All the Pasha's Men: Mehmed Ali, His Army and the Making of Modern Egypt by Khaled
Fahmy
Review by: Mine Ener
Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 121, No. 1 (Jan. - Mar., 2001), pp. 102-104
Published by: American Oriental Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/606737 .
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102
Journal of the American Oriental Society 121.1 (2001)
with David Ayalon that Turkspredominatedin this contingent,
but qualifies his generalized assertion by highlighting the prominence of the Kurdish minority and the lack of systematic discrimination against them. She also discerns that free Turks
outnumberedMamluks in the early phase of Ayyubid rule, but
were gradually displaced as the central regime exerted its authority over tribal leaders (p. 230).
Yehoshua Frankel assesses the impact of Crusaders on the
ruralpopulationsof Syria-Palestine.He arguesthat the Ayyubids
and Mamluks who ultimately supplanted the Latin Crusaders
refined their predecessors'exploitation of local peasants. Latin
and Muslim governments shared a common need for revenue
gleaned from taxes on land and agriculture.Ayyubid and Mamluk rulers regarded villages and fields seized from Latins as
booty (fayc) which they reserved for distributionto their retainers (p. 241). After the Battle of Hattin (1187), Saladin confiscated propertiesheld by the Churchand individual monasteries,
transferring them to Muslim institutions as charitable trusts
(awqaf). JohnMasson Smith considersthe ecological and technological contexts of Mongol armies that attemptedto conquerthe
Syrian corridor.Among the most perceptivecontributionsto this
volume, Smith'sessay emphasizes the small size of the Mongol
horse (more accurately a pony). Due to the necessity of maintaining re-mounts,the Mongols requiredmore horses per warrior
than did their Mamluk opponents, who were overall better
armed and trained. The Mongols depended on large invading
forces to overwhelm their opponents. But the ecological conditions of Syria-Palestine,particularlyin summer, could not produce sufficient fodder to sustain them (p. 254). The Mongols
attempted to adapt their army to function in this environment,
but did not succeed. Smith's comments provide a lucid explanation for the remarkablesuccess of the Mamluks in thwartingthe
Mongol invaders, despite their numerical disadvantage.
Reuven Amitai-Preis discusses the ethos of the Mamluk
officer class in its formative stage under Sultan Baybars (126077). He summarizesthe debate over this class initiated by R. S.
Humphreysand David Ayalon (pp. 268-69); his subsequentremarks qualify their assertions without refuting them outright.
Amitai-Preis states that Baybars was a pragmatistwho balanced
a practical need to reward and promote fellow officers who
stood by him as he consolidated his position with the advisability of building his own corps of purchased soldiers, many
of whom would expect the same rate of advancementin return
for effective performancein battle. BernadetteMartel-Thoumian
examines the career of Sultan Qaytbay's eminent adjutant,
Yashbak min Mahdi. Much of this essay is occupied with the
rebellion of the Dhulgadridprince Shah Suwar in southeastern
Anatoliaduringthe latterfifteenthcentury.Qaytbay'sotherprominent colleagues failed in their efforts to subdue Suwar before
Yashbak assumed responsibility for his defeat and capture.
Many of these details have appearedin my Twilightof Majesty:
TheReigns of the MamlukSultansal-AshrafQaytbayand Qansuh
al-Ghawri in Egypt (Seattle: Univ. of WashingtonPress, 1993),
57-72, to which Martel-Thoumianrefers minimally. Her own
discussion rests on a broader base of sources than does my
version. Martel-Thoumianthen proceeds to events surrounding
Yashbak'sabortive attemptto apprehendthe rebel Bedouin chief
Sayf of the Al-Fadl tribe. Pursuingthis individualinto the territory of Diyar Bakr, Yashbak planned to conquer the region and
assert his autonomous control over it. But following his refusal
to accept the local governor'spledge to turnover Sayf, Yashbak's
Mamluk cohort was routed and he taken prisoner, ultimately to
suffer ignominious execution. Martel-Thoumianconcludes that
this defeat critically weakened the Mamluk military apparatus
during Qaytbay's final years, and stimulated the aggression of
his foreign rivals-in particularthe Ottomans(p. 340).
Kelly DeVries compares levels of sophistication in gunpowder technology in the Byzantine and Ottoman military institutions during the decades preceding Mehmet Fatih's siege of
Constantinople(1453). He notes that the Ottomansexcelled their
Muslim contemporariesin the fielding of hand-heldfirearmsand
artillery,but that they came to them late. Only underMehmet did
the regime appreciatethe advantagesofferedby theiruse (p. 353).
Alan Williams continues this line of discourse by examining the
metallurgyof Turkisharmorand cannons. He offers a technical
survey of bronze, iron, and steel casting by the Ottomans. An
appendixof specimens detailing chemical composition of alloys
(with illustrativeplates) concludes the essay.
The final contribution, by Gideon Weigert, addresses the
Arabic term Hudna or "peacemaking."This term is placed in
its textual and theoretical settings according to Islamic Law.
While the author chides "Muslim Fundamentalists"for their
failure to comprehendthe pragmaticinterpretationsof classical
jurists with regardto the principles of Hudna (p. 405), his essay
confines itself largely to abstractconcepts with few referencesto
specific historical events in which treaties were negotiated.
Although this informative volume is attractively composed
and presented, its text is dotted with minor typographicalerrors
that could have been easily corrected during a final editorial
check.
CARLF. PETRY
NORTHWESTERN
UNIVERSITY
All the Pasha's Men: MehmedAli, His Army and the Making of
Modern Egypt. By KHALED
FAHMY.
Cambridge:CAMBRIDGE
UNIV.PRESS,1997. Pp. xvii + 334.
All the Pasha's Men is one of the few scholarly texts that
succeed in gracefully weaving together a close reading with an
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Reviews of Books
analysis of diplomatic, political, and social history. Using as his
vantage point Egypt's conscripted peasant army, Fahmy's study
works on a number of levels: he engages previous scholarship
that has posited Muhammed Ali as the founder of modern
Egypt and identified his army as being a prime vehicle through
which nationalist sentiment was disseminated and experienced;
he presents a detailed analysis of the very personages, personal
enmities, struggles for survival, and goals of geopolitical supremacy that guided the decisions and actions of Muhammad
Ali, Sultan Mahmud II, and Lord Palmerston; he explores the
concepts of discipline and disciplinary power and how they
were applied (albeit in many cases unsuccessfully) to the geography of Egypt and, most minutely, to the bodies of Egypt's
soldiers; and he examines conscription's impact on the lives of
Egypt's peasants. Having negotiated astutely through European
and Egyptian sources and deployed fine theoretical insights, a
careful and extensive use of Ottoman and Arabic archival materials available in the Egyptian National Archives, and a fresh
perspective on scholarship on Egypt and the region as a whole
during the first half of the nineteenth century, Fahmy has
ensured that this monographwill have a broad scholarly appeal
and will serve as an importantstudy upon which future scholars
will build.
Most forcefully, Fahmy argues against scholarship (identified
as "nationalist")that has recognized Muhammad Ali as the
"founderof modem Egypt" and which contendedthat his struggles with the OttomanPortewere directedtowardthe sole purpose
of achieving independence on behalf of the Egyptian nation.
Drawing extensively from the personal letters exchanged between MuhammadAli and his son Ibrahim(the commander-inchief of the Egyptian army), the symbols utilized in the army
(such as medals and flags, pp. 241, 283), and the evidence of the
contempt that Muhammad Ali and Ibrahim Pasha showed toward the Egyptian populace and most specifically its peasantry
(pp. 245, 282), he beautifully demonstrateshow MuhammadAli
used this army for his own dynastic ends, not with the intention
of securing an independent Egyptian nation (p. 311). Through
analysis of manifestations of Muhammad Ali's allegiance toward the Sultan and their personal exchanges, his connections
with Istanbul, and his tastes in culture and architecture,Fahmy
eloquently illustrates how MuhammadAli's cultural and political identity was that of an Ottoman (e.g., pp. 73, 279, 281).
The struggles waged between MuhammadAli and Mahmud
II, in Fahmy'sanalysis, were motivated by the former'sown desires for survival and his goal of securing the hereditaryrule of
Egypt for his family and progeny.Yet these wars and political insecurities also grew out of personal relationships. To this end,
Fahmy reveals how competition and animosities, such as the
mutualhatredof MuhammadAli and his nemesis Husrev Pasha,
were the source of greatpersonalinsecurityand, simultaneously,
influenced the former'srelationshipwith the Porte (pp. 285-90).
In addition to positioning MuhammadAli and Egypt more suc-
103
cinctly within the OttomanEmpire,All the Pasha's Men engages
features of diplomatic history, arguing that British animosity
toward him and his designs in Egypt were generated by fear
that Muhammad Ali's wars with the Sultan would so weaken
the Ottoman empire that it would seek aid from Russia. The
ensuing Russian involvement, Lord Palmerston feared, would
threatenBritish possessions in India (pp. 294-99).
In terms of social history, like other scholars who have explored the Egyptian government'sincursions into the lives of the
Egyptian populace and the latter'sattitudestowardconscription,
corv6e, and other forms of forced labor, Fahmy presents a detailed study of the means by which the state attemptedto utilize
best the labor potential of the Egyptian populace. Discussing
methods of governance such as the tadhkira, the census, medical examinations, and hierarchies of responsibility and systems
of punishment that sought to control the mobility of the peasantry, he describes in minute detail the avenues through which
the state sought to exercise its power over the populace (and
most specifically, for the purposes of his study, military conscripts) and the points at which these endeavors failed. From a
close readingof militaryand medical manualsand plans, he also
shows how these projects were intended to work, and the moments at which their execution was unrealizable.While the apparatusesof control might not have achieved the state's desired
ends, in Fahmy's analysis, their imposition did take Egyptians
one step closer to considering themselves a nation.
It is this last point of analysis which Fahmy could have explored at greaterlength. He argues that the linguistic and cultural
divide between Turkishofficers and Egyptian peasants and anger
toward military hierarchies of privilege and command (as well
as similar manifestations of privilege apparentin the civil administration) would only become apparent at the time of the
CUrabirevolt, but he does not explain why such animosity would
take nearly sixty years of conscription to come to the surface
(pp. 268, 314). To address more closely if and how the seeds of
nationalism were planted at this juncture, Fahmy could have
examined in greater detail other features of the military's homogenizing experience, such as issues of the soldiers'own sense
of comraderyas they engaged in life and death struggles on the
battlefieldor the ways in which ties between soldiers might have
replaced family and village bonds.
Fahmy'sconcluding remarkson the rise of the modernnationstate, additionally,take to the extremethe very ideas of discipline
and control that his previous chaptershad so eloquently dismantled. He is right to argue that the army was a crucial feature in
the rise of the nation-state (alongside the military, one must
also address the other methods of extraction that brought the
Egyptian government face to face with Egypt's rural and urban
populaces), yet in this regard he is better placed to argue that
collective resistance and animosity toward the state (which
protected the interests of those of privilege) sowed the seeds
of nationalism. However, his argumentthat via numerous state
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104
Journal of the American Oriental Society 121.1 (2001)
incursions (such as the internmentof the insane, the captureof
deserters, etc.) "the Egyptian nation came into being" erroneously conflates the terms "nation,""state," and "nation-state"
(p. 314). The "nation" is not the state's ability to extract, tax,
confine, and conscript; the nation is a collective sense of allegiance and sharedidentity.It is felt, not imposed. To understand
the manifestationsof such feelings on the part of Egypt's rulers
as well as her populace, we need to explore culturalsymbols and
mediums of expression as well as other institutions through
which nationalist sentiments were disseminated. We also need
to continue to tease out of the archives information that gives
us perspectives on the populace'srange of experiences with the
state at this critical juncture in Egypt's history.
One final weakness of Fahmy's work is his dismissal of a
group of scholars whom he has identified as "nationalist"historians. His point that the very organization of the Egyptian National Archives (when they were located in the Abdin Palace)
was a nationalist (and dynastic) project is well taken. However,
while scholars making use of these archives might have been
misdirectedby the nationalistagenda that permeatedthe Arabic
translations of various documents and their own subjectivity,
we cannot disregardtheir studies' continued contributionto the
field. Historiansof our generationhave an importantintellectual
debt to the scholars who came before us. In our own pursuit of
knowledge, will it ever be possible to deny that the intellectual
endeavors of our generation were not directed, at least in part,
by our own agendas and shaped by the ideological milieu in
which we write and think?
MINEENER
VILLANOVA UNIVERSITY
The Revolution of 1908 in Turkey.By AYKUTKANSU.Leiden:
BRILL,1997. Pp. xi + 341. $110;
This book sets out "to criticise the conventional approaches
in writing modern Turkishhistory" with particularreference to
the 1908 revolution, which the authorwould like to establish as
"a fundamentalturning point in Turkishhistory" (p. 25). In an
introductory chapter that sets out the author's views on the
historiographicaland theoretical problems associated with the
Young Turk revolution and the events leading up to it, Kansu
argues passionately for the need to re-examine the period with
a critical eye toward the influences of Kemalism and modernization theory. Five subsequent chapters cover in narrative
fashion the period from the tax revolts of 1906 to the elections
of 1908, including the unrest leading up to the revolution, the
events of the revolution of 1908 itself, the transition from the
old to the new regime, the opposition createdby the new government, and the elections of 1908. Two lengthy and heavily footnoted but useful appendices list the members of the Ottoman
House of Representatives (Meclis-i Mebusan) and the Senate
(Meclis-i Ayan) from 1908 to 1912.
Kansu,who teaches in the Departmentof Political Science and
Public Administrationat the Middle East Technical University,
Ankara,states in the acknowledgementsthat this book represents
approximately one-fifth of his 1990 Ph.D. dissertation, and a
recent announcementfrom Brill indicates that a second volume
covering the period from 1908 to 1913 is on its way. Clearly
Kansuhas a lot to say and, if this book serves as an indicator,we
can expect a majorattemptat redefiningthis period.
The presentvolume is perhapsbest consideredas two separate
parts.The more theoreticalintroductorychapterstandsapartfrom
the rest of the text; its bibliography,for example, is given on its
own and there is, furthermore,little attempt to bridge the gap
between these two largely disparateparts. Takenon its own, the
first chapteris a provocative assessment of modem Turkishhistoriographyand the place of the 1908 revolution in it. Kansu's
style is lively and on the whole quite readable, but some may
find his tone occasionally given to stridencyand exaggeration.
Kansu's main thesis is that the events of 1908 amount to a
majorrevolution, indeed a watershedin Turkishhistory,and that
the historiographyof the period needs to be alteredto accept the
importanceof 1908. Kansu seems to believe that in orderto justify such a historiographicalshift it is necessary to demonstrate
that this was a mass revolution. To my mind, the revolution's
historical importanceneed not depend on the breadthof its popularity. Just how "popular"this activity was, however, remains
elusive. Kansu would clearly like to demonstratethat the string
of revolts and the subsequent revolution were much more
widely supportedby average Ottoman subjects than has previously been accepted. Kansu repeatedly refers to "the people"
and "the populace"as being the wellspring of anti-governmental
agitation,yet the evidence he provides rarelygoes beyond establishing a relatively small numberof activists and their immediate
followers. His assessment that the revolution of 1908 was "a totally popularmovement"would thus seem to be a stretch.Clearly
there was much celebration afterwardswhen such display was
relatively free of risk, yet there is insufficient evidence here to
justify the broad-basedpopularityof the revolution beforehand,
as the authorclaims.
This raises the issue of the book's source base and resulting
bias. Kansu relies heavily on British governmental correspondence and newspapers, many of which representdistinctly foreign or minority concerns. Armenian publications such as Pro
Armenia stand out, particularlyin discussions of events in eastern Anatolia. Kansu should be applaudedfor using a numberof
such sources not generally consulted in the existing literature,
but uncritical use of them raises broader questions. What is
more, no Ottoman archival sources were used in this study, an
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