Bonaparte in Egypt and the Egyptians of To-day

Yet one word more is necessary on this subject. Whatever truth there was in the French excuse that they were but "doing in the East what the Easterns did," this was not true of the Egyptians. All historians agree in one thing – that from the earliest days down to the French occupation (which, as we have seen, was the introduction of an era of "liberty, equality, and fraternity") the Egyptian people had always been the downtrodden slaves of the long string of foreign rulers who had exploited them in the most merciless manner. Yet in these same histories we find the people spoken of as if they had been the rulers, and all the vices and sins of the Mamaluks, their followers and their servants the Copts, are put down with a most generous impartiality to the unhappy people who had to bear the bitter burthen these sins and vices cast upon them. Tyranny, torture, bribery, corruption were rife in the country, therefore the Egyptians were tyrannical, corrupt, and so on. And the same writers, with a calm indifference to the claims of logic and common sense not altogether peculiar to them, tell us that the people were slothful, lacking in energy, content to live from hand to mouth, servile and, to cap the pyramid of their faults and follies, fatalists! How is it that these brilliant historians are unable to see that the centre and controlling feature of all the history of the country has been the utter irreconcilability of the characters of the ruled and their rulers? This was so in the days of the Ptolemies and of the Caliphs as in the days of the Mamaluks and of the French.

Crushing as was the indemnity imposed by the French upon the miserable citizens of Cairo, it was not in the eyes of the Egyptians the worst of the evils from which they had to suffer. We have seen that in their day of trouble the Christians, if they had found assailants among the Moslems, had also found very vigorous protectors. Now that the Christians had an opportunity of showing their gratitude they hastened to do so. The French, with a paltry spite that admits no excuse, forbade the Moslems to ride, commanded them, under pain of the bastinado, to stand up whenever a Frenchman passed, and in other ways sought to humiliate them as much as possible, not the least being the permission they tacitly, if not directly, accorded the native Christians to insult, abuse, and ill-treat the Moslems. And all this was done to "Our people" in virtue of the "Amnesty" that had been granted, not in the fiery heat of open hostility or wrath, or to crush opposition, but with deliberate vindictiveness when all excuse for such brutality had ceased. And the native Christians, following the good example set them and in gratitude for the protection they had received from Moslem defenders, availed themselves to the utmost of the privilege accorded them.

It has been said that this was but a recoil upon the Moslems of ill-treatment they had in times past inflicted upon the Christians. No falser excuse could be offered. It is true that, as I have before admitted, the lower classes of the Moslems had constantly insulted and ill-used the Christians, and under some of the Sultans these had been subjected to degrading and vexatious tyrannies; but, as we have seen, the better class of the people and the Moslem rulers in general always afforded them the full and ample protection to which they were entitled in accordance with Moslem law and religion, even when the granting of that protection necessitated the shedding of Moslem blood. Never once in the history of the country had the Christians been without some of the Moslems for their protectors, and never once had the Moslems, in cool blood or with deliberate malice, persecuted them as native and European Christians now persecuted the Moslems. In moments of wrath and of political excitement Christians had been massacred and their houses pillaged, the lower classes were habitually offensive to them, they had been subjected to humiliating conditions and restrictions by some of the rulers of the land as they had been petted and pampered by others, but with all this they had always been not worse but better off than the bulk of the Moslems. Nor must it be forgotten that it was not as Christians, but as the servants of the Government, that the Christians were hated by the people. Bigots and fanatics have existed, such as Nasooh Pacha, but they were and are regarded by all true Moslems as little better than heretics and infidels. Nowhere throughout Islam are Christians hated as Christians, or for the sake of their religion, but for their actions towards and treatment of Moslems.

No better evidence of the true relations between the two peoples or of their conduct to each other can be asked for than that afforded by Gabarty's history, with its perfect freedom from bigotry and fanaticism. So far from exonerating or condoning the faults of the Moslems, he speaks of and condemns these more frequently and more freely than those of the Christians, and the fact that he does so is the more noticeable, and by far the more significant, that he was writing, not for Christian or European readers, but solely for his countrymen and coreligionists. Nor can we forget in weighing its value that, plain-spoken as it is on the faults and failings of the Moslems, it is the most popular history written in their language. If the Moslems of Egypt were the bitter fanatics they are so commonly accused of being this could not be so. But that the Moslems never did oppress the Christians is proved by the simple historical fact, attested by all the Christian historians of the country, that, from the first introduction of Islam into the country down to the present day, the Moslem Egyptians have never had the power or means of oppressing or tyrannising over the Christians or any one else. Not only so, but they have never had the means or the power to protect themselves from the tyranny and oppression of the Christians. Under the Caliphs and their successors the Mamaluks whatever there was of tyranny and oppression fell with fullest weight upon the Moslems. Their grievances were real enough, and not, as were those of the Christians, little more than sentimental; the kurbag, the corvée, extortion and injustice of every kind, were the evils from which the Moslems had to suffer, while for the most part the Christians escaped these and had as their chief grievances the facts that they were treated socially as an inferior race, were not allowed to ride horses, or to hold land, and had to wear a distinctive dress. And as a set-off to these grievances they had no small share in the golden harvest extorted by cruelty and torture from the Moslems. What wonder if the Moslems felt bitterly against them, or that their bitterness was increased by their impotency to protect themselves. And yet, save for such wild outbursts as that incited by Nasooh Pacha, they were content to leave the Christians alone.

And when we recall the relative position of the Christians and the Moslem people in the country we cannot be surprised that the bitterness I have spoken of should develop into hatred. So far as the people were concerned, it was the Christians, and the Christians alone, who were mainly responsible for their sufferings. It was the Christians who were the real oppressors of the people. They constituted the one class in the country which, if it had willed to do so, could have softened the endless sufferings of the people – the one class that, without a complete change in the government, could have benefited them. But far from benefiting they were the one and only class that in season and out of season never ceased to pursue the miserable people day or night, grinding them in the dust from pure malicious hatred. It was they who carried on the atrocious tyranny that wrecked the commerce of the country and well-nigh desolated the land, for it was they who fixed and they who collected the assessments that crushed and starved the peasantry. They might, with little loss to themselves, have vastly bettered the condition of the people, but far from doing so they pushed their power for evil to the utmost. That is why the Moslems hated them. Ruthless, savage as were the Mamaluks, they were always under some restraint. As a mere matter of policy they could not wholly resist the intercessions of the Ulema, and so it was to their Coptic and other Christian clerks that the Beys turned for advice and counsel as to how much and how the people could be forced to pay. The Beys thought nothing of annihilating a village that would not or could not pay the sum demanded of it, but it was the Christian clerks of the Beys who fixed the amount to be paid and who persuaded the Beys that it was unwillingness and not inability that kept the people from paying. These are facts that cannot be denied or disputed. They are practically admitted by all historians, none of these failing to point out that the administrative branch of the government has always been in the hands of the Christians, though none of them seem to have ever cared to recognise the logical and inevitable consequence of this fact. It was not in the power of the Christians to have wholly averted the evils from which the people had to suffer, but they might have done much that would have vastly mitigated not only the outrageous extortion practised but also the cruelty and brutality with which it was enforced. It was, then, not as Christians but as their heartless oppressors that the Moslems hated the Christians, and the sole excuse that these could offer for their wanton inhumanity was the contempt and social ill-treatment they received, not from the people but from the men they served.

And as it was with the Christians of the country so it was with the French – whatever of hatred the people had for them was due not to religious fanaticism or bigotry but to the oppression they inflicted upon the people.

I have dwelt upon this point at the greater length that I am convinced of the importance of the European critics of Egypt and the Egyptians learning to look at this question from the true point of view. At the present day it is the commonly asserted belief of almost all the Europeans in the country that the Egyptians are a bigoted and fanatical race. I deny it entirely. I have travelled and lived among Moslems in more lands than one, among Kurds and Afghans, Indians and others, and I have never met a Moslem people not only so free from fanaticism but so lax, from the Moslem point of view, as the Egyptians. Nor must the reader forget two points that tend to show that the bitterness of the people towards the Christians was the result of political and not of religious animosity. These facts are that Moslems of whose orthodoxy there was no doubt were during the revolt and during the siege assaulted, ill-treated, and in more than one case killed, by the mob on the accusation of befriending or simply of being in sympathy with the French. The Sheikh El Sadat was one of those who had to suffer in this way, and almost all of the Sheikhs who had gone as a deputation to treat for peace during the siege. So, on the other hand, the Jews, who have always refrained from interfering in politics, and who have ever been studiously careful to avoid taking sides with any party or sect in the country, although they are the subject of far stronger personal and religious dislike than are the Christians, were never the object of direct attack from the people, though they, like the Moslems, on many occasions suffered when the mob broke out against the Christians. In the time of the French occupation the Harat el Yahoud, or Jews' Quarter, was situated, as it still is, off the Mousky, then the principal residence of the Franks and Christians, yet in the list that Gabarty gives of the quarters of the town that had been raided by the mob this is not included. All through the troubled days of the French occupation the Jews had to bear their share of the ills that fell upon all; but the people bore them no special hatred, had no special grievance against them, did not look upon them as their personal enemies, and thus they escaped the direct attacks that were made upon the Christians.

The hatred, then, with which the Egyptians had learned to regard the French was not the hatred of fanaticism and had but little reference to the question of religion. Had the French understood the people and been willing and able to rule them with due regard for their prejudices and desires, there was no reason why they should not have gained the goodwill, and with certain limitations, the loyalty of the people. It was not only possible for the French to have done this, but it would have been easier for them to do so than to follow the mad course they chose to adopt. The fact of the French being Christians, for as such the Egyptians regarded them, would have had but small weight if they had conceded to Moslem sentiment its reasonable demands. To the Egyptian mind the Mamaluks were not much better Moslems than the French might easily have been. This the French could not see, and not being able to see it, or to understand the people, they could find no other way to rule them but that which the Mamaluks had adopted – force. And it was with them as with every government that has ever existed or ever can exist, the admission that it is compelled to use force to rule any people whatever is a confession that the task of rightly ruling that people is beyond their strength, that it is one for which they are unfitted and one in which they never can succeed. It is a law of nature in the moral as in the physical world and one from which there is no escape – that no force can operate without creating resistance to its own action, and the greater the force the greater the resistance. A given force may for a time appear to crush all opposition, but if it could do so in reality it would be but to find itself exhausted and effete. Unable to understand either the people of Egypt or their history, the French could not see that while for centuries the rule of the country had been founded upon force, it had been maintained not by force but by the pliancy of its rulers. No one knew this better than the Mamaluk chiefs. These cared nothing for the people or their desires, and they never hesitated to drive them to the uttermost, but they knew equally well that there was a limit and, though they but yielded to conquer, they yielded when that limit was reached. Nor did they, like the French, waste their force in unprofitable directions or in exciting needless opposition, but devoted it wholly and solely to the attainment of their one great object – the procuring of the funds they needed.

In the East the shepherd goes before his flock; whither he leads they follow, and his dogs serve only to bring up the stragglers or hasten the steps of the laggards. It is much the same with the people. Caliphs, Sultans, Beys, and French may seem to be driving them, but in reality they are not being driven but led, led by perhaps unseen and unknown shepherds that are yet more potent for good or evil than any ruler that ever sat on an Eastern throne. Europeans cannot see this, yet every Eastern who has given the subject a moment's thought knows that it is so. As often as not the real leader and ruler of the people is himself unconscious of his power or position. It was so in the days before the revolt of Cairo. An open avowed leader the people would most probably have distrusted, but the almost silent man who said but little, who assumed no authority but rightly gauged the feelings stirring around him and knew how, by simple words, to influence the current of those feelings, could sway the people as he willed. The demagogue who cries aloud in the market-places, bidding men accept him as their guide and friend, obtains but a poor following. He may stir up latent feeling to action, but he cannot direct either the feeling or the action. So far as he can rightly interpret the feeling he may pose as the spokesman and leader of a party, but true leader he never is. Mahdis are for ever arising to preach, like Peter the Hermit, the glory and duty of a "Holy War," but among the people of the East they gain but poor success. The negro races flock to the standards of these men and have died in thousands for their sake, but the Eastern asks for a miracle before he will be convinced, and, holding aloof from the would-be guide, follows all unknowingly some other.

If the reader has followed me so far he will now have pretty clearly grasped the truth that the rule of the French in Egypt had proved an utter failure, and to some extent he will have seen why this was so. That failure was brought about by not one but many causes. Of these, besides those that I have already dealt with, there is one that I may speak of here.

I have shown in a previous chapter how, although the teachings of the Christian and Mahomedan religions are almost identical as to the duty of obedience to those in authority, the varying circumstances affecting the peoples of England and those of the East lead these to interpret and apply those teachings very differently. It is so with other matters. Christianity and Islam are at one in ranking Justice and Mercy as the greatest of the virtues. "The Lord thy God" is "a just God," but also "a merciful God" is the teaching of the Koran as well as of the Bible. It is the belief of the Moslem as well as of the Christian. But the European conception of justice is to the Moslem, and indeed to all Easterns, hopelessly imperfect, so imperfect that in their eyes it becomes injustice. One law for all, for high and low, rich and poor. That is the ideal of civilised Europe – an ideal that never has been and in all probability never will be accepted in the East. The man of high position who commits an offence should, says the West, be punished in the same way and in the same degree as an humbler man would be for the same offence. That, says the East, is just in theory but impossible in practice. And the East is right. In no conceivable case is it possible to accord to two men an exactly equal amount of punishment. Whether it be a sixpenny fine or the death penalty, every penalty inflicted affects the person upon whom it is inflicted precisely in proportion to facts and circumstances that it is not possible should be known to or weighed by his judge. That this is so is admitted by all, but in England and other countries men are content with an attempt at "justice" that almost wholly ignores this fact. Not so the Easterns. That one of the Ulema, a Pacha or any other person of position should be punished by a penalty such as might be inflicted upon any ordinary citizen is to the Eastern mind not justice but gross injustice.

But the difference in the Englishman's conception of justice and that of the Eastern lies even deeper than this. To the English mind the idea of justice is mainly associated with the administration of punishment to the guilty and with abstention from injustice in dealing with others. The Eastern, until he has acquired that tinge of European thought and sentiment that unconsciously yet constantly causes him to mislead Europeans as to what is and what is not Eastern thought on such subjects, but rarely connects the idea of punishment with that of justice. To him punishment is not the administration of justice but the administration of a deterrent. That as such it may be just or unjust he quite recognises, but the justice or injustice of a punishment is to his mind an incident and not an essential of the punishment, and the justice so often lauded in the East is not the justice of the courts but the personal quality that prevents a man wronging another or leads him when he has acted unjustly to admit his error and seek to remedy it.

And while the two peoples are thus apart in their interpretation of justice, they are still more widely so in the positions they assign to justice and mercy. The European, and perhaps especially the Englishman, places justice first and only allows mercy to come in a long way off. Not so the Eastern. To him mercy is first and justice second. That this should be so is a direct result of the conditions under which the two peoples have lived for many centuries. As all history shows, the races of Europe have always had a genius for and a tendency towards organised government. Whether we peruse the records of liberty-loving England or of thraldom-trodden Spain, of republican France, or of despotic Russia, in every European country we find the people regarding an organised government, a government acting in a prescribed manner upon a prescribed system, as a natural complement of existence as a nation. It is not so in the East. There the whole bent of opinion tends towards autocratic if not to pure despotic rule. The difference is due to various causes, but possibly to none more than this – that in Europe the community of interests binding individuals together and causing them to recognise each other as members of a group are territorial, limited chiefly and sometimes wholly by geographical boundaries, whereas in the East this community of interest rests almost entirely upon the religious distinctions that divide peoples living in the same countries. In Europe, though there have been religious wars, war has in the main been the result of the rivalries of peoples distinguished from each other by language, habits, and character. In the East religion has in general been the line of distinction. It has followed from this that in Europe the peoples have been and still are obliged to group themselves as nations, while in the East they group themselves by their religions. The European nation or community is therefore a secular body, and as such seeks a secular government, whereas the Eastern peoples are not nations so much as religious communities. To each an organised government is necessary for self-protection and internal adjustment. This the European is obliged to find in the organisation of a special governing body, while the Easterns find it ready to hand in the organisation of their Churches. Now in the organisation of a nation with regard to its internal affairs, justice is almost of necessity placed before mercy, whereas in that of a religion, mercy is exalted above justice. Hence a people like the English learn to look upon justice, or whatever near approach to it can be attained, as the greatest good to be sought for from their rulers and in their efforts to attain this end, like the political economists of whom Ruskin complained, forget the human equation, and that justice, however finely balanced by tale and weight of legal prescription, can never be more nor less than a failure, if it be not dominated by mercy. In Europe peoples have again and again revolted against the tyrants that have oppressed them that they might thereby secure justice and its complement liberty, and they could do this because there was no higher or conflicting interest to hold them back; but it has not been so in the East. There all the organisation that the peoples have needed for the administration of their internal affairs has always been found in the organisation of their religion, and whether the tyranny and oppression from which they have suffered from times immemorial afflicted them through the hands and acts of their co-religionists or from those of other and rival religions, the interests of their religion, and therefore of their fellows, demanded submission to such ills rather than a resistance that could not fail to injure that which they deemed the higher and better cause. And in the sufferings they were thus called upon to bear they naturally turned to their religion for consolation, and found it in their belief in the ineffable mercy of the Deity, and thus learning to look upon mercy as the highest attribute of God inevitably rank it as the noblest virtue in man. And to the Moslem the appreciation of mercy he thus acquires is enforced by the teaching of the Koran. The law of retaliation, an eye for an eye, is ordained to Moslems, but with the promise that to him who exacts less his forbearance shall be accounted as a charity and as such shall gain him a rich reward. To bridle one's anger, to forgive men and to intercede "with a good intercession" – these are virtues that are endlessly praised and commended in "The Book of God."

What a poor substitute for these is the "even-handed justice" that is the boast of our vaunted civilisation!

Is it necessary for me to say now that the price the French asked the people of Cairo to pay for the peace that had been accorded them, was to them a violation of all justice? Or need I point out at length that this incompatibility of ideals on the subjects of justice and mercy was one of the principal causes of the failure of the French to realise the anticipations with which they had entered the country, as it is still one of the causes that hold the East and West apart, and forms a never-resting cause of misunderstanding between all Orientals and Europeans. Unfortunately in this, as in other matters, the Oriental is too prone to keep his ideals as a standard whereby to judge the merits and failings of others, rather than as a guide for his own actions. It is one of the greatest of the Englishman's merits that he does not do this. He strives as best he may to realise his ideals, and in this it would be well indeed for the Egyptian to imitate him. With both people, as indeed with all others if we would judge them justly, we must, however, take account first of their ideals and next of the sincerity and earnestness with which they seek to bring these into practice.