Ottoman Egypt
Ottoman Egypt was an administrative division of the Ottoman Empire after the conquest of Mamluk Egypt by the Ottomans in 1517. The Ottomans administered Egypt as a province of their empire. It remained formally an Ottoman province until 1914, though in practice it became increasingly autonomous during the 19th century and was under de facto British control from 1882.
Egypt always proved a difficult province for the Ottoman Sultans to control, due in part to the continuing power and influence of the Mamluks, the Egyptian military caste who had ruled the country for centuries. As such, Egypt remained semi-autonomous under the Mamluks until Napoleon Bonaparte's French forces invaded in 1798. After Anglo-Turkish forces expelled the French in 1801, Muhammad Ali Pasha, an Albanian military commander of the Ottoman army in Egypt, seized power in 1805, and established a quasi-independent state.
Egypt under the Muhammad Ali dynasty remained nominally an Ottoman province. In reality, it was practically independent and went to war twice with the empire, from 1831 to 1833 and again from 1839 to 1841. The Ottoman sultan granted Egypt the status of an autonomous vassal state or Khedivate in 1867. Isma'il Pasha and Tewfik Pasha governed Egypt as a quasi-independent state under Ottoman suzerainty until the British occupation of 1882. Nevertheless, the Khedivate of Egypt remained a de jure Ottoman province until 5 November 1914, when the Sultanate of Egypt was declared a British protectorate in reaction to the Young Turks of the Ottoman Empire joining the First World War on the side of the Central Powers.
History
Early Ottoman period
After the conquest of Egypt in 1517, the Ottoman Sultan Selim I left the country. Grand Vizier Yunus Pasha was awarded the governorship of Egypt. However, the sultan soon discovered that Yunus Pasha had created an extortion and bribery syndicate, and gave the office to Hayır Bey, the former Mamluk governor of Aleppo, who had contributed to the Ottoman victory at the Battle of Marj Dabiq.The history of early Ottoman Egypt is a competition for power between the Mamluks and the representatives of the Ottoman Sultan.
The register by which a great portion of the land was a fief of the Mamluks was left unchanged, allowing the Mamluks to quickly return to positions of great influence. The Mamluk emirs were to be retained in office as heads of 12 sanjaks, into which Egypt was divided; and under the next sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent, two chambers were created, called the Greater Divan and Lesser Divan, in which both the army and the ecclesiastical authorities were represented, to aid the pasha by their deliberations. Six regiments were constituted by the conqueror Selim for the protection of Egypt; to those Suleiman added a seventh, of Circassians.
It was the practice of the Sublime Porte to change the governor of Egypt at short intervals, after a year or less. The fourth governor, Hain Ahmed Pasha, hearing that orders for his execution had come from Constantinople, endeavoured to make himself an independent ruler and had coins struck in his own name. His schemes were frustrated by two of the emirs whom he had imprisoned and who, escaping from their confinement, attacked him in his bath and attempted to kill him; although Ahmed Pasha escaped wounded, he was soon captured and executed by the Ottoman sultan's forces.
In 1519, Mamluks like the kashif of Gharbiyya, Inal al-Sayfi Tarabay, started slaughtering Arab Bedouin shaykhs like Shukr and his brother Hasan ibn Mar'i in revenge for the Bedouin betraying the Mamluks to the Ottomans. They executed another brother of the two in Cairo and at Bab al-Nasr they hoisted the heads of the two brothers. The kashif of Qalyub killed another Arab Bedouin shaykh, 'Ali al-Asmar ibn Abi'l-Shawarib. At a council of Arab shaykhs, one of the shaykhs, Husam al-Din ibn Baghdad, accused the Mamluks of murdering the Bedouin for their Ottoman sympathies.
1527 to 1610
In 1527, the first survey of Egypt under the Ottomans was made, the official copy of the former registers having perished by fire; this new survey did not come into use until 1605. Egyptian lands were divided into four classes: the sultan's domain, fiefs, land for the maintenance of the army, and lands settled on religious foundations.The constant changes in the government seem to have caused the army to get out of control at an early period of the Ottoman occupation, and at the beginning of the 17th-century mutinies became common; in 1604, governor Maktul Hacı Ibrahim Pasha was murdered by the soldiers, and his head set on the Bab Zuweila, earning him the epithet Maktul, "the Slain". The reason for these mutinies was the attempt made by successive pashas to put a stop to the extortion called the tulbah, a forced payment exacted by the troops from the inhabitants of the country by the fiction of debts requiring to be discharged, which led to grievous ill-usage.
In 1609, a conflict broke out between the army and the pasha, who had loyal regiments on his side and the Bedouins. The soldiers went so far as to choose a sultan, and to provisionally divide the regions of Cairo between them. They were defeated by the governor Kara Mehmed Pasha, who, on 5 February 1610, entered Cairo in triumph, executed the ringleaders, and banished others to Yemen, earning him the nickname Kul Kıran. Historians such as Ibn Abi al-Surur speak of this event as a second conquest of Egypt for the Ottomans. A great financial reform was then effected by Kara Mehmed Pasha, who readjusted the burdens imposed on the different communities of Egypt in accordance with their means.
17th Century
With the troubles that beset the metropolis of the Ottoman Empire, the local Mamluk beys began to dominate the Egyptian administration, being placed in charge of the treasury and given a virtual monopoly over the various provincial administrations. In addition, Mamluk beys came to hold important military positions within Egypt, giving them a power source with which to challenge Ottoman-appointed governors. The governors appointed thence came to be treated by the Egyptians with continually decreasing respect. In July 1623, an order came from the Porte dismissing Kara Mustafa Pasha, and appointing Çeşteci Ali Pasha governor in his place. The officers met the deputy of the newly appointed governor and demanded from him the customary gratuity; when the deputy refused, they sent letters to the Porte declaring that they wished to have Kara Mustafa Pasha, and not Çeşteci Ali Pasha, as governor. Meanwhile, Çeşteci Ali Pasha had arrived at Alexandria and was met by a deputation from Cairo telling him that he was not wanted. He returned a mild answer; when a rejoinder came in the same style as the first message, he had the leader of the deputation arrested and imprisoned. The garrison of Alexandria then attacked the castle and rescued the prisoner, whereupon Çeşteci Ali Pasha was compelled to reembark on his ship and escape. Shortly thereafter, a rescript arrived from Constantinople confirming Kara Mustafa Pasha in the governorship. Mustafa was succeeded by Bayram Pasha in 1626.Officers in the Ottoman Egyptian army were appointed locally from the various militias, and had strong ties to the Egyptian aristocracy. Thus Ridwan Bey, a Mamluk emir, was able to exercise de facto authority over Egypt from 1631 to 1656. In 1630, Koca Musa Pasha was the newly appointed governor, when the army took it upon themselves to depose him, in indignation at his execution of Kits Bey, an officer who was to have commanded an Egyptian force required for service in Persia. Koca Musa Pasha was given the choice of handing over the executioners to vengeance, or to resigning his place; as he refused to do the former, he was compelled to do the latter. In 1631, a rescript came from Constantinople, approving the conduct of the army and appointing Halil Pasha as Koca Musa Pasha's successor. Not only was the governor unsupported by the sultan against the troops, but each new governor regularly inflicted a fine upon his outgoing predecessor, under the name of money due to the treasury; the outgoing governor would not be allowed to leave Egypt until he had paid it. Besides the extortions to which this practice gave occasion, the country suffered greatly in these centuries from famine and pestilence. In the spring of 1619, pestilence is said to have killed 635,000 persons and, in 1643, completely desolated 230 villages.
The 17th Century saw the development of two distinct factions within Egypt who continually vied for power - the Faqari and the Qasimi. The Faqari had strong links to the Ottoman cavalry and donned white colours and used the Pomegranate as their symbol. Conversely, the Qasimi were aligned with native Egyptian troops and donned red as their colour and adopted a disc shaped symbol as their banner. By the end of the Century these factions were well established and wielded a significant amount of influence over Ottoman governors. Between 1688 and 1755, mamluk beys, allied with Bedouin and factions within the Ottoman garrison, deposed at least thirty-four governors.
Later Ottoman period
1707 to 1755
By the 18th century, the importance of the pasha was superseded by that of the Mameluk beys; two offices, those of Shaykh al-Balad and Amir al-hajj—which were held by Mamluks—represented the real headship of the community. The process by which this came about is obscure, owing to the want of good chronicles for the Turkish period of Egyptian history. In 1707, the shaykh al-balad, Qasim Iywaz, was the head of one of two Mameluke factions, the Qasimites and the Fiqarites, between whom the seeds of enmity were sown by the pasha of the time, with the result that a fight took place between the factions outside Cairo, lasting eighty days. At the end of that time, Qasim Iywaz was killed and the office which he had held was given to his son Ismail. Ismail held this office for 16 years, while the pashas were constantly being changed, and succeeded in reconciling the two factions of Mamelukes. In 1711, an event known to chroniclers as the "Great Sedition" and the "revolution" occurred, when a religious fanatic preacher began to publicly denounce the practice of praying at the graves of Sufi saints, sparking a religious movement that was not crushed for three years until 1714. In 1724, Ismail was assassinated through the machinations of the pasha, and Shirkas Bey—of the opposing faction—was elevated to the office of Sheikh al-Balad in his place. He was soon driven from his post by one of his own faction called Dhu-'l-Fiqar, and fled to Upper Egypt. After a short time, he returned at the head of an army, and in the last of the ensuing battles Shirkas Bey met his end by drowning. Dhu-'l-Fiqar was himself assassinated in 1730. His place was filled by Othman Bey, who had served as his general in this war.In 1743, Othman Bey was forced to flee from Egypt by the intrigues of two adventurers, Ibrahim and Ridwan Bey, who—when their scheme had succeeded—began a massacre of beys and others thought to be opposed to them. They proceeded to govern Egypt jointly, holding the offices of Sheikh al-Balad and Amir al-Hajj in alternate years. An attempt by one of the pashas to remove these two by a coup d'état failed, owing to the loyalty of the beys' armed supporters, who released Ibrahim and Ridwan from prison and compelled the pasha to flee to Constantinople. An attempt by a subsequent pasha, in accordance with secret orders from Constantinople, was so successful that some of the beys were killed. Ibrahim and Rilwan escaped and compelled the pasha to resign his governorship and return to Constantinople. Ibrahim was assassinated shortly afterwards by someone who had aspired to occupy one of the vacant beyships, which had instead been conferred upon Ali—who, as Ali Bey al-Kabir, was destined to play an important part in the history of Egypt. The murder of Ibrahim Bey took place in 1755, and his colleague Ridwan perished in the subsequent disputes.
Ali Bey, who had first distinguished himself by defending a caravan in Arabia against bandits, set himself the task of avenging the death of his former master Ibrahim. He spent eight years in purchasing Mamelukes and winning other adherents, exciting the suspicions of the Sheikh al-Balad Khalil Bey, who organised an attack upon him in the streets of Cairo—in consequence of which he fled to Upper Egypt. Here he met one Salib Bey, who had injuries to avenge upon Khalil Bey, and the two organised a force with which they returned to Cairo and defeated Khalil. Khalil was forced to flee to Iaifla, where for a time he concealed himself; eventually he was discovered, sent to Alexandria, and finally strangled. After Ali Bey's victory in 1760, he was made Sheikh al-Balad. He executed the murderer of his former master Ibrahim; but the resentment which this act aroused among the beys caused him to leave his post and flee to Syria, where he won the friendship of the governor of Acre, Daher al-Umar, who obtained for him the goodwill of the Porte and reinstatement in his post as Sheikh al-Balad.