LINKS WITH THE PAST
To understand the Egyptian as he is, we must go back to that memorable
23rd of June in 1798, and learn not only what he then was, but how he
had become that which he was. Happily, it needs no long historical
details, or wearisome discussion of remote or doubtful causes to gain
this necessary knowledge. A few words to show how the Egyptian of
to-day is linked with his ancestors of far distant ages, and a short
sketch of the social and political conditions existing in the country
at the close of the eighteenth century will tell the reader all he
need know to enable him to comprehend the story of the years that have
since elapsed.
Although the people were then well established in the land and
possessed a high degree of civilisation, their history, as we now know
it, dates only from the reign of Menes, somewhere over five thousand
years before the birth of Christ. From that date down to the present
time we have a continuous record, the whole course of which may be
divided into three clearly distinguished periods. Of these the first
was not only by far the longest, but in every way the most brilliant.
In it Egypt was an independent country with a social system of an
advanced type, the spontaneous product of the genius of the people,
and it was the one in which, under native rulers, the land was filled
with the marvellous pyramids, temples, and sculptures that, though now
in ruins, still excite the admiration and wonder of the world.
The second period began in 529 B.C. with the conquest of the country
by Cambyses. In it after nearly two hundred years of Persian rule,
interrupted by a brief restoration of the native power, Egypt was for
a little more than three and half centuries in the hands of the
Greeks, from whom in the thirtieth year of the Christian Era it passed
to the Roman Empire. Six centuries later, in 638, when the flood tide
of Islamic conquest first swept westward from Arabia, the country
became a prey to the Arabs who, in 1171, were in their turn succeeded
by their revolting slaves, under whom as the Mameluk Sultans it
remained, until, in 1517, it became a province of the Turkish Empire.
In this period, under the sway of foreigners, the country suffered
from all the ills we are accustomed to associate with the idea of the
dark ages of Europe, and everything that was great or noble in the
people or their civilisation perished. It was, indeed, during this
time that the world-famous cities of Alexandria and Cairo were built
as well as the magnificent mosques that are the pride of all Islam,
but these were all the work, not of the people themselves, but of the
foreigners by whom they were held in thraldom, and are therefore
monuments not of the country's glory but of its shame.
The third and present period began in 1798 when the landing of
Bonaparte was the first of the series of events that by the
introduction and gradual development of European influence have
brought about the now existing social and political condition of the
country. In this period Egypt has ceased to be a province of the
Turkish Empire, and having acquired the semi-independent position of a
tributary State, has been lifted from an appalling condition of social
and commercial destitution produced by the ruinous misgovernment and
reckless tyranny of a dominant class, to one of unexampled prosperity
and of social and political freedom not exceeded in any country of the
world.
The three periods into which I have thus divided Egyptian history are
then distinguished by differences so deep and so far-reaching that
almost the only links by which they can be bound into one consistent
whole are the persistence of the people and the preservation of the
monuments that testify to their former greatness.
That the Egyptian of to-day is in truth the lineal descendant of those
who inhabited the country six thousand years ago is beyond all doubt.
Wherever we go in the Nile valley or in the Delta we meet with men and
women whose faces and features are living reproductions of the
portraits of the kings and people of the most ancient times as
sculptured by the artists of their days. And in their habits, manners,
and customs, we find to-day striking traces of those that seem to have
prevailed when four thousand years before Christ, Ptah-hotep wrote his
book of "Instructions," now believed to be the oldest book in the
world. And from their building in those far-off ages down to the
present day the pyramids, temples, and tombs have stood surviving
witnesses of the early greatness of the country, and, though but
heedless spectators of its vicissitudes, silent guardians of its
departed glory, ever linking its present with its past.
Closely united as the living Egyptian thus is with his earliest
ancestors, all the men and almost all the events that preceded the
French invasion are as nothing to the Egypt of to-day. Not a single
ruler, patriot, statesman, demagogue, artist or author, in short, no
man or woman that lived before the dawn of the modern period, has been
instrumental in the making of Egypt or the Egyptians what they now
are. Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Turks; all these have held the
people in bondage, but their influence never reached below the surface
of the life of the country, and has vanished completely with the men
upon whom it depended, and though some of these have left monuments,
all but imperishable, of their greatness and glory, these to the
Egyptians, heirs of their creators, are but idle relics of a forgotten
and unheeded past. And as it has been with the men almost so has it
been with events, for there are but two of these that, preceding the
French invasion, have exercised an influence of such vitality as to
survive the great change in the condition of the country that has
since been wrought. These two events, with four that belong to the
modern period, are indeed all that the whole history of the country
presents to us as still clearly and prominently exerting an important
and permanent influence upon both the character of the people and the
existing circumstances and condition of their country. Of these six
events the two that belong to the second period are, the conquest of
the land by the Arabs and its subsequent seizure by the Turks. The
other four are, the French invasion, the rise of Mahomed Ali, the
English occupation and the evacuation of Fachoda by the French.
Each and all of these six events have played important parts in
moulding the present-day aspect of Egypt and its people, and the more
closely do we study the existing conditions, the more strikingly do
these six events stand out from all others as the great and dominating
landmarks in the history of modern Egypt. Compared with these all the
other incidents of that story of seventy centuries--the long
procession of dynasties of Pharaohs, Ptolemies, Caliphs, Sultans,
Khedives--are all but shadows that have come and gone. It is not so
with the landmarks I have named, for not only are these events that
have influenced and are still influencing the thoughts and feelings of
the people, but the influence they exert is recognised by the people
themselves and must be taken into account in any endeavour either to
understand the present condition of the country, or to forecast its
future. Although, therefore, the third of these landmarks forms, as we
have already seen, the starting-point of the story of modern Egypt, to
rightly comprehend that story it is necessary we should have a clear
conception of the effects wrought by the first two events and of the
influence these have had and still have upon the affairs of the
country.
Let us remember here that Egypt, like most civilised countries, has in
reality two stories, one the history of the nation as a political
body; in other words, its history as history is commonly understood
and written, the record of the rise and fall of its rulers, the tale
of their triumph and of their failures, and chronicle of their wars,
victories, defeats, and all the events that have made or marred their
destinies: the other the story of the people themselves, of the growth
of their character and institutions, and of the development of their
social and moral surroundings. It is with this latter story that we
have to deal, and it is, therefore, from the point of view thus
assumed that I have estimated the importance of the events of which I
have just spoken.
In the history of some countries the two stories, if rightly told, are
so interwoven that they become as one, but in the first and second
periods of Egyptian history they have scarce anything in common, for
so long as the people remained under the rule of the Pharaohs or of
the foreigners who succeeded them they were little more than passive
victims of the varying fortunes that affected their rulers, and almost
the only fluctuations in their state during the long ages stretching
from the time of Menes to the French invasion were those occasioned by
the varying degrees of the tyranny to which they were subjected. Now
and again under some ruler of more humanity or of greater laxity than
others their condition may be said to have for the time improved, but
such changes were far too slight and their possible duration always
far too uncertain for these benefits to be more to the people than as
the grateful but passing pleasure a fleeting morning cloud brings to
the traveller in a sunburnt desert. Hence, such as the fellaheen or
peasantry were when Cheops was building his pyramid, such they
remained in almost all respects down to the arrival of the French. The
history of the country has, therefore, in the first two periods little
to say of the people. In the modern period the two stories touch each
other more closely, for in it the people have begun to have a
political existence. They have not, indeed, a representative
government, and so they have no direct power, but they have a press,
the freedom of which is absolutely unrestricted, and they have a
"Legislative Council" as a body of elected representatives, through
whom, though they cannot control the action of the Government, they
are at least able to make their voices heard and their wishes known.
More important still, they have begun to comprehend the right of a
people to be governed, not only justly, but with a regard to their
interests as well as to those of their rulers--a fundamental principle
that in the past would have been deemed an unpardonable heresy.
The first step towards the realisation of this improvement, though one
for long wholly unproductive of any political benefit to the people,
was the Arab conquest, which by the resulting conversion of almost the
whole population to the Mahomedan religion, brought about a change
still fruitful in its influence upon their ideals and aspirations. To
fully describe the importance of this event it would be necessary to
enlarge upon the character and tendency of the Mahomedan religion at a
length my limits forbid, and I must here therefore content myself with
noting that, great as was the moral and mental revolution this
conversion occasioned, it was by no means commensurate with that which
followed the introduction of Islam into other countries. On the
everyday life of the people it seems indeed to have had but little
effect other than that of altering their moral standard and modifying
in some slight degree their habits and mode of living. It was,
perhaps, inevitable that this should be so, for of all the peoples of
the East the Egyptians were, and are, the least susceptible of
imbibing the spirit that marked the early spread of Islam, gave it the
energy that carried it to victory, and still gives it such vitality as
it continues to possess. Christianity had been for a long time the
State religion of the country, but it seems clear that the great
majority of the people were never more than mere nominal followers of
the Cross, and the arrival of the Arabs was, therefore, quickly
succeeded by the voluntary adoption of Islam by all but the small
minority to whom Christianity was something more than a name and whose
descendants constitute the Coptic Church of to-day. The political
condition of the people was little, if at all, affected by the change
in their religion; and consequently, under the Caliphs and their
successors, the Egyptian continued to be as he had been before--a man
with no higher ambition than that of passing through life with the
least possible trouble. From year to year his one prayer was for an
abundant Nile and a plentiful crop, not that he might thereby enrich
himself, but that he might thereby secure a sufficiency for himself
and his family and suffer less from the rapacious tyranny and
heartless cruelty of those never-resting oppressors, his rulers and
all who, as officials or favourites, were lifted even a little above
his own level. It was, and is, of the essence of Islam that it appeals
to freemen and favours that love of freedom that is the birthright of
every man; but Islam brought no freedom to the Egyptians, save,
indeed, the spiritual and moral one their rulers could not rob them
of. So such as he had been before, such he remained after the Arab
conquest, but with a loftier sense of the dignity of manhood, a nobler
conception of life and of its duties, and a stronger faith in a
hereafter that should compensate him for all his sufferings and
privations in this life. As an individual, therefore, he was somewhat
altered, but as a member of the State--if we may apply that term to
one who had no political existence save that involved in yielding to
his rulers the utmost pennyworth of value they could wrest from him by
tyranny and cruelty--he was the same helpless, hopeless, downtrodden
being, less valued and less cared for than the beasts in his fields.
But the conversion of the Egyptians has filled them with that intense
attachment to the faith of Islam that, shared by all Mahomedans, has
given rise to the charge of fanaticism so commonly brought against
them--a charge that, in the case of the Egyptians, if not wholly
unjust, is too often exaggerated, although none the less there is
nothing excites the wrathful passions of the people or, in milder
moods, sways their actions more than their fidelity to their religion.
It is the fact that this is so that renders the Arab conquest the
first great landmark in the story of modern Egypt, for it is not too
much to say that this attachment of the Egyptians to their faith is to
the present day the most important factor with which all who are
concerned in the administration of the country have to deal.
If socially and otherwise the Egyptians profited but little from the
establishment of the Caliphate, they gained still less from the
domination of the Turks. To the people, indeed, this change was
scarcely more than a mere nominal one. It left them practically under
the same rulers, for though the system of government was modified, it
placed the executive power, if not in the hands of the same men as
before, at least in those of men of the same stamp, who ruled them as
their predecessors had done, in the same manner, through the same
agents, and with the same cruelty and wanton oppression. Yet the
Turkish, like the Arab, conquest wrought one important effect, the
influence of which time has strengthened so that it is only second to
that in the urgency of its bearing upon existing conditions. Under the
Arabs the Egyptians had been ruled by foreigners, but by foreigners
who were in some degree allied to them. Under the Turks their
sovereign was, and is, not only a foreigner, but one of an utterly
alien race, wholly separated from them by language, character, habits,
by everything, indeed, save the bond of their common religion. None
the less a spirit of loyalty to the Turkish Empire has grown and
spread among the people, which, though it would be an error to credit
it with the intensity popular writers of the country ascribe to it,
has unquestionably a powerful influence upon the views and opinions of
the great majority of the people. To Europeans this loyalty, which, it
is worthy of mention here, is shared by the Moslems of India, has
always appeared somewhat of an enigma. No one, however, who knows the
peoples of the two countries can doubt that, apart from the fact of
the Sultan being the official head of their religion, their loyalty to
him is largely due to the desire of peoples who have lost the place
they once held in the comity of nations to associate themselves with
such kindred peoples as have in some extent maintained their ancient
status. The Indian and the Egyptian Mahomedans alike look back to the
time when Islam was the one dominant, unopposable power in their
native lands, and, conscious of their own fallen condition, would fain
relieve the darkness of their destiny by seeking a place, however
humble, within the only radiance they can claim to share. While,
therefore, the loyalty of the Egyptians to the Turkish Empire is only
a part of their loyalty to their religion, it has this, from the
political point of view, important difference--that it is not
irrevocable, but more or less dependent upon the Sultan maintaining
his political supremacy in the Mahomedan world, for should he lose the
position he holds as the most powerful ruler in Islam, not only the
Egyptians, but his own immediate subjects, would feel justified in
transferring their allegiance to any ruler who might succeed him. But
absolutely as the Sultan may depend upon the loyalty of the Egyptians
as against any non-Moslem Power, yet, as we shall have occasion to
see, not only can he not do so as against a Moslem rival, but he can
only ensure their loyalty and obedience as his subjects by ceding to
conditions they hold they have a right to impose upon him. Were,
therefore, the hopes of the large section of the Mahomedans which is
filled with the desire for the restoration of an Arab Caliphate to be
realised it would entirely depend upon circumstances that it is quite
impossible to foresee--whether the Egyptians would or would not remain
faithful to the Empire. Meanwhile the revival of the Arabic power
being a possibility too far removed from probability to take a place
in the politics of the day, the loyalty of the Egyptians to the
Turkish Empire must be accepted as a controlling feature in the
affairs of the country.
Such, then, are the links that bind the Egypt of the present day to
the Egypt of the past, but important as has been, and is, the part
that the Arab and Turkish conquests have played in shaping the present
and will yet have in moulding the future of the people, it was not to
these events but to others occurring outside the country that we owe
the inauguration of the modern period of Egyptian history.
What these events were and how they affected the making of the
Egyptian what he now is we have now to see.