Imagined Empires

by Zeinab Abul-Magd

  The French generals believed that the fate of the occupation of Upper Egypt depended only on the demonstration of military might to the Arabs. Therefore, in Qina Province, the troops destroyed the villages that refused to give them provisions and harshly punished their Arab shaykhs. In one incident, after waiting for four hours for bread to arrive from some villages and realizing that the towns’ “dogs” (i.e., inhabitants) had refused to send provisions, the French soldiers beat the villages’ Arab shaykhs with a hundred sticks. Furthermore, the French requested submission of the cash tax within three hours and the grain tax within six days. When one village tried to escape the grain tax by claiming there was low Nile inundation and water shortage that year, Commander Boyer imprisoned the shaykhs of this village until they paid. Villages delivered camels, horses, and sheep and surrendered their weapons to the French troops. Boyer also once seized a large herd of sheep from an Arab shaykh who did not submit his dues to the French. The shaykh’s sheep were only returned when he paid what he owed.48

  As the months passed, Denon’s misinformed presumptions of friendship between Copts the French in Upper Egypt proved untrue. Educated Copts had held the positions of finance ministers and treasury accountants in Egypt for centuries since the Islamic conquest, and they had developed the complicated qirma script for Arabic letters and figures in bookkeeping. Copts maintained these positions under the Ottoman/Mamluk regime until the arrival of the French. The French had no choice but to use Coptic services to decipher the coded, complex land survey and tax system in both the north and south of Egypt and so hired Copts in the same jobs that they held previously, as mubashirs. Copts resumed their work, only to immediately take advantage of the ignorant colonial regime. Napoléon instated Jirjis al-Juhari as the minister of finance—a position that elite Cairene Copts had held under the Mamluks—and al-Juhari was commissioned to hire local Coptic accountants in villages and towns throughout Egypt. Napoléon apparently did not trust the native employees, probably affected by the narratives of Sonnini about the Coptic merchant who deceived him. Thus, he hired French agents to monitor each accountant, in order to audit their registers and learn the language of the system.49

  In Upper Egypt, Copts were not particularly pleased by the French overseeing the work they had done for centuries. The French hired local Coptic accountants in the south starting in February 1799, after they fully completed the conquest of the region. When local peasants refused to pay taxes, the French had to bring back the old Coptic tax collectors to help. Mu‘allim Ya‘qub, a prominent Upper Egyptian Copt who formed an army to fight with the French, was the general accountant of the south, or l’intendant général de la Haute-Égypte. From the beginning, local accountants forced the French to deal with them as a collective group, through the Coptic minister of finance in Cairo who acted as their head. This way they managed to maintain their autonomous unity against the French, despite the monitoring system that Napoléon put in place. Copts were extremely careful not to give away the secrets of their profession or to furnish complete information about the sources of revenue. It was difficult and implausible for the French to learn how to calculate the time of the Nile inundation and the withdrawal of the flood, how to survey the size of land cultivated after the flood in each village, and how to estimate the revenue of each piece of land. As Nasir Ibrahim, an Egyptian historian, puts it, it was a knowledge/power battle between the French and the Copts, in which the latter controlled information as well as revenue.50

  Daily conflicts broke out between the Copts and the French auditors, as the former were deliberately imprecise in the information they submitted to the latter. The Copts kept in mind the potential defeat of the French and return of the old Mamluks, with religious retaliation, so the Copts did not grant full loyalty to the French. The Coptic minister of finance, Mu‘allim al-Juhari, centralized the land survey and tax collection system and archived all registers in his Cairo office, and he did not allow the French access to local records. His office was the only place that issued tax reports, and, hence, he was in full control of the financial information passed to the French. In Upper Egypt, when the French demanded records from the Coptic accountants in villages, they only delivered vague and ambiguous data. This raised anger and suspicion among the French officials during times of hardship, when the troops were in dire need of Egypt’s income. More importantly, in the villages of Upper Egypt, Coptic tax collectors embezzled the revenue of villages that they purposely did not list in the French official registers. Tired of the Copts, General Kléber, the first commander in chief after Napoléon, gradually reduced reliance on them and formed a committee to review their files. In a state of hopeless anger, his successor, General Menou, eventually decided to marginalize them.51

  Supposedly friendly Arab tribes excluded the French from administration of Upper Egypt on another front as well. Leaders of Arab tribes traditionally governed daily affairs of villages and towns through democratic councils (majalis ‘arab). Shaykhs and peasants regularly gathered in these councils to manage cultivation and irrigation matters and to resolve local disputes between individuals or villages. The tribes resumed this governing method after the end of battles with the French in order to discuss the demands of the new colonial regime, but they did not invite the French, who did not even speak the local language, to attend and participate in decision making. Obviously very impressed with it, Denon drew a huge sketch of one of these councils in Qina Province and wrote the following about the meeting: “It is not in my power to give the particular deliberations of this council, but I was informed that no innovations were introduced without previously consulting with the will of the inhabitants, to whom every possible encouragement was promised . . . . The consultation was not about arbitrary impositions, but the best means of promoting the public welfare.”52 Denon asserted that the council functioned the same way as it had during the golden age of Shaykh al-‘Arab Hammam, the former autonomous Arab ruler of Upper Egypt. Denon proudly credited the French for restoring this system of democracy that allegedly had vanished after Hammam, despite Sonnini’s elaborate description of similar councils’ presence in Qina only a decade earlier.

  Immediately after the holy month of Ramadan in 1800, an exceptionally large Arab council issued a decree to resolve a major dispute among several villages, revealing a high degree of social and religious equality. The session was evidently unattended or overseen by French official representatives. The shaykhs of disputing villages came to Isna Court in order to register this decree and make it legally binding for all involved parties, and the shaykhs recorded equal treatment of Copts and individuals from every social background—even less honorable tribes such as the Jamasa, who were notorious for their lack of morals and ethics. As the court record states, “All the shaykhs of . . . [named villages] agreed and consented to that whoever transgresses by hitting, robbing, or committing any action that generates chaos in the market or elsewhere must pay the governor of the locality four bags of 24,000 silver coins. That is the oath they all took. This condition applies whether the attacked was Muslim ra‘iyya, Christian, Jamasi, guest, or native resident.”53

  TURN TO DESPOTISM AND “IMPERIAL PLAGUE”

  With the French colonial image of the self as liberator being dramatically smashed by both the natives’ Jihad and deceit, the panicking French Republic soon reinstalled a despotic government. The French hired Murad Bey himself to serve as the autonomous governor of Upper Egypt. The letterheads of official correspondence between the French generals supposedly governing the south and their supreme chief in Cairo always carried the emblem of “Liberté, Égalité—République Français” (Liberty, Equality—the French Republic). Nonetheless, the Republic brought back to rule over the south the same Mamluk tyrant that Sonnini had condemned and that French troops had fiercely fought and defeated. The French self-perception of being quick and efficient developers of the crops and commerce of Upper Egypt similarly faded away, replaced instead by a desire for a rushed seizure of resou
rces by means of oppression. Finally, the environmental destruction that the new despotic government generated brought about an unprecedented wave of the plague in Upper Egypt.

  After the conquest of Upper Egypt, the colonial regime regularly retaliated against the manipulative natives. General Menou ordered his officer in the south, Donzelot, to lie and pretend that his decisions, even if they did the opposite, were in the best interest of the natives. In one incident, the French troops collected horses and camels from Upper Egyptians but later realized that they no longer needed them. Instead of returning the animals to their original owners, Menou, with a spirit of revenge, ordered Donzelot to burn them and tell the people that this was an action of grace for their benefit. “Some practices of charlatanism are always needed with those people” (Il faut toujours un peu de charlatanerie dans ce monde), Menou affirmed.54

  The French placed great emphasis on coercive control of grain, which the troops needed desperately. Storing 100,000 ardabbs of wheat and 150,000 ardabbs of beans, barley, and lentils was necessary to sustain the army for the year of 1800, so General Kléber ordered that these provisions be collected from the Upper Egyptian provinces and sent for storage in Cairo. Kléber ordered the boat captains of Upper Egypt to ship only the grain of the French Republic and prohibited them from transporting the loads of any native peasants or merchants. The boat captains disobeyed and secretly carried the people’s grain. They filled only part of their boats with the French grain and saved the rest of the space for the people’s crops. When the French found out, the Food Committee issued a decree to confiscate any grain that did not belong to the Republic on these boats in Cairo ports and to force the boat captain to pay a fine in addition to the regular customs and tariffs for confiscated commodities. Military officers inspected the grain boats and protected them from people’s attacks.55

  Kléber later hired private French companies instead of native boats to carry this grain. The company of Livron et Hamelin was responsible for collecting the Republic’s grain and transporting it to Cairo. The remaining grain was not to be left for the people but was sold and its revenue sent to the colonial treasury. French agents in the provinces of Upper Egypt were ordered to prepare daily registers of the current prices for each kind of grain in the markets of towns and big villages and to send the information to the general financial manager. The same private company was ordered to sell this grain in Upper Egypt on behalf of the Republic. The sale took place in return for cash, and the two capitalist businessmen, Livron and Hamelin, received a handsome commission of up to 5 percent for their commercial services.56

  The second resource that the occupation hastily attempted to seize in Upper Egypt was the commerce of Qusayr and Qina Province. Instead of developing it proficiently, the French ruined this trade in the brief period of their stay. Upon the arrival of French troops in Qina Province, Denon described the robust trade from India, Arabia, East Africa, North Africa, and Turkey, contradicting the negative assessments made by Savary and Sonnini. Denon asserted that Qusayr was the best-known port on the Red Sea and the point of connection between Asia and Africa. Highly amazed by what he saw, Denon depicted the lively trade scene in Qina:

  We . . . arrived at Keneh [Qina], where we found a number of merchants of all nations. By encountering the natives of very foreign countries, remote distances seems closer. When begin to reckon the days required for the journey, and the necessary means of affecting it, the space to be passed over ceases to be immense. The Red Sea, Gidda, Mecca, seemed like neighboring places to the town where we were; and India itself was but a short way beyond them. In the opposite direction the oases were actually no more than three days journey off us, and ceased to appear to our imagination as an undiscovered country . . . . The journey to Darfur may be accomplished in forty days, a hundred more are required to reach Tombuctoo. A merchant whom I found in Keneh . . . had often been in Darfur, where the caravans arrive from Tombuctoo. . . . Here we also found many Turkish, Meccan and Moorish merchants, come to exchange coffee and Indian cottons for corn.57

  However, Denon still maintained the fundamental view of his predecessors, saying that the Mamluk tyranny had ruined this trade.58

  The colonial actions that followed brought Qina’s commerce into a state of chaos. General Menou and his officers in Upper Egypt paid much attention to the Yemeni coffee and Sudanese commerce, including black slaves, and attempted to control the flow of goods through direct correspondence with the rulers of these places. Menou sent envoys to the sultan of Darfur in order to resume trade with his territory, and he received in return a gift of three black concubines. After reconciliation with the sharif of Mecca, Menou assured him that the French would send the holy places in Hijaz their regular shipments of grain and asked the sharif to send the regular shipments of coffee in return.59 Nonetheless, more than a year after concluding the invasion of Upper Egypt, the French failed to control the region’s trade, let alone develop it. Commerce in the Qusayr port was interrupted, and the volume of shipping on the Nile decreased daily. In December 1800, the commander of the French Navy informed Menou that “slowing and hindering trade in Qusayr hurt agriculture and navigation in Upper Egypt.”60 Furthermore, Denon lamented that the French troops were randomly killing innocent merchants, who were mistaken for Meccan Jihadists, and raiding their caravans:

  The soldiers who were sent out on scouting parties, frequently mistook for Meccans the poor merchants belonging to a caravan, with whom they fell in; and before justice could be done them, which in some cases the time and circumstances would not allow, two or three of them had been shot, a part of their merchandize either plundered or pilfered, and their camels exchanged for ours which resulted from these outrages, fell invariably to the share of bloodsuckers of the army, the civil commissaries, Copts, and interpreters; the soldiers, who sought every opportunity to enrich themselves.61

  Eventually, the failing French restored the tyrannical regime in Upper Egypt in order to contain this chaotic situation. As mentioned earlier, Napoléon had not been able to conclude a peace agreement with the Mamluk leader Murad Bey, but General Kléber succeeded. An agreement was signed in April 1800, and according to its conditions Murad Bey was granted an independent authority over Upper Egypt in return for taxes and military support of the French in Cairo. The French threw their ideological claims about liberating Upper Egypt into the Nile. According to ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti, a prominent contemporary Egyptian chronicler, Murad Bey—a blond with a great beard and a scar from a battle on his face—was oppressive, reckless, arrogant, and conceited. Murad married the widow of his former Mamluk master and shared power in Egypt with Ibrahim Bey, with whom he occasionally disputed over the sources of revenue. Murad led a luxurious life in his many vast palaces located outside Cairo, and he coercively collected taxes to sustain his lavish lifestyle and hefty military. He built a great arsenal and a navy, for which he hired a Greek Christian commander.62

  The agreement between Murad and Kléber initiated an alliance between the French and the Mamluks against the Ottomans. Thus, Murad split from his former master, the Ottomans, and happily ended the Jihad. Murad’s influential wife, Nafisa, mediated between the two parties to reach a satisfying treaty for both. Under its conditions, Murad became a vassal of France, or a tributary to the French Republic, and the Upper Egyptian provinces from Jirja to Aswan—including Qina—were allotted to him. He was granted the title of Prince Governor for the French Republic, and he was not allowed to keep but a few hundred knights from his former army. The treaty compelled him to submit an annual tribute of 20,000 baras (a monetary unit) and 15,000 ardabbs of wheat and 20,000 ardabbs of other grains. This tribute was divided into four installments to be paid every three months. Murad was allowed to control the revenue of the port of Qusayr, which suggests that the French had given up on their dreams of controlling international trade through this Red Sea harbor. Murad enjoyed full authority over the administrative system in his territory without the intervention of the Republ
ican regime in Cairo. The treaty also compelled the French to protect him against any external attacks—alluding to Meccan Jihadists, Ottomans, and the British. When Kléber was assassinated two months later, in June 1800, his successor, General Menou, maintained the agreement and ordered General Donzelot in Upper Egypt to treat Murad in a friendly and sincere manner.63

  Murad Bey died exactly one year after his installment. In April 1801, he was killed by the massive plague epidemic that struck Upper Egypt under the French occupation. Murad was infected and died in the city of Suhaj, where he was buried. The official gazette of the Republic in Egypt, Le Courier d’Égypte, published the news of the death of a “great man,” and Menou granted his widow, Nafisa, an annual salary of sixty thousand pounds.64