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Militarized Cultural Encounters in the Long Nineteenth Century pp 151–170Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

A Crisis of Images: The French, Jihad and the Plague in Upper Egypt, 1798–1801

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Part of the book series: War, Culture and Society, 1750-1850 ((WCS))

Abstract

Abul-Magd examines France’s abortive colonization of Egypt in 1798 as a crisis of images, a conquest undone by the conflict between the French colonizers’ self-image as enlightened liberators of an inferior, oppressed population and the population’s manipulation, and ultimately rejection, of French occupation. The chapter draws on a variety of Arabic and French sources to explore the interaction between the French and Coptic and Arab elites in Upper Egypt, while a fierce Jihad erupted in response to the French occupation. By tracing the demographic destruction the French presence wrought in Upper Egypt and the occupation’s enduring influence under Muhammad Ali Pasha in the early nineteenth century, the chapter concludes by reviewing this short-lived occupation’s lasting legacy.

An earlier version of this essay appeared as a chapter in Imagined Empires: A History of Revolt in Egypt (Berkeley, CA, 2013).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Vivant Denon, Voyage dans le Basse et la Haute Égypte, pendant les campagne du Général Bonaparte, 2 vols. (Paris, 1802), II, p. 120. The translation is from Vivant Denon, Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt, 2 vols. (New York, 1973), II, p. 199.

  2. 2.

    About Copts, see Nasir Ahmad Ibrahim, al-Faransyyun fi Sa‘id Misr: al-muwajaha al-maliyya, 1798–1801 (Cairo, 2005), pp. 135–73. About the Arab tribes, see Denon, Voyage dans le Basse et la Haute Égypte, II, pp. 139–40.

  3. 3.

    Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin, eds., The Post-colonial studies reader (London, 2006), pp. 93–116.

  4. 4.

    Edward Said, Orientalism (New York, 1979), p. 66, p. 7.

  5. 5.

    M. Savary probably presented the first systematic account in this regard through his 1779 visit. M. Savary, Lettres sur l’Égypte (Paris, 1789 ed.).

  6. 6.

    C. S. Sonnini, Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt undertaken by order of the old government of France, 2 vols. (London, 1799 ed.), I, p. 287.

  7. 7.

    Ibid., 1:192–94. Also see 264–65.

  8. 8.

    Ibid., I, pp. 196–97.

  9. 9.

    Ibid., I, pp. 312.

  10. 10.

    Ibid., I, p. 186.

  11. 11.

    Ibid., I, p. 188.

  12. 12.

    Ibid., I, p. 239. Quote is on 244.

  13. 13.

    Ibid., I, p. 203.

  14. 14.

    Ibid., I, p. 311.

  15. 15.

    Ibid., I, p. 214.

  16. 16.

    Ibid., I, pp. 230–31. Also see 232–33.

  17. 17.

    Ibid., I, p. 204, 215.

  18. 18.

    Juan Cole, Napoleon’s Egypt: invading the Middle East (New York, 2008), pp. 11–12.

  19. 19.

    ‘Abd Al-‘Aziz Jamal al-Din, ‘al-‘Amaliyyat al-‘askariyya fi Sa‘id Misr bayn ‘amayy 1798/1799’, appendix 1, in ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti, ‘Aja’ib al-athar fi al-tarajim wa-l-akhbar, 4 vols. (Cairo, 1958–), IV, pp. 382–85.

  20. 20.

    Isna Court, Sijill Ishhadat 50, pp. 111–14, 21 Rabi‘ al-Awwal 1213, Archival Code 1169-000050; Isna Court, Sijill Ishhadat 50, pp. 116–118, 3 Jumada al-Awwal 1213, Archival Code 1169-000050, both in Egyptian National Archives (ENA).

  21. 21.

    Isna Court, Sijill Ishhadat 51, p. 284, 35 Dhu al-Qi‘da 1214, Archival Code 1169-000051, ENA.

  22. 22.

    ‘Izzat Hasan Effendi al-Darandali, al-Hamla al-faransiyya ‘ala Misr fi daw’ makhtut ‘Uthmani, makhtutat Dianama, dirasat wa-tarjamat Jamal Sa‘id ‘Abd al-Ghani (Cairo, 1999), p. 367; Husam Muhammad ‘Abd al-Mu‘ti, al-‘Ilaqat al-Misriyya al-Hijaziyya fi al-qarn al-thamin ‘ashr (Cairo, 1999), pp. 63–70; Jamal al-Din, ‘al-‘Amaliyyat al-‘askariyya’, pp. 382–85.

  23. 23.

    Jamal al-Din, ‘al-‘Amaliyyat al-‘askariyya’, pp. 410–27; E. L. F Haut, Mémoires d’un officier de l’armée Française (Cairo, 2005), pp. 252–70; D. J. Larrey, Memoirs of military surgery and campaigns of the French army, Richard Willmott Hall, trans., 2 vols., (Baltimore, 1914), I, p. 128; Nabil al-Sayyid al-Tukhi, al-Sa‘id fi ‘ahd al-hamla al-Faransiyya (Cairo, 1997).

  24. 24.

    Vivant Denon, ‘Discourse du citoyen Denon’, in Mémoires sur l’Égypte, publiés pendant les campagnes du Général Bonaparte (Paris, 1800), p. 410.

  25. 25.

    Denon, Voyage dans le Basse et la Haute Égypte, II, pp. 120–21, 131–32. The translation is from Denon, Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt, II, pp. 199–200.

  26. 26.

    Ibid., pp. 230–31, 235–36.

  27. 27.

    Ibid., 191. The translation is from Denon, Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt, II, p. 295.

  28. 28.

    Ibid., 197–99.

  29. 29.

    Ibrahim, al-Faransyyun fi Sa‘id Misr, pp. 135–73.

  30. 30.

    Ibid.

  31. 31.

    See, for example: Isna Court, Sijill Ishhadat 50, p. 286, 5 Shawwal 1214, Archival Code 1169-000051, ENA.

  32. 32.

    Denon, Voyage dans le Basse et la Haute Égypte, II, pp. 139–40.

  33. 33.

    Madiha Dus, ed., Mukhtarat min watha’iq al-hamla al-Faransiyya, 1798–1801 (Cairo, 2006), pp. 78–82, 87–91, 108–9.

  34. 34.

    Ibid., pp. 86–91.

  35. 35.

    Ibid., pp. 118.

  36. 36.

    Ibid., pp. 109–33; Khalid Abu Al-Rus, ‘Madinat Isna fi al-qarn al-thamin ‘ashr’ (PhD dissertation, Cairo University, 2008), p. 56.

  37. 37.

    Ibid.

  38. 38.

    Denon, Voyage dans le Basse et la Haute Égypte, 2:195–97. The translation is from Denon, Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt, II, pp. 300–301.

  39. 39.

    Dus, Mukhtarat min watha’iq al-hamla, pp. 112–13, 136, 144; Jamal al-Din, appendix 10, in al-Jabarti, ‘Aja’ib al-athar, IV, pp. 433–35.

  40. 40.

    Jamal al-Din, appendix 15, in al-Jabarti, ‘Aja’ib al-athar, IV, p. 439.

  41. 41.

    Denon, Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Égypte, II, pp. 151–52. The translation is from Denon, Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt, II, pp. 243–44.

  42. 42.

    al-Jabarti, ‘Aja’ib al-athar, IV, pp. 592–601; Jamal al-Din, ‘Mu‘ahadat al-Sulh bayna Kilibar wa-Murad Bey’, in al-Jabarti, ‘Aja’ib al-athar, IV, pp. 301–3; The Annual register or a view of the history of politics and literature for the year 1801 (London, 1802), p. 212–17, 225.

  43. 43.

    Jamal al-Din, ‘al-Amir Murad Bey’, in al-Jabarti, ‘Aja’ib al-athar, IV, p. 592.

  44. 44.

    Edward Lane, An account of the manners and customs of modern Egyptians: written in Egypt during the years 1833, 34, and 35, 2 vols. (London, 1837), I, p. 3.

  45. 45.

    Gabor Agoston and Bruce Masters, eds., Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire (New York, 2009), pp. 462–63.

  46. 46.

    Larrey, Memoirs of military surgery, I, p. 370; ‘The diseases of Egypt, from observations made during the British Expedition in that country under Sir R. Abercromble, K.C.B, in 1801’, Medical Press and Circular, a Weekly Journal of Medicine and Medical Affairs, July–December 1882, pp. 152–53.

  47. 47.

    ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti, Muzhir al-taqdis bi-zawal dawlat al-Faransis (Cairo, 1998), p. 250. The translation is from LaVerne Kuhnke, Lives at risk: public health in nineteenth-century Egypt (Berkeley, CA, 1990), p. 76.

  48. 48.

    al-Jabarti, Muzhir al-taqdis, introduction of Ahmad Zakariyya al-Shalaq, pp. 9–10; al-Jabarti, ‘Aja’ib al-athar, vol. III.

  49. 49.

    Nuris Muhammad Sayf al-Din, al-Jaliya al-Faransiyya fi Misr, 1882–1956 (Cairo, 2012), pp. 21–25.

  50. 50.

    Antoine B. Clot-Bey, Aperçu général sur l’Egypte, 2 vols. (Paris, 1840), II, pp. 255–62, 87–89.

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  1. Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH, USA

    Zeinab Abul-Magd

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  1. Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Joseph Clarke

  2. Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    John Horne

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Abul-Magd, Z. (2018). A Crisis of Images: The French, Jihad and the Plague in Upper Egypt, 1798–1801. In: Clarke, J., Horne, J. (eds) Militarized Cultural Encounters in the Long Nineteenth Century. War, Culture and Society, 1750-1850. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78229-4_7

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