Ancient Man and His First Civilizations

Egypt-10

So now in Persia, a new Persian dynasty, the "Sassanians" have ascended. Thus begins a series of great wars against the Romans, because these two great empires were of equal strength, it was not possible for either side to gain decisive victory. So for year after year, the battles raged, and the two sides became weaker and weaker.

The Arab/Eurasian Invasion

After so long battling each other, the Persians and the Romans had little hope of defeating the Arab forces that came sweeping in. The exact nature of these "early" Arab forces is not well understood, for certainly it seems unlikely that the sparsely populated deserts of Arabia, could on it's own, field an army large enough to defeat the combined forces of the Sassanian and Roman Empires. Later occurrences of course, make it obvious that Turks and Greeks were the dominant elements.

In 627 A.D, the Prophet Mohammed, the founder of Islam, caused letters to be written to several rulers, including letters to the governor of Alexandria and the Viceroy of Egypt. {No guarantee on the accuracy of this letter}.

In the Name of Allâh, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful.

From Muhammad slave of Allâh and His Messenger to Muqawqas, vicegerent of Egypt.

Peace be upon him who follows true guidance. Thereafter, I invite you to accept Islam. Therefore, if you want security, accept Islam. If you accept Islam, Allâh, the Sublime, shall reward you doubly. But if you refuse to do so, you will bear the burden of the transgression of all the Copts.

There is controversy as to exactly who the Copt's are, though certainly NOT native Egyptian, they may perhaps be a combination of Greek and Levant Christians from the time of the Ptolemy's.

Native Egyptians, who had not governed themselves for almost 1,200 years, had no say in the matter. They were totally at the mercy of officials, bureaucrats and an elite class, that was of foreign blood. Who of course, had their own interest to think about, their home was now Egypt. The Egypt of the Pharaoh's was a long lost memory, save for the statues and monuments that they left behind. The Egypt they knew was the Egypt of their own making, and they had no desire to be uprooted.

Then as now, the portion of Egypt's population that is native Egyptian is a mystery. Though we know that there were massive influxes of Greeks, Romans, Turks and others, there is no data available as to what percentage of the population they comprised. One line of thought is that native Egyptians were forced south into what is now Sudan, {then Nubia}. This theory has to be given credence if for no other reason, than simply because it explains Egypt's acceptance of foreign rule for so long, cross-breeding of course, being another element. Logically it seems safe to assume, that if there had still been a sizable Egyptian element to the population, they would have had long ago reestablished their own governance, 1,200 years is a very long time.

Accordingly, in about 639-640 A.D, after much maneuvering and many intrigues, a treaty was signed by Roman representatives and Arab representatives, which called for the total withdrawal of Roman soldiers, it also stipulated certain monies to be paid to the Arabs. After occupying Egypt, Arabs forces later spread out over Northern Africa, the Middle-East, Eastern Europe and Western Asia.

The following post "Arab invasion history", though speaking of Egypt, may be considered typical of North Africa and the middle East.

The Prophet Muhammad, had made Medina his capital, and it was there that he died. Leadership then fell to Abu Bakr (632-634), Muhammad's father-in-law and the first of the four orthodox Caliphs, or temporal leaders of the Muslims. Umar followed him (634-644) and organized the governmental administration of captured provinces. The third caliph was Uthman (644-656), under whose administration the compilation of the Quran was accomplished.

An aspirant to the caliphate was Ali, Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law. Upon the murder of Uthman, Ali became caliph (656-661). After a civil war with other aspirants to the caliphate, Ali moved his capital to Kufa Iraq, and was later assassinated at Al Kufah. Ali's followers established the first of Islam's dissident sects, the Shia (from Shiat Ali "party of Ali"). Those before and after Ali's succession remained the orthodox of Islam; they are called Sunnis - from the word sunnia meaning orthodox.

The Umayyad dynasty: After Ali's murder in 661, Muawiyah - the governor of Syria, (Syria - the Greek name for the region that connected three continents), and a kinsman of Uthman, and also a member of the Quraysh lineage of the Prophet - proclaimed himself caliph and established his capital in Damascus, Syria.

Muawiyah cultivated the goodwill of Christian Syrians by recruiting them for his army at double pay, appointing Christians to many high offices, and by appointing his son by his Christian wife as his successor. {Since the time of Alexander, Greeks had built many cities in Syria and had become the dominate element of the population. By virtue of the Roman occupation, most had become Christians. The province of Syria included the modern elements of Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria}.

The Syrian army became the basis of Umayyad strength, enabling the bypassing of Arab tribal rivalries. It was under Umayyad Caliph Umar II (reigned 717-720), that these discontented mawali (non-Arab Muslims) were placed on the same footing with all other Muslims, without respect to nationality. This decree allowed Greeks, Turks and other Eurasians to fully assimilate into the Muslim brotherhood.

The Abbasid dynasty: Later the mawali became involved with the Hashimiyah, a religious/political sect that denied the legitimacy of Umayyad rule. In 749 the Hashimiyah, proclaimed as caliph Abu al-'Abbas as-Saffah, who thereby became first Caliph of the 'Abbasid dynasty. The Abbasid dynasty would rule over Islam for approximately the next 500 years. The Abbasids were descended from an uncle of Muhammad and were cousins to the ruling Umayyad dynasty. The Abbasids established the caliphate in the new city of Baghdad. The strength of the Abbasid dynasty was its Turkish troops.

The Tulunid dynasty: It was during the rule of Abbasid caliph Harun ar-Rashid (ruled 786-809), that the caliphs began assigning Egypt to Turks rather than to Arabs. The first Turkish dynasty was that of Ibn Tulun who entered Egypt in 868.

The Ikhshidid dynasty: 935 A.D. ushered in the Ikhshidid dynasty of Muhammad ibn Tughj, a Turk from Uzbekistan in Central Asia.

The Ikhshidid dynasty was usurped by their Abyssinian slave tutor named Kafur, he ruled Egypt with the caliphate's sanction.

The Fatimid Dynasty: When Kafur died in 968, the Fatimids (a contending force for the Caliphate), took advantage of the disorder in Egypt to attack, the attack was successful and led to the occupation of Egypt by a Berber army led by the Fatimid general Jawhar. The early Fatimids' reliance on Berber troops was soon replaced by the importation of Turkish, Sudanese, and Arab contingents. By the time of their decline however, the Fatimid army was under the leadership of Eurasian Armenian generals, (not Aramaean).

The Ayyubid dynasty: In 1169 The Turkish governor of Syria sent an army lead by Saladin (a Kurd born in Tikrit Iraq), to occupy Egypt.

Saladin, (born 1137/38, Tikrīt, Mesopotamia [now in Iraq] — died March 4, 1193, Damascus [now in Syria]), Muslim sultan of Egypt, Syria, Yemen, and Palestine, founder of the Ayyūbid dynasty, and the most famous of Muslim heroes. In wars against the Christian Crusaders, he achieved great success with the capture of Jerusalem (October 2, 1187), ending its nearly nine decades of occupation by the Franks.

Saladin was born into a prominent Kurdish family. On the night of his birth, his father, Najm al-Dīn Ayyūb, gathered his family and moved to Aleppo, there entering the service of ʿImad al-Dīn Zangī ibn Aq Sonqur, the powerful Turkish governor in northern Syria. Growing up in Baʿlbek and Damascus, Saladin was apparently an undistinguished youth, with a greater taste for religious studies than military training.

His formal career began when he joined the staff of his uncle Asad al-Dīn Shīrkūh, an important military commander under the emir Nūr al-Dīn, who was the son and successor of Zangī. During three military expeditions led by Shīrkūh into Egypt to prevent its falling to the Christian (Frankish) rulers of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, a complex, three-way struggle developed between Amalric I, the king of Jerusalem; Shāwar, the powerful vizier of the Egyptian Fātimid caliph; and Shīrkūh.

After Shīrkūh’s death and after ordering Shāwar’s assassination, Saladin in 1169 at the age of 31, was appointed both commander of the Syrian troops in Egypt and vizier of the Fātimid caliph there. His relatively quick rise to power must be attributed not only to the clannish nepotism of his Kurdish family but also to his own emerging talents. As vizier of Egypt, he received the title “king” (malik), although he was generally known as the sultan.

Saladin’s position was further enhanced when, in 1171, he abolished the weak and unpopular Shīʿite Fāṭimid caliphate, proclaiming a return to Sunni Islam in Egypt. Although he remained for a time theoretically a vassal of Nūr al-Dīn, that relationship ended with the Syrian emir’s death in 1174. Using his rich agricultural possessions in Egypt as a financial base, Saladin soon moved into Syria with a small but strictly disciplined army to claim the regency on behalf of the young son of his former suzerain.

Soon, however, he abandoned this claim, and from 1174 until 1186 he zealously pursued a goal of uniting, under his own standard, all the Muslim territories of Syria, northern Mesopotamia, Palestine, and Egypt. This he accomplished by skillful diplomacy backed when necessary by the swift and resolute use of military force. Gradually his reputation grew as a generous and virtuous but firm ruler, devoid of pretense, licentiousness, and cruelty. In contrast to the bitter dissension and intense rivalry that had up to then hampered the Muslims in their resistance to the Crusaders, Saladin’s singleness of purpose induced them to rearm both physically and spiritually.

Saladin’s every act was inspired by an intense and unwavering devotion to the idea of jihad, or holy war. It was an essential part of his policy to encourage the growth and spread of Muslim religious institutions. He courted their scholars and preachers, founded colleges and mosques for their use, and commissioned them to write edifying works, especially on the jihad itself. Through moral regeneration, which was a genuine part of his own way of life, he tried to re-create in his own realm some of the same zeal and enthusiasm that had proved so valuable to the first generations of Muslims when, five centuries before, they had conquered half the known world.

Saladin also succeeded in turning the military balance of power in his favor, by uniting and disciplining a great number of unruly forces than by employing new or improved military techniques. When at last, in 1187, he was able to throw his full strength into the struggle with the Latin Crusader kingdoms, his armies were their equals. On July 4, 1187, aided by his own military good sense and by a phenomenal lack of it on the part of his enemy, Saladin trapped and destroyed in one blow an exhausted and thirst-crazed army of Crusaders at Hattin, near Tiberias in northern Palestine. So great were the losses in the ranks of the Crusaders in this one battle that the Muslims were quickly able to overrun nearly the entire kingdom of Jerusalem. Acre, Toron, Beirut, Sidon, Nazareth, Caesarea, Nāblus, Jaffa (Yafo), and Ascalon (Ashqelon) fell within three months. But Saladin’s crowning achievement and the most disastrous blow to the whole Crusading movement came on October 2, 1187, when the city of Jerusalem, holy to both Muslim and Christian alike, surrendered to Saladin’s army after 88 years in the hands of the Franks.

Saladin planned to avenge the slaughter of Muslims in Jerusalem in 1099 by killing all Christians in the city, but he agreed to let them purchase their freedom provided that the Christian defenders left the Muslim inhabitants unmolested.

His sudden success, which in 1189 saw the Crusaders reduced to the occupation of only three cities, was, however, marred by his failure to capture Tyre, an almost impregnable coastal fortress to which the scattered Christian survivors of the recent battles flocked. It was to be the rallying point of the Latin counterattack. Most probably, Saladin did not anticipate the European reaction to his capture of Jerusalem, an event that deeply shocked the West and to which it responded with a new call for a Crusade. In addition to many great nobles and famous knights, this Crusade, the third, brought the kings of three countries into the struggle. The magnitude of the Christian effort and the lasting impression it made on contemporaries gave the name of Saladin, as their gallant and chivalrous enemy, an added lustre that his military victories alone could never confer on him.

The Crusade itself was long and exhausting, despite the obvious, though at times impulsive, military genius of Richard I (the Lion-Heart). Therein lies the greatest—but often unrecognized achievement of Saladin. With tired and unwilling feudal levies, committed to fight only a limited season each year, his indomitable will enabled him to fight the greatest champions of Christendom to a draw. The Crusaders retained little more than a precarious foothold on the Levantine coast, and when King Richard left the Middle East, in October 1192, the battle was over. Saladin withdrew to his capital at Damascus.

Soon the long campaigning seasons and the endless hours in the saddle caught up with him, and he died. While his relatives were already scrambling for pieces of the empire, his friends found that the most powerful and most generous ruler in the Muslim world had not left enough money to pay for his grave. Saladin’s family continued to rule over Egypt and neighbouring lands as the Ayyūbid dynasty, which succumbed to the Mamlūk (Turkish Slave Soldiers) dynasty in 1250.

The Mamluk dynasty: In 1250 A.D. The Mamluks rebelled and established their own dynasty.

The Ottoman dynasty: In 1516 A.D. the Ottoman Turks along with other Eastern European troops (Serbs and Bosnians), defeated the Mamluks.

In 1798, the French army under Napoleon, invaded and occupied Egypt.

In 1801, the British invaded and occupied Egypt.

Muhammad Ali (Pasha): In March 1803 the British were evacuated in accordance with the Peace of Amiens. But the Ottomans, determined to reassert their control over Egypt remained, establishing their power through a viceroy and an occupying army of Albanians. The Albanians later mutinied and installed their own leader as acting viceroy. When he was assassinated shortly afterward, the command of the Albanians passed to his lieutenant, Muhammad Ali. The dynasty that he established would rule Egypt and Sudan until the Egyptian Revolution of 1952.

In Arabia, the domination of Mecca and Medina by puritanical Wahhabi Muslims was a serious embarrassment to the Ottoman sultan, who was the titular overlord of the Arabian territory of the Hejaz and the leading Muslim sovereign. At the invitation of Sultan Mahmud II (1808-39), Muhammad Ali sent an expedition to Arabia that between 1811 and 1813 expelled the Wahhabis from the Hejaz. In a further campaign (1816-18), Ibrahim Pasha, the viceroy's eldest son, defeated the Wahhabis in their homeland of Najd, and brought central Arabia under Albanian control.

In 1820-21 Muhammad Ali sent an expedition up the Nile and conquered much of what is now the northern Sudan. By so doing, he made himself master of one of the principal channels of the slave trade, and began an African Empire that was to be expanded under his successors. The conquest of the Sudan was intended to provide recruits. But the slaves, encamped at Aswan, died wholesale, and Muhammad Ali had to look elsewhere for his troops. In 1823 he took to conscripting Egyptian peasants for the rank and file of his new army. On the other hand, the officers were mostly Turkish Ottomans, while the director of the whole enterprise, Sulayman Pasha (Colonel Sève), was a former French officer. The conscription was brutally administered.

In 1882 the British once again invaded and occupied Egypt. This occupation was to last until the end of WWI. After which, Egypt became a protectorate of Britain.

Egypt 1882

From the Brooklyn Museums Lantern Slide Collection

Egypt - Arabian Horse and man from Sais, Cairo

Egypt - Bisharin Man, Assuan/Aswan

Egypt - Donkey and Cart, Kasr-el-Nil

For more pictures of Egypt 1882: similar Algerian pictures, as well as erotic Picture Post Cards from North Africa, for the same period: Click here >>>

In 1922 Egypt was granted limited independence, and on March 15, the Sultan Ahmad Fuad, son of the Turkish Khedive (Viceroy), Ismail Pasha, became King Fuad I of Egypt.

On Feb.1,1958, Egypt and Syria proclaimed the two countries to be the United "Arab" Republic (U.A.R.). The union ended on Sept. 28, 1961, when Syria, following a military coup, declared itself independent of Egypt. Despite the dissolution of the union, Egypt retained the name United Arab Republic until Sept. 2, 1971, when it took its current name the "Arab Republic of Egypt".

Click Here for a Picture Gallery of Turkish Rulers of Egypt. Click >>>

This marks the end of this Egyptian presentation.