Napoleon in Egypt (24 page)

Prior to the French occupation, Cairo had been policed in its own rather lackadaisical manner. The city was divided up into a number of separate walled and gated quarters, each of which was presided over by its own sheik, who was expected by the Mamelukes to maintain some semblance of public order, though that was liable to be disturbed at any moment by the Mamelukes themselves. Napoleon saw this division of the city as a threat to the French authority, and therefore ordered Barthelemy to make breaches in the walls which sealed off the quarters, and to destroy the gates.

Barthelemy took to riding around Cairo on a donkey with a large scimitar dangling from his side, at the head of his similarly mounted troop. The scimitar was not for display purposes, and malefactors (or even those simply suspected of crimes) were liable to be beheaded on the spot. Napoleon was now willing to tolerate such behavior; after his initial attempts to ingratiate himself with the people of Cairo, he had quickly become exasperated at the lack of respectful response—from the devious sheiks on the
divan
to the distrustful ordinary citizens. In a report to the Directory, he concluded: “Cairo, which has more than 300,000 inhabitants, has the most villainous population in the world.”
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From the outset, Magallon had advised him that the Egyptians regarded compassion in a ruler as a sign of weakness, advice that Napoleon had initially been unwilling to follow. He was determined that the French should demonstrate their progressive ideas by sympathetic example. Just as in Alexandria, he gave orders to all commanders that soldiers who committed an offense against the local people—whether it be theft, lack of respect for Islam, or rape—should be clapped in irons and even executed. But now that he realized progressive ideas could not be instilled in the Egyptians overnight, he began applying to them a similar regime to the military discipline he imposed upon his own men. Advising Menou at Rosetta, he wrote: “The Turks
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can only be ruled with the greatest severity; every day I have five or six heads cut off in the streets of Cairo . . . We must adopt a manner which makes these people obey us; and for these people, to obey means to fear.”
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Although he was still intent upon introducing progressive ideas, he now had no qualms about using traditional Oriental methods to impose them. The irony of this appears to have escaped him.

At the same time, he continued to proclaim his sympathetic attitude towards Islam, informing a senior Muslim cleric that his aim was “to unite all the wise and learned men of the country, and establish a proper overall government, founded upon the principles of the Koran, which alone are true and which alone can bring happiness to mankind.”
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He was conciliatory in his approach to the muftis and religious leaders of the Al-Azhar mosque, even going so far as to proclaim his own belief in the principles of Islam, and attempting to demonstrate his deep understanding of the Koran. This last was not quite so laughable as it sounds. In his history El-Djabarti dismisses Napoleon’s proclamations to the Egyptians, with their Islamic pretensions, ridiculing their awkward and un-Koranic Arabic; but in fact the faulty Arabic is entirely due to Napoleon’s Oriental scholars who translated his original French. Several modern Arabic scholars have remarked on the fidelity of the Koranic tone in Napoleon’s original French versions, a fidelity which he had acquired during his intense study of the Koran on his journey across the Mediterranean.

Once again, Napoleon saw himself as following in the footsteps of his great hero:

When Alexander arrived in Egypt, they ran to him, greeting this great man as a liberator. When he marched for fifteen days into the desert, from Alexandria to the Temple of Ammon, and was declared the son of Jupiter by the priestess, he demonstrated that he understood these people: he played on their deepest inclination, which was for their religion. This did more to assure his conquest than if he had built twenty castles and brought in 100,000 Macedonian troops.
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Likewise, Napoleon had understood from the outset that he could only rule Egypt with the aid of Islam. He too had come as a liberator, but initially at least, the success of his conquest would depend upon his adherence to Muslim principles, as well as leaving the Islamic structure of society untouched. And this would have to be seen to be the case: in other words, he would have to gain the blessing of the muftis. Napoleon was willing to go to great lengths to acquire this seal of legitimacy for French rule, and for this reason he approached the muftis with immense tact, using all his considerable charisma and intelligence in an effort to win them over to his cause. In no time his charm offensive began to bear fruit. Napoleon remembered in his official memoirs (in which he was in the habit of referring to himself in the third person):

The sheiks were old men, worthy of great respect for their morals, their knowledge, their riches and even their noble birth. Every day, at the setting of the sun, they and the
ulema
of the Al-Azhar mosque made a habit of calling at the palace of Elfi Bey, before the hour of prayer. Their entourage stretched all the way across Ezbekiyah Square: they arrived on their richly harnessed mules, surrounded by their servants and a great many attendants armed with sticks. The French soldiers on guard would present arms, according them full military honors. When they arrived in the salon, they would be received with the utmost respect by the staff officers and interpreters, and would then be served with sherbet or coffee. A few moments later the general-in-chief himself would enter and sit down amongst them on the same divan. He would seek to gain their trust by discussing with them the Koran, asking them to explain to him principal passages and revealing his great admiration for the Prophet. When they left they went on to the mosques, where the people were assembled, and here they spoke to them of all their hopes, calming the mistrust and fears of the entire population.
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Napoleon recounts the arguments and flatteries by which he sought to win over the wise men and
ulema
of the Al-Azhar mosque. No approach was too shameless. He softened them up with a blatant appeal to their patriotism:

Why has the Arabic nation submitted to the Turks? How come that fertile Egypt and holy Arabia are under the domination of a people from the Caucasus [i.e., the Mamelukes]? If the prophet descended from the heavens today where would he go? Mecca? This would not be at the center of the Muslim empire. Constantinople? This is a profane spot where there are more infidels than believers: here he would be amongst his enemies. No, he would prefer the blessed waters of the Nile, he would come to live at the Al-Azhar mosque.

At this, the venerable old men nodded in approval, exclaiming: “How true, how true!”
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Or so Napoleon would have us believe in his memoirs. However, the evidence suggests that something similar must indeed have taken place, though perhaps without quite such a thoroughly acquiescent audience. As if all this was not preposterous enough, Napoleon now tried to persuade the assembled worthies of the Al-Azhar mosque that he was “destined” to arrive in Egypt, something that would not have been quite so difficult as it sounds, due to the fact that he certainly believed this himself. Soon, “their fondness for Napoleon was evident, and already they accepted that in principle he was a true Moslem.” Napoleon proceeded to elaborate his argument: “The French would never have been able to conquer you people of the true faith, if their leader had not been under the special protection of the Prophet; the Mameluke army was invincible, the bravest in all the Orient. . . . This great revolution [the French victory] was written in several passages of the Koran.”
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As a result of these arguments, Napoleon became known by the muftis as Sultan El-Kebir, the great ruler. He was flattered, though the degree of irony in this usage is unclear. The muftis eventually agreed to issue a
fatwa
recognizing the French as the legitimate rulers of Egypt, on condition that Napoleon and the French army converted to Islam. Napoleon, for his part, had no objection to this, and felt that with a little persuasion he could sell this to his army as a mere formality. After all, his men could hardly object on religious grounds as they were not practicing Christians. But the muftis insisted that such a move should be more than a formality: the French would all have to be circumcised and swear to abstain from alcohol. At this stage Napoleon was forced to concede that such a move was impossible: no French soldier would ever swear to abstain from alcohol. Even so, he continued to press the muftis at his afternoon meetings, until finally they found their way to a suitably devious concession: because the French were not Christians, although they were not Muslims they could be recognized as allies of the Muslim religion.

Napoleon appeared to have won his point. But what precisely
was
his point? In his long letter to Kléber, he would later write: “We must lull to sleep this fanaticism before we can eradicate it.”
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Despite all his claims to respect Islam, his dealings with it were cynical—more so than perhaps he could admit to himself at this stage, when he still saw himself as following the example of Alexander the Great, who at least partially sought to assimilate his army to the ways and customs of the countries it conquered. Yet despite himself and all his overweening ambition, Napoleon’s agenda was more than power, more even than the establishment of an empire. Concomitant with all this was his seemingly benevolent wish to “civilize” Egypt, to introduce the latest progressive Western ideas. But was this combination of aims in any way compatible?

During his first few weeks in Cairo, Napoleon set in motion an extensive program of reform. He was faced with a city where piles of rubbish lay festering in all open spaces (waiting to be carried away by the annual flooding of the Nile), where one in five of the population had at least one sightless milky eye, where the dead were buried in open spaces, their graves desecrated by the packs of scavenging dogs. Both the conditions and the physical state of the population harked back to that of medieval times, a world which had largely disappeared from Europe 300 years previously.

On the very day of his entry into the city, Napoleon ordered the establishment of four hospitals, capable of treating 600 patients, “all to be ready in eight days.”
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New baking ovens and bakeries were constructed. Soon burial was no longer permitted within the walls of Cairo, and the engineers were set to work mapping the entire city. According to Nicolas Turc, “Each house door was ordered to have an illuminated lantern hanging outside it at night, and if the night patrols found one without a lantern they would hammer a nail in the door, so that next morning a punishment could be inflicted on the owner.”
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Once the streets were illuminated, a concerted operation was launched against the packs of rabid dogs, which in the course of one night were all poisoned—a move which bemused the locals. El-Djabarti was convinced that this was simply an act of revenge against the dogs for the lack of respect they showed the French, “because when they passed through the streets at night the dogs followed them barking.”
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Meanwhile, further public health measures were taken: military doctors identified the Egyptian eye disease as a virulent indigenous strain of ophthalmia. At the same time efforts were made to render the streets more hygienic, and the dumping of refuse inside the city was only permitted at allotted spots, which were cleared daily.

All this was just the beginning. Yet such a program required money, and this was soon in short supply, though it is difficult to account for precisely why this should have been so. Assuming that Napoleon had spent all the three million francs he had initially received from the Swiss exchequer in Berne, as well as the sums purloined from other European exchequers, on outfitting his expedition before it set out, there was still the seven million francs (plus quantities of gold and silver plate) he had taken from Malta. Despite this, there is no denying that he soon claimed to be short of cash in Cairo, and all the indications are that this claim was genuine. During the Italian campaign Napoleon had always been able to requisition treasures from local cities and castles, but in Cairo he found that the Mamelukes had long since drained the exchequer dry. Meanwhile, the army’s wage bill amounted to one million francs a month, a bill it appears he could not pay. (The soldiers’ main currency in the bazaars continued to be their buttons.) Fortunately food was plentiful, and suppliers were issued promissory notes for rice, beans, lentils and vegetables, as well as sheep and goats brought in from outside the city. Napoleon sent an urgent message to Kléber in Alexandria, ordering him to issue promissory notes and redeem all the gold that had been issued to local merchants; this was to be dispatched to Cairo, where it would be minted into coins. Meanwhile, in an effort to raise some immediate cash, he ordered a tax on all wealthy merchants. Barthelemy’s local knowledge was used to assess how much individual merchants could afford, then he and his brigade of “policemen” were simply dispatched to collect it. Napoleon even felt that this move might increase his popularity amongst the downtrodden urban poor, who resented the wealth of these fellow countrymen whom they felt to be living at their expense.

When Napoleon heard that the wives of many of the wealthy Mamelukes were still roaming the countryside outside Cairo in camel caravans, abandoned by their masters and preyed on by the Bedouin, he issued an armistice allowing them to return to their palaces in Cairo. But for this privilege each of them would be required to pay a large “ransom”: in this way he hoped to gain access to the treasures which he knew had been concealed in the Mameluke palaces and elsewhere. When Setty-Nefissa, Murad Bey’s wife, arrived back at her palace, Napoleon’s young aide Eugene Beauharnais, the son of his wife, Josephine, was sent to pay a courtesy call, and at the same time to inform her of the sum she would be required to pay. Setty-Nefissa was a powerful woman, having been married to the great Mameluke ruler Ali Bey before she became Murad Bey’s wife. Besides being extremely rich, she was also respected throughout Cairo, and even in these difficult times she continued to maintain Murad Bey’s numerous household, which included “a harem containing fifty women of all countries and all colors.” Napoleon reports that when Sub-Lieutenant Beauharnais arrived at her palace, “all the slaves and servants wanted to see the fine young Frenchman. Setty-Nefissa received the messenger from Sultan El-Kebir [Napoleon] with dignity and grace. She led him into the harem, treated him with great kindness, did him the honor of serving him with a superb meal, and gave him a very valuable ring.”
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Yet all this sumptuous hospitality proved of no avail, and Setty-Nefissa was still required to pay 600,000 francs.