THE REFORM LEADERS AT THE AZHAR
I left England that autumn of 1880 on the 3rd of November, in the first
place for Egypt, and without any more definite further plan than to go
on from thence to Jeddah and educate myself in view of possible future
opportunities. My wilder schemes in regard to the Arabs seemed for the
moment impracticable, and all that I hoped for was to gain sufficient
knowledge of the doctrine and modern tendencies of Islam to put it into
my power to act should circumstances become more favourable. On leaving
London I had arranged with Hamilton that we should correspond during the
winter, and that I would let him know anything of special interest which
might occur on my journey and which he might communicate to Mr.
Gladstone, who was still, he assured me, though I had not seen him
again, interested in my ideas. At the Foreign Office I was looked upon,
though in a friendly way, more as a visionary than as anything seriously
likely to affect the official view of Eastern policy, even under a
Radical Prime Minister.
At Cairo, where I arrived a few days later, I found much change, and
all, as it seemed to me, for the better. The old irresponsible tyranny
of Ismaïl had given place to the comparatively mild _régime_ of the
Anglo-French _Condominium_. The finances had been regularized, and order
put into most of the Administrations. I visited some of the same
villages I had known in such terrible straits five years before, and
found that the worst evils affecting their position had been put a stop
to, and, though still poor and highly-taxed, there was no longer that
feeling of despair among the fellahin which had made them pour out the
history of their woes to me when I had first come among them as a
sympathetic stranger. I went to the British Agency, and was delighted to
find established there as Consul-General my friend Malet, who gave me a
roseate account of the reforms that had been effected or were in
project, for as yet little had been actually done except financially.
All was going slowly but steadily on the road of improvement, and the
only clouds he could see on the horizon were, first, in the Soudan,
which was so great a drain upon Egypt's resources, and, secondly, in the
Army, where there had been latterly symptoms of discontent. He spoke
much in praise of the new Khedive, Tewfik, and took me to see him at the
Palace, and I found him, if not very interesting, at least holding the
language of a civilized and liberal-minded Prince. An echo of Malet's
optimism may be recognized in my letters from Egypt of that date, and I
find the draft of one I wrote to Hamilton of which the following is an
extract:
"I find a great change here for the better since five years ago, and,
whatever may be the shortcomings the late Government may have to answer
for elsewhere, their policy in Egypt certainly was a success. The
country people now look fat and prosperous, and the few I have talked
to, people who in former years complained bitterly of their condition,
now praise the Khedive and his administration. They seem, for once, to
have gone the right way to work here, making as few changes as possible
in the _system_ of government and only taking care that the _men_ who
caused the disorder should be changed. It was a great stroke of policy
getting rid of Ismaïl, and I feel little doubt that with proper
management the present man will go straight. Egypt is so rich and such a
cheap country to govern that its finances _must_ come right, if it
limits its ambition to its own natural prosperity. But there are one or
two rocks ahead, the government of the Soudan for instance, which will
always be an expense and will always be an excuse for maintaining an
army. I cannot conceive why Egypt should charge itself with governing
the Nile beyond the First Cataract, its old boundary. Putting down the
slave-trade in Africa is an amusement only rich countries need afford
themselves. It will also be a great misfortune if such protection and
supervision as the Government gets from England should be withdrawn, at
least for some years and until a new generation has grown up used to a
better order of things than the old. I should like immensely to see
Syria put under another such _régime_. That, too, if there is no
attempt to hold the desert, is a fairly rich country and might be made
to pay its way. But it would require a very distinct protection from
Europe to relieve it of the cost of an army. For police purposes a very
small force would be sufficient, and I am convinced that people in
England exaggerate immensely the difficulty of keeping the peace between
the mixed Mohammedan and Christian populations there. These have all
lain groaning together so long under the same tyranny that the edges of
their prejudices have got worn down."
With regard to my plan of seeking Mohammedan instruction, I was from the
outset singularly fortunate. Rogers Bey, a distinguished Eastern scholar
whom I had known some years before as Consul at Damascus, was now an
official of the Finance Office at Cairo, and from him I obtained the
name of a young Alem connected with the Azhar University, Sheykh
Mohammed Khalil, who came to me daily to give me lessons in Arabic, and
stayed to talk with me often through the afternoons. It happened,
however, that he was far more than a mere professor of the language of
the Koran. Mohammed Khalil, of all the Mohammedans I have known, was
perhaps the most single-minded and sincere and at the same time the most
enthusiastic Moslem of the larger and purer school of thought such as
that which was being expounded at that time at Cairo by his great
master, Sheykh Mohammed Abdu. I like to think of him as he then was, a
young man of about thirty, serious, intelligent, and good, without
affectation, pious and proud of his religion, but without the smallest
taint of Pharisaism or doctrinal intolerance or of that arrogant reserve
which is so common with Mohammedans in dealing with persons not of their
own faith. He was all the contrary to this. From almost the first day of
our intercourse he made it his duty and his pleasure to teach me all he
knew. His school of interpretation was of the very widest kind. He
accepted as true creeds all those that professed the unity of God; and
Judaism and Christianity were to him only imperfect and corrupted forms
of the one true religion of Abraham and Noah. He would hear nothing of
intolerance, nothing of bitterness between believers so near akin. The
intolerance and the bitterness were the evil legacy of ancient wars, and
he believed the world to be progressing towards a state of social
perfection where arms would be laid down and a universal brotherhood
proclaimed between the nations and the creeds. As he unfolded to me
these ideas and based them on texts and traditions, declaring them to be
the true teaching of Islam, it may be imagined how astonished and
delighted I was--for they were very close to my own--and the more so
when he affirmed that they were the views beginning to be held by all
the more intelligent of the younger generation of students at his own
university, as well as elsewhere in the Mohammedan world. He gave me,
too, an account of how this school of enlightened interpretation had
sprung up almost within his own recollection at the Azhar.
The true originator of the Liberal religious Reform movement among the
Ulema of Cairo was, strangely enough, neither an Arab, nor an Egyptian,
nor an Ottoman, but a certain wild man of genius, Sheykh Jemal-ed-din
Afghani, whose sole experience of the world before he came to Egypt had
been that of Central Asia. An Afghan by birth, he had received his
religious education at Bokhara, and in that remote region, and
apparently without coming in contact with any teacher from the more
civilized centres of Mohammedan thought, he had evolved from his own
study and reflection the ideas which are now associated with his name.
Hitherto all movements of religious reform in Sunnite Islam had followed
the lines not of development, but of retrogression. There had been a
vast number of preachers, especially in the last 200 years, who had
taught that the decay of Islam as a power in the world was due to its
followers having forsaken the ancient ways of simplicity and the severe
observance of the law as understood in the early ages of the faith. On
the other hand, reformers there had been of a modern type recently, both
in Turkey and Egypt, who had Europeanized the administration for
political purposes, but these had introduced their changes as it were by
violence, through decrees and approvals obtained by force from the
unwilling Ulema, and with no serious attempt to reconcile them with the
law of the Koran and the traditions. The political reforms had been
always imposed from above, not suggested from below, and had generally
been condemned by respectable opinion. Jemal-ed-din's originality
consisted in this, that he sought to convert the religious intellect of
the countries where he preached to the necessity of reconsidering the
whole Islamic position, and, instead of clinging to the past, of making
an onward intellectual movement in harmony with modern knowledge. His
intimate acquaintance with the Koran and the traditions enabled him to
show that, if rightly interpreted and checked the one by the other, the
law of Islam was capable of the most liberal developments and that
hardly any beneficial change was in reality opposed to it.
Having completed his studies in 1870, and being then thirty-two years
old, he passed through India to Bombay and joined the pilgrimage to
Mecca, and, this duty accomplished, he came on to Cairo and afterwards
to Constantinople. He remained on this first visit no more than forty
days in Egypt, but he had time to make acquaintance with certain of the
Azhar students and to lay the foundations of the teaching he afterwards
developed. At Constantinople his great eloquence and learning soon
asserted itself, and he was given a position in the _Anjuman el Elm_,
where he lectured on all subjects, his knowledge being almost universal.
He had great quickness of intellect and an astonishing memory, so that
it is said of him that he could read a book straight off on any subject
and master the whole contents as inscribed upon his mind forever.
Beginning with grammar and science, his lectures went on to philosophy
and religion. He taught that Sunnite Islam was capable of adapting
itself to all the highest cravings of the human soul and the needs of
modern life. As an orthodox Sunni, and with the complete knowledge he
had of the _hawadith_, he was listened to with respect and soon got a
following among the younger students. He inspired courage by his own
boldness, and his critical treatment of the received commentaries, even
those of El Hánafi, was accepted by them as it would hardly have been
from any other. Their consciences he was at pains to free from the
chains in which thought had lain for so many centuries, and to show them
that the law of Islam was no dead hand but a system fitted for the
changing human needs of every age, and so itself susceptible of change.
All this stood in close analogy to what we have seen of the re-awakening
of the Christian intellect during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
in Europe and its adaption of orthodox doctrines to the scientific
discoveries of the day. It is strange, however, that in Western Islam
the new spirit of criticism should have been initiated as it was, by
one whose education had been made in such unprogressive lands as those
of Central Asia, and at a university so far away.
Sheykh Jemal-ed-din's career at Constantinople was a brilliant but a
short one. He was essentially a free lance, and, like most Afghans, a
disregarder of persons and of those ceremonial observances which
regulate among the Ottoman dignitaries the personal intercourse of the
great with those who attend their levées. Although protected by certain
of the Liberal Statesmen, and notably by Ali and Fuad Pashas, who saw in
his teaching a support to their unorthodox political reforms against the
old-fashioned Ulema, Jemal-ed-din had managed to give offence to the
high religious authorities, and especially by his independent personal
attitude to the Sheykh el Islam, and these soon found in his lectures
matter for reproof and condemnation. Advantage was taken of certain
passages in his lectures to denounce him to the Government as an atheist
and a perverter of the law, and when the Afghan reformer had replied by
a courageous demand to be confronted with his high accusers and heard in
a public discussion the official sense of propriety was shocked and
alarmed. The challenge was producing an immense excitement among the
Softas, the younger of whom were all on Jemal-ed-din's side, and the
quarrel seemed likely to lead to serious trouble. Notice was somewhat
reluctantly given that he had better leave once more for Egypt and the
Holy Places. It was thus under the cloud of religious persecution that
he returned to Cairo, but not without having sown the seed of inquiry
which was to mature some years later at Constantinople in the shape of a
general demand among the Softas for constitutional reform. It was the
religious part of the movement which was to culminate in the political
revolution attempted by Midhat Pasha in 1876.
At the Azhar, when he returned to Cairo in 1871, Jemal-ed-din's
reputation had of course preceded him, and, though Egypt was then in the
darkest night of its religious unintelligence, for the moral corruption
of the Government, especially in Ismaïl's reign, had infected all
classes and had extinguished every tradition of courage and independence
among the Ulema, considerable curiosity was felt about him. The few
friends he had made on the occasion of his first visit welcomed him, if
not openly, in secret, and presently the wonderful fire and zeal of his
conversation drew around him, as it had done at Constantinople, a group
of young and enthusiastic followers. The most remarkable of these, his
earliest disciples at the Azhar, were Sheykh Mohammed Abdu, who was to
play so important a part in public affairs later and who is now Grand
Mufti of Egypt, and Sheykh Ibrahim el Aghani the well-known publicist.
To these he was able to communicate without reserve his stores of varied
knowledge, and to inspire them with his critical spirit and something of
his courage. Courage indeed was needed in those days for any man at
Cairo to speak out. Ismaïl brooked no kind of opposition and wielded
power so absolute in the country that independent speech, almost
independent whispering, had disappeared from men's mouths. It was only
the fellahin of the village, already despoiled of all, that dared
complain, or those in the city too poor and insignificant to be of any
political count. The highest religious authorities, as well as the
highest officials, had long been silent about injustice and had chosen
their part of acquiescence, content so long as they could get their
share, each one however small, of the general plunder.
On this dark state of intellectual and moral things Jemal-ed-din's
courageous teaching broke like an apparition of strange light, and his
very courage for awhile secured him a hearing undisturbed by admonition
from the Government. Perhaps his quarrel at Constantinople was a
passport to Ismaïl's tolerance, perhaps he deemed this Afghan too
insignificant a force to call for suppression. Perhaps, like Ali and
Fuad Pashas, he thought to turn the new teaching to account in his long
war with the European Consuls. Be this as it may, Jemal-ed-din was
allowed during the whole of the remaining years of Ismaïl's reign to
carry on his lectures, and it was only on Tewfik's accession and the
establishment of the Anglo-French condominium that he was arrested on an
executive order, sent untried to Alexandria, and summarily exiled. He
had, however, already done his work, and at the time of which I am
writing his principles of Liberal reform upon a theological basis had so
far prevailed at the Azhar that they had already been adopted by all
that was intellectual there among the students. The reformer's mantle
had fallen upon worthy shoulders, shoulders indeed it may be said,
worthier even than his own. My little Arabic instructor, Mohammed
Khalil, was never weary of speaking to me of the virtues and
intellectual qualities of him who was now his spiritual master, Sheykh
Mohammed Abdu, the acknowledged leader at the Azhar, in Jemal-ed-din's
succession, of the Liberal Party of reform.
I find a note among my papers that it was on the 28th of January, 1881,
that I was first taken by my enthusiastic Alem to Mohammed Abdu's little
house in the Azhar quarter, a day to be marked by me with an especially
white stone, for it began for me a friendship which has lasted now for
nearly a quarter of a century with one of the best and wisest, and most
interesting of men. When I use these words of him it must not be thought
that they are light or exaggerated judgment. I base them on a knowledge
of his character gained in a variety of circumstances on very difficult
and trying occasions, first as a religious teacher, next as leader of a
movement of social reform and as the intellectual head of a political
revolution; again, as prisoner in the hands of his enemies, as exile in
various foreign lands, and for some years under police surveillance at
Cairo when his exile had been annulled; lastly, by the strength of his
intellect and his moral character reasserting himself as a power in his
own country, resuming his lectures at the Azhar, placed in the
judicature, named Judge of Appeal, and finally, in these last days,
Grand Mufti at Cairo, the highest religious and judicial position
attainable in Egypt.
Sheykh Mohammed Abdu when I first saw him in 1881 was a man of about
thirty-five, of middle height, dark, active in his gait, of quick
intelligence revealed in singularly penetrating eyes, and with a manner
frank and cordial and inspiring ready confidence. In dress and
appearance purely Oriental, wearing the white turban and dark kaftan of
the Azhar Sheykhs and knowing as yet no European language, or, indeed,
other language than his own. With him I discussed, with the help of
Mohammed Khalil, who knew a little French and helped on my insufficient
Arabic, most of those questions I had already debated with his disciple,
and between them I obtained before leaving Cairo a knowledge really
large of the opinions of their liberal school of Moslem thought, their
fears for the present, and their hopes for the future. These I
afterwards embodied in a book published at the end of the year under the
title of "The Future of Islam." Sheykh Mohammed Abdu was strong on the
point that what was needed for the Mohammedan body politic was not
merely reforms but a true religious reformation. On the question of the
Caliphate he looked at that time, in common with most enlightened
Moslems, to its reconstitution on a more spiritual basis. He explained
to me how a more legitimate exercise of its authority might be made to
give a new impulse to intellectual progress, and how little those who
for centuries had held the title had deserved the spiritual headship of
believers. The House of Othman for two hundred years had cared almost
nothing for religion, and beyond the right of the sword had no claim any
longer to allegiance. They were still the most powerful of Mohammedan
princes and so able to do most for the general advantage, but unless
they could be induced to take their position seriously a new Emir el
Mumenin might legitimately be looked for. Certainly a new political
basis was urgently required for the spiritual needs of Islam. In all
this there was a tone of moderation in the expression of his views very
convincing of their practical wisdom.
In the course of the winter I made with my wife our intended visit to
Jeddah, where I gathered much information of the kind I sought as to the
opinions of the various sects of Islam. No place accessible to Europeans
could have been better chosen for the purpose, and I made the
acquaintance of a number of interesting Moslems through the help of one
Yusuf Effendi Kudsi, who had a connection with the English Consulate.
Among them the most remarkable were Sheykh Hassan Johar, a learned and
very intelligent Somali, Sheykh Abd-el-Rahman Mahmud from Hyderabad in
India, Sheykh Meshaat of Mecca, several members of the Bassam family
from Aneyzah in Nejd, and a certain Bedouin Sheykh, a highly educated
man, from Southern Morocco. My stay in Jeddah, however, was but a short
one, as I fell ill of a malarious fever very prevalent there, and this
prevented any idea I may still have had of penetrating into the
interior. The moment, too, I found was a most unfavourable one for any
plan of this kind, through the new hostility of the Meccan authorities
to England. Already the Sultan Abdul Hamid had begun to assert himself,
a thing for many generations unknown to his Ottoman predecessors, as
spiritual Head of Islam, and in Arabia especially he had become jealous
of his authority, while his quarrel with our Government made him
suspicious, more than of any other, of English influences. Only a few
months before my visit to Jeddah he had made a vigorous assertion of his
authority at Mecca by the appointment of a new Grand Sherif of strong
reactionary and anti-European views. The former Grand Sherif Huseyn Ibn
Aoun had been a man of liberal ideas and known for his friendly
relations with the English Consulate, and had so incurred his
displeasure and met a violent death. Whether this was in reality
contrived by the Sultan, or perhaps his Valy, it is not possible
precisely to say, but it was certainly believed to have been so when I
was at Jeddah.
I learned the particulars of the Sherif Huseyn's death from his agent at
Jeddah, Omar Nassif, who most certainly laid it to the Sultan's charge.
According to this account, which I have since had confirmed to me from
other quarters of authority, Huseyn had just ridden down from Mecca at
the close of the pilgrimage, as the custom was, to Jeddah, there to give
his blessing to the departing pilgrims. He had travelled down by night
and was making his entrance on horseback to the seaport riding in state
with an escort, partly Arab, partly Ottoman, intending to alight at Omar
Nassif's house, when an Afghan pilgrim poorly dressed, came forward from
the crowd as if to ask alms and stabbed him in the belly. The Sherif,
though wounded, rode on and died in his agent's house in the course of
the day, having, as I heard, been unskilfully treated for his wound
which need not have been fatal. There were various circumstances which
seemed to differentiate the case from one of fanaticism or common
murder. The assassin was no Shiah schismatic, as was first supposed, but
an orthodox Sunni, and he used language after his arrest which seemed to
show that he considered himself commissioned. "There was an elephant,"
he said, when asked the reason for his deed, "the greatest beast of the
forest, and to him was sent an ant, the least of living creatures, and
the ant bit him and he died." Also there was no open trial made of the
assassin, who was executed within four days of his arrest, while
everything was done to hush up as far as was possible and conceal the
affair.
Huseyn's successor who was of the rival house of Zeyd, the Sherif Abdul
Mutalleb, belonged to the extremest school of Mohammedan reaction. He
was an aged man, old enough to have been Sherif at the time Mecca was
occupied by the Wahhabis, when he had conformed, at least outwardly, to
the Wahhabi doctrine. Now, in extreme age, he was reinstated as Prince
in order to further the Pan-Islamic views held at Constantinople. Under
Huseyn it would have been very possible for an Englishman to have
travelled through the Hejaz without molestation, and both Doughty and
Professor Robertson Smith had received his aid and protection. Now any
such attempt would have been very dangerous, and, in fact, the French
traveller Hüber lost his life in venturing in that same year. We
consequently returned to Suez, and later by Ismaïlia into Syria.
Passing through Egypt I received the following letters from Hamilton in
answer to two of mine. They are principally interesting as showing how
the Government's attention to Eastern matters was already being diverted
and distracted by their troubles nearer at home in Ireland. It is a
curious and melancholy thing to observe how the necessity, as the Whigs
in the Cabinet considered it to be, of putting down nationalism and
liberty in Ireland reacted upon the fine feelings they had expressed so
readily out of office of sympathy with national freedom in the East.
Gladstone, whose inclination no doubt would have been for liberty in
both directions, had weighed himself in the Cabinet by these Whig
Ministers, his colleagues, who were all along bent on leading him in the
opposite direction. Ireland throughout the history of the next two years
proved the stumbling-block of his policy, and, as I will show in its
place, the decision of coercion there was decided on in 1882 at the
self-same Cabinet Council with the decision to coerce in Egypt. The
connection of misfortune between the two countries was a fatality not a
little tragical, both to the countries themselves and doubly so to
English honour.
"10, Downing Street, _Decr. 22, 1880_.
"... I took the liberty of showing your letter to several who I
knew would like to read it, including Lord Granville, Rivers
Wilson, Pembroke, and Harry Brand. I think it especially pleased
Rivers Wilson, who looks with a very tender eye on his work in
Egypt, and who was naturally gratified to hear from an independent
source that what he had so prominent a hand in had resulted in so
much good. I am afraid he considers that his own contribution to
the result has not been fully appreciated.
"Ireland has continued to monopolize all the time and energies of
the Government, and I am afraid it is difficult to exaggerate the
grave state of affairs in that distracted country. Thank goodness,
we are now within hail of the re-assembling of Parliament. Whether
or no the Government has erred on the side of over-patience and
excessive forbearance remains to be proved, and it is not for me to
venture to express an opinion. The present state of things is
certainly a disgrace to this country; and the Government are driven
reluctantly to hark back on the old stereotyped course of strong
coercive measures. I am beginning, most unwillingly, to think that
Ireland is not fitted for a Constitutional Government, and that,
however much we may try to remove legitimate grievances, she will
not be got into hand again without a return to something like a
Cromwellian policy. It is heart-breaking work all round, and unless
some extraordinary transformation can be effected, we shall
probably have to submit in this country to any amount of shipwrecks
of governments within the next few years. I feel very gloomy as to
the look out. Would that we could apply to Ireland a regeneration
such as you have found in Egypt.... That wretched Ireland has
nearly knocked the Government out of time as regards foreign
policy. They will, however, still manage, I hope, to find a corner
of room for Greece, and not let that question entirely slide, which
would inevitably mean war between Turkey and Greece. Greece could
never contend single-handed with Turkey successfully, and Turkey at
war would probably be the signal for a general revolt in Eastern
Roumelia and Macedonia. I still trust some sort of compromise on
the question of adjusting the territory of the kingdom of the
Hellenes may be effected by the intervention of the Powers in the
direction of a small slice northwards, and perhaps the handing over
of Crete. There is no doubt that a means of strengthening and
opening out Greece must be found, not only to keep the peace
temporarily in the East, but to lay the foundations for some power
that may grow into a set-off against the Slavic nationalities...."
"10, Downing Street, _Feby. 11, 1881_.
"Your letter has since its receipt made a little ministerial round.
I read parts of it to Mr. Gladstone; and Lord Granville and Mr.
Goschen have both had the benefit of perusing it themselves, and of
perusing it, as I am told, with interest. Lord Granville, moreover,
sent a copy of your postscript, which related to Indian matters, to
Lord Hartington. I hope in having turned your information to
official account I shall not be considered to have abused your
confidence. I have shown it also to Harry Brand. His father, the
Speaker, has had difficulties to encounter such as no predecessor
in the Chair ever had before; and he has come out of the ordeal
magnificently. What with unprecedented continuous sitting of the
House for days and nights and wholesale suspensions of obstructive
Members, we have been having most exciting Parliamentary times. I
trust, however, that the neck of obstruction as of the Irish
land-agitation has been fairly well broken; and when once the
Coercive, or rather Protective, measures have been passed, and a
fair, just and strong and comprehensive Land Bill has become law,
we shall not be troubled again immediately with the Irish
nightmare.
"Meanwhile of course all public attention has for the last few
months been centred on that wretched God-forsaken country, and the
public have not troubled their heads much with foreign affairs.
However, the Greek question has not been forgotten. Lord Granville
has been pulling the strings most diplomatically, and not, I hope,
without success. Of course the great stumbling-block of making head
with this difficult question has been the very shabby part which
France has played, first blowing so hot and then blowing so cold.
However, Bismarck has been induced to take the initiative in making
a new proposal which may possibly lead to good results. The primary
condition of all the Powers is of course to maintain the peace of
Europe. If it were not that the outbreak of war between Turkey and
Greece would almost inevitably lead to the outbreak of disturbances
and fighting in Bulgaria and Eastern Roumelia, and if it were not
that Greece's chances single-handed in a combat would be very
small, the natural preliminary to Greece raising herself in the
European scale would be by an appeal to the sword. The modern
Romans would not have had a united kingdom but for fighting for
it, and the modern Greeks could hardly complain were they obliged
to face similar difficulties and dangers. But apart from the
dangers of a stand-up fight, Greece, having been made the special
protégé of Europe, has a right not to be thrown overboard now. If
the Berlin award cannot be enforced peacefully--and owing to
France's action this seems to be admitted--I believe the massacre
of the award has been termed in diplomatic phraseology, 'Le
Barthélemy de St. Hilaire'--the best alternative seems to be to
find some equivalent for Greece--I mean by compensating her
elsewhere for what she does not obtain, Thessaly and Epirus, which
she would accept and which the Powers would in concert help her to
obtain. Such a proposal as this may possibly be the new departure.
I am afraid your remedies, though far more effective, are too
drastic for acceptance by Europe."
I do not remember what in my letters can have suggested this long
digression about Greece, which did not particularly interest me at the
time. The phraseology of the letter is so like Mr. Gladstone's own that
I half think this and the previous letter must have been more or less
dictated by him. For this reason I quote them almost _in extenso_, and
because the long account of the difficulties of his Greek policy
suggested to me the idea that perhaps he might, if there was a rising on
the Greek frontier, also encourage one concurrently with it of the Arabs
in Syria.
Our journey from Ismaïlia was an interesting one. Once across the Suez
Canal we struck due eastwards, over a long track of sand dunes, to a
very little known hill region called the Jebel Hellal. This, on a small
scale, has some of the characteristics of Nejd, in vegetation and in the
arrangement of its sand drifts, and we made friendly acquaintance there
with the Aiaideh, the Teyyaha, and, further north, with the Terrabin
tribes, as well as with those very Azazimeh with whom we had been so
nearly having an encounter five years before. All these tribes were at
that time independent of the Ottoman Government, living as they did in
the no man's land which forms the frontier between Syria and Egypt. They
had, however, as is always the case in independent Arabia, been at feud
with each other and, with debts of blood on either side, the war had
gone on and on, causing much disturbance even to the confines of Gaza.
The Ottoman Government, to put an end to the trouble, had resorted to
one of their common devices. They had invited the chiefs of the two
principal tribes to a friendly conference with the Muteserif of Gaza,
and had had them treacherously surrounded and captured, and were now
holding them as hostages for the peace of the frontier in prison at
Jerusalem. At that time the long tradition of English influence in
Turkey was still alive among the Arabs, and as we passed through the
tribes the relations of the imprisoned sheykhs besought my intervention
with the Government to obtain their release. In pity for them I
consented to do what I could, and I took with me the acting Sheykh of
the Teyyaha, Ali Ibn Atiyeh, and the little son of the Sheykh of the
Terrabin, who rode on with us to Jerusalem, making our way over the
hills by no road so that we arrived at El Kuds, or rather at Bethlehem,
without having entered a single town or village on all our journey. At
Jerusalem I called at once upon our Consul, Moore, and obtained through
him from the Pasha an order to visit the prisons, and found there the
sheykhs I was in search of in an underground dungeon near the Mosque of
Omar. They were in a pitiable condition, suffering from disease and long
confinement, and I made an application to the governor on their behalf
for an amnesty for them on condition that a general peace should be
agreed to between the tribes, an agreement which I had got them to sign
and seal. The Muteserif, however, declared himself incompetent to order
their release, and referred me to his superior, the Valy of Damascus, as
being in a position to do so; and to Damascus we therefore went, still
accompanied by Ali Ibn Atiyeh and with our camel caravan, by way of the
Jordan valley and the Hauran plain, a beautiful and interesting journey,
for the whole country, there having been heavy rain, was a garden of
Eden with flowers. In the Hauran we found war going on between the
Ottoman troops and the Druses, but managed to slip by between the two
armies without molestation and so arrived at Damascus, where we alighted
at a little house in the Bab Touma quarter which I had purchased, with
an acre of garden behind it, on our visit of three years before when we
were starting for Nejd.
Our house at Damascus was next door to that of the well-known
Englishwoman Lady Ellenborough, or, as she was now called, Mrs. Digby,
who, after many curious adventures in the East and West, had married in
her old age a Bedouin sheykh of one of the Anazeh tribe, and was living
with her husband, Mijwel, at Damascus, being no longer able to bear the
hardships of her former desert life. From her and from her excellent
husband, whom we knew well, we received the advice that we should put
our case for the release of the prisoners neither before the Consul nor
directly before the Valy, but indirectly through the intermediary of
their distinguished friend and our acquaintance of 1878, Seyyid
Abd-el-Kader, whose influence at Damascus was more powerful on all
things relating to the Arabs than any other with the Government.
Abd-el-Kader was then a very old man, and was leading a life of
religious retirement and held in great reverence by all in the city, and
amongst the Arabs in Syria especially, he had a large following, for he
had often proved their protector. Mijwel assured me that it would be
merely a matter of money with the Valy and that if the Seyyid would
undertake the negotiation with a sufficient sum in hand it could be
easily managed. I consequently called with him and Ali Ibn Atiyeh on
Abd-el-Kader, whom we found with his eldest son Mohammed, a very worthy
man, born to him while he was still in Algeria of an Algerian mother,
and explained our errand, and the Seyyid gladly consented to be our
intercessor with the Pasha, and if possible to arrange for the release
of the Teyyaha and Terrabin sheykhs on the condition prescribed of a
general peace between the tribes, and I left with him a bag containing
400 Napoleons in gold, which he considered would be a sufficient sum to
obtain what we required. Bribery was so much a matter of course in
dealing with Ottoman officials in those days that I do not think either
the Seyyid or I or any of us had a scruple about offering the money. The
sum was a large one, but my sympathy was strong with the imprisoned
Bedouins, and I had it at heart to be able to send Ali Ibn Atiyeh back
to Jerusalem with an order of release for them. So I made the sacrifice.
As it turned out, however, the negotiation failed of the effect
intended. A few days later the bag was brought back to me by Mohammed
Ibn Abd-el-Kader untouched, with a message from his father that the Valy
sent me his compliments and would have been very pleased to be agreeable
to me in the matter but it was beyond his competence; it had already
been referred to Constantinople, and it was there alone that the thing
could be arranged.
The sequel of this little incident is curious, and has a direct bearing
on events the following year in Egypt. Finding my local efforts vain, I
took the Valy's advice and wrote to Goschen, our Ambassador at
Constantinople, and laid the case before him, urging as a reason for his
interesting himself in it, that possibly some day our Government might
have need of securing the passage of the Suez Canal from possible attack
on the eastern side should England happen to be at war with any other
power. Goschen, if I remember rightly, took some steps in the matter,
and when a few weeks later Lord Dufferin succeeded him at the embassy it
was handed on to him, and eventually, after long waiting, what I had
asked was granted, and the sheykhs were set free. My suggestion,
however, about the tribes was to bear fruit later of a kind I did not at
all contemplate or intend, for when in the summer of 1882, the military
expedition under Wolseley was decided on, it was remembered by Goschen,
or some one else connected with the Government, and, using my name with
the Bedouins, a secret agent was sent precisely to the tribes I had
befriended south of the Gaza to draw them into alliance with the English
forces against the Egyptian Nationalist army. I was therefore, as they
say, unworthily "hoist with my own petard." This was the famous Palmer
mission, about which I shall have more to say in its place.
Syria and all the Arab frontier was at this time in a great state of
political ferment. There were two currents of feeling there among
Mohammedans, the one of fanaticism fostered by the Sultan, the other in
favour of liberal reform, representing the two sides of the Pan-Islamic
movement, and at Damascus it was represented to me that the feeling
against the Sultan and the corrupt Ottoman administration was so strong
that a general revolt might at any time occur. I spoke to Mohammed Ibn
Abd-el-Kader about it, and found that he and his father were strongly on
the liberal side and that, like the rest of the Arabic speaking Ulema,
they favoured the idea of an Arabian Caliphate, if such could be made to
come about; and the thought occurred to me that no one then living had a
better title to be candidate for the Ottoman succession than
Abd-el-Kader himself might have. I therefore begged Mohammed to sound
the old Seyyid on the subject, and to ask him whether he would be
willing, should such a movement come to a head, to be put forward as its
leader. Mohammed did so, and brought back a message from his father to
the effect that, though too old to take any active part in a movement of
the kind himself, his sons would be willing, and he would not refuse to
give his name as a candidate for the Caliphate, should such candidature
be thrust upon him. There would, however, be no chance of success to the
movement unless it should have support from without, the Ottoman
Government being militarily too strong, and it was arranged that I
should communicate his answer confidentially to our Government and
ascertain what attitude England would assume in case of a Syrian rising.
This therefore I did, using my usual channel of communication with Mr.
Gladstone, his private secretary Hamilton, asking what help the Arabian
movement might count on. I suggested, in reference to Hamilton's letter
already quoted, that such a movement might be favourably regarded by our
Government, especially in connection with their difficulties with the
Porte about Greece. Gladstone's interest, however, in the East and in
foreign politics had by this time altogether cooled down, and Hamilton's
answer was brief and discouraging. "I hope," he wrote, "that there is
good prospect that the war between Greece and Turkey will be averted,
and therefore I trust there will be no necessity to resort to your
scheme in Syria. I can, I am afraid, only say that it is conceived that
such a state of things might arise when something of the sort you
suggest might be necessary, but that the case is not considered to have
arisen. This is confused and enigmatic, but I fear I can say no more."
With this I had to be content, and I made no delay in communicating the
result to the Seyyid.
The rest of our journey that summer was without political interest. We
again visited our friends the Anezeh Bedouins, whom we found encamped
near Palmyra, but our dealings with them were merely about horses. The
Anezeh care nothing about politics other than those of the desert and as
little for the affairs of religion. They can hardly indeed be counted as
even nominally Mohammedans, as they neither fast nor pray nor practice
any Moslem observance. Their only connection with Islam is that they
have in common with it the old Arabian customary law on which the law of
the Sheriat was founded, but they do not, as far as I have ever been
able to ascertain, hold any of the Moslem beliefs except vaguely and
negatively the unity of God. They are without respect for Prophet or
Saint or Koran, and know nothing whatever of a future life. With them we
travelled northwards to the border of their wanderings and found
ourselves at the beginning of the summer heat at Aleppo, and soon after
once more in England.[6]
FOOTNOTES:
[6] It is worth recording that while at Aleppo on this occasion we made
friends with two English officers afterwards prominently connected with
Egypt and the Soudanese war, Colonel Stewart, who shared with Gordon in
the defence of Khartoum against the Mahdi, and Colonel Sir Charles
Wilson who succeeded to the command of the British army at Metemneh
after the battle of Abu Klea. Stewart, at my suggestion, made a tour
that summer among the Anazeh and Shammar Bedouins, but failed to get on
good terms with them, the truth being that he was quite out of sympathy
with Orientals. Wilson, a man of far wider ideals, accompanied us on our
homeward journey as far as Smyrna, which we reached in the time of
Midhat Pasha's arrest. Both were at that date Consuls in Asia Minor of
the perambulating kind provided by the terms of the Cyprus Convention.