Egypt

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The authors wish to acknowledge the contributions of the writers of the 1983 edition of Egypt: A Country Study, edited by Richard F. Nyrop. Their work provided general background for the present volume.

The authors are grateful to individuals in various government agencies and private institutions who gave of their time, research materials, and expertise in the production of this book. The authors also wish to thank members of the Federal Research Division staff who contributed directly to the preparation of the manuscript. These people included Thomas Collelo, the substantive reviewer of all the graphic and textual material; Sandra W. Meditz, who reviewed all drafts and served as liaison with the sponsoring agency; and Martha E. Hopkins and Marilyn Majeska, who managed editing and book production.

Also involved in preparing the text were editorial assistants Barbara Edgerton and Izella Watson; Richard Kollodge and Ruth Nieland, who edited chapters; Beverly Wolpert, who performed the prepublication editorial review; and Shirley Kessell, who compiled the index. Linda Peterson of the Library of Congress Composing Unit, prepared the camera-ready copy under the supervision of Peggy Pixley.

The authors would like to thank Ly H. Burnham, who assisted with demographic data. Finally, the authors acknowledge the generosity of the many individuals and public and private agencies, especially the Press and Information Bureau of the Arab Republic of Egypt, who allowed their photographs to be used in this study.

Egypt - Preface

This edition of Egypt: A Country Study replaces the previous edition published in 1983. Like its predecessor, the present book attempts to treat in a compact and objective manner the dominant historical, social, economic, political, and national security aspects of contemporary Egypt. Sources of information included scholarly books, journals, and monographs; official reports and documents of governments and international organizations; and foreign and domestic newspapers and periodicals. Relatively up-to-date economic data were available from several sources, but the sources were not always in agreement.

Measurements are given in the metric system. Landholdings, however, are presented in feddans, a unit of measure that remains in general use although Egypt officially uses the metric system. One feddan equals 1.038 acres.

The information available on ancient and modern Egypt is detailed and voluminous. Limitations of space and time, however, precluded the presentation of anything more than a short survey.

The transliteration of Arabic words and phrases posed a particular problem. For many of the words--such as Muhammad, Muslim, Quran, and shaykh--the authors followed a modified version of the system adopted by the United States Board on Geographic Names and the Permanent Committee on Geographic Names for British Official Use, known as the BGN/PCGN system; the modification entails the omission of all diacritical markings and hyphens. In numerous instances, however, the names of persons or places are so well known by another spelling that to have used the BGN/PCGN system may have created confusion. For example, the reader will find Cairo rather than Al Qahirah, Giza rather than Al Jizah, Suez rather than As Suways, and Gamal Abdul Nasser rather than Jamal Abd an Nasr. For some place-names, two transliterations have been provided.

Egypt - INTRODUCTION

OCCUPYING A FOCAL GEOGRAPHIC bridge linking Africa and Asia, contemporary Egypt is the inheritor of a civilization dating back more than 6,000 years. The unification of Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt in the third millennium B.C. required the development of administrative and religious structures, and the monuments that remain demonstrate the mathematical, astronomical, and architectural skills attained in constructing rock tombs, temples, and pyramids--the latter dedicated to the divine kings, the pharaohs.

Egypt's strategic location has made it the object of numerous conquests: by the Ptolemies, Romans, Greeks, Arabs, Fatimids, Mamluks, Ottomans, and Napoleon Bonaparte. The most recent conquerors, the British, granted Egypt partial independence in 1922 and withdrew completely in 1954. Of these foreign rules, the Arab Muslim conquest, by its arabization and Islamization, had the greatest impact on Egyptian life and culture, resulting in the rapid conversion of the overwhelming majority of the population to Islam and the spread of Sunni Muslim religious and educational institutions. Shia Islam, represented by the Fatimid conquest in 969, led to the founding the same year of Al Azhar, later transformed into a Sunni theological school, and in the 1990s still regarded as the outstanding interpreter of Islamic religious law (sharia).

The rule of Muhammad Ali (1805-48), an Albanian officer in the army of the Ottoman sultan, who succeeded in detaching Egypt from Ottoman control, represented another major influence on Egypt's history. Muhammad Ali encouraged the development of agriculture, by introducing long-staple cotton as a major crop; by expanding Egypt's infrastructure through a network of canals, irrigation systems, and roads; and by promoting secular education. His efforts to create a manufacturing sector failed, however, in part because Britain's tariff policies were designed to favor the import of raw materials to be processed in Britain.

For contemporary Egypt, the Free Officers' 1952 Revolution, spearheaded by Gamal Abdul Nasser, has clearly been the formative event. Nasser's charismatic leadership institutionalized the role of the military and created an authoritarian state that pursued goals of "Arab socialism." These goals centered on the implementation of agrarian reform, nationalization of key industries, a one-party state (the Arab Socialist Union--ASU) domestically, and closer ties with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe internationally. Major events of Nasser's regime included the construction of the Aswan High Dam with Soviet aid; the take- over of the Suez Canal in 1956, which led to the 1956 War and the British-French-Israeli Tripartite Invasion of the Sinai Peninsula (also known as Sinai); and the short-lived Egyptian-Syrian union as the United Arab Republic (1958-61). Egyptian participation in the June 1967 War with Israel resulted in Egypt's loss of the Gaza Strip and Sinai and the so-called War of Attrition along the Suez Canal in 1969-70.

Nasser's death brought to office his vice president, Anwar as Sadat, also a military man but more conservative in political outlook than his predecessor. Sadat's rule has been characterized as patriarchal, a return to a traditional method of government that relied on clientelism. Sadat demilitarized the state in favor of the bourgeoisie and opened Egypt to capitalism and to the West through the infitah (opening or open door) in 1974. Sadat also moved toward some democratization and constitutionalism, represented by the Constitution of 1971, which, however, concentrated power in the hands of the president. Sadat's early successes in the October 1973 War with Israel made him a popular hero and psychologically boosted the morale of Egyptians. In an attempt to end the state of war with Israel, Sadat journeyed to Jerusalem in November 1977; as a next step, through the mediation of United States president Jimmy Carter, he signed the Camp David Accords in September 1978 and the Egyptian- Israeli peace treaty in March 1979. These actions, however, and Sadat's increasing repression of domestic opposition, resulted in Egypt's being cut off from the rest of the Arab world and ultimately led to Sadat's assassination by a Muslim extremist group, Al Jihad (Holy War), in October 1981.

Husni Mubarak, Sadat's vice president, took over the government and was initially regarded by many as an interim president. He demonstrated a commitment to gradualism aimed at modifying and preserving the best elements of his predecessors' accomplishments while building domestic consensus, tolerating opposition, promoting an equal partnership between the public and private sectors, allowing greater democracy and constitutionalism, and relying on technocrats for advice. In addition, through skillful diplomacy he gained Egypt's return to the Arab fold in 1987 and assumed a leadership role in the Arab world. Simultaneously he maintained good relations with the West and improved relations with the Soviet Union.

Mubarak's gradualism seemed to many observers a useful leadership characteristic for contemporary Egypt. For example, he strove to prevent the small but growing number of Muslim extremists, sometimes referred to as fundamentalists, from exercising disproportionate influence over the moderate body of Muslims, who in November 1990 constituted approximately 90 percent of the country's population of about 56 million persons. (In announcing the population figure, the Census Bureau stated that the population has increased by 1 million persons in nine months and seven days.) Although concerned about the intimidation of Christian minorities, mainly Copts, at the hands of Muslim extremists, as of mid-1991, the government has been unable to prevent young Coptic Christians from acting on their own to counter acts of violence against their religious centers and property.

Since the 1952 Revolution, the government has appointed the functionaries of mosques and Islamic religious schools. The growth of Islamic political movements, especially the Muslim Brotherhood, and of Islamic associations in universities resulted in increased pressure on the government in the 1980s for application of the sharia in legal decisions. Mubarak acceded to the gradual application of the process.

The 1952 Revolution also expanded secular education, and from 1964 to 1974 the government was obliged by law to hire all those with higher education degrees. The practice led to an overstaffed and ineffective bureaucracy. The infitah ended this hiring requirement, but by the mid-1980s unemployment among university graduates was estimated to be as high as 30 percent.

The 1952 Revolution initiated free health care at public health facilities. Although these services continued in the early 1990s, facilities often lacked adequate medical personnel. In addition, a social security program was begun in the 1960s.

The 1952 Revolution had given priority to economic development and had made the state the prime economic agent of Arab socialism. The National Charter of 1962 clearly spelled out the state's role. The role of the private sector, however, was considerably enlarged by the infitah after the October 1973 War, and private-sector employees on average received three times the salaries of government workers. Mubarak encouraged private investment but funds flowed largely into the service sector and agriculture rather than into industry, despite government development plans (1982-86, 1987-91) designed to promote the latter. The shortage of skilled personnel, especially in the technical and industrial spheres, also had a major impact on the economy.

Agricultural production had not benefited significantly from the development process. By 1990, although production had shifted away from concentration on long-staple cotton to such crops as rice, fruits, and vegetables, self-sufficiency had fallen below the 1960 level. Only approximately 3 percent of Egypt's land was suitable for agriculture. Despite postrevolutionary land reforms, increased mechanization, and land reclamation programs following the construction of the Aswan High Dam--a program underway in 1991 involved 300,000 feddans to be worked jointly with Sudan--Egypt's agricultural output did not keep pace with population growth. Although pricing reforms and the elimination of government quotas for most crops helped increase output, production remained insufficient. Part of the problem was lack of proper drainage and consequent reduction of optimum yields. In general, a major challenge facing Egypt was better exploitation of its water resources, including exploration for new underground water, particularly in the Western Desert, and improved irrigation technology. Government development plans also sought to promote generation of electricity and other energy sources such as oil, gas, and coal as well as to improve further the transportation network of roads, railroads, and canals and to update telecommunications.

Egypt's major sources of foreign exchange used for development projects and for needed imports were oil revenues, Suez Canal tolls, tourism income, and workers' remittances from the approximately 2.5 million Egyptians working abroad. Added to these were capital grants from other Arab states after the October 1973 War and, as well, economic and military grants from the United States and loans from the Paris Club (the informal name for a consortium of eighteen Western creditor nations) after the conclusion of the 1979 peace treaty with Israel.

Egypt faced a serious economic situation in the late 1980s and early 1990s: stagnation and ultimately negative economic growth in addition to heavy indebtedness. After two years of negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Egyptian government finally concluded a preliminary agreement in October 1990 that enabled it to reschedule its US$18 billion debt to Paris Club members. The agreement required Egypt to increase prices of certain basic commodities such as gas, fuel oil, gasoline, electricity, flour, and rice by eliminating or reducing subsidies. Mandated, as well, were the devaluation and unification of the Central Bank exchange rate and the exchange rate of commercial banks, raising of the interest rate, and reforming of the foreign investment law. Egypt also sought to promote privatization of the industrial public sector--one of the recommendations of the World Bank--and announced in October 1990 that it would establish nine new industrial "free zones" to encourage investment and create more jobs. Some officials recognized that, additionally, the government needed to restructure management style in the public sector and banking to encourage greater efficiency and productivity. Another economic problem facing Egypt was rising inflation, which between 1987 and 1989 had increased between 20 and 25 percent annually. In early 1991, inflation was estimated to have dropped to 11 percent, but it nevertheless had a severe impact especially on lower income groups.

Egypt also endeavored to improve its trade and financial situation by concluding barter agreements that eliminated the need to expend foreign currency. For example, in August 1990 it reached a five-year agreement with the Soviet Union that was worth £E5 billion, with other supplemental agreements to follow.

Egypt's economic situation became particularly critical in 1990 because of the Persian Gulf crisis. In October, before the crisis developed into a war, the World Bank had calculated that Egypt would lose US$2.4 billion in remittances from workers in Iraq and Kuwait, US$500 million from the loss of exports to Iraq and Kuwait, US$500 million from tourism, and US$200 million from Suez Canal tolls. In addition, Egyptian minister of international cooperation Maurice Makramallah estimated that Egypt would require a further US$900 million to meet the needs of Egyptians repatriated from Iraq and Kuwait. In early April 1991, after the war, Egyptian officials announced that 700,000 Egyptians who had worked in Iraq and Kuwait had returned home jobless. Estimates of unemployment in early 1991 varied, with some figures as high as 20 percent, despite the approximate 684,000 visas issued to Egyptians for work in Saudi Arabia after the Persian Gulf crisis began.

The estimated costs did not take into account actual war costs of sending about 38,000 Egyptian armed forces personnel to Saudi Arabia and provisioning them. Saudi Arabia, which in December promised US$1.5 billion, and Kuwait, together with several European Economic Community (EEC) member nations, had agreed to contribute to these costs and to the losses incurred by Egypt's economy, but funds were slow in arriving. President George Bush of the United States proposed in September that the United States forgive Egypt its approximately US$7 billion military debt because of Egypt's help in the Persian Gulf crisis; Congress subsequently endorsed this proposal. This action relieved Egypt of annual repayments amounting to more than US$700 million. Other countries such as Canada, several EEC member states, the Persian Gulf countries and Saudi Arabia also forgave Egypt's debt obligations. By early November 1990 the total debt cancellation stood at about US$14 billion.

In subsequent action, Egypt sent a delegation in mid-April 1991 to the IMF requesting an eighteen-month standby agreement and a loan. When United States secretary of state James A. Baker III visited Cairo in March, he had promised that the United States, grateful for Egypt's support in the war with Iraq, would put in a good word for Egypt with the IMF. In mid-May the IMF approved the standby agreement and granted Egypt a US$372 million loan, but imposed certain additional conditions on the Egyptian economy. The IMF agreement paved the way for Egypt to obtain favorable terms from the Paris Club for its debt to member countries. On May 25, it was announced that Egyptian government debts would be reduced 50 percent and advantageous terms granted on the remainder. In mid-June the World Bank agreed to an additional US$520 million loan to Egypt.

Meanwhile, with regard to economic development Egypt signed an agreement at the end of May 1991 with the African Development Bank for a US$350 million loan to finance part of the Kuraymar power station. This sum was supplemented by contributions of US$100 million from the Arab Fund for Social and Economic Development, US$100 million from the World Bank, and US$10 million from the Islamic Bank for Development. On July 10 the Egypt Consultative Group, consisting of thirty countries and institutions, pledged US$8 billion in aid to Egypt over the next two years, more than twice the minimum Egypt had suggested. The World Bank, which organized the group, stated that the donors had determined on "massive support" for Egypt's reform program, which it described as "daring" and "exhaustive." It estimated that Egypt had lost approximately US$20 billion as a result of the war in the Persian Gulf.

The endorsement of Egypt's policies represented by the action of this World Bank-affiliated group was an encouraging sign. In summary, however, Egypt's prospective economic situation depended upon several factors: the successful implementation of the IMF agreement, its capacity to promote itself as an investment and financial center, its role in the region as well as its position as a partner of the West, and perhaps most critically, its ability to follow through on necessary economic reforms.

The role of government was prominent not only in Egypt's economic life but also in other spheres, such as political parties, parliamentary organization and elections, the judiciary, and the military. The Constitution of 1971 validated a mixed presidential-parliamentary-cabinet system with power concentrated in the hands of the president, who had extensive opportunities to bestow patronage, including the appointment of the prime minister, and who could legislate by decree in emergencies. Whereas the People's Assembly, the elected lower house, theoretically could exercise a check on the president, in reality this did not occur, and the assembly had no role in foreign affairs or defense matters. The upper house, the Consultative Council, was an advisory body created in 1980 when the Central Committee of the Arab Socialist Union, then the only legitimate political party, became the nucleus of the council.

Under Mubarak the People's Assembly acquired greater authority over minor matters of state and more freedom of debate; assembly committees also exercised an oversight role with regard to cabinet ministers. The dominant political party remained the National Democratic Party (NDP), which had succeeded the ASU, but it was largely an appendage of the government. The new Electoral Law in 1984 limited opposition seats in the assembly to parties that obtained at least 8 percent of the vote, thereby eliminating representation on the part of some of the small fringe parties. In May 1990, however, Egypt acquired several new parties: the Green Party, the Democratic Unionist Party, and the Young Egypt (Misr al Fatah) Party became eligible to run for election. The Supreme Administrative Court rejected, however, the application for party status of the Nasserite Party on the ground that its program was totalitarian. A similar request for party recognition by the Muslim Brotherhood in January 1990 had been rejected because the body had been formed on a religious basis.

In May 1990, the Supreme Constitutional Court ruled that the People's Assembly elected in May 1987 was invalid. It so ruled because a 1986 amendment to the 1972 Electoral Law was judged unconstitutional by reason of its discrimination against independent candidates through use of the closed list system of proportional representation, requiring selection of a single slate. As a result, assembly legislation passed up to June 2 would stand, but new elections had to be held under the second- ballot system, in which, if no individual received an absolute majority, a run-off was held between the top two candidates. Mubarak adjourned the existing assembly and called a referendum for October 11 on whether the assembly should be dissolved. The referendum resulted in new assembly elections called for November 29, with nine legal parties authorized to participate.

In fact, the Muslim Brotherhood and three of the major opposition parties--the right-of-center New Wafd Party, the left- of-center Socialist Labor Party, and the centrist Liberal Party-- declined to take part in the elections. They refused because of amendments to the 1972 Electoral Law forbidding unified lists (the Muslim Brotherhood had combined with the Socialist Labor Party for election purposes) and preventing NDP members from changing allegiance. Other reasons for the abstention of these parties was the government's refusal to lift the state of emergency or to allow judicial bodies to supervise the election. As a result, in a very low voter turnout estimated at between 8 and 25 percent of those eligible, the NDP claimed to control 79.6 percent of the new assembly, with independents holding 19 percent and the left 1.4 percent. The NDP percentage included, however, ninety-five independents affiliated with the NDP, indicating that party control was not as strong as it might seem. An internationally known Egyptian political analyst has said that the 1990 elections showed that local issues and loyalties counted for more in party politics than political platforms and that unless the NDP is separated from the government, Mubarak's desire for reorganization of NDP structure in the interests of increased democratization cannot occur. The November election was further clouded by the October 12 assassination by Muslim extremists of assembly speaker Rafat al Mahjub, constitutionally next in line to the president.

The Persian Gulf crisis and the ensuing war resulted in quandaries for various Egyptian parties other than the NDP. For example, divisions occurred among Islamist groups with some supporting Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and others backing Iraq. The Muslim Brotherhood decided to end its alliance with the Socialist Labor Party and seek to gain party status of its own. The leftist parties also experienced confusion, with some members of Tagammu supporting each side in the Persian Gulf war.

Evidence of the greater role of constitutionalism was the growing independence of the judiciary under Mubarak. Judges increasingly defended the rights of citizens against the state. The Ministry of Interior, however, often ignored court decrees.

On the foreign affairs front as well, Mubarak followed a policy of gradualism. He continued the friendly relations with the West established under Sadat but sought a more independent course for Egypt. For instance, he improved relations with the Soviet Union and rejected United States president Ronald Reagan's proposal to take joint military action against Libya.

A number of events reflected Mubarak's growing confidence in asserting his personal role and that of Egypt on the Middle East scene. In September 1989, he proposed ten points to enable direct Palestinian-Israeli talks on Israeli prime minister Yitzhaq Shamir's election plan. The points included international observers for the election, withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces from the balloting area, an end to Israeli settlement activities in the West Bank, and the participation of East Jerusalem residents in the election. The Israeli Labor Party endorsed the proposals, but the Likud government sharply opposed them.

Egypt's more prominent role in the international sphere was also reflected in Mubarak's April 1990 visits to various Asian and European capitals: Beijing, Pyongyang, Moscow, and London. He focused primarily on economic matters, seeking debt relief and expanded export markets for Egypt. His purpose also included a request for political action condemning Israel's settlement of Soviet Jewish immigrants in the occupied territories and banning weapons proliferation in the Middle East.

The major event affecting Egypt's relations with the Arab world and the broader international sphere was clearly its decision to side with Saudi Arabia and the United States in opposing Iraq's invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990. Earlier Mubarak had sought unsuccessfully to mediate between Iraq and Kuwait. Egyptians were unsympathetic with Iraq despite the presence there of nearly 1 million Egyptian workers because of numerous instances of mistreatment of Egyptians by Iraq and disenchantment with Saddam Husayn's Baath socialism and his authoritarian actions. Mubarak's condemnation of Iraq's occupation of Kuwait, therefore, was initially popular in Egypt; as the crisis developed into war, however, popular support appeared to wane somewhat although observers believed Egyptians supported Mubarak's position approximately three to one.

Even before Iraq invaded Kuwait, its threats to that country began producing a realignment in the Arab world. In mid-July Syrian president Hafiz al Assad paid a historic visit to Cairo after thirteen years of separation between the two nations; both countries shared a concern about Iraq's growing bellicosity. The visit led to the creation of a joint ministerial committee to further cooperation in the economic, industrial, petroleum, energy, agricultural, education, and information fields. (At the beginning of April 1991, after the war, Mubarak and Assad met again in Cairo and announced their opposition to breaking up Iraq.) In mid-October Libyan president Muammar al Qadhafi visited Cairo, as an aftermath of which a number of cooperation agreements were also signed.

A further indication of the new alignment was the majority vote in early September of League of Arab States (Arab League) members to return Arab League headquarters to Cairo. Egypt had been expelled from the Arab League in 1979 after signing the peace treaty with Israel. Readmitted to the Arab League proper in 1989, Egypt had subsequently joined several League-affiliated bodies such as the Arab Atomic Energy Organization and the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries. The vote indicated the split in the organization because only twelve of the twenty-one members, those supporting the condemnation of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, sent their foreign ministers to the Cairo meeting; representatives of Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Sudan, Yemen, and the Palestine Liberation Organization, among others, were conspicuously absent.

The rift was underscored by Egypt's announcement of its decision in mid-September not to participate further in the Arab Cooperation Council, a primarily economic body formed in 1989 by Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and the Yemen Arab Republic (North Yemen, prior to the May 1990 union of North and South Yemen). In December Mubarak proposed the creation of a new Arab alliance consisting of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Syria, presumably as a replacement for the Arab Cooperation Council, and warned pro- Iraqi Sudan that Egypt would act if Iraqi weapons were transferred there.

Whereas it supported the United States, Egypt's stance in the Persian Gulf crisis was a moderate one. It advocated the ouster of Iraq from Kuwait, but in early November 1990, Mubarak sent word to President Bush that sanctions should be given two to three more months to work before any military attack on Iraq. In a speech to the joint session of the People's Assembly and the Consultative Council on January 24, 1991, Mubarak stated that he had made twenty-six unavailing appeals to Saddam Husayn and had eventually sent a force of 35,000 Egyptians to Saudi Arabia in conformity with the provisions of the Arab Mutual Defense Pact signed in 1950. Also in January, Mubarak sent Minister of Foreign Affairs Ismat Abdul Majid to Washington with a message indicating, among other points, that if Iraq withdrew from Kuwait, Egypt considered Saddam Husayn's remaining in power acceptable.

As the war was ending, Mubarak again addressed a joint legislative session on March 3, 1991. He stated that Egypt was prepared to help rebuild Iraq as well as Kuwait with Egyptian labor and set forth a nine-point program, which he described as a "pan-Arab appeal." The points included that there should be no vengeance, that border disputes must be settled, that the Middle East must be freed of weapons of mass destruction, that the Arab- Israeli dispute must be settled, and that the basis for participation of all Arab citizens in democracy should be expanded. As time passed, however, Egypt became disillusioned by the responses of Kuwait, particularly, and, to a lesser extent, Saudi Arabia to Egypt's offers of manpower assistance. Egypt had agreed to serve with Syria in a Persian Gulf peacekeeping force proposed by the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, in accordance with the Damascus Declaration of March 6. Kuwait had made public promises to grant contracts to Egyptian firms and to hire Egyptian workers for its reconstruction efforts. It granted minimal awards to Egypt, however, and implied that Egyptians were fit only for menial labor. In addition, Kuwait indicated its preference for United States rather than Egyptian troops on its territory.

Informed observers believed that Mubarak's announcement on April 8 that Egyptian forces would be withdrawn from the Persian Gulf was the cumulative result of these factors. The United States was shocked by Mubarak's decision and expressed its displeasure to Kuwait, indicating that only a minimal number of United States forces would remain in the area. As a result of United States pressure, Kuwait modified its position, and Egypt agreed in principle with United States secretary of defense Richard B. Cheney to send peacekeeping and border patrol troops to Kuwait. In mid-June the number of such troops remained to be worked out, but Mubarak's visit to Kuwait on July 18 indicated that relations between the two countries had improved. Other evidence of improved Egyptian relations with all Arab states was the unanimous election of Ismat Abdul Majid as secretary general of the Arab League in May.

In the broader international sphere, Secretary of State Baker paid several post-Persian Gulf war visits to Cairo in the first half of 1991, and Egypt was among the first Arab states to indicate its acceptance of the Baker plan for a twofold approach to Middle East talks. The plan proposed that the United States and the Soviet Union jointly sponsor an opening session to be followed by direct negotiations between Israel and its Arab neighbors. On July 19, in a further step toward easing Middle East tensions, Mubarak proposed that Israel suspend the expansion of settlements in the occupied territories, in return for which the Arab states would end their economic boycott of Israel. Saudi Arabia and Jordan soon afterward indicated agreement with this proposal.

Mubarak's domestic policy has been summarized as one of limited liberalization, limited Islamization, and limited repression. These three factors all impinged on national security, a sphere in which Mubarak emphasized the maintenance of domestic stability, probably a more important concern after the 1979 peace treaty with Israel than external threats. Egypt had a professional officer corps but a shortage of well trained enlisted personnel, especially noncommissioned officers, because of the attraction of higher paying civilian employment. Conscripts, based on the 1955 National Military Service Law, served for three years in one of the four services: army, navy, air force, or Air Defense Force, or they might be assigned to the police, prison guard service, or the military economic service. Until the Persian Gulf crisis of late 1990-91, the last war in which the armed services had seen action was the October 1973 War.

Egypt's defense spending was proportionately less than that of most Middle Eastern countries, but it represented 11 percent of gross national product (GNP) in 1987, or 32 percent of total government spending. In addition, Egypt benefited to a substantial degree from foreign military assistance. From 1955 to 1975, this aid came primarily from the Soviet Union, with the result that Egypt had much Soviet military equipment in its inventory. From the signing of the peace treaty with Israel in 1979 onward, the United States became Egypt's main military supplier, and the orientation of the armed forces became Western. Egypt's defense industry was the largest in the Arab world, producing arms, ammunition, artillery, and other military goods and assembling aircraft and armored vehicles for domestic use or export to Third World countries.

With reference to internal security, the military were called out to join the police and the paramilitary police, the Central Security Forces (CSF), to suppress dissent when occasions warranted. This occurred during the 1977 food riots and the 1986 riots by the CSF. The police and intelligence services kept a watchful eye on rightwing Islamic groups, of which the Muslim Brotherhood was the chief, but Al Jihad was one of the most extreme--the organization's leader in Bani Suwayf in Upper Egypt was killed in a riot in late June 1991. Left-wing factions were kept under surveillance as well, although the Communist Party of Egypt had been officially banned since the early 1950s. Former Minister of Interior General Zaki Badr was responsible for the arrest of as many as 20,000 persons charged with being dissidents during his four-year tenure; this figure included arrests in April 1989 of 1,500 persons accused of acts of Muslim extremism against Christian churches and businesses. Moreover, human rights organizations brought accusations of torture on a regular basis against Egypt's internal security forces. Mubarak relieved Badr of his post in early January 1990; his successor, General Muhammad Abd al Halim Musa, stated that he considered the opposition to be "part of the mechanism" of government. This statement encouraged popular hope for a more liberal internal security policy. Restrictions remained, however, and in September 1990, a group of Muslim activists and leftists was barred by the government from traveling to Iraq and Saudi Arabia on a peace mission.

Part of Egypt's internal security concern related to its neighbor to the south, Sudan, which staged a massive pro-Iraqi demonstration in Khartoum on January 19, just after the Persian Gulf war began. Egyptian security forces had been keeping a watchful eye on a number of Sudanese activists, and 500 of them were rounded up and deported on January 23 as representing a threat to Egyptian security. Although public demonstrations have been outlawed in Egypt, about 2,000 Cairo University students staged an antiwar demonstration on February 24, which Cairo police broke up with tear gas. No serious injuries were reported.

The government's continuing concern over national security was but one aspect of the problems posed by the Persian Gulf war. The war had far-reaching political, economic, and diplomatic implications for Egypt's future. In mid-July 1991, it remained to be seen whether Egypt would continue to evolve democratic political institutions, to reform governmental administrative structures, and to promote economic reforms designed to further agricultural and industrial development. Also in question was whether Egypt could resume the position of Arab leadership it had gained under Nasser, now that Syria's Hafiz al Assad was reasserting his regional leadership role, and whether the realignment resulting from the war would work in Egypt's favor.

Egypt - Historical Setting

THE ROOTS OF EGYPTIAN civilization go back more than 6,000 years to the beginning of settled life along the banks of the Nile River. The country has an unusual geographical and cultural unity that has given the Egyptian people a strong sense of identity and a pride in their heritage as descendants of humankind's earliest civilized community.

Within the long sweep of Egyptian history, certain events or epochs have been crucial to the development of Egyptian society and culture. One of these was the unification of Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt sometime in the third millennium B.C. The ancient Egyptians regarded this event as the most important in their history, comparable to the "First Time," or the creation of the universe. With the unification of the "Two Lands" by the legendary, if not mythical, King Menes, the glorious Pharaonic Age began. Power was centralized in the hands of a god-king, and, thus, Egypt became the first organized society.

The ancient Egyptians were the first people of antiquity to believe in life after death. They were the first to build in stone and to fashion the arch in stone and brick. Even before the unification of the Two Lands, the Egyptians had developed a plow and a system of writing. They were accomplished sailors and shipbuilders. They learned to chart the heavens in order to predict the Nile flood. Their physicians prescribed healing remedies and performed surgical operations. They sculpted in stone and decorated the walls of their tombs with naturalistic murals in vibrant colors. The legacy of ancient Egypt is written in stone across the face of the country from the pyramids of Upper Egypt to the rock tombs in the Valley of the Kings to the Old Kingdom temples of Luxor and Karnak to the Ptolemaic temples of Edfu and Dendera and to the Roman temple to Isis on Philae Island.

The Arab conquest of 641 by the military commander Amr ibn al As was perhaps the next most important event in Egyptian history because it resulted in the Islamization and Arabization of the country, which endure to this day. Even those who clung to the Coptic religion, a substantial minority of the population in 1990, were Arabized; that is, they adopted the Arabic language and were assimilated into Arab culture.

Although Egypt was formally under Arab rule, beginning in the ninth century hereditary autonomous dynasties arose that allowed local rulers to maintain a great deal of control over the country's destiny. During this period Cairo was established as the capital of the country and became a center of religion, learning, art, and architecture. In 1260, the Egyptian ruler, Qutuz, and his forces stopped the Mongol advance across the Arab world at the battle of Ayn Jalut in Palestine. Because of this victory, Islamic civilization could continue to flourish when Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid caliphate, fell to the Mongols. Qutuz's successor, Baybars I, inaugurated the reign of the Mamluks, a dynasty of slave-soldiers of Turkish and Circassian origin that lasted for almost three centuries.

In 1517 Egypt was conquered by Sultan Selim I and absorbed into the Ottoman Empire. Since the Turks were Muslims, however, and the sultans regarded themselves as the preservers of Sunni Islam, this period saw institutional continuity, particularly in religion, education, and the religious law courts. In addition, after only a century of Ottoman rule, the Mamluk system reasserted itself, and Ottoman governors became at times virtual prisoners in the citadel, the ancient seat of Egypt's rulers.

The modern history of Egypt is marked by Egyptian attempts to achieve political independence, first from the Ottoman Empire and then from the British. In the first half of the nineteenth century, Muhammad Ali, an Albanian and the Ottoman viceroy in Egypt, attempted to create an Egyptian empire that extended to Syria and to remove Egypt from Turkish control. Ultimately, he was unsuccessful, and true independence from foreign powers would not be achieved until midway through the next century.

Foreign, including British, investment in Egypt and Britain's need to maintain control over the Suez Canal resulted in the British occupation of Egypt in 1882. Although Egypt was granted nominal independence in 1922, Britain remained the real power in the country. Genuine political independence was finally achieved between the 1952 Revolution and the 1956 War. In 1952 the Free Officers, led by Lieutenant Colonel Gamal Abdul Nasser, took control of the government and removed King Faruk from power. In 1956 Nasser, as Egyptian president, announced the nationalization of the Suez Canal, an action that resulted in the tripartite invasion by Britain, France, and Israel. Ultimately, however, Egypt prevailed, and the last British troops were withdrawn from the country by the end of the year.

No history of Egypt would be complete without mentioning the Arab-Israeli conflict, which has cost Egypt so much in lives, territory, and property. Armed conflict between Egypt and Israel ended in 1979 when the two countries signed the Camp David Accords. The accords, however, constituted a separate peace between Egypt and Israel and did not lead to a comprehensive settlement that would have satisfied Palestinian demands for a homeland or brought about peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Thus, Egypt remained embroiled in the conflict on the diplomatic level and continued to press for an international conference to achieve a comprehensive agreement.

Egypt - ANCIENT EGYPT

The Predynastic Period and the First and Second Dynasties, 6000-2686 B.C.

During this period, when people first began to settle along the banks of the Nile (Nahr an Nil) and to evolve from hunters and gatherers to settled, subsistence agriculturalists, Egypt developed the written language, religion, and institutions that made it the world's first organized society. Through pharaonic Egypt, Africa claims to be the cradle of one of the earliest and most spectacular civilizations of antiquity.

One of the unique features of ancient Egyptian civilization was the bond between the Nile and the Egyptian people and their institutions. The Nile caused the great productivity of the soil, for it annually brought a copious deposit of rich silt from the monsoon-swept tableland of Ethiopia. Each July, the level of the Nile began to rise, and by the end of August, the flood reached its full height. At the end of October, the flood began to recede, leaving behind a fairly uniform deposit of silt as well as lagoons and streams that became natural reservoirs for fish. By April, the Nile was at its lowest level. Vegetation started to diminish, seasonal pools dried out, and game began to move south. Then in July, the Nile would rise again, and the cycle was repeated.

Because of the fall and rise of the river, one can understand why the Egyptians were the first people to believe in life after death. The rise and fall of the flood waters meant that the "death" of the land would be followed each year by the "rebirth" of the crops. Thus, rebirth was seen as a natural sequence to death. Like the sun, which "died" when it sank on the western horizon and was "reborn" in the eastern sky on the following morning, humans would also rise and live again.

Sometime during the final Paleolithic period and the Neolithic era, a revolution occurred in food production. Meat ceased to be the chief article of diet and was replaced by plants such as wheat and barley grown extensively as crops and not gathered at random in the wild. The relatively egalitarian tribal structure of the Nile Valley broke down because of the need to manage and control the new agricultural economy and the surplus it generated. Long-distance trade within Egypt, a high degree of craft specialization, and sustained contacts with southwest Asia encouraged the development of towns and a hierarchical structure with power residing in a headman who was believed to be able to control the Nile flood. The headman's power rested on his reputation as a "rainmaker king." The towns became trading centers, political centers, and cult centers. Egyptologists disagree as to when these small, autonomous communities were unified into the separate kingdoms of Lower Egypt and Upper Egypt and as to when the two kingdoms were united under one king.

Nevertheless, the most important political event in ancient Egyptian history was the unification of the two lands: the Black Land of the Delta, so-called because of the darkness of its rich soil, and the Red Land of Upper Egypt, the sun-baked land of the desert. The rulers of Lower Egypt wore the red crown and had the bee as their symbol. The leaders of Upper Egypt wore the white crown and took the sedge as their emblem. After the unification of the two kingdoms, the pharaoh wore the double crown symbolizing the unity of the two lands.

The chief god of the Delta was Horus, and that of Upper Egypt was Seth. The unification of the two kingdoms resulted in combining the two myths concerning the gods. Horus was the son of Osiris and Isis and avenged the evil Seth's slaying of his father by killing Seth, thus showing the triumph of good over evil. Horus took over his father's throne and was regarded as the ancestor of the pharaohs. After unification, each pharaoh took a Horus name that indicated that he was the reincarnation of Horus. According to tradition, King Menes of Upper Egypt united the two kingdoms and established his capital at Memphis, then known as the "White Walls." Some scholars believe Menes was the Horus King Narmer, whereas others prefer to regard him as a purely legendary figure.

With the emergence of a strong, centralized government under a god-king, the country's nascent economic and political institutions became subject to royal authority. The central government, either directly or through major officials, became the employer of soldiers, retainers, bureaucrats, and artisans whose goods and services benefited the upper classes and the state gods. In the course of the Early Dynastic Period, artisans and civil servants working for the central government fashioned the highly sophisticated traditions of art and learning that thereafter constituted the basic pattern of pharaonic civilization.

Egypt - The Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom, and Second Intermediate Period, 2686 to 1552 B.C.

Historians have given the name "kingdom" to those periods in Egyptian history when the central government was strong, the country was unified, and there was an orderly succession of pharaohs. At times, however, central authority broke down, competing centers of power emerged, and the country was plunged into civil war or was occupied by foreigners. These periods are known as "intermediate periods." The Old Kingdom and the Middle Kingdom together represent an important single phase in Egyptian political and cultural development. The Third Dynasty reached a level of competence that marked a plateau of achievement for ancient Egypt. After five centuries and following the end of the Sixth Dynasty (ca. 2181 B.C.), the system faltered, and a century and a half of civil war, the First Intermediate Period, ensued. The reestablishment of a powerful central government during the Twelfth Dynasty, however, re-instituted the patterns of the Old Kingdom. Thus, the Old Kingdom and the Middle Kingdom may be considered together.

Divine kingship was the most striking feature of Egypt in these periods. The political and economic system of Egypt developed around the concept of a god incarnate who was believed through his magical powers to control the Nile flood for the benefit of the nation. In the form of great religious complexes centered on the pyramid tombs, the cult of the pharaoh, the godking , was given monumental expression of a grandeur unsurpassed in the ancient Near East.

Central to the Egyptian view of kingship was the concept of maat, loosely translated as justice and truth but meaning more than legal fairness and factual accuracy. It referred to the ideal state of the universe and was personified as the goddess Maat. The king was responsible for its appearance, an obligation that acted as a constraint on the arbitrary exercise of power.

The pharaoh ruled by divine decree. In the early years, his sons and other close relatives acted as his principal advisers and aides. By the Fourth Dynasty, there was a grand vizier or chief minister, who was at first a prince of royal blood and headed every government department. The country was divided into nomes or districts administered by nomarchs or governors. At first, the nomarchs were royal officials who moved from post to post and had no pretense to independence or local ties. The post of nomarch eventually became hereditary, however, and nomarchs passed their offices to their sons. Hereditary offices and the possession of property turned these officials into a landed gentry. Concurrently, kings began rewarding their courtiers with gifts of tax-exempt land. From the middle of the Fifth Dynasty can be traced the beginnings of a feudal state with an increase in the power of these provincial lords, particularly in Upper Egypt.

The Old Kingdom ended when the central administration collapsed in the late Sixth Dynasty. This collapse seems to have resulted at least in part from climatic conditions that caused a period of low Nile waters and great famine. The kings would have been discredited by the famine, because pharaonic power rested in part on the belief that the king controlled the Nile flood. In the absence of central authority, the hereditary landowners took control and assumed responsibility for maintaining order in their own areas. The manors of their estates turned into miniature courts, and Egypt splintered into a number of feudal states. This period of decentralized rule and confusion lasted from the Seventh through the Eleventh dynasties.

The kings of the Twelfth Dynasty restored central government control and a single strong kingship in the period known as the Middle Kingdom. The Middle Kingdom ended with the conquest of Egypt by the Hyksos, the so-called Shepherd Kings. The Hyksos were Semitic nomads who broke into the Delta from the northeast and ruled Egypt from Avaris in the eastern Delta.

Egypt - Pyramids in the Old and Middle Kingdoms

With the Third Dynasty, Egypt entered into the five centuries of high culture known as the Pyramid Age. The age is associated with Chancellor Imhotep, the adviser, administrator, and architect of Pharaoh Djoser. He built the pharaoh's funerary complex, including his tomb, the Step Pyramid, at Saqqarah. Imhotep is famed as the inventor of building in dressed stone. His architectural genius lay in his use of durable, fine-quality limestone to imitate the brick, wood, and reed structures that have since disappeared.

The first true pyramid was built by Snoferu, the first king of the Fourth Dynasty. His son and successor, Kheops, built the Great Pyramid at Giza (Al Jizah); this, with its two companions on the same site, was considered one of the wonders of the ancient world. It contained well over 2 million blocks of limestone, some weighing fifteen tons apiece. The casing stones of the Great Pyramid were stripped off to build medieval Cairo (Al Qahirah).

The building and equipping of funerary monuments represented the single largest industry through the Old Kingdom and, after a break, the Middle Kingdom as well. The channeling of so much of the country's resources into building and equipping funerary monuments may seem unproductive by modern standards, but pyramid building seems to have been essential for the growth of pharaonic civilization.

As Egyptologists have pointed out, in ancient societies innovations in technology arose not so much from deliberate research as from the consequences of developing lavish court projects. Equally important, the continued consumption of so great a quantity of wealth and of the products of artisanship sustained the machinery that produced them by creating fresh demand as reign succeeded reign.

The pyramids of the pharaohs, the tombs of the elite, and the burial practices of the poorer classes are related to ancient Egyptian religious beliefs, particularly belief in the afterlife. The Egyptian belief that life would continue after death in a form similar to that experienced on earth was an important element in the development of art and architecture that was not present in other cultures. Thus, in Egypt, a dwelling place was provided for the dead in the form of a pyramid or a rock tomb. Life was magically recreated in pictures on the walls of the tombs, and a substitute in stone was provided for the perishable body of the deceased.

Egypt - The New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period, 1552-664 B.C.

Around the year 1600 B.C., a semi-autonomous Theban dynasty under the suzerainty of the Hyksos became determined to drive the Shepherd Kings out of the country and extend its own power. The country was liberated from the Hyksos and unified by Ahmose (ruled 1570-1546 B.C.), the son of the last ruler of the Seventeenth Dynasty. He was honored by subsequent generations as the founder of a new line, the Eighteenth Dynasty, and as the initiator of a glorious chapter in Egyptian history.

During the New Kingdom, Egypt reached the peak of its power, wealth, and territory. The government was reorganized into a military state with an administration centralized in the hands of the pharaoh and his chief minister. Through the intensive military campaigns of Pharaoh Thutmose III (1490-1436 B.C.), Palestine, Syria, and the northern Euphrates area in Mesopotamia were brought within the New Kingdom. This territorial expansion involved Egypt in a complicated system of diplomacy, alliances, and treaties. After Thutmose III established the empire, succeeding pharaohs frequently engaged in warfare to defend the state against the pressures of Libyans from the west, Nubians and Ethiopians (Kushites) from the south, Hittites from the east, and Philistines (sea people) from the Aegean-Mediterranean region of the north.

Toward the end of the Twentieth Dynasty, Egyptian power declined at home and abroad. Egypt was once more separated into its natural divisions of Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt. The pharaoh now ruled from his residence-city in the north, and Memphis remained the hallowed capital where the pharaoh was crowned and his jubilees celebrated. Upper Egypt was governed from Thebes.

During the Twenty-first Dynasty, the pharaohs ruled from Tanis (San al Hajar al Qibliyah), while a virtually autonomous theocracy controlled Thebes. Egyptian control in Nubia and Ethiopia vanished. The pharaohs of the Twenty-second and Twentythird dynasties were mostly Libyans. Those of the brief Twentyfourth Dynasty were Egyptians of the Nile Delta, and those of the Twenty-fifth were Nubians and Ethiopians. This dynasty's ventures into Palestine brought about an Assyrian intervention, resulting in the rejection of the Ethiopians and the reestablishment by the Assyrians of Egyptian rulers at Sais (Sa al Hajar), about eighty kilometers southeast of Alexandria (Al Iskandariyah) on the Rosetta branch of the Nile.

Egypt - Art and Architecture in the New Kingdom

As historian Cyril Aldred has said, the civilization of the New Kingdom seems the most golden of all the epochs of Egyptian history, perhaps because so much of its wealth remains. The rich store of treasures from the tomb of Tutankhamen (1347-1337 B.C.) gives us a glimpse of the dazzling court art of the period and the skills of the artisans of the day.

One of the innovations of the period was the construction of rock tombs for the pharaohs and the elite. Around 1500 B.C., Pharaoh Amenophis I abandoned the pyramid in favor of a rock-hewn tomb in the crags of western Thebes (present-day Luxor). His example was followed by his successors, who for the next four centuries cut their tombs in the Valley of the Kings and built their mortuary temples on the plain below. Other wadis or river valleys were subsequently used for the tombs of queens and princes.

Another New Kingdom innovation was temple building, which began with Queen Hatshepsut, who as the heiress queen seized power in default of male claimants to the throne. She was particularly devoted to the worship of the god Amun, whose cult was centered at Thebes. She built a splendid temple dedicated to him and to her own funerary cult at Dayr al Bahri in western Thebes.

One of the greatest temples still standing is that of Pharaoh Amenophis III at Thebes. With Amenophis III, statuary on an enormous scale makes its appearance. The most notable is the pair of colossi, the so-called Colossi of Memnon, which still dominate the Theban plain before the vanished portal of his funerary temple.

Ramesses II was the most vigorous builder to wear the double crown of Egypt. Nearly half the temples remaining in Egypt date from his reign. Some of his constructions include his mortuary temple at Thebes, popularly known as the Ramesseum; the huge hypostyle hall at Karnak, the rock-hewn temple at Abu Simbel (Abu Sunbul); and his new capital city of Pi Ramesses.

Egypt - The Cult of the Sun God and Akhenaten's Monotheism

During the New Kingdom, the cult of the sun god Ra became increasingly important until it evolved into the uncompromising monotheism of Pharaoh Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV, 1364-1347 B.C.). According to the cult, Ra created himself from a primeval mound in the shape of a pyramid and then created all other gods. Thus, Ra was not only the sun god, he was also the universe, having created himself from himself. Ra was invoked as Aten or the Great Disc that illuminated the world of the living and the dead.

The effect of these doctrines can be seen in the sun worship of Pharaoh Akhenaten, who became an uncompromising monotheist. Aldred has speculated that monotheism was Akhenaten's own idea, the result of regarding Aten as a self-created heavenly king whose son, the pharaoh, was also unique. Akhenaten made Aten the supreme state god, symbolized as a rayed disk with each sunbeam ending in a ministering hand. Other gods were abolished, their images smashed, their names excised, their temples abandoned, and their revenues impounded. The plural word for god was suppressed. Sometime in the fifth or sixth year of his reign, Akhenaten moved his capital to a new city called Akhetaten (present-day Tall al Amarinah, also seen as Tell al Amarna). At that time, the pharaoh, previously known as Amenhotep IV, adopted the name Akhenaten. His wife, Queen Nefertiti, shared his beliefs.

Akhenaten's religious ideas did not survive his death. His ideas were abandoned in part because of the economic collapse that ensued at the end of his reign. To restore the morale of the nation, Akhenaten's successor, Tutankhamen, appeased the offended gods whose resentment would have blighted all human enterprise. Temples were cleaned and repaired, new images made, priests appointed, and endowments restored. Akhenaten's new city was abandoned to the desert sands.

Egypt - The Late Period, 664-323 B.C.

The Late Period includes the last periods during which ancient Egypt functioned as an independent political entity. During these years, Egyptian culture was under pressure from major civilizations of the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East. The socioeconomic system, however, had a vigor, efficiency, and flexibility that ensured the success of the nation during these years of triumph and disaster.

Throughout the Late Period, Egypt made a largely successful effort to maintain an effectively centralized state, which, except for the two periods of Persian occupation (Twenty-seventh and Thirty-first dynasties), was based on earlier indigenous models. Late Period Egypt, however, displayed certain destabilizing features, such as the emergence of regionally based power centers. These contributed to the revolts against the Persian occupation but also to the recurrent internal crises of the Twenty-eighth, Twenty-ninth, and Thirtieth dynasties.

The Twenty-sixth Dynasty was founded by Psammethichus I, who made Egypt a powerful and united kingdom. This dynasty, which ruled from 664 to 525 B.C., represented the last great age of pharaonic civilization. The dynasty ended when a Persian invasion force under Cambyses, the son of Cyrus the Great, dethroned the last pharaoh.

Cambyses established himself as pharaoh and appears to have made some attempts to identify his regime with the Egyptian religious hierarchy. Egypt became a Persian province serving chiefly as a source of revenue for the far-flung Persian (Achaemenid) Empire. From Cambyses to Darius II in the years 525 to 404 B.C., the Persian emperors are counted as the Twentyseventh Dynasty.

Periodic Egyptian revolts, usually aided by Greek military forces, were unsuccessful until 404 B.C., when Egypt regained an uneasy independence under the short-lived, native Twenty-eighth, Twenty-ninth, and Thirtieth dynasties. Independence was lost again in 343 B.C., and Persian rule was oppressively reinstated and continued until 335 B.C., in what is sometimes called the Thirty-first Dynasty or second Persian occupation of Egypt.

Egypt - PTOLEMAIC, ROMAN, AND BYZANTINE EGYPT, 332 B.C.-A.D. 642

The Persian occupation of Egypt ended when Alexander the Great defeated the Persians at the Battle of Issus (near presentday Iskenderun in Turkey) in November 333 B.C. The Egyptians, who despised the monotheistic Persians and chafed under Persian rule, welcomed Alexander as a deliverer. In the autumn of 332 B.C., Alexander entered Memphis, where, like a true Hellene, he paid homage to the native gods and was apparently accepted without question as king of Egypt. Also like a true Hellene, he celebrated the occasion with competitive games and a drama and music festival at which some of the leading artists of Greece were present. From Memphis, Alexander marched down the western arm of the Nile and founded the city of Alexandria. Then he went to the oasis of Siwa (present-day Siwah) to consult the oracle at the Temple of Amun, the Egyptian god whom the Greeks identified with their own Zeus.

Egypt - The Ptolemaic Period

After Alexander's death of malarial fever in 323 B.C., the Macedonian commander in Egypt, Ptolemy, who was the son of Lagos, one of Alexander's seven bodyguards, managed to secure for himself the satrapy (provincial governorship) of Egypt. In 306 B.C., Antigonus, citing the principle that the empire Alexander created should remain unified, took the royal title. In reaction, his rivals for power, Ptolemy of Egypt, Cassander of Macedonia, and Seleucus of Syria, countered by declaring themselves kings of their respective dominions. Thus came into existence the three great monarchies that were to dominate the Hellenistic world until, one by one, they were absorbed into the Roman Empire.

The dynasty Ptolemy founded in Egypt was known as the line of Ptolemaic pharaohs and endured until the suicide of Cleopatra in 30 B.C., at which time direct Roman control was instituted. The early Ptolemies were hardheaded administrators and business people, anxious to make the state that they created stable, wealthy, and influential. The Ptolemies had their eyes directed outward to the eastern Mediterranean world in which they sought to play a part. Egypt was their basis of power, their granary, and the source of their wealth.

Under the early Ptolemies, the culture was exclusively Greek. Greek was the language of the court, the army, and the administration. The Ptolemies founded the university, the museum, and the library at Alexandria and built the lighthouse at Pharos. A canal to the Red Sea was opened, and Greek sailors explored new trade routes.

Whereas many Egyptians adopted Greek speech, dress, and much of Greek culture, the Greeks also borrowed much from the Egyptians, particularly in religion. In this way, a mixed culture was formed along with a hybrid art that combined Egyptian themes with elements of Hellenistic culture. Examples of this are the grandiose temples built by the Ptolemies at Edfu (present-day Idfu) and Dendera (present-day Dandarah).

The last of the Ptolemies was Cleopatra, the wife of Julius Caesar and later Mark Antony. During her reign, Egypt again became a factor in Mediterranean politics. Cleopatra was a woman of genius and a worthy opponent of Rome. Her main preoccupations were to preserve the independence of Egypt, to extend its territory if possible, and to secure the throne for her children. After the ruinous defeat at Actium in 31 B.C., Cleopatra was unable to continue the fight against Rome. Rather than witness the incorporation of Egypt into the Roman Empire, she chose to die by the bite of the asp. The asp was considered the minister of the sun god whose bite conferred not only immortality but also divinity.

Egypt - Egypt under Rome and Byzantium, 30 B.C.-A.D. 640

Perhaps the most important event to occur in Egypt since the unification of the Two Lands by King Menes was the Arab conquest of Egypt. The conquest of the country by the armies of Islam under the command of the Muslim hero, Amr ibn al As, transformed Egypt from a predominantly Christian country to a Muslim country in which the Arabic language and culture were adopted even by those who clung to their Christian or Jewish faiths.

The conquest of Egypt was part of the Arab/Islamic expansion that began when the Prophet Muhammad died and Arab tribes began to move out of the Arabian Peninsula into Iraq and Syria. Amr ibn al As, who led the Arab army into Egypt, was made a military commander by the Prophet himself.

Amr crossed into Egypt on December 12, 639, at Al Arish with an army of about 4,000 men on horseback, armed with lances, swords, and bows. The army's objective was the fortress of Babylon (Bab al Yun) opposite the island of Rawdah in the Nile at the apex of the Delta. The fortress was the key to the conquest of Egypt because an advance up the Delta to Alexandria could not be risked until the fortress was taken.

In June 640, reinforcements for the Arab army arrived, increasing Amr's forces to between 8,000 and 12,000 men. In July the Arab and Byzantine armies met on the plains of Heliopolis. Although the Byzantine army was routed, the results were inconclusive because the Byzantine troops fled to Babylon. Finally, after a six-month siege, the fortress fell to the Arabs on April 9, 641.

The Arab army then marched to Alexandria, which was not prepared to resist despite its well fortified condition. Consequently, the governor of Alexandria agreed to surrender, and a treaty was signed in November 641. The following year, the Byzantines broke the treaty and attempted unsuccessfully to retake the city.

Muslim conquerors habitually gave the people they defeated three alternatives: converting to Islam, retaining their religion with freedom of worship in return for the payment of the poll tax, or war. In surrendering to the Arab armies, the Byzantines agreed to the second option. The Arab conquerors treated the Egyptian Copts well. During the battle for Egypt, the Copts had either remained neutral or had actively supported the Arabs. After the surrender, the Coptic patriarch was reinstated, exiled bishops were called home, and churches that had been forcibly turned over to the Byzantines were returned to the Copts. Amr allowed Copts who held office to retain their positions and appointed Copts to other offices.

Amr moved the capital south to a new city called Al Fustat (present-day Old Cairo). The mosque he built there bears his name and still stands, although it has been much rebuilt.

For two centuries after the conquest, Egypt was a province ruled by a line of governors appointed by the caliphs in the east. Egypt provided abundant grain and tax revenue. In time most of the people accepted the Muslim faith, and the Arabic language became the language of government, culture, and commerce. The Arabization of the country was aided by the continued settlement of Arab tribes in Egypt.

From the time of the conquest onward, Egypt's history was intertwined with the history of the Arab world. Thus, in the eighth century, Egypt felt the effects of the Arab civil war that resulted in the defeat of the Umayyad Dynasty, the establishment of the Abbasid Caliphate, and the transfer of the capital of the empire from Damascus to Baghdad. For Egypt, the transfer of the capital farther east meant a weakening of control by the central government. When the Abbasid Caliphate began to decline in the ninth century, local autonomous dynasties arose to control the political, economic, social, and cultural life of the country.

Egypt - The Tulinids, Ikhshidids, Fatimids, and Ayyubids, 868- 1260

A new era began in Egypt with the arrival in Al Fustat in 868 of Ahmad ibn Tulun as governor on behalf of his stepfather, Bayakbah, a chamberlain in Baghdad to whom Caliph Al Mutazz had granted Egypt as a fief. Ahmad ibn Tulun inaugurated the autonomy of Egypt and, with the succession of his son, Khumarawayh, to power, established the principle of locally based hereditary rule. Autonomy greatly benefited Egypt because the local dynasty halted or reduced the drain of revenue from the country to Baghdad. The Tulinid state ended in 905 when imperial troops entered Al Fustat. For the next thirty years, Egypt was again under the direct control of the central government in Baghdad.

The next autonomous dynasty in Egypt, the Ikhshidid, was founded by Muhammad ibn Tughj, who arrived as governor in 935. The dynasty's name comes from the title of Ikhshid given to Tughj by the caliph. This dynasty ruled Egypt until the Fatimid conquest of 969.

The Tulinids and the Ikhshidids brought Egypt peace and prosperity by pursuing wise agrarian policies that increased yields, by eliminating tax abuses, and by reforming the administration. Neither the Tulinids nor the Ikhshidids sought to withdraw Egypt from the Islamic empire headed by the caliph in Baghdad. Ahmad ibn Tulun and his successors were orthodox Sunni Muslims, loyal to the principle of Islamic unity. Their purpose was to carve out an autonomous and hereditary principality under loose caliphal authority.

The Fatimids, the next dynasty to rule Egypt, unlike the Tulinids and the Ikhshidids, wanted independence, not autonomy, from Baghdad. In addition, as heads of a great religious movement, the Ismaili Shia Islam, they also challenged the Sunni Abbasids for the caliphate itself. The name of the dynasty is derived from Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad and the wife of Ali, the fourth caliph and the founder of Shia Islam. The leader of the movement, who first established the dynasty in Tunisia in 906, claimed descent from Fatima.

Under the Fatimids, Egypt became the center of a vast empire, which at its peak comprised North Africa, Sicily, Palestine, Syria, the Red Sea coast of Africa, Yemen, and the Hijaz in Arabia, including the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Control of the holy cities conferred enormous prestige on a Muslim sovereign and the power to use the yearly pilgrimage to Mecca to his advantage. Cairo was the seat of the Shia caliph, who was the head of a religion as well as the sovereign of an empire. The Fatimids established Al Azhar in Cairo as an intellectual center where scholars and teachers elaborated the doctrines of the Ismaili Shia faith.

The first century of Fatimid rule represents a high point for medieval Egypt. The administration was reorganized and expanded. It functioned with admirable efficiency: tax farming was abolished, and strict probity and regularity in the assessment and collection of taxes was enforced. The revenues of Egypt were high and were then augmented by the tribute of subject provinces. This period was also an age of great commercial expansion and industrial production. The Fatimids fostered both agriculture and industry and developed an important export trade. Realizing the importance of trade both for the prosperity of Egypt and for the extension of Fatimid influence, the Fatimids developed a wide network of commercial relations, notably with Europe and India, two areas with which Egypt had previously had almost no contact.

Egyptian ships sailed to Sicily and Spain. Egyptian fleets controlled the eastern Mediterranean, and the Fatimids established close relations with the Italian city states, particularly Amalfi and Pisa. The two great harbors of Alexandria in Egypt and Tripoli in present-day Lebanon became centers of world trade. In the east, the Fatimids gradually extended their sovereignty over the ports and outlets of the Red Sea for trade with India and Southeast Asia and tried to win influence on the shores of the Indian Ocean. In lands far beyond the reach of Fatimid arms, the Ismaili missionary and the Egyptian merchant went side-by-side.

In the end, however, the Fatimid bid for world power failed. A weakened and shrunken empire was unable to resist the crusaders, who in July 1099 captured Jerusalem from the Fatimid garrison after a siege of five weeks.

The crusaders were driven from Jerusalem and most of Palestine by the great Kurdish general Salah ad Din ibn Ayyub, known in the West as Saladin. Saladin came to Egypt in 1168 in the entourage of his uncle, the Kurdish general Shirkuh, who became the wazir, or senior minister, of the last Fatimid caliph. After the death of his uncle, Saladin became the master of Egypt. The dynasty he founded in Egypt, called the Ayyubid, ruled until 1260.

Saladin abolished the Fatimid caliphate, which by this time was dead as a religious force, and returned Egypt to Sunni orthodoxy. He restored and tightened the bonds that tied Egypt to eastern Islam and reincorporated Egypt into the Sunni fold represented by the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad. At the same time, Egypt was opened to the new social changes and intellectual movements that had been emerging in the East. Saladin introduced into Egypt the madrasah, a mosque-college, which was the intellectual heart of the Sunni religious revival. Even Al Azhar, founded by the Fatimids, became in time the center of Islamic orthodoxy.

In 1193 Saladin died peacefully in Damascus. After his death, his dominions split up into a loose dynastic empire controlled by members of his family, the Ayyubids. Within this empire, the Ayyubid sultans of Egypt were paramount because their control of a rich, well-defined territory gave them a secure basis of power. Economically, the Ayyubid period was one of growth and prosperity. Italian, French, and Catalan merchants operated in ports under Ayyubid control. Egyptian products, including alum, for which there was a great demand, were exported to Europe. Egypt also profited from the transit trade from the East. Like the Fatimids before him, Saladin brought Yemen under his control, thus securing both ends of the Red Sea and an important commercial and strategic advantage.

Culturally, too, the Ayyubid period was one of great activity. Egypt became a center of Arab scholarship and literature and, along with Syria, acquired a cultural primacy that it has retained through the modern period. The prosperity of the cities, the patronage of the Ayyubid princes, and the Sunni revival made the Ayyubid period a cultural high point in Egyptian and Arab history.

Egypt - The Mamluks, 1250-1517

To understand the history of Egypt during the later Middle Ages, it is necessary to consider two major events in the eastern Arab World: the migration of Turkish tribes during the Abbasid Caliphate and their eventual domination of it, and the Mongol invasion. Turkish tribes began moving west from the Eurasian steppes in the sixth century. As the Abbasid Empire weakened, Turkish tribes began to cross the frontier in search of pasturage. The Turks converted to Islam within a few decades after entering the Middle East. The Turks also entered the Middle East as mamluks (slaves) employed in the armies of Arab rulers. Mamluks, although slaves, were usually paid, sometimes handsomely, for their services. Indeed, a mamluk's service as a soldier and member of an elite unit or as an imperial guard was an enviable first step in a career that opened to him the possibility of occupying the highest offices in the state. Mamluk training was not restricted to military matters and often included languages and literary and administrative skills to enable the mamluks to occupy administrative posts.

In the late tenth century, a new wave of Turks entered the empire as free warriors and conquerors. One group occupied Baghdad, took control of the central government, and reduced the Abbasid caliphs to puppets. The other moved west into Anatolia, which it conquered from a weakened Byzantine Empire.

The Mamluks had already established themselves in Egypt and were able to establish their own empire because the Mongols destroyed the Abbasid caliphate. In 1258 the Mongol invaders put to death the last Abbasid caliph in Baghdad. The following year, a Mongol army of as many as 120,000 men commanded by Hulagu Khan crossed the Euphrates and entered Syria. Meanwhile, in Egypt the last Ayyubid sultan had died in 1250, and political control of the state had passed to the Mamluk guards whose generals seized the sultanate. In 1258, soon after the news of the Mongol entry into Syria had reached Egypt, the Turkish Mamluk Qutuz declared himself sultan and organized the successful military resistance to the Mongol advance. The decisive battle was fought in 1260 at Ayn Jalut in Palestine, where Qutuz's forces defeated the Mongol army.

An important role in the fighting was played by Baybars I, who shortly afterwards assassinated Qutuz and was chosen sultan. Baybars I (1260-77) was the real founder of the Mamluk Empire. He came from the elite corps of Turkish Mamluks, the Bahriyyah, socalled because they were garrisoned on the island of Rawdah on the Nile River. Baybars I established his rule firmly in Syria, forcing the Mongols back to their Iraqi territories.

At the end of the fourteenth century, power passed from the original Turkish elite, the Bahriyyah Mamluks, to Circassians, whom the Turkish Mamluk sultans had in their turn recruited as slave soldiers. Between 1260 and 1517, Mamluk sultans of TurcoCircassian origin ruled an empire that stretched from Egypt to Syria and included the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. As "shadow caliphs," the Mamluk sultans organized the yearly pilgrimages to Mecca. Because of Mamluk power, the western Islamic world was shielded from the threat of the Mongols. The great cities, especially Cairo, the Mamluk capital, grew in prestige. By the fourteenth century, Cairo had become the preeminent religious center of the Muslim world.

Egypt - THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE

In 1517 the Ottoman sultan Selim I (1512-20), known as Selim the Grim, conquered Egypt, defeating the Mamluk forces at Ar Raydaniyah, immediately outside Cairo. The origins of the Ottoman Empire go back to the Turkish-speaking tribes who crossed the frontier into Arab lands beginning in the tenth century. These Turkish tribes established themselves in Baghdad and Anatolia, but they were destroyed by the Mongols in the thirteenth century.

In the wake of the Mongol invasion, petty Turkish dynasties called amirates were formed in Anatolia. The leader of one of those dynasties was Osman (1280-1324), the founder of the Ottoman Empire. In the thirteenth century, his amirate was one of many; by the sixteenth century, the amirate had become an empire, one of the largest and longest lived in world history. By the fourteenth century, the Ottomans already had a substantial empire in Eastern Europe. In 1453 they conquered Constantinople, the Byzantine capital, which became the Ottoman capital and was renamed Istanbul. Between 1512 and 1520, the Ottomans added the Arab provinces, including Egypt, to their empire.

In Egypt the victorious Selim I left behind one of his most trusted collaborators, Khair Bey, as the ruler of Egypt. Khair Bey ruled as the sultan's vassal, not as a provincial governor. He kept his court in the citadel, the ancient residence of the rulers of Egypt. Although Selim I did away with the Mamluk sultanate, neither he nor his successors succeeded in extinguishing Mamluk power and influence in Egypt.

Only in the first century of Ottoman rule was the governor of Egypt able to perform his tasks without the interference of the Mamluk beys (bey was the highest rank among the Mamluks). During the latter decades of the sixteenth century and the early seventeenth century, a series of revolts by various elements of the garrison troops occurred. During these years, there was also a revival within the Mamluk military structure. By the middle of the seventeenth century, political supremacy had passed to the beys. As the historian Daniel Crecelius has written, from that point on the history of Ottoman Egypt can be explained as the struggle between the Ottomans and the Mamluks for control of the administration and, hence, the revenues of Egypt, and the competition among rival Mamluk houses for control of the beylicate. This struggle affected Egyptian history until the late eighteenth century when one Mamluk bey gained an unprecedented control over the military and political structures and ousted the Ottoman governor.

Egypt - MODERN EGYPT

Most scholars of Egyptian history now agree that the political and economic changes that occurred in the early nineteenth century had their origins not in the French invasion of 1798 but rather in events that occurred in Egypt itself in the latter half of the eighteenth century. At that time, political and military power was consolidated in the hands of the Mamluk Ali Bey al Kabir (1760-66) and his successor, Muhammad Bey Abu adh Dhahab (1772-75). Before 1760 a balance of power and separate spheres of influence were maintained by the Mamluk beylicate, which controlled the civil administration and derived its revenues from the rural tax farms, and by the Mamluks, who dominated the military and derived their revenues from the urban tax farms and the customs house.

In 1760 Ali Bey gained control of the military and drove the sultan's governor from the country. He issued firmans (decrees) in his own name, redirected the state revenues to his own use, and attempted to recreate the medieval Mamluk empire by invading Syria. In addition, Ali Bey tried to strengthen commercial ties with Europe by encouraging trade and attempting to open the Port of Suez to European shipping.

Ali Bey ruled only briefly, but his successors, especially Muhammad Bey, continued his policies. These two beys effectively eliminated Ottoman control and repositioned Egypt at the center of a newly emerging network of international relationships that embraced the lands of the eastern Mediterranean, the Red Sea coasts, and Europe. Thus, Napoleon Bonaparte did not "open" an isolated Egypt to the West, nor was Muhammad Ali Pasha in the nineteenth century the originator of the policies responsible for Egypt's transformation. Only Ali Bey's dramatic expulsion from the country and Muhammad Bey's premature death of a fever prevented them from using the authority they acquired to carry on those policies that are associated with Egypt's revival in the nineteenth century.

Egypt - The French Invasion and Occupation, 1798-1801

After the death of Muhammad Bey, there was a decade-long struggle for dominance among the beys. Eventually Ibrahim Bey and Murad Bey succeeded in asserting their authority and shared power in Egypt. Their dominance in the country survived an unsuccessful attempt by the Ottomans to reestablish the empire's control (1786-91). The two continued in power until the French invasion in 1798.

In addition to the upheavals caused by the Ottoman-Mamluk clashes, waves of famine and plague hit Egypt between 1784 and 1792. Thus, Cairo was a devastated city and Egypt an impoverished country when the French arrived in 1798.

On July 1, 1798, a French invasion force under the command of Napoleon disembarked near Alexandria. The invasion force, which had sailed from Toulon on May 19, was accompanied by a commission of scholars and scientists whose function was to investigate every aspect of life in ancient and contemporary Egypt.

France wanted control of Egypt for two major reasons--its commercial and agricultural potential and its strategic importance to the Anglo-French rivalry. During the eighteenth century, the principal share of European trade with Egypt was handled by French merchants. The French also looked to Egypt as a source of grain and raw materials. In strategic terms, French control of Egypt could be used to threaten British commercial interests in the region and to block Britain's overland route to India.

The French forces took Alexandria without difficulty, defeated the Mamluk army at Shubra Khit and Imbabah, and entered Cairo on July 25. Murad Bey fled to Upper Egypt while Ibrahim Bey and the Ottoman viceroy went to Syria. Mamluk rule in Egypt collapsed.

Nevertheless, Napoleon's position in Egypt was precarious. The French controlled only the Delta and Cairo; Upper Egypt was the preserve of the Mamluks and the bedouins. In addition, Britain and the Ottoman government joined forces in an attempt to defeat Napoleon and drive him out of Egypt. On August 1, 1798, the British fleet under Lord Nelson annihilated the French ships as they lay at anchor at Abu Qir, thus isolating Napoleon's forces in Egypt. On September 11, Sultan Selim III declared war on France.

On October 21, the people of Cairo rioted against the French, whom they regarded as occupying strangers, not as liberators. The rebellion had a religious as well as a national character and centered around Al Azhar mosque. Its leaders were the ulama, religiously trained scholars, whom Napoleon had tried to woo to the French side. During this period, the populace began to regard the ulama not only as moral but also as political leaders.

To forestall an Ottoman invasion, Napoleon invaded Syria, but, unable to take Acre in Palestine, his forces retreated on May 20, 1799. On August 22, Napoleon, with a very small company, secretly left Egypt for France, leaving his troops behind and General Jean-Baptiste Kléber as his successor. Kléber found himself the unwilling commander in chief of a dispirited army with a bankrupt treasury. His main preoccupation was to secure the evacuation of his troops to France. When Britain rejected the evacuation plan, Kléber was forced to fight.

After Kléber's assassination by a Syrian, his command was taken over by General Abdullah Jacques Menou, a French convert to Islam. The occupation was finally terminated by an Anglo-Ottoman invasion force. The French forces in Cairo surrendered on June 18, 1801, and Menou himself surrendered at Alexandria on September 3. By the end of September, the last French forces had left the country.

As historian Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid Marsot has written, the three-year French occupation was too short to exert any lasting effects on Egypt, despite claims to the contrary. Its most important effect on Egypt internally was the rapid decline in the power of the Mamluks.

The major impact of the French invasion was the effect it had on Europe. Napoleon's invasion revealed the Middle East as an area of immense strategic importance to the European powers, thus inaugurating the Anglo-French rivalry for influence in the region and bringing the British into the Mediterranean. The French invasion of Egypt also had an important effect on France because of the publication of Description de l'Egypte, which detailed the findings of the scholars and scientists who had accompanied Napoleon to Egypt. This publication became the foundation of modern research into the history, society, and economics of Egypt.

Egypt - Muhammad Ali, 1805-48

After the French left Egypt, an Ottoman army remained in the country. The Ottoman government was determined to prevent a revival of Mamluk power and autonomy and to bring Egypt under the control of the central government. The Ottomans appointed Khusraw Pasha as viceroy. Hostilities occasionally broke out between his forces and those of the Mamluks who had established themselves in Upper Egypt.

By 1803 it was apparent that a third party had emerged in the struggle for power in Egypt. This was the Albanian contingent of Ottoman forces that had come in 1801 to fight against the French. Muhammad Ali, who had arrived in Egypt as a junior commander in the Albanian forces, had by 1803 risen to commander. In just two short years, he would become the Ottoman viceroy in Egypt.

Muhammad Ali, who has been called the "father of modern Egypt," was able to attain control of Egypt because of his own leadership abilities and political shrewdness but also because the country seemed to be slipping into anarchy. The urban notables and the ulama believed that Muhammad Ali was the only leader capable of bringing order and security to the country. The Ottoman government, however, aware of the threat Muhammad Ali represented to the central authority, attempted to get rid of him by making him governor of the Hijaz. Eventually, the Ottomans capitulated to Egyptian pressure, and in June 1805, they appointed Muhammad Ali governor of Egypt.

Between 1805 and 1811, Muhammad Ali consolidated his position in Egypt by defeating the Mamluks and bringing Upper Egypt under his control. Finally, in March 1811, Muhammad Ali had sixty-four Mamluks, including twenty-four beys, assassinated in the citadel. From then on, Muhammad Ali was the sole ruler of Egypt. Muhammad Ali represented the successful continuation of policies begun by the Mamluk Ali Bey al Kabir. Like Ali Bey, Muhammad Ali had great ambitions. He, too, wanted to detach Egypt from the Ottoman Empire, and he realized that to do so Egypt had to be strong economically and militarily.

Muhammad Ali's development strategy was based on agriculture. He expanded the area under cultivation and planted crops specifically for export, such as long-staple cotton, rice, indigo, and sugarcane. The surplus income from agricultural production was used for public works, such as irrigation, canals, dams, and barrages, and to finance industrial development and the military. The development plans hinged on the state's gaining a monopoly over the country's agricultural resources. In practical terms, this meant the peasants were told what crops to plant, in what quantity, and over what area. The government bought directly from the peasants and sold directly to the buyer, cutting out the intermediaries or merchants.

Muhammad Ali was also committed to the industrial development of Egypt. The government set up modern factories for weaving cotton, jute, silk, and wool. Workers were drafted into factories to weave on government looms. Factories for sugar, indigo, glass, and tanning were set up with the assistance of foreign advisers and imported machinery. Industries employed about 4 percent of the population, or between 180,000 and 200,000 persons fifteen years of age and over. The textile industry was protected by embargoes imposed by the government to prohibit the import of the cheap British textiles that had flooded the Egyptian market. Commercial activities were geared toward the establishment of foreign trade monopolies and an attempt to acquire a favorable balance of trade.

The historian Marsot has argued that Britain became determined to check Muhammad Ali because a strong Egypt represented a threat to Britain's economic and strategic interests. Economically, British interests would be served as long as Egypt continued to produce raw cotton for the textile mills of Lancashire and to import finished goods from Britain. Thus, the British and also the French were particularly angered by the Egyptian monopolies even though Britain and France engaged in such trade practices as high tariffs and embargoes to protect their own economies. Strategically, Britain wanted to maintain access to the overland route through Egypt to India, a vital link in the line of imperial communications. Britain was worried not only about the establishment of a united, militarily strong state straddling the eastern Mediterranean but also about Muhammad Ali's close ties to France.

It was at this time that Lord Palmerston, the British minister of foreign affairs, established the British policy, which lasted until the outbreak of World War I, of preserving the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. Britain preferred a weakened but intact Ottoman Empire that would grant it the strategic and commercial advantages it needed to maintain its influence in the region. Thus, Muhammad Ali's invasion of Syria in 1831 and his attempt to break away from the Ottoman Empire jeopardized British policy and its military and commercial interests in the Middle East and India. The Egyptian invasion of Syria was provoked ostensibly by the sultan's refusal to give Syria and Morea (Peloponnesus) to Muhammad Ali in return for his assistance in opposing the Greek war for independence in the late 1820s. This resulted in Turkey and Egypt being forced out of the eastern Mediterranean by the destruction of their combined naval strength at Navarino on the southern coast of Greece.

When Egyptian forces invaded and occupied Syria and came within sight of Istanbul, the great powers (Britain, France, Austria, Russia, and Prussia) allied themselves with the Ottoman government to drive the Egyptian forces out of Syria. A British fleet bombarded Beirut in September 1840, and an Anglo-Turkish force landed, causing uprisings against the Egyptian forces. Acre fell in November, and a British naval force anchored off Alexandria. The Egyptian army was forced to retreat to Egypt, and Muhammad Ali was obliged to accede to British demands. According to the Treaty of 1841, Muhammad Ali was stripped of all the conquered territory except Sudan but was granted the hereditary governorship of Egypt for life, with succession going to the eldest male in the family. Muhammad Ali was also compelled to agree to the Anglo-Ottoman Convention of 1838, which established "free trade" in Egypt. This meant that Muhammad Ali was forced to abandon his monopolies and establish new tariffs that were favorable to imports. Thus, Egypt was unable to control the flood of cheap manufactured imports that decimated local industries.

Muhammad Ali continued to rule Egypt after his defeat in Syria. He became increasingly senile toward the end of his rule and his eldest son, Ibrahim, petitioned the Ottoman government to be appointed governor because of his father's inability to rule. Ibrahim was gravely ill of tuberculosis, however, and ruled for only six months, from July to November 1848. Muhammad Ali died in August 1849.

Egypt - Abbas Hilmi I, 1848-54 and Said, 1854-63

Ibrahim was succeeded by Abbas Hilmi I, a genuine traditionalist with no interest in continuing the development plans of his grandfather, Muhammad Ali. Abbas disliked Europeans, but he allowed a railroad line to be built between Alexandria and Cairo that facilitated British imperial communications with India. Regular steamship services already linked Britain to India via Alexandria, Suez, and Bombay. This partially overland route to India took thirty-one days, compared to three months for the journey around the Cape of Good Hope.

Abbas's successor was Said, the fourth son of Muhammad Ali. He revived the works in agriculture, irrigation, and education begun by his father. Under his rule, the first land law governing private landed property in Egypt was passed in 1858. Said abolished the agricultural monopolies of his father by granting landowners the right to dispose freely of their produce as well as the freedom to choose what crops to cultivate. He also introduced uniform military service and the first organized pension plan for public servants.

Said was a friend of the French engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps, to whom he granted a concession in 1854 to construct a canal from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean. The Suez Canal Company was organized to undertake the construction, and the concession to the company included two items that proved costly for Egypt. First, the company was granted a strip of land linking the Nile with the canal site. There a freshwater canal was constructed, and the strip of land was decreed tax free, allowing the company to enjoy the benefits of its cultivation. Second, the viceroy undertook to supply labor for the canal's construction, in what amounted to a system of forced labor.

Egypt - Social Change in the Nineteenth Century

During the nineteenth century, the socioeconomic and political foundations of the modern Egyptian state were laid. The transformation of Egypt began with the integration of the economy into the world capitalist system with the result that by the end of the century Egypt had become an exporter of raw materials to Europe and an importer of European manufactured goods. The transformation of Egypt led to the emergence of a ruling elite composed of large landowners of Turco-Circassian origin and the creation of a class of medium-sized landowners of Egyptian origin who played an increasingly important role in the political and economic life of the country. In the countryside, peasants were dispossessed because of debt, and many landless peasants migrated to the cities where they joined the swelling ranks of the underand unemployed. In the cities, a professional middle class emerged composed of civil servants, lawyers, teachers, and technicians. Finally, Western ideas and cultural forms were introduced into the country.

Muhammad Ali had attempted to take Egypt directly from a subsistence agricultural economy to a complex industrial one. He failed because of internal weaknesses and European pressures. Ironically, Muhammad Ali, whose goal was to make Egypt economically and politically independent of Europe, set the country on the path to economic dependence and foreign domination.

In the industrial sector, Muhammad Ali's factories did not last past his death. In the agricultural sector, Egypt's longstaple cotton became increasingly attractive to British textile manufacturers. Between 1840 and 1860, the export of cotton increased 300 percent. During the American Civil War, the area devoted to cotton cultivation in Egypt increased almost fourfold and cotton prices rose along with cotton production.

The transformation of the rural economy