Peace Be Upon You (34 page)

The belief in progress shaped how Muslim societies and Western Christian states interacted. Just as the American Revolution cannot be understood without looking at the ideas of liberty and freedom that fueled it, the interaction between Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the
nineteenth century was framed not just by Western expansion but by a potent set of ideas about the untapped potential of human beings and the promise of a future better than anyone had ever known.

Here, as throughout this complicated story of relations between Muslims, Christians, and Jews, it is not a question of either-or. There are ample episodes of rapacious greed, racism, and abuse meted out by the imperial powers of the West on the rest. There are numerous times when they found surrogates to do their bidding. None ofthat negates the other history, of coexistence and cooperation.

So while it is true that Western states used raw power to dominate the world, it is also true that they found willing and avid partners who were devoted to the progress of their societies. Unfortunately, most of those who joined hands with Western states to work for progress, many of whom were heroes at the time, became scapegoats in the twentieth century, denigrated as fools and collaborators in their own subjugation by the West. Some were fools, no doubt, but not all, or even most. A closer look reveals that they often understood the ways of the world better than those who caricatured and lampooned them a century later. They recognized the weakness of their societies, confronted their limitations, and partnered with Western states in order to reform. They were willing to undertake the hard work of change. They were Muslims who decided to cooperate with Christian states, who did not look first to religion for answers, and often not even for guidance. And at times they were met not by Europeans who wanted to subjugate them but by Westerners who looked to them as allies in a common, human cause.

THE SICK MAN OF EUROPE

THROUGHOUT
the nineteenth century, the fate of the Ottoman Empire was inextricably entwined with European politics. From Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798 through World War I, the states of Europe fought over who would claim which Ottoman lands. As the century wore on, the empire shrank, and province after province either was absorbed into Europe’s orbit or became an independent state in its own right.

After the Congress of Vienna in 1815, which ended the long period of war that had wracked the continent since the French Revolution, the
countries of Europe competed with one another, not by fighting directly but by carving up the globe. The balance of power in Europe was maintained at the expense of anything but a stable balance of power globally. The Ottoman Empire, sitting directly on the frontiers of Europe, was both more vulnerable to European encroachment and more able to ward off annihilation.

By midcentury, the Ottomans became a crucial player in European politics. The empire was treated as a hobbled but important component of the diplomatic system that kept peace on the continent. Too weak to defend themselves on the battlefield, the Ottomans survived because no European state wanted another European state to occupy Istanbul and thereby gain control of the sea lanes connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. The empire was kept on life support, but the sultan understood that in order to keep Europe at bay, his diplomats would have to become master manipulators—and they did. Astute at survival but never strong enough to compete militarily, the empire became known as the “Sick Man of Europe.”

For much of the nineteenth century, European ministers jockeyed for influence in Istanbul, and the armies of Europe nibbled at the empire’s edges. Every foreign ministry had a department dedicated to the “eastern question,” and more than once during the century, the system established at the Congress of Vienna threatened to disintegrate in the face of a crisis involving the Ottomans.
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This was usually the result of a European state attacking an Ottoman province or demanding unreasonable concessions from the sultan and his vizier. But some of the challenges came from within the empire, and one of them nearly ended its life.

In 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Egypt. His career in Paris was at a standstill, and his plans for a cross-channel assault on England were not going well. Convinced that if he stayed in Paris he would become lost in the political labyrinth, and even more convinced that it was his destiny to reshape the world, he decided to undermine England by striking at its empire. By taking Egypt, which was then under Ottoman control, Napoleon hoped to disrupt England’s plans in India and beyond. The choice of Egypt was strategically questionable, and Napoleon remained in the desert land for only two years, until Admiral Nelson destroyed the French fleet off Alexandria. But while Napoleon’s invasion was a sideshow to the larger continental conflict between France and everyone else, it set in motion a chain of events that fundamentally
altered not just the Ottoman Empire but the future history of Muslim societies and their interaction with the West.

Since its conquest by Suleyman at the beginning of the sixteenth century, Egypt had been left alone by Istanbul. The old Mameluke elite still dominated the country, and though the Ottoman governor was in theory the most powerful official, the appointees sent by Istanbul depended on the Mamelukes to make sure taxes were collected and order was maintained. Egypt was also home to a large and prosperous Coptic Christian population, and Cairo and Alexandria sheltered an affluent and established Jewish community. Napoleon shattered that calm. The Mamelukes, who had not fought a battle of consequence for centuries, were comically overmatched. The French, even in the dead of summer, even after a scorching, debilitating march across the desert from Alexandria to Cairo, destroyed the Mameluke army in an afternoon.

The ease of the victory did not surprise Napoleon. He knew how weak his adversary was, and he had planned for the occupation of the country by bringing administrators and civil servants on the expedition. He also gathered a group of scholars, known as the
savants
, who were tasked with the study of Egyptian life and history. These mathematicians, engineers, geographers, linguists, and historians were given the responsibility of classifying and cataloging Egyptian culture. They had the eye of clinicians and they were acolytes of the religion of progress, which had triumphed when the French king was humbled, deposed, and finally executed. The French Revolution represented the demise of a social order based on God and king, and the intellectuals who accompanied Napoleon, as well as Napoleon himself, looked to a new world where reason and science would trump faith. Trained at the Polytechnic School in Paris, the
savants
treated Egypt as a canvas primed for a new tableau.

The French Revolution, whose radical leaders renamed 1793 as “Year 1,” embodied the spirit of an era when men (and they were mostly men) believed that society could be purged of past impurities. Organized religion was perceived as one of those impurities. The revolutionaries treated religion, and Catholicism in particular, as a primitive force, hostile to inquiry and reason, and inimical to science and progress. The
savants were
scarcely more forgiving of Islam, but Napoleon at least was
sensitive to the vital role of religious authorities in maintaining the status quo in Egypt. With less than fifty thousand troops, he intended to govern a large, mostly desert country, and he needed the tacit cooperation of the
ulamato
achieve that. In both Alexandria and Cairo, he issued proclamations declaring that he had no fight with Islam, only with the Mamelukes. Earlier, in Italy, Napoleon had ordered his troops not to interfere with religious leaders, including rabbis. He reiterated those commands in Egypt: “Deal with them as you dealt with Jews and with Italians,” he commanded. “Respect their
muftis
and their
imans
, as you respected rabbis and bishops. Show the same tolerance towards the ceremonies prescribed by the Koran that you showed towards convents and synagogues.”

Not since the fall of Granada in 1492 had a Christian power occupied a major Muslim metropolis. Though Napoleon and many of the revolutionary soldiers did not think of themselves as Christian armies, the inhabitants of Cairo did. They were shocked at what they took to be the barbarity of the French. Napoleon had scarcely begun to establish himself in the city when a revolt broke out. As he had demonstrated in suppressing rebellions in Italy, Napoleon was ruthless when challenged. His artillery shelled densely populated areas, and his soldiers occupied the precincts of Al-Azhar Mosque. The behavior of the French, both during these weeks and after, fueled the anger of at least one notable Azhar sheikh, al-Jabarti. In his meticulous multivolume history of the French occupation, al-Jabarti was scathing in his denunciations of the French and was appalled at how filthy, rude, and uncultured they were. He expressed the outrage of many of Cairo’s leading citizens about the disrespectful way French troops behaved in Al-Azhar, alleging that “they treated the books and Koranic volumes as trash, throwing them on the

ground, stamping on them with their feet and shoes They soiled the

mosque, blowing their snot in it, pissing and defecating in it. They guzzled wine and smashed their bottles in the central court.”
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What al-Jabarti interpreted as disrespect for Islam, however, was something rather different for the French army. At that time, flush with the spirit of the French Revolution and imbued with the fervor of their charismatic but somewhat amoral general, the French were at best indifferent and at worst acutely hostile to religion in general. They had no particular animus toward Islam as Islam. In fact, they almost certainly
had more rage toward Catholicism, which they saw as an impediment to the evolution of humanity. They scorned Islam, not because of its particular attributes but simply because it was a religion.

The French expedition survived barely two years, long enough to give Egypt a taste of the West but not long enough to reshape Egyptian society. After Nelson destroyed his fleet, Napoleon escaped to France. With the Mamelukes scattered but still dangerous, Egypt was left in a vacuum, which both the Ottomans and local factions attempted to fill. Though the country was hardly a priority for the sultan, who was then engaged in a power struggle in Istanbul with the Janissaries, it was important. The grand vizier looked for a governor who would be loyal to the sultan, and in 1805 he chose a rising young star. The new governor saved Egypt, but he almost destroyed the empire.

MUHAMMAD ALI

BORN IN ALBANIA
, Muhammad Ali served the Ottoman armies as a loyal mercenary. Given the state of the empire at the turn of the century, that was not such an oxymoron. The Janissaries had ceased to be an effective fighting force outside of Istanbul, and the sultan and his cabinet relied on a motley assortment of paid soldiers and officers to keep the peace within the empire’s borders. Muhammad Ali was an unusually capable soldier of fortune who went to Egypt in 1801 precisely because he perceived an opportunity in the turmoil. By the time officials in Istanbul appointed him governor in 1805, it was largely a formality. In his four years in the country, he had consolidated his hold through an adroit combination of guile and force.

Muhammad Ali Pasha ruled Egypt for more than forty years, and under his stewardship, the country went from a quiet province of the Ottoman Empire to a pivotal actor in world affairs. Alexandria blossomed as a commercial center, home to merchants and bankers from every major country in Europe, and Egypt emerged as a vital link between Europe and India, which had become the fulcrum of the British Empire. The pasha himself became a legendary figure, known throughout the world as the man who modernized his country and nearly brought down the sultan.

As gifted as he was, Muhammad Ali made one major miscalculation.
Earlier than most in the Ottoman world, he recognized the superiority of Western armies. Unlike the officials in Istanbul, he had seen close up what the French army could do and watched as Napoleon had easily overrun Egypt. He also witnessed the unparalleled skill of the British navy, and the discipline of both the infantry and sailors in battle. He recognized that armies and navies like these were the product of more than good training. They were the result of a radically different society, with an education system designed to foster both independence and loyalty, and state bureaucracies capable of extracting considerably more revenue than the Ottomans.

After becoming governor, Muhammad Ali plotted for nearly six years to end the threat of the Mamelukes. Finally, in 1811, he invited them to a banquet in the Citadel in Cairo, sealed the doors, and had his soldiers massacre them as they ate. All but one of the Mamelukes were killed, and the pasha emerged as the sole power in Egypt, answerable only to the sultan.

He then embarked on a campaign to modernize the country. He sent promising young men to school in Europe. Some were dispatched to Italy; Italian merchants were well represented in Egypt, and closer relations would be a financial boon. Others went to Paris, which inaugurated more than a century of Egyptian Francophilia. There, they encountered Turkish civil servants who had been sent by the sultan, Mahmud II, with a similar goal. Among the young Egyptians in Paris in the 1820s was an Al-Azhar scholar named Rifa’a al-Tahtawi. Though he had been studying at the most established Muslim university in the world, a bastion of tradition, Tahtawi embraced the new and the foreign. The pasha himself had commissioned translations (into Turkish, not Arabic, which the pasha never learned to read) of Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Machiavelli, and he wanted the students he sent to Europe to exhibit the same curiosity. Even more, he expected them to learn engineering and science. But he did not approve of them fraternizing with the local population. Like the Russians who sent students to the West during the Cold War, Muhammad Ali had an intuitive sense of the dangers of “going native.” The students were to take what they could from Europe and apply it to the betterment of Egypt.