Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt

"As to the promotions of the officers, of which European newspapers are making so much talk, allow me to explain the facts. In the first place, the promotions were not made by Arabi Pasha's sole will and pleasure, nor were they a bribe to gain the officers' affections towards Arabi. They were made in consequence of the new military law, which prescribes that officers, after a certain age, or sick, or infirm, or disabled, should retire from active service with a pension. In Sherif Pasha's time this military law began to take effect, and accordingly 558 officers were put on the retired list. Next 96 officers were sent a year ago to the frontier of Abyssinia, Zaila, and elsewhere, while 100 officers left the army and took civil employ. The total number thus retired is 754. It was thus natural that promotions should be made to fill up vacancies. There are still fifty vacancies reserved for the cadets of the Military School.

"Arabi's title of Pasha was not forced on him by the Sultan, but by the Khedive, who insisted that all his Ministers should hold that rank.

"Let me now dispel from all minds, once for all, the false idea that Arabi, or the Military party, or the National party, are tools of the Turks. Every Egyptian, whether he be a learned man (of the Ulema) or a fellah, an artisan or a merchant, a soldier or a civilian, a politician or not a politician, hates the Turks and detests their infamous memory. No Egyptian can look forward to the idea of a Turk landing in his country without feeling an impulse to rush to his sword to drive out the intruder.

"The Turks are tyrants who have left calamities behind them in Egypt which still make our hearts sore. We cannot wish them back, or wish to have anything more to do with them. The Turks have footing enough with their firmans in Egypt. They must stop there, and try nothing further. But if any attempt of this kind comes to our knowledge, we shall hail it as a not altogether unwelcome accident. We have had already some presentiment about this, and it has been the cause of our preparations. We shall make use of the event, if it happens, to recover our full independence. Our clearest minded statesmen are now watching every movement of Turkish policy in this country to check it the moment it oversteps its limits. I do not deny that there are Turks and Circassians in Egypt who advocate the cause of the Porte, but they are few – nothing to those who love their country.

"With regard to the Circassian conspiracy against Arabi Pasha's life, it is not really a serious danger.

"The ex-Khedive Ismaïl, the greatest enemy Egypt ever had, and one still envious of her happiness, has long been mining us with plots to destroy (blow up) our present Government, thinking in so doing to prepare the way for his return. But God Almighty has scattered to the wind his hopes, since every Egyptian knows that Ismaïl's return means the ruin of Egypt. The tyrant (Faraoun), however, hoping against hope, sent to Egypt one of his followers, Ratib Pasha, who had been banished; and he, by underhand means in Sherif Pasha's time, received admission to Egyptian soil, where he joined his brother, Mahmud Effendi Talaat Beg-bashi, and later secured to his service Yusuf Bey Najati, Mahmud Bey Fouad, Kosrow Pasha's nephew and Otheman Pasha Rifki (all these are Circassians). These worked to make converts to their plan, which was to destroy the actual Ministers, and kill the superior officers of the army, beginning with Arabi Pashi. Through their efforts, about forty of the inferior officers joined their plan, swearing alliance, but at first put off its execution for want of a pretext. This was found in the discontent of nine Circassian officers, who objected to being ordered for service to the Soudan. Ratib's party became aware of what was going on among them, and took advantage of it to suggest to the nine Circassians that they should refuse to go except with promotion.

"The Ministry has long had a suspicion of the mischief which was impending. As long ago as when Ratib first returned to the country, Mahmud Sami, the present Prime Minister when Minister of War, requested Sherif Pasha, in the Khedive's presence, to expel Ratib. He suspected something wrong in the fact that Ratib had left the ex-Khedive so suddenly at Naples. But Sherif refused, although Mahmud Sami warned him that he would be held responsible for all that might one day happen. This because Ratib was Sherif's son-in-law, and, as is thought, also perhaps his accomplice in the design of restoring Ismaïl.

"It happened, however, that Ratib's party invited a certain Circassian officer, Rashid Effendi Anwar, to join them, and that this officer refused to have anything to do with their plan, and, leaving the conspirators where they were, came straight to Arabi and disclosed the plot. Thus they were arrested, and brought to trial by court-martial.

"The event has caused little excitement among the common people. Every one knows that Arabi's life is exposed as other men's, to dangers daily. Nor is it possible for a man, however great he be, that all should wish him well. But we should only laugh if it were stated publicly that England was on the verge of anarchy because a madman, soldier or civilian, had tried to shoot your Queen.

"The Circassians in the army number in all eighty-one persons, and no one in his senses need be alarmed at the chance of so small a number of men succeeding against the Government.

"Now, as to the Slave Trade. The present Ministry is trying hard to suppress domestic slavery. The Mohammedan religion offers no obstacle at all to this; nay, according to Mohammedan dogma Moslems are not allowed to have slaves except taken from infidels at war with them. In fact, they are captives or prisoners taken in legal warfare, or who belonged to infidel peoples not in friendly alliance with Mohammedan princes, nor protected by treaties or covenants. But no Moslem is allowed to be taken as a slave. Moreover, if a person is an infidel, but belongs to a nation in peaceful treaty with a Mohammedan prince, he cannot be taken as a slave. Hence the Mohammedan religion not only does not oppose abolishing slavery as it is in modern time, but radically condemns its continuance. Those learned gentlemen in England and elsewhere who hold a contrary opinion should come here and teach us, the Sheykhs of the Azhar, the dogmas of our faith. This would be an astonishing spectacle. The whole Mohammedan world would be struck dumb when it learned that a Christian had taken upon him the task, in the greatest Mohammedan University in the world, of teaching its Ulema, professors, and theologians the dogmas of their religion, and how to comment on their Koran.

"A Fewta will in a few days be issued by the Sheykh el Islam to prove that the abolition of slavery is according to the spirit of the Koran, to Mohammedan tradition, and to Mohammedan dogma.

"The Egyptian Government will endeavour to remove every obstacle in the way, and will not rest till slavery is extirpated from Egyptian territory.

"Mohammed Abdu."

The plot thus on the 25th of April seemed to be frustrated, nor would it have led to any more serious complications but for the action taken by Malet in regard to it. Instead of supporting the Ministry against whom it had been directed, his official sympathies were given wholly to the conspirators. These had been tried by court-martial and condemned to the not overwhelming punishment of being banished to the White Nile, a penalty constantly enforced in Egypt even in the time of the Dual Control. Malet, however, wrote home that the sentence was a monstrous one, equivalent to death, while the "Times" correspondent was allowed to publish the story, an altogether false one, that Arabi had privately visited the prison and there had had the conspirators tortured under his eyes. That there was no truth in this tale it is hardly necessary to affirm. Yet Malet gave it a certain countenance in his despatches to the extent of mentioning it as a report prevalent, and that cries had been heard issuing at night from the prison. What is certain is that it was made a pretext with him for encouraging the Khedive to quarrel with his Ministers by taking the case out of their hands into his own, and commuting their sentence into one of simple exile, an act which according to the new Constitution was beyond his right.

To go back to my journal in London, I find that on 28th April I went to Downing Street "rather wroth" about nothing having been done for Egypt, but Hamilton bade me be patient and said that my idea of a Commission had been taken up. Also, the next day, Button congratulated me on my success. "He tells me there has been a fearful crisis about Egypt; that the Sultan was for sending troops there, deposing Tewfik, setting up Halim, and hanging Arabi. The English and French Governments, however, have prevented this, and Arabi is to be supported and a Commission sent." On Tuesday there was to be a declaration of their Egyptian policy in the House of Lords by the Government. This news of the Sultan's intervention seems, in fact, to have been a crisis of the moment brought on by the Rothschilds with the support of Bismarck. The relations between Constantinople and the National Party in Egypt had become strained in the last few weeks through various circumstances which it is time now to explain, as well as the peculiar communications which passed in the month of February between the Sultan and Arabi, communications which are of the greatest possible importance in estimating Arabi's growing position of political power in Egypt superior to that of his fellow Ministers.

It will be remembered that when the Sultan's Commissioners visited Egypt in the autumn of 1881 Ahmed Pasha Ratib (not to be confounded with Ratib Pasha, the ex-Khedive's agent), who was one of them and the Sultan's A. D. C., met Arabi in the train on his way to Suez and Mecca, and that they had interchanged ideas and made friends, and that the Pasha had promised to represent him favourably to his master as a good Mohammedan and one loyal to the Caliphate. This had led to correspondence between them, of which I have in my possession the originals of the following two important documents. They came into my hands, with a mass of other papers, at the time of Arabi's trial. The two letters were written within three weeks after the Government of Mahmud Sami was formed, in February, 1882, in which Government Arabi was Minister of War. The first is from Ahmed Ratib, the second from Sheykh Mohammed Zafir, one of the great religious sheykhs of Constantinople, who at that time was charged with the Sultan's secret correspondence; and both were written at the Sultan's personal command.

"To the Egyptian Minister of War, Ahmed Arabi Bey

"I related to His Majesty the Sultan the conversation we had on the railway between the stations of Zagazig and Mahda on my return to Constantinople, and it caused great pleasure to His Majesty, and he ordered me to communicate to you his Imperial compliments. I related to His Majesty all the kind treatment I received at your hands and the courtesy my eyes witnessed while I was at Cairo, and His Majesty was extremely gratified thereat, so that the satisfaction he felt in your devotion and fidelity was increased manyfold. People had made him think that you were acting, I know not how, contrary to right, and had succeeded in perverting His Majesty's idea about you, but now as I have exposed the true state of the case to him, I swear to you that His Majesty deeply regrets ever having paid any attention to these false and lying statements about you; and as a good proof of this His Majesty has commanded me to write this letter, and to express to you the sentiments which follow:

"It matters nothing who is the Khedive of Egypt. The thoughts of the ruler of Egypt, his intentions and his conduct must be governed with the greatest care, and all his actions must tend to secure the future of Egypt and to uphold intact the sovereignty of the Caliph, while he must show the most perfect faith in upholding the faith and the country's rights. This will be required of him of the persons who have been on the Khedivial Throne. Ismaïl Pasha and his predecessors gave bribes to Ali Pasha, Fuad Pasha, Midhat Pasha and their representatives of the Sublime Porte, traitors; and, after shutting the eyes of the officials, dared to overtask and oppress the Egyptians. And, in addition to this, they made heavy debts and brought the Egyptians under a grievous yoke. And today, in the eyes of the world, their state has specially appealed to our pity, but the whole position is an extremely delicate one which calls for the necessity of finding a speedy and sure remedy. Therefore it behooves you above all things to prevent anything that might lead to foreign intervention, and never to stray from the just and true path nor to listen to any treacherous falsehoods, but in every way with watchful care to hinder the seditious projects of foreigners. This is the great hope of the Sultan.

"And, since we two shall correspond in the future, you must take necessary precautions to prevent our letters from falling into strange hands. For this the easiest way at present, and there is no safer channel you can find, is to submit your correspondence to the true and trusty man who carries this letter and that of Sheykh Mohammed Zafir.

"I would also add that it is indispensable that you should send secretly some officer who knows well what is going on in Egypt, and who is a trusted friend of yours, to present at the footstool of His Majesty the reports on the state of the country in true detail.

"I beg you to send the answer by the man who brings this letter.

Ahmed Ratib, Aide-de-Camp of the Sultan.

"4th Rebi ul Akhar. 22nd Feb., 1882."

"To His Excellency the Egyptian Minister of War.

"I have presented your two faithful letters to His Majesty the Sultan, and from their contents he has learnt all your sentiments of patriotism and watchfulness, and especially have the promises you make of your efforts to guard faithfully and truly His Majesty's interests been a cause of lively satisfaction to His Majesty, so much so that His Majesty ordered me to express his pleasure and his favour to you, and further bade me write to you as follows, viz.: – As the maintenance of the integrity of the Caliphate is a duty which touches the honour of every one of us it is incumbent on every Egyptian to strive earnestly after the consolidation of my power, to prevent Egypt from passing out of our hands into the rapacious grasp of foreigners as the Vilayet of Tunis has passed, and I repose all my confidence in you, my son, to exert all your influence and to put forth every effort to prevent such a thing happening. And you are to beware never for one moment to lose sight of this important point, and to omit none of the precautionary measures which are called for by the age in which we live, keeping all ways before you, as a perpetual goal, the defence of your faith and of your country; and especially you are to persist in maintaining your confidence and the ties which bind you.

"That country (Egypt) is of the highest importance to England and France, and most of all to England, and certain seditious intrigues in Constantinople, following in the path of these Governments, have, for some time past, been busy with their treacherous and accursed projects, and, since they have found it to their profit zealously to promote these intrigues and seditions in Egypt, it is the especial desire of His Majesty that you should keep a very careful eye on these persons (or things?). And, according to the telegrams and news sent by the Khedive, Tewfik Pasha, one of this party, we see that he is weak and capricious; and also it is to be remarked that one of his telegrams does not corroborate another, but they are all in contradiction (wound each other). In addition to this I may tell you that Ali Nizami Pasha and Ali Fuad Bey have spoken to His Majesty most highly in your favour, and Ahmed Ratib Pasha also has repeated to His Majesty the substance of the conversation he had with you in the railway carriage between the stations of Zagazig and Mahda, and as His Majesty places the greatest confidence in Ahmed Pasha, His Majesty desires me again for this to express his trust in you, and to say that as he considers you a man of the highest integrity and trustworthiness he requires of you, above all things, to prevent Egypt from passing into the hands of strangers, and to be careful to allow them no pretext for intervention there.

"The orders which Ahmed Pasha Ratib will receive on this head will be separately communicated to you. Both my letter and that of Ahmed Pasha Ratib, by order of His Majesty, have been written by one of His Majesty's own private secretaries, and after we have affixed our seals to the letters; we also put an extra seal on the envelopes.

"And, in a special and secret manner, I tell you that the Sultan has no confidence in Ismaïl, Halim, or Tewfik. But the man who thinks of the future of Egypt and consolidates the ties which bind her to the Caliphate; who pays due respect to His Majesty and gives free course to his firmans; who assures his independent authority in Constantinople and elsewhere; who does not give bribes to a swarm of treacherous sub-officials; who does not deviate one hair's-breadth from his line of duty; who is versed in the intrigues and machinations of our European enemies; who will watch against them and ever preserve his country and his faith intact – a man who does this will be pleasing and grateful, and accepted by our great lord the Sultan.

"If I have not entered into any further details in this letter of mine, I beg you to excuse me because Ahmed Ratib Pasha only arrived three days ago, and yet in that time, owing to his declarations of your fidelity and true intentions, His Majesty has expressed his full confidence in you. I only received the message I have just given you yesterday. I hope to be able to send you by next week's post a more detailed letter. In every case be careful not to let any letter you send fall into strange hands but try to get a special messenger, and, as for this time; it would be better if you would send your answer by the hand of the man who brings this letter.

"Your Servant, Mohammed Zafir.

"4th Rebi ul Akhar, 22nd Feb., 1882."

These two letters are records of such high historical importance that if ever my memoirs come to be printed they should be annexed to them in facsimile. They explain much of what happened later in June at the time of the Dervish Mission, and they prove that if Arabi took upon himself then and during the months of the war the position in some degree of dictator in Egypt, it was not without ample justification from a Mohammedan point of view, in the commands of the Caliph as head of his religion to protect the province against Christendom. They show, too, why it was that in the month of August Abdul Hamid was so loath to proclaim him a rebel, and how absurd was the charge of rebellion brought against him at his trial.

Nevertheless, it must not be assumed from this that Arabi had made himself the Sultan's tool in anything that concerned the administrative independence of his country. His position on this point was a firm one. He hated the Turks, and would certainly have resisted in arms any attempt from Constantinople at military intervention. Of this Sheykh Mohammed Abdu's letter is ample proof, and it is in harmony with all that Arabi has himself told me. His position, therefore, at the Caliphal Court was a changing and precarious one. He had strong friends there in Ahmed Ratib and Mohammed Zafir, but he also had strong enemies. Sabit Pasha, the Khedive's Turkish secretary, was especially one of them, and reported to Yildiz everything he could find against him. Thus, when the arrest of the Circassian conspirators occurred, among whom were Osman Pasha Rifki, and other important Turks, it is quite possible there was a wave of anger against Arabi in the Sultan's mind. But it does not seem to have lasted, and from the moment when it became once more a question of resisting Europe, Arabi again had the Sultan's approval. As between Tewfik, the puppet of the Anglo-French Control, and Arabi the defender against the two Christian Powers of the independence of a Moslem state, there could be no hesitation in the Caliph's sympathies.

I think it is to be regretted that the Sultan's wish to depose Tewfik and set up Halim was not carried out. Though Arabi did not belong to the party of Halim in Egypt, he would certainly not have opposed it after Tewfik had gone over to the English against him, and it would have been accepted by a considerable number of respectable men in Egypt who knew Halim to be both more intelligent and more liberal in his views than the other. The Sultan's intervention, therefore, would have been a peaceable one if he had refrained from sending an army to enforce it. On the whole it was probably the best solution. The French Government, however, were strongly opposed to the immixture of the Sultan in Egyptian affairs, and our diplomacy at Cairo was pledging itself more and more every day to Tewfik. All that came of the idea of Turkish intervention and of the commission I had asked for, and which had been almost promised, was an absurd compromise of the two things, in the shape of a proposal made, but not insisted on, by Lyons to Freycinet at Paris, that a French, an English, and a Turkish general should be sent to Egypt to "restore discipline in the Egyptian army." Lord Lyons, be it remarked, had a special reason for taking Malet's view of the situation in Egypt in the fact that Malet had been for years his private secretary and devoted servant in the profession.

Nothing, therefore, was really done of what I had been told at Downing Street to expect, not even those few words of goodwill in Parliament which Gladstone had begged Arabi to wait for. By a synchronism, tragic for Egypt, the crisis at Cairo, so long worked up to, coincided exactly with that other crisis which had also been impending in Ireland. There a régime of threats and coercion under Forster, the Chief Secretary, had been tried all through the winter. Members of Parliament had been imprisoned without trial, and the arts of police despotism had been put into more rigorous practice than for many years, and without any result of pacification. Gladstone had persuaded his Cabinet to try conciliatory measures. According to a secret arrangement made with Parnell, the Irish leader, while he was in gaol at Kilmainham, and known as the Kilmainham treaty, Parnell and his political friend, Dillon, had been released; and, as a consequence, Forster on the 2nd of May resigned his office and attacked the Government for their pusillanimity in the House of Commons. The very same day, 2nd May, had been fixed for a Ministerial statement about Egypt, on a motion made by Lord De la Warr in the House of Lords, and I find the following entry in my journal:

"May 2.– Met Lord De la Warr at the House of Lords. He took me in, and I expected to hear the promised statement about Egypt, but heard instead Lord Granville's announcement of Mr. Forster's resignation in Ireland. A good deal of excitement. Lord Granville seemed rather shy and badgered. Lord Salisbury interrupted once or twice… I heard Rosebery say a few words in a very impressive and dignified manner, etc., etc. Egyptian affairs are put off as of no importance." Ireland for the next few weeks drove out all English interest in Egypt, so much so that when on the 6th I took Mohammed Abdu's important letter, explaining the Circassian plot, to Morley, he refused to publish it on the ground of its length, and that "nobody cared about Egypt."

This, however, was but the first act of the coming tragedy. On the 7th Lord Frederick Cavendish, a brother of Lord Hartington and an intimate friend of Gladstone's, who had been appointed Chief Secretary in Forster's place to carry out the new policy of conciliation, was assassinated at Dublin with Mr. Burke, the chief permanent official, by members of an Irish secret society, known as the "Invincibles." These were in reality quite unconnected with Parnell's Parliamentary party, but the public did not discriminate between the two, and the result was a universal cry for strong measures against all forms of rebellion. For a moment Gladstone battled against this, and it was proposed to Dilke, who, as an advanced Radical, was with Chamberlain at that time friendly to the Parnellites, that he should take the post of danger at Dublin and continue, as Cavendish's successor, the task of conciliating Ireland. But Dilke did not like the look of things, and refused the post. It was found difficult to get any one to accept it. What, however, decided the abandonment of the policy of conciliation was the attitude of Hartington. He took the matter of his brother's death, which he felt deeply, as a personal wrong to be avenged, and from that moment became the most determined enemy of Irish Nationalism. Gladstone had to choose between resignation and the abandonment of his policy, and, seeing a majority of his Cabinet against him, he chose the latter. Trevelyan was sent to Dublin and new coercive measures were resolved on. And so, too, as to Egypt. Up to this point, in spite of the unconciliatory views of the Foreign Office, Gladstone, supreme in the Cabinet, had been able to put a veto on any active form of armed intervention. But now he found himself out-voted, and Egypt, too, was thrown to the wolves. "Look," his colleagues seem to have said to him, "where your policy of conciliation has led us in Ireland." If I have been rightly informed, a policy of coercion in Ireland and of intervention in Egypt was decided on at one and the same Cabinet in the second week of May. I quote some extracts from my Diary in illustration of the double situation.12