BEGINNINGS OF THE REVOLUTION IN EGYPT
The summer of 1881 I spent almost entirely at Crabbet, writing the book
which was the fruit of my winter experience: "The Future of Islam." It
was composed somewhat in haste and under circumstances unfavourable to
deliberate judgment, for in the very act of writing it, events crowded
so closely on events, and portents upon portents that a calm forecast of
Islam's destiny seemed at times almost impossible. Nevertheless, and in
spite of many defects, I look upon the work as still of serious value,
if only historically, as showing the condition of the Mohammedan hopes
and fears of the day when it was written. In it I committed myself
without reserve to the Cause of Islam as essentially the "Cause of Good"
over an immense portion of the world, and to be encouraged, not
repressed, by all who cared for the welfare of mankind. I gave an
historical sketch of its origin, its glories, and its apparent decay, a
decay which was very similar to that which had seemed to overtake
Christendom four hundred years before, and which might be met as
Christendom had met its troubles by a religious reformation and the
freeing of its thought from the bondage of a too strict tradition
impeding its evolution. I expounded the ideas, as I had learned them
from Sheykh Abdu, of the liberal school of teaching, and appealed to all
that was best among my own countrymen to sympathize with their hopes as
against the party of reaction which, hide-bound in the old and evil
ways, had nothing to offer but a recrudescence of fanaticism and a last
desperate appeal against its many enemies to the sword. To England
especially, as interested so largely in the future of Islam through
India, I addressed myself, urging that her policy should be an active
one of friendship with the better elements of Eastern thought in its
struggle with the worse, not merely to profit by its decay for the
extension of her own material interests. "The main point," I said, "is
that England should fulfil the trust she has accepted (by her
inheritance of the Mogul Empire and her long connection with Ottoman
affairs) of developing, not destroying the existing elements of good in
Asia. She cannot destroy Islam or dissolve her own connection with her.
Therefore, in God's name, let her take Islam by the hand and encourage
her boldly in the path of virtue. This is the only worthy course and the
only wise one, wiser and worthier, I venture to assert, than a whole
century of crusade."
The chapters of this little volume, as they came out in monthly numbers
of the "Fortnightly Review," produced a considerable effect in England
and also among the English-reading Moslems of India, and found their
way, to some extent, in translation to Egypt. Already, while I was
writing them, it had become clear that great events were imminent in the
Mohammedan world and were even now in progress. Early in May the French
Government with hardly a note of warning, and in pursuance of the secret
arrangement made at Berlin three years before between M. Waddington and
our Foreign Office, invaded Tunis and, on the fanciful pretext of
protecting the Bey from a quite unreal danger threatened him by his
subjects, occupied the western portion of the Regency and proclaimed a
French Protectorate. This sudden act of aggression on a perfectly
inoffensive and harmless neighbour was justified by nothing in the
condition of the province either in the way of ill government or danger
to Europeans or even financial embarrassment. The Bey himself was a mild
and respectable personage, and had in no way forfeited the goodwill of
his people. The seizure of his person by General Bréart, and the
usurpation of his authority by the French Republic was an act of cynical
illegality almost without parallel in the history of modern aggression
upon weaker nations, if we except the invasion of Egypt by Bonaparte in
1799, and was generally condemned in England where the history of the
Berlin betrayal was not as yet suspected. In the Mohammedan world it lit
a flame of anger and dismay which gathered in intensity as the truth
became slowly known. The western Tunisians, taken wholly by surprise at
first, had hardly fired a shot against the French, and the Bey had been
forced to sign the Treaty presented to him at the sword's point by
Bréart, which surrendered the independence of the Regency, before the
real state of the case came to be understood. But in the eastern
provinces the tribes of the desert took up arms, and before the middle
of summer the revolt had spread to the Algerian Sahara and a wave of
anger against Christendom was rolling eastwards which, as will be seen,
had begun to affect Egypt dangerously, and remains in truth to this day
responsible for precipitating the action of the liberal reformers there
and of the army in demanding self government.
It is worth noting, as showing the complicity of our Government in this
scandalous affair, that Lord Granville allowed himself to be content
with an assurance given him by the French Government, that the
occupation of the Regency was only for the restoration of order, though
it was patent that order had not been so much as threatened, and that it
would not continue a day longer than might be necessary to secure the
safety of the Bey's Government--a line of falsehood closely imitated by
Lord Granville himself the following year when the positions of France
and England were reversed in Egypt. It is most noticeable too that,
though Parliament was sitting at the time, Lord Salisbury, the leader of
the opposition, maintained an absolute silence about Tunis, though his
followers, who did not know his secret reasons, were clamorous for
explanations. Bismarck was equally silent at Berlin, and no single Power
of those who had been represented at Berlin dissented, though the
Italian public was deeply aggrieved by the French action. The Sultan
alone of them recorded his public protest, Tunis having been always
reckoned as part of the Ottoman dominions. By the European Governments
it was accepted speedily as a _fait accompli_.
The history of the rise of what in the summer of 1881 began to be known
as the Egyptian National movement needs here to be told. It had its
origin as a practical idea in the last desperate efforts made by the
Khedive Ismaïl when he had quarrelled with Wilson to maintain himself in
power against the consular tutelage in which he had, by his folly and
his debts, placed himself. He sought to recover the moral status he had
lost and the goodwill of his subjects by making to them a popular appeal
for support, and in the spring of 1879 he proclaimed his intention of
calling together an assembly of Notables. There is little doubt that his
intention was, under the cloak of a national demand, to repudiate at
least a portion of the debt, and though no one in Egypt, except perhaps
certain European residents, thought him sincere, the idea of a
constitutional form of government as a remedy for the ills they were
suffering began from that time to be popularized at Cairo. Sheykhs
Jemal-ed-din and his school had always maintained that the growing
absolutism of Mohammedan princes in modern times was contrary to the
spirit of Islam which in its essence was a Republic where every Moslem
had the right of free speech in its assemblies, and where the authority
of the ruler rested on his conformity to the law and on popular
approval. Ismaïl was condemned by the Azhar reformers on the double
ground of his being a breaker of the law and a political tyrant. In the
spring of 1879 it had been much discussed among them in private how, and
by what means, he could be deposed or even, if there were no other way,
removed by assassination. It was the consciousness of his double peril,
both at home and from Europe, and of the opinions held at the Azhar that
determined him to appear as a Constitutionalist. Constitutionalism, it
must, moreover, be remembered, was much in the air just then not only in
Egypt, but at Constantinople, where an assembly had met convoked by
decree of the Sultan only five years before. Little, therefore, as
Ismaïl was trusted by the Reformers, his new move was one of which they
could not but approve, and it was taken up and expounded by such printed
organs of opinion as had furtively begun to be established at Cairo
under their direction. Apart from the Azhar, there were not a few of the
high officials who at this time were Constitutionalists, notably Sherif
Pasha, Ali Pasha Mubarak and Mahmud Bey Sami el Barodi. Nor was this
all. The Khedive's heir apparent and eventual successor, Mohammed
Tewfik, had come under Jemal-ed-din's potent influence, and through him
was in close communication with the Reformers, and had given them
repeated pledges that if ever he came to the Khedivial throne he
would govern on strictly constitutional lines. Ismaïl's latest
Ministry, which lasted three months, included Tewfik and Sherif,
Constitutionalists both, and they were actually in charge of the
administration when the old Khedive was deposed.
Tewfik's accession was therefore greeted by Jemal-ed-din and the
Reformers as a stroke of good fortune, and, though they regretted that
it had not been in the power of the Egyptians themselves to depose the
tyrant, they looked forward to the new _régime_ with the confident
expectation of men who had at last obtained a lever to their wishes. The
new Khedive, however, like many another heir apparent when he has
succeeded to power, was not long in changing his opinion, and a month
had hardly elapsed before he had forgotten his promises and betrayed his
friends. Tewfik's character was one of extreme weakness. The son of a
woman who had been a servant only in his father's house, he had been
from his childhood treated as of small account by Ismaïl and brought up
by his mother in bodily fear of the unscrupulous Khedive, and in those
habits of insincerity and dissimulation which in the East are the
traditional safeguards of the unprotected. He had grown up in this way,
in the harem more than with men, and had been unable to rid himself of a
certain womanish timidity which prompted him always to yield his opinion
in the presence of a stronger will than his own, and after yielding, to
regain his ground, if possible, by indirect means and covertly as is the
habit of women. He had, too, a large share of the womanish quality of
jealousy and of the love of small vengeances. Otherwise, in his domestic
life he was well-conducted as compared with most of his predecessors,
and not unadorned with respectable virtues. As a ruler his was too
negative a character not to be a danger to those who had to deal with
him. His first impulse was always to conceal the truth and to place upon
others the blame of any failure that might have occurred by his fault.
His resentments were shown not by open displeasure, but by tale-bearing
and false suggestion and the setting of one against another where he
desired to prevail or be revenged. It has been said of him that he was
never sincere, and that no one ever trusted him who was not betrayed.
When therefore on his accession Tewfik found himself placed between two
forces with opposite ends in view, the force of his reforming friends
urging him to fulfil his constitutional promises, and the force of the
consulates forbidding him to part with any of his power, a power they
intended to exercise in his name themselves, he consented first to his
Minister Sherif's suggestion that he should issue a decree granting a
Constitution and then at the instance of the Consuls refused to sign it.
This led to Sherif's resignation, and the substitution in his place of a
nominee of the Consulates, Riaz Pasha, on whom these counted to carry
out their ideas of financial reform while leaving him full power, under
the Rescript of 1878, to carry on the internal administration as he
would, without check from any Council or Assembly, in the Khedive's
name. The weakness shown by the Khedive in this, the first important
decision of his reign, was the cause of all his future troubles. Had he
remained loyal to his promises to the Reformers and to his Ministers,
and summoned at that time a Council of Notables, he would have had his
subjects enthusiastically with him and would have been spared the
intrigues and counter intrigues which marked the next two years and
prepared the way for the revolution of 1882. As it was, he found himself
by his compliance deprived of all authority, and treated as a mere dummy
prince by Consuls whose will he had obeyed and by his new Minister.
The character of Riaz has been much debated. At the time of my visit to
Egypt in the autumn of 1881, his name was in execration with the
Nationalists as the author of the violent but abortive measures which
had been taken for their repression, but as I now think in part
unjustly. Riaz was a man of the old _régime_ and as such a disbeliever
in any but the most absolute forms of government, and he carried on the
administration while in power according to the received methods which
had prevailed in Ismaïl's time, by espionage, police rule, arrests, and
deportations. But he was neither unjust nor personally cruel, and he was
certainly animated throughout his public career by a real sense of
patriotism. His idea in taking office under the joint control of the
English and French Consulates, and the assistance he gave them in
opposition to the popular will, was, as he has since assured me, simply
to recover Egypt from its financial misfortunes and redeem the debt and
so get rid as speedily as possible of the foreign intervention, nor is
there any doubt that in the first year of his being in office great
progress had been made in relieving the fellahin from their financial
burdens. But the process of redemption must in any case have been a very
slow one, and there is no probability that he would have succeeded
either in freeing Egypt from the tutelage imposed on it or even of
seeing the grosser evils of the administration which still weighed upon
the people sensibly relieved. The _régime_ of the Joint Control which
Riaz served looked solely to finance and troubled itself hardly at all
about other matters. The fellahin were still governed mainly by the
kurbash, the courts of justice were abominably corrupt, the landed
classes were universally in debt and were losing their lands to their
creditors, and the alien caste of Turks and Circassians still lorded it
over the whole country. There was no sign during the period of anything
in the shape of moral improvement encouraged by the Government or even
of improvement in the administrative system. This was the weak side of
the Anglo-French _régime_ and the cause of its failure to win popular
favour. Nevertheless, it may be questioned whether the crisis would have
come as speedily as it did, but for the Khedive's own insincerities and
intrigues against his Minister. It was his character, as I have
explained, to yield outwardly to pressure but at the same time to seek
to regain his end by other means. Thus it happened that he had hardly
taken Riaz to his counsels before he began to intrigue against him. He
was jealous of his authority and grudged the power that he had given to
his too independent Minister. This is the true history of the series of
crises through which Egypt passed in 1881, including, to a large extent,
the military troubles which ended in Riaz' fall from power.
The intervention of the army during the winter of 1880-81 as a political
force in Egypt is so important a matter that it needs careful
explanation. As an element of discontent, it may be said to date from
the disastrous campaign in Abyssinia which destroyed in it the Khedivial
prestige, and at the same time by the financial difficulties it had
involved made the pay of the soldiers precarious and irregular. The men
who returned from the campaign had no longer any respect for their
generals who had shown themselves incompetent, and the subordinate
officers for the most part made common cause against them with the men.
This came about the more naturally because the higher posts in the army
were occupied exclusively by the Turkish-speaking "Circassian" class
which at that time monopolized official power, while the common soldiers
and the officers to the rank of captain were almost as exclusively drawn
from the Arabic-speaking fellahin population. The class feeling became
strong when it was precisely these that were mulcted of their pay, while
the Circassians continued to enjoy their much larger salaries
undiminished. During the last three years, therefore, of Ismaïl's reign
the rank and file of the army had fully shared the general discontent of
the country, and there had been conspiracies, never made public, among
the lower officers which at one moment very nearly came to the point of
violent action. A leader in this class feeling in the army was, as early
as 1877, Ahmed Bey Arabi, whose rank as lieutenant-colonel, a very
unusual one to be held by a fellah, gave him a position of exceptional
influence with his Arabic-speaking fellow countrymen. A short biography
of this remarkable man will not be here out of place.
Arabi was born in 1840, the son of a small village sheykh, the owner of
eight and a half acres of land, at Horiyeh, near Zagazig, where his
family had been long established and enjoyed a certain local
consideration of a semi-religious kind. Like many other village sheykhs
they claimed a strain of Seyyid blood in their otherwise purely fellah
lineage, and had a tradition of being, on that account, somewhat
superior to their rustic neighbours. How far this claim was a valid
one--and it has been disputed--I do not know, but it had at least the
effect of giving them a desire for better religious education than is to
be found in the Delta villages, and Arabi, like his father, was sent as
a youth to Cairo and was a student there for two years at the Azhar. At
the age of fourteen he was taken for a soldier, and as he was a tall,
well-grown lad and Saïd Pasha, the then Viceroy, had a scheme for
training the sons of village sheykhs as officers, he was pushed on
through the lower ranks of the army, and at the early age of seventeen
became lieutenant, captain at eighteen, major at nineteen, and Caimakam,
lieutenant-colonel, at twenty. This rapid and unexampled advancement in
the case of a fellah was due in part to the protection of the French
general under whom he was serving, Suliman Pasha el Franzawi, but still
more to the favour shown by the Viceroy, who affected to be, like the
mass of his subjects, an Egyptian, not merely a member of the alien
Turkish caste, and wished to have fellah officers about him. Arabi, a
presentable young fellow, even so far enjoyed his favour as to be named
his A. D. C., and in this capacity he accompanied Saïd to Medina the
year before his death. It was during this close intercourse with the
Viceroy that he acquired his first political ideas, which were those of
equality as between class and class, and of the respect due to the
fellah as the preponderating element in Egyptian nationality. It is this
particular advocacy of fellah rights which distinguished Arabi from the
other reformers of his day. The Azhar movement was one of general
Mohammedan reform, without distinction of race. Arabi's was essentially
a race movement and as such far more distinctly national and destined to
be far more popular.
The unexpected death of his master, Saïd, was a great blow to Arabi's
hopes. Under Ismaïl the favour shown to the fellah officers was
withdrawn, and all preferment was once more given to the Circassians.
Arabi found himself treated with scant courtesy by these, and was given
only subordinate duties to perform in the transport service and
semi-civilian posts. This threw him into the ranks of the discontented
and made him more than ever the advocate of the rights of his own class.
He was eloquent and able to expound his views in the sort of language
his countrymen understood and appreciated, not very precise language
perhaps, but illustrated with tropes and metaphors and texts from the
Koran, which his Azhar education supplied. He thus exercised a
considerable influence over those with whom he came in contact. During
this period he came a good deal into the society of Europeans,
especially at Alexandria, where he had been sent on business, not
altogether military, connected with the Khedive's Daira. His relations
with these were friendly, and throughout his career he remained free
from the least taint of fanatical intolerance in regard to Christians.
On points of religion, though his practice was strict, he belonged to
the largest and most liberal school of Mohammedan interpretation, and
he was essentially a humanitarian in his ideas of the fraternity of
nations and creeds. He knew no language, however, but his own, and
maintained his integrity free from the European vices which are so
easily acquired.
In the Abyssinian war Arabi saw some service, but only on the
communication lines between Massawa and the front, and he returned from
the campaign like all the rest, incensed at the way in which it had been
mismanaged. It was this that turned his attention decidedly to politics
and gave a wider scope to his indignation now principally directed
against the Khedive. This was intensified when he found himself
arrested, with another fellah officer, Ali Bey Roubi, on a false charge
of having been concerned in the attack on Nubar, a manoeuvre of
Ismaïl's intended to screen his own part in the affair; and, after his
release, he for a moment joined with others in a plan which, however,
came to nothing, of deposing the Khedive. It is probable that, if Europe
had not intervened when it did, this result would have ultimately
happened, either through the action of the army or perhaps by Ismaïl's
assassination, for such a solution too was at one time seriously
discussed at the Azhar. All the Reforming party it is certain, and the
soldiers with them, rejoiced at Ismaïl's downfall. It is a mistake also
to suppose that Arabi was at the outset hostile to the new _régime_.
Neither with Tewfik nor with the European Consuls had he the smallest
quarrel. On the contrary, he saw in Tewfik a friendly influence, and in
the Consuls protectors for the fellahin from their old oppressors.
Moreover, he had obtained the command of a regiment of the guard, and
was quartered where he would most have desired to be, in the Abbassiyeh
barracks at Cairo. Had moderate prudence been used in dealing with the
soldiers' very real grievances, and a War Minister less hostile to the
fellah officers been appointed, there is every reason to believe that
neither he nor any of his fellow officers would have thought of taking
up an attitude hostile to the Government. Action in self defence was
forced upon them, and for this the Khedive's jealousy of Riaz was mainly
responsible.
The trouble came about in this way: when the new Ministry under Riaz was
formed, Osman Rifky, a Turkish pasha of the old school, was made
Minister of War. He was an extreme representative of the class which for
centuries had looked upon Egypt as their property and the fellahin as
their slaves and servants. His attitude, therefore, towards the fellah
officers was from the first a hostile one, and in the appointments made
by him it was to the Circassian, not the fellah, element in the army
that preference was always given. The soldiers too were angry at being
made use of for purposes outside their military duty, and subjected to a
kind of _corvée_ of hard labour such as the digging of canals and
agricultural work on the Khedivial estates, to which they had become
unaccustomed, and it was for taking their part and refusing to allow the
men of his regiment to be ordered away to dig the Towfikiyeh Canal that
Arabi first incurred the Minister's displeasure. There were questions
too of pay withheld which called for redress, and on the 20th of May,
1880, a first petition was sent in by the fellah officers, of whom Arabi
was one, setting forth their grievances.
The address included nothing political, and was made in proper form to
the Ministry of War, and led, through the intervention of the French and
English Consuls, to an official inquiry which proved the justice of the
complaints. In this matter the French Consul, M. de Ring, took the part,
as was just, of the officers, and from that time gave them to a certain
extent his protection, especially when during the course of the Inquiry
he had found himself in personal altercation with Riaz. Arabi in all
this, while taking a leading part, was prudent and moderate, and his
conduct was approved by the Consuls. Since his return to Cairo, as
Colonel of the Fourth Regiment, he had renewed his acquaintance with the
reformers of the Azhar and the Constitutional party, and through a
mutual friend and Arabi's fellow officer Ali Bey Roubi, was in
communication with two of the Ministers, Ali Pasha Mubarak and Mahmud
Bey Sami. These, though Constitutionalists and adherents of Sherif
Pasha, had retained their places as Ministers of Public Works and
Religious Foundations (_Awkaf_) when Sherif had been dismissed. By
Mahmud Sami, Arabi and the fellah officers were especially befriended.
It was in this conjuncture of affairs that the Khedive, seeing in it
the elements of an intrigue against Riaz, put himself in communication
with the officers through the intermediary of his A. D. C., Ali Bey
Fehmi, an officer of fellah origin but attached through his Circassian
wife to the Palace, and Colonel of the 1st regiment of the Guard. This
Ali Fehmi was a very worthy young officer, and though he had not taken
any part in the petition sent in to the Ministry and was without
political bias, was already on friendly terms with Arabi and the rest,
and had no difficulty in persuading them that the Khedive too was on
their side in the quarrel, and had sent him to warn them that worse
things were being designed against them by Osman Rifky and Riaz, and
that unless they could procure the dismissal of these they would always
be in danger. Arabi was the easier persuaded of this because Riaz had
already had many of the Constitutionalists arrested, and some of these
had been friends of his own. Sheykh Jemal-ed-din had been summarily
dealt with, and a young landowner of the Sherkiyeh, Hassan Mousa el
Akkad, a special friend of Arabi, had been deported only a short time
before to the White Nile, for the mere reason that in response to an
invitation publicly made by Sir Rivers Wilson he had petitioned against
the Moukabalah confiscation. It was therefore suggested to the officers
that they should be beforehand with Osman Rifky and should petition for
his dismissal, a request which the Khedive would view favourably.
The affair came to a crisis about the end of the year 1880, when one
evening, Arabi being with other officers at the house of Nejm el Din
Pasha, he learned that it had been decided at the Ministry that he and
his fellow Colonel of the Black Regiment, Abd-el-Aal Bey Helmi, were to
be deprived of their commands and dismissed the service; and almost at
the same time news was brought him that Ali Fehmi was at his own house
and desired to see him. On returning home, therefore, he found Ali Fehmi
waiting for him, and with him Abd-el-Aal who confirmed what he had
heard, and after taking counsel it was decided that they should all
three together--for Ali Fehmi expressed himself willing to throw in his
lot with theirs--go to the Prime Minister and insist upon an end being
put to their persecution by the dismissal of Osman Rifky; and this the
next day they did. Arabi's own account given to me of their interview
with Riaz is interesting and I have no doubt correct: "We went," he
says, "with our petition to the Ministry of the Interior and asked to
see Riaz. We were shown into an outer room and waited while the Minister
read our document in the inner room. Presently he came out. 'Your
petition,' he said, 'is _muhlik_, a hanging matter. What is it you want?
to change the Ministry? And what would you put in its place? Whom do you
propose to carry on the government?' And I answered him, '_Ya saat el
Basha_, is Egypt then a woman who has borne but eight sons and then
become barren?' By this I meant himself and the seven Ministers under
him. He was angry at this, but in the end said he would see into our
affair, and so we left him."
At the Council of Ministers which assembled immediately after this
incident the Khedive played a treacherous part. In order to involve the
Ministry in an open quarrel with the officers, in which he knew the
officers would have M. de Ring's protection, he proposed that they
should be arrested and placed upon their trial by Court Martial, but to
this Osman Rifky objected because he also would thus be put on trial,
while Riaz was against making it a case of public scandal at all, and
took the officers' part. It was pointed out however to Riaz privately
that his opposition would be misinterpreted, and would be looked upon as
an act disloyal to the Khedive, and he withdrew his opposition, and a
compromise was come to according to which Osman Rifky was to be left to
deal with the officers summarily, and according to methods common in
Ismaïl's reign. No open action therefore was taken against the officers,
and the case was left undecided by the Council.
What followed is well known. Some days later the three Colonels who had
signed the petition received an invitation to attend at the Kasr el Nil
Palace to arrange with the Minister what part their regiment should take
in some festivities which were being organized for the Princess Jamila's
wedding. Arrived there, they found a number of their superior officers,
Circassians, with Osman Rifky, and were at once arrested, disarmed, and
insulted. Arabi has always maintained that it was intended to put them
on board a steamer which was lying in the river outside, and have them
conveyed up the Nile and drowned; and I see no reason to doubt that
this was the case. Osman Rifky's object was to avoid a trial, which
would have exposed his own tyrannical proceedings, and it would
doubtless have been reported that the officers had been dismissed the
service and gone to their homes. Be this however as it may, they were
speedily released by the soldiers of Ali Fehmi's regiment, who, under
the command of their major, Mohammed Obeyd, a good and loyal man who was
afterwards killed at Tel-el-Kebir, marched down on news being brought
and forced the Palace doors. The Circassian Generals then beat a retreat
as they best could, and Osman Rifky was forced to an undignified flight
through a ground-floor window, whereupon the three Colonels marched back
at the head of their troops, and with drums beating, to their barracks.
Here they drew up a letter telling what had happened, and explaining
that their action had been one of self-defence only, and in no way
endangered the safety of any one, and addressed it to M. de Ring,
begging his intercession with the Khedive, and that another Minister
might be appointed in Osman Rifky's place, to which in the course of the
day the Khedive readily acceded. It is certain, however, that he and M.
de Ring together made a strong effort to get Riaz also dismissed, on the
plea that as Prime Minister he was principally responsible for the
disorder which had happened. Nevertheless Riaz was too strongly
supported by the Financial Controllers and by the German Consul General,
and, I think, by Malet, who was at that time, as I have recorded, by no
means favourably disposed to the officers, and on the matter being
referred to London and Paris the Khedive's wish was disregarded, and
shortly after M. de Ring was recalled by his Government in disgrace.
The date of this first military disturbance at the Kasr el Nil was 1st
February, 1881. It took place while I was still in Egypt, but after I
had left Cairo, and I do not remember to have heard Arabi's name
mentioned before it happened. The public part, however, that he played
that brought him into immediate notoriety, and at once his name was in
all men's mouths as that of a man who had been able successfully to defy
the Government and bring about a change of Ministers. His position in a
very few weeks became one of power in the country, or at least of
imputed power, and, as the custom is in Egypt, petitions of all kinds
poured in upon him from persons who had suffered wrong and who sought
his aid to get justice. The fact that he had appeared in the affair as
champion of fellah wrongs against the Turkish ruling class gave him
popularity outside of Cairo, and many of the Notables and country
sheykhs put themselves into communication with him. To all he returned
what good answers he could and help as far as his limited power
extended, and wherever men met him his fine presence, attractive smile,
and dignified eloquence in conversation conveyed a favourable
impression.
In personal appearance Arabi was at that time singularly well endowed
for the part he was called upon to play in Egyptian history as
representative of his race. A typical fellah, tall, heavy-limbed, and
somewhat slow in his movements, he seemed to symbolize that massive
bodily strength which is so characteristic of the laborious peasant of
the Lower Nile. He had nothing in him of the alertness of a soldier, and
there was a certain deliberation in his gesture which gave him the
dignity one so often sees in village sheykhs. His features in repose
were dull, and his eyes had an abstracted look like those of a dreamer,
and it was only when he smiled and spoke that one saw the kindly and
large intelligence within. Then his face became illumined as a dull
landscape by the sun. To Turkish and Circassian pashas this type of man
seemed wholly negligible, that of the peasant boor they had for
generations dominated and held in slavery and forced to labour for them
without pay, and it seemed impossible to them he should be used
otherwise than as a tool in their astute hands. Riaz from first to last
despised him, and even the intellectual Reformers of the Azhar took
little count of him as a political force. But with his own peasant class
his rusticity was all in his favour. He was one of themselves, they
perceived, but with their special qualities intensified and made
glorious by the power they credited him with, and by the semi-religious
culture he had acquired at the Azhar superior to their own. It must be
remembered that in all Egyptian history, for at least three hundred
years, no mere fellah had ever risen to a position of any political
eminence in Egypt, or had appeared in the light of a reformer, or
whispered a word of possible revolt. I doubt, however, whether his
qualities alone, which were after all rather negative ones, or his
talents, of which he had as yet given no proof, would have sufficed to
bring him to the front as a National leader, but for the unwise
persecution to which he was subjected by Riaz in the months following
the affair of Kasr el Nil, and which, through the intrigues of the
Minister's political enemies, he was always able to thwart and
circumvent. The most important of these, and the man in the best
position to warn him of his dangers was the new Minister of War, Mahmud
Bey Sami, who, through M. de Ring's influence, had been given Osman
Rifky's succession, and who, as one of the ex-Minister Sherif's party,
was a strong Constitutionalist. Though not personally acquainted with
Arabi hitherto, he had already been friendly disposed towards him, and
with one of the fellah officers, Ali Bey Roubi, he was on terms of
intimacy. Having become Minister of War, he was in a position to help
them actively, and to give them notice of designs against them such as
came to his ears; and he was able to do this the more effectively
because he still saw little of Arabi personally, though remaining in
touch with him through Ali Roubi. He had made the officers a general
promise that if at any time the Khedive joined actively against them
they would know it, even if he did not warn them directly, by his
retirement from the Ministry.
Mahmud Samiel Barodi's part in the revolution of that year was a
determining one in the course it took. Of a Circassian family long
established in the country, and so of the traditional ruling class, he
was, like Sherif Pasha, a reformer and a patriot. Intellectually, he was
far superior to Arabi, and was indeed one of the most cultivated
intelligences in Egypt, with a good knowledge of literature, both Arabic
and Turkish, and especially of Egyptian history, besides being an
elegant and distinguished poet. English writers, following the lead, or
mislead, of the Blue Books, talk of him only as an intriguer, but he was
something much more than this, and it must be remembered that in
intriguing, as he undoubtedly did here against Riaz, he acted against a
Minister who was of a different party from his own, and whom he had not
elected to serve. At the time Riaz took office in 1879, Mahmud Sami was
already in the Ministry, and there had been an understanding that he
and Ali Mubarak, who were Constitutionalists, should remain on an
independent footing as far as their own departments were concerned. In
the spring of 1881 they were both undoubtedly intriguing against Riaz,
but it was with the object of restoring their own party chief Sherif
Pasha, to power. This puts a different complexion upon Mahmud Sami's
action, and I fancy might find many a parallel in the annals of our own
English Cabinets. His part, as I see it, throughout the troubles that
were coming was a perfectly loyal one, both to the Constitutional and
the National cause, and he paid dearer for his constancy, for he was a
rich man and so had more to lose, than any other concerned in the
rebellion.
The Khedive's part in the next seven months was far less straightforward.
He seems throughout to have been torn with irresolutions, jealousies,
fears, and ambitions. Riaz' enemies had suggested to him that that
masterful Minister was plotting against him to supplant him as Khedive,
an altogether absurd suspicion which he nevertheless at times gave ear
to. At other times Arabi's growing popularity aroused his jealousy, and
he was constantly shifting from one dread to the other, while his
ambition was to regain his own or rather his father's lost authority.
The Anglo-French control irked him sorely, and he knew that by the bulk
of his subjects he was disliked and despised. His Circassian
_entourage_, the men of his Court, were all violent against the fellah
officers and were constantly urging him to take strong measures against
them, while Sherif Pasha and the Constitutionalists were for his making
use of them on the lines already attempted to get rid of Riaz and the
Consular subjection in which he lay, by another military demonstration.
Such was the state of things in the month of August when the general
ferment in the Mohammedan world, caused by the French invasion of Tunis,
brought matters at Cairo to a definite crisis.