Imagined Empires

by Zeinab Abul-Magd

  Edward Said’s Orientalism is one of the canonical texts that established the concept of representation in postcolonial theory. Said relies on Michel Foucault’s vision concerning the inseparable relationship between knowledge and power to argue that European experts on the Middle East created a body of knowledge—in the form of reductionist stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims—that directly or indirectly served imperial ends. “Such ‘images’ of the Orient as this are images in that they represent or stand for a very large entity, otherwise impossibly diffuse, which they enable one to grasp or see,” Said writes.4 He asserts that imperialist Europeans controlled the production of these images with almost no interference from the natives. “The scientists, the scholar, the missionary, the trader, or the soldier was in, or thought about, the Orient because he could be there, or could think about it, with very little resistance on the Orient’s part,” Said asserts.5 Thus, Said grants the natives a minimum role in creating these stereotypical representations.

  In the case of Upper Egypt, the natives did play an important role in making the stereotypes: the inhabitants of Upper Egypt perceived Europeans as naïve, and sometimes foolish, foreigners and potential subjects of exploitation. This is precisely what created a crisis of images in the French Empire’s colonial propaganda in southern Egypt and generated other military crises that undermined the empire’s allegedly liberationist endeavor. As the holy war of Jihad and the epidemic of the plague in Upper Egypt—and particularly in Qina Province—indicate, the French campaign proved to be an environmentally scarred endeavor of a trapped empire.

  IMAGE MAKING, DECISION MAKING

  During the two decades that preceded Napoléon’s campaign, a number of French “experts” visited Egypt to explore the country and produce scientific knowledge to aid in potential colonization. Their published records presented detailed recommendations to the old and new governments, or the ancien régime and the revolutionary French Republic, about how to use the agricultural and commercial sources of northern and southern Egypt. More importantly, their writings served as a foundational tool in an ongoing process of image making about the oppressed, barbarian native and the enlightened, liberating self. These writings portrayed an intelligent Frenchman who was able to go anywhere on earth, quickly learn the culture and investigate the resources of this place, and cleverly develop those resources. These foundational texts served as trusted authorities and propaganda pieces in the process of decision making, inside the French Republic’s government and Parliament, concerning dispatching the military expedition to the Orient.

  FIGURE 3. Luxor Temple and plain.

  French travelers visited Egypt and reported about it centuries before Napoléon’s arrival, especially after it became an Ottoman province in the sixteenth century. Since early travelers were mostly Christian pilgrims passing through holy places in Egypt and Palestine, they mainly sent back to France romantic accounts about biblical and holy sites. In the eighteenth century, the age of European secular enlightenment that glorified pre-Christian legacies of Western civilization, French travelers paid extensive attention to Greek and Roman relics in Egypt and romanticized Egyptian ancient sites. They were also sure to comment on the flourishing trade of this country, especially in Upper Egypt, which brought exotic luxuries of the Indian Ocean to Cairo and the Mediterranean.6 Finally, by the end of the eighteenth century, in the age of European imperial ambitions, French accounts mixed this romanticized view of ancient times with strategic geopolitical and economic observations. More than simple pilgrims or travelers, French visitors to Egypt were increasingly scientists, philologists, archaeologists, and the like, some of whom were officially sent by the French government on formal missions to explore the possibility of creating a colony in this resource-rich land.

  M. Savary probably presented the first systematic account of France as the needed liberator of the Egyptians from the Ottoman despots and their installed military regime of foreign Mamluks. Savary explored Egypt in 1779, nearly twenty years before Napoléon’s Egyptian campaign. His published Lettres sur l’Égypte was a blunt proposal for colonialism. In the eyes of contemporary Europeans, Savary was a true scholarly expert. An English literary journal commended his “erudition and capacity” and asserted that he “has shown himself well versed in ancient and modern writings concerning Egypt and its antiquities.”7 With an informed tone, Savary indicated that Egypt was a country of immense resources, but it was unfortunately inflicted with the “ignorance” of the native Egyptians and the “tyranny” of the Mamluk rulers. Turks, Arabs, and Copts were all “barbarians” neglecting great potential sources of wealth and paying no attention to magnificent monuments. Only an enlightened nation that appreciated art and cultural history, such as France, could restore the riches of this land and return it to its ancient glory after centuries of backwardness.

  In Qina Province, Savary formed the most important colonial argument, asserting that the occupation of the south would bring about French control over global trade. He observed that Qina’s Red Sea port of Qusayr was a meeting point of Indian, Arabian, East African, North African, and Egyptian commerce but lamented how Mamluk despotism and Bedouin raids had reduced the port city’s traditionally robust trade. He advocated using Qusayr to turn Egypt into “the center of commerce in the world,” uniting Europe and Asia.8 Savary even suggested digging a canal between Qusayr and the city of Qina—the seat of the province that was a southern Nile port and entrepôt—in order to connect the Red Sea to the river and ultimately the Mediterranean. In the late eighteenth century, caravans had to spend three days carrying Indian and Arabian commodities from the eastern desert to Qina. In ancient times, there had been a canal connecting Qina to Qusayr, but the Turks neglected it and let it dry out. Savary proposed to revive this canal—almost a century before another Frenchman proposed digging the Suez Canal for similar goals:

  Were Egypt subjected by an enlightened people, the route to Cosseir [Qusayr] would be safe and commodious. I even suppose it possible to turn an arm of the Nile into this deep valley, over which the sea formerly flow. Such a canal appears not more difficult than that which Amrou cut between Fostat and Colzoum [Cairo and Suez], and would be much more advantageous, since it would abridge the voyage of the Indian shipping a hundred league, and through a perilous ocean, across the farther and narrow part of the Red Sea. The cloths of Bengal, the perfumes of Yemen, and the gold dust of Abyssinia would soon be seen at Cossier; and the corn, linen, and various productions of Egypt, given in return. A nation friendly to the arts [i.e., France] would soon render this fine country once more the center of commerce of the world, the point which should unite Europe to Asia.9

  Upper Egypt was an important region for Savary’s colonial proposal to develop the agriculture of the country, again after liberating it from despotism. He lamented that twelve thousand years of Arab and Turkish rule had degraded Egyptian agriculture. Whereas ancient Egypt had fed millions in the Roman Empire, the annual produce of the country was decreasing due to the ignorance of the present government, which neglected cultivation, just as it did trade. The Egyptian peoples themselves, Savary sympathetically added, were suffering from the rule of foreigners who were not farmers themselves; they endured arbitrary taxes and lacked means of subsistence. The poor peasants had to sell their machines to pay taxes.10 However, he did not look highly upon those peasants he sought to liberate. The Arabs, he opined, had lost their good faith under the tyrants. Copts were not much different. Despite being the descendants of ancient Egyptians, Copts had lost the sciences of their ancestors but had kept a “vulgar” ancient language.11

  In 1780, only one year after Savary’s visit, King Louis XVI officially dispatched C.S. Sonnini, an engineer in the French Navy and a prominent scientist, on a mission to Egypt. Sonnini’s observations were published in the voluminous Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt Undertaken by Order of the Old Government of France. During his journey, Sonnini encountered difficult situations, in which he faced Mamluk dictators
as well as “superstitious and ungoverned barbarians”—both Arabs and Copts—but he managed to compile his recommendations on creating a future French colony in Egypt.12 With an unmistakable tone of superiority, Sonnini proposed various possibilities for colonial exploitation of Egypt’s underdeveloped commercial and agricultural resources. Sonnini depicted in detail the colossal Pharaonic monuments of Upper Egypt and said that in this region, and under French governance, Egypt could recover its lost glory. More importantly, he forged images of the Arab tribes and Copts of Upper Egypt as potential allies of the French would-be liberators. These two groups, however, viewed things quite differently.

  In Qina Province, Sonnini’s vision of developing trade at the port of Qusayr was almost identical to Savary’s. Sonnini maintained that Qusayr and Qina could be turned into international centers for Indian and Asian commerce, and he also proposed reviving the ancient canal between Qusayr and Qina. He similarly and romantically asserted that the possession of this commercial area would render France in de facto control of Indian Ocean and Arabian Gulf trade, which would certainly be a great victory against Britain, France’s rival. Interestingly, he indicated that Qusayr was particularly important for the Parisian coffee drinkers who cared about getting pure mocha—imported from the Yemeni port of Mocha via the Upper Egyptian port city: In Qusayr and Qina one could find the best Yemeni coffee, a product that was typically adulterated several times with American colonial coffee before reaching Paris. Sonnini explains:

  [Qusayr] is the track the caravans pursue, which transport into Arabia the commodities of the Egypt, and which carry thither the coffee of Yemen. The greater number of these caravans deliver to Kous [Qus]. Some also go to Kenné [Qina], and others to Banoub. If you wish to be supplied with excellent coffee, you must go to one of these three places to find it. When once it arrived to Cairo, or had crossed the Nile, it was no longer pure. Merchants were waiting there to mix it with the common coffee of America. At Alexandria it underwent a second mixture by the factors who forwarded it to Marseilles, where they did not fail again to adulterate it: so that the presented Mokka [Mocha] coffee, which is used in France, is often the growth of the American colonies, with about a third, and seldom with a half, of the genuine coffee of Yemen. . . . When I was in Kous an hundred weight of this coffee, unadulterated, and of the first quality, cost . . . one hundred and five franks. . . . How is possible to believe that they should have real Mokka coffee at Paris at the rate of five shillings a pound?13

  Moreover, Sonnini elaborated on the immense fertility of land in Upper Egypt. The land of all Egypt was rich, but “this uncommon fertility is still more brilliant to the south than to the north.” The south might be hot and dry, but its soil was “infinitely more fruitful than the moist soil of the Delta.”14 Then he added similar observations to those of Savary about the backwardness of cultivation in the region, because the natives were “ignorant and lazy” and the Mamluks were careless, and the need for the enlightened French to reform it. The hot weather in Upper Egypt might deter the French from inhabiting the future “colony,” but Sonnini affirmed that it was still a proper environment to live in.15

  Liberating the Egyptians and achieving these great economic goals would entail the collaboration of internal allies, and Sonnini envisioned the Arab tribes and Copts of Upper Egypt as qualified candidates. Proud of their honorable lineages, the Arab tribal leaders were constantly rebelling against the Caucasian Mamluks, while they were hospitable and generous with Sonnini. The Copts, although not Catholics, were fellow Christians. Nonetheless, two encounters that Sonnini had with an Arab leader and a Coptic merchant reveal that there was a serious misunderstanding on the part of the French expert. Sonnini the physician assumed cultural superiority with the Arab leader, when the latter clearly perceived him as another servant. Sonnini trusted the Coptic merchant, when the latter obviously thought him a naïve, foolish foreigner who would be taken advantage of. Suffering the illusions of supremacy, Sonnini created fatal misrepresentations that the troops of his country would pay for later.

  While in Qina Province, Sonnini was hosted by Shaykh Isma‘il Abu ‘Ali, the Arab governor of a district. Upon his arrival by boat in Luxor, Sonnini heard that the Arab prince was there inspecting his tax farms, so he quickly crossed the river to meet the man of great power. Sonnini described the prince as an ugly, dirty old man, “disgusting,” but he had a clear and intelligent mind. Sonnini witnessed him running administrative matters in a governing council with noticeable justice: “A concourse of Arabians and of the inhabitants encircled him; he listened to them with attention whilst he was dictating to his secretaries; he issued his orders and gave his dictions with surprising distinctness and regard to justice.”16 When the shaykh finished this case, he looked with disinterest at the Frenchman—who was patiently waiting at the door of the tent—and asked with a “voice sufficiently dry” who he was. Sonnini came close and gave him a letter from Murad Bey, the Mamluk ruler in Cairo, recommending him for the job of private physician. The ill shaykh hired him, gave him some instructions, and resumed his affairs. Sonnini sat under some trees outside the tent, unaware that he was now considered another one of the shaykh’s servants. The next morning, the shaykh woke up and did not find Sonnini by him, so he shouted, Where is the doctor? Where is the doctor? (Fen hakim? Fen hakim?). Sonnini was in Luxor then, so the shaykh sent him a message ordering him to come back and stay at the prince’s disposal: “He dispatched a messenger after me to say, that Mourat Bey having sent me to his assistance, I must not think of quitting him, and that from that period I was his physician. This message was concluded with an order to hold myself in readiness the next day, to accompany Ismain in his journey.”17

  Another Arab tribal chief, the shaykh of Luxor, gave Sonnini orders “with much polite condescension,” as Sonnini put it. Sonnini knew that his importance among Arab shaykhs was derived from his medical skills rather than his white race or civilized manners, so he sometimes lied in order to maintain his position. He pretended to know the cure of illnesses when he did not. The mayor shaykh of Gurna, for instance, “was afflicted with a disorder which could not be cured except by a difficult operation. I [Sonnini] took care not to tell him that this cure was beyond my skill; I gave him some medicine which could do him neither good nor bad.”18

  While conducting himself in this unprofessional manner, Sonnini stated that “it is impossible to depict the customs of a degraded people, of whom barbarism has taken entire possession, without interference of ideas so dishonorable to humanity, ideas of crimes and robberies, which blend in the picture, and constitute the greatest part of it.”19 At any rate, Sonnini’s general impression of the Arab shaykhs throughout his journey in Qina Province implied that those dark leaders were generous, powerful, and just and that Frenchmen could be good allies. He suggested that inciting the Arabs to revolt against the Mamluks could be a fruitful strategy, proposing that “the various tribes . . . perhaps ought to be disposed for revolution rather than attacked as enemies.”20

  Sonnini similarly viewed Copts as barbarians whom the French had no choice but to count on as fellow Christians. The Copts of Upper Egypt, in fact, harbored bitter sentiments against European Christians, because Catholic missionaries were spreading throughout the region and denouncing the native Orthodox faith. European monks were not successful in converting Copts to Catholicism, but they surely disturbed their lives and earned their hatred. Sonnini explained,

  The name of Frank, which in the East denotes all Europeans of whatever country, held in esteem among Turks, despised in the cities of Lower Egypt, was considered with horror by the inhabitants of the Said [Upper Egypt]. This hatred is instilled by the Cophts, who are more numerous here than in those districts farther to the north. They felt sore at the arrival of some missionaries, who came from Italy purposely to preach against them, to expose them openly as heretics and dogs, and do damn them without pity . . . . These pious injuries had perhaps merit in the view of theology; but they were
extremely prejudicial to commerce and the increase of knowledge.21

  FIGURE 4. An Upper Egyptian Coptic priest.

  In the city of Qus, just north of Luxor, Sonnini met a wealthy Copt by the name of Mu‘allim Boqtor, a highly respected merchant. Although a Catholic convert himself, Boqtor did not hesitate to take advantage of Sonnini, who wanted to embark on a journey to the port of Qusayr. It was a harsh trip of three days in the eastern desert and required special arrangements, so Boqtor offered to take Sonnini there safely. Boqtor kept taking money and gifts from Sonnini under the guise of preparing for the trip. Time passed and the journey did not take place. In fact, the Copt colluded with a Turkish merchant to rob as much money and other luxuries as possible from the conceited Frenchman, and the pair eventually informed him that the trip was delayed for security considerations—for fear of Bedouin attacks. Then they asked him to leave his luggage with the Turk if he still wanted to go. Foreseeing their intention of robbing his belongings, Sonnini refused, cancelled the trip, and demanded his payments back. They first refused to refund him, but they did when he threatened to complain to his master, Shaykh Isma‘il.

  Sonnini concluded that the Coptic merchant was just another of Egypt’s many thieves and added that the Mamluks were better than the dark native Egyptians: “Mu‘allim Boqtor, who had so often promised to see me conducted to Cosseir . . . was like all his fellow citizens, nothing else but a traitor . . . . I here feel it incumbent on me to say, that for the most part I have had better reason to applaud the conduct of the Mamelucs than the natives of Egypt . . . . [Mamluks] possessed a certain pride and blunt harshness . . . whilst the Cophts, dark and designing, insinuating and deceitful, distinguished himself by the cringing and submissive deportment of the most abject slave.”22 Nevertheless, Sonnini still insisted that the Copts needed Europeans as enlightened liberators. He condemned the way Copts were treated in Egypt, “a country where the name of Christian merely is a crime.” Copts enjoyed prestigious government positions and wealth, but the Mamluks arbitrarily confiscated their properties. Copts needed to understand the difference between missionaries and other Europeans who went to Egypt to assist rather than insult them, said Sonnini.23