Muhammad Ali (1805-2005) is a special series published fortnightly by Al-Ahram Weekly in anticipation of the international symposium commemorating the bicentennial of Muhammad Ali Pasha's acendancy to power, to be held in Egypt on 10 November. Contributions, proposals and letters on the subject should be addressed to the series editor Amina Elbendary [email protected] or faxed to +202 578 6089. Previous instalments: Muhammad Ali (1805-2005) On the eve of the international symposium to be held in Cairo and Alexandria beginning 12 November, Al-Ahram Weekly concludes the Muhammad Ali series commemorating the bicentennial of the Pasha's ascendancy to power Constructing Muhammad Ali Kenneth M. Cuno* analyses how Muhammad Ali became the "founder of modern Egypt" Muhammad Ali became "the founder of modern Egypt" more than half a century after his death during the official celebration of the centennial of his appointment as viceroy, in June 1905. Khedive Abbas II, the Pasha's great-great-grandson, decreed this centennial observance as a way of legitimating his dynasty's claim to rule Egypt. In the speeches and press articles surrounding the centennial, Muhammmad Ali was repeatedly called "the founder of modern Egypt," and the nickname has stuck. The idea that the modern history of Egypt began with an "awakening" initiated by the policies of Muhammad Ali Pasha was not widely accepted before then. Instead, there were multiple and competing narratives of nineteenth century Egyptian history. Each was connected with a particular view of the country's present and a vision of its future. History, after all, is written by contemporaries looking backward, who in fashioning narratives about the past give it meaning in terms of the present. Political and social debates at the turn of the twentieth century in Egypt were particularly contentious, and the history of the previous century was disputed. Viewed in this context the success of the Palace in posthumously designating Muhammad Ali "the founder of modern Egypt" represents the triumph of one narrative over its competitors, rather than a simple acknowledgement of truth. How that triumph occurred needs explaining. The idea of a modern awakening under Muhammad Ali's rule appears to have originated in the rhetoric of the Pasha himself. In his reform programme Muhammad Ali drew initial inspiration from the Ottoman nizam-i jadid reforms begun earlier by Sultan Selim III, and he later conformed with the Ottoman reforms after they were revived by Sultan Mehmed II. In like manner, his official, reformist rhetoric resembled Ottoman rhetoric in portraying the previous era as one of decline, and his reforms as a restoration. For example, the preamble to the 1829 law regulating agriculture, known as La'ihat Zira`at al-Fallah, stated that the law was necessitated by a decline in industrial skills, commodity production, and cultivation. Three years earlier, the official Ottoman explanation of the necessity of replacing the Janissary corps with a new army had stressed the Janissaries' decline to corruption and ineffectiveness on the battlefield. While the early reforms were presented in conservative guise as restoring what had been lost after a period of decline, the rhetoric of later decades emphasised "progress and civilisation" and "the attainment of the general good" -- the phrases used, for example, to explain the need for the Egyptian census of the 1840s. A similar shift in Ottoman reform rhetoric occurred at the same time. The rhetoric of reform was continued by Muhammad Ali's successors, with an emphasis on the Pasha as having started the process of regeneration. His grandson Ismail declared that when Muhammad Ali came to Egypt, "he found it without any trace of civilisation, and he found its people deprived of security and comfort," and so he devoted himself "to making the people secure and to civilising the country." The modern development of an Egyptian national identity was the second source of the idea of Egypt's awakening. A sense of political community in the Nile Valley was nurtured in part by the spread of literacy, the state school curriculum, railroads and telegraphs, the khedives' encouragement of intellectual life and their use of public rituals and symbols to foster loyalty to their own dynasty. A crucial role was played by publishing and the press, which grew exponentially before and during the British occupation. Their growth both reflected and promoted the emergence of a "public" that imagined themselves to be part of a political community larger than an urban quarter, village or religious group -- namely, Egypt -- and this public took an interest in and discussed issues affecting their political community. The British occupation spurred this process by frustrating the desire of the political and intellectual elite for self-rule. British officials justified their role in Egypt, as colonialists have often done, in terms of Egyptian backwardness. A long period of tutelage would be necessary before Egyptians would be able to manage their affairs on their own. Moreover, the occupiers doubted the existence of an Egyptian national community, emphasising instead an absence of ethnic homogeneity as they saw it. Thus, in addition to reflecting the emergent national identity, the idea of a modern Egyptian awakening addressed this rather condescending imperial discourse. It asserted a common Egyptian identity as well as a progressive vision of the nation's modern history in which its awakening and advance (to use the vocabulary of that time) began decades before the arrival of British "tutors." Although readers accustomed to thinking of Muhammad Ali as "the founder of modern Egypt" might presume that the Pasha's role in that awakening and advance would have been obvious, in the nineteenth century it was anything but that. Muhammad Ali's contemporary, the historian Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti, disliked his rule and looked back with nostalgia to the time of the "Mamluk" amirs Ali Bey al-Kabir and Muhammad Bey Abu al-Dhahab. Undoubtedly al-Jabarti's view was influenced by his membership in the class of multazims and waqf administrators who were deprived of most of their income and privileges by Muhammad Ali. Other intellectuals of the time and later, like Shaykh Hasan al-Attar and his student Rifa`a Rafi al-Tahtawi, supported the Pasha's reforms. The view of al-Tahtawi, who spent his career in the service of Muhammad Ali and his dynasty, was the opposite of al-Jabarti's. He regarded the Mamluks as tyrants, and saw Muhammad Ali as having delivered Egypt from them, inaugurating an era of progress. European opinions of Muhammad Ali were also divided. During his rule Muhammad Ali and Egypt were the subject of numerous French and English books and articles, indicating a lively interest in his reforms and conquests. The Pasha himself was concerned with his image in Europe and sought to present himself to Europeans as an enlightened reformer. Yet although some writers admired him and praised his projects, others portrayed him as a tyrant who was ruining the country. To a large extent these writings reflected the predispositions of their authors and European social and political debates of the time as much as they did the situation in Egypt. In the latter stage of his rule, after Muhammad Ali invaded Syria, European writings became more negative. Yet another narrative of the history of modern Egypt was put forward by British writers during and after the occupation period. Not surprisingly, most British writers downplayed Muhammad Ali's reforms. Even those who attributed some importance to his reforms asserted that they had had no lasting effect. More attention was devoted to Khedive Ismail, whom they portrayed as an incompetent tyrant who led Egypt into disorder and bankruptcy, from which it had to be rescued. In this, the imperial narrative, the occupation and the "enlightened" colonial administration it installed were the most important turning point in modern Egyptian history, and the beginning of progressive reform. Perhaps the most famous criticism of the role of Muhammad Ali by an Egyptian was published by Muhammad Abduh in al-Manar in 1905. Abduh described Egypt before the rule of Muhammad Ali as having had a stable social and political order in which the religious elite played a leading and moderating role. The picture of pre-nineteenth century Egypt that Abduh sketched was not that of a society in need of rescuing from chaos, or in decline and in need of revival. Consistent with that picture, he described Muhammad Ali as a destroyer rather than a founder. Abduh was provoked to pen his criticism of the Pasha by the numerous speeches and articles in praise of Muhammad Ali on the occasion of the centenary celebration of 1905. Abduh, who was on poor terms with Khedive Abbas II, was associated with a group of anti-khedival nationalists who would form the Umma Party and found its newspaper, al-Jarida, two years later. Though desiring self rule, the Umma group distrusted the autocratic leanings of the khedive, and favored writing a constitution that would restrain his power. However, in contrast to Abduh's views, the editor of al-Jarida, Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid, believed that Muhammad Ali had been working for Egypt (and not just for his family) when he secured Egypt's autonomy within the Ottoman Empire. Lutfi al-Sayyid's view of the Pasha's accomplishment seems to have been influenced by his purely Egyptian nationalism, which was devoid of Ottomanism or Pan-Islamism. He valued the autonomy achieved in 1840 as a step toward an independent nation- state. The most popular nationalist figure of that era was Mustafa Kamil, editor of the newspaper al-Liwa (1900) and leader of the Watani or Nationalist Party founded in 1907. For much of this time Kamil was patronised by the khedive, breaking with him only after 1904. Up to then he added his voice to those praising Muhammad Ali's role, but afterward he turned against the khedive and his dynasty. It is significant that the nickname "the founder of modern Egypt" was coined in the context of the official celebration of the centenary, which was organised by the Palace. On one hand, the assignment of the role of "the founder of modern Egypt" to Muhammad Ali was consistent with the dynasty's rhetoric of reform and modernisation. In this respect it may be regarded as a restatement of the historical narrative advanced, for example, in Khedive Ismail's speech of 1866. On the other hand, the Palace now had to contend with the alternative historical theses put forth recently by the British and by some of the anti-khedivial nationalists. The struggle to define Egypt's past was part of the larger struggle between the Palace, the British, and the anti-khedivial nationalists over Egypt's political future. Thus the Palace exploited the opportunity of the 1905 centennial to assign to the founder of the Muhammad Ali dynasty -- and hence to the dynasty itself -- a central place in the narrative of national history. As the struggle for Egypt and the contest over its past intensified after the First World War, Muhammad Ali began to be named "the founder of modern Egypt" more often. Book titles are a good indicator of this. Abd al-Halim Hilmi al-Misri's Muhammad 'ali al-kabir munshi' misr al-haditha appeared in 1919, and Ilyas Ayyubi's Tarikh muhammad 'ali mu'assis misr al-haditha wa ra's al- 'a'ila al-karima appeared in 1922. In the following year Ayyubi published a two-volume history of the era of Khedive Ismail, who was not only the grandson of Muhammad Ali but the father of King Fuad. This extended the narrative of progress under the auspices of the khedivial dynasty into the late nineteenth century and maintained the continuity between "the founder of modern Egypt" and the current monarch. Indeed it was largely due to the efforts of his great-grandson, King Fuad, that Muhammad Ali's role as "the founder of modern Egypt" became firmly established in historiography. Fuad's role as a patron of intellectual activity resembles that of his father, though it has not received adequate attention from historians. While a prince he was the royal patron of the Egyptian University (now Cairo University), founded in 1908, and once on the throne he saw to the organisation of a national archive in Abdin Palace. National archives had been established for the purpose of historical research several decades earlier in western Europe and the U.S.A. Like a national library or museum, a research archive was one of the appurtenances of a modern state. Such an archive would facilitate as well as influence the writing of the history of the state -- especially in Egypt, where the Abdin archive was the personal property of the King, who controlled its organisation and access to it. Additionally, King Fuad and his son Farouk patronised historical research and writing on a grand scale, the aim of which was to further develop a narrative of modern national history that was inseparable from that of their dynasty. Largely as a result of their efforts, some 50 scholarly books in French, English, and Italian dealing with Muhammad Ali and/or Egypt during his era were published between 1900 and 1950. One of the monographs of this period was by the British historian Henry Dodwell, entitled The Founder of Modern Egypt: a Study of Muhammad Ali (Cambridge, 1931). It was Dodwell who popularised this nickname for Muhammad Ali in the Anglophone world. During the same half-century, more than 40 works were published in Arabic, in Egypt, on Muhammad Ali and/or Egypt during his era. Several of these titles were substantial scholarly studies by the founding generation of Egyptian academic historians, for example Ahmad `Izzat `Abd al-Karim's history of education under Muhammad Ali, and Ahmad Ahmad al-Hitta's history of agriculture. In addition to books on Muhammad Ali and his era, numerous other works (not counted above) appeared in this period dealing with various aspects of the modern history of Egypt. Nearly all of them begin the narrative of modern history with the French expedition and/or the rise of Muhammad Ali, and all emphasise the Pasha's pivotal role. During the monarchy period, also, a smaller though still significant number of books appeared on Muhammad Ali's son and grandson, Ibrahim and Ismail, the aim of which was to secure their place in history as well. The reigns of Abbas I and Said were almost completely neglected, and one suspects that this was due to their not being direct ancestors of the kings. From any perspective, those years are a crucial period in Egypt's history, but Fuad and Farouk were direct descendants of Muhammad Ali, Ibrahim, and Ismail. The historical narrative promoted by the kings had no place for Abbas and Said, and, partly as a consequence, there is a gap in our knowledge of their period that persists to this day. If the position of Muhammad Ali as modern Egypt's founder was secured during the monarchy period, a final question we need to consider is why the Pasha has kept that position more than half a century after the monarchy's end. Indeed, Muhammad Ali's statue still stands in Alexandria and that of his son, Ibrahim, in Opera Square. On the other hand, the empty column in front of Cairo University's Giza campus, from which a statue of King Fuad was pulled down in 1952, stands as a reminder of how the later monarchs were despised. By then, it seems, Muhammad Ali and Ibrahim had become so closely identified with the revival of the modern nation that there was no need felt to topple their statues. They had also become closely identified with the modern army by then, thanks in part to the writings of historians like Abd al-Rahman Zaki, Asad Rustum and Umar Tusun. The officers that overthrew the monarchy traced the roots of their military services to the reforms of Muhammad Ali and the victories won under Ibrahim's command, preferring to forget the virtual re-creation of the army during the British occupation. That "long" view of the Egyptian military's history is evident in a bas-relief visible nowadays on a wall of the Military Academy in Madinat Nasr. Thus Muhammad Ali's reputation as "the founder of modern Egypt" outlived the dynasty he founded due to his association with the modern military. * The writer is professor of history and director of the Program in South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign. He is the author of The Pasha's Peasants : Land, Society and Economy in Lower Egypt, 1740-1858 (Cambridge, 1992).
