Contrary to common perception that Egyptians can stomach in silence all manner of injustice, the history of the Egyptian people is replete with popular uprisings in defence of core rights, writes Ammar Ali Hassan* In the midst of their jubilation over the 25 January Revolution, Egyptians may not recall the train of protests and revolutions against foreign occupation, tyranny and deprivation throughout their long history. If we put all these uprisings side to side, it would put paid to the belief that the Egyptian people will perpetually tolerate inequity or that they are prey to a culture of political passivity ingrained by centuries of pharaonic-style rule and deification of the ruler, or by the power and strength of the central state derived from its control over the sources of water and, hence, wealth in an agrarian country, or by the accident of geography that gave Egypt a narrow river valley whose terrain and people were easy to control in the midst of a barren desert whose inhospitable expanse offered no opening for escape, or by an inherited misunderstanding of religion that imparted a spirit of fatalism, submissiveness and resignation to "reaping one's rewards" in the next world. Perhaps the most salient proof of the fallacy of such notions is the fact that the first revolution in history took place on the banks of the Nile. Such was the scope and force of that revolution that it has stirred the consciences and aroused the amazement of all who have studied the ancient history and documents of the world's first organised state. The chief cause of that revolution, which occurred during the reign of Pepi II, was rampant injustice combined with a vast gap between rich and poor. As the ancient sources relate, there was a bloated over-satiated minority while the masses stared at hunger and starvation. The crisis reached its peak when people were forced to eat grass while some had only water to quench the emptiness in their stomach. Even birds could find no sustenance. The silos had emptied of grain and the livestock was left to roam. The skeletal animals were slaughtered and devoured until even their carcases had disappeared. The situation reached the point where people would snatch filth from the mouths of pigs. Thousands of people died, their corpses glutted the streets and the river until even the crocodiles were driven away after having had their fill. At the peak of their wretchedness, the people began to attack the palaces of the rulers and the wealthy, murdering their residents, plundering their contents and setting fire to many. The chant that rung out over the banks of the Nile was "We will rid the land of all of rank and title!" The anarchy culminated in the fall of government. Ministries and courts were sacked and destroyed, their records plundered, their senior officials massacred. Afterwards, Egypt was left without a government for six years. Bands of thieves and murderers proliferated, the public treasuries were emptied and even the pharaoh's palace was plundered. Egypt did not subside into acquiescence and passivity since that tempestuous uprising, in spite of surface appearances. That undercurrent of rebellion against inequity and injustice persisted, erupting periodically in different forms. There were revolutions, riots and revolts. There were acts of resistance, civil disobedience and sheer dogged persistence in clinging to the national spirit and its principles through successive eras of occupation, to the extent that even the occupiers were gradually drawn into and assimilated into Egypt's powerful culture. It was this spirit that enabled Egypt to preserve its full independence for millennia, regardless of whether it was ruled by purely Egyptian dynasties or by foreign dynasties that had Egyptianised after imbibing the spirit of this ancient country and virtually severed the ties between Egypt and the imperial capitals, as was the case with the Greeks and Romans and the Abbasids and Ottomans. For the most part, Egypt's independence was the fruit of its vibrant and indomitable spirit as exhibited in its diverse revolutions. After the revolution against Pepi II, the Egyptians arose as one against the Hyksos, driving those invading hordes out of the Nile Valley and deep into the desert. Then came a revolution of an entirely new form. This was a religious, philosophical and artistic uprising championed by Akhenaton who launched the call to monotheism and rebelled against pagan idolatry that had been used to exploit the people in the name of deified rulers. Had that revolution succeeded it would have altered the history of the entire world. When the Assyrians invaded Egypt, Psamtik led the revolution to drive them out, after which he founded the 26th dynasty. Then the dynasty that inherited its beacon unleashed turbulent popular uprisings against the Persian occupiers. The Egyptians continued to pay dearly, sacrificing themselves in defence of their way of life until Alexandra the Great arrived and drove the Persians out of Egypt, only to occupy it in turn. Several centuries later it came the Romans' turn to taste another brand of Egyptian resistance. In subscribing and adhering to Christianity, the Egyptians discovered a powerful form of protest against pagan Rome. They severed themselves symbolically, philosophically and morally from the empire. However, when Constantine embraced Christianity and made it the state religion in his far-flung empire, the Egyptians found themselves in a predicament. This they soon resolved by establishing a doctrinal distinction between the Church of Egypt and that of Byzantine Constantinople. The Copts thus sustained the struggle, sacrificing countless lives in the course of their unwavering determination to defend their faith, however brutally their enemies persecuted them. Their diverse anti-imperial resistance movements culminated in a violent uprising in Upper Egypt against the rule of Duqaldiyanos. Although the Muslims freed Egypt from Roman oppression, later Ummayid and Abbasid rulers transformed religion into an ideology in the name of which some of their governors unleashed oppression. Once again, Egyptians rose up against injustice. This time, however, it was not just Copts but also Muslims, whether of Coptic origin or from the Bedouin tribes that had inhabited Egypt long before the rise of Islam. Egypt bred a different brand of revolution when it rose to the defence of the East and Islam against the Mongols and Crusaders. However, Egyptians never flagged in their protest against the injustices of some Fatimid, Mameluke and Turkish governors, a struggle that reached its peak in the revolt by the scholars and students of Al-Azhar against Khurshid Pasha, forcing Istanbul to replace him with their choice for governor, Mohammed Ali the Great. Just before this, the Egyptians displayed their courage and valour against the French invasion and occupation (1798- 1801). Soon after the old and rusty muskets of the Mamelukes fell before the cannons of the Napoleonic army, the Egyptians staged two massive riots in Cairo, shaking the French army out of its complacency. They made it abundantly clear that the French would find it impossible to stay in Egypt, a lesson that was driven home through 22 battles against Napoleonic forces in Upper Egypt, not to mention the insurrectionist and resistance movements that swept the whole of that region. The same reaction, albeit on a smaller scale, met the British campaign led by General Fraser in 1807. Hardly had his forces come ashore in Rashid than the men and women of that coastal city attacked, using whatever crude implements they could get their hands on as weapons, and forced Fraser and his troops to flee. Moving into the modern era, Ahmed Orabi spearheaded the rebellion against the Khedive Tawfiq in defence of the rights of Egyptian army officers and then led the peasants in the resistance against the British occupation. Although Orabi was defeated, his campaigns fired the patriotic fervour of subsequent generations of Egyptians who heeded the call to revolution by Mohammed Farid and Mustafa Kamel in 1908. While the British once again managed to quash this uprising, they would fail utterly to defeat the great 1919 Revolution, which brought onboard all ages, professions and classes of the Egyptian people behind the leadership of Saad Zaghloul, and which culminated in a declaration of independence (albeit with some reservations) and a splendid constitution. This paved the way for the July 1952 Revolution that was inaugurated by a military coup but evolved into a comprehensive social revolution that overturned the social hierarchy, freed the country from a corrupt monarchy and brutal colonial hegemony, and fired the spirit of liberation and resistance among peoples everywhere in the Third World. If this long history speaks of a permanent revolutionary struggle it is one that has always been tempered by Egyptians' hatred for chaos and love for peace and order, their ability to incorporate the alien into their national fusion, their ingenuity at waging resistance through wiles and ruses, and their confidence in their faith and their culture. Egyptian history, therefore, is the story of a lasting flame burning beneath fertile ground, discernible only by those with a keen and penetrating intellect. * The writer is a political analyist.
