Signs from Allah: History, Science and Faith in Islam
83. The Suez Canal and the Colonization of Egypt - 1
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
Concord, CA
Egypt is where the two giant continents of Asia and Africa meet. South of the Jordan valley the landscape of West Asia changes to the harsh desert of the Sinai. Dust storms rise up in the desert, blowing their way through the wasteland, making it difficult for man or beast to survive. At Suez, this harsh land meets up with the equally harsh eastern desert in Egypt. It is barely a hundred miles, as the crow flies, from the shores of the Mediterranean to the mouth of the Gulf of Suez. Yet, these few miles have separated not just two bodies of water, the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, but two distinct historical regions. The Mediterranean region has its own distinct history as does the Indian Ocean region, which jets into the Gulf of Suez through the Red Sea. South of Suez, the Sinai becomes a rugged terrain, rising into the lofty Al Ajmali Mountains. This was the land through which Prophet Moses wandered for forty years, and it was the land where God spoke to man.
The civilizations of the Mediterranean and those of the Indian Ocean have interacted and traded with each other through the centuries. Egypt, sitting astride two continents, radiated its influence westwards into North Africa, south into the Sudan, east into the Red Sea basin, and north into the Syrian highlands. With its strategic position, it commanded the trade routes to North Africa, Europe and Asia. Goods from the Mediterranean basin were unloaded at Alexandria, transported by land to Suez, and ferried again by sea to the littoral regions of the Indian Ocean, including Yemen, Persia, India, Indonesia and China. The rulers of Egypt, since the time of the Pharaohs, had pondered the possibility of connecting the two regions by digging a canal across the Suez area. The sheer magnitude of the task was overwhelming, and the dream remained unfulfilled until recent times when the use of machinery increased the ability of man to subdue nature.
With the European discovery of trade routes to the Indian Ocean around the Cape of Good Hope, the strategic importance of Egypt increased. Specifically, in the 18th century, as France and England fought for influence and colonies in the Indian subcontinent, Egypt acquired added importance. Napoleon landed in Egypt in 1798, ostensibly to free the Egyptians from despotic rule, but his eyes were further east, on India. The French contingent easily defeated the Turkish-Egyptian garrison under Murad Bey at the Battle of the Pyramids and occupied Cairo. Egypt was a province of the Ottoman Empire. In response to the French invasion, the Ottoman Sultan Selim III declared war on France. Britain, which was at war with France, supported the Ottomans. Napoleon was bottled up in Cairo and his fleet was defeated by the British at the Battle of the Nile. Napoleon’s grand plan was to strike at India through Syria and Iraq. With this in view he started correspondence with Tippu Sultan of Mysore (India) and the Sultan of Oman. However, his attempts to punch through Ottoman lines in Syria were frustrated when Turkish forces held their line at the Battle of Heliopolis (1800). Meanwhile, the British had successfully stormed Srirangapatam (1799), capital of Mysore, and Tippu had died in battle. Frustrated, Napoleon retreated to France, leaving behind him a large number of scholars, administrators and French chefs.
British strategic interest in Egypt grew in proportion to the consolidation of the British Empire in India. The British tried both diplomacy and war to gain a foothold on the Nile. However, its initial attempts met with failure. After the withdrawal of Napoleon, the Ottomans returned, and with the Treaty of El Arish, the British were forced to withdraw their naval contingents from the Nile. In 1805, Mohammed Ali, an ambitious and capable Albanian in the Ottoman garrison in Egypt, rose to become the Turkish Governor. He instituted reforms in the Egyptian administration and built up the Ottoman-Egyptian garrison into one of the finest fighting machines in the Mediterranean. When the British attempted to capture Alexandria in 1807, Muhammed Ali successfully beat back the assault. To counter British ambitions, Muhammed Ali cultivated the French, and used their services in the continued modernization of Egypt.
As long as Muhammed Ali was the Ottoman Viceroy, British ambitions in Egypt were kept at bay. However, Egypt could not remain isolated from the expanding European colonial juggernaut. Napoleon’s invasion had shown the military vulnerability of the Ottomans. Throughout the first half of the 19th century, the Mediterranean was the focus of rivalry between the competing interests of the European powers. The interests of Britain, France, Russia and Austria-Hungary converged in the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire, but collided as to who would pick up the pieces once the Ottomans had left. The British had their paramount interest in Egypt as the gateway to the British Indian Empire and the Indian Ocean. The Empire of Austria-Hungary was interested in the Balkans and kept up its steady pressure south of the Danube. The French occupied Algeria in 1830 and had ambitions in Morocco and Tunisia. The Russians were devouring Ottoman territories in the Caucasus and the Black Sea region. Their geopolitical goal was the occupation of Istanbul and the control of the Bosporus Straits so that their navy would have access to warm waters. A projection of Russian power into the Mediterranean would threaten French and British ambitions in North Africa and West Asia. So, they cooperated in containing Russia even while they themselves nibbled at the Ottoman Empire from the south. Greece was encouraged to secede from the Ottoman Empire (1820), but when the Ottomans decided to challenge European naval supremacy in the eastern Mediterranean, war ensured. Britain, France and Russia formed an alliance and their combined navies defeated the Ottomans in an engagement off the coast of Cyprus (1827). Thereafter, the Mediterranean became a European naval preserve.
(The author is Director, World Organization for Resource Development and Education, Washington, DC; Director, American Institute of Islamic History and Culture, CA; Member, State Knowledge Commission, Bangalore; and Chairman, Delixus Group)
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