British Society for Middle Eastern Studies All the Pasha's Men: Mehmed Ali, His Army and the Making of Modern Egypt by Khaled Fahmy Review by: Ehud R. Toledano British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 28, No. 1 (May, 2001), pp. 108-113 Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/826203 . Accessed: 24/09/2013 04:56 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Taylor & Francis, Ltd. and British Society for Middle Eastern Studies are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 129.194.8.73 on Tue, 24 Sep 2013 04:56:19 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions REVIEWS:GENERAL ENDOWMENTS, RULERS AND COMMUNITY: WAQF AL-HARAMAYN IN OTTOMAN ALGIERS. By MIRIAMHOEXTER(Studies in Islamic Law and Society, 6) Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1998. 188 pp. When I read in the Acknowledgements Professor Hoexter's thanks to a foundation for providing computing expenses, I feared that her book would prove to be a dull work of defterology, consisting of little more than a mass of statistics. My forebodings, as it turned out, were quite without foundation. The book does indeed rest on a basis of statistics, drawn from the microfilmed records in Paris and Aix-en-Provence of the Waqf al-Haralmavn in Algiers. Reconstituting these records was in itself a heroic feat, but even more impressive is the way in which the author has been able to use the numerical evidence which they furnish to provide a coherent and readable account of the development over two centuries of the Waqf al-.Haramavy. Furthermore, although much of the evidence is statistical, it is an account which is accessible even to the semi-numerate such as myself. The author's history is as good as her mathematics. The Waqf al-Haramayn was a Hanafi foundation established in the early seventeeenth century for the support of the poor of Mecca and Medina. Given the largesse that the Muslim world as a whole bestowed on Holy Cities, it is unlikely that anyone in the Holy Cities would remain poor for very long. However, Professor Hoexter shows that, apart from fulfilling the pious aspirations of the donors, the Waqf had a legitimizing function in that it provided a visible link between Algiers and the Holy Cities. This became particularly important during the period between 1720 and 1830 when Algiers enjoyed the status of an autonomous Ottoman province under the rule of the Deys. The functions of the institution were also to become much wider than the title Waqf al-Haramayn implies. It supported, in addition to the poor of the Holy Cities, the poor of Algiers, and in 1688 assumed responsibility for the upkeep of the Mosque of Hasan Pasha Mezzo Morto, and subsequently for three other mosques in the city, together with their endowed properties. As the patrimony of the Waqf increased, especially with the accession of Waqfs whose primary purpose was extinct and whose ultimate beneficiaries were the poor of the Holy Cities, the .Haramavn became a major owner and manager of property in Algiers. Inevitably, therefore, it came to play an increasingly important part in the social and physical fabric of the city. Professor Hoexter gives a careful account of the growth of the institution and describes its management, showing how the board of managers was carefully balanced between the Janissary ocak, the indigenous townspeople, especially those of Andalusian descent and other elements in the city. She shows too how, during the two centuries under discussion, in some areas the board introduced slight modifications to the laws of Waqf, when it was to the financial advantage of the institution to do so. This is most obvious in their tolerance of long leases of Waqf property, which strict Hanafi doctrine does not allow. Her overall picture is that of a wise management which maintained the integrity of the Waqf over two centuries, despite natural catastrophes and occasional bombardments of the city by foreign fleets. All in all, this is an excellent book. In giving a first-rate account of a particular institution, it serves also as a reminder of the central importance of Waqf as an institution in Muslim urban life in general, and at the same time makes a valuable contribution to the history of a neglected province of the Ottoman Empire. UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER COLIN IMBER ALL THE PASHA'S MEN: MEHMED ALI, HIS ARMY AND THE MAKING OF MODERN EGYPT. By KHALEDFAHMY.(Cambridge Middle East Studies 2). Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997. 334 + xviii pp., 10 illustrations The study of Egyptian history in the last phase of Ottoman rule, more specifically what 108 This content downloaded from 129.194.8.73 on Tue, 24 Sep 2013 04:56:19 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions REVIEWS: GENERAL I have elsewhere called 'the long-nineteenthcentury',' has come a long way over the past decade and a half. Until the mid-1980s, the discourse was dominated by the nationalist narrative, which sought to contribute to the task of nation-building in a Middle East that was extricatingitself from the grip of colonial powers. Egyptianwriters such as al-Rafi'i, Rifat, Sabry, and others joined together with the rising forces of nationalismto constitutean Egypt that did not only have legitimateclaims to sovereignty and independence,but also a past that validated and documentedthose claims. Western scholarshiphas generally accepted and in some cases actively promotedthe nationalist narrative to create and foster a discourse of Egyptian history that was practically unimpeachable. In that discourse, a sad Ottomanchapterof misgovernmentand abuse that lasted close to three centuries, drew to a blissful end with the rise of Mehmet Ali at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It was then that the Egyptian nation rose to the historical moment and recreateditself along well-defined contours, which over the century, and under the House of Mehmet Ali, became one, indivisible, and purposeful. With the active participationof its Ottoman-Egyptianelite, it effectively erased from memory most traces of its Ottomanheritage,embracingan Arab-Egyptianidentitythat ultimately achieved full independence only after the 1952 revolution.2A key component in the nationalistnarrativehas been the pivotal role played by Mehmet Ali and his dynasty in providinga clean breakwith the OttomanEmpireand a fresh starttowardsa new Egypt. Despite the revolution's recasting the narrativeto conform to the world view of its leading elite, the formative role of Mehmet Ali, or rather Muhammad'AlI to them, remained,by and large, unchanged. Robert F. Hunter's Egypt under the Khedives, 1805-1879: From Household Governprovidedthe first indirectchallenge to some of the basic meint to Modern Bureaucracvy,3 assumptions in that narrative. Although working from Arabic Egyptian sources and excluding OttomanTurkishones, Hunterneverthelesspierced the first substantiveholes in the edifice constructed by nationalist historians, as the picture he carefully drew betrayed,almost inadvertantly,the stark Ottomanrealities of nineteenth-centuryEgypt. A major setback to this nascent, and much needed, revision occurred with the publication, also in 1984, of Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid Marsot's Egypt in the Reign of Muhammad Ali.4 Marsotreinforcedall the majorconstituentpartsof the nationalistnarrative,driving the discourse back to its safe sites of emergence in the 1930s-1960s. Although my own work centred on the middle decades of the nineteenthcentury,it tried to challenge some of the most fundamentalnotions of the nationalistnarrativesby re-attachingthat century to the preceding Ottomanperiod, as by relegitimatingthe Ottomanpast and heritage of Egypt.5 Fortunately,with the publication of Khaled Fahmy's book on Egyptian State and society in the period of Mehmet Ali Pasha-for this endeavour is certainly far more comprehensiveand significantthan a mere study of the Vali's army-the revision within the discourse has been given a majorand highly welcome boost. Fahmy's is not only an excellent, well-researched,well-conceived and well-arguedmonograph,but also a major 1 EhudR. Toledano, 'Social and EconomicChangein the "LongNineteenthCentury"',in MartinDaly (ed.) The CambridgeHistory of Modern Egypt (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press, 1998, Vol. 2, pp. 252-284. 2 On that processof re-editingthe past,see EhudR. Toledano,'ForgettingEgypt'sOttomanPast', in JayneWarner (ed.) Talat S. Halman Festschrift (New York), forthcoming. 3 RobertF. Hunter, HouseholdGovernmentto Modern;Bureaucracy Egyptunderthe Khediives,1805-1879: Froma? (Pittsburgh:University of PittsburghPress, 1984). 4 Afaf Lutfi Ali (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress). al-Sayyid Marsot,Egypt in the Reign of Muhlammad For a thoroughevaluationof the work, see Ehud R. Toledano. 'Muhammad'Ali Basha or MehmetAli Pasha?', in Middle Eastern Studies, 21(4) (1985) pp. 141-159. 5Ehud R. Toledano, State and Society in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Egypt (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press, 1990). 109 This content downloaded from 129.194.8.73 on Tue, 24 Sep 2013 04:56:19 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions REVIEWS: GENERAL contributionto our understandingof Egyptianhistory and of Ottomanprovincialhistory in general. With the work of Robert Hunter,Juan Cole, KennethCuno, Selim Deringil (from a central perspective), and others, we now have a coherent and articulate alternativeto the nationalistnarrativeon the long nineteenthcentury;this scholarshipin this area has now attaineda level that is perhapsunparelledin writings on other Arab provinces of the OttomanEmpire. Professor Fahmy's book is so dense and full of rich detail and neatly-crafted interpretationthat it deserves and requires close and serious reading. Since it is impossible to do justice to this work even in a somewhat more extensive review, I shall try to at least enumeratethe main points of contributionto the debate, and simply urge the reader to take it from here, and proceed forward to what will undoubtedlybe a rewardingjourney, though perhaps more for the specialist than the general interested public. In a ratherpolemical introductorychapter(pp. 1-37), Fahmy effectively deconstructs the three main components, as he sees them, of the nationalistnarrative.What he dubs the 'powerful, monolithic discourse of Egyptiannationalism'(p. 17), consisted, first, of a belief that Egypt is a pre-existing,eternal,primordialnation, an entity that had always been out there, either embodied in certainhistoricalstates that had previously reigned in the Nile Valley, or potentiallyhovering over that territory,waiting to be summonedand realized. Secondly, it is assumedthat any obstacles, delays, and failings that occurredon the road to nationalrealizationwere not due to internalforces, i.e. Mehmet Ali's army and government, but rather were caused by external, malicious forces, namely the British.Thirdly,the OttomanState and its agents are seen as a majornemesis, the natural 'other-a backward,stubbornand dogmatic enemy, one that had occupied Egypt for long, dark centuries causing her to lag "behind"the humanist and scientific developments that were taking place in Europe' (p. 18). These three constituent elements of the nationalist narrative are almost perfectly reflected in the discourse about the history of the newly formed Egyptian army of Mehmet Ali Pasha. In a concise and well-argued section (pp. 18-26), Fahmy debunks each of the three, taking to task and exposing the weakensses of works by Egyptianand Europeanwriters,but most effectively the work of Afaf Marsot.He argues that far from resurrecting a dormant Egyptian nation, the army and other institutions under the commandof an oppressive, tyrannicalrulercarved out, delineated,moulded, and forced into being a new entity, the Egyptiannation, that had never existed before. This was not a natural,pleasant, or even positive action, but rathera cruel, inhumanprocess, driven by personal and dynastic ambition that demanded the ultimate sacrifice under false pretence. The Egyptian nation, he concludes, was actually the product of the very nationalist discourse which argued that it had existed for ever and ever before. Fahmy then goes on to reject the notion that Britain was to blame for the eventual collapse of the Pasha's enterprise, which would have otherwise met with total and well-deserved success. The argumenthere is more sophisticated than a mere counter claim that it was all the Pasha's fault; the authoropposes the very distinction between internal and external factors, arguing that these were inextricably intertwined,jointly leading, in a gradualprocess to a mountingopposition to his ambitiousimperialproject, both from within and from without. The Vali's actions and the effect they producedon the people who had to cope with their impactultimatelycreatedthe threatto the integrity of the OttomanEmpire, that Britaincould not afford to ignore within the frameworkof its own imperial designs. Lastly, Professor Fahmy takes up the core issue of Egypt's 'Ottomanness'and the Ottomannatureof its rulerand government.It is arguablyhere that the authormakes the most significant contributionto the discourse on Egyptian history. For he effectively combines an historicalperspective with an historiographicalone to join the undergoing revision within the discourseon the OttomanMiddle East. Fahmy extends backwardsthe views that I and others have propoundedfor the past decade or so, namely that, to quote 110 This content downloaded from 129.194.8.73 on Tue, 24 Sep 2013 04:56:19 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions REVIEWS: GENERAL his own words, '... three hundred years of Ottoman rule must have had a significant impact on the legal, cultural and economic position of Egypt, and that only if "Egypt" is taken to refer to a nation with a clearly defined identity could these three centuriesbe seen as foreign and alien' (pp. 25-26). In this and other significantpoints, Fahmy rejects Marsot's theses one by one, and restores, with the full weight of his splendid research and control of the evidence, to Muhammad'All Basha his true identity as Mehmet Ali Pasha. Another importantcontributionis in evaluation and approach,which is essentially a humanist one, ratherthan an external, merely 'evaluative'. I had for long considered a lost cause my own attempt to draw attention to the enormous suffering inflicted by Mehmet Ali on ordinaryEgyptians, indeed to raise the issue of the intolerablehuman cost of his reforms and personal-dynasticambitions.6Fahmy independentlytakes up this line of argument,bolstering his postion with convincing, indeed irrefutabledocumentation. This is social history at its best, with great emphasis being put on the plight of the soldiers who were brutallycoerced to serve in the Pasha's army, abused, humiliated, trodden upon, deprived of their humanity, and used in the most cynical sense of the word. Here, ProfessorFahmy almost becomes an advocate for a cause, sparingno effort in trying to give the down and out a voice. He shows how they resisted their exploiter in every way possible, and by returningto them the agency to deprive the Vali-or his son Ibrahim,for that matter-of any role as a nationalisticon, the authorrestoresto them the basic dignity which the nationalistnarrative,inadvertantlyand in a roundaboutway, in fact denies them. Fahmy does not mince words. 'Service in Mehmed Ali's army was ... a dreadful experience,' he writes. Soldiers, he goes on, 'were insulted, abused and humiliated ... poorly fed, poorly clothed and poorly paid. It was an army that did not recognize the sacrifice given by those who were wounded while serving in it. Above all, ... it was an army that did not respect its dead' (p. 256). Consequently, and quite understandably, soldiers were averse to the service, seeing the army as the very embodiment of 'the atrocious, inhumanand dreadfulpolicies of Mehmed Ali' (p. 277). Feeling 'disgust and hatred' towards the Pasha's brutalregime, they respondedby absconding in droves and by mass self-maiming. But Fahmy not only condones their reaction, he actually finds it laudatory,fully identifying with the victims, as he frankly writes: 'There is something almost splendid about defying Mehmed Ali and his authoritiesin that way and at that level' (p. 259). While not denying some of the remarkableleadershipand command qualities of the Pasha, Fahmy rightly condemns him for the oppression and inhumanitythat his blind ambition amply produced. '... [S]ervice in the army,' he writes, 'was an ever-present reminder to the soldiers of the injustice and misery that were reigning all over the country during Mehmed Ali's rule' (p. 254). The soldiers, he asserts elsewhere, 'came to see the army as the most detestable aspect of the Pasha's already hated regime' (p. 277). All these observationsare part and parcel of Fahmy's larger thesis that service in the army had nothing to do with nation-building,nor did or could it instill in the soldiers the sentiments of pride or belonging that are essential for developing nationalist sentiments.He answers a flat no to a series of scathing questions intendedto dispel any attemptto rehabilitatethe nationalistnarrativewhich he effectively demolishes (p. 253). Even Ibrahim Pasha does not escape the just criticism that he was the most loyal servant of his father's dynastic ambitions, not the Egyptian nationalist,that traditional writers made him to be (pp. 242 ff., and 276). With this, Fahmy puts to rest all of Marsot's main nationalist arguments, sharing none of the admirationshe has for the Ottoman-EgyptianVali (pp. 252-254). But Professor Fahmy does not buy into her economic thesis either. Marsot has depicted Mehmet Ali as a strong mercantilist,who 6 EhudR. Toledano, 'Muhammad'Ali Pasha',Encyclopaediaof Islam, second edition (Leiden:E.J. Brill, 1991), Vol. 7 pp. 423-431. It is there,too, thatI outline some otherviews aboutthe motives and significanceof Mehmet Ali's reign, that are in tandem with many of the positions espoused by Fahmy in his book. 111 This content downloaded from 129.194.8.73 on Tue, 24 Sep 2013 04:56:19 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions REVIEWS:GENERAL had conducted an 'industrialrevolution' in Egypt, and threatenedwith his monopolies and economic prowess the interests of Britain in the eastern Mediterranean,if not beyond. Fahmy, rightly again, wishes to returnthe discussion to its propergeo-strategic context, as he argues that Britain, and Palmerstonas the policy maker in this regard, viewed Mehmet Ali as a threatto the integrity of the OttomanEmpire, whose actions might very well lead to Russian interventionand put in jeopardy British assets in the Levant and the sub-continent(pp. 292-304). Although Professor Fahmy is more interested in a 'bottom-up' approach, and is committed to giving voice and agency to the native Egyptian soldiery, he also demonstratesan understandingof the views and mood of the Ottoman-Egyptianelite. Here, however, there is no empathy involved; they were the loyal-sometimes even enthusiastic-servants of an oppressive dynasty and a ruthlessruler,though Fahmy does recognize the ambivalenceof their predicamentas well. Although the Ottoman-Egyptian elite was larger than the Ottoman-Egyptianofficer corps in Mehmet Ali's army, that group of senior officers was its dominantelement, especially during campaign periods, which took up much of the Pasha's reign. The authordescribeswell the compositionand characterof that group, putting his finger on the linguistic, cultural, and orientation divide that separated its members from the soldiers and the junior Arabic-speaking officers (pp. 242-252). Much of the hatred of the service on the part of soldiers, and humiliatingconduct of the officers towards them, derived from that divide, which was a constituent element of the entire army and lay at the very core of Mehmet Ali and Ibrahim'sconcept of how the army should be constructedand led. It is here that my majorcriticism of Fahmy's view comes in. Whereashe does accept the basic views elaboratedin my own work on the Ottoman-Egyptianelite, he does not feel comfortablewith my notion of a 'socio-culturaldivide', that existed within Egyptian society duringmuch of the nineteenthcentury (pp. 26-29). InsteadFahmy contends that boundaries between members of that elite and members of non-elite groups were frequentlynegotiatedand crossed duringthe second half of the century. I am willing to accept his view that I did not spend enough time on the groups that inhabited the peripheriesof these two groups, i.e. 'scribes, guards,lower-rankinggovernmentbureaucrats, non-commissionedofficers, nurses and servants'. I also agree with him that these people 'stood at the peripheriesof these two groups and facilitated the communication and the interactionbetween their respective members' (p. 27). Finally, Fahmy believes that I highlight the divide ratherthan the fact that it was often enough breachedat the peripheries. However, one needs only to point to the overwhelming and impressive evidence that Fahmy himself provides throughouthis own book, in order to reinforce, rather than to refute, the daunting nature of the divide, certainly during the reign of Mehmet Ali Pasha. The vivid existence of that divide in the army, and the inability of the Egyptian officers and soldiers effectively to negotiate and cross it, serves Fahmy himself as the most powerful causal tool in his narrative.Nonetheless, it seems to me the differences here are of degree ratherthan of kind, and are in fact dwarfed by the agreements shared between us within the evolving discourse on nineteenth century OttomanEgypt. A corrolary of this discussion is the attempt made by Fahmy to understand the serious identity issue that evolved within the Ottoman-Egyptianofficers corps, which also affected othercomponentsof the elite. The militaryconflict between MehmetAli's army and Sultan Mahmut II's imperial forces only brought this inherentconflict into relief, exacerbatingan already present, if dormantdilemma. As I have argued elsewhere, the Ottoman-Egyptianelite, like other Ottoman-Localelites within the Middle East and North Africa, was forged out of the Ottoman imperial elite through a dual process of Localization and Ottomanizationfrom the seventeenthcentury on.7 Under Mehmet Ali 7 Ehud R. Toledano, 'The Emergenceof Ottoman-LocalElites (1700-1800): A Frameworkfor Research',in I. Pappe and M. Ma'oz (eds) MiddleEasternPolitics and Ideas: A Histornfrom Within,(Londonand New York: Tauris Academic Studies, 1997), pp. 145-162; and idem, 'Social and Economic Change' pp. 252-284. 112 This content downloaded from 129.194.8.73 on Tue, 24 Sep 2013 04:56:19 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions REVIEWS: GENERAL in Egypt, the process moved from household hegemony-first achieved under the Kazda6ly household in the eighteenth century, then under Mehmet Ali-into the dynastic phase, which was accomplished by the Pasha in the early 1840s, then consolidated under his descendants. The essence of the process involved not only the rallying of an elite corps around a leading figure and his household, but also the formationof Ottoman-Localidentity. Such a process inevitably consists of constructing a core local, here Egyptian, identity vis-i-vis an Ottoman 'Other'. Without resortingto this type of explanation,Fahmy neverthelessgrasps the natureof the process that took place within the Ottoman-Egyptianofficers corps during the campaigns of Mehmet Ali. TEL-AVIV UNIVERSITY EHUD R. TOLEDANO ISRAEL: THE FIRST HUNDRED YEARS, VOLUME 1: ISRAEL'S TRANSITION FROM COMMUNITY TO STATE. Edited by EFRAIMKARSH.London, Frank Cass Publishers, 2000. 244 pp. HOW ISRAEL WAS WON: A CONCISE HISTORY OF THE ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT. By BAYLIS THOMAS. London, Lexington Books, 1999. xviii + 288 pp., maps Recently, the US and Israelhave declassified governmentdocuments,enablinghistorians and scholars to impartmore accurateaccounts of the Arab-Israeliconflict. Yet, opening up archival doors has not ended the polemics of interpretingMiddle Eastern history. Israel: The First Hundred Years and How Israel Was Won both tackle the contro- versial history of the birth of Israel. Efraim Karsh's book, which is a compilationof 12 essays written by various authors,takes a more nationalisticapproachto describingthe evolution of Israel. The book includes abstractsof each of the essays as well as an index at the end, but it does not provide a bibliographyor profiles of the contributors.Baylis Thomas's book, with 19 chapters, two appendices, a bibliography, and ample maps, appears to capture a more balanced approachin interpretingthe events leading to the creation of Israel and the origins of the Arab-Israeliconflict. The titles of these books also deserve attention.The First Hundred Yearspresumably refer to the preliminarystages leading up to the establishmentof the State of Israel in 1948, and its subsequentsurvival to the present. The subtitle, 'Israel's Transitionfrom Community to State', presupposes that Israel had existed in communal form prior to statehood, which is the underlyingpremise of Karsh's book, upon which each chapter is supposed to build. The selected essays pertain to various aspects of state-building, entailing the establishment of institutions, infrastructure,security forces, intelligence networks,settlements,transportationsystems, the political structuresfor self-rule,Zionist leadership,education systems, and media services, while facing nearly insurmountable obstacles. The perspective of this book describes Israel's evolution as an outcome of a collective action for survival, driven by the determinationand sagacity of a severely persecuted people. How Israel Was Won, however, connotes 'how the West was won', invoking an analogy between, on the one hand, America's deliberate, violent campaign against the indigenous Native American population in confiscating land, establishing settlements, terrorizing the perceived enemy, and declaring statehood based on sovereignty and self-determination,and, on the other hand, similar tactics carried out by the Zionist movement against the indigenous population in Palestine. This analogy is not actually mentioned until the last page of the last chapter in the book. However, the preceding chapterseffectively build up to this analogy, using well-researcheddocumentsto support 113 This content downloaded from 129.194.8.73 on Tue, 24 Sep 2013 04:56:19 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
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