Muhammad Ali in Egypt and the Influence

Muhammad Ali in Egypt and the Influence of Napoleon

Services and Mission of Muhammad Ali Pasha

Reforms under the Regime of Muhammad Ali Pasha

Societal Reforms

Education Reforms

Westernization

Economic Reforms

Agricultural Reforms

Political Reforms

Political Reforms

Economic Strengthening Activities to Make Egypt Self Sufficient

Muhammad Ali the Father of Modern Egypt

AFU Armed Forces Union

CGS Chief of the General Staff

CUP the Committee of Union and Progress

Dev-Sol Revolutionary Left

Dev-Yol Revolutionary Way

D-SK Confederation of Unions of Revolutionary Workers

DP Democrat Party

EEC or EC European Economic Community or European Community

Hak-?

Confederation of Unions of Islamist Workers

IMF International Monetary Fund

JP Justice Party

MI-SK The Confederation of Unions of Nationalist Workers

M-T National Intelligence Organization

NAP Nationalist Action Party

NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NDP Nationalist Democracy Party

NOP National Order Party

NSC National Security Council

NSP National Salvation Party

NTP New Turkey Party

NUC National Unity Committee

OYAK Army Mutual Assistance Association

PKK Workers' Party of Kurdistan

PRP Progressive Republican Party

RPP Republican People's Party

SHP Social Democratic Populist Party

SODEP Social Democratic Party

SPO State Planning Organisation

TPLA Turkish People's Liberation Army

Turk-?

Confederation of the Workers Unions of Turkey

TUSIAD Association of Turkish Industrialists and Businessmen

WPT Workers' Party of Turkey

Egypt has been successfully ruled by the Muhammad Ali Pasha and his family for about 147 years, the cultural history and benevolence of the era remains an integral component of the history of Egypt owing to the fact that the historical trends and evolutions of the Egypt remained is largely a part of the modern Alexandria and its customs[footnoteRef:2]. Muhammad Ali Pasha is regarded as the founding head of the Egypt and due to his ceaseless efforts and dynamic personality traits his name has seems to appear everywhere on the streets buildings and other related architectural sites. Muhammad Ali pasha entered Egypt in 1800 as Turkish Army Officer and due to his revolutionary thinking he rose to the top level to rule Egypt. His struggle for evolution and welfare of Egypt did not lasted with him but his decedents continued his struggle until the last king of Egypt Ahmed Fouad II, abdicated his rule in 1952, as a consequence of a Royal verdict decree No. 65-1952[footnoteRef:3]. Throughout the presence of the Muhammad Ali Pasha's regime the Egypt witnessed and experienced new and modern enlightenment in Egypt and an equally paced up pace modernization. [2: Alston, R. (1995). Soldier and Society in Roman Egypt: A Social History. London: Routledge. P 8-102 Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=109085852] [3: Alston, R. (1995). Soldier and Society in Roman Egypt: A Social History. London: Routledge. P 110 Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=109085852]

The Ottoman times

The prominence on the army's role in Turkish history and politics, from Ottoman times to the present, suggests a continuity which seems believable, as per the subtle criterion and subjective development. It assumes that the army was an institution which never changed its world view, which it stood above society and acted independently of it, in order to safeguard the interest of the dwellers of the region functional under the military. It also tends to obscure the changes, often sharp and dramatic, which Turkey has experienced and which provide a better and deeper understanding of modern Turkish history and politics. There is always the thread of continuity which runs through the history of virtually every nation and there is rarely a total break with the past, as this connection of the past and the future values ensures the sustainability of a nation at large[footnoteRef:4]. Yet it is vital not to lose sight of the turning points. This is particularly true in the case of modern Turkey and the way the Ottoman Empire expanded the operations and exercised powers in Egypt and other Arab countries. Ataturk laid stress on the fact that the regime they were creating had nothing in common with the former Ottoman state and was a complete break with the corrupt past[footnoteRef:5]. However, there is another thread of continuity which runs through the history of modern Turkey and which helps us to make better sense of the contemporary situation than does the factor of military involvement. This was the Turkish determination to find a place for their empire in the emerging world economy at the beginning of the nineteenth century, dominated by Britain and Europe in the industrial age. At first, the sultans hoped to meet the growing Western challenge by simply creating a modern army[footnoteRef:6]. But by the nineteenth century, the ruling classes realized that they could not withstand Western pressure by only military means. In order to do so, they knew that they had to create a modern political, social, and economic structure of which the modern army was but one part[footnoteRef:7] [4: Ansari, H. (1986). Egypt, the Stalled Society / . Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. P 102 Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=102522123] [5: Asante, M.K. (2002). Culture and Customs of Egypt. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. P45-56 Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=111669565] [6: Assmann, J. & Stroumsa, G.G. (Eds.). (1999). Transformations of the Inner Self in Ancient Religions. Boston: Brill p 56-90. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=114080134] [7: Assmann, J. & Stroumsa, G.G. (Eds.). (1999). Transformations of the Inner Self in Ancient Religions. Boston: Brill p89-101. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=114080134]

Biography of the Great Leader

Muhammad Ali Pasha was significant Ottoman officer and a reforming viceroy from 1805 to 1848; additionally he is also regarded as the founder of the dynasty that ruled Egypt until 1952. The founding figure of Egypt Muhammad Ali was born in Qavalla (Macedonia), Muhammad 'Ali was the son of a tobacco merchant who was a soldier, this can hereby be deduced that the personality and the leadership qualities and warship talent of Muhammad Ali were in his blood. His military and probably naval experience was gleaned from fighting bandits and pirates in his province[footnoteRef:8]. He became an officer in the Ottoman army despite his lack of formal education; he did not learn to read until he was forty-five. He came to Egypt in 1801 as second-in-command of a 300-man Albanian regiment in the Ottoman army, allied with the British, to drive out the French invaders[footnoteRef:9]. He persuaded the Mamluks to aid the Ottomans and his Albanians against the French. He then maneuvered the ulama and Mamluk factions into ousting the Ottoman-appointed governors, KHUSRAW and then KHURSHID, so that he could himself be named to their post in 1805. He went on contending with the remaining Mamluks, until he had them massacred in 1811[footnoteRef:10]. Acting as a loyal vassal of the Ottoman sultan, Muhammad 'Ali sent troops to suppress the Wahhabi rebellion in Arabia, thus conquering the Hijaz for Egypt. Constructing a Nile River fleet, he also sent forces to conquer the eastern Sudan in 1821, hoping to staff his armies with Blacks, but most could not survive Egypt's climate[footnoteRef:11]. He replaced them with Egyptian peasants, who had not been conscripted since antiquity. He ordered dams, dikes, canals, and catch basins built to improve Nile irrigation, and many cash crops were introduced, including long-staple Egyptian cotton. By putting all agricultural land under a state monopoly, he controlled the output and price of cash crops, thus raising the funds needed to pay for his other reforms. [8: Badran, M. (1995). Feminists, Islam, and Nation: Gender and the Making of Modern Egypt. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press p 89-90. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=100249537] [9: Badran, M. (1995). Feminists, Islam, and Nation: Gender and the Making of Modern Egypt. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press p 99&105. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=100249537] [10: Badran, M. (1995). Feminists, Islam, and Nation: Gender and the Making of Modern Egypt. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press p 56-78. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=100249537] [11: Badran, M. (1995) p 45]

Muhammad Ali Pasha was the Ottoman officer and the reforming viceroy from 1805 to 1848, and founder of the dynasty that ruled Egypt until 1952. He was born in Qavalla (Macedonia), Muhammad 'Ali was the son of a tobacco merchant who was also a soldier.

In 1848 he agreed to relinquish his governorship to Ibrahim, who died soon afterward, leaving the post to 'ABBAS HILMI I. Muhammad Ali was one of the ablest men ever to govern Egypt and did much to in- crease the country's power and wealth, but he showed no concern for his subjects' welfare and established a system of personal rule that, in the hands of less capable descendants, would prove ruinous to his dynasty and injurious to Egypt. He died at Ras al-Tin Palace[footnoteRef:12]. [12: Baer, G. (1962). A History of Landownership in Modern Egypt, 1800-1950. New Haven: Oxford University Press p 98-101. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=91598140]

Muhammad Ali in Egypt and the Influence of Napoleon

Services and Mission of Muhammad Ali Pasha

In part at least, the Ottoman Turks restored the glories of a united Islam. But they took away, for five centuries, the possibility of an independent Arab-dom, and Arab nationalists bore them considerable ill-will for it[footnoteRef:13]. The only 'Arab' state conquered by the Turks which was not in irremediable decay, was the Mamluk state of Egypt and Syria[footnoteRef:14]. The Mamluks themselves were a dynasty of Turkish slaves; and in any case they afterwards succeeded, as did all the North African provinces, in enjoying internal autonomy under Ottoman suzerainty. The claim that the caliphate had been transmitted to the Ottoman sultans was made only late in the history of the Empire. It was as Turkish rulers that they held their power, and only secondarily (if at all) as vice-regents of the Prophet. They preserved and even sharpened the distinction between the secular and the spiritual administration[footnoteRef:15]. The Shaikh-al-Islam as the head of the religious organization of the Empire was on a par with the Grand Vizier. As head of the religious judiciary he had considerable independence, and was sometimes able successfully to oppose the Sultan[footnoteRef:16]. The Ottomans, indeed, had a great deal more respect for the religious law than the Mamluks. [13: Barnett, M.N. (1992). Confronting the Costs of War: Military Power, State, and Society in Egypt and Israel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press p 56-98. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=102840603] [14: Beattie, K.J. (1994). Egypt during the Nasser Years: Ideology, Politics, and Civil Society. Boulder, CO: Westview Press p 101-190. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=86005149] [15: Black, J. (2004). Rethinking Military History. New York: Routledge p 345. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=108014528] [16: Bush, R. (1999). Economic Crisis and the Politics of Reform in Egypt. Boulder, CO: Westview Press p 350. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=82383383]

The Ottoman Empire cannot be considered a true successor state to the early Arab Empires. Its Islamic territories were much smaller. At its utmost extent it did not include Morocco, and it exercised only an indirect suzerainty over the other 'Barbary' states of North Africa[footnoteRef:17]. In Arabia it ruled the Hejaz and the Yemen, but always with an unsteady hand, and really doing little more than keep open the pilgrim road to Mecca. [17: Black, J. (2004). Rethinking Military History. New York: Routledge p 362. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=108014528]

What distinguish the Ottoman Empire even more sharply, are its racial character and its administration. The language of the Empire was Turkish. The Ottomans preserved themselves remarkably clearly from the Arabs in culture, even if they freely intermarried, and at some periods it was reckoned unworthy to speak Arabic -- even if the speaker were born an Arab phone[footnoteRef:18]. [18: David, R. (2000). The Experience of Ancient Egypt. London: Routledge p 98. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=103322542]

The autonomous life of the Arab peoples went on to a surprising extent under the Ottomans, largely because of the complete insulation of the Turkish official classes from the merchant and middle classes who were the main sections of the Arabic educated population. There was no attempt at colonization: the Ottomans remained as it was extraneous to their own Empire. There was no renaissance of Arab literature and thought, but there was not the entire stagnation which is sometimes supposed. Orthodox Islamic culture, however, failed to recover from its medieval decline[footnoteRef:19]. The learning of the great universities and schools, which had been the glory of Islam as late as the thirteenth century, had silted up: orthodox Islamic philosophy and theology became no more than the stultified repetition of medieval texts. The impetus had gone out of orthodox religion, and it now spent itself in the multitude of dervish sects or brotherhoods. And as the impulse of the Sufi brotherhoods became spread out over tens of thousands of associations of simple and illiterate people, their doctrines became vulgarized into a loose and superstitious popular bigotry[footnoteRef:20]. [19: David, R., & David, A.E. (1992). A Biographical Dictionary of Ancient Egypt. London: Seaby p138. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=103503376] [20: Dilorenzo, T.J. (2000, June). Trade and the Rise of Freedom. Ideas on Liberty, 50, 23+ p 148 Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5037542618]

The Ottoman Empire and its supremacy

The period of systematic intervention by the western powers in the Near East begins with Napoleon's expedition to Egypt in 1798. By occupying Egypt, Napoleon clearly showed the British that their Indian Empire could be threatened by a hostile power which could close the Suez portage. Egypt had entered into the strategy of British imperial communications[footnoteRef:21]. [21: Doran, M. (1999). Pan-Arabism before Nasser: Egyptian Power Politics and the Palestine Question. New York: Oxford University Press p 687. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=65770940]

A second 'vital interest' which grew out of the weakness of the Ottoman Empire was the question of Russia's drive to control the Straits of the Bosporus and Dardanelles and to open the Mediterranean to her Black Sea fleet. With this question was linked that of Russian imperialism in the Balkans and Russian 'protection' of the Christians of the Near East. This was what nineteenth-century statesmen understood by 'the Eastern Question'. But it was linked with the survival of the Turkish Empire as a political unit: thus both the Egyptian question and the question of the Straits were eventually one -- as Palmerstone's diplomacy was to demonstrate[footnoteRef:22]. [22: Erlich, H. (2002). The Cross and the River: Ethiopia, Egypt, and the Nile. Boulder, CO: L. Rienner p 456. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=105512601]

The powers vitally interested in the Eastern Question were Great Britain, Russia, Austria and France. Of these, Great Britain had the most to lose and Russia the most to gain. British interest was to avoid a 'settlement' of the Eastern Question and to prop up the Ottoman Empire so far as she could do so without betraying the subject Balkan Christians. She wished to keep Egypt out of hostile hands and the straits out of Russian hands, and to widen the regime of protection for European traders (the 'capitulations') so as to keep the eastern markets open to British trade. Russia was interested above all in the Balkans, but the combination of her interests there with her ambitions over the straits tended to end in a policy of dominating the whole Turkish Empire. France had trade interests in the Levant, and her connexion with the Maronite Christian minority in the Lebanon together with the interest in Egypt which Napoleon had aroused, combined to give her the desire to win something from Ottoman weakness[footnoteRef:23]. None of the powers, in fact, desired the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Each was too fearful of the advantages its neighbors might gain, to want to risk a general melee in the Near East. But each power attached conditions to the survival of the Ottoman Empire, which the others were unwilling to accept. [23: Freeman, C. (1999). Egypt, Greece, and Rome: Civilizations of the Ancient Mediterranean. Oxford: p 560 Oxford University Press. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=35516993]

The career of Muhammad Ali in Egypt was in some senses a test case for the policies of the powers. Muhammad Ali was an Albanian mercenary who seized power in Egypt in 1805 during the disorders after the French withdrawal, massacred the last of the Mamluk aristocracy, and founded a new state, which although it continued to recognize the suzerainty of the sultan, was effectively autonomous[footnoteRef:24]. Muhammad Ali was not an Arab, but he set Egypt free from the Ottoman as she had not been since 1517, and he was the first Islamic ruler to have the desire and the means more than superficially to westernize the state. [24: Gardiner, A. (1964). Egypt of the Pharaohs An Introduction. London: Oxford University Press p68. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=95611383]

The attitude of the powers to Muhammad Ali was one of increasing suspicion. Quite early in the game he offered England friendship and privileges if she would consent to his seizure of Syria and Iraq, thus creating a friendly 'Fertile Crescent' power across the route to India. Far from inspiring confidence, it was probably this suggestion which finally turned Palmerston against Muhammad Ali[footnoteRef:25]. The idea that he might overturn Ottoman power and seize the caliphate was in any case distasteful to a power as deeply committed as was Great Britain to the stability of the Ottoman Empire. But this was decisive that the threat to British influence in the Persian Gulf, and the further threat of a great oriental power which might link up with Russia through Northern Iraq and Kurdistan[footnoteRef:26]. British communication with the east did not merely depend on Egypt, but on the whole zone of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley, Persian Gulf and Red Sea. It is significant that at this period, when British fears of Egyptian expansion were acute, Great Britain annexed Aden. [25: Goldschmidt, A. (1999). Biographical Dictionary of Modern Egypt. Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner p 68-98&156. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=113668077] [26: Hahn, P.L. (1991). The United States, Great Britain, and Egypt, 1945-1956: Strategy and Diplomacy in the Early Cold War. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press p245-167. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=35477347]

Muhammad Ali then turned to France, the one power which was willing to risk the uncertainties of a general Ottoman collapse. In 1832 his son Ibrahim had defeated the Turks and conquered Syria, and in 1833 only Russian intervention prevented him from going to Constantinople. The sultan sent an army against Ibrahim, which was totally defeated at Nezib in 1839. A period of negotiations followed, in which the European powers bargained with Muhammad Ali, as to what he might exact from the Ottomans for his victory[footnoteRef:27]. Encouraged by France, he held out for too stiff a price: Syria and Crete were more than Palmerston and Russia were willing to allow him. France was unable to back up her protege by force, and in 1840 Ibrahim was expelled from Syria and utterly defeated by a small allied force under the English Admiral Napier. The first attempt to create a new non-Ottoman state in the Fertile Crescent had failed[footnoteRef:28]. [27: Herold, J.C. (1962). Bonaparte in Egypt (1st ed.). New York: Harper & Row p 45. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=1507750] [28: Holland, M.F. (1996). America and Egypt: From Roosevelt to Eisenhower. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers p 98. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=27254217]

The treatment of Muhammad Ali by the powers sprang more from the conservatism of a generation which thought in terms of the balance of power, than from any reactionary desire to suppress oriental national movements - it certainly occurred to no one to think of Muhammad Ali in this light. It was Nicholas I's desire to stand firm with Austria and Prussia in Europe, which had the effect of lining up Russia beside England to preserve the Ottoman Empire intact. This, combined with British fears for the security of the route to India, secured Muhammad Ali's overthrow[footnoteRef:29]. [29: Issawi, C. (1954). Egypt at Mid-Century: An Economic Survey (Revised ed.). London: Oxford University Press p 450-560. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=11651743]

By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the purely archaic and oriental structure of earlier Ottoman society had disappeared; its final period was described in the eighteen twenties by the Englishman Lane, in his classic Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians. The shell of eastern society was still archaic, but the core had begun to undergo the most profound changes, the most important of which was the opening-up of the Near East as a mass market for western industry[footnoteRef:30]. [30: Jankowski, J. (2002). Nasser's Egypt, Arab Nationalism, and the United Arab Republic. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner p66. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=105194180]

Reforms under the Regime of Muhammad Ali Pasha

1: Societal Reforms

Education Reforms

By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the purely archaic and oriental structure of earlier Ottoman society had disappeared; its final period was described in the eighteen twenties by the Englishman Lane, in his classic Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians. The shell of eastern society was still archaic, but the core had begun to undergo the most profound changes, the most important of which was the opening-up of the Near East as a mass market for western industry[footnoteRef:31]. Egyptian cotton had revolutionized the Egyptian economy, just as the Suez Canal had revolutionized the position of Egypt in world communications. Railways were being built or contemplated all over the Ottoman Empire; so were ports able to handle modern shipping. Factories and modern schools began to appear[footnoteRef:32].That economic insolvency soon, become political insolvency was first demonstrated in Egypt. Muhammad Ali had obtained the hereditary government of Egypt for his descendants under Turkish suzerainty. His grandson Isma-il, who succeeded in 1863, attempted to force the pace of modernization by measures which compelled him to raise loans on ruinous terms. The Suez Canal, as a result of a particularly unscrupulous set of transactions, was paid for almost entirely by Egypt. The breakdown of the Egyptian Debt payments in 1876 led to the appointment of a European Commission of the Debt to supervise Egyptian finances. Isma'il riposted by the formation of a 'liberal' ministry and by attempting to appeal to national feeling against foreign intervention[footnoteRef:33]. He was too late, and his manœuvre led in 1879 to his deposition. One of Isma'il's devices had been to encourage mutiny in the Army, where the economies of the Commission of the Debt had caused much discontent. In 1881 a certain Colonel Ahmed Arabi led a revolt which forced the new Khedive, Tewfik, to appoint a liberal nationalist ministry. Ahmed Arabi was unable to work in harmony with the constitutionalists for long, and by 1882 he was virtually the nationalist dictator of Egypt[footnoteRef:34]. What now appears to be the most important and permanent effect of British intervention in Egypt was the re conquest and colonization of the Sudan. This huge territory of a million or more square miles, was conquered by Egypt, between the reigns of Muhammad Ali and Isma'il. It was never securely held, and the revolt of Muhammad Ahmed, the 'Mahdi', in 1881, was not particularly surprising. Muhammad Ahmed was the head of a religious brotherhood or 'tariqa[footnoteRef:35]'. He proclaimed himself to be the Mahdi or right-guided one, who had come to complete the work of the Prophet, conduct the final holy war, and inaugurate the final triumph of Islam. [31: Lacouture, J., & Lacouture, S. (1958). Egypt in Transition (Scarfe, F., Trans.). New York: Criterion Books p89&167. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=9738079] [32: Lacouture, J., & Lacouture, S. (1958). Egypt in Transition (Scarfe, F., Trans.). New York: Criterion Books p 77&109. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=9738079] [33: Little, T. (1958). Egypt. New York: Frederick A. Praeger. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=6286827] [34: Marlowe, J. (1954). A History of Modern Egypt and Anglo-Egyptian Relations, 1800-1953. New York: Praeger p 234. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=87653900] [35: Little, T. (1958). Egypt. New York: Frederick A. Praeger p567. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=6286827]

The Mahdi was carried to power in the Sudan by a tribal and religious explosion which the Egyptian army was powerless to stop, and which led to the isolating of Gordon in Khartoum and his death there in 1885. Great Britain was not willing, in view of her own uncertain position in Egypt in 1885, to undertake the conquest of the Sudan there and then, and a Mahdist regime was left relatively undisturbed in the Sudan until 1896. By that time the British position in Egypt was well-established, and the threat that France would occupy the Sudan from the west made British action there inevitable. Kitchener was sent with an Anglo-Egyptian army to undertake the reconquest, which was completed by 1899[footnoteRef:36]. [36: Meital, Y. (1997). Egypt's Struggle for Peace: Continuity and Change, 1967-1977. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida p678. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=11277019]

Having conquered the Sudan 'with' Egypt, Great Britain found herself uncertain how to dispose of it. If she annexed it, international protest - and particularly French protest - was likely to be violent. She did not want to give it outright to Egypt, because it was not certain that the British occupation of Egypt would endure forever, and without Britain it was feared that Egypt would be unable to defend the Sudan against the ambitions of other great powers[footnoteRef:37]. A further factor was Cromer's desire to avoid imposing on the Sudan the regime of European legal privilege (the 'capitulations') which obtained in Egypt. The extraordinary (and at that time new) expedient of a condominium was hit upon; Great Britain and Egypt would govern the Sudan jointly. In 1899 this was thought of as a kind of British guardianship on behalf of Egypt. It could not then be foreseen that the new idea of trusteeship on behalf of native peoples would one day transfer the benefit of British guardianship from Egypt to the Sudanese, and lead to the creation of a new state [footnoteRef:38]. [37: JABARTI?, ?. A.-R., & HATHAWAY, J. (2009). Al-Jabarti?'s history of Egypt. Princeton, NJ, Markus Wiener Publishers p87-99.] [38: Meskell, L. (2004). Object Worlds in Ancient Egypt: Material Biographies Past and Present / . New York: Berg p127-130. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=102270779]

The last decade of the nineteenth century saw the rise of a movement of Ottoman nationalism, which blamed the despotism of the Sultan Abdulhamid for the woes of the Empire, rejected the Sultan's Pan-Islamic ideas, and looked forward to the establishment of a secular, modern Ottoman state, which would unite all the peoples of the old Empire, Muslim and Christian, in a new nationalism. These, the ideas of the ' Society for Union and Progress', had a fatal fault: they contradicted the two most important principles on which the Empire was built[footnoteRef:39]. The Empire was an Islamic community - under the Caliph-Sultan, the Islamic community in which Christians were necessarily subordinate to Muslims[footnoteRef:40]. Secondly, the racial variety of the Empire could be overcome only by asserting Islam as its basic principle. The idea of Ottoman nationalism was an impossible one, and was only a transition stage in the growth of new forms of national consciousness, which had already undermined the Ottoman Empire at its base. Thus the Turkish revolution of 1908, and the apparent triumph of the Society for Union and Progress, did not bring with it a renaissance of the Ottoman Empire - which, on the contrary, continued to be dismembered even more rapidly by the powers. By 1911 most of the Ottoman European possessions had gone, and Italy had invaded Tripolitania[footnoteRef:41]. [39: Mitchell, T. (2002). Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press p 56-67. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=105696916] [40: Modrzejewski, J.M. (1995). The Jews of Egypt: From Rameses II to Emperor Hadrian (Cornman, R., Trans.) (1st ed.). Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society p98-134. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=24697294] [41: Morewood, S. (2005). The British Defence of Egypt, 1935-1940: Conflict and Crisis in the Eastern Mediterranean. London: Frank Cass p 567. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=108721501]

It was at this point that Arab nationalism, which in the latter part of the nineteenth century had existed only as a floating idea in the minds of a few theorists, began to emerge into practical politics - although no western statesman at that time would have called it 'practical politics'. Publicly, Arab societies were founded from 1909 onwards to ask for 'decentralization' - a sort of local Arab autonomy inside the Empire, with Arabic recognized as an official language. Secretly, other societies were founded at the same period for the liberation of the Arab countries from the Turk. Membership of the secret societies included Syrians (both Christian and Muslim) and Iraqis[footnoteRef:42]. Particularly important was the military secret group known as al-Ahd, which was formed largely by young Iraqi officers[footnoteRef:43]. The secret societies had contacts outside the lands under direct Ottoman government, particularly at Cairo, where the Syrians domiciled in Egypt were important, and at Paris, where the movement received a good deal of encouragement from certain of the French. Besides these subversive movements, Ottoman rule in the Arab lands was meeting opposition of quite a different sort. Turkish rule in Arabia had never been more than spasmodically effective. In the Yemen, the theocratic dynasty of the Imams, after a series of rebellions, had extracted favourable terms from the Turks in 1911[footnoteRef:44]. North of the Yemen, Muhammad Ibn Ali, the 'Idrisi', kept the province of Asir in a state of anti-Turkish rebellion. In central Arabia the young Abdul-Aziz Ibn Sa'ud was beginning to reconstitute the Wahhabi power of his ancestors, which had been crushed in 1818 by Ibrahim Pasha. In the Hejaz, the Hashemite Hussein Ibn Ali, the Grand Sharif of Mecca, was willing to change his allegiance. The condition of Arabia was in truth no more turbulent than it had been for centuries under Ottoman rule. But this had never before been the chance of linking a revolt in the desert with revolt in Syria and Iraq[footnoteRef:45]. [42: El-Tahtawi, Rif'a. 1869, The Methodology of Egyptian Minds with Regard to the Marvels of Modern Literature p98-156.] [43: Morewood, S. (2005). The British Defence of Egypt, 1935-1940: Conflict and Crisis in the Eastern Mediterranean. London: Frank Cass p445. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=108721501] [44: Noblecourt, C.D. (1960). Ancient Egypt: The New Kingdom and the Amarna Period. Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society p343. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=10328949] [45: Partner, P. (1960). A Short Political Guide to the Arab World. New York: Praeger p323. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=4012161]

Mohammed Ali, a clever, able, and ambitious military officer of Albanian origin.His path to power was made difficult by other individuals and groups who were determined to retain their positions within the country, but in the end Mohammed Ali emerged victorious. From the outset he realized that Egypt was now an important force in the international system, that events in Egypt would be watched carefully in all the chancelleries of Europe, and most carefully of all in the capital of the Ottoman Empire, whose sultan was determined to retain Egypt as part of his dominions. Hence, if Mohammed Ali were to achieve his objective of establishing hereditary rule in Egypt, he had to consolidate his own power and establish Egypt as an independent force, a truly formidable task. Egypt had a population of only about two million and, despite the shock of Napoleon's invasion, still conformed closely to the model of a traditional society.

Since the basis of power was a strong military establishment, Mohammed Ali set out to create a modern army. In so doing he was to transform the entire country, for his military ambitions could be realized only within the framework of a modern administration, economy, and society. His first requirement was for skilled manpower, and he turned to education as the prime source of officers trained in European ways.

As early as 1809 he sent a student mission abroad, and in 1816 he opened the first modern school where, in addition to the Koran and reading and writing, foreign languages (Turkish, Persian, Italian) and military subjects were taught. Before long other schools were opened, each designed to meet a specific need perceived by Mohammed Ali, particularly in the military field where schools for infantry, cavalry, artillery, and navy officers were established. A second area of concern was to produce trained personnel for the auxiliary services required by a modern military organization, and between 1827 and 1834 he opened such institutions as a medical school, a school of pharmacy, one of veterinary medicine, an engineering school, a signal school, and even a school of music to train buglers and trumpeters. Besides his military aims, Mohammed Ali also wished to build up an administrative structure totally dependent upon and loyal exclusively to him, and to do so he had to replace the Copts who dominated various branches of the existing administration with his own followers.Hence he established a school of accounting ( 1826), civil school ( 1829), and a school of administration (1834). To provide manpower for his industrial and agricultural enterprises, he opened an industrial school and a school of irrigation in 1831 and a school of agriculture three years later.

Thus Mohammed Ali established an extensive network of higher technical schools of various types, each designed to provide trained manpower for a specific field.This early attempt at relating education functionally to the perceived manpower needs of the society served above all to emphasize the need for coordinated educational planning among the various parts of an educational system and the complex problems involved in attempting to establish modern educational institutions in a traditional setting.

The first difficulty was finding instructors for the schools. At the beginning the only solution was to employ large numbers of Europeans, since few Egyptians were trained in the subjects that Mohammed Ali wanted taught. This remedy soon proved costly and inefficient. Not only were the Europeans of uneven quality, but they commanded large salaries, and since few knew Arabic, interpreters (and qualified ones were extremely scarce) had to be utilized, which increased the cost of foreign teachers and the inefficiency of this method. From Mohammed Ali's viewpoint, however, the most serious weakness in using such instructors was their independence; he was unwilling to tolerate in key positions persons whose loyalty was doubtful and over whom he had no control.

For these reasons, the decision was soon made to train native Egyptians as teachers, and students were sent to Europe for this purpose. The first mission left Egypt in 1809, and by 1826 twenty-eight Egyptians were being educated in Europe. As the need became ever more apparent, their numbers increased dramatically. By 1849, an additional 321 Egyptians were in Europe studying military subjects and medicine, as well as industrial arts, engineering, administration, agriculture, and science.

The second problem was to find qualified students, since no modern schools existed at the lower levels of the educational system. Recourse was perforce to the graduates of traditional institutions, with obvious consequences for the quality of the new schools. Even this remedy, however, soon proved unfeasible because many parents preferred to deny their children a traditional education rather than make them eligible for enrollment in the colleges which were rightly regarded as sources of manpower for the hated military. To be a student was to be a member of the army and to be treated as such. This was the experience of the famous educator Ali Mubarak, who after gaining admission to one of the new preparatory schools in 1836 found that the quality of the institution was low, that the accommodations and the food were of poor quality, that pupils were treated harshly, and that most of the instruction consisted of military drill. The easiest way for a parent to save his son from such a future was not to enroll him in any school at all, and enrollments declined accordingly.

The strength of the traditional schools was further undermined when Mohammed Ali confiscated all revenues and properties of the pious foundations which subsidized them. By 1833 the traditional educational system was so badly attended that not even poorly qualified students could be recruited, and Mohammed Ali ordered the creation of ten primary schools in upper Egypt to provide freshmen for his higher institutes. To increase the attractiveness of his colleges and to overcome existing apathy, he also provided generous subsidies of food, clothing, lodging, and an allowance. These measures proved successful, enticing an adequate flow of students into the colleges, and in time the popular attitude toward modern schools changed dramatically. As it became obvious that the new system comprised an important channel of social mobility, and that graduation from its higher levels ensured a position in the bureaucracy with a guaranteed income and high prestige, the number of applicants soon came to greatly exceed available spaces[footnoteRef:46]. [46: Harten, Stuart. 2003, Rediscovering Ancient Egypt: Bonaparte's Expedition and the Colonial

Ideology of the French Revolution in Napoleon in Egypt. Irene A. Bierman, editor. Garnett Publishing: Reading p78-99]

A third problem area was the absence of suitable instructional materials. European texts had to be translated, so Mohammed Ali, in his typical manner, launched a massive project using whatever translators were available. Here too, however, the Egyptian leader's ambition clearly outpaced his resources. Few translators of any kind were available, and the good ones tended to be engaged in a wide variety of other related occupations. Nor could anyone provide the quick results that the impatient ruler demanded. Characteristically he is reputed to have sliced a work on geography into three sections and assigned each part to a different translator.

Such uncoordinated though determined efforts merely served to demonstrate the need to institutionalize the translation of European works in a more effective way, and in 1835 he established a school of translation within which was located a bureau of translation. It has been estimated that in the next thirteen years, this bureau, which became the focal point for all translation activities, produced over 2,000 books. This flood of European works represented a major channel for the introduction of new ideas and thus spurred the growth of an Egyptian national consciousness.

To remedy the inadequate preparation of the pupils, a special two? year preparatory course was introduced to teach the future doctors such modern subjects as French, mathematics, history, and geography. These criticisms, however, should not blind us to the fact that all the students were native Egyptians -- the members of the upper class, the Turks and Circassians, did not deign to attend any institution that was not designed to produce military officers (although many of the medical school graduates did serve with the Army) -- thus facilitating Mohammed Ali's policy of recruiting native Egyptians into his service. This factor was to have a fundamental impact upon the stratification of Egyptian society, a point to which we shall return later.

It soon became apparent that such expedients as sending students abroad and using foreign teachers constituted merely a temporary palliative, and that it was necessary -- even for the limited utilitarian educational aims of Mohammed Ali -- to coordinate and diversify the educational system that had developed. By the early 1830's, the modern educational institution consisted of primary schools in every province and a large number of specialized colleges with but one preparatory school between the higher and lower levels.

The weaknesses of this unplanned, fragmented, and uncoordinated system led to the establishment in about 1834 of a commission of investigation. The commission's report recommended the total reorganization and restructuring of education. The system was to be divided into primary, secondary, and higher levels and would consist of fifty primary schools with 5,500 pupils and two secondary schools -- one in Cairo with 1,500 students and one in Alexandria with 500. However, because of Mohammed Ali's opposition to this scheme -- whether he was too impatient to implement it or was averse to the idea of spreading education among the people is unclear -- nothing much was done to change the educational system during the remainder of his reign. His able and gifted son, Ibrahim, did approve a project in 1847 to introduce Western methods, but after the death of both father and son the following year it was abandoned.

Westernization

By far the richest and most highly developed of the Arab Near Eastern states in the post-war period was Egypt. With a population of 14,000,000 ( 1927), a highly organized economic structure, and a lively and rapidly growing Arab culture, Egypt was the most industrialized and sophisticated of all the Arab countries, and the only one whose ruling class had any real understanding of the west. But Egypt suffered from appalling over-population, and from the weakness of a single-crop economy: her dependence on the world cotton market was almost absolute[footnoteRef:47]. [47: Pinch, G. (2004). Egyptian Myth: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press p123. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=101583498]

The inter-war period was in a sense an armistice in the history of the Near East. For the first time for over a century, the interests of Great Britain and France were no longer opposed there by an active Russia[footnoteRef:48]. Germany for the time being was out of the running, and when she recovered her policies were directed at other objectives[footnoteRef:49]. The United States was interested in protecting her oil interests, but her activities went no further than this. Great Britain and France were too closely linked in Europe to permit themselves the luxury of active rivalry in the Near East. Their vital interests being thus cheaply protected, the two powers could permit themselves what they felt to be a considerable degree of liberalism in their relations with the nascent, Arab states[footnoteRef:50]. [48: Platt, R.R., & Hefny, M.B. (1958). Egypt: A Compendium. New York: American Geographical Society p56. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=343661] [49: Dodwell, Henry (1977), The Founder of Modern Egypt. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.] [50: Powell, E.M. (2003). A Different Shade of Colonialism: Egypt, Great Britain, and the Mastery of the Sudan. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press p566. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=105685412]

The old-style imperialism had suffered a major defeat in Great Britain, when in 1919 the India Office advocates of an Iraq closely attached to the Indian Empire were defeated by the partisans of an independent Arab Iraq[footnoteRef:51]. When this new state was set up, the British advisers rapidly did their work in mounting the essential government machinery, and by 1922 a qualified independence had been granted. In 1930, after further quarrelling at home between liberal and less liberal imperialists, Great Britain gave up the mandate in exchange for a treaty of alliance which guaranteed her the use of air bases, and whose effect was to make the British Ambassador in Bagdad remain a weighty force in Iraqi politics[footnoteRef:52]. [51: Rice, M. (1999). Who's Who in Ancient Egypt. London: Routledge p345. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=102896934] [52: Rowse, A.L. (1948). The Use of History. New York: The Macmillan Company p454. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=4635925]

Oil was a new factor in the policies of the powers, and was still by no means the dominant factor which it later became. Nevertheless, it was already important. The inclusion of Mosul in Iraq rather than in the French mandate of Syria was largely as a result of oil interests -- though the big discoveries there did not come until 1927[footnoteRef:53]. Oil interests in the inter-war period were governed by the Red Line agreement of 1928, which allotted interests in the Iraq Petroleum Company to British, French and American groups[footnoteRef:54]. [53: Fahmy, Khaled. 1997, All the Pasha's Men. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge p78-98] [54: Rugh, A.B. (1984). Family in Contemporary Egypt (1st ed.). Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press p192. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=45614096]

2: Economic Reforms

Agricultural Reforms

One of Muhammad Ali Pasha's first acts after his assumption of power was to abolish the old system of multazimin (who had started as tax-farmers and had ended up as semi-autonomous provincial governors) and to declare all the land of Egypt as belonging to the State[footnoteRef:55]. This apparently arbitrary measure was in fact an indispensable preliminary to an urgently necessary reform of the system of land tenure. Having taken over all the land in the name of the State, and having dispossessed all the previous owners (who mostly consisted of the Mameluke beys), he distributed part of it in estates to members of his family and entourage, but retained most of it as State property cultivated by the previous tenants. In course of time these tenants became, to all intents and purposes, the owners of the land they cultivated, provided that they paid their taxes. For example, in 1854, provision was made for the registration of land in the name of the occupier on the evidence of his taxation receipts, and in 1858 the Moslem law of inheritance was made officially applicable to land so registered[footnoteRef:56]. These two types of ownership -- land granted by the State in return for services rendered (sic), and land accruing to the occupier as the result of continued occupancy -- were known as ushuri and kharaj respectively. The ushuri lands were exempt from half the land tax in virtue of the terms on which they were originally granted to their owners. The kharaj lands were thus the main source of the land tax, from which was derived the annual tribute paid to Constantinople[footnoteRef:57]. [55: Saeed, J. (1994). Islam and Modernization: A Comparative Analysis of Egypt, and Turkey. Westport, CT: Praeger p911. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=23348122] [56: Shamir, S. (Ed.). (1995). Egypt from Monarchy to Republic: A Reassessment of Revolution and Change. Boulder, CO: Westview Press p345. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=89741953] [57: Springborg, R. (1989). Fragmentation of the Political Order. Boulder, CO: Westview Press p567. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=99439030]

The system of tax farming was abolished, and instead Muhammad Ali Pasha created a hierarchy of officials, depending from the central government, who were responsible for the collection of taxes, for the control of irrigation, and for the maintenance of public security. Under this system (which in its essentials still exists in the Egyptian provinces), Egypt was divided into provinces, each under a mmudir, or governor[footnoteRef:58]. These provinces, or mudiriyas, were subdivided into markazes, each under a mamur, who had under him the umdas, or headmen, of the various villages[footnoteRef:59]. [58: Sullivan, D.J., & Abed-Kotob, S. (1999). Islam in Contemporary Egypt: Civil Society vs. The State. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner 112. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=105816178] [59: Sullivan, D.J., & Abed-Kotob, S. (1999). Islam in Contemporary Egypt: Civil Society vs. The State p56]

Having thus brought the cultivated land under his direct control, Muhammad ali Pasha was able to proceed with his irrigation works. He caused the basin walls to be repaired and the canals to be redug. But he did not stop there. The traditional system only provided for irrigation during the time of high Nile[footnoteRef:60]. There was no water available for summer crops during the time of low Nile, when the land, perforce, lay fallow. For this reason it was impracticable to grow the sub-tropical crops for which the climate of the Egyptian summer was, in other respects, suitable. Muhammad Ali Pasha, who had a keen eye for industrial developments in Europe, and who knew all about the boom in textiles resulting from the invention of mechanical spinning and weaving, quickly saw the possibilities of cotton cultivation in Egypt. The climate was suitable. Transport to the sea-coast was cheap and easy[footnoteRef:61]. European markets were not too far distant. A profitable export crop would provide the money necessary for the Western goods and services which he was determined to introduce into Egypt. The only thing lacking was summer water. This was obtainable both by the digging of canals deep enough to enable the water to be led off from the low Nile, and by the construction of dams to raise the level of the low Nile. Both these expedients were adopted by Muhammad Ali Pasha. He chose the Delta for his cotton-growing experiment, presumably owing to its proximity to the seaboard. Deep canals were cut by forced labour. Steam pumps were used to raise the level of the summer water on to the fields, since the difference in level was too great for the primitive saqias and shadoofs[footnoteRef:62]. In 1834 a start was made on the construction of the Delta Barrage at the branching of the Rosetta and Damietta channels, some twelve miles north of Cairo. But work was soon abandoned, and only renewed, under French engineers, in 1847. It was hardly completed during Muhammad Ali Pasha's lifetime, and was thereafter neglected and allowed to fall into desuetude, until it was rehabilitated by British engineers some forty years later[footnoteRef:63]. [60: Szyliowicz, J.S. (1973). Education and Modernization in the Middle East. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press p565. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=96296550] [61: Toledano, E.R. (1998). Slavery and Abolition in the Ottoman Middle East. Seattle: University of Washington Press p199. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=35405660] [62: Tollefson, H. (1999). Policing Islam: The British Occupation of Egypt and the Anglo-Egyptian Struggle over Control of the Police, 1882-1914. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press p 456. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=113106787] [63: Warburg, G.R. & Kupferschmidt, U.M. (Eds.). (1983). Islam, Nationalism, and Radicalism in Egypt and the Sudan. New York: Praeger p145. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=106972296]

Cotton was not the only crop introduced into Egypt through the development of summer irrigation, which, by making it possible to grow two crops a year on one piece of land, increased the productivity of the land to a far greater extent than is indicated by the figures showing the increase in cultivated area. The indigo plant was brought from India and was an important agricultural product until the development of chemical dyes killed the indigo trade. Tobacco flourished until its cultivation was forbidden under the British occupation in the interests of the Customs revenue. Maize became an important summer crop and provided a valuable cereal supplement to the traditional winter crops of wheat and barley. The country's food supply was further augmented by the development of summer rice cultivation in the north-eastern Delta. These summer food crops in turn permitted a certain amount of winter cultivation to be turned over to bersim (a kind of clover) for animal fodder[footnoteRef:64]. [64: Wickhman, C.R. (2002). Mobilizing Islam: Religion, Activism, and Political Change in Egypt. New York: Columbia University Press p676. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=99823404]

3: Political Reforms

Political Reforms

Economic Strengthening Activities to Make Egypt Self Sufficient

The fundamental economic activity of the whole Near East was, and is, agriculture. The peasantry which carries out this agriculture was, and is (with the exception of Egypt), organized on a social and economic basis of profound archaism.

The relationship between the peasant and the land which has existed since the middle Ages in western Europe -- the profound attachment of a land-owning peasantry for a fertile soil -- in the Near East does not exist. What does exist is something more akin to the slave-owning Roman latifundia, than to the agrarian society which grew out of the settlements of the free barbarian warriors of the European Dark Ages[footnoteRef:65]. Unlike western society, which until the Industrial Revolution was dominated by the countryside, in which land-owning was the basis of titles of honour, the eastern countryside has for millenia been dominated by the towns as if by parasites. Land-owning has been nothing but a source of revenue to be enjoyed in the towns, and the cultivation of the land has seldom been a matter of the slightest interest to a gentleman. A mere instrument of exploitation to the landowner, the peasant has also been subject for millenia to the brigandage of the nomad, whose margin of life turns on what he can steal from the settled zones. [65: Wilkinson, T.A. (1999). Early Dynastic Egypt. London: Routledge p45. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=102909662]

These conditions have grown, in part, from the physical difficulties of exploiting the soil. Save in Egypt, where the harvest is guaranteed by the inundations of the Nile, Near Eastern agriculture depends on a margin of rain which must moisten the crops in March and April, and which can never safely be predicted. The soil is light and easily worked. It has been exploited for century after century by the fellah, often without the slightest attempt on his part to replace what he has taken out of it, or even to retain it in place. Deforestation and the destruction of flora have led to the light soil being carried off from the surface. The ruins of twelve Byzantine cities can be seen north of Aleppo, where now the land is bare rock and stones. The forests of Lebanon and Syria have disappeared, destroyed by the negligence of centuries, and the proverbial riches of the east have gone with them[footnoteRef:66]. [66: Ufford, Lettia. 2007, The Pasha: How Mehemet Ali Defied The West. McFarland: Jefferson p 38-45]

Of the three basic types of land-owning, none is satisfactory. Until the early fifties, most of the agricultural land of the whole area belonged to such great landowners. Peasant-owned lands are either farmed communally and in rotation (so that the good farmer has periodically to hand over his land to the bad every year), or else held individually. The individual peasant holdings are fragmented to an impossible degree, because of the Quranic laws on the division of inheritances[footnoteRef:67]. [67: Winter, M. (1992). Egyptian Society under Ottoman Rule, 1517-1798. New York: Routledge p 134. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=108367154]

Beyond these already torturing problems is the problem of over-population. For the past century and a half the population of the Near East has been rising -- in twentieth-century Egypt, spectacularly -- in the rest of the area steeply during the past thirty years. This is a problem which weighs heaviest upon Egypt, which has all the available agricultural land already under intense cultivation, but which is in fact universal. All the agricultural populations of the Near East are under-employed[footnoteRef:68]. [68: Winter, M. (1992). Egyptian Society under Ottoman Rule, 1517-1798. New York: Routledge p67. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=108367154]

In the inter-war period the only state which possessed the capital and the technical expertise to begin to affront the agrarian question was Egypt. On British initiative she had already built the Aswan dam in 1902, and the whole delta had been put under a uniform irrigation system which made possible perennial cultivation[footnoteRef:69]. Elsewhere there were improvements in irrigation, by the French in the Orontes Valley and elsewhere, and by the British in the Tigris-Euphrates. Of agrarian reform in the interest of the peasant there was scarcely a whisper. The fiscal reforms in Egypt were under British guidance directed in a way on the whole favorable to the peasant[footnoteRef:70]. But the complete political predominance of the urban landowning class all over the Middle East made a true agrarian reform impossible. It may even be said that benevolent western help did not always or in all ways assist the peasant. The new irrigation system in Egypt was a success, but it broke up the social unity of the Egyptian village. The land registration systems introduced by the British and French in Syria and Iraq were the occasion of appalling injustice, since land held communally by the village or tribe was registered personally in the name of the sheikh. [69: Wilkinson, T.A. (1999). Early Dynastic Egypt p 42-50] [70: Toledano, E.R. (1998). Slavery and Abolition in the Ottoman Middle East. Seattle: University of Washington Press p34. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=35405660]

The system of latifundia, combined with the almost total absence of industry, ensured the political domination of the landowning class and prevented the growth of a really numerous and powerful middle class. Such as it was, the substantial Arab bourgeoisie tended to be enrolled as clients of the great landowners, under the system of political patronage and nepotism which pervades all Mediterranean and eastern countries. The lesser bourgeoisie, minor shopkeepers and civil servants, was not powerful enough to strike out on its own political program, and saw the hope of social improvement only in the expulsion of the foreigner and the ending of 'colonial' exploitation. Thus there appeared a type of monolithic nationalist party of which the classic example was the Egyptian Wafd, at times connected with great financiers and landowners, but with the lower bourgeoisie and small land owners as its most militant supporters. Student demonstrations and street riots were its typical manifestation[footnoteRef:71]. [71: Szyliowicz, J.S. (1973). Education and Modernization in the Middle East. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press p45. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=96296550]

The part of the peasant in this political system was to elect his landlord. The 'democratic' constitutions which the British gave to Egypt and Iraq in the twenties placed these countries in the hands of the land-owning classes as firmly as any instrument which could have been devised. The landowners and the police between them were always able to secure the election of their candidates, as surely as the Irish Protestant landowners secured theirs before the Emancipation. It is significant that the Muslim Brotherhood, which was one of the few effective protests of the oriental petite bourgeoisie, wanted to take away the vote from the peasant, and restrict political power to the towns[footnoteRef:72]. [72: Springborg, R. (1989). Fragmentation of the Political Order. Boulder, CO: Westview Press p89. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=99439030]

The proletariat played no part in the oriental political scene, because of the absence of large-scale industry. In consequence, socialism of a modern type was excluded from politics also, and was confined to a few intellectuals. Only in the early forties did industry and the ancillary services become important enough for labor movements to begin to make an effective appearance. They had existed in Egypt from the beginning of the century, but only as a phantasmal force[footnoteRef:73]. [73: Springborg, R. (1989). Fragmentation of the Political Order. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=99439030]

4: Muhammad Ali the Father of Modern Egypt

The regime of Muhammad Ali Pasha 1805 to 1850 induced the sense of moderation and new outlook in Egypt. A 360 degree change was observed in Egypt since the empowerment of Muhammad Ali Pasha. Muhammad Ali laid emphasis on every domain of functionality within Egypt and emphasized that Egypt is no more a tyranny of its ill fate and is in a supreme authority to withstand the external forces of Turks or even Britain[footnoteRef:74]. The supremacy of Egypt as an independent nation was emphasized on account of his ceaseless efforts in all the spheres of development in Egypt. Starting from the societal and agricultural reforms he even stepped in to improve the educational criterions and the educational reforms of Egypt became an ultimate reality. But the most significant were the political reforms that were induced in Egypt by Muhammad Ali Pasha. The following reasons justify the fact that Muhammad Ali is the father of modern Egypt [footnoteRef:75] [74: Harten, Stuart. 2003, Rediscovering Ancient Egypt: Bonaparte's Expedition and the Colonial

Ideology of the French Revolution in Napoleon in Egypt. Irene A. Bierman, editor. Garnett Publishing: Reading p34] [75: Tollefson, H. (1999). Policing Islam: The British Occupation of Egypt and the Anglo-Egyptian Struggle over Control of the Police, 1882-1914. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press p98-115. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=113106787]

The most important reforms that turned the fate of Egypt and transformed the entire state to a modernized state were the political reforms brought about by the great leader and warrior Muhammad Ali Pasha. As per the available data and the statistical reporting the basic rather the fundamental economic activity of the whole Near East was, and is, agriculture. The peasantry which carries out this agriculture was, and is (with the exception of Egypt), organized on a social and economic basis of profound archaism[footnoteRef:76]. The area that surrounded Egypt was enhancing rapidly on the basis of the agricultural yield but before Muhammad Ali Pasha intervention as the reformer of Egypt until the early fifties, most of the agricultural land of the whole area belonged to such great landowners. Peasant-owned lands are either farmed communally and in rotation (so that the good farmer has periodically to hand over his land to the bad every year), or else held individually[footnoteRef:77]. The individual peasant holdings are fragmented to an impossible degree, because of the Quran-based laws on the division of inheritances. [76: Tollefson, H. (1999). Policing Islam: The British Occupation of Egypt and the Anglo-Egyptian Struggle over Control of the Police, 1882-1914. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press p 167. Retrieved June 7, 2011, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=113106787] [77: Mansel, Philip. 2010, "The Man who Remade Alexandria." History Today 60 (12): 26-32.]