Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt

On my way to Egypt an incident occurred which I shall have to return to when its full importance comes to be considered. At Charing Cross Station I found Dilke and his private secretary, Austin Lee, on their way, as I was, to Paris, and I made the whole journey in their company. Dilke that day was in the highest possible spirits. His intimate friend Gambetta had just, 15th November, succeeded St. Hilaire as French Prime Minister; and Dilke, who had been for the last six months the English Commissioner at Paris for the negotiation of a renewal of the Commercial Treaty with France without having succeeded in concluding it, was now returning to his work confident that with the change at the Quai d'Orsay he should no longer have any difficulty. Gambetta, on his side, had a plan of his own in which Dilke as Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office could be of the greatest use to him. St. Hilaire had made a terrible mess of the Tunis invasion and had left all North Africa in a blaze for his successor to deal with. Gambetta had come into office determined to use strong measures, and, as they say, to "grasp the nettle" with both hands. He was filled with apprehension of a general Pan-Islamic rising, and saw in the National movement at Cairo only a new and dangerous manifestation of Moslem "fanaticism." He was closely connected, too, through his Jewish origin with the great financial interests involved in Egypt, and had made up his mind to better St. Hilaire's halting aggression on Tunis by forcing our intervention also in Egypt. In this he wanted our Government to go with him and join in an anti-Islamic crusade in the name of civilization, and as a first measure to strengthen the hold of the European Joint Control at Cairo. On both these matters, the Commercial Treaty and Egypt, Dilke was most communicative, though he did not put all the dots upon the i's, treating the former as a special English interest, the latter as specially a French one. It was a point of party honour with the Liberal Government, which was essentially a Free Trade Government, to show the world that their Free Trade declarations did not prevent them from getting reciprocity from other nations, or favorable commercial terms from protectionist governments, and Dilke knew that it would be a feather in his cap if he could obtain a renewal of the French concessions. So eager indeed was he about it that I distinctly remember saying to myself, half aloud, as we parted at the Gare du Nord: "That man means to sell Egypt for his Commercial Treaty." Nor did the event prove it otherwise than exactly a true prophecy. It will be seen a little later that to the trivial advantage of obtaining certain small reductions of the import duties levied on English goods in France, the whole issue of liberty in Egypt, and to a large extent of Mohammedan reform throughout the world, was sacrificed by our Liberal Government. But of all this in its place.

My going at all to Cairo that winter was, as I have explained, somewhat fortuitous, providential I might almost say, if I was not afraid of giving my personal action in Egypt too much importance and too high a meaning. The ship which was to bring me out my servants and camp equipage, after nearly foundering in the Bay of Biscay, ran aground in the Canal and I was obliged to wait at Suez. I left it for Cairo, meaning to be there for a few days only. It had been reported in England that the Azhar Ulema had been won back from their ideas of reform and had adopted the Sultan's reactionary Pan-Islamic views. Half distrustful of the result, I sent a message to my first friend, at the University, Sheykh Mohammed Khalil, and then another curious accident occurred. In answer to my note begging him to come and see me at the Hôtel du Nil, where I had alighted, behold, instead of the young Alem whom I knew so well, another Azhar Sheykh of the same name, Sheykh Mohammed Khalil el Hajrasi, a perfect stranger who greeted me with a stranger's welcome. The newcomer had received my message, and, thinking it had come from a European merchant with whom he had dealings in connection with his native village in the Sherkieh, had followed close upon the heels of the messenger. This Mohammed el Hajrasi, though a man of less intrinsic worth than my real friend, was a person of some importance at the Azhar, and proved to be perhaps of even more interest to me at the moment than the other could have been from the fact that he was intimate with the chiefs of what was then called the military party at Cairo and was personally acquainted with Arabi. This my own Mohammed Khalil was not, and, as I presently found, neither he nor his chief Sheykh Mohammed Abdu, would have served me as an intermediary with these, for, as already said, they had disapproved of the immixture of the army in political affairs in September and, though rejoicing at the result, were still to a certain extent holding aloof. Hajrasi, however, when he had recovered from his surprise at finding me an Englishman and not the man he had expected, was nothing loath to talk of Arabi and his doings, and when I went on to explain my views to him of reform upon an Arab basis he at once became confidential and explained to me his own views which were not very different from mine. He was one of the principal Sheykhs, he told me, of the Shafeite rite, and had close relations with the Liberal party of reform at Mecca, who were then in avowed opposition to Abdul Hamid and were looking forward to a new Arabian Caliphate. This was a great point of sympathy between us, and it was not long before we had made a full exchange of our ideas; and I think no better proof could be given of the wonderful liberty of thought and speech which marked those days in Egypt than that this eminent religious Sheykh, who certainly a year before would have locked his secrets jealously in his bosom, even perhaps from a friend, should suddenly have thus unloosened his tongue in eloquent response to my questions and should have unfolded to me, a European and a complete stranger, his most dangerous aspirations in politics. It no doubt, however, was in some part due to the presence with me of my learned Arabic professor, Sabunji, whom I had had the happy inspiration to bring with me from London to help out my poor resources of that language.

It was thus from Hajrasi that I first learned the details of what had been going on at Cairo during the summer and the true position of the soldiers in regard to the National Party, facts which I soon after had confirmed to me from a number of other sources including my original friends, Mohammed Khalil and Mohammed Abdu. Sabunji, moreover, who had a real genius for this kind of work, was presently busy all the city over seeking out news for me, so that in a very few days we knew between us pretty nearly everything that was going on. Nor were we long before we had made acquaintance with some of the fellah officers who had taken part with Arabi in the demonstration, especially with Eïd Diab and Ali Fehmi, with whom I was pleasantly impressed. The matters being principally discussed at the moment were, first, the character of the Khedive – was he to be trusted, or was he not, to fulfil the promises he had given? He had promised a Constitution, but was this to be a real transfer of power to Ministers responsible to a Representative Chamber, or only the summoning of a Chamber of Notables with common consultative powers? Tewfik was mistrusted on this point, and it was generally believed that he was being advised to shuffle in this way out of his engagement by Malet who, as already said, had just come from Constantinople and had declared that the Sultan would never agree to real Constitutional government.

The more advanced section of the Nationalists were bitter against the whole house of Mohammed Ali and especially of the branch of it to which Tewfik belonged, his father Ismaïl and his grandfather Ibrahim, a cruel and treacherous race which had brought untold woes upon the fellahin and had ruined the country morally and financially, and had, by their misconduct, brought about foreign intervention. Secondly, there was the question of reforms. Now that the Press was free, attacks were beginning to be made upon various gross abuses, the injustice of the taxation which, under the foreign Financial Control, favoured Europeans at the expense of the native population; of the unnecessary multiplication of highly paid offices held by foreigners, French and English; of the hold obtained by these over the railway administration and the administration of the domains which had passed into the hands of representatives of the Rothschilds; of the scandal of £9,000 a year subvention being granted still, in spite of the poverty of the land, to the European Opera House at Cairo. A campaign was being carried on, especially by the "Taif" newspaper, edited by a hot-headed young man of genius, Abdallah Nadim, against the brothels and wine-shops and disreputable cafés chantants which under protection of the "Capitulations" had invaded Cairo to the grief and anger of pious Moslems. There was an echo, too, of the bitterness felt by all Mohammedans just then on account of the French raid in Tunis where it was affirmed that mosques had been profaned and Moslem women outraged. Nevertheless the feeling at Cairo between native Christian and native Mohammedan was altogether friendly. The Copts were as a rule wholly with the revolution, and their Patriarch was on the best of terms with the Ministry of which Butros Pasha was a prominent and respected member. Even the native Jews with their Chief Rabbi were all for the Constitutional reform. With the officers the point of principal concern was naturally that of the promised increase of the army, which they affirmed was necessary in view of what had taken place in Tunis, where the Bey had been found quite unprepared with a military force sufficient to defend his country. The legal maximum allowed by the Sultan's Firman in Egypt was 18,000 men and the army must be raised to that point.

My earliest intervention in the affairs of the Nationalists of any active kind came about in this way. About the end of November my friend Sheykh Mohammed el Hajrasi informed me of an agitation which was going on among the students of the Azhar, especially those of the Shafeite and Malekite rites, to depose the actual Sheykh el Islam, or as he is more generally called, Sheykh el Jama, the head of the Hanefite rite, Mohammed el Abbasi. The reason given me for this was that, as a nominee of the Khedive, he could not be relied on to give an honest fetwa (legal opinion) as to the legality of constitutional government, and that it was believed that he would be made use of to refuse a fetwa in its favour and so give the Khedive an excuse for withdrawing from his full promise. The Hanefite rite has always been the Court rite in Egypt, the Turkish Viceroys, even since the time of Sultan Selim, having usurped the privilege of Court appointment, and the Government has always named a Hanefite to the supreme religious office. At the same time by far the larger number of the students, who amount in all to some 15,000, have been and are of the other two rites, and an attempt was now to be made in accordance with the revolutionary ideas of the day to revert to the more ancient form of nomination, namely by general election. He had come, el Hajrasi said, to consult me about this because the idea was prevalent that Malet was behind the Khedive in the support he was giving to el Abbasi and in the plan of evading his constitutional promise. The difficulty he thought I might be able to remove, if I went to Malet and used my influence with him in their favour. To this I very readily assented, and with the result that I found Malet entirely ignorant of the whole matter and quite ready to say that the religious disputes of the Ulema were outside his province; and that he should interfere on neither side. On the 5th of December, therefore, el Abbasi was by vote of the students deposed from his office and a Sheykh of the Shafeite rite, el Embabeh, named in his place. El Embabeh had not been the most popular candidate, for the majority of the students had been for the Malekite el Aleysh, a man of high courage and religious authority, who afterwards played a leading part during the war and died in the first months of the English occupation in prison, it is generally believed poisoned from his outspoken evidence at the time of Arabi's trial. Embabeh, a man altogether his inferior, obtained the vote only as the result of a compromise, the Khedive having refused el Aleysh. Four thousand students voted at this election and there were only twenty-five dissentients. The little service thus rendered them gave my friends among the Nationalists confidence in my will and power to serve them, and they asked me to delay my departure and stay on at least some weeks to see them through their farther difficulties. To this I readily agreed, seeing in the development of a movement so congenial to my ideas work of the very kind that I was seeking and one in which I could be of real use, as interpreter of their perfectly legitimate ambitions, both with Malet at the Agency and at home with Gladstone.

In the following few weeks I saw Malet almost daily, and acquired considerable influence over him. Though not unsympathetic towards the Nationalists, I found him very ill informed as to their views and objects. He knew none of their leaders personally except Sherif Pasha, and depended in regard to the general drift of affairs on what Sherif and the Khedive thought fit to tell him. For what was passing in the street he had nobody on whom he could rely except his Greek dragoman Aranghi who picked up his news at the cafés of the European quarter. Thus he had little means of understanding the situation, nor was Sinkiewicz, his new French colleague, much better informed. Malet was also in terrible perplexity as to the real wishes of his own Government. Lord Granville had just written him the well-known despatch of November 4th, in which he had stated in vague terms the sympathy of Her Majesty's Government for reforms in Egypt. But this might mean almost anything, and was no guide as to the attitude he should observe if any new conflict should arise between the Khedive and the Nationalists, or between these united and the Financial Controllers. Above all he was in doubt as to Mr. Gladstone's mind in the affair of the Constitution. It was, therefore, a real relief to him to find in me some one who had a definite policy to suggest, and mine was very clearly that he should support the Nationalists.

I was able, too, to assure him about Gladstone that he need not doubt that when the Prime Minister came to know the facts he must be on the Constitutional side. I received support, too, with Malet on this point from certain English friends of mine whom I found at Cairo, winter visitors, whom I was able to influence to my views. Among these the most prominent were two ex-Members of the House of Commons, Lord Houghton, who in early life had been an enthusiastic advocate of freedom in the East, and Sir William Gregory, an old follower of Gladstone's and a well-known Liberal. By the middle of December I had succeeded in bringing round nearly all the English element at Cairo to my view of the case. Even Sir Auckland Colvin, the English Financial Controller, who had three months before given the Khedive the heroic advice to shoot Arabi, professed himself converted and half inclined to come to terms with the revolution.