This final massacre was just the last few, a mopping-up operation. In one account it is suggested only twenty-four turned up to be killed. Whatever happened at the Citadel, Muhammad Ali had made himself undisputed ruler of Egypt. His expeditions south resulted in conquering the Upper Egyptian and Sudanese tribes; he became known as an enlightener – to some – but to many he was the bringer of death. Funerals along the Nile marked the passage of his armies.

  Muhammad Ali’s troops killed Christians and Muslims alik
e. It is a sign that the funeral service is ancient and, in essence, precedes both Islam and Christianity in that it remains, in Egypt, largely the same for each religion. But there are differences. The Christians bury in coffins, which, in accordance with a tradition of ancient Egypt, were made of stone, but in more modern times were wooden. Muslims use only a shroud, or rather several shrouds. Shortly after the Napoleonic occupation there was a case where land belonging to Copts was seized by Muslims. It was found to be a burial ground, and all of those graves, when excavated, contained coffins. As a Coptic burial ground it was returned to the Copts.

  Burial in either religion must take place within twenty-four hours of death. On the way to the grave, in Christian cases hymns and chants are sung. In the case of a Muslim, a hired singer or singers of the Koran will lead.

  Copts are closer to the ancients in that they are buried in their finest garments, including a few jewels. The shroud, on a rich man, is embroidered in gold and silver. If the dead man has made a pilgrimage to the River Jordan, the garments he wore may be interred with him. If he is not a pilgrim he will be clad in the robe he wore in life for receiving Holy Communion. At both Muslim and Christian funerals prayers and incense are offered up for the soul of the departed.

  The ancient Egyptians chose to bury their dead on the west bank and to live on the eastern bank. Crossing the River Nile, like the Styx, was an inevitable part of the route towards one’s own death. That the ancient Egyptians were obsessed by death is evident everywhere. Some of that obsession continues to this day with elaborate ceremonies performed at graves seven days, forty days, one year and seven years after someone has died. Both Muslims and Coptic Christians respect the arbyeen, the forty-day ceremony, meaning it is almost certainly of pharaonic origin. The Nile is still a river entwined with death, natural death and the cycles of the flood seeming to go together. But by the nineteenth century man would begin his attempt to change nature. The Nile was soon to become an unnatural river of death.