Imagined Empires (5 page)

In response, the southern Hawwara were ready with an army of peasants and Nubians. After a long fight, they lost the battle. The Mamluks occupied their capital town in Qina Province, Farshut, and the Mamluk soldiers plundered their properties and took their women. They looted the Hawwaras' oil mills' machinery, flour mills' grounding stones, slaves, horses, and camels in Farshut and sent the spoils north by boat. Many of the peasants of Upper Egypt died in the battle, but the ruling Hawwara tax farmers were unharmed.

It was time for the southern peasants, who resented the destruction that the Hawwara regime had inflicted on them, to rebel. The peasant leadership, of Arab tribal origin, visited the defeated leaders of the Hawwara in Farshut, saying, “We are people of farming. More than half of us died [because of the war]. We no longer want to fight and disobey the sultanate.”
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In response, the tribal ruling elite took their families and precious belongings and escaped through the western mountains with the goal of departing farther west. The next morning, peasant leaders walked from Farshut to meet with ‘Abd al-Rahman Bey in his camp in order to serve him breakfast and show submission to his new order. They relayed to him what happened between them and the Hawwara and assured him again that they were the subjects, or
ra‘iyya,
of the sultan. Then they pledged allegiance to Cairo and Istanbul. The bey appointed Mamluk tax farmers to replace the Hawwara in all of their former villages. News of the bey's victory and the Hawwaras' escape was relayed immediately to the sultan in Istanbul.
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However, after supporting the subalterns in the beginning, the Ottoman imperial center sabotaged their rebellion. It did not take the Hawwara long to return and restore their full control over Upper Egypt. “In every place,
money . . . buys men prestige and glory. . . . It is the tongue for he who wants to be eloquent . . . and the weapon for he who wants to fight,” read a poem recited by an Ottoman official during negotiations to reinstall the tribe.
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The Hawwara purchased their regime back from the sultan and his proxy administration in Cairo. After the Hawwaras' departure to the mountains, they had taken refuge with an Arab tribal leader, al-‘Ayd, who gave his home to their families and saved their remaining properties. They asked the Arab leader to find them a merchant going Cairo to carry a message to their allies among the incumbent Mamluk officers there. He found a suitable merchant and they rented a boat to carry him—and their important message—north. Upon receiving the message, the officers—the sultan's appointed bureaucrats—inquired about the amount of money that Hawwara leaders might have to assist in buying back their landholdings and restoring authority over the southern villages.
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As soon as the Hawwara received the response, they left for Cairo, bearing shipments of wheat to the Mamluk minister of mint. They arrived secretly at night and after dining spent the night at the minister's palace. An allied officer said, “Ask them if they have enough money to arrange to things.” The Hawwara leaders responded, “Whatever you request is available. Just get us back our villages.” The officer was so pleased by this response that he recited the abovementioned poem stating that money could buy everything. In a long session over a heavy meal and coffee, they agreed to plot against ‘Abd al-Rahman Bey, have the pasha remove him from his position as the governor of Girga, and give the Hawwara back their tax farms. The plot succeeded and the newly appointed governor of Girga became a close ally of the Hawwara.
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AFTER REBELLION: A SOUTHERN “REPUBLIC”

Two decades after the onset of this environmental crisis and peasants' rebellion against the tribal regime, a republic was born in Upper Egypt. Upper Egypt was still an autonomous state governed by the returning Hawwara, but it was now based on a new social contract between the Hawwara and the subaltern classes of the south, to appease the latter. This republic emerged because of internal social conflicts and dynamics, in which the distant empire played no role aside from receiving annual tribute. Furthermore, the republic had its own political and social institutions, divorced from the imperial system. It was the state of Shaykh al-‘Arab Hammam Ibn Yusuf.

Hammam was a legendary leader who founded a state that lasted for forty years, from the 1720s until 1769. He was born in Farshut around 1709 to a Hawwara ruler and was raised to inherit his father's position. Hammam unified Upper Egypt under one tax farmer, himself. Between the 1720s and 1730s he added extensive lands to his already vast inheritance and became practically the sole tax farmer in the entirety of Upper Egypt from Asyut to Aswan. His lands were officially lifetime tax farms that he could pass to his heirs or, in legal terms, were akin to private property purchased from the sultan.
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With his independent position, he bypassed Cairo and established direct relations with Istanbul. James Bruce, a contemporary British traveler who had the pleasure to attend Hammam's court, observed, “This Shekh was a man of immense riches, and, little by little, had united in his own person, all the separate districts of Upper Egypt, each of which formerly had its particular prince [from the Hawwara leaders]. But his interest was great at Constantinople, where he applied directly for what he wanted, insomuch as to give a jealousy to the Beys of Cairo. He had in farm from the Grand Signior [the sultan] almost the whole country, between Siout and Syene [Asyut and Aswan].”
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For the officers of the French expedition, who occupied Egypt by the end of 1790s, Hammam's state was a model to follow in creating a “national” and “just” government in Egypt comparable to the French Republic.
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For Rifa‘a al-Tahtawi, the nineteenth-century Egyptian intellectual and translator of French civil law, Hammam's state was no less modern than the republican system that he studied in France. He called it
jumhuriyya iltizamiyya,
or a tax farming republic.
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Al-Jabarti, the eighteenth century Cairene chronicler, attributed similarly legendary characteristics to the Hammam: “The honorable Excellency; the magnificent refuge; the noble and royal in origin; the shelter of the poor and princes; the station and comforter of travelers and caravans; the commander; the most affluent and generous whose generosity covered the near and the far; the honor of the state; and the grand ruler of Upper Egypt. . . . He encompassed in his mind the knowledge of all the matters of Upper Egypt.”
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Bruce visited the town of Farshut and met with Hammam in the late 1760s. The Scottish man was impressed by the refined manners of this ruler: “We waited upon Shekh Hamam; who was a big, tall handsome man, I apprehended not far from sixty. He was dressed in a large fox-skin pelisse over the rest of his cloaths, and had a yellow India shawl wrapped about his head, like a turban. He received me with great politeness and condescension, made me
sit down by him, and asked me more about Cairo than about Europe.”
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Richard Pococke, another British voyager, was similarly impressed by Hammam's manners upon meeting him. Pococke was accompanied by an Armenian interpreter and an Aleppine merchant doing business in Upper Egypt. When they arrived in Farshut, Hammam's secretary escorted them to Hammam's court. “The Sheikh was sitting in the corner of his room by a pan of coals,” noted Pococke. “He rose both when I came and when I left him; his dress was after the Arab manner.” Hammam asked the traveler many questions “with a good-natured smile.”
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Hammam's state was a continuation of the reversed core/periphery case in the empire. He established monopolies over most Upper Egyptian trade and commercial agriculture and increased the dependency of the consumerist imperial core in Istanbul on its capitalist periphery. Hammam's monopolies emerged when Qina's market in the Indian Ocean system reached its highest point of maturity in the eighteenth century. In fact, it is not a historical accident that the “republic” of Hammam arose in this century when its economic foundations existed outside of the alleged Ottoman world economy. The city of Qina and the other towns of the province, including Qus, Farshut, and Nagada, gradually became some of the most important centers in Egypt for international trade. As historian Fred Lawson illustrates,

Several Upper Egyptian cities served as bases for this trading network at the turn of the century. Arguably the most significant of these was Qina, a major transshipment point on the Nile river. . . . The older merchant center at Qus was also active in the Red Sea grain and cloth trade during the 1790s, while Farshut and Nagada maintained trading relations with the Hijaz. . . . Any mention of the Sudan requires consideration of the second major commercial network of which Qina province was a part during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century—the trade between Sinnar, Dar Fur, and Abyssinia to the south with Cairo and Europe to the north. This network extended over a vast expanse of territory and handled a variety of commodities.
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Trade in coffee, which was often destined for Istanbul, expanded tremendously in Qina's Red Sea port of Qusayr, especially as the volume of trade in the Suez port shrank because of less favorable navigation conditions. Ten to twenty ships visited Qusayr every month, while Suez received no more than sixty ships during the whole year.
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Hammam established a monopoly over Qusayr, where he seized an old castle and used it as a lodge for his guests. His own businesses carried wheat from Qina through Qusayr to the port of Jeddah in Arabia. He secured and protected the trade route between the Red
Sea and Qina by winning the loyalties of particular Arab tribes, the Bedouin highway raiders, who were roaming the road. He assigned the duty of securing the Qusayr route to the ‘Ulayqat tribe.
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In addition, East African trade expanded in Farshut. Farshut was the final destination of
darb al-jallaba
(road of the importers) caravans coming from the Sinnar kingdom of the Sudan that carried slaves, ivory, and more. Again, one of the primary destinations of this precious cargo was Istanbul. Hammam made Farshut—his hometown—the seat of his state in Qina Province, and he monopolized much of the East African trade that passed through the city.
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Farshut also played a major role in establishing Qina's position as a famous sugarcane and sugar producer.
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Its sugar was an effective competitor with colonial American sugar in Istanbul, the Levant, and elsewhere in the East. Henry Light, a captain of the British royal artillery, noted that Farshut was the area “where the greatest quantity of sugar is made” and added that “the Levant chiefly derives its sugar from it [Farshut]. In no part of the East, which I visited, was colonial sugar to be found; that for the use of the seraglio at Constantinople comes from Fairshoot [Farshut], and is refined with extraordinary care.”
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Hammam monopolized both the sugar industry in Farshut and the entire agricultural production of Upper Egypt. He owned twelve thousand bulls solely for purposes of sugarcane cultivation. In order to sustain this commercial power, he employed numerous plowing machines, waterwheels, flour mills, cows, and oxen and built countless storehouses filled with commercial crops.
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Hammam gained a respected image in both Egyptian and European records because of the just government he founded in Upper Egypt. He established a power-sharing structure built on a new social contract with many of the region's subaltern and elite groups. The ultimate goal of this order was to sustain agricultural production, secure the movement of trade, and ensure political stability. In a continuation of the Hawwara government system, Hammam's contract incorporated peasants producing the commercial crops, educated Copts managing the finances of the state, and Bedouins protecting southern trade routes and carrying goods on their camels. Each of these groups played a vital role in maintaining the stability of Hammam's regime.

Hammam held a public council (called
hukuma,
or government) for villagers, town dwellers, and Bedouins to discuss socioeconomic occurrences and solve disputes through collective consultation. The council, organized at Hammam's immense ranch in Farshut, held daily, well-attended sessions.
Attendees casually came and left the council as they pleased and were served breakfast and lunch from the kitchen of their affluent ruler's residence.
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In this council, peasants saw Hammam as a respected authority to whom they could appeal regarding disputes over usufruct rights, either between individual peasants or whole villages. The verdicts he issued in his council had the power of legal documents and were taken to the shari‘a court to be notarized and applied by the judge.
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The second group with which Hammam founded a social contract was elite Copts, especially educated accountants. Hammam's government was composed of many departments, each of which had its own Coptic auditors working day and night. After spending the day and two-thirds of the night meeting with the people who frequented his public council, Hammam spent the third part of the night with his Coptic bureaucrats dealing with state finances and attending to administrative affairs.
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Hammam's Coptic secretaries acted as his deputies in villages, collecting the grain tax from peasants and shipping it to Cairo.
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For example, he tasked the brothers Bulus and Jirjis, sons of Manqaryus, with collecting the grain taxes and sending them north. The same brothers also managed, as his agents, his financial transactions.
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Coptic peasants in particular experienced a golden age under the rule of Hammam, as both eighteenth-century Arabic and foreign sources affirm. During the time of the Napoleonic campaign in Egypt (1798–1801), French scientists and officers asserted that they encountered pleasant memories of Hammam among wealthy and poor Copts of Qina Province three decades after his death. Copts told the French that they missed the days of security and justice under Hammam.
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A Coptic notable who accompanied the returning French forces to France compiled a treatise on freeing Egypt from the Ottomans and founding an independent republic. The new government that he and his French supporters envisioned was to be “just . . . and national, like that of Sheikh Hammam in Upper Egypt.”
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