29. “a transection of Egyptian society”: List of slaves freed by Consul Reade, June 26, 1866–June 19, 1868 (FO84/1290). “indentured to their own government”:Fellahin slave purchases decribed in Reade to Stanley, August 9, 1876 (FO141/63). “Ismail personally held”: Rogers to Clarendon, November 24, 1869 (FO84/1305). “A decade after” and “a matter”: Stanton to Clarendon, May 9, 1866 (FO84/1260).
30. “absolute and supreme power”: Ismail’sfirman of May 1869, backdated to April 1, 1869, because Baker wanted to be paid from the date he accepted the commission;T. D. Murray and A. S. White,Sir Samuel Baker: A Memoir (London: Macmillan & Co., 1895), 149.
31. “In the end”: Baker,Ismailia (2 vol., London: Macmillan, 1874), II, 513.
32. “I was most thoroughly”: Ibid., 482.
33. “The first thing”: Baker to the mayor and Corporation of Brighton at a banquet given in his honor, January 1874; cit. M. Brander,The Perfect Victorian Hero: Samuel White Baker (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1982), 175.
2: The Engineer: 1873–79
1. “I will take”: Gordon to Augusta, Le Havre, May 18, 1881,Letters to his Sister, 222.
2. “What eyes they were!”: Arthur Stannard, a civilian employee of the Royal Engineers at Gravesend: “Gordon at Gravesend: A Personal Reminiscence,” inThe Nineteenth Century, XVII, April 1885, 714.
3. “No such thing as chance”: Gordon to Augusta, Gravesend, October 19, 1866,Letters to his Sister, 7.
4. “I do not think,” “an atrocious fib,” and “Our wounded”: Trench, 19 and 17.
5. “Is this all”: Gordon to E. A. Maund, as recounted in January 1884 on the day he left for Khartoum, in Maund to Augusta, January 30, 1888,Letters to his Sister, 302.“ to be too closely”: Gordon to the Reverend R.H. Barnes, Jaffa, September 26, 1883, Barnes Mss., Boston (Mass.) Public Library, f.2r.
6. “Whosoever confesseth”: I John IV: 15.
7. “Something broke in my heart”: Gordon to Barnes, op.cit., f2r.“ the great secret”: Gordon to Augusta, Gravesend, July 31, 1867,Letters to his Sister, 18.
8. “You see a new boy, don’t you?”: Trench, 58. “There were boys running about”: O. Freese,More About Gordon, by One Who Knew Him Well(London: Richard Bentley,1894), 37. “Great blessings”: Trench, 62.
9. “The creature is in bondage”: Gordon to Augusta, Mauritius, February 18, 1882,Letters to his Sister, 253.“A Problem in Greek Ethics”: A pioneering, discreetly apologetic study of ancient Greek pederasty and the utility of “inversion” to an imperial culture, written by J. A. Symons in 1873 and published privately in 1883. “homosexuality”: A term that arrived in English in 1892 via C. B. Chaddock’s translation of Krafft-Ebbing’sPsycopathia Sexualis. Its earliest recorded use dates from 1869, in a German pamphlet by Karl Maria Kertbeny against the Prussian sodomy laws, published anonymously.“ Do not disgrace the throne” (Jeremiah, XIV: 21): Gordon to Augusta, Kokstadt (the Cape), July 2, 1882,Letters to his Sister, 269.
10. “I wished I was a eunuch”: Gordon to Barnes, Jaffa, September 26, 1883, Barnes Mss., Boston (MA) Public Library, Mss. Eng. 450 (21). “I never had”: Gordon to Barnes, Jaffa, October 13, 1883, Barnes Mss., Boston (MA) Public Library, Mss. Eng. 450(33). “We are so”: Gordon to Augusta, Gravesend, June 12, 1866,Letters to his Sister, 3.“ The world”: Gordon to Augusta, from a series of tracts from 1870 to 1871,Letters to his Sister, 66.
11. “May Heaven’s high”: Jeal, 356.
12. “The lesson”: Ismail’s instructions to Gordon, February 16, 1874, in Gordon,Central Africa, xxxii; see also BM Add. Ms. 51296, f.272, undated; Stanton to Granville, February 21, 1874 (FO78/2342).
13. “Greek or Hebrew”: Gordon to Augusta, Cairo, February 14, 1874,Central Africa, 2.“ the rottenness of Egypt”: Gordon to Augusta, Suakin, February 26, 1874,Central Africa, 4. “quite innocent”: Gordon to Augusta, Cairo, February 14, 1874,Central Africa, 1. “You have no idea”: Gordon to Augusta, Cairo, February 18, 1874,Central Africa,3.
14. “My object”: Gordon to Augusta, Tultcha, November 17, 1874,Letters to his Sister,91.
15. “When that man comes into the room”: Ismail, cit. Landes, 20.
16. “The Khedive is an honest fellow”: Gordon to the Reverend Horace Waller, Cairo, February 14, 1874, cit. Allen, 13.“ I wear Engineer”: Gordon to Augusta, Suakin, February 26, 1874,Central Africa,2.
17. “African chief ’s palace” and “silver bullets”: Dr. G. Schweinfurt,The Heart of Africa: Three Years’Travels & Adventures in the Unexplored Regions of Central Africa, from 1868 to 1871 (2 vol., London: Sampson, Low, 1873), I, 383, and II, 325. His full name was Zubair Rahmatallah Mansur.
18. “re-establish” and “secure”: Stanton to Derby, December 18, 1875 (FO78/2404). “retain her”: Ismail, in Stanton to Derby, December 29, 1875 (FO78/2404).
19. “he borrowed £7 million” and “huge loan from Henry”: Malortie, 134.“ when revenue was £7.3 million”: From the 1873 budget, enclosed in Rogers to Vivian, October 5,1873 (FO141/82). “amount to be repaid”: Marlowe, 174.
20. “Muqabala”: Marlowe, 173.
21. “Thekourbash”: L. D. Gordon,Letters from Egypt, 1863–65 (London: R.B. Johnson,1875), 208–09.
22. “at intervals”: Between Sobat and Lado, January 29, 1875,Central Africa, 67.
23. “I never in the course of my life”: Gordon to Augusta, Fatiko, January 3, 1876,Letters to his Sister, 116. “The fact is”: South of Bedden, July 15, 1875,Central Africa,93.
24. “pestiferous”: Between Lado and Sobat, January 26, 1875, when he was bitten twice by a scorpion hidden in the folds of his mosquito net,Central Africa,66.“ rank jungle-grass”: Dufilé, October 17, 1875,Central Africa, 133.
25. “No steamer as yet”: Lado, June 25, 1875,Central Africa, 84.“ ‘horrid climate’”: Mugi, September 9, 1875,Central Africa,119. “most ordinary”: Bedden, July 15, 1875,Central Africa,92.
26. “fearful mysteries”: Near Bedden, July 15, 1875,Central Africa, 93.
27. “IT IS ALL OVER!”: Dufilé, October 17, 1875,Central Africa, 131.
28. “mosquitoes”: Dufilé, February 10, 1876,Central Africa, 155.
29. “What right have I?”: South of Bedden, July 15, 1875,Central Africa, 93.
30. “Oh! I am sick of these people”: Rageef, April 10, 1875,Central Africa, 80. “Poor sheath! It is much worn”: Dufilé, February 16, 1876,Central Africa, 156.
31. “You are a barnacle to the world”: Gordon to Augusta, Fatiko, January 3, 1876,Letters to his Sister, 119.
32. “All we want”: Palmerston, rejecting the chance to annex Abyssinia, in a Minute on Plowden to the Foreign Office, August 28, 1847 (FO1/4).
33. “a comfortable”: Disraeli, at Crystal Palace, June 1872, cit. Sir E. Clarke,Benjamin Disraeli: The Romance of a Great Career, 1804–1881 (London: John Murray, 1926),207–08. “I am the blank”: Morris, 385.
34. “some competent”: Stanton to Lord Derby, January 4, 1876 (FO78/2404).
35. “Egypt is well”: The Cave Report, cit. McCoan, 402.
36. “would repudiate”: Goschen, cit. Derby to Vivian, December 12, 1876 (FO78/2499).
37. “Sadyk Pasha”:Moniteur Egyptien,November 15, 1876; cit. de Leon, 111.
38. “What an affair!”: Gordon to Augusta, Esneh, south of Thebes, November 29, 1876,Central Africa, 200.
39. “his murderers’ thumbs”: McCoan, 198.
3: God’s Diplomacy: 1879–81
1. “Religion is the Mainstay”: al-Afghani,The Truth about the Neicheri Sect, and an Explanation of the Neicheris (1880–1881), trans. Keddie, in Keddie,An Islamic Response to Imperialism, 132. As Afghani explains (ibid., 133), aneicheri is to be understood as synonymous with the Frenchnaturaliste and Englishmaterialist.
2. “tea, coffee, tobacco, and the odd brandy”: Salim Rufa’il Jirjis al-Anhuri,Sihr Harut(Harut’s Magic; Damascus, 1885), 179 and 185, cit. Kedourie, 18.
3. “an assumed identity”: Keddie, 5–7. Much of our information about Afghani’s early life comes fro
m a Foreign Office investigation of his origins (FO60/594).
4. “Owing to his preoccupation”: Rashid Rida,Tarikh, I, 72, cit. Kedourie, 8. “cut the organ”: Muhammad al-Makhzumi,Khatirat Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (Reminiscences of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani; Beirut: 1931), 110–11; cit. Kedourie, 9.
5. “the sciences of the Franks,” “complete votary,” and Abdu’s attitudes and hair: Abdu’s contemporary, the sheikh Mustafa Abd al-Raziq, in a 1922 lecture reported inAl-Manar, XXIII (1922), 526–27; cit. Kedourie, 12 and 15, n.44. “You have made us”: Abdu to Afghani from Beirut, early 1880s, in Afshar & Mahdavi,Documents, plates 134–37, trans. and cit. Kedourie, 10.
6. “the government allocated nine thousand pounds”: Enclosed in Rogers to Vivian, October 5, 1873 (FO141/82).
7. “I used to see them”: Sharubim,al-Kafi (1898–1900), IV, 258–59, cit. Cole,Colonialism and Revolution,125.
8. “iron-fisted” and “great diversity”: Cromer,Modern Egypt, I, 38.
9. “I have a strong”: Salisbury to Consul Vivian, July 17, 1878 (FO78/1951).
10. “political ignorance”: Abdu,The Grand Mufti’s Remarks(on Arabi’sAutobiography), Blunt,Secret History, App. I, 489.
11. “an Italian,” “stockpiled,” and “clever attempts”: Vivian to Derby, No. 7, October 20,1876 (FO141/100). “A Sufi from Mecca”: Vivian to Derby, No. 100, April 19, 1877(FO141/106). “Sheikh Ahmed”: Vivian to Derby, No. 186, June 21, 1877 (FO141/106). The telegram (FO141/111) was translated by “Acting Vice-Consul”Raphael Borg, a Maltese of British citizenship, prominent in the Star of the East lodge that elected al-Afghani as its leader.
12. “I wish”: Gordon to Augusta, Shaka, September 17, 1877,Letters to his Sister, 150.“ your affectionate”: Ismail to Gordon, cit. Allen, 108
13. “Either give me”: Gordon to Augusta, February 11, 1877, reporting the events of the previous day,Central Africa,210.
14. “the suppression”: Ismail to Gordon, February 17, 1877, cit. Sir H.W. Gordon,Events in the Life of Charles George Gordon (London: Kegan, Paul & Trench, 1886), 106–07.
15. “Here slavery”: Gordon to Augusta, Khartoum, May 4, 1877,Central Africa, 229 and225.“ If the liberation” and “It is rather amusing”: Gordon to Augusta, Shaka, April 20,1879,Central Africa,351.
16. “a grand uniform”: Gordon to Augusta, Khartoum, January 9,1879,Central Africa, 334.“ cut the divans”: Gordon to Augusta, Khartoum, May 4, 1877,Central Africa,230.
17. “With the help”: Gordon to Augusta, Khartoum, May 4, 1877, Central Africa, 230. “The people”: Gordon to Augusta, Khartoum, May 18, 1877, Central Africa, 231.
18. “torrid wastes”: Gordon to Augusta, Umchanga, June 15, 1877, Central Africa, 236. “a single, dirty”: Gordon to Augusta, Dara, August 31, 1877, Central Africa, 270–71.
19. The multiple sackings of May 1878: Gordon, Central Africa, 314.
20. “furtive, polecat”: Gordon to Augusta, Keren, March 25, 1877, Central Africa, 218. “mutilating,” “daily deadly blows,” and “Government of Terror”: Gordon to Augusta, Khartoum, August 8, 1878, Central Africa, 319.
21. “Consider the effect”: Gordon to Augusta, Khartoum, May 4, 1877, Central Africa, 225.
22. “I look upon”: Gordon to Augusta, Massowa, January 5, 1878, Letters to his Sister, 176. “His Highness”: Khartoum, January 24, 1879, Gordon, Central Africa, 335. “hermaphrodite”: Gordon’s memo at Shaka, April 24, 1879, Central Africa, App. B, 438–39. “God or Baal”: Gordon to Augusta, Lado, June 27, 1875, Letters to his Sister, 100.
23. “The only thing”: Between Umchanga and Toaschia, June 16, 1879, Central Africa, 366.
24. “I wish”: Gordon to Augusta, Khartoum, August 8, 1878, Central Africa, 319.
25. “The long crucifixion”: Edowa, March 31, 1879, Central Africa, 347. “A rush of blood”: Khartoum, November 15, 1878, Central Africa, 324.
26. “I have brought it”: Gordon to Augusta, Red Sea, September 6, 1879, Letters to his Sister, 202.
27. “There is no deliverance”: Afghani, cit. E. Kedourie, Politics in the Middle East (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 274.
28. “I strongly approved”: The Grand Mufti’s Remarks on Arabi’s Autobiography, Blunt, Secret History, App. I, 489.
29. “If a philosopher”: Mustafa Abd al-Raziq, Muhammad Abduh (Cairo, 1946), 74–75; cit. Kedourie, 14–15.
30. “The first book,” “disastrous,” “in a fearful,” and “After this”: Arabi’s Autobiography, in Blunt, Secret History, App. I, 482.
31. “I admire the khedive”: Gordon, Shaka, April 25, 1877, Central Africa, 352.
32. “Death to the dogs”: Vivian to Salisbury, No. 57, February 20, 1879 (FO141/125).
33. “If you are”: Vivian to Salisbury, No. 57, February 20, 1879 (FO141/125).
34. “The Khedive alone”: Ibid.
35. “My family”: Ismail, cit. Crabitès, Ismail, 278.
36. “This is a grave”: Salisbury to Lascelles, April 25, 1879 (FO141/123).
37. “Bismarck weighed in”: Blunt, Secret History, 65. “officially to abdicate”: Salisbury to Lascelles, June 19, 1879, cit. Cromer, Modern Egypt, I, 135.
38. “It has been proved”: Cromer, Modern Egypt, I, 140.
4: The Redeemer: 1881–82
1. Legends of the Mahdi’s childhood: Beshir, M. O. Beshir, “Abdel Rahman ibn Hussein el-Jabri and His Book, History of the Mahdi,” SNR, XL (1963), 136–39.
2. “The governor”: Mehmet Ali told Hafiz Ibrahim Effendi to stop using the garrison doctor to amputate the feet and ears of convicted criminals, and bastinado them instead. See Hill, Egypt in the Sudan, 36, 41, and 44.
3. “the single cloud”: Beshir, 136–39.
4. “How he fasted!”: Bermann, 116–17.
5. “This is the hour”: Mahdi, October 9, 1880, cit. Abu-Salim, I, 67, trans. Nicoll, 54.
6. “You show the truth”: Nur al-Daim, cit. Holt, Mahdist State, 48; Slatin, 125.
7. “After midnight”: Yusuf Mikhail; cit. Holt, 63–67. The Mahdi’s pledge: “We pledge our allegiance to Allah, his Prophet and to you that we will [uphold] the Unity of Allah and will not set up associates to him. We will not steal, commit adultery, make slanderous allegations or disobey your command to do what is good and honorable. We pledge our allegiance to you to renounce and forsake the world, to be content with what lies with Allah and the Hereafter, and not to shirk from jihad.” From M. Mahmoud, “Sufism and Islamism in the Sudan,” in African Islam and Islam in Africa, ed. D. Westerlund and E. E. Rosander (London: Hurst, 1997), 162–92; 175.
8. “Lights, good omens”: Mahdi, between October 5 and November 4, 1880, cit. Abu-Salim, I, 67, trans. Nicoll, 54.
9. “revolution”: Afghani, in the second installment of the French socialist Ernest Vauquelin’s series Souvenirs de la Revolution d’Egypte, published in L’Intransigeant, August 3, 1882, cit. Kedourie, 29–30. “young thugs” and “the ruin”: The Pyramids, August 28, 1879, cit. M. Subaih, Muhammad Abduh (Cairo, 1944), 55–77, trans. Kedourie, 31.
10. “a firing squad”: William Dye, Moslem Egypt and Christian Abyssinia, or, Military Service under the Khedive, in his Provinces and Beyond their Borders, as Experienced by the American Staff (New York: Atkin & Prout, 1880), 483.
11. “Your petition”: Riaz Pasha, cit. Blunt, Secret History, 136.
12. “We were on our guard”: Urabi, Kashf al-Sitar (Cairo, 1953), 157, cit. Schölch, Egypt for the Egyptians, 140.
13. “I am empty”: Mahdi, quoted by Abd al-Rahman Birra, Aba Island, January 2003, cit. Nicoll, 63.
14. Characteristics of the Mahdi: Shaked, 57; Nicoll, 60.
15. “At length I plucked”: Abdullahi to Slatin, cit. Slatin, 126–30.
16. “I was awake”: Mahdi, May 12, 1883, cit. Abu-Salim, I, 334–39, trans. Nicoll, 65.
17. “I must reveal”: Mahdi to Mohammed Rauf Pasha, cit. Abu-Salim, I, 94–95, trans. Nicoll, 71–72.
18. “I began” and “sympathies”: Blunt, Secret History, 1 an
d 7.
19. “a moral” and “infecting”: Ibid., 28. “to champion”: Ibid., 7.
20. “the patriotic idea” and “cosmopolitan finance”: Blunt, Gordon at Khartoum, ix. “Semitic influence”: Ibid., x. “too powerful”: Blunt, Secret History, 21.
21. “I knew that”: Ibid., 83. “Philo-Asiatics”: Ibid., 89.
22. “the Caliphal question”: Ibid., 87. “I am full”: Ibid., 89.
23. “a little house” to “more spiritual”: Ibid., 105–06. “wild man”: Ibid., 100.
24. “bondage,” “the freeing,” “religious reformation,” “better elements,” and “In God’s name”: Ibid., 121–22.
25. “A foreign occupation”: Further Account by Sheikh Mohammed Abdu, in Blunt, Secret History, App. I, 493.
26. “the Colonels overruled”: At a meeting on September 8, 1881, Schölch, Egypt for the Egyptians, 160–61.
27. “Now is your moment” to “We are not slaves”: Blunt, Secret History, 150.
28. “The Egyptians”: Sharif to Blunt, ibid., 196.
29. “Perhaps you might”: Currie to Blunt, mid-November 1881, ibid., 158.
30. “We have won”: Urabi to Blunt, December 6, 1881, ibid., 170–71.
31. “certain”: Ibid., 173.
32. “composed a program”: The Programme of the National Party of Egypt, forwarded by Mr. Blunt to Mr. Gladstone, December 20, 1881 is in Blunt, Secret History, App. V, 556–59. On December 18, 1881, Blunt, “in conjunction with Sheikh Mohammed Abdu and others of the civilian leaders,” and with Sabunji as their scribe, drew up “a manifesto.” Abdu gained the “adhesion” of Mahmud Sami al-Barudi, the minister for war, and the “approval” of Urabi, before Blunt, “with Malet’s knowledge,” forwarded it to Gladstone on December 20 (Blunt, Secret History, 173).
33. “It will be”: Granville to Gladstone, September 9, 1881, Gladstone, Political Correspondence, I, 290, it. 527.
5: Egypt for the Egyptians! 1882
1. “It has been”: Gladstone to Sir Francis Doyle, cit. Matthew, 257. “hopelessly” and “a sophisticated”: M. R. D. Foot, Introduction to Gladstone, Midlothian Speeches, 11.
Three Empires on the Nile Page 37
