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Egypt, a country study
Federal Research Division
Library of Congress
Edited by Helen Chapin Metz
Research Completed December 1990
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* Table of Contents
* Foreword
* Acknowledgments
* Preface
* Country Profile
Geography
Society
Economy
Transportation and Communications
Government and Politics
National Security
* Introduction
* Chapter 1. Historical Setting
**Ancient Egypt
The Predynastic Period and the First and Second Dynasties, 6000-2686 B.C.
Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom, and Second Intermediate Period, 2686 to 1552 B.C.
Pyramid Building in the Old and Middle Kingdoms
The New Kingdom and Third Intermediate Period, 1552-664 B.C.
Art and Architecture in the New Kingdom
The Cult of the Sun God and Akhenaten's Monotheism
The Late Period, 664-323 B.C.
**Ptolomaic, Roman, and Byzantine Egypt, 332 B.C.-A.D. 642
The Alexandrian Conquest
The Ptolemaic Period
Egypt under Rome and Byzantium, 30 B.C.-A.D. 640
**Medieval Egypt
The Arab Conquest, 639-41
The Tulinids, Ikhshidids, Fatimids, and Ayyubids, 868- 1260
The Mamluks, 1250-1517
**Egypt Under the Ottoman Empire
**Modern Egypt
The Neo-Mamluk Beylicate, 1760-98
The French Invasion and Occupation, 1798-1801
Muhammad Ali, 1805-48
Abbas Hilmi I, 1848-54 and Said, 1854-63
Social Change in the Nineteenth Century
Rural Society
Towns and Cities
**From Autonomy to Occupation: Ismail, Tawfiq, and Urabi Revolt
Khedive Ismail, 1863-79
From Intervention to Occupation, 1876-82
**From Occupation to Nominal Independence: 1882-1923
The Occupiers
Economy and Society under Occupation
Egypt under the Protectorate and the 1919 Revolution
**The Era of Liberal Constitutionalism and Party Politics
The Rise and Decline of the Wafd, 1924-39
Egypt During the War, 1939-45
On the Threshold of Revolution, 1945-52
The Revolution and the Early Years of the New Government: 1952-56
Egypt and the Arab World
Nasser and Arab Socialism
Egypt, the Arabs, and Israel
The June 1967 War
**The Aftermath of the War
Internal Relations
External Relations
Nasser's Legacy
Sadat Takes Over, 1970-73
October 1973 War
Political Developments, 1971-78
Egypt's New Direction
Peace with Israel
The Aftermath of Camp David and the Assassination of Sadat
**Mubarak and the Middle Way
* Chapter 2. The Society and Its Environment
**Geography
Physical Size and Borders
Natural Regions
Nile Valley and Delta
Western Desert
Eastern Desert
Sinai Peninsula
Climate
**Population
Population Control Policies
Major Cities
Emigration
Minorities
**Social Organization
Urban Society
Rural Society
**Family and Kinship
Importance of Kinship
Attitudes Toward Women
Changing Status of Women
**Religion
Islam
Early Developments
Contemporary Islam
Islamic Political Movements
Coptic Church
Other Religious Minorities
**Education
**Health and Welfare
*Chapter 3. The Economy
**Structure, Growth, and Development of the Economy
Infrastructure
Transportation
Communications
**The Role of Government
Mubarak's Gradualism?
Development Planning
Pricing and Subsidy
Exchange Rates
Public Finance
Banking, Credit, and Inflation
**Labor
Employment
Wages
**Agriculture
The Food Gap
Land Ownership and Reform
Land Reclamation and Loss
Pricing Policy
Cropping Patterns, Production, and Yield
Technology
**Energy, Mining, and Manufacturing
Energy
Mining
Manufacturing
**Foreign Trade
Exports
Imports
Trade Partners
**Balance of Payments and Main Sources of Foreign Exchange
Petroleum
Suez Canal
Remittances
Tourism
Current Account Balance
Capital Account and Capital Grants
Direct Foreign Investment
Loans
**Debt and Restructuring
* Chapter 4. Government and Politics
**The Dominant Executive and the Power Elite
The Presidency
The President and the Power Elite
The Prime Minister, the Council of Ministers, and the Policy-making Process
The Road to Power: Recruitment and Composition of the Elite
Elite Ideology
Politics among Elites
Military Politics
The Politics of Economic Strategy
The Bureaucracy and Policy Implementation
Local Government
**The Subordinate Branches: the Regime and Its Constituency
Parliament
The Judiciary, Civil Rights, and the Rule of Law
The Political Role of the Media
Interest Groups
**Controlling the Mass Political Arena
The "Dominant Party System"
The Ruling Party
The Opposition Parties
Elections
Limits of Incorporation: Rise of Political Islam and the Continuing Role of Repression
**Foreign Policy
The Determinants of Foreign Policy
Foreign Policy Decision Making
The Development of Foreign Policy
* Chapter 5. National Security
**Military Heritage
The Egyptian Military in World War II
First Arab-Israeli War
The 1956 War
The June 1967 War
War of Attrition and the October 1973 War
**Security Concerns and Strategic Perspectives
**The Military in National Life
**The Armed Forces
Army
Air Force
Navy
Air Defense Force
Training and Education
Conscription and Reserves
Conditions of Service
Defense Spending
Military Justice
Uniforms and Insignia
**Armed Forces Production
Production of Civilian Goods
Defense Industry
**Foreign Military Assistance
**Internal Security
Muslim Extremism
Leftist Organizations
Police
Organization
Training
Central Security Forces
telligence Services
**Crime and Punishment
The Judicial System
Incidence of Crime
Drug Trafficking
The Penal System
* Bibliography
* Glossary
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*Foreword
This volume is one in a continuing series of books prepared by the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress under the Country Studies/Area Handbook Program sponsored by the Department of the Army. The last two pages of this book list the other published studies.
Most books in the series deal with a particular foreign country, describing and analyzing its political, economic, social, and national security systems and institutions, and examining the interrelationships of those systems and the ways they are shaped by cultural factors. The authors seek to provide a basic understanding of the observed society, striving for a dynamic rather than a static portrayal. Particular attention is devoted to the people who make up the society, their origins, dominant beliefs and values, their common interests and the issues on which they are divided, the nature and extent of their involvement with national institutions, and their attitudes toward each other and toward their social system and political order.
The books represent the analysis of the authors and should not be construed as an expression of an official United States government position, policy, or decision. The authors have sought to adhere to accepted standards of scholarly objectivity. Corrections, additions, and suggestions for changes from readers will be welcomed for use in future editions.
Louis R. Mortimer
Chief
Federal Research Division
Library of Congress
Washington, D.C. 20540-5220
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*Acknowledgments
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.
Graphics were prepared by David P. Cabitto, and Timothy L.
Merrill reviewed map drafts. David P. Cabitto and Greenhorne and
O'Mara prepared the final maps. Special thanks are owed to Marty
Ittner, who prepared the illustrations on the title page of each
chapter.
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.
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*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.
Chapter bibliographies appear at the end of the book; brief
comments on some of the more valuable sources for further reading
appear at the conclusion of each chapter. Measurements are given
in the metric system; a conversion table is provided to assist
those who are unfamiliar with the metric system (see table 1,
Appendix). 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 Glossary provides brief definitions of terms, such as feddan,
that may be unfamiliar to the general reader.
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 (see fig. 1).
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*Country Profile
Formal Name: Arab Republic of Egypt.
Short Form: Egypt.
Term for Citizens: Egyptian(s).
Capital: Cairo.
Geography
Size: Approximately 1 million square kilometers.
Topography: Four major regions: Nile Valley and Delta, where
about 99 percent of population lives; Western Desert; Eastern
Desert; and Sinai Peninsula.
Climate: Except for modest amounts of rainfall along
Mediterranean coast, precipitation ranges from minimal to
nonexistent. Mild winters (November to April) and hot summers
(May to October).
Society
Population: Estimated at more than 52.5 million in mid-1990,
mostly concentrated along banks of Nile River. Annual growth rate
estimated at 2.6 percent.
Education and Literacy: Education compulsory for basic nine-year
cycle but attendance not enforced; approximately 16 percent of
school-age children did not attend. Literacy approximately 45
percent in 1990.
Health and Welfare: Ministry of Health provided health care at
variety of public medical facilities. Urban-rural distribution of
health care generally biased in favor of larger cities. Average
nutrition compared favorably with most middle- and low-income
countries. Average life expectancy at birth fifty-nine years for
men and sixty years for women in 1989.
Language: Arabic.
Ethnic Groups: Egyptians, beduins, Greeks, Nubians, Armenians,
and Berbers.
Religion: Almost 90 percent Sunni Muslims, 8.5 percent Coptic
Christians, 1.5 percent other Christians.
Economy
Gross Domestic Product (GDP): US$45.08 billion, or US$867 per
capita in 1988. Economy experienced sluggish growth after
mid-1980s.
Agriculture: Single largest source of employment; contributed 15
percent of GDP in 1987. Major crops by area planted (in
descending order): clover for livestock feed, corn, wheat,
vegetables, rice, cotton, and fruit. Heavily dependent on food
imports. Some reforms in pricing implemented in 1980s.
Industry: Contributed 34 percent of GDP in 1987. Share of
manufacturing in GDP 12 percent; sector stagnated in 1980s.
Manufacturing produced mainly consumer goods but also some basic
industries such as iron and steel, aluminum, and cement.
Manufacturing dominated by public sector; consensus that sector
needed reform. Oil share of GDP fell considerably with crash of
oil prices in late 1985. Oil production averaged 42.7 tons per
year between 1984 and 1988. Gas acquiring added importance in
1980s.
Exports: US$4.8 billion in 1988, of which oil was US$3.1 billion.
Textiles US$458 million and other manufacturing US$810 million.
Cotton (major export before late 1970s) US$310 million. Exports
stagnated in 1980s.
Imports: US$10.6 billion, of which intermediate goods US$3.7
billion, capital goods US$3 billion, consumer goods US$2 billion,
and food and agriculture US$1.7 billion. Trade deficit increased
rapidly in first half of 1980s and stabilized in second half.
Debt: Civilian US$35 billion in 1988 (forecast); military US$10.8
billion. Negotiations with International Monetary Fund continuing
in early 1990 on debt rescheduling and economic restructuring.
Currency: Egyptian pound ( E) consists of 100 piasters. In early
1990, worth between US$1.00 and US$1.50 depending on applicable
exchange rate.
Fiscal Year: Since July 1, 1980, July 1 through June 30.
Transportation and Communications
Railroads: More than 4,800 kilometers of track, 950 kilometers
of which double-tracked. Bulk of system standard gauge (1.435
meters), but 347 kilometers narrow gauge (0.75 meter).
Twenty-five-kilometer suburban transit link between Cairo and
industrial suburb of Hulwan electrified. Southern part of Cairo
Metro opened 1987; northeast line opened 1989. Ferry at Aswan
connects Egyptian Railways to Sudanese system.
Roads: More than 49,000 kilometers, of which about 15,000
kilometers paved, 2,500 kilometers gravel, 31,500 kilometers
earthen.
Inland Waterways: About 3,500 kilometers, consisting mainly of
Nile River and several canals in Delta.
Suez Canal: About 160 kilometers for international shipping
between Red and Mediterranean seas. Reopened in 1975. Capable of
handling ships of 150,000 deadweight tons laden and 16 meters
draft. In 1987 17,541 ships transited canal with 257,000 tons of
cargo, earning Egypt US$1.22 billion.
Ports: Alexandria main port. Port Said and Suez other two large
ports. Phosphates shipped from Bur Safajah on the Red Sea. Port
near Alexandria remained under construction in 1990.
Pipelines: About 1,400 kilometers for domestic crude oil and
refined products plus about 600 kilometers for natural gas.
Airports: Sixty-six airfields but only Cairo and Alexandria
handled international traffic.
Telecommunications: Well developed radio and television
facilities; shortage of telephones. Numerous international
communications links.
Government and Politics
Government: Constitution of 1971 delegates majority of power to
president, who dominates two-chamber legislature--lower People's
Assembly and upper Consultative Council, created in 1978 from the
old Central Committee of the Arab Socialist Union--and judiciary,
although each constitutionally independent. President possesses
virtually unrestricted power to appoint and dismiss officials,
including vice president or vice-presidents, prime minister and
members of Council of Ministers, military officers, and governors
of the twenty-six administrative subdivisions known as
governorates.
Politics: President Husni Mubarak (1981- ), former military
officer, as were his predecessors: Gamal Abdul Nasser (1954-70)
and Anwar as Sadat (1970-81). Nasser was leader and Sadat member
of Free Officers' group that overthrew monarchy in 1952
Revolution. President dominated National Democratic Party formed
in 1977. Opposition composed of number of secular and religious
parties in legislature, of which Muslim Brotherhood was the
chief, and some nonparliamentary Islamic extremist groups.
International Organizations: Member of United Nations and its
specialized agencies; Organization of African Unity; and
Nonaligned Movement. Founding member of League of Arab States
(Arab League), headquartered in Cairo until after Egypt signed
peace treaty with Israel in March 1979. Arab League expelled
Egypt and moved headquarters out of country. In 1990 Arab League
headquarters scheduled to return to Cairo.
National Security
Armed Forces (1989): Total personnel on active duty 445,000,
including draftees mostly serving for three years. Reserves
totaled about 300,000. Component services: army of 320,000
(estimated 180,000 conscripts), navy of 20,000 including 2,000
Coast Guard (10,000 conscripts), and air force of 30,000 (10,000
conscripts). Air Defense Force separate service of 80,000 (50,000
conscripts).
Major Tactical Military Units (1988): Army: four armored
divisions, six mechanized infantry divisions, two infantry
divisions, four independent infantry brigades, three mechanized
brigades, one armored brigade, two air mobile brigades, one
paratroop brigade, Republican Guard armored brigade, two heavy
mortar brigades, fourteen artillery brigades, two
surface-to-surface missile (SSM) regiments, and seven commando
groups.
Navy: Twelve submarines, one destroyer (training), five frigates,
twenty-five fast-attack craft (missile), eighteen fast-attack
craft (torpedo), minesweepers, and landing ships.
Air Force: About 440 combat aircraft and 72 armed helicopters;
force organized into one bomber squadron, ten fighter-ground
attack squadrons, thirteen fighter squadrons, two reconnaissance
squadrons, and fifteen helicopter squadrons, plus electronic
monitoring, early warning, transport, and training aircraft. Air
Defense Force organized into more than 230 battalions of
antiaircraft guns and SAMs.
Military Equipment (1989): Tanks and armored personnel vehicles a
mix of older Soviet and newer United States models. Other major
equipment included Soviet artillery and mortars; Soviet, French,
United States, and British antitank rockets and missiles; and
mostly Soviet tactical air defense weapons. Egypt planned to
coproduce 540 Abrams M1A1 tanks with United States beginning in
1991. Air force fighters included F-16s and F-4s from United
States and Mirage 2000s from France, backed by large number of
older Soviet designs. Most fighting ships of Soviet or Chinese
origin, although fleet included two modern frigates built in
Spain and six British missile boats. Air Defense Force had more
than 600 Soviet SA-2 and SA-3 SAMs plus 108 improved Hawk SAMs
from United States.
Defense Budget: Authoritative data not available although
minister of defense claimed spending E2.4 billion or 10 percent
of total government outlays in 1989. Other sources believed
defense expenditures twice as high as claimed, even excluding
US$1.3 billion in military aid from United States, aid from Saudi
Arabia, and income from other sources such as foreign sales of
domestic defense industry.
Internal Security Forces: Principal security agencies--national
police force of more than about 122,000 members and Central
Security Forces, a paramilitary body of about 300,000, mostly
conscripts, which augmented regular police in guarding buildings
and strategic sites and controlling demonstrations. Several other
government agencies had own law enforcement bodies. General
Directorate for State Security Investigations main intelligence
organization monitoring suspected subversive and opposition
groups and suppressing Islamic extremists.
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*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; see Glossary)
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 (see Glossary) 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--see
Glossary), 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 (see
Glossary)--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 (see Glossary), 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--see Glossary) 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.
July 23, 1991 Helen Chapin Metz
***********************
*Chapter 1 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 (see
Glossary) 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.
**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
(see Glossary) Egypt, Africa claims to be the cradle of one of
the earliest and most spectacular civilizations of antiquity (see
fig. 2).
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.
***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 god-king, 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.
***Pyramid Building 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.
***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 Twenty-
third dynasties were mostly Libyans. Those of the brief Twenty-
fourth 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.
***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.
***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.
***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 Twenty-seventh 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.
**PTOLEMAIC, ROMAN, AND BYZANTINE EGYPT, 332 B.C.-A.D. 642
***The Alexandrian Conquest
The Persian occupation of Egypt ended when Alexander the Great
defeated the Persians at the Battle of Issus (near present-day
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.
***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 under Rome and Byzantium, 30 B.C.-A.D. 640
With the establishment of Roman rule by Emperor Augustus in 30
B.C., more than six centuries of Roman and Byzantine control
began. Egypt again became the province of an empire, as it had
been under the Persians and briefly under Alexander. As the
principal source of the grain supply for Rome, it came under the
direct control of the emperor in his capacity as supreme military
chief, and a strong force was garrisoned there. Gradually, Latin
replaced Greek as the language of higher administration. In 212
Rome gave the Egyptians citizenship in the empire.
The emperor ruled as successor to the Ptolemies with the title
of "Pharaoh, Lord of the Two Lands," and the conventional divine
attributes assigned to Egyptian kings were attributed to him.
Rome was careful, however, to bring the native priesthood under
its control, although guaranteeing traditional priestly rights
and privileges.
Augustus and his successors continued the tradition of building
temples to the local gods on which the rulers and the gods were
depicted in the Egyptian manner. The Romans completed the
construction of an architectural jewel, the Temple of Isis on
Philae Island (Jazirat Filah), which was begun under the
Ptolemies. A new artistic development during this period was the
painting of portraits on wood, an art that originated in the
Fayyum region. These portraits were placed on the coffins of
mummies.
The general pattern of Roman Egypt included a strong,
centralized administration supported by a military force large
enough to guarantee internal order and to provide security
against marauding nomads. There was an elaborate bureaucracy with
an extended system of registers and controls, and a social
hierarchy based on caste and privilege with preferred treatment
for the Hellenized population of the towns over the rural and
native Egyptian population. The best land continued to form the
royal domain.
The empire that Rome established was wider, more enduring, and
better administered than any the Mediterranean world had known.
For centuries, it provided an ease of communication and a unity
of culture throughout the empire that would not be seen again
until modern times. In Western Europe, Rome founded a tradition
of public order and municipal government that outlasted the
empire itself. In the East, however, where Rome came into contact
with older and more advanced civilizations, Roman rule was less
successful.
The story of Roman Egypt is a sad record of shortsighted
exploitation leading to economic and social decline. Like the
Ptolemies, Rome treated Egypt as a mere estate to be exploited
for the benefit of the rulers. But however incompetently some of
the later Ptolemies managed their estate, much of the wealth they
derived from it remained in the country itself. Rome, however,
was an absentee landlord, and a large part of the grain delivered
as rent by the royal tenants or as tax by the landowners as well
as the numerous money-taxes were sent to Rome and represented a
complete loss to Egypt.
The history of Egypt in this period cannot be separated from the
history of the Roman Empire. Thus, Egypt was affected by the
spread of Christianity in the empire in the first century A.D.
and by the decline of the empire during the third century A.D.
Christianity arrived early in Egypt, and the new religion quickly
spread from Alexandria into the hinterland, reaching Upper Egypt
by the second century. According to some Christian traditions,
St. Mark brought Christianity to Egypt in A.D. 37, and the church
in Alexandria was founded in A.D. 40. The Egyptian Christians are
called Copts, a word derived from the Greek word for the country,
Aegyptos. In the Coptic language, the Copts also called
themselves "people of Egypt." Thus the word Copt originally
implied nationality rather than religion.
In the third century A.D., the decay of the empire gradually
affected the Roman administration of Egypt. Roman bureaucracy
became overcentralized and poorly managed. The number of
qualified applicants for administrative positions was seriously
reduced by Roman civil war, pestilence, and conflict among
claimants to imperial power.
A renaissance of imperial authority and effectiveness took place
under Emperor Diocletian. During his reign (284-305), the
partition of the Roman Empire into eastern and western segments
began. Diocletian inaugurated drastic political and fiscal
reforms and sought to simplify imperial administration. Under
Diocletian, the administrative unity of Egypt was destroyed by
transforming Egypt from one province into three. Seeing
Christianity as a threat to Roman state religion and thus to the
unity of the empire, Diocletian launched a violent persecution of
Christians.
The Egyptian church was particularly affected by the Roman
persecutions, beginning with Septimius Severus's edict of 202
dissolving the influential Christian School of Alexandria and
forbidding future conversions to Christianity. In 303 Emperor
Diocletian issued a decree ordering all churches demolished, all
sacred books burned, and all Christians who were not officials
made slaves. The decree was carried out for three years, a period
known as the "Era of Martyrs." The lives of many Egyptian
Christians were spared only because more workers were needed in
the porphyry quarries and emerald mines that were worked by
Egyptian Christians as "convict labor."
Emperor Constantine I (324-337) ruled both the eastern and
western parts of the empire. In 330 he established his capital at
Byzantium, which he renamed Constantinople (present-day
Istanbul). Egypt was governed from Constantinople as part of the
Byzantine Empire. In 312 Constantine established Christianity as
the official religion of the empire, and his Edict of Milan of
313 established freedom of worship.
By the middle of the fourth century, Egypt was largely a
Christian country. In 324 the ecumenical Council of Nicea
established the patriarchate of Alexandria as second only to that
of Rome; its jurisdiction extended over Egypt and Libya. The
patriarchate had a profound influence on the early development of
the Christian church because it helped to clarify belief and to
formulate dogmas. In 333 the number of Egyptian bishops was
estimated at nearly 100.
After the fall of Rome, the Byzantine Empire became the center
of both political and religious power. The political and
religious conflict between the Copts of Egypt and the rulers of
Byzantium began when the patriarchate of Constantinople began to
rival that of Alexandria. The Council of Chalcedon in 451
initiated the great schism that separated the Egyptian Church
from Catholic Christendom. The schism had momentous consequences
for the future of Christianity in the East and for Byzantine
power. Ostensibly, the council was called to decide on the nature
of Christ. If Christ were both God and man, had he two natures?
The Arians had already been declared heretics for denying or
minimizing the divinity of Christ; the opposite was to ignore or
minimize his humanity. Coptic Christians were Monophysites who
believed that after the incarnation Christ had but one nature
with dual aspects. The council, however, declared that Christ had
two natures and that he was equally human and equally divine. The
Coptic Church refused to accept the council's decree and rejected
the bishop sent to Egypt. Henceforth, the Coptic Church was in
schism from the Catholic Church as represented by the Byzantine
Empire and the Byzantine Church.
For nearly two centuries, Monophysitism in Egypt became the
symbol of national and religious resistance to Byzantium's
political and religious authority. The Egyptian Church was
severely persecuted by Byzantium. Churches were closed, and
Coptic Christians were killed, tortured, and exiled in an effort
to force the Egyptian Church to accept Byzantine orthodoxy. The
Coptic Church continued to appoint its own patriarchs, refusing
to accept those chosen by Constantinople and attempting to depose
them. The break with Catholicism in the fifth century converted
the Coptic Church to a national church with deeply rooted
traditions that have remained unchanged to this day.
By the seventh century, the religious persecutions and the
growing pressure of taxation had engendered great hatred of the
Byzantines. As a result, the Egyptians offered little resistance
to the conquering armies of Islam.
**Medieval Egypt
***The Arab Conquest, 639-41
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.
***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 (see Glossary), 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.
***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, so-
called 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 Turco-
Circassian 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 Under 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.
**MODERN EGYPT
***The Neo-Mamluk Beylicate, 1760-98
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.
***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 Kl ber as his successor. Kl ber 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,
Kl ber was forced to fight.
After Kl ber'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.
***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.
***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 (see Suez Canal, ch. 3).
***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 under-
and 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.
****Rural Society
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 long-staple
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 from subsistence to
cash-crop agriculture caused dramatic changes, including the
privatization of land in fewer hands and the dispossession of
peasants. The privatization of land began during the reign of
Muhammad Ali, who in the 1840s distributed half the agricultural
land to royal family members, Turco-Circassian officials, and
Egyptian notables or village headmen. Although many land grants
were rescinded during the reign of Abbas, consolidation of
landholdings proceeded during the reigns of Said and Ismail at
the expense of small and middle-sized peasant proprietors. By the
1870s, the royal family owned one-fifth of all the cultivated
land in the country. The largest royal estates could be as large
as 10,000 feddans (a feddan is slightly more than an acre--see
Glossary). By the 1890s, 42.5 percent of all registered land was
held in tracts of more than fifty feddans. The largest landowners
included members of the royal family, and the Turco-Circassian
elite of officers and officials. Their estates were worked by
sharecroppers or agricultural laborers. By the time of Ismail,
these landowners had developed into a landed aristocracy. Another
group of landholding elite originated with Muhammad Ali's
appointment of Egyptians as village headmen (umada; sing.,
umdah), the state's agents in the countryside. This was Muhammad
Ali's attempt to reduce the power of the Turco-Circassians. With
the privatization of land, the Egyptian notables became
substantial landowners with considerable political influence.
Historian Judith Tucker has described the nineteenth century as
a time when the peasants were transformed from independent
producers with rights to use the land to landless peasants forced
to work as wage-laborers or to migrate to the cities where they
became part of the urban dispossessed. The development of
capitalist agriculture and a monetized rural economy spelled
disaster for many peasants. Despite land laws like those of Said
in 1855 and 1858, which gave peasants legal ownership of their
plots, peasant land loss occurred at an unprecedented rate,
chiefly because of indebtedness. Forced to borrow at high rates
of interest to get the seed and animals necessary for sowing and
to pay monthly installments on their taxes, the peasants had to
repay these loans at harvest time when the prices were lowest.
The American Civil War put a premium on Egyptian cotton, and the
price increased. When the war ended, the inflated prices suddenly
dropped. For the first time in Egypt, a serious problem of
peasant indebtedness appeared with its inevitable consequences:
mortgages, foreclosures, and usurious loans. The village headmen
and the owners of great estates profited from the crisis by
purchasing abandoned land. The headmen also profited as
moneylenders.
Peasants also lost land because taxes on peasant land were
higher than on estate land. Large landholders sometimes paid as
little as one-fourth of the taxes paid by the peasantry. In
addition, peasants fled the countryside to escape corv e (forced
labor) on the state's public works projects and military
conscription.
At the turn of the century, the population of Egypt was about 10
million. Of this total, between 10 and 20 percent were landless
peasants. In 1906 less than 20 percent of the privately held and
waqf (religiously endowed) land was held by 80 percent of the
population while 1 percent owned more than 40 percent. Most
landowners owned between one and five feddans, with three feddans
being necessary for subsistence.
****Towns and Cities
Of the 10 million people in Egypt at the turn of the century,
approximately 2 million lived in towns and cities, and of those,
500,000 lived in cities with a population of more than 20,000.
The population of Alexandria grew as it became the financial and
commercial center of the cotton industry. New towns like Az
Zaqaziq and Port Said (Bur Said) on the Suez Canal were
established.
Most of the increase in Egypt's urban population was the result
of the migration of peasants from the countryside. Although some
became workers or petty traders, most joined the ranks of the
under- or unemployed. By the turn of the century, a working class
had emerged. It was composed mainly of transport and building
workers and of workers in the few industries that had been
established--sugar refineries, ginning mills, and cigarette
factories. However, a large proportion of the new urban lower
class consisted of a fluctuating mass of people without any fixed
employment.
The old lower class of the cities and towns, particularly the
artisans, suffered from the influx of cheaply made European
imports. Whereas some crafts, like basketry, pottery, and rug
weaving, survived, others such as textiles and glass blowing were
virtually eliminated. The urban guilds declined and eventually
disappeared because Europeans replaced Egyptians in production
and commerce.
The old, or traditional, middle class also declined in status
and wealth. This middle class included the ulama, religiously
educated elite who staffed the religious institutions and courts,
and the merchants. The ulama and the merchants were closely tied
to each other because of family and business connections.
Furthermore, these categories overlapped; the ulama were also
merchants and tax-farmers. The decline of the ulama began during
the reign of Muhammad Ali who considered the ulama an intolerable
alternative power center. He abolished tax farms, which were a
major source of ulama wealth, thus weakening their position.
The decline of the ulama and the merchants was accelerated by
the socioeconomic transformation of Egypt that led to the
emergence of secular education, to secularly trained civil
servants staffing the government bureaucracy, and to the
reorientation of Egyptian trade. Secular education and the
establishment of schools influenced by Western ideas and methods
occurred throughout the century but were particularly widespread
during the reign of Khedive (see Glossary) Ismail. Secular
education became identified with entrance into government
employment. Moreover, once government employment was opened to
Egyptians, it became the goal of the educated because of the
power and social status it conferred. Between 1882 and 1907, the
number of persons employed in public administration grew by 83.7
percent. The rise of this new urban middle class, called the
effendiyah, parallelled the rise of the rural notables or umada.
In fact, during the nineteenth century, the effendiyah tended to
be first-generation urbanites from rural notable families who
took advantage of expanded education and employment opportunities
in the cities.
Whereas the Egyptian effendiyah and umada were rising, the
traditional merchant class declined because the lucrative import-
export trade was dominated by resident foreigners, and Egyptian
merchants were confined to internal trade. During the nineteenth
century, foreign trade was completely reoriented. In the past, it
had dealt mainly in Sudanese, Arabian, and oriental goods. Cairo
was one of the most important centers of trade, and Egyptian,
Syrian, and Turkish merchants engaged in it. During the
nineteenth century, Greeks and other Europeans resident in Egypt
monopolized the export of cotton to Europe and the import of
European industrial goods.
The change was reflected in the increase of foreigners in Egypt-
-from between 8,000 and 10,000 in 1838 to 90,000 in 1881. The
majority was engaged in cotton production, import-export trade,
banking, and finance. The European community occupied a
privileged position as a result of the capitulations, the
treaties governing the status of foreigners within the Ottoman
Empire. These treaties put Europeans virtually beyond the reach
of Egyptian law until the establishment of the mixed courts (with
jurisdiction over Egyptians and foreigners) in 1876. Like the
artisans, Egyptian merchants suffered from a large variety of
oppressive taxes and duties from which foreign merchants were
exempt. With the support of their consuls, foreigners in Egypt
became an increasingly powerful pressure group committed to
defending its own interests.
**FROM AUTONOMY TO OCCUPATION: ISMAIL, TAWFIQ, AND THE URABI REVOLT
***Khedive Ismail, 1863-79
No ruler of Egypt, except Gamal Abdul Nasser, has provoked such
controversy in the West as Ismail. At the time, the anti-Ismail
view was held mainly by British administrators like Evelyn Baring
(Lord Cromer) and Lord Alfred Milner, who depicted him as
squeezing the peasants for money by oppressive taxation and the
whip, and "ruining Egypt" by his lavish spending and despotic
ways. Journalists and the American consuls in Egypt such as Edwin
de Leon held a more balanced view, arguing that Ismail inherited
an unfavorable Suez Canal agreement and a significant public and
private debt from his uncle, Said. They noted that although
Ismail spent lavishly, much of the money he borrowed from
European bankers was used for building or repairing the country's
infrastructure. They also pointed out that European bankers and
financiers loaned money to Egypt at usurious interest rates and,
when it seemed Egypt would be unable to repay the loans, urged
their governments to intervene to protect their interests.
Ismail's goals for Egypt were similar to those of his
grandfather, Muhammad Ali. He wanted Egypt to become virtually
independent of the Ottoman Empire, a political and military power
in the eastern Mediterranean and an economic partner of Europe.
Ismail achieved a considerable degree of independence from the
Porte (from Sublime Porte, the term for the High Gate that came
to be synonymous with the Ottoman government) by making large
payments to the Ottoman treasury. For example, in return for
increasing Egypt's annual payment to the Ottoman treasury from
175,000 to 400,000, Sultan Abdul Aziz allowed Ismail to change
the rule of succession from the oldest surviving male heir of
Muhammad Ali to direct male primogeniture in his family. The
sultan also granted Ismail the formal title of khedive, which
elevated his standing to a position closer to royalty.
Ismail's attempt to make Egypt independent foundered eventually
because of the gap between the revenues the country could produce
and the expenses necessary to achieve his goals. He attempted to
generate more income by increasing agricultural productivity,
chiefly by bringing more land into cultivation through expensive
irrigation projects such as the construction of canals and dams.
During his reign, an additional 506,000 hectares were brought
under cultivation, representing a sizeable increase in both
production and income.
To service the cotton crop, which was the basis of Egypt's
prosperity, roads, bridges, railways, harbors, and telegraph
lines had to be constructed. During Ismail's reign, 112 canals,
13,440 kilometers long, were dug; 400 bridges were built; 480
kilometers of railroad lines were laid; and 8,000 kilometers of
telegraph lines were erected. Towns and cities were modernized by
the expansion of public services such as water distribution,
transport, street lighting, and gas supply. Public education was
reorganized and expanded, and a postal service was established.
The army and bureaucracy were expanded and modernized. In short,
Ismail undertook the construction of the infrastructure of a
modern state.
Ismail greatly expanded Egypt's revenues and exports during his
reign. But the country's prosperity was tied to the export of
cotton, whose price was set on a fluctuating world market, making
income uncertain. Moreover, Ismail's infrastructure development
entailed more expenditure than Egypt's income could provide, with
the result that he was obliged to contract foreign loans. These
loans, added to the expensive concessions that Said had made
concerning the Suez Canal, meant that by 1875 Egypt was 100
million in debt. In that year, Ismail sold his shares in the Suez
Canal Company, making the British government overnight the single
largest shareholder in the company. The sale of Ismail's shares
did not solve the country's financial problems, however, but
merely staved off the crisis for another year.
***From Intervention to Occupation, 1876-82
Seriously concerned with the country's financial situation,
Ismail asked for British help in fiscal reform. Britain responded
by sending Steven Cave, a member of Parliament, to investigate.
Cave judged Egypt to be solvent on the basis of its resources and
said that all the country needed to get back on its feet was time
and the proper servicing of the debts. Cave recommended the
establishment of a control commission over Egypt's finances to
approve all future loans.
European creditors, however, would not allow Egypt time. When
Ismail suspended payment of interest on the loans in 1875, his
creditors in Britain and France appointed two men to represent
their interests and negotiate new arrangements with the khedive.
The Goschen-Joubert Mission achieved three things: the
consolidation of the debt; the appointment of two European
controllers, one British and one French; and the establishment of
the Caisse de la Dette Publique, a special department with
representatives from the various European creditor states to
ensure the service of the debt. Revenue from the most productive
provinces went straight to the department, and by 1877 more than
60 percent of all Egyptian revenue went to service the national
debt.
Although Egypt serviced the debt faithfully, European
intervention increased. At the insistence of the French, a
commission of inquiry was appointed in 1878 to examine all
sources of revenue and expenditure. The commission had the right
to ask any Egyptian official or government deputy to testify
before it and to subpoena all records. Such powers implied the
dilution of Egyptian sovereignty by Europeans.
The commission report indicted the khedival government and
suggested limiting Ismail's power as a first step in solving the
country's financial problems. The khedive accepted the
commission's conditions, including a cabinet containing Europeans
and the principle of ministerial responsibility. He appointed
Nubar Pasha as prime minister and asked him to form a government
containing two Europeans. Many Europeans were appointed at high
salaries in various government departments; thirty British
officers were appointed to the Land Survey Department alone.
Ismail was also forced to delegate governmental responsibility to
his cabinet, which was made independent of the khedive and
responsible for the administration of the country.
Opposition to European intervention in Egypt's internal affairs
emerged from the Assembly of Delegates, which Ismail had created
in 1866, and from the Egyptian army officers. The assembly,
composed mainly of Egyptian notables, had no legislative power.
It was Ismail's attempt to associate the Egyptian notables with
his financial policies, and thus, to demonstrate support for his
taxes and foreign loans. The presence of Egyptian officers in the
army resulted from the 1854 decree of Said, who ordered the sons
of village notables to join the army. Said allowed them to be
trained as officers and to rise to the rank of colonel, but the
top posts in the army continued to be held by members of the
Turco-Circassian elite.
The Assembly of Delegates, meeting between January and July
1879, demanded more control over financial matters and
accountability of the European ministers to the assembly. At the
same time, a group of Egyptian army officers who opposed the
mixed cabinet protested the placing of 2,500 officers on half-
pay. A group of army officers marched on the Ministry of Finance
and occupied the building. Only the personal intervention of the
khedive, who was suspected of instigating the incident, saved the
situation. At this point, Ismail realized that he could use both
the assembly and the army officers to rid himself of foreign
control.
In April 1879, Ismail's opportunity came. Under foreign
pressure, Ismail ordered the assembly to dissolve. Its members
refused, saying they represented the nation and would not
relinquish their mandate at the order of the khedive, influenced
and pressured as he was by foreign powers. On March 29, they
presented a manifesto to the khedive protesting the Council of
Ministers' attempts to usurp their power and authority. They also
stated their determination to reject the European ministers'
demand that Egypt declare itself bankrupt.
The leader of the delegates was the constitutionally minded
Muhammad Sharif Pasha, who was among the members of a secret
society called the National Society (later the Hulwan Society).
The society had drawn up a plan for national reform (Laiha
Wataniyah) that proposed constitutional and financial reforms to
increase the power of the assembly and resolve Egypt's financial
problems without foreign advisers or control.
In a shrewd political move, Ismail summoned the European consuls
and confronted them with the discontent of the delegates, the
disaffection in the army, and the general public uneasiness. He
informed them that he had decided to act in accordance with the
resolutions of the assembly. Therefore, he rejected the proposal
to declare Egypt bankrupt and stated his intent to meet all
obligations to Egypt's creditors. He also invited Sharif Pasha to
form a government. Sharif Pasha and his Egyptian cabinet
dismissed the European ministers.
Although these actions made Ismail popular at home, they
threatened continued European control over Egypt's finances. The
European powers, particularly Britain and France, decided Ismail
had to go. Since he refused to abdicate, the European powers put
pressure on the Ottoman sultan to dismiss him in favor of his son
Tawfiq. On June 26, 1879, he received a telegram from the grand
vizier addressed to "the ex-khedive Ismail." Ismail left Egypt
for exile in Naples and subsequently in Istanbul, where he died
in 1895.
Tawfiq proved to be a more pliable instrument in the hands of
the European powers. The dual control of Egypt's finances was
reinstituted. An international commission of liquidation was
appointed with British, French, Austrian, and Italian members. In
July 1880, the Law of Liquidation was promulgated, limiting Egypt
to 50 percent of its total revenues. The rest went to the Caisse
de la Dette Publique to service the debt. The Assembly of
Delegates remained dissolved.
The direct interference of Europeans in Egypt's affairs and the
deposition of Khedive Ismail forged a nationalist movement
composed of Egyptian landowners and merchants, especially former
members of the assembly, Egyptian army officers, and the
intelligentsia, including the ulama and Muslim reformers. A
secret society of Egyptian army officers had also come into
existence in 1876, comparable to the secret society of Egyptian
notables. The army society included Colonel Ahmad Urabi, who
would become the leader of the nationalist movement, and colonels
Ali Fahmi and Abd al Al Hilmi. In 1881 a link, if not a merger,
was formed between the Urabists and the National Society. This
expanded group took the name Al Hizb al Watani al Ahli, the
National Popular Party.
Beginning in 1881, the army officers demonstrated their strength
and their ability to intimidate the khedive. They began with a
mutiny provoked by the anti-Urabist minister of war. Not only
were they able to force the appointment of a more sympathetic
minister but by January 1882, Urabi joined the government as
undersecretary for war.
These developments alarmed the European powers, particularly
Britain and France. Britain was especially concerned about
protecting the Suez Canal and the British lifeline to India. In
January 1882, Britain and France sent a joint note declaring
their support for the khedive. The note had the opposite effect
from that intended, producing an upsurge in anti-European
feeling, a shift in leadership of the nationalist movement from
the moderates in the assembly to the military, and the formation
of a new government with Urabi as minister of war. At this point,
the goal of Urabi and his followers became not only the removal
of all European influence from Egypt but also the overthrow of
the khedive.
In another attempt to break Urabi's power, the British and
French agreed on a joint show of naval strength. They also issued
a series of demands including the resignation of the government,
the temporary exile of Urabi, and the internal exile of his two
closest associates, Ali Fahmi and Abd al Al Hilmi. As a result,
violent anti-European riots broke out in Alexandria with
considerable loss of life on both sides.
During the summer, an international conference of the European
powers met in Istanbul, but no agreement was reached. The Ottoman
sultan Abdul Hamid boycotted the conference and refused to send
troops to Egypt. Eventually, Britain decided to act alone. The
French withdrew their naval squadron from Alexandria, and in July
1882, the British fleet began bombarding Alexandria.
Following the burning of Alexandria and its occupation by
British marines, the British installed the khedive in the Ras at
Tin Palace. The khedive obligingly declared Urabi a rebel and
deprived him of his political rights. Urabi in turn obtained a
religious ruling, a fatwa, signed by three Al Azhar shaykhs,
deposing Tawfiq as a traitor who brought about the foreign
occupation of his country and betrayed his religion. Urabi also
ordered general conscription and declared war on Britain. Thus,
as the British army was about to land in August, Egypt had two
leaders: the khedive, whose authority was confined to British-
controlled Alexandria, and Urabi, who was in full control of
Cairo and the provinces.
In August Sir Garnet Wolsley and an army of 20,000 invaded the
Suez Canal Zone. Wolsley was authorized to crush the Urabi forces
and clear the country of rebels. The decisive battle was fought
at Tall al Kabir on September 13, 1882. The Urabi forces were
routed and the capital captured. The nominal authority of the
khedive was restored, and the British occupation of Egypt, which
was to last for seventy-two years, had begun.
Urabi was captured, and he and his associates were put on trial.
An Egyptian court sentenced Urabi to death, but through British
intervention the sentence was commuted to banishment to Ceylon.
Britain's military intervention in 1882 and its extended, if
attenuated, occupation of the country left a legacy of bitterness
among the Egyptians that would not be expunged until 1956 when
British troops were finally removed from the country.
**FROM OCCUPATION TO NOMINAL INDEPENDENCE: 1882-1923
***The Occupiers
With the occupation of 1882, Egypt became a part of the British
Empire but never officially a colony. The khedival government
provided the facade of autonomy, but behind it lay the real power
in the country, specifically, the British agent and consul
general, backed by British troops.
At the outset of the occupation, the British government declared
its intention to withdraw its troops as soon as possible. This
could not be done, however, until the authority of the khedive
was restored. Eventually, the British realized that these two
aims were incompatible because the military intervention, which
Khedive Tawfiq supported and which prevented his overthrow, had
undermined the authority of the ruler. Without the British
presence, the khedival government would probably have collapsed.
In addition, the British government realized that the most
effective way to protect its interests was from its position in
Egypt. This represented a change in the policy that had existed
since the time of Muhammad Ali, when the British were committed
to preserving the Ottoman Empire. The change in British policy
occurred for several reasons. Sultan Abdul Hamid had refused
Britain's request to intervene in Egypt against Urabi and to
preserve the khedival government. Also, Britain's influence in
Istanbul was declining while that of Germany was rising. Finally,
Britain's unilateral invasion of Egypt gave Britain the
opportunity to supplant French influence in the country.
Moreover, Britain was determined to preserve its control over the
Suez Canal and to safeguard the vital route to India.
Between 1883 and the outbreak of World War I in 1914, there were
three British agents and consuls general in Egypt: Lord Cromer
(1883-1907), Sir John Eldon Gorst (1907-11), and Lord Herbert
Kitchener (1911-14). Cromer was an autocrat whose control over
Egypt was more absolute than that of any Mamluk or khedive.
Cromer believed his first task was to achieve financial solvency
for Egypt. He serviced the debt, balanced the budget, and spent
what money remained after debt payments on agriculture,
irrigation, and railroads. He neglected industry and education, a
policy that became a political issue in the country. He brought
in British officials to staff the bureaucracy. This policy, too,
was controversial because it prevented Egyptian civil servants
from rising to the top of their fields.
Gorst, who was less autocratic than Cromer, had to face a
growing Egyptian nationalism that demanded British evacuation
from the country. Gorst's attempt to create a "moderate"
nationalism ultimately failed because the nationalists refused to
make any compromises over independence and because Britain
considered any concession to the nationalists a sign of weakness.
When Kitchener arrived in Egypt in 1911, he was already famous as
the man who had avenged the death of General Charles Gordon in
Khartoum in 1885 during the Mahdist uprising. In 1913 Kitchener
introduced a new constitution that gave the country some
representative institutions locally and nationally. When the
British occupation began, the Assembly of Delegates had ceased to
exist. It was superseded by an assembly and legislative council
that were consultative bodies whose advice was not binding on the
government. The Organic Law of 1913 provided for a legislative
assembly with an increased number of elected members and expanded
powers.
On October 29, 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered World War I on
the side of the Central Powers. Martial law was declared in Egypt
on November 2. On November 3, the British government unilaterally
declared Egypt a protectorate, severing the country from the
Ottoman Empire. Britain deposed Khedive Abbas, who had succeeded
Khedive Tawfiq upon the latter's death in 1892, because Abbas,
who was in Istanbul when the war broke out, was suspected of pro-
German sympathies. Kitchener was recalled to London to serve as
minister of war.
***Economy and Society under Occupation
By 1914 cotton constituted 90 percent of Egypt's exports. To the
British, who controlled Egypt's financial and economic life,
ensuring Egypt's prosperity and its ability to service its debt
meant expanding Egypt's reliance on cotton production. Some
British officials had more personal reasons for their interest in
the production and export of cotton. Some were landowners; some
were involved in the marketing of the crop; and some, like Lord
Cromer, made huge fortunes from cotton speculation.
Trade policy was based on free trade, which favored the more
industrialized nations whose products undersold those produced
locally. Lord Cromer himself described the effects of the import
of European manufactures on local craft production. He noted that
quarters of the city that had been "hives of busy workmen" had
shrunk or been eliminated entirely. Caf s and small stores
selling European goods replaced productive workshops. Egyptian
industrialization would have required protective tariffs that the
British would not allow. Thus, although Egypt had a solid
infrastructure, a sizeable local market, and an indigenous supply
of capital, industrial development was stymied by a British trade
policy that sought to protect the Egyptian market for British
products and to maintain Britain's near monopoly on Egyptian
cotton.
In spite of these formidable obstacles, a small industrial
sector did develop, devoted primarily to processing raw materials
and producing perishable or bulky goods. Industrialization gave
rise to a modern working class engaged in factory labor. By 1916
there were 30,000 to 35,000 workers employed in modern factories.
Pay in the industrial sector was low and working conditions
sometimes unsafe. Just as it maintained a hands-off policy
concerning trade, the state refused to intervene to regulate
working conditions. Between 1899 and 1907, at least seven
workers' associations were formed, focusing on conditions and
pay. Strikes were organized among cigarette wrappers; warehouse,
port, and railroad workers; and spinners in factories. The
working-class movement received considerable support from Mustafa
Kamil's National Party (Al Hizb al Watani), which set up schools
in working-class areas and assisted unions with publicity and
legal counsel during strikes. The unions, like the nationalist
movement, were severely repressed by the government.
In 1906 the Dinshawi Incident occurred, which intensified
nationalist and anti-British sentiments. A fight broke out
between the villagers of Dinshawi, near Tanta in the Delta, and a
group of British officers who were shooting pigeons nearby. In
the course of the shooting, the wife of the local imam (religious
leader) was shot and wounded. Villagers surrounded the officers,
and in the ensuing fracas, two British officers were wounded. The
officers in turn panicked and opened fire on the villagers. One
of the British officers died of his wounds as he attempted to
march back to camp a few miles away. British soldiers who found
the dead officer beat a peasant to death. Fifty-two Egyptians
were arrested and brought before a special court convened in
Shibin al Kawm. Four peasants were sentenced to death, many to
terms of imprisonment at hard labor, and others to public
flogging. The sentences were executed swiftly, publicly, and
brutally. This event heightened Egyptian political consciousness
and led to the organization of political parties.
In 1907 two political parties were formed, which served as
vehicles for expressing nationalist ideas and actions. They were
Kamil's National Party (also seen as the Watani Party) and the
People's Party (Al Hizb al Umma or Umma Party). The Umma Party
was founded by Mahmud Sulayman Pasha, a former leader of the
assembly and ally of Colonel Urabi, and Hasan Abd ar Raziq, among
others. The most prominent member of the Umma Party was Ahmad
Lutfi as Sayyid, editor of the party's newspaper, Al Jaridah (The
Newspaper). The National Party's newspaper was Al Liwa (The
Standard). Kamil and Lutfi as Sayyid were Egyptian rather than
Turco-Circassian in origin and represented the increasing
political strength of Egyptians in national life. Kamil's party
called for the British to evacuate Egypt immediately. Although
Kamil agreed that Egypt needed reform, he argued that the British
presence was not necessary to achieve it. Because Islam played a
larger role in his thought and in the party ideology than in the
Umma Party, Kamil and the National Party attracted to it anti-
European conservatives and religious traditionalists.
The leaders of the Umma Party had been disciples of the
influential Islamic reformer Muhammad Abduh. Unlike Abduh,
however, who was concerned with the reform of Islam to
accommodate it to the modern world, Lutfi as Sayyid was concerned
with progress and the reform of society. The aim of the Umma
Party was independence. Lutfi as Sayyid believed, however, that
Egypt would attain self-rule not by attacking the British or the
khedive but through reform of Egyptian laws and institutions and
the participation of Egyptians in public life.
Lutfi as Sayyid believed Egypt should cooperate in any measures
that would limit the autocracy of the khedive and expand
constitutional government, which could only strengthen the
nation. Implicit in the Umma program was the idea of tactical
cooperation and eventual negotiation with the British on the
future of Egypt, an idea that Kamil and the National Party
rejected. The National Party was described as "extremist" because
of its demand for the immediate withdrawal of the British, while
the Umma Party was called "moderate" because of its gradualist
approach to independence from British domination.
Kamil died in 1908; the party never recovered from his death
although it continued to play a role in national political life
until 1952. It was the only political group that refused to take
part in negotiations for the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936. The
Umma Party participated in Egyptian party politics until World
War I, and its newspaper ceased publication in 1915. The party's
influence was long-lasting, however, because Saad Zaghlul, who
emerged as leader of the nationalist movement after the war, was
part of the Umma/Al-Jaridah circle.
***Egypt under the Protectorate and the 1919 Revolution
Opposition to European interference in Egypt's affairs resulted
in the emergence of a nationalist movement that coalesced and
spread after the British military intervention and occupation of
1882. The immediate causes of what is known to Egyptians as the
1919 Revolution, however, were British actions during the war
that caused widespread hardship and resentment. Specifically,
these included Britain's purchase of cotton and requisitioning of
fodder at below market prices, Britain's forcible recruitment of
about 500,000 peasants into the Labor and Camel Transport Corps
in the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, and its use of the country
as a base and a garrison populated by British, Australian, and
other troops. After the war, Egypt felt the adverse effects of
soaring prices and unemployment.
When the war ended, the nationalists began to press the British
again for independence. In addition to their other reasons, the
Egyptians were influenced by American president Woodrow Wilson,
who was preaching self-determination for all nations. In
September 1918, Egypt made the first moves toward the formation
of a wafd, or delegation, to voice its demands for independence
at the Paris Peace Conference. The idea for a wafd had originated
among prominent members of the Umma Party, including Lutfi as
Sayyid, Saad Zaghlul, Muhammad Mahmud, Ali Sharawi, and Abd al
Aziz Fahmi.
On November 13, 1918, thereafter celebrated in Egypt as Yawm al
Jihad (Day of Struggle), Zaghlul, Fahmi, and Sharawi had an
audience with Sir Reginald Wingate, the British high
commissioner. They demanded complete independence with the
proviso that Britain be allowed to supervise the Suez Canal and
the public debt. They also asked permission to go to London to
put their case before the British government. On the same day,
the Egyptians formed a delegation for this purpose, Al Wafd al
Misri (known as the Wafd), headed by Saad Zaghlul. The British
refused to allow the Wafd to proceed to London. On March 8,
Zaghlul and three other members of the Wafd were arrested and
thrown into Qasr an Nil prison. The next day, they were deported
to Malta, an action that sparked the popular uprising of March-
April 1919 in which Egyptians of all social classes participated.
There were violent clashes in Cairo and the provincial cities of
Lower Egypt, especially Tanta, and the uprising spread to the
south, culminating in violent confrontations in Asyut Province in
Upper Egypt.
The deportation of the Wafdists also triggered student
demonstrations and escalated into massive strikes by students,
government officials, professionals, women, and transport
workers. Within a week, all of Egypt was paralyzed by general
strikes and rioting. Railroad and telegraph lines were cut, taxi
drivers refused to work, lawyers failed to appear for court
cases, and demonstrators marched through the streets shouting
pro-Wafdist slogans and demanding independence. Violence
resulted, with many Egyptians and Europeans being killed or
injured when the British attempted to crush the demonstrations
with force.
On March 16, between 150 and 300 upper-class Egyptian women in
veils staged a demonstration against the British occupation, an
event that marked the entrance of Egyptian women into public
life. The women were led by Safia Zaghlul, wife of Wafd leader
Saad Zaghlul; Huda Sharawi, wife of one of the original members
of the Wafd and organizer of the Egyptian Feminist Union; and
Muna Fahmi Wissa. Women of the lower classes demonstrated in the
streets alongside the men. In the countryside, women engaged in
activities like cutting rail lines.
The upper-class women participating in politics for the first
time assumed key roles in the movement when the male leaders were
exiled or detained. They organized strikes, demonstrations, and
boycotts of British goods and wrote petitions, which they
circulated to foreign embassies protesting British actions in
Egypt.
The women's march of March 16 preceded by one day the largest
demonstration of the 1919 Revolution. More than 10,000 teachers,
students, workers, lawyers, and government employees started
marching at Al Azhar and wound their way to Abdin Palace where
they were joined by thousands more, who ignored British
roadblocks and bans. Soon, similar demonstrations broke out in
Alexandria, Tanta, Damanhur, Al Mansurah, and Al Fayyum. By the
summer of 1919, more than 800 Egyptians had been killed, as well
as 31 Europeans and 29 British soldiers.
Wingate, the British high commissioner, understood the strength
of the nationalist forces and the threat the Wafd represented to
British dominance and had tried to persuade the British
government to allow the Wafd to travel to Paris. However, the
British government remained hostile to Zaghlul and the
nationalists and adamant in rejecting Egyptian demands for
independence. Wingate was recalled to London for talks on the
Egyptian situation, and Milne Cheetham became acting high
commissioner in January 1919. When the 1919 Revolution began,
Cheetham soon realized that he was powerless to stop the
demonstrations and admitted that matters were completely out of
his control. Nevertheless, the government in London ordered him
not to give in to the Wafd and to restore order, a task that he
was unable to accomplish.
London decided to replace Wingate with a strong military figure,
General Edmund Allenby, the greatest British hero of World War I.
He was named special high commissioner and arrived in Egypt on
March 25. The next day, he met with a group of Egyptian
nationalists and ulama. After persuading Allenby to release the
Wafd leaders and to permit them to travel to Paris, the Egyptian
group agreed to sign a statement urging the people to stop
demonstrating. Allenby, who was convinced that this was the only
way to stop the revolt, then had to persuade the British
government to agree. On April 7, Zaghlul and his colleagues were
released and set out for Paris.
In May 1919, Lord Milner was appointed to head a mission to
investigate how Egypt could be granted "self-governing
institutions" while maintaining the protectorate and safeguarding
British interests. The mission arrived in Egypt in December 1919
but was boycotted by the nationalists, who opposed the
continuation of the protectorate. The arrival of the Milner
Mission was followed by strikes in which students, lawyers,
professionals, and workers participated. Merchants closed their
shops, and organizers distributed leaflets urging the Egyptians
not to cooperate with the mission.
Milner realized that a direct approach to Zaghlul was necessary,
and in the summer of 1920 private talks between the two men took
place in London. As a result of the so-called Milner-Zaghlul
Agreement, the British government announced in February 1921 that
it would accept the abolition of the protectorate as the basis
for negotiation of a treaty with Egypt.
On April 4, 1921, Zaghlul's return to Egypt was met by an
unprecedented welcome, showing that the vast majority of
Egyptians supported him. Allenby, however, was determined to
break Zaghlul's political power and to build up a pro-British
group to whom Britain could safely commit Egyptian independence.
On December 23, Zaghlul was deported to the Seychelles via Aden.
His deportation was followed by demonstrations, violent clashes
with the police, and strikes by students and government employees
that affected Cairo, Alexandria, Port Said, Suez, and provincial
towns like Tanta, Zifta, Az Zaqaziq, and Jirja.
On February 28, 1922, Britain unilaterally declared Egyptian
independence without any negotiations with Egypt. Four matters
were "absolutely reserved to the discretion" of the British
government until agreements concerning them could be negotiated:
the security of communications of the British Empire in Egypt;
the defense of Egypt against all foreign aggressors or
interference, direct or indirect; the protection of foreign
interests in Egypt and the protection of minorities; and Sudan.
Sultan Ahmad Fuad became King Fuad I, and his son, Faruk, was
named as his heir. On April 19, a new constitution was approved.
Also that month, an electoral law was issued that ushered in a
new phase in Egypt's political development--parliamentary
elections.
**FROM OCCUPATION TO NOMINAL INDEPENDENCE: 1882-1923
***The Occupiers
With the occupation of 1882, Egypt became a part of the British
Empire but never officially a colony. The khedival government
provided the facade of autonomy, but behind it lay the real power
in the country, specifically, the British agent and consul
general, backed by British troops.
At the outset of the occupation, the British government declared
its intention to withdraw its troops as soon as possible. This
could not be done, however, until the authority of the khedive
was restored. Eventually, the British realized that these two
aims were incompatible because the military intervention, which
Khedive Tawfiq supported and which prevented his overthrow, had
undermined the authority of the ruler. Without the British
presence, the khedival government would probably have collapsed.
In addition, the British government realized that the most
effective way to protect its interests was from its position in
Egypt. This represented a change in the policy that had existed
since the time of Muhammad Ali, when the British were committed
to preserving the Ottoman Empire. The change in British policy
occurred for several reasons. Sultan Abdul Hamid had refused
Britain's request to intervene in Egypt against Urabi and to
preserve the khedival government. Also, Britain's influence in
Istanbul was declining while that of Germany was rising. Finally,
Britain's unilateral invasion of Egypt gave Britain the
opportunity to supplant French influence in the country.
Moreover, Britain was determined to preserve its control over the
Suez Canal and to safeguard the vital route to India.
Between 1883 and the outbreak of World War I in 1914, there were
three British agents and consuls general in Egypt: Lord Cromer
(1883-1907), Sir John Eldon Gorst (1907-11), and Lord Herbert
Kitchener (1911-14). Cromer was an autocrat whose control over
Egypt was more absolute than that of any Mamluk or khedive.
Cromer believed his first task was to achieve financial solvency
for Egypt. He serviced the debt, balanced the budget, and spent
what money remained after debt payments on agriculture,
irrigation, and railroads. He neglected industry and education, a
policy that became a political issue in the country. He brought
in British officials to staff the bureaucracy. This policy, too,
was controversial because it prevented Egyptian civil servants
from rising to the top of their fields.
Gorst, who was less autocratic than Cromer, had to face a
growing Egyptian nationalism that demanded British evacuation
from the country. Gorst's attempt to create a "moderate"
nationalism ultimately failed because the nationalists refused to
make any compromises over independence and because Britain
considered any concession to the nationalists a sign of weakness.
When Kitchener arrived in Egypt in 1911, he was already famous as
the man who had avenged the death of General Charles Gordon in
Khartoum in 1885 during the Mahdist uprising. In 1913 Kitchener
introduced a new constitution that gave the country some
representative institutions locally and nationally. When the
British occupation began, the Assembly of Delegates had ceased to
exist. It was superseded by an assembly and legislative council
that were consultative bodies whose advice was not binding on the
government. The Organic Law of 1913 provided for a legislative
assembly with an increased number of elected members and expanded
powers.
On October 29, 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered World War I on
the side of the Central Powers. Martial law was declared in Egypt
on November 2. On November 3, the British government unilaterally
declared Egypt a protectorate, severing the country from the
Ottoman Empire. Britain deposed Khedive Abbas, who had succeeded
Khedive Tawfiq upon the latter's death in 1892, because Abbas,
who was in Istanbul when the war broke out, was suspected of pro-
German sympathies. Kitchener was recalled to London to serve as
minister of war.
***Economy and Society under Occupation
By 1914 cotton constituted 90 percent of Egypt's exports. To the
British, who controlled Egypt's financial and economic life,
ensuring Egypt's prosperity and its ability to service its debt
meant expanding Egypt's reliance on cotton production. Some
British officials had more personal reasons for their interest in
the production and export of cotton. Some were landowners; some
were involved in the marketing of the crop; and some, like Lord
Cromer, made huge fortunes from cotton speculation.
Trade policy was based on free trade, which favored the more
industrialized nations whose products undersold those produced
locally. Lord Cromer himself described the effects of the import
of European manufactures on local craft production. He noted that
quarters of the city that had been "hives of busy workmen" had
shrunk or been eliminated entirely. Caf s and small stores
selling European goods replaced productive workshops. Egyptian
industrialization would have required protective tariffs that the
British would not allow. Thus, although Egypt had a solid
infrastructure, a sizeable local market, and an indigenous supply
of capital, industrial development was stymied by a British trade
policy that sought to protect the Egyptian market for British
products and to maintain Britain's near monopoly on Egyptian
cotton.
In spite of these formidable obstacles, a small industrial
sector did develop, devoted primarily to processing raw materials
and producing perishable or bulky goods. Industrialization gave
rise to a modern working class engaged in factory labor. By 1916
there were 30,000 to 35,000 workers employed in modern factories.
Pay in the industrial sector was low and working conditions
sometimes unsafe. Just as it maintained a hands-off policy
concerning trade, the state refused to intervene to regulate
working conditions. Between 1899 and 1907, at least seven
workers' associations were formed, focusing on conditions and
pay. Strikes were organized among cigarette wrappers; warehouse,
port, and railroad workers; and spinners in factories. The
working-class movement received considerable support from Mustafa
Kamil's National Party (Al Hizb al Watani), which set up schools
in working-class areas and assisted unions with publicity and
legal counsel during strikes. The unions, like the nationalist
movement, were severely repressed by the government.
In 1906 the Dinshawi Incident occurred, which intensified
nationalist and anti-British sentiments. A fight broke out
between the villagers of Dinshawi, near Tanta in the Delta, and a
group of British officers who were shooting pigeons nearby. In
the course of the shooting, the wife of the local imam (religious
leader) was shot and wounded. Villagers surrounded the officers,
and in the ensuing fracas, two British officers were wounded. The
officers in turn panicked and opened fire on the villagers. One
of the British officers died of his wounds as he attempted to
march back to camp a few miles away. British soldiers who found
the dead officer beat a peasant to death. Fifty-two Egyptians
were arrested and brought before a special court convened in
Shibin al Kawm. Four peasants were sentenced to death, many to
terms of imprisonment at hard labor, and others to public
flogging. The sentences were executed swiftly, publicly, and
brutally. This event heightened Egyptian political consciousness
and led to the organization of political parties.
In 1907 two political parties were formed, which served as
vehicles for expressing nationalist ideas and actions. They were
Kamil's National Party (also seen as the Watani Party) and the
People's Party (Al Hizb al Umma or Umma Party). The Umma Party
was founded by Mahmud Sulayman Pasha, a former leader of the
assembly and ally of Colonel Urabi, and Hasan Abd ar Raziq, among
others. The most prominent member of the Umma Party was Ahmad
Lutfi as Sayyid, editor of the party's newspaper, Al Jaridah (The
Newspaper). The National Party's newspaper was Al Liwa (The
Standard). Kamil and Lutfi as Sayyid were Egyptian rather than
Turco-Circassian in origin and represented the increasing
political strength of Egyptians in national life. Kamil's party
called for the British to evacuate Egypt immediately. Although
Kamil agreed that Egypt needed reform, he argued that the British
presence was not necessary to achieve it. Because Islam played a
larger role in his thought and in the party ideology than in the
Umma Party, Kamil and the National Party attracted to it anti-
European conservatives and religious traditionalists.
The leaders of the Umma Party had been disciples of the
influential Islamic reformer Muhammad Abduh. Unlike Abduh,
however, who was concerned with the reform of Islam to
accommodate it to the modern world, Lutfi as Sayyid was concerned
with progress and the reform of society. The aim of the Umma
Party was independence. Lutfi as Sayyid believed, however, that
Egypt would attain self-rule not by attacking the British or the
khedive but through reform of Egyptian laws and institutions and
the participation of Egyptians in public life.
Lutfi as Sayyid believed Egypt should cooperate in any measures
that would limit the autocracy of the khedive and expand
constitutional government, which could only strengthen the
nation. Implicit in the Umma program was the idea of tactical
cooperation and eventual negotiation with the British on the
future of Egypt, an idea that Kamil and the National Party
rejected. The National Party was described as "extremist" because
of its demand for the immediate withdrawal of the British, while
the Umma Party was called "moderate" because of its gradualist
approach to independence from British domination.
Kamil died in 1908; the party never recovered from his death
although it continued to play a role in national political life
until 1952. It was the only political group that refused to take
part in negotiations for the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936. The
Umma Party participated in Egyptian party politics until World
War I, and its newspaper ceased publication in 1915. The party's
influence was long-lasting, however, because Saad Zaghlul, who
emerged as leader of the nationalist movement after the war, was
part of the Umma/Al-Jaridah circle.
***Egypt under the Protectorate and the 1919 Revolution
Opposition to European interference in Egypt's affairs resulted
in the emergence of a nationalist movement that coalesced and
spread after the British military intervention and occupation of
1882. The immediate causes of what is known to Egyptians as the
1919 Revolution, however, were British actions during the war
that caused widespread hardship and resentment. Specifically,
these included Britain's purchase of cotton and requisitioning of
fodder at below market prices, Britain's forcible recruitment of
about 500,000 peasants into the Labor and Camel Transport Corps
in the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, and its use of the country
as a base and a garrison populated by British, Australian, and
other troops. After the war, Egypt felt the adverse effects of
soaring prices and unemployment.
When the war ended, the nationalists began to press the British
again for independence. In addition to their other reasons, the
Egyptians were influenced by American president Woodrow Wilson,
who was preaching self-determination for all nations. In
September 1918, Egypt made the first moves toward the formation
of a wafd, or delegation, to voice its demands for independence
at the Paris Peace Conference. The idea for a wafd had originated
among prominent members of the Umma Party, including Lutfi as
Sayyid, Saad Zaghlul, Muhammad Mahmud, Ali Sharawi, and Abd al
Aziz Fahmi.
On November 13, 1918, thereafter celebrated in Egypt as Yawm al
Jihad (Day of Struggle), Zaghlul, Fahmi, and Sharawi had an
audience with Sir Reginald Wingate, the British high
commissioner. They demanded complete independence with the
proviso that Britain be allowed to supervise the Suez Canal and
the public debt. They also asked permission to go to London to
put their case before the British government. On the same day,
the Egyptians formed a delegation for this purpose, Al Wafd al
Misri (known as the Wafd), headed by Saad Zaghlul. The British
refused to allow the Wafd to proceed to London. On March 8,
Zaghlul and three other members of the Wafd were arrested and
thrown into Qasr an Nil prison. The next day, they were deported
to Malta, an action that sparked the popular uprising of March-
April 1919 in which Egyptians of all social classes participated.
There were violent clashes in Cairo and the provincial cities of
Lower Egypt, especially Tanta, and the uprising spread to the
south, culminating in violent confrontations in Asyut Province in
Upper Egypt.
The deportation of the Wafdists also triggered student
demonstrations and escalated into massive strikes by students,
government officials, professionals, women, and transport
workers. Within a week, all of Egypt was paralyzed by general
strikes and rioting. Railroad and telegraph lines were cut, taxi
drivers refused to work, lawyers failed to appear for court
cases, and demonstrators marched through the streets shouting
pro-Wafdist slogans and demanding independence. Violence
resulted, with many Egyptians and Europeans being killed or
injured when the British attempted to crush the demonstrations
with force.
On March 16, between 150 and 300 upper-class Egyptian women in
veils staged a demonstration against the British occupation, an
event that marked the entrance of Egyptian women into public
life. The women were led by Safia Zaghlul, wife of Wafd leader
Saad Zaghlul; Huda Sharawi, wife of one of the original members
of the Wafd and organizer of the Egyptian Feminist Union; and
Muna Fahmi Wissa. Women of the lower classes demonstrated in the
streets alongside the men. In the countryside, women engaged in
activities like cutting rail lines.
The upper-class women participating in politics for the first
time assumed key roles in the movement when the male leaders were
exiled or detained. They organized strikes, demonstrations, and
boycotts of British goods and wrote petitions, which they
circulated to foreign embassies protesting British actions in
Egypt.
The women's march of March 16 preceded by one day the largest
demonstration of the 1919 Revolution. More than 10,000 teachers,
students, workers, lawyers, and government employees started
marching at Al Azhar and wound their way to Abdin Palace where
they were joined by thousands more, who ignored British
roadblocks and bans. Soon, similar demonstrations broke out in
Alexandria, Tanta, Damanhur, Al Mansurah, and Al Fayyum. By the
summer of 1919, more than 800 Egyptians had been killed, as well
as 31 Europeans and 29 British soldiers.
Wingate, the British high commissioner, understood the strength
of the nationalist forces and the threat the Wafd represented to
British dominance and had tried to persuade the British
government to allow the Wafd to travel to Paris. However, the
British government remained hostile to Zaghlul and the
nationalists and adamant in rejecting Egyptian demands for
independence. Wingate was recalled to London for talks on the
Egyptian situation, and Milne Cheetham became acting high
commissioner in January 1919. When the 1919 Revolution began,
Cheetham soon realized that he was powerless to stop the
demonstrations and admitted that matters were completely out of
his control. Nevertheless, the government in London ordered him
not to give in to the Wafd and to restore order, a task that he
was unable to accomplish.
London decided to replace Wingate with a strong military figure,
General Edmund Allenby, the greatest British hero of World War I.
He was named special high commissioner and arrived in Egypt on
March 25. The next day, he met with a group of Egyptian
nationalists and ulama. After persuading Allenby to release the
Wafd leaders and to permit them to travel to Paris, the Egyptian
group agreed to sign a statement urging the people to stop
demonstrating. Allenby, who was convinced that this was the only
way to stop the revolt, then had to persuade the British
government to agree. On April 7, Zaghlul and his colleagues were
released and set out for Paris.
In May 1919, Lord Milner was appointed to head a mission to
investigate how Egypt could be granted "self-governing
institutions" while maintaining the protectorate and safeguarding
British interests. The mission arrived in Egypt in December 1919
but was boycotted by the nationalists, who opposed the
continuation of the protectorate. The arrival of the Milner
Mission was followed by strikes in which students, lawyers,
professionals, and workers participated. Merchants closed their
shops, and organizers distributed leaflets urging the Egyptians
not to cooperate with the mission.
Milner realized that a direct approach to Zaghlul was necessary,
and in the summer of 1920 private talks between the two men took
place in London. As a result of the so-called Milner-Zaghlul
Agreement, the British government announced in February 1921 that
it would accept the abolition of the protectorate as the basis
for negotiation of a treaty with Egypt.
On April 4, 1921, Zaghlul's return to Egypt was met by an
unprecedented welcome, showing that the vast majority of
Egyptians supported him. Allenby, however, was determined to
break Zaghlul's political power and to build up a pro-British
group to whom Britain could safely commit Egyptian independence.
On December 23, Zaghlul was deported to the Seychelles via Aden.
His deportation was followed by demonstrations, violent clashes
with the police, and strikes by students and government employees
that affected Cairo, Alexandria, Port Said, Suez, and provincial
towns like Tanta, Zifta, Az Zaqaziq, and Jirja.
On February 28, 1922, Britain unilaterally declared Egyptian
independence without any negotiations with Egypt. Four matters
were "absolutely reserved to the discretion" of the British
government until agreements concerning them could be negotiated:
the security of communications of the British Empire in Egypt;
the defense of Egypt against all foreign aggressors or
interference, direct or indirect; the protection of foreign
interests in Egypt and the protection of minorities; and Sudan.
Sultan Ahmad Fuad became King Fuad I, and his son, Faruk, was
named as his heir. On April 19, a new constitution was approved.
Also that month, an electoral law was issued that ushered in a
new phase in Egypt's political development--parliamentary
elections.
**The Era of Liberal Constitutionalism and Party Politics
***The Rise and Decline of the Wafd, 1924-39
Political life in Egypt during this period has been described as
basically triangular, consisting of the king, the Wafd, and the
British. The basis of British power was its army of occupation as
well as British officials in the administration, police, and
army. The king's power rested on the rights he could exercise in
accordance with the 1923 constitution and partly on the
permanence of his position. The king's rights included selecting
and appointing the prime minister, dismissing the cabinet, and
dissolving Parliament. The Wafd's power was based on its popular
support and its command of a vast majority in Parliament.
These three forces in Egyptian politics were of unequal
strength. The British had overwhelming power, and if their
interests were at stake, their power prevailed over the other
two. The king was in a stronger position than the Wafd because
his power was difficult to curb while the Wafd could easily be
removed from power. The Wafd embodied parliamentary democracy in
Egypt; thus, by its very existence, it constituted a threat to
both the king and the British. To the king, any democratic system
was a threat to his autocratic rule. To the British, a democratic
system meant that in any free election the Wafd would be voted
into power. The British believed that the Wafd in power was a
threat to their own power in the country. Thus, the British
attempted to destroy the power of the Wafd and to use the king as
a counter to the Wafd.
In the parliamentary election of January 12, 1924, the Wafd won
179 of 211 parliamentary seats. Two seats each went to the Wafd's
opponents, the National Party and the Liberal Constitutionalist
Party, a party founded in 1922 and considered excessively
cooperative with the British. The Wafd felt it had a mandate to
conclude a treaty with Britain that would assure Egypt complete
independence. As prime minister, Zaghlul carefully selected a
cross-section of Egyptian society for his cabinet, which he
called the "People's Ministry." On March 15, 1924, the king
opened the first Egyptian constitutional parliament amid national
rejoicing. The Wafdist government did not last long, however.
On November 19, 1924, Sir Lee Stack, the British governor
general of Sudan and commander of the Egyptian army, was
assassinated in Cairo. The assassination was one of a series of
killings of British officials that had begun in 1920. Allenby,
who considered Stack an old and trusted friend, was determined to
avenge the crime and in the process humiliate the Wafd and
destroy its credibility in Egypt. Allenby demanded that Egypt
apologize, prosecute the assailants, pay a 500,000 indemnity,
withdraw all troops from Sudan, consent to an unlimited increase
of irrigation in Sudan and end all opposition to the
capitulations (Britain's demand of the right to protect foreign
interests in the country). Zaghlul wanted to resign rather than
accept the ultimatum, but Allenby presented it to him before
Zaghlul could offer his resignation to the king. Zaghlul and his
cabinet decided to accept the first four terms but to reject the
last two. On November 24, after ordering the Ministry of Finance
to pay the indemnity, Zaghlul resigned. He died three years
later.
During the 1930s, Ismail Sidqi emerged as the "strong man" of
Egyptian politics and an ardent opponent of the Wafd. It was he
who abolished the constitution in 1930 and drafted another that
enhanced the power of the monarch. He formed his own party, Al
Hizb ash Shaab, which merged with the Ittihad Party in 1938. Also
in 1938, dissident members of the Wafd formed the Saadist Party,
named after Saad Zaghlul.
On April 28, 1936, King Fuad died and was succeeded by his son,
Faruk. In the May elections, the Wafd won 89 percent of the vote
and 157 seats in Parliament.
Negotiations with the British for a treaty to resolve matters
that had been left outstanding since 1922 had resumed. The
British delegation was led by its high commissioner, Miles
Lampson, and the Egyptian delegation by Wafdist leader and prime
minister, Mustafa Nahhas. On August 26, a draft treaty that came
to be known as the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936 was signed.
The treaty provided for an Anglo-Egyptian military and defense
alliance that allowed Britain to maintain a garrison of 10,000
men in the Suez Canal Zone. In addition, Britain was left in
virtual control of Sudan. This contradicted the Anglo-Egyptian
Condominium Agreement of 1899 that provided that Sudan be
governed by Egypt and Britain jointly. In spite of the agreement,
however, real power was in British hands. Egyptian army units had
been withdrawn from Sudan in the aftermath of the Stack
assassination, and the governor general was British.
Nevertheless, Egyptian nationalists, and the Wafd particularly,
continued to demand full Egyptian control of Sudan.
The treaty did provide for the end of the capitulations and the
phasing out of the mixed courts. The British high commissioner
was redesignated ambassador to Egypt, and when the British
inspector general of the Egyptian army retired, an Egyptian
officer was appointed to replace him.
In spite of these advances, the treaty did not give Egypt full
independence, and its signing produced a wave of anti-Wafdist and
anti-British demonstrations. To many of its followers, in
negotiating and signing the treaty the Wafd had betrayed the
nationalist cause. Because of this perception and also because it
had failed to develop and implement a program for social and
economic reform, the Wafd declined in power and influence.
Although it considered itself the representative of the nation,
the Wafd failed to offer meaningful domestic programs to deal
with the problems of under- and unemployment, high living costs,
lack of industrial development, and unequal distribution of land.
Thus, during the 1930s, support for the Wafd, particularly among
students and urban middle-class professionals and civil servants,
was eroded by more militant, paramilitary organizations like the
Muslim Brotherhood (Al Ikhwan al Muslimun, also known as the
Brotherhood) and Young Egypt (Misr al Fatat).
The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 by religious leader
Hasan al Banna who established himself as the supreme guide
leading his followers in a purified Islamic state. The
Brotherhood represented a trend in the Islamic reform movement
that attributed the difficulties in Islamic society to a
deviation from the ideals and practices of early Islam during the
period of the first four caliphs. The aim, therefore, was to
return society to a state of purity by reforming it from within
and purging it of foreign domination and influence. The
Brotherhood consisted of nationwide cells, battalions, youth
groups, and a secret apparatus for underground activities.
Young Egypt was founded in 1933 by a lawyer, Ahmad Husayn. It
was a radical nationalist organization with religious elements.
Its aim was to make Egypt a great empire, which would consist of
Egypt and Sudan. The empire would act as an ally to Arab
countries and serve as the leader of Islam. It was also a
militaristic organization whose young members were organized in a
paramilitary movement called the Green Shirts. The organization
had fascist overtones and openly admired Nazi achievements. As
German power grew, Young Egypt's anti-British tone increased.
Both of these organizations presented clearly defined programs
for political, economic, and social reform. Both also represented
a new political movement whose ideology was not the liberal
constitutionalism of the nationalist movement, which was regarded
as having failed.
***Egypt During the War, 1939-45
With the beginning of World War II, Egypt again became vital to
Britain's defense. Britain had to assure, if not the wholehearted
support of Egypt, at least its acquiescence in British military
and political policies during the crisis. For its part, Egypt
considered the war a European conflict and hoped to avoid being
entangled in it. As one Axis victory succeeded another, Egyptians
grew increasingly convinced that Germany would win the war. Some
were pleased at the prospect of a German victory, not because
they were attracted to the Nazi ideology, but because they viewed
any enemy of their enemy, Britain, as a friend. Meanwhile, the
British were determined to prevent an Egyptian-German alliance.
The war gave the Wafd the opportunity to return to power. The
Wafd set out to convince the British that they would not lead an
anti-British insurrection during the wartime crisis. Uncertain of
the loyalty of Prime Minister Ali Maher and convinced that the
king was intriguing against them, the British decided to entrust
the Egyptian government to the Wafd. On February 2, 1942, with
the German army under General Erwin Rommel advancing toward
Egypt, Lampson, the British ambassador, ordered the king to ask
Mustafa Nahhas, the Wafdist leader, to form a government. The
incident clearly demonstrated that real power in Egypt resided in
British hands and that the king and the political parties existed
only so long as Britain was prepared to tolerate them. It also
eroded popular support for the Wafd because it showed that the
Wafd would make an alliance with the British for purely political
reasons. The Wafd's credibility was eroded further in 1943 when a
disaffected former Wafd member, Makram Ubayd, published his Black
Book. The book contained details of Nahhas's corrupt dealings
over the years and seriously damaged his reputation.
The Wafdist government fell in 1944, and the Wafd boycotted the
elections of 1945, which brought a government of Liberal
Constitutionalists and Saadists to power. As World War II ended,
the Wafd was splintered into several competing camps. The
political initiative and popular support swung toward the
militant organizations on the right, such as the Muslim
Brotherhood and Young Egypt.
***On the Threshold of Revolution, 1945-52
In 1945 a Labour Party government with anti-imperialist leanings
was elected in Britain. This election encouraged Egyptians to
believe that Britain would change its policy. The end of the war
in Europe and the Pacific, however, saw the beginning of a new
kind of global war, the Cold War, in which Egypt found itself
embroiled against its will. Concerned by the possibility of
expansion by the Soviet Union, the West would come to see the
Middle East as a vital element in its postwar strategy of
"containment." In addition, pro-imperialist British Conservatives
like Winston Churchill spoke of Britain's "rightful position" in
the Suez Canal Zone. He and Anthony Eden, the Conservative Party
spokesman on foreign affairs, stressed the vital importance of
the Suez Canal as an imperial lifeline and claimed international
security would be threatened by British withdrawal.
In December 1945, Egyptian prime minister Mahmud Nuqrashi, sent
a note to the British demanding that they renegotiate the 1936
treaty and evacuate British troops from the country. Britain
refused. Riots and demonstrations by students and workers broke
out in Cairo and Alexandria, accompanied by attacks on British
property and personnel.
The new Egyptian prime minister, Ismail Sidqi, a driving force
behind Egyptian politics in the 1930s and now seventy-one and in
poor health, took over negotiations with the British. The British
Labour Party prime minister, Clement Atlee, agreed to remove
British troops from Egyptian cities and bases by September 1949.
The British had withdrawn their troops to the Suez Canal Zone
when negotiations foundered over the issue of Sudan. Britain said
Sudan was ready for self-government while Egyptian nationalists
were proclaiming "the unity of the Nile Valley," that is, that
Sudan should be part of Egypt. Sidqi resigned in December 1946
and was succeeded by Nuqrashi, who referred the question of Sudan
to the newly created United Nations (UN) during the following
year. The Brotherhood called for strikes and a jihad (holy war)
against the British, and newspapers called for a guerrilla war.
In 1948 another event strengthened the Egyptian desire to rid
the country of imperial domination. This event was the
Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel by David
Ben-Gurion in Tel Aviv. The Egyptians, like most Arabs,
considered the State of Israel a creation of Western,
specifically British, imperialism and an alien entity in the Arab
homeland. In September 1947, the League of Arab States (Arab
League) had decided to resist by force the UN plan for partition
of Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state. Thus, when Israel
announced its independence in 1948, the armies of the various
Arab states, including Egypt, entered Palestine to save the
country for the Arabs against what they considered Zionist
aggression. The Arabs were defeated by Israel, although the Arab
Legion of Transjordan held onto the Old City of Jerusalem and the
West Bank (see Glossary), and Egypt saved a strip of territory
around Gaza that became known as the Gaza Strip.
When the war began, the Egyptian army was poorly prepared and
had no plan for coordination with the other Arab states. Although
there were individual heroic acts of resistance, the army did not
perform well, and nothing could disguise the defeat or mitigate
the intense feeling of shame. After the war, there were scandals
over the inferior equipment issued to the military, and the king
and government were blamed for treacherously abandoning the army.
One of the men who served in the war was Gamal Abdul Nasser, who
commanded an army unit in Palestine and was wounded in the chest.
Nasser was dismayed by the inefficiency and lack of preparation
of the army. In the battle for the Negev Desert in October 1948,
Nasser and his unit were trapped at Falluja, near Beersheba. The
unit held out and was eventually able to counterattack. This
event assumed great importance for Nasser, who saw it as a symbol
of his country's determination to free Egypt from all forms of
oppression, internal and external.
Nasser organized a clandestine group inside the army called the
Free Officers. After the war against Israel, the Free Officers
began to plan for a revolutionary overthrow of the government. In
1949 nine of the Free Officers formed the Committee of the Free
Officers' Movement; in 1950 Nasser was elected chairman.
The Muslim Brotherhood, whose volunteer squads had fought well
against Israel, gained in popularity and membership. Before the
war, the Brotherhood was responsible for numerous attacks on
British personnel and property. With the outbreak of the war
against Israel, martial law was declared in Egypt, and the
Brotherhood was ordered to dissolve. In retaliation, a member of
the Brotherhood murdered Nuqrashi, the prime minister. His
successor, Ibrahim Abdul Hadi, detained in concentration camps
thousands of Brotherhood members as well as members of Young
Egypt and communists. In February 1949, Brotherhood founder
Hassan al Banna was assassinated, probably by agents of the
security branch of the government.
In January 1950, the Wafd returned to power with Nahhas as prime
minister. In October 1951, Nahhas introduced, and Parliament
approved, decrees abrogating unilaterally the Anglo-Egyptian
Treaty of 1936 and proclaiming Faruk king of Egypt and Sudan.
Egypt exulted, with newspapers proclaiming that Egypt had broken
"the fetters of British imperialism." The Wafd government gave
way to pressure from the Brotherhood and leftist groups for
militant opposition to the British. "Liberation battalions" were
formed, and the Brotherhood and auxiliary police were armed. Food
supplies to the Suez Canal Zone were blocked, and Egyptian
workers were withdrawn from the base. A guerrilla war against the
British in the Suez Canal Zone was undertaken by students and the
Brotherhood.
In December British bulldozers and Centurion tanks demolished
fifty Egyptian mud houses to open a road to a water supply for
the British army. This incident and one that followed on January
25 provoked intense Egyptian anger. On January 25, 1952, the
British attacked an Egyptian police barracks at Ismailiya (Al
Ismailiyah) when its occupants refused to surrender to British
troops. Fifty Egyptians were killed and 100 wounded.
The January incident led directly to "Black Saturday," January
26, 1952, which began with a mutiny by police in Cairo in protest
against the death of their colleagues. Concurrently, groups of
people in Cairo went on a rampage. British property and other
symbols of the Western presence were attacked. By the end of the
day, 750 establishments valued at 50 million had been burned or
destroyed. Thirty persons were killed, including eleven British
and other foreigners; hundreds were injured.
The British believed there was official connivance in the
rioting. Wafdist interior minister Fuad Siraj ad Din (also seen
as Serag al Din) was accused of negligence by an Egyptian
government report and dismissed. The king dismissed Nahhas, and
four prime ministers held office in the next six months. It
became clear that the Egyptian ruling class had become unable to
rule, and none of the radical nationalist groups was strong
enough to take power. This power vacuum gave the Free Officers
their opportunity.
On July 22, the Free Officers realized that the king might be
preparing to move against them. They decided to strike and seize
power the next morning. On July 26, King Faruk, forced to
abdicate in favor of his infant son, sailed into exile on the
same yacht on which his grandfather, Ismail, had left for exile
about seventy years earlier.
***The Revolution and the Early Years of the New Government: 1952-56
The nine men who had constituted themselves as the Committee of
the Free Officers' Movement and led the 1952 Revolution were
Lieutenant Colonel Gamal Abdul Nasser, Major Abd al Hakim Amir,
Lieutenant Colonel Anwar as Sadat, Major Salah Salim, Major Kamal
ad Din Husayn, Wing Commander Gamal Salim, Squadron Leader Hasan
Ibrahim, Major Khalid Muhi ad Din, and Wing Commander Abd al
Latif al Baghdadi. Major Husayn ash Shafii and Lieutenant Colonel
Zakariyya Muhi ad Din joined the committee later.
After the coup, the Free Officers asked Ali Mahir, a previous
prime minister, to head the government. The Free Officers formed
the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), which dictated policy to
the civilian cabinet, abolished all civil titles such as pasha
and bey, and ordered all political parties to purify their ranks
and reconstitute their executive committees.
The RCC elected Muhammad Naguib president and commander in
chief. He was chosen because he was a popular hero of the 1948
Arab-Israeli War and an officer trusted by the army. In 1951 the
Free Officers had elected him as president of the Egyptian Army
Officers Club over the candidate chosen by Faruk. It was
extremely important for the Free Officers to ensure the loyalty
of the army if the coup were to succeed. Naguib was fifty-one
years old; the average age of the other Free Officers was thirty-
three.
The decision made by the Wafd government after the Anglo-
Egyptian Treaty of 1936 to allow sons of nonaristocratic families
into the Military Academy had proved an important one for the
future of Egypt. It meant that men such as Nasser and Sadat were
able to become officers in the army and thus be in a position to
shape events in Egypt. The decision had been made, not to create
a more egalitarian officer corps, but rather to meet a desperate
need for more officers. As it turned out, most members of the
Free Officers' group and all of the original members of the RCC
had entered the Military Academy during the period between 1937
and 1940. The men who profited from this new policy were not from
the poorest families; their families had to have enough money to
send their children to secondary schools. For the most part, they
were from families of moderately prosperous landholders and minor
government officials, who constituted the class of rural
notables.
Nasser himself came from a rural notable family. His father was
from a small village in Upper Egypt and worked as a postal clerk.
In 1915 the senior Nasser moved to Alexandria, where on January
15, 1918, his first son, Gamal, was born. At the age of seven,
Gamal was sent to Cairo to live with his uncle and to attend
school. He went to a school in Khan al Khalili, the old quarter
of the city near Al Azhar Mosque, where he experienced firsthand
the bustling, crowded quarters of Cairo and the poverty of many
in the city. Between 1933 and 1938, he attended An Nahda (the
Awakening) School in Cairo, where he combined studying with
demonstrating against British and Egyptian politicians. In
November 1935, he marched in demonstrations against the British
and was wounded by a bullet fired by British troops. Identified
as an agitator by the police, he was asked to leave his school.
After a few months in law school, he joined the army.
Nasser desired vehemently to change his country; he believed
that the British and the British-controlled king and politicians
would continue to harm the interests of the majority of the
population. Nasser and the other Free Officers had no particular
desire for a military career, but Nasser had perceived that
military life offered upward mobility and a chance to participate
in shaping the country's future. The Free Officers were united by
their desire to see Egypt freed of British control and a more
equitable government established. Nasser and many of the others
seemed to be attached to no particular political ideology,
although some, such as Khalid Muhi ad Din, were Marxists and a
few sympathized with the Muslim Brotherhood. The lack of a
coherent ideology would cause difficulties in the future when
these men set about the task of governing Egypt.
Although Naguib headed the RCC and Mahir the civilian
government, Nasser was the real power behind the RCC. The years
between 1952 and 1954 witnessed a struggle for control of the
government that Nasser ultimately won. The first crisis to face
the new government came in August 1952 with a violent strike
involving more than 10,000 workers at the Misr Company textile
factories at Kafr ad Dawwar in the Delta. Workers attacked and
set fire to part of the premises, destroyed machinery, and
clashed with the police. The army was called in to put down the
strike; several workers lost their lives, and scores were
injured. The RCC set up a special military court that tried the
arrested textile workers. Two were convicted and executed, and
many others were given prison sentences. The regime reacted
quickly and ruthlessly because it had no intention of encouraging
a popular revolution that it could not control. It then arrested
about thirty persons charged with belonging to the outlawed
Communist Party of Egypt (CPE). The Democratic Movement for
National Liberation, a faction of the CPE, reacted by denouncing
the regime as a military dictatorship.
On September 7, Ali Mahir resigned, and Naguib became prime
minister, minister of war, commander in chief, and president of
the RCC. That same month, the RCC passed its first major domestic
measure, the Agrarian Reform Law of 1952. The law was intended to
abolish the power of the absentee landlord class, to encourage
investment in industry, and to build support for the regime. The
law limited landholdings to 200 feddans with the right to
transfer another 100 to wives and children. The owners of the
land requisitioned by the government received about half the
market value of the land at 1951 prices in the form of government
bonds. The land was sold in lots of two to five feddans to
tenants and small farmers owning less than five feddans. The
small farmers had to buy the lots at a price equal to the
compensation paid to the former owner.
The RCC also dealt with labor legislation and education. Initial
legislation raised minimum wages, reduced working hours, and
created more jobs to reduce unemployment. Enforcement of these
measures was lax until the early 1960s, however. In another
effort to reduce unemployment, the RCC instituted a policy of
providing employment in government service for all university
graduates, a practice that swelled the ranks of the bureaucracy
and left many skilled people underused. The government increased
its spending on education with the goal of educating all
citizens. Rent control was established, and the government
undertook construction of housing for workers. These programs
were expanded in the 1960s.
On January 17, 1953, all political parties were dissolved and
banned. A three-year transition period was proclaimed during
which the RCC would rule. On February 10, the Liberation Rally
headed by Nasser was launched to serve as an organization for the
mobilization of popular support for the new government. On June
18, Egypt was declared a republic, and the monarchy was
abolished, ending the rule of Muhammad Ali's dynasty. Naguib
became the first president and also prime minister. Nasser became
deputy prime minister and minister of interior. Other officers
took over other ministries.
Between 1952 and 1954, there was a struggle between Naguib and
Nasser and his colleagues on the RCC for control of the
government and over the future form of the government. Naguib was
to have one vote on the council and was responsible for carrying
out council decisions. He enjoyed considerable popularity, and he
developed his own following after conflicts involving policies
arose between him and the RCC. The conflicts came to a head on
February 23, 1954 when Naguib resigned. The RCC may have been
relieved at this decision, but the popular outcry was so great
that Naguib was reinstated as president of the republic. Nasser,
however, took the position of prime minister, previously held by
Naguib, and remained president of the RCC.
As soon as the Free Officers came to power, their immediate and
major concern was the evacuation of Britain from Egypt. At first,
the Free Officers feared that the British from their garrison in
the Suez Canal Zone might try to intervene on behalf of the king.
However, the British made it clear that they would not interfere
on behalf of the king nor take any action unless British lives
were threatened. Achieving the evacuation of the British,
however, involved two contentious issues--Sudan and the Suez
Canal. Sudan proved to be the easier to resolve. In February
1953, the Egyptian government agreed to a plan for self-
determination for Sudan to be implemented over a three-year
period. The Sudanese opted for independence rather than union
with Egypt.
The issue of the Suez Canal was more complex and linked to
Britain's desire to involve Egypt in the West's Cold War with the
Soviet Union. As early as September 1952, the British government
announced that there was no strategic alternative to the
maintenance of the British base in the canal area. In the opinion
of Anthony Eden, British foreign secretary, Egypt had to fit into
a regional defense system, the Baghdad Pact, and agreement on
this point would have to precede any withdrawal from the canal.
This was the period of pacts directed against the Soviet Union.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Southeast Asia Treaty
Organization were supposed to contain the Soviet Union in the
west and east. The Baghdad Pact, bringing into alliance Britain,
Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, and Iraq, was supposed to do the same on
the Soviet Union's southern borders. The British government was
attempting to force Egypt to join the alliance by refusing to
discuss evacuation of the Suez Canal base until Egypt agreed.
Egypt, however, would discuss only evacuation and eventual
administration of the base, and the British slowly realized the
drawbacks of holding the base without Egyptian acquiescence. By
October 1954, Nasser signed an agreement providing for the
withdrawal of all British troops from the base within twenty
months, with the provision that the British base could be
reactivated in the event of an attack on Egypt by an outside
power or an Arab League state or an attack on Turkey.
The agreement gained a mixed reception among Egyptians. Despite
the enthusiasm for ending imperialism, there were those who
criticized Nasser for rewriting the old treaty. Nasser's chief
critics were the communists and the Brotherhood. It was while
Nasser was justifying the canal agreement to a crowd in
Alexandria on October 26, 1954 that a member of the Brotherhood
attempted to kill him. The following day, in a show of courage,
Nasser deliberately exposed himself to crowds in Alexandria, at
stations en route to Cairo and in the capital. In Cairo he was
met by an estimated 200,000 people, his popularity having been
enormously strengthened by this incident.
Although the Muslim Brotherhood had a long history of anti-
British and antiregime activities, its leaders stipulated that
they would work with the Free Officers only if the officers would
agree to Brotherhood objectives. Because the Brotherhood would
not refrain from opposing the RCC, Nasser had outlawed the
organization in February 1954. Naguib had always had a certain
sympathy for the Brotherhood, and its leaders implicated him in
the attack on Nasser. It is doubtful that he had any connection
with the attack, but it gave Nasser the pretext he needed to
remove Naguib from the presidency, and he did so in November.
In February 1955, Eden visited Cairo seeking again to persuade
Nasser to join the Baghdad Pact. Nasser again refused. Many
Egyptians were skeptical of Britain's intentions and believed
that membership in the pact would amount to trading one form of
British domination for another. In addition, however, Nasser was
increasingly attracted to the Nonaligned Movement that eschewed
membership in either the Western or the Soviet camp. Nasser was
no particular friend of the Soviet Union, and the Communist Party
remained outlawed in Egypt. It was Western imperialism and
colonialism, however, that Egypt had been struggling against.
Nasser also had become an admirer and friend of President
Marshal Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia and Prime Minister
Jawaharlal Nehru of India. Tito had survived by aligning himself
neither with the West nor with the Soviet Union. Together, he and
Nasser developed the concept of nonalignment, which entailed
avoiding both pro- and anti-Soviet pacts but did not prevent them
from purchasing arms or receiving aid from either bloc.
Nevertheless, the West, particularly the United States, expected
Third World countries to support the West in return for both arms
and aid, as Nasser was soon to learn.
A turning point for Nasser was the Conference of the Nonaligned
Movement in Bandung, Indonesia in April 1955. There he found
himself the center of attention as a Third World leader, accepted
as a colleague by Chinese premier Chou En Lai, and greeted by
crowds in the streets. Egyptian participation in the conference,
along with other former colonies such as India, symbolized not
only the new postcolonial world order but also Egypt's own
independence.
Another turning point for Nasser came in February 1955 when he
became convinced that Egypt had to arm to defend itself against
Israel. This decision put him on a collision course with the West
that ended on the battlefields of Suez a year later. In February
1955, the Israeli army attacked Egyptian military outposts in
Gaza. Thirty-nine Egyptians were killed. Until then, this had
been Israel's least troublesome frontier. Since the end of the
1948 Arab-Israeli War, Egypt's leaders, from King Faruk to
Nasser, had avoided militant attitudes on the ground that Israel
should not distract Egypt from domestic problems. Nasser made no
serious attempt to narrow Israel's rapidly widening armaments
lead. He preferred to spend Egypt's meager hard currency reserves
on development.
Israel's raid on Gaza changed Nasser's mind, however. At first
he sought Western aid, but he was rebuffed by the United States,
France, and Britain. The United States government, especially the
passionately anticommunist Secretary of State John Foster Dulles,
clearly disapproved of Egypt's nonalignment and would make it
difficult for Egypt to purchase arms. The French demanded that
Egypt cease aiding the Algerian national movement, which was
fighting for independence from France. The British warned Nasser
that if he accepted Soviet weapons, none would be forthcoming
from Britain.
Rejected in this shortsighted way by the West, Nasser negotiated
the famous arms agreement with Czechoslovakia in September 1955.
This agreement marked the Soviet Union's first great breakthrough
in its effort to undermine Western influence in the Middle East.
Egypt received no arms from the West and eventually became
dependent on arms from the Soviet Union.
Relations between Nasser and the West reached a crisis over
plans to finance the Aswan High Dam. Construction of the dam was
one of the earliest decisions of the Free Officers. It would
increase both electrical generating power and irrigated land
area. It would serve industry and agriculture and symbolize the
new Egypt. The United States agreed to give Egypt an
unconditional loan of US$56 million, and Britain agreed to lend
Egypt US$14. The British loan was contingent on the American
loan. The World Bank (see Glossary) also agreed to lend Egypt an
additional US$200 million. The World Bank loan stipulated that
Egypt's budget be supervised by World Bank officials. To Nasser
these conditions were insulting and were reminiscent of Europe's
control over Egypt's finances in the 1870s.
While Nasser admitted to doubts about the West's sincerity, the
United States became incensed over Egypt's decision to recognize
communist China. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union was offering aid to
Egypt in several forms, including a loan to finance the Aswan
High Dam. Then, on July 19, the United States withdrew its loan
offer, and Britain and the World Bank followed suit. Nasser was
returning to Cairo from a meeting with President Tito and Prime
Minister Nehru when he heard the news. He was furious and decided
to retaliate with an action that shocked the West and made him
the hero of the Arabs.
On July 26, 1956, the fourth anniversary of King Faruk's exile,
Nasser appeared in Muhammad Ali Square in Alexandria where twenty
months earlier an assassin had attempted to kill him. An immense
crowd gathered, and he began a three-hour speech from a few notes
jotted on the back of an envelope. When Nasser said the code
word, "de Lesseps," it was the signal for engineer Mahmud Yunis
to begin the takeover of the Suez Canal.
The canal's owner was the Suez Canal Company, an international
company with headquarters in Paris. Anthony Eden, then British
prime minister, called the nationalization of the canal "theft,"
and United States secretary of state Dulles said Nasser would
have to be made to "disgorge" it. The French and British depended
heavily on the canal for transporting oil supplies, and they felt
that Nasser had become a threat to their remaining interests in
the Middle East and Africa. Eden wanted to launch a military
action immediately but was informed that Britain was not in a
position to do so. Both France and Britain froze Egyptian assets
in their countries and increased their military preparedness in
the eastern Mediterranean.
Egypt promised to compensate the stockholders of the Suez Canal
Company and to guarantee right of access to all ships, so it was
difficult for the French and British to rally international
support to regain the canal by force. The Soviet Union, its East
European allies, and Third World countries generally supported
Egypt. The United States moved farther away from Britain and
stated that while it opposed the nationalization of the canal, it
was against the use of force.
What followed was the invasion of Egypt by Britain, France, and
Israel, an action known as the Tripartite Invasion or the 1956
War. Whereas the truth about the invasion eventually became
known, at the time the Conservative government in London denied
that it used Israel as an excuse for attacking Egypt. Eden, who
had an intense personal dislike for Nasser, concealed the
cooperation with Israel from his colleagues, British diplomats,
and the United States.
The plan, which was supposed to enable Britain and France to
gain physical control of the canal, called for Israel to attack
across the Sinai Desert. When Israel neared the canal, Britain
and France would issue an ultimatum for an Egyptian and Israeli
withdrawal from both sides of the canal. An Anglo-French force
would then occupy the canal to prevent further fighting and to
keep it open to shipping. Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion
agreed to the plan but informed Britain that Israel would not
attack unless Britain and France first destroyed the Egyptian air
force.
On October 28, Israeli troops crossed the frontier into the
Sinai Peninsula (also seen as Sinai), allegedly to destroy the
bases of Egyptian commandos. The first sign of collusion between
Israel and Britain and France came on the same day when the
Anglo-French ultimatum was handed to Egypt and Israel before
Israel had even reached the canal. British bombing destroyed the
Egyptian air force, and British and French paratroopers were
dropped over Port Said and Port Fuad. The Egyptians put up fierce
resistance. Ships were sunk in the canal to prevent transit. In
the battle for Port Said, about 2,700 Egyptian civilians and
soldiers were killed or wounded (see The 1956 War, ch. 5).
Although it was invaded and occupied for a time, Egypt can claim
to have emerged the victor. There was almost universal
condemnation of the Tripartite Invasion. The Soviet Union
threatened Britain and France with a rocket attack if they did
not withdraw. The United States, angered because it had not been
informed by its allies of the invasion, realized it could not
allow the Soviet Union to appear as the champion of the Third
World against Western imperialism. Thus, the United States put
pressure on the British and French to withdraw. Faced with almost
total opposition to the invasion, the anger of the United States,
and the threat of the collapse of the pound sterling, the British
agreed to withdraw. Severely condemned, Britain and France
accepted a cease-fire on November 6, as their troops were poised
to advance the length of the canal. The final evacuation took
place on December 22.
Israel, which occupied all of Sinai, was reluctant to withdraw.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower of the United States placed great
pressure on Israel to give up all its territorial acquisitions
and even threatened sanctions. The Israelis did withdraw from
Sinai, but they carried out a scorched earth policy, destroying
roads, railroads, and military installations as they went.
A United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) was established and
began arriving in Egypt on November 21. The troops were stationed
on the Egyptian side of the Egyptian-Israeli border as well as
along the eastern coast of Sinai. Israel refused to allow UN
troops on its territory. The UN troops were stationed on the Gulf
of Aqaba to ensure the free passage of Israeli shipping to Elat.
The troops remained in Egypt until 1967, when their removal
contributed to the outbreak of the June 1967 War.
Egypt reopened the canal to shipping in April and ran it
smoothly. It was open to all ships except those of Israel, and it
remained open until the June 1967 War (Arab-Israeli war, also
known as the Six-Day War). Diplomatic relations between Egypt and
Britain were not restored until 1969.
Nasser had won a significant victory. The immediate effect was
that Britain and France were finally out of Egypt. Nasser went on
to nationalize all other British and French assets in Egypt. The
Egyptians now had full control of the canal and its revenues. The
Suez crisis also made Nasser the hero of the Arab world, a man
who had stood up to Western imperialism and had prevailed.
In response to his increased prestige, Nasser emphasized the
Arab character of Egypt and its leadership role in the Arab
world. He had always had a concern for Arab causes, as shown by
his volunteering to fight in Palestine in 1948, but now this
tendency was amplified. His Egyptian nationalism became Arab
nationalism when he decided that if the Arab countries worked
together, they would have the resources to solve their individual
problems. In addition, the move toward nationalization, which
started with French and British assets, continued in Egypt and
became a cornerstone of Nasser's administration.
Another result of the 1956 events was the increased Soviet
influence in Egypt stemming from the Soviet financing of the
Aswan High Dam construction and Soviet arms sales to Egypt. Thus,
Egypt became the cornerstone of the Soviet Union's Middle East
policy.
***Egypt and the Arab World
For a variety of conflicting reasons, the political leaders of
Syria in January 1958 asked Nasser for a union between their two
countries. Nasser was skeptical at first and then insisted on
strict conditions for union, including a complete union rather
than a federal state and the abolition of the Baath (Arab
Socialist Resurrection) Party, then in power, and all other
Syrian political parties. Because the Syrians believed that
Nasser's ideas represented their own goals and that they would
play a large role in the union, they agreed to the conditions. A
plebiscite was held in both countries in 1958, and Nasser was
elected president. Cairo was designated the capital of the United
Arab Republic. Nasser then visited Damascus, where he received a
tumultuous welcome. Arabs everywhere felt a new sense of pride.
Several Arab governments viewed Nasser with less enthusiasm,
however. The conservative monarchies of Saudi Arabia and Jordan
saw his ideas as a potential threat to their own power. Nasser
regarded these monarchs as reactionaries and as obstacles to Arab
unity. The United States moved to strengthen these regimes as
well as the government of Lebanon in an effort to offset the
influence of Egypt.
The hastily conceived union of Syria and Egypt did not last
long. There were too many problems to overcome: the two
countries were not contiguous, their economies and populations
were different, and the Syrian elite deeply resented being made
subservient to Egyptian dictates. The deciding factor for the
Syrian upper and middle classes came in July 1961 when Nasser
issued the so-called "socialist decrees" that called for
widespread nationalizations. This was followed by the elimination
of local autonomy and a plan for the unification of Egyptian and
Syrian currencies, a move that would deal the final blow to
Syrian economic independence.
There was also resentment in the army that paralleled the
resentment in civilian circles. On September 28, a group of army
officers called the High Arab Revolutionary Command staged a
successful coup and proclaimed the separation of Syria from
Egypt. Nasser decided not to resist and ordered his troops to
surrender. He blamed Syria's defection on "reactionaries" and
"agents of imperialism."
During the same period, Egypt attempted a separate union with
Yemen. This federation, called the United Arab States, fared no
better than the Syrian one. In December 1961, Nasser formally
ended it. In 1962 a military coup overthrew the royalist
government in Yemen. Nasser intervened to support the new
republican government against the Saudi-backed royalists, who
were attempting to regain control. This undertaking proved to be
a great drain on Egypt's financial and military resources. At the
height of its involvement, Egypt had 75,000 troops in Yemen.
Egypt's intervention also increased inter-Arab tensions,
especially between Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Egypt's defeat at the
hands of Israel in the June 1967 War obliged it to withdraw its
forces from Yemen and to seek peace. A settlement was achieved at
a conference in Khartoum in 1967.
***Nasser and Arab Socialism
Nasser concentrated on implementing his doctrine of Arab
socialism internally, especially after the break with Syria. The
National Charter, essentially drawn up by Nasser, was promulgated
in 1962. It established the basis of authority for the new
constitution that was to follow. It showed a change in
orientation from the nationalist goals of the original revolution
and emphasized that Egypt was an Arab nation based on Islamic
principles. In addition, the Arab Socialist Union (ASU) was
created to be the sole political party and a means of gathering
the support of the masses.
In July on the ninth anniversary of the 1952 coup, Nasser
announced a list of nationalizations that cut more deeply into
the private sector than had occurred in any country outside of
Eastern Europe. The decrees nationalized all private banks, all
insurance companies, and fifty shipping companies and firms in
heavy and basic industries. Eighty-three companies were obliged
to sell 50 percent or more of their shares to public agencies. A
second agrarian reform law lowered the limit for an individual
owner from 200 to 100 feddans. The nationalization program
continued in successive waves through 1962 and 1963 and involved
shipping companies, cotton-ginning factories, cotton-exporting
companies, pharmaceutical producers, ocean and river transport
companies, trucking companies, glass factories, and the largest
book-publishing company in Egypt. Between 1952 and 1966, E7
billion (for value of the Egyptian pound, see Glossary) in shared
and public assets were transferred to public ownership (see The
Role of Government, ch. 3).
The decrees also included legislation such as taxing gross
incomes over E5,000 at the rate of 90 percent, limiting base
salaries of public sector directors to E5,000, and limiting
membership on all boards of directors to seven persons, two of
whom must be workers. All joint-stock companies were required to
place 5 percent of all profits in government bonds and to allot
10 percent to workers in cash and 15 percent to worker housing
and community infrastructure. The work week was reduced to forty-
two hours, and the minimum wage was raised. Half of all seats in
Parliament and on all elective bodies and worker-management
boards were reserved for peasants and workers.
Elections were held in March 1964 for a new National Assembly
from a list of candidates drawn up by the ASU. Immediately after
the election, Nasser released a draft constitution that
functioned until 1971. The constitution was based on the National
Charter and emphasized freedom, socialism, and unity.
The position of some minority groups changed during this period.
Most Jews left Egypt, the last large group being several thousand
who did not have Egyptian citizenship and who were expelled
during the Suez crisis. The Greek community also decreased
considerably because many Greeks who did not like socialism
returned to Greece.
***Egypt, the Arabs, and Israel
During the late 1950s and early 1960s, the question of Israel
became more vexing for the Arab states. In 1964, in spite of the
problems that existed among the various Arab states, Nasser
initiated Arab summit meetings that were held in January, March,
and September in Cairo and Casablanca. The immediate reason for
the summits was to find a way to block Israel's plan to divert
the waters of the Jordan River to irrigate the Negev Desert, a
plan that would deprive the lower Jordan River valley of water.
The Arab states drew up a plan that called for diverting the
Jordan River in Syria and Lebanon but did not implement it.
The Arab summit meetings also took up other matters. League
members agreed to created a unified military command, the United
Arab Command, with headquarters in Cairo, but this plan, like
that of diverting the Jordan River, remained on paper. The Arab
leaders did implement a plan to create the Palestine Liberation
Organization (PLO) to be the primary organization of
Palestinians. The Arab governments, especially Egypt, were
becoming increasingly uneasy about the growing activities of
Palestinian guerrillas, and they wanted to create an organization
through which they could control such operations. They created
the Palestine Liberation Army, whose units would be stationed and
controlled by Egypt, Syria, and Iraq. Egypt exercised control of
the PLO until 1969 when Yasir Arafat, the leader of the guerrilla
organization called Al Fatah, took control of the organization
from Ahmad Shukairy, the choice of the Arab League governments.
***The June 1967 War
During the mid-1960s, tensions between the Arab states and
Israel increased. In November 1966, Egypt and Syria signed a
five-year defense pact. In the same month, Israeli forces crossed
into the West Bank of Jordan to destroy the village of As Samu in
retaliation for increasing Palestinian guerrilla raids. In 1967
Israeli leaders repeatedly threatened to invade Syria and
overthrow the Syrian government if guerrilla raids across the
Syrian border did not stop. In April 1967, there were serious
Israeli-Syrian air clashes over Syrian air space. Israeli prime
minister Levi Eshkol warned that Damascus could be occupied if
necessary.
The Soviet Union warned Egypt that they had information that the
Israelis had mobilized two brigades on the frontier. Nasser
reacted by sending troops to the Israeli border, and Syria
followed suit. The claim has been made that Nasser believed that
the presence of Egyptian troops would deter the Israelis from
attacking Syria. Israel responded by deploying its own forces. It
was clear that it would be difficult for Egypt to come to Syria's
aid according to the terms of their agreement because of an
obstacle--the presence of UNEF troops, stationed on the Egyptian
side of the Egyptian-Israeli border since the 1956 War. A great
deal of pressure to remove the troops had been put on Nasser by
Arab critics such as King Hussein of Jordan and Crown Prince
Faisal (Faisal ibn Abdul Aziz Al Saud) of Saudi Arabia, who
accused him of not living up to his responsibilities as an Arab
leader. He was accused of failing to match words with deeds and
of hiding behind the UN shield rather than thinking about
liberating the Palestinian homeland.
On May 16, Nasser made the move that led inexorably to war. He
asked the UN to remove the UNEF from the Egyptian-Israeli
frontier in Sinai. Once the UNEF was withdrawn, Nasser declared
he was closing the Strait of Tiran, which connects the Gulf of
Aqaba and the Red Sea, to Israeli shipping--a threat he never
carried out. Israel, for its part, regarded the withdrawal of the
UNEF troops as a hostile act and the closing of the strait as a
casus belli. Meanwhile, Jordan and Iraq signed defense agreements
with Egypt.
Field Marshal Amir, deputy supreme commander of the armed
forces, and Shams ad Din Badran, the minister of defense, urged
Nasser to strike first, saying the Egyptian army was strong
enough to win. The Soviet Union and the United States urged
Nasser not to go to war. Nasser publicly denied that Egypt would
strike first and spoke of a negotiated peace if the Palestinians
were allowed to return to their homeland and of a possible
compromise over the Strait of Tiran.
On the morning of June 5, Israel launched a full-scale attack on
Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. In three hours, at least 300 of Egypt's
430 combat aircraft were destroyed, many on the ground as the
pilots did not have time to take off. Israeli ground forces
started a lightning strike into Sinai and by June 8 had reached
the Suez Canal (see The June 1967 War, ch. 5). On that day, both
sides accepted a UN Security Council call for a cease-fire. By
June 11, the Arab defeat was total; Israel now held all of
historic Palestine, including the Old City of Jerusalem, the West
Bank, and the Gaza Strip, as well as Sinai and part of the Golan
Heights of Syria.
**The Aftermath of the War
***Internal Relations
Egypt's losses in the war were enormous: approximately 10,000
soldiers and 1,500 officers killed, 5,000 soldiers and 500
officers captured, 80 percent of military equipment destroyed.
Sinai was under Israeli control, and the Suez Canal was blocked
and closed to shipping.
On June 9, Nasser spoke on television and took full
responsibility for the debacle. He resigned as president, but the
Egyptian people poured into the streets to demonstrate their
support for him. The cabinet and the National Assembly voted not
to accept the resignation, and Nasser withdrew it.
Soon after the cease-fire, there was a broad shake-up in the
military and the government. Field Marshal Amir and Minister of
Defense Badran, who had been chosen for the post by Amir, were
forced to resign. General Muhammad Fawzi became commander in
chief, and Nasser retained the position of supreme commander. On
June 19, Nasser enlarged his political powers by assuming the
role of prime minister. He named a twenty-eight-member cabinet
and took control of the ASU as secretary general. Ali Sabri, the
vice president and secretary general of the ASU until that time,
was named deputy prime minister in the new cabinet.
On August 25, 1967, Amir and fifty other high-ranking military
and civilian officials were arrested and accused of plotting to
overthrow Nasser. Approximately two weeks later, the government
announced that Amir, who was once considered Nasser's closest
associate among the Free Officers, had committed suicide by
taking poison while under house arrest.
In March 1968, widespread demonstrations by students and workers
broke out in Cairo, Alexandria, and the industrial town of
Hulwan. The demonstrations were provoked by the decision of a
military tribunal that convicted two air force commanders of
negligence in the June 1967 War and acquitted two others. The
demonstrators demanded stiffer sentences for the four officers. A
sit-in by students at Cairo University ended only when the
government promised to retry the officers and released arrested
demonstrators.
Although the decision of the military tribunal was the immediate
cause of the demonstrations, the underlying cause was popular
frustration with the government repression over the preceding
sixteen years and the lack of popular participation in the
government. Nasser declared his desire to satisfy popular demands
and promised to present a plan of action. The new plan, approved
by a referendum in May, called for a new constitution that would
reform the ASU, grant parliament control over the government, and
allow greater personal and press freedom. Popular elections were
to be held for the National Assembly.
Nasser's reform of the existing political system was instituted
through the formulation of new laws and the election of new
members to all of the organs of the ASU. This initial phase of
his plan was completed during October 1968, with the election of
the reorganized Supreme Executive Committee (SEC) of the ASU.
Only eight people received the required majority of votes, and
the election of the remaining two members was postponed. The SEC
organized itself into five permanent committees: political
affairs, chaired by Anwar as Sadat; administration, chaired by
Ali Sabri; internal affairs, chaired by Abdul Muhsin Abu an Nur;
economic development, chaired by Muhammad Labib Shuqayr; and
culture and information, chaired by Diya Muhammad Daud. Nasser
headed the SEC, and its three remaining members were Husayn ash
Shafii, General Muhammad Fawzi, and Kamal Ramzi Stinu.
This reorganization proved unsatisfactory to those who had hoped
for an expansion of freedom and democracy. Thus, in November,
demonstrations broke out again with cries of "Nasser resign"
reported. Several demonstrators were killed or wounded in clashes
with the police. Universities and secondary schools were again
closed. The demonstrators were expressing popular frustration
over the failure of the government to implement the program
approved by the referendum. Nasser apparently was unwilling or
unable to widen popular participation in the government.
***External Relations
The first move of the Arabs after the June 1967 War was to hold
a summit conference in Khartoum in September 1967. At that
meeting, Nasser and Faisal came to an agreement: Nasser would
stop his attempts to destabilize the Saudi regime, and in return
Saudi Arabia would give Egypt the financial aid needed to rebuild
its army and retake the territory lost to Israel. At the
conference, the Arab leaders were united in their opposition to
Israel and proclaimed what became known as "the three no's" of
the Khartoum summit: no peace with Israel, no negotiations, no
recognition.
At the UN in November, the Security Council unanimously adopted
Resolution 242, which provided a framework for settlement of the
June 1967 War. This resolution, still not implemented in 1990,
declared that the acquisition of territory by force was
unacceptable. The resolution called for Israel to withdraw "from
territories occupied in the recent conflict," for the termination
of the state of belligerency, and for the right of all states in
the area "to live in peace within secure and recognized
boundaries." Freedom of navigation through international
waterways in the area was to be guaranteed, and a just settlement
of the "refugee" problem was to be attained.
Gunnar Jarring, a Swedish diplomat at the UN, started a series
of journeys in the Middle East in an attempt to bring both sides
together. In May 1968, Egypt agreed to accept the resolution if
Israel agreed to evacuate all occupied areas. By accepting the
resolution, Egypt for the first time implicitly recognized the
existence--and the right to continued existence--of Israel. In
return Egypt gained a UN commitment to the restoration of Sinai.
The PLO rejected the resolution because it referred to the
Palestinians only as "refugees" and thus appeared to dismiss
Palestinian demands for self-determination and national rights.
Syria characterized the plan as a "sellout" of Arafat and the
PLO. The disagreement on that issue was compounded when,
throughout 1969, tensions grew between the Lebanese government
and Palestinian groups within Lebanon's borders, and serious
clashes broke out. Syria condemned Lebanese action. Nasser
invited both parties to Cairo, and an agreement was negotiated in
November 1969 to end the hostilities.
Israel rejected Jarring's mission as meaningless, insisting that
negotiations should precede any evacuation. Israel also objected
to Nasser's support for the PLO, whose objective at the time was
the establishment of a secular state in all "liberated"
Palestinian territory. Nasser replied that if Israel refused to
support Resolution 242 while Egypt accepted it, he had no choice
"but to support courageous resistance fighters who want to
liberate their land."
The mutual frustration led to the outbreak of the so-called War
of Attrition from March 1969 to August 1970. Hoping to use
Egypt's superiority in artillery to cause unacceptable casualties
to Israeli forces dug in along the canal, Nasser ordered Egyptian
guns to begin a steady pounding of the Israeli positions. Israel
responded by constructing the Bar-Lev Line, a series of
fortifications along the canal, and by using the one weapon in
which it had absolute superiority, its air force, to silence the
Egyptian artillery. Having accomplished this with minimal
aircraft losses, Israel embarked on a series of deep penetration
raids into the heartland of Egypt with its newly acquired
American-made Phantom bombers. By January 1970, Israeli planes
were flying at will over eastern Egypt.
To remedy this politically intolerable situation, Nasser flew to
Moscow and asked the Soviet Union to establish an air defense
system manned by Soviet pilots and antiaircraft forces protected
by Soviet troops. To obtain Soviet aid, Nasser had to grant the
Soviet Union control over a number of Egyptian airfields as well
as operational control over a large portion of the Egyptian army.
The Soviet Union sent between 10,000 and 15,000 Soviet troops and
advisers to Egypt, and Soviet pilots flew combat missions. A
screen of surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) was set up, and Soviet
pilots joined Egyptian ones in patrolling Egyptian air space.
After the June 1967 War, the Soviet Union poured aid into Egypt
to replace lost military equipment and rebuild the armed forces.
However, by sending troops and advisers to Egypt and pilots to
fly combat missions, the Soviet Union took a calculated risk of
possible superpower confrontation over the Middle East. This
added risk occurred because the United States under the Nixon
administration was supplying Israel with military aid and
regarded Israel as a bulwark against Soviet expansion in the
area.
Many plans for peace were formulated and rejected, but on June
25, 1970, the Rogers Plan, put forth by United States secretary
of state William Rogers, started a dialogue that eventually led
to the long-awaited cease-fire in the War of Attrition along the
Suez Canal. Basically, the plan was a modification of Resolution
242. Shortly after the plan was announced, from June 29 to July
17, Nasser visited Moscow. Discussions were held on the Rogers
Plan, a newly formed Moscow peace plan, and the future of Soviet-
Egyptian relations.
After his return to Egypt, Nasser declared a major policy shift
based on his assertion that Egypt must be respected for doing
what it could on its own because the other Arab states were not
prepared to wage war with Israel. This policy shift set the stage
for Egypt's acceptance of the Rogers Plan in July, to the
surprise of Israel and the consternation of many Arab states that
feared Egypt would sign a separate peace agreement with Israel.
Jordan, however, followed Egypt's lead and accepted the plan.
Israel accepted the plan in August.
Egyptian-Israeli fighting halted along the Suez Canal on August
7, 1970, in accordance with the first phase of the plan, and a
ninety-day truce began. Palestinian guerrilla groups in
opposition to the cease-fire continued to engage in small-scale
actions on the Jordanian-Syrian-Lebanese fronts.
PLO leader Arafat's open criticism of the parties accepting the
truce led Nasser to close down the Voice of Palestine radio
station in Cairo and to terminate most of the material support
Egypt provided to the PLO. In addition, many PLO activists were
expelled from Egypt. Within a month, the guerrillas had
effectively undermined progress on the Rogers Plan by a series of
acts, including the hijacking of five international airplanes in
early September 1970, thus triggering the Jordanian civil war
that month.
King Hussein launched a major Jordanian military drive against
the Jordan-based Palestinian guerrilla groups on September 14,
partly out of fear that their attacks on Israel would sabotage
the truce, but primarily because the guerrillas were becoming
powerful enough to challenge his government. Nasser's position on
these events, as in the preceding year when hostilities broke out
between the Palestinians and Lebanese, was based on a desire to
stop any form of intra-Arab conflict. He was extremely angry when
Syria sent an armored force into Jordan to support the
guerrillas. The United States and Israel offered assistance to
the beleaguered King Hussein.
Nasser called for a meeting in Cairo to stop the civil war. The
Arab summit finally came about on September 26 after bloody
military engagements in which Jordan decisively repulsed the
Syrians and seemed to be defeating the PLO, although PLO forces
were not pushed out of Jordan until July 1971. On September 27,
1970, Hussein and Arafat agreed to a fourteen-point cease-fire
under Nasser's mediation, officially ending the war.
The effort by Nasser to bring about this unlikely reconciliation
between two bitter enemies was enormous. He was by then a tired
and sick man. He had been suffering from diabetes since 1958 and
from arteriosclerosis of the leg. He had treatment in the Soviet
Union, and his doctors had warned him to avoid physical and
emotional strain. He had ignored their advice and suffered a
heart attack in September 1969. The strain of the summit was too
much. He felt ill at the airport on September 28 when bidding
good-bye to Arab leaders and returned home to bed. He had another
heart attack and died that afternoon.
***Nasser's Legacy
When news of Nasser's death was announced, Egyptians took to the
streets by the tens of thousands to express shock and grief at
the death of their leader. In spite of the doubts that many
Egyptians may have felt about the path on which Nasser had taken
Egypt, the sense of loss was overwhelming, and there was great
uncertainty about the future. It has been argued that Nasser's
rule was not a great success; that there were almost as many
landless peasants in 1970 as when the Free Officers took over in
1952 because it was the wealthier peasants who had profited and
still controlled the villages; that the army had done no better
in 1967 after fifteen years of the revolution than it had done in
1948 or 1956; that nationalization had caused inefficiency and
corruption; and, finally, that repression was so pervasive that
Egyptians were less free than they had been in the past.
It was under Nasser that Egypt finally succeeded in ridding
itself of the last vestiges of British imperialism; that Egypt
attempted to steer a middle course between the Western countries
and the Soviet Union and its allies and in so doing became a
founder of the Nonaligned Movement that exists to this day; that
Egypt moved out of the isolation the British had imposed on the
country and assumed a leadership position in the Arab world; and
that Egypt became the "beating heart" of pan-Arabism and the
symbol of renewed Arab pride.
Internally, Nasser destroyed the political and economic power of
the old feudal landowning class. Education and employment
opportunities were made available to all Egyptians regardless of
class or sex. Women were encouraged to get an education and go to
work as part of the national struggle for economic progress and
development. After the revolution, women were at last granted the
right to vote. Nasser emphasized social programs to improve the
living and working conditions of the peasants and workers, such
as the electrification of villages, worker housing, minimum wage
laws, decreased working hours, and worker participation in
management. Industrialization intensified, and the country became
less dependent on the export of cotton. The economy grew at
acceptable rates in spite of some problems. After the June 1967
War, however, the military expenditures began to absorb about 25
percent of Egypt's gross national product (GNP--see Glossary).
Also, the population increase that had begun in the 1940s began
to overtake the economic advances.
It is true that Nasser never really opened up his rule to
popular participation. He once admitted that he had become so
used to conspiracy, by necessity, that he tended to see a
conspiracy in everything, a view that prevented him from
conducting an open rule. He wanted to establish a basis of
support for his regime but one that would not require the regime
to give significant power to the public (see The Presidency, ch.
4). He felt that an ideology such as socialism might accomplish
this, but at the same time he feared that the commitment would be
to the ideology and not to him. Thus, when Nasser died in 1970 he
left behind an imperfect and unfinished revolution.
***Sadat Takes Over, 1970-73
When Nasser died, it became apparent that his successor, Anwar
as Sadat, did not intend to be another Nasser. As Sadat's rule
progressed, it became clear that his priority was solving Egypt's
pressing economic problems by encouraging Western financial
investment. Sadat realized, however, that Western investment
would not be forthcoming until there was peace between Egypt and
Israel, Soviet influence was eliminated, and the climate became
more favorable to Western capitalism.
Sadat was a Free Officer who had served as secretary of the
Islamic Congress and of the National Union and as speaker of the
National Assembly. In 1969 he was appointed vice president and so
became acting president on Nasser's death. On October 3, 1970,
the ASU recommended that Sadat be nominated to succeed Nasser as
president. An election was held on October 15, and Sadat won more
than 90 percent of the vote. Almost no one expected that Sadat
would be able to hold power for long. Sadat was considered a
rather weak and colorless figure who would last only as long as
it would take for the political maneuvering to result in the
emergence of Nasser's true successor. Sadat surprised everyone
with a series of astute political moves by which he was able to
retain the presidency and emerge as a leader in his own right.
Sadat moved very cautiously at first and pledged to continue
Nasser's policies. On May 2, 1971, however, Sadat dismissed Ali
Sabri, the vice president and head of the ASU. On May 15, Sadat
announced that Sabri and more than 100 others had been arrested
and charged with plotting a coup against the government. Also
charged in the plot were Sharawy Jumaa, minister of interior and
head of internal security, and Muhammad Fawzi, minister of war.
These men were considered to be left-leaning and pro-Soviet. They
were arrested with other important figures of the Nasser era.
They had all resigned their positions on May 13, apparently in
preparation for a takeover. But anticipating their moves, Sadat
outflanked them and was then able to assert himself and appoint
his own followers, rather than Free Officer colleagues, to
leadership positions.
This action, which became known as the Corrective Revolution,
began Sadat's move away from Nasser's policies. He announced new
elections and a complete reorganization of the ASU. The armed
forces pledged their support for Sadat on May 15. There were also
some popular demonstrations in the streets in support of Sadat's
moves.
Sadat signed the first Soviet-Egyptian Treaty of Friendship and
Cooperation on May 27, 1971. He later explained that he did it to
allay Soviet fears provoked by his ouster of Ali Sabri and the
others and to speed up deliveries of Soviet military supplies.
Even as he was preparing to break the stalemate with Israel,
however, he was already thinking of expelling the Soviet
advisers.
***October 1973 War
On February 4, 1971, Sadat announced a new peace initiative that
contained a significant concession: he was willing to accept an
interim agreement with Israel in return for a partial Israeli
withdrawal from Sinai. A timetable would then be set for Israel's
withdrawal from the rest of the occupied territories in
accordance with UN Resolution 242. Egypt would reopen the canal,
restore diplomatic relations with the United States, which had
been broken after the June 1967 War, and sign a peace agreement
with Israel through Jarring. Sadat's initiative fell on deaf ears
in Tel Aviv and in Washington, which was not disposed to
assisting the Soviet Union's major client in the region.
Disillusioned by Israel's failure to respond to his initiative,
Sadat rejected the Rogers Plan and the cease-fire.
In May 1972, President Nixon met Soviet president Leonid
Brezhnev, and Sadat was convinced that the two superpowers would
try to prevent a new war in the Middle East and that a position
of stalemate--no peace, no war--had been reached. For Sadat this
position was intolerable. The June 1967 War had been a
humiliating defeat for the Arabs. Without a military victory, any
Arab leader who agreed to negotiate directly with Israel would do
so from a position of extreme weakness. At the same time, the
United States and the Soviet Union were urging restraint and
caution. However, the United States refused to put pressure on
Israel to make concessions, and the Soviet Union, which had
broken off diplomatic relations with Israel as a result of the
June 1967 War, had no influence over Israel. Internally, the
Egyptian economy was being steadily drained by the confrontation
with Israel. Economic problems were becoming more serious because
of the tremendous amount of resources directed toward building up
the military since the June 1967 War, and it was clear that Sadat
would have to demonstrate some results from this policy. In the
last half of 1972, there were large-scale student riots, and some
journalists came out publicly in support of the students. Thus,
Sadat felt under increasing pressure to go to war against Israel
as the only way to regain the lost territories.
In retrospect, there were indications that Egypt was preparing
for war. On July 17, 1972, Sadat expelled the 15,000 Soviet
advisers from Egypt. Sadat later explained that the expulsion
freed him to pursue his preparations for war. On December 28,
1972, Sadat created "permanent war committees." On March 26,
1973, Sadat assumed the additional title of prime minister and
formed a new government designed to continue preparations for a
confrontation with Israel.
Then on October 6, 1973, Egyptian forces launched a successful
surprise attack across the Suez Canal (see War of Attrition and
the October 1973 War, ch. 5). The Syrians carried out an attack
on Israel at the same time. For the Arabs, it was the fasting
month of Ramadan, and for Israel it was Yom Kippur. The crossing
of the canal, an astounding feat of technology and military
acumen, took only four hours to complete. The crossing was code-
named Operation Badr after the first victory of the Prophet
Muhammad, which culminated in his entry into Mecca in 630.
On October 17 the Arab oil producers announced a program of
reprisals against the Western backers of Israel: a 5 percent
cutback in output, followed by further such reductions every
month until Israel had withdrawn from all the occupied
territories and the rights of the Palestinians had been restored.
The next day, President Nixon formally asked Congress for US$2.2
billion in emergency funds to finance the massive airlift of arms
to Israel that was already under way. The following day, King
Faisal of Saudi Arabia decreed an immediate 10 percent cutback in
Saudi oil and, five days after that, the complete suspension of
all shipments to the United States.
Israel was shocked and unprepared for the war. After the initial
confusion and near panic in Israel followed by the infusion of
United States weaponry, Israel was able to counterattack and
succeeded in crossing to the west bank of the canal and
surrounding the Egyptian Third Army. With the Third Army
surrounded, Sadat appealed to the Soviet Union for help. Soviet
prime minister Alexei Kosygin believed he had obtained the
American acceptance of a cease-fire through Henry Kissinger,
United States secretary of state. On October 22, the UN Security
Council passed Resolution 338, calling for a cease-fire by all
parties within twelve hours in the positions they occupied. Egypt
accepted the cease-fire, but Israel, alleging Egyptian violations
of the cease-fire, completed the encirclement of the Third Army
to the east of the canal. By nightfall on October 23, the road to
Suez, the Third Army's only supply line, was in Israeli hands,
cutting off two divisions and 45,000 men.
The Soviet Union was furious, believing it had been double-
crossed by the United States. On October 24, the Soviet
ambassador handed Kissinger a note from Brezhnev threatening that
if the United States was not prepared to join in sending forces
to impose the cease-fire, the Soviet Union would act alone. The
United States took the threat very seriously and responded by
ordering a grade-three nuclear alert, the first of its kind since
President John F. Kennedy's order during the Cuban missile crisis
of 1962. The threat came to naught, however, because a UN
emergency force arrived in the battle zone to police the cease-
fire.
Meanwhile, Syria felt betrayed by Egypt because Sadat did not
inform his ally of his decision to accept the cease-fire. Two
days after Sadat, President Hafiz al Assad of Syria accepted the
cease-fire as well.
Neither side had won a clear-cut victory, but for the Egyptians,
it was a victory nonetheless. The Arabs had taken the initiative
in attacking the Israelis and had shown that Israel was not
invincible. The stinging defeats of 1948, 1956, and 1967 seemed
to be avenged.
The Israelis, however, paid a heavy price for merely holding
their attackers to an inconclusive draw. In three weeks, they
lost 2,523 personnel, two and a half times as many,
proportionally speaking, as the United States lost in the ten
years of the Vietnam war. The war had a devastating effect on
Israel's economy and was followed by savage austerity measures
and drastically reduced living standards. For the first time,
Israelis witnessed the humiliating spectacle of Israeli
prisoners, heads bowed, paraded on Arab television. Also, for the
first time captured Israeli hardware was exhibited in Cairo.
In Egypt the casualties included about 8,000 killed. The effect
of the war on the morale of the Egyptian population, however, was
immense. Sadat's prestige grew tremendously. The war, along with
the political moves Sadat had made previously, meant that he was
totally in control and able to implement the programs he wanted.
He was the hero of the day.
Negotiations toward a permanent cease-fire began in December
1973. In January 1974, Kissinger began his shuttle diplomacy
between Egypt and Israel. On January 18, the first disengagement
agreement was signed separately by Sadat and Golda Meir. A second
disengagement agreement was signed on September 1, 1975. The
agreement provided for a partial Israeli withdrawal in Sinai and
limited the number of troops and kinds of weapons Egypt could
have on the eastern side of the canal. Israel agreed to withdraw
from the Abu Rudays oil fields in western Sinai, which produced
small but important revenue for Egypt. Egypt also agreed not to
use force to achieve its aims, a concession that in effect made
Egypt a nonbelligerent in the Arab-Israeli conflict. As the price
for its agreement, Israel extracted important concessions from
the United States. Kissinger's secret promises to Israel included
meeting Israel's military needs in any emergency, preserving
Israel's arms superiority by providing the most advanced and
sophisticated weaponry, and pledging not to recognize or to
negotiate with the PLO.
On June 5, 1975, the Suez Canal was reopened. This was a great
moment for Sadat, not only politically but economically, because
the canal provided Egypt with considerable revenues (see Suez
Canal, ch. 3).
***Political Developments, 1971-78
On September 11, 1971, a new constitution was presented by Sadat
and approved by the electorate. The previous constitution had
been issued as "provisional" in 1964. The Constitution of 1971
provides additional guarantees against arbitrary arrest, seizure
of property, and other Nasser-era abuses. The responsibility of
the People's Assembly, which replaced the National Assembly, was
widened, but the president clearly retained dominant authority.
Sadat dissolved the old legislature on September 8, 1971, and on
September 19, he formed a new cabinet.
The Constitution provides that the president may issue binding
decrees, which was essentially the way Sadat ruled the country.
After ridding himself of Ali Sabri and his allies, Sadat
conducted his presidency without the constraints that Nasser had
faced. Sadat's government came to be composed of his own
handpicked followers, not of colleagues whose opinions he had to
consider. Especially during the euphoria following the October
1973 War, Sadat was able to consolidate the power of the
presidency in a way that Nasser never had (see The Presidency,
ch. 4).
Nevertheless, Sadat attempted to allow a certain degree of
political expression. Competitive, but not totally free,
elections were held for the People's Assembly on October 27,
1971. In 1975 Sadat permitted the establishment of three
groupings in the ASU to express the opinions of the left, the
right, and the center of the regime. By 1976 the three platforms
were permitted, within established guidelines, to act as separate
political entities, but each group needed to elect a minimum of
twelve deputies to the People's Assembly to be recognized. The
leftist group was originally known as the National Progressive
Unionist Organization (NPUO--later NPUP when it was allowed to
become a party) led by Khalid Muhi ad Din, a Free Officer and a
Marxist. The right-wing group was the Socialist Liberal
Organization (SLO--later the Liberal or Ahrar Party) led by
Mustafa Kamil Murad. The center group was known as the Egyptian
Arab Socialist Organization. The country's main political forces,
the Wafd, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Nasserites, and the
communists, were not allowed representation.
In the October 1976 election, not unexpectedly, the
progovernment center platform of the ASU won an overwhelming
majority, 280 seats; the SLP won 12 and the NPUP only 2.
Independent candidates won forty-eight seats. When he opened the
new assembly, Sadat announced that the platforms would become
political parties.
In July 1977, Sadat announced that he would establish his own
party, the National Democratic Party (NDP), signaling the end of
the Arab Socialist Union, which was merged with the NDP. Sadat
also wanted a more pliable left-wing opposition party, so the
Socialist Labor Party (Amal) was founded with Sadat's brother-in-
law as vice president.
Sadat also allowed comparative freedom of action to the Muslim
Brotherhood. Sadat felt he could use the Islamic fundamentalists
to counter the growing influence of the left. The leaders of the
Muslim Brotherhood were freed in 1974 along with other political
prisoners. They were not allowed to become a legal organization,
but they were allowed to operate openly and to publish their
magazine, Al Awd (The Return) as long as they did not criticize
the regime too sharply. This policy seemed to work until the
peace treaty with Israel, and then the Brotherhood became a
severe critic of the regime (see "The Dominant Party System," ch.
4).
The movement away from a one-party system matched Egypt's turn
away from the Soviet Union and toward the United States. Sadat
hoped that his new political and economic policies would attract
large sums of private American investment. He also felt that the
United States was the only country that could pressure Israel
into a final peace settlement. To enhance relations with the
United States and to respond to the Soviet Union's refusal to
reschedule repayments of Egypt's debt, Sadat unilaterally
renounced the Soviet-Egyptian Treaty of Friendship and
Cooperation in March 15, 1976.
***Egypt's New Direction
In April 1974, Sadat presented what he called the October
Working Paper, which described his vision of Egypt's future. The
paper committed Egypt to building a strong country, continuing
the confrontation with Israel, working toward Arab unity, and
playing a leading role in world politics. Perhaps the most
important part of Sadat's paper was the announcement of a new
economic policy that came to be called infitah, (opening or open
door; see Glossary and The Role of Government, ch. 3).
This new economic policy allowed increased foreign investment in
Egypt, greater participation by the private sector in the
Egyptian economy, more freedom for individuals to develop their
own wealth and property, and relaxed currency regulations so that
Egyptians could have access to foreign currency. The new
direction gradually changed Egypt in many ways: the shops filled
with foreign consumer goods; foreign companies built huge modern
hotels; and new wealth was displayed in a way that had not been
seen in Egypt since before the 1952 Revolution. Doubts began to
be expressed, however, about how much all this was actually doing
for the Egyptian people since foreign investment in long-term
agricultural or industrial projects was lacking.
In January 1977, Egyptians took to the streets in antigovernment
riots that demonstrated their disillusionment with infitah and
the nepotism and corruption it spawned. The cause of the riots
went back to late 1976 when Sadat, in an effort to solve the
country's economic problems, asked the World Bank for loans. In
response to the bank's criticisms of public subsidies, the
government announced in January 1977 that it was ending subsidies
on flour, rice, and cooking oil and canceling bonuses and pay
increases.
The result was immediate and shocking. On January 18 and 19,
there was rioting in towns from Aswan to Alexandria, variously
described as the biggest upheaval since the 1919 riots against
the British, or a second Black Saturday. It was the first time
the army had been brought into the streets since 1952. For
thirty-six hours, the rioters unleashed their pent-up fury on
targets that symbolized the yawning gap between the haves and
have-nots, the frivolity and corruption of the ruling class, and
the incompetence and insensitivity of the administration. The
rioters shouted slogans like, "Hero of the crossing, where is our
breakfast?" and "Thieves of the infitah, the people are
famished." There were also shouts of "Nasser, Nasser." In the
clashes between demonstrators and police, 800 persons were
killed, and several thousands were wounded, according to
unofficial estimates. The rioting ended when the government
canceled the price increases while retaining 10 percent wage
increases and other benefits for public sector employees.
***Peace with Israel
In 1977 the outlook for peace between Israel and Egypt was not
good. Israel still held most of Sinai, and negotiations had been
at a stalemate since the second disengagement agreement in 1975.
Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin was a hard-liner and a
supporter of Israeli expansion. He approved the development of
settlements on the occupied West Bank and reprisal raids into
southern Lebanon. He also refused to approve any negotiation with
the PLO. After the food riots of January 1977, Sadat decided that
something dramatic had to be done, and so on November 19, 1977,
in response to an invitation from Begin, Sadat journeyed to
Jerusalem.
The world was amazed by this courageous move. The reaction in
Egypt was generally favorable. Many Egyptians accepted peace with
Israel if it meant regaining Egyptian territories. They were
tired of bearing the major burden of the confrontation and,
considering the sacrifices Egypt had already made, felt that the
Palestinians were ungrateful. Of the Arab countries, only Sudan,
Oman, and Morocco were favorable to Sadat's trip. In the other
Arab states, there was shock and dismay. The Arabs felt that
Sadat had betrayed the cause of Arab solidarity and the
Palestinians. In spite of Sadat's denials, the Arabs believed
that he intended to go it alone and make a separate peace with
Israel.
In fact, that is what happened. In December 1977, Egypt and
Israel began peace negotiations in Cairo. These negotiations
continued on and off over the next several months, but by
September 1978 it was clear that they were deadlocked. President
Jimmy Carter had become closely involved in the negotiations. In
an effort to break the deadlock, Carter invited Sadat and Begin
to Camp David. The negotiations were tense and almost broke down
several times. On September 17, however, Carter announced that
the Camp David Accords had been reached. They consisted of two
parts, the Framework for Peace in the Middle East and the
Framework for the Conclusion of a Peace Treaty between Israel and
Egypt. The Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty was signed on March 26,
1979. Israel agreed to withdraw from Sinai within three years of
the treaty; normal diplomatic and trade relations were to be
established, and Israeli ships would pass unhindered through the
canal. Egypt, however, would not have full sovereignty over
Sinai. A multinational observer force would be stationed in
Sinai, and the United States would monitor events there.
The Framework for Peace in the Middle East was an elaboration of
the "autonomy" plan that Begin had put forward nine months
before. A "self-governing authority" was to be established for a
five-year transitional period, by the third year of which
negotiations would begin to determine the final status of the
West Bank and the Gaza Strip and to conclude a peace treaty
between Israel and Jordan. Within one month of the ratification
of the treaty, Egypt and Israel were supposed to begin
negotiations for the establishment of the "elected self-governing
authority" in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. They set
themselves the goal of completing the negotiations within one
year so that elections could be held "as expeditiously as
possible." These deadlines came and went, and by 1990 the
Framework for Peace had become a virtual dead letter. Begin made
his position perfectly clear: Jerusalem would remain undivided;
settlement would continue, and autonomy would never become
sovereignty. There would be no Palestinian state. On May 12,
1979, shortly before the autonomy talks were supposed to begin,
deputy Geula Cohen, a Zionist extremist, introduced a bill,
adopted by the Knesset, that declared Jerusalem to be Israel's
united and indivisible capital.
The Camp David Accords made Sadat a hero in Europe and the
United States. The reaction in Egypt was generally favorable, but
there was opposition from the left and from the Muslim
Brotherhood. In the Arab world, Sadat was almost universally
condemned. Only Sudan issued an ambivalent statement of support.
The Arab states suspended all official aid and severed diplomatic
relations. Egypt was expelled from the Arab League, which it was
instrumental in founding, and from other Arab institutions. Saudi
Arabia withdrew the funds it had promised for Egypt's purchase of
American fighter aircraft.
In the West, where Sadat was extolled as a hero and a champion
of peace, the Arab rejection of the Camp David Accords is often
confused with the rejection of peace. The basis for Arab
rejection was opposition to Egypt's separate peace with Israel.
Although Sadat insisted that the treaty provided for a
comprehensive settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Arab
states and the PLO saw it as a separate peace, which Sadat had
vowed he would not sign. The Arabs believed that only a unified
Arab stance and the threat of force would persuade Israel to
negotiate a settlement of the Palestinian issue that would
satisfy Palestinian demands for a homeland. Without Egypt's
military power, the threat of force evaporated because no single
Arab state was strong enough militarily to confront Israel alone.
Thus, the Arabs felt betrayed and dismayed that the Palestinian
issue, the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict, would remain an
unresolved, destabilizing force in the region.
***The Aftermath of Camp David and the Assassination of Sadat
The Camp David Accords brought peace to Egypt but not
prosperity. With no real improvement in the economy, Sadat became
increasingly unpopular. His isolation in the Arab world was
matched by his increasing remoteness from the mass of Egyptians.
While Sadat's critics in the Arab world remained beyond his
reach, increasingly he reacted to criticism at home by expanding
censorship and jailing his opponents. In addition, Sadat
subjected the Egyptians to a series of referenda on his actions
and proposals that he invariably won by more than 99 percent of
the vote. For example, in May 1979 the Egyptian people approved
the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty by 99.9 percent of those
voting.
One of Sadat's most remarkable acts during this period was the
so-called Law of Shame, which was drafted at Sadat's express
instructions. Among the shameful crimes punishable under this law
were "advocating any doctrine that implies negation of divine
teaching," "allowing children or youth to go astray by advocating
the repudiation of popular, religious, moral, or national values
or by setting a bad example in a public place," and "broadcasting
or publishing gross or scurrilous words or pictures that could
offend public sensibilities or undermine the dignity of the
state." Offenders could be barred from public life or from
engaging in economic activity or managing their own property;
they could be condemned to internal exile or prohibited from
leaving the country. The Law of Shame was approved in a
referendum by 98.56 percent of the electorate. This was
remarkable since there was widespread opposition to the law,
which was denounced as "an act of shame."
In May 1980, an impressive, nonpartisan body of citizens charged
Sadat with superseding his own constitution. Their manifesto
declared, "The style in which Egypt is governed today is not
based on any specific form of government. While it is not
dictatorship, Nazism, or fascism, neither is it democracy or
pseudodemocracy."
In September 1981, Sadat ordered the biggest roundup of his
opponents since he came to power, at least 1,500 people according
to the official figure but more according to unofficial reports.
The Muslim Brotherhood bore the brunt of the arrests. The supreme
guide of the Brotherhood, Umar Tilmasani, and other religious
militants were arrested. Sadat also withdrew his "recognition" of
the Coptic pope Shenudah III, banished him to a desert monastery,
and arrested several bishops and priests. Also arrested were such
prominent figures as journalist Mohamed Heikal, and Wafd leader
Fuad Siraj ad Din. Sadat ordered the arrest of several SLP
leaders and the closing of Ash Shaab (The People) newspaper. A
referendum on his purge showed nearly 99.5 percent of the
electorate approved.
On October 6, while observing a military parade commemorating
the eighth anniversary of the October 1973 War, Sadat was
assassinated by members of Al Jihad movement, a group of
religious extremists. Sadat's assassin was Lieutenant Colonel
Khalid al Islambuli. The conspirators were arrested and tried. In
April 1982, two of the conspirators were shot and three hanged.
Whereas a number of Western leaders, including three former
United States presidents, attended Sadat's funeral, only one
member of the Arab League was represented by a head of state,
Sudan. Only two, Oman and Somalia, sent representatives. In Egypt
43 million people went on with the celebration of Id al Adha, the
Feast of Sacrifice, as if nothing had happened. There were no
throngs in the streets, grieving and lamenting, as there were
when Nasser died. In the Arab world, Sadat's death was greeted
with jubilation.
**MUBARAK AND THE MIDDLE WAY
Sadat's handpicked successor, Husni Mubarak, was overwhelmingly
approved in a national referendum on October 24, 1981. Sadat
appointed Mubarak vice president of the state in 1975 and of the
NDP in 1978. Mubarak, who was born in 1928 in Lower Egypt and had
spent his career in the armed forces, was not a member of the
Free Officers' movement. He had trained as a pilot in the Soviet
Union and became air force chief of staff in 1969 and deputy
minister of war in 1972.
In a speech to the People's Assembly in November 1981, Mubarak
outlined the principles of his government's policy and spoke
about the future he wanted for Egypt. Infitah would continue, and
there would be no return to the restrictive days of Nasser.
Mubarak called for an infitah of production, however, rather than
of consumption, that would benefit all of society and not just
the wealthy few. Food subsidies would remain, and imports of
unnecessary luxury goods would be curtailed. Opposition parties
would be allowed. The peace treaty with Israel would be observed.
Thus, Mubarak sought to chart a middle course between the
conflicting legacies of Nasser and Sadat.
Since 1981 Mubarak has allowed more overt political activity.
Slowly, parties and newspapers began to function again, and
political opponents jailed by Sadat were released. At the time of
the 1984 election, five parties were allowed to function in
addition to the ruling NDP. The left-wing opposition consisted of
the National Progressive Unionist Party, a grouping of socialists
led by Khalid Muhi ad Din, and the Socialist Labor Party. The
Wafd resurfaced and won a court case against its prohibition. One
religious party was licensed, the Umma. Not officially
represented were the communists, the Muslim Brotherhood, and
avowed Nasserites, although all three tendencies were represented
in other parties (see The "Dominant Party System," ch. 4).
In the 1984 election, a party had to win at least 8 percent of
the vote to be represented in the Assembly. The NDP received more
than 70 percent of the vote (391 seats). The Wafd, the only other
party to gain any seats, won fifty-seven. The NPUP received only
7 percent of the votes and consequently lost them all to the NDP.
There were some complaints that the election was rigged, but no
serious challenge was mounted against the results.
In addition to domestic programs, Mubarak was concerned to
regain the Sinai Peninsula for Egypt and to return his country to
the Arab fold. One of Mubarak's first acts was to pledge to honor
the peace treaty with Israel. In April 1982, the Israeli
withdrawal from Sinai took place as scheduled. A multinational
force of observers took up positions in Sinai to monitor the
peace. Egypt was allowed to station only one army division in
Sinai.
In 1983 Egypt's isolation in the Arab world began to end. In
that year, Arafat met Mubarak in Cairo after the PLO leader had
been expelled from Lebanon under Syrian pressure. In January
1984, Egypt was readmitted unconditionally to the Islamic
Conference Organization. In November 1987, an Arab summit
resolution allowed the Arab countries to resume diplomatic
relations with Egypt. This action was taken largely as a result
of the Iran-Iraq War and Arab alarm over the Iranian offensive on
Iraqi territories at the end of 1986 and throughout January and
February 1987. On Egypt's side, its economic crisis worsened, and
it needed economic assistance from the Arab oil states. Thus, the
summit resolution amounted to an exchange of Egyptian security
assistance in the Persian Gulf crisis for Arab aid to Egypt's
economy. The summit indicated that Mubarak, in attempting to
steer a middle course between the imposing legacies of Nasser and
Sadat, had brought Egypt back into the Arab fold and into the
center of Middle East peace making.
* * *
The literature on Egypt from ancient to modern times is
extensive. Good basic works on ancient Egypt are Egypt before the
Pharaohs by Michael H. Hoffman and Ancient Egypt, edited by B.G.
Trigger, B.J. Kemp, D. O'Connor and A.B. Lloyd. Also recommended
are Cyril Aldred's The Egyptians and Egypt to the End of the Old
Kingdom. Two readable, popular histories are Jill Kamil's The
Ancient Egyptians and Robert A. Armour's Gods and Myths of
Ancient Egypt. Egyptian art is covered in W. Stevenson Smith's
The Art and Architecture of Ancient Egypt.
The Arab Conquest of Egypt by Alfred Butler and Egypt During the
Middle Ages by Stanley Lane-Poole are classics that should be
read for the periods they cover. For Egypt during the medieval
period, there are also Robert Irwin's The Middle East in the
Middle Ages and Bernard Lewis's article, "Egypt and Syria," in
The Cambridge History of Islam. Egypt during the Ottoman period
is covered in P.M. Holt's Egypt and the Fertile Crescent, 1516-
1922.
For the late Ottoman period and the transition to modernity, two
important historical works are The Roots of Modern Egypt by
Daniel Crecelius and Islamic Roots of Capitalism by Peter Gran.
Valuable French works are Andr Raymond's Artisans et commer ants
au Caire au XVIIIe si cle and the collection of articles in
L'Egypte au XIXe si cle.
For the modern period, there are several good general histories,
including P.M. Holt's Egypt and the Fertile Crescent, 1516-1922,
which ends with World War I and Egyptian independence, and P.J.
Vatikiotis's The History of Egypt from Muhammad Ali to Sadat.
Roger Owen's The Middle East in the World Economy has informative
chapters on Egypt. Also important for an understanding of the
transformation that took place in Egypt in the nineteenth century
are Holt's Political and Social Change in Modern Egypt and
Gabriel Baer's Studies in the Social History of Modern Egypt.
Other important studies on particular aspects of this period
include Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid Marsot's Egypt in the Reign of
Muhmmad Ali; Robert Hunter's Egypt under the Khedives, 1805-1879;
Albert Hourani's intellectual history, Arabic Thought in the
Liberal Age, 1798-1939; Timothy Mitchell's Colonizing Egypt; and
Eric Davis's Challenging Colonialism. The definitive study of the
Urabi Revolt and the British invasion of 1882 remains Alexander
Scholch's Egypt for the Egyptians. Also important are the first
book-length history of Egyptian women in English, Women in
Nineteenth-Century Egypt by Judith Tucker, and two studies of the
development of the working class, Workers on the Nile by Joel
Beinin and Zachary Lockman, and Tinker, Tailor, and Textile
Worker by Ellis Goldberg.
The period of parliamentary democracy is well covered in Party
Politics in Egypt by Marius Deeb and The Wafd by Janice Terry.
For the revolutionary and postrevolutionary periods, there are
Anthony McDermott's Egypt from Nasser to Mubarak: A Flawed
Revolution and Derek Hopwood's Egypt: Politics and Society, 1945-
1984. Also important are Anouar Abdel-Malek's Egypt: Military
Society, John Waterbury's The Egypt of Nasser and Sadat, and
Raymond A. Hinnebusch, Jr.'s Egyptian Politics under Sadat.
Egypt's most recent history is covered in David Hirst's and Irene
Beeson's biography of Anwar Sadat entitled Sadat, Muhammad
Hasanayn Haykal's attempt to explain Sadat's assassination in
Autumn of Fury, and Robert Springborg's Mubarak's Egypt. (For
further information and complete citations, see Bibliography.)
**************************
* Chapter 2. The Society and Its Environment
Egyptian Society in 1990 reflected both ancient roots and the
profound changes that have occurred since Napoleon Bonaparte
invaded the country in 1798. Land tenure, crops, and cultivation
patterns had all been transformed during the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, and the country had become increasingly
urbanized and industrialized. Nevertheless, approximately half
the population still lived in rural areas where settlement
patterns remained defined, as they had been since pharaonic
times, by the Nile River and irrigated agriculture. Villages were
clustered along both banks of the Nile and along myriad
irrigation canals in the Delta.
The rise of commercial agriculture in the nineteenth century set
in motion a transformation of rural society. Land that was
previously held in common by a village and granted in usufruct to
individual families was transferred to private ownership. The
transfers created a small class of wealthy absentee landowners, a
somewhat larger class of relatively prosperous farmers who owned
medium-sized parcels of land, and an enormous class of small
farmers, sharecroppers, and landless casual laborers.
The land-reform measures implemented by the government in the
1950s and 1960s led to the redistribution of nearly 15 percent of
the arable land to about 10 percent of the rural population. Land
reform limited individual landownership to twenty-one hectares,
thus forcing the wealthiest landed families to sell most of their
holdings. Small peasant proprietors were the main beneficiaries
of the redistribution. By the early 1980s, however, continued
population growth and rising production costs had eroded many of
the accomplishments of land reform. Inheritance tended to
fragment already small holdings, and the number of landless
people increased.
Land reform was only one of several social programs initiated by
the Free Officers who led the 1952 Revolution (see The Revolution
and the Early Years of the New Government, 1952-56, ch. 1). The
majority of these officers, who came mostly from the middle
class, was determined to broaden opportunities in a society that
had been dominated by a narrow elite. They perceived education as
a critical force for change. Beginning in the nineteenth century,
secular education provided the country with the foundation for a
civil bureaucracy. Access to a university education and
government employment, however, was generally limited to the
urban upper classes until the mid-1930s, when sons of urban and
rural middle-class families were accepted into the military or
civil administration. Following the 1952 Revolution, educational
opportunities from primary school through university increased
substantially. Through the 1980s, university enrollments swelled
as increasing numbers of middle- and lower-class youth pursued
higher education in the hope of obtaining prestigious employment.
By the 1980s, overstaffing in the state bureaucracy had become a
major problem. Periodic discussion by the mass media on the need
to reform the government's hiring and promotion systems, which
gave preference to university graduates, caused anxiety among
students, many of whom had migrated from rural areas and faced
limited employment prospects in agriculture. Most of these
students perceived higher education and government employment as
means for achieving upward mobility. They therefore showed little
support for the proposed reforms, which would reduce their
opportunities.
Massive urbanization beginning after World War II has had a
pervasive and accelerating impact on the nation's cities,
especially Cairo and Alexandria. These cities, which were once
the enclaves of the relatively prosperous and privileged, have
attracted millions of rural migrants, including landowning
families' children who wanted to pursue an education and
illiterate sons and daughters of poor, landless peasants who were
willing to work as unskilled laborers. The migrants have adapted
to urban life by attempting to replicate the social organization
found in villages. Residential patterns, employment practices,
and socializing have tended to reflect and to reinforce
relationships formed in the countryside.
Religion, mainly Islam, is an integral aspect of social life.
Although most Egyptian Muslims respect and agree on the basic
tenets of Islam, their religious perspectives differ. Trained
theologians, for example, practice orthodox Islam while villagers
practice a simple form of the religion. Since the 1970s, there
has been a resurgence of Islamic political groups. Activists
ranged from persons fervent in religious practice to individuals
who favor the adoption of the Muslim legal code as the basis of
Egyptian law to others who espouse the violent overthrow of the
government to achieve an Islamic social order. Some leaders of
the Islamic political groups are former university students or
recent graduates whose families migrated from rural areas. Many
Muslims have responded favorably to these leaders, who are likely
to remain a potent political force in the 1990s.
**Geography
***Physical Size and Borders
Egypt, covering 1,001,449 square kilometers of land, is about
the same size as Texas and New Mexico combined. The country's
greatest distance from north to south is 1,024 kilometers, and
from east to west, 1,240 kilometers. The country is located in
northeastern Africa and includes the Sinai Peninsula (also seen
as Sinai), which is often considered part of Asia. Egypt's
natural boundaries consist of more than 2,900 kilometers of
coastline along the Mediterranean Sea, the Gulf of Suez, the Gulf
of Aqaba, and the Red Sea (see fig. 1).
Egypt has land boundaries with Israel, Libya, Sudan, and the
Gaza Strip, a Palestinian area formerly administered by Egypt and
occupied by Israel since 1967. The land boundaries are generally
straight lines that do not conform to geographic features such as
rivers. Egypt shares its longest boundary, which extends 1,273
kilometers, with Sudan. In accordance with the Anglo-Egyptian
Condominium Agreement of 1899, this boundary runs westward from
the Red Sea along the twenty-second parallel, includes the
Sudanese Nile salient (Wadi Halfa salient), and continues along
the twenty-second parallel until it meets the twenty-fifth
meridian. The Sudanese Nile salient, a finger-shaped area along
the Nile River (Nahr an Nil) north of the twenty-second parallel,
is nearly covered by Lake Nasser, which was created when the
Aswan High Dam was constructed in the 1960s. An "administrative"
boundary, which supplements the main Egyptian-Sudanese boundary
permits nomadic tribes to gain access to water holes at the
eastern end of Egypt's southern frontier. The administrative
boundary departs from the international boundary in two places;
Egypt administers the area south of the twenty-second parallel,
and Sudan administers the area north of it.
Egypt shares all 1,150 kilometers of the western border with
Libya. This border was defined in 1925 under an agreement with
Italy, which had colonized Libya. Before and after World War II,
the northern border was adjusted, resulting in the return of the
village of As Sallum to Egyptian sovereignty. Egypt shares 255
kilometers of its eastern border in Sinai with Israel and 11
kilometers with the Gaza Strip.
Egypt is divided into twenty-six governorates (sometimes called
provinces), which include four city governorates: Alexandria (Al
Iskandariyah), Cairo (Al Qahirah), Port Said (Bur Said) and Suez;
the nine governorates of Lower Egypt in the Nile Delta region;
the eight governorates of Upper Egypt along the Nile River south
from Cairo to Aswan; and the five frontier governorates covering
Sinai and the deserts that lie west and east of the Nile. All
governorates, except the frontier ones, are in the Nile Delta or
along the Nile Valley and Suez Canal.
***Natural Regions
Egypt is predominantly desert. Only 35,000 square
kilometers--3.5 percent of the total land area--are cultivated
and permanently settled. Most of the country lies within the wide
band of desert that stretches from Africa's Atlantic Coast across
the continent and into southwest Asia. Egypt's geological history
has produced four major physical regions: the Nile Valley and
Delta, the Western Desert (also known as the Libyan Desert), the
Eastern Desert (also known as the Arabian Desert), and the Sinai
Peninsula (see fig. 3). The Nile Valley and Delta is the most
important region because it supports 99 percent of the population
on the country's only cultivable land.
***Nile Valley and Delta
The Nile Valley and Delta, the most extensive oasis on earth,
was created by the world's second-longest river and its seemingly
inexhaustible sources. Without the topographic channel that
permits the Nile to flow across the Sahara, Egypt would be
entirely desert; the Nile River traverses about 1,600 kilometers
through Egypt and flows northward from the Egyptian-Sudanese
border to the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile is a combination of
three long rivers whose sources are in central Africa: the White
Nile, the Blue Nile, and the Atbarah.
The White Nile, which begins at Lake Victoria in Uganda,
supplies about 28 percent of the Nile's waters in Egypt. In its
course from Lake Victoria to Juba in southern Sudan, the
elevation of the White Nile's channel drops more than 600 meters.
In its 1,600-kilometer course from Juba to Khartoum, Sudan's
capital, the river descends only 75 meters. In southern and
central Sudan, the White Nile passes through a wide, flat plain
covered with swamp vegetation and slows almost to stagnation.
The Blue Nile, which originates at Lake Tana in Ethiopia,
provides an average of 58 percent of the Nile's waters in Egypt.
It has a steeper gradient and flows more swiftly than the White
Nile, which it joins at Khartoum. Unlike the White Nile, the Blue
Nile carries a considerable amount of sediment; for several
kilometers north of Khartoum, water closer to the eastern bank of
the river is visibly muddy and comes from the Blue Nile, while
the water closer to the western bank is clearer and comes from
the White Nile.
The much shorter Atbarah River, which also originates in
Ethiopia, joins the main Nile north of Khartoum between the fifth
and sixth cataracts (areas of steep rapids) and provides about 14
percent of the Nile's waters in Egypt. During the low-water
season, which runs from January to June, the Atbarah shrinks to a
number of pools. But in late summer, when torrential rains fall
on the Ethiopian plateau, the Atbarah provides 22 percent of the
Nile's flow.
The Blue Nile has a similar pattern. It contributes 17 percent
of the Nile's waters in the low-water season and 68 percent
during the high-water season. In contrast, the White Nile
provides only 10 percent of the Nile's waters during the
high-water season but contributes more than 80 percent during the
low-water period. Thus, before the Aswan High Dam was completed
in 1971, the White Nile watered the Egyptian stretch of the river
throughout the year, whereas the Blue Nile, carrying seasonal
rain from Ethiopia, caused the Nile to overflow its banks and
deposit a layer of fertile mud over adjacent fields. The great
flood of the main Nile usually occurred in Egypt during August,
September, and October, but it sometimes began as early as June
at Aswan and often did not completely wane until January.
The Nile enters Egypt a few kilometers north of Wadi Halfa, a
Sudanese town that was completely rebuilt on high ground when its
original site was submerged in the reservoir created by the Aswan
High Dam. As a result of the dam's construction, the Nile
actually begins its flow into Egypt as Lake Nasser, which extends
south from the dam 320 kilometers to the border and an additional
158 kilometers into Sudan. Lake Nasser's waters fill the area
through Lower Nubia (Upper Egypt and northern Sudan) within the
narrow gorge between the cliffs of sandstone and granite created
by the flow of the river over many centuries. Below Aswan the
cultivated floodplain strip widens to as much as twenty
kilometers. North of Isna (160 kilometers north of Aswan), the
plateau on both sides of the valley rises as high as 550 meters
above sea level; at Qina (about 90 kilometers north of Isna) the
300-meter limestone cliffs force the Nile to change course to the
southwest for about 60 kilometers before turning northwest for
about 160 kilometers to Asyut. Northward from Asyut, the
escarpments on both sides diminish, and the valley widens to a
maximum of twenty-two kilometers. The Nile reaches the Delta at
Cairo.
At Cairo the Nile spreads out over what was once a broad estuary
that has been filled by silt deposits to form a fertile,
fan-shaped delta about 250 kilometers wide at the seaward base
and about 160 kilometers from north to south. The Nile Delta
extends over approximately 22,000 square kilometers (roughly
equivalent in area to Massachusetts). According to historical
accounts from the first century A.D., seven branches of the Nile
once ran through the Delta. According to later accounts, the Nile
had only six branches by around the twelfth century. Since then,
nature and man have closed all but two main outlets: the east
branch, Damietta (also seen as Dumyat; 240 kilometers long), and
the west branch, Rosetta (235 kilometers long). Both outlets are
named after the ports located at their mouths. A network of
drainage and irrigation canals supplements these remaining
outlets. In the north near the coast, the Delta embraces a series
of salt marshes and lakes; most notable among them are Idku, Al
Burullus, and Manzilah.
The fertility and productivity of the land adjacent to the Nile
depends largely on the silt deposited by floodwaters.
Archaeological research indicates that people once lived at a
much higher elevation along the river than they do today,
probably because the river was higher or the floods more severe.
The timing and the amount of annual flow were always
unpredictable. Measurements of annual flows as low as 1.2 billion
cubic meters and as high as 4.25 billion cubic meters have been
recorded. For centuries Egyptians attempted to predict and take
advantage of the flows and moderate the severity of floods.
The construction of dams on the Nile, particularly the Aswan
High Dam, transformed the mighty river into a large and
predictable irrigation ditch. Lake Nasser, the world's largest
artificial lake, has enabled planned use of the Nile regardless
of the amount of rainfall in Central Africa and East Africa. The
dams have also affected the Nile Valley's fertility, which was
dependent for centuries not only on the water brought to the
arable land but also on the materials left by the water.
Researchers have estimated that beneficial silt deposits in the
valley began about 10,000 years ago. The average annual deposit
of arable soil through the course of the river valley was about
nine meters. Analysis of the flow revealed that 10.7 million tons
of solid matter passed Cairo each year. Today the Aswan High Dam
obstructs most of this sediment, which is now retained in Lake
Nasser. The reduction in annual silt deposits has contributed to
rising water tables and increasing soil salinity in the Delta,
the erosion of the river's banks in Upper Egypt, and the erosion
of the alluvial fan along the shore of the Mediterranean Sea.
***Western Desert
The Western Desert covers about 700,000 square kilometers
(equivalent in size to Texas) and accounts for about two-thirds
of Egypt's land area. This immense desert to the west of the Nile
spans the area from the Mediterranean Sea south to the Sudanese
border. The desert's Jilf al Kabir Plateau has an altitude of
about 1,000 meters, an exception to the uninterrupted territory
of basement rocks covered by layers of horizontally bedded
sediments forming a massive plain or low plateau. The Great Sand
Sea lies within the desert's plain and extends from the Siwah
Oasis to Jilf al Kabir. Scarps (ridges) and deep depressions
(basins) exist in several parts of the Western Desert, and no
rivers or streams drain into or out of the area.
The government has considered the Western Desert a frontier
region and has divided it into two governorates at about the
twenty-eighth parallel: Matruh to the north and New Valley (Al
Wadi al Jadid) to the south. There are seven important
depressions in the Western Desert, and all are considered oases
except the largest, Qattara, the water of which is salty. The
Qattara Depression is approximately 15,000 square kilometers
(about the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island) and is largely
below sea level (its lowest point is 133 meters below sea level).
Badlands, salt marshes, and salt lakes cover the sparsely
inhabited Qattara Depression.
Limited agricultural production, the presence of some natural
resources, and permanent settlements are found in the other six
depressions, all of which have fresh water provided by the Nile
or by local groundwater. The Siwah Oasis, close to the Libyan
border and west of Qattara, is isolated from the rest of Egypt
but has sustained life since ancient times. The Siwa's cliff-hung
Temple of Amun was renowned for its oracles for more than 1,000
years. Herodotus and Alexander the Great were among the many
illustrious people who visited the temple in the pre-Christian
era.
The other major oases form a topographic chain of basins
extending from the Al Fayyum Oasis (sometimes called the Fayyum
Depression) which lies sixty kilometers southwest of Cairo, south
to the Bahriyah, Farafirah, and Dakhilah oases before reaching
the country's largest oasis, Kharijah. A brackish lake, Birkat
Qarun, at the northern reaches of Al Fayyum Oasis, drained into
the Nile in ancient times. For centuries sweetwater artesian
wells in the Fayyum Oasis have permitted extensive cultivation in
an irrigated area that extends over 1,800 square kilometers.
***Eastern Desert
The topographic features of the region east of the Nile are very
different from those of the Western Desert. The relatively
mountainous Eastern Desert rises abruptly from the Nile and
extends over an area of approximately 220,000 square kilometers
(roughly equivalent in size to Utah). The upward-sloping plateau
of sand gives way within 100 kilometers to arid, defoliated,
rocky hills running north and south between the Sudan border and
the Delta. The hills reach elevations of more than 1,900 meters.
The region's most prominent feature is the easterly chain of
rugged mountains, the Red Sea Hills, which extend from the Nile
Valley eastward to the Gulf of Suez and the Red Sea. This
elevated region has a natural drainage pattern that rarely
functions because of insufficient rainfall. It also has a complex
of irregular, sharply cut wadis that extend westward toward the
Nile.
The Eastern Desert is generally isolated from the rest of the
country. There is no oasis cultivation in the region because of
the difficulty in sustaining any form of agriculture. Except for
a few villages on the Red Sea coast, there are no permanent
settlements. The importance of the Eastern Desert lies in its
natural resources, especially oil (see Energy, ch. 3). A single
governorate, the capital of which is at Al Ghardaqah, administers
the entire region.
***Sinai Peninsula
This triangular area covers about 61,100 square kilometers
(slightly smaller than West Virginia). Similar to the desert, the
peninsula contains mountains in its southern sector that are a
geological extension of the Red Sea Hills, the low range along
the Red Sea coast that includes Mount Catherine (Jabal Katrinah),
the country's highest point--2,642 meters. The Red Sea is named
after these mountains, which are red.
The southern side of the peninsula has a sharp escarpment that
subsides after a narrow coastal shelf that slopes into the Red
Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba. The elevation of Sinai's southern rim
is about 1,000 meters. Moving northward, the elevation of this
limestone plateau decreases. The northern third of Sinai is a
flat, sandy coastal plain, which extends from the Suez Canal into
the Gaza Strip and Israel.
Before the Israeli military occupied Sinai during the June 1967
War (Arab-Israeli war, also known as the Six-Day War), a single
Egyptian governorate administered the whole peninsula. By 1982
after all of Sinai was returned to Egypt, the central government
divided the peninsula into two governorates. North Sinai has its
capital at Al Arish and the South Sinai has its capital in At
Tur.
***Climate
Throughout Egypt, days are commonly warm or hot, and nights are
cool. Egypt has only two seasons: a mild winter from November to
April and a hot summer from May to October. The only differences
between the seasons are variations in daytime temperatures and
changes in prevailing winds. In the coastal regions, temperatures
range between an average minimum of 14*C in winter and an average
maximum of 30*C in summer.
Temperatures vary widely in the inland desert areas, especially
in summer, when they may range from 7*C at night to 43*C during
the day. During winter, temperatures in the desert fluctuate less
dramatically, but they can be as low as 0*C at night and as high
as 18*C during the day.
The average annual temperature increases moving southward from
the Delta to the Sudanese border, where temperatures are similar
to those of the open deserts to the east and west. In the north,
the cooler temperatures of Alexandria during the summer have made
the city a popular resort. Throughout the Delta and the northern
Nile Valley, there are occasional winter cold spells accompanied
by light frost and even snow. At Aswan, in the south, June
temperatures can be as low as 10*C at night and as high as 41*C
during the day when the sky is clear.
Egypt receives fewer than eighty millimeters of precipitation
annually in most areas. Most rain falls along the coast, but even
the wettest area, around Alexandria, receives only about 200
millimeters of precipitation per year. Alexandria has relatively
high humidity, but sea breezes help keep the moisture down to a
comfortable level. Moving southward, the amount of precipitation
decreases suddenly. Cairo receives a little more than one
centimeter of precipitation each year. The city, however, reports
humidity as high as 77 percent during the summer. But during the
rest of the year, humidity is low. The areas south of Cairo
receive only traces of rainfall. Some areas will go years without
rain and then experience sudden downpours that result in flash
floods. Sinai receives somewhat more rainfall (about twelve
centimeters annually in the north) than the other desert areas,
and the region is dotted by numerous wells and oases, which
support small population centers that formerly were focal points
on trade routes. Water drainage toward the Mediterranean Sea from
the main plateau supplies sufficient moisture to permit some
agriculture in the coastal area, particularly near Al Arish.
A phenomenon of Egypt's climate is the hot spring wind that
blows across the country. The winds, known to Europeans as the
sirocco and to Egyptians as the khamsin, usually arrive in April
but occasionally occur in March and May. The winds form in small
but vigorous low-pressure areas in the Isthmus of Suez and sweep
across the northern coast of Africa. Unobstructed by geographical
features, the winds reach high velocities and carry great
quantities of sand and dust from the deserts. These sandstorms,
often accompanied by winds of up to 140 kilometers per hour, can
cause temperatures to rise as much as 20*C in two hours. The
winds blow intermittently and may continue for days, cause
illness in people and animals, harm crops, and occasionally
damage houses and infrastructure.
**Population
Egypt's population, estimated at 3 million when Napoleon invaded
the country in 1798, has increased at varying rates. The
population grew gradually and steadily throughout the nineteenth
century, doubling in size over the course of eighty years.
Beginning in the 1880s, the growth rate accelerated, and the
population increased more than 600 percent in 100 years. The
growth rate was especially high after World War II. In 1947 a
census indicated that Egypt's population was 19 million. A census
in 1976 revealed that the population had ballooned to 36.6
million. After 1976 the population grew at an annual rate of 2.9
percent and in 1986 reached a total of 50.4 million, including
about 2.3 million Egyptians working in other countries.
Projections indicated the population would reach 60 million by
1996.
Egypt's population in mid-1990 was estimated at 52.5 million,
about an 8 percent increase over the 1986 figure. The increase
meant that the annual population growth rate had slowed slightly
to 2.6 percent. Although Egypt's overall population density in
1990 was only about fifty-four people per square kilometer, close
to 99 percent of all Egyptians lived along the banks of the Nile
River in 3.5 percent of the country's total area. Average
population densities in the Nile Valley exceeded 1,500 per square
kilometer--one of the world's highest densities (see fig. 4).
According to the 1986 census, 51.1 percent of Egypt's population
was male and 48.9 percent female. More than 34 percent of the
population was twelve years old or younger, and 68 percent was
under age thirty. Fewer than 3 percent of Egyptians were
sixty-five years or older. In 1989 average life expectancy at
birth was fifty-nine years for men and sixty years for women. The
infant mortality rate was 94 deaths per 1,000 births. Although
the urban population has been increasing at a higher rate than
the rural population since the 1947 census, approximately 51
percent of people still lived in villages in 1986. By the end of
1989, however, demographers estimated the urban-rural
distribution to be equal.
***Population Control Policies
Egypt's population is very large in relation to the country's
natural resources. Although it is not a perfect measure of the
impact of high population growth rates, the amount of land
cultivated by the average farmer provides a glimpse at the extent
of the problem. In slightly more than 150 years (1821-1976), the
per capita cultivated area dropped from 0.8 feddan (see Glossary)
to 0.27 feddan among the rural population. If the urban
population is included, the per capita cultivated area in 1976
amounted to only 0.15 feddan. The decline has meant that the same
amount of cultivated land must feed a continuously increasing
population. In 1974 Egypt, which had been a net exporter of
cereals for centuries, became a net importer of food, especially
grains.
As early as 1959, government economists expressed concern about
the negative impact of high population growth rates on the
country's development efforts. In 1966 the government initiated a
nationwide birth control program aimed at reducing the annual
population growth rate to 2.5 percent or less. Since then
state-run family planning clinics have distributed birth control
information and contraceptives. These programs were somewhat
successful in reducing the population growth rate, but in 1973
the rate began to increase again. Population control policies
tended to be ineffective because most Egyptians, especially in
rural areas, valued large families.
***Major Cities
Although Egypt's urban history is lengthy, modern urbanization,
characterized by massive and continuing rural-to-urban migration,
is largely a post-World War II phenomenon. Since 1947, urban
growth rates have averaged about one percentage point higher than
the rates for rural areas. Thus, for forty years, the urban
population has been expanding at the rate of 4 percent annually.
Cairo, the country's capital and largest city, has been affected
the most by this urbanization. Between 1947 and 1986, the city's
population grew from 1.5 million to more than 6 million (within
the city's corporate limits). During the same period, the
population of Giza (Al Jizah), across the Nile from Cairo, grew
even more dramatically, from 18,000 to 1.6 million. In 1989 an
estimated 10.5 million people, or 20 percent of all Egyptians,
lived in the urban agglomeration known as Greater Cairo, which
extended along both banks of the Nile from Shubra al Khaymah in
the north to Hulwan in the south. Within the city's boundaries,
the population density averaged 26,000 people per square
kilometer. In some of the more crowded quarters of the city, such
as Rawd al Faraj, densities were as high as 135,000 per square
kilometer.
Cairo is an ancient city, occupying a site that has been
continuously inhabited for more than 3,500 years. Over the
centuries, there have been nine distinct cities where Cairo is
located. The "modern" city was founded in 969 near the site of
ancient Egypt's Khere-ohe, better known in the West by its Greek
name of Heliopolis. In Arabic, "Cairo" means "victorious" and is
the same name used for the planet Mars. Cairo has consistently
been a city of preeminence in the Arab world for more than 1,000
years, but its political and economic influence within and beyond
Egypt has varied. One of its more illustrious periods ran from
1170 to 1345, when Cairo became one of the world's largest cities
with a population of about 500,000. The layout of central Cairo
remains similar to what it was during that time. Many of the
city's renowned mosques--there are more than 600 Islamic
monuments in Cairo--also date back to the medieval period.
Cairo's importance derived from its role as a center for the
production and export of textiles and refined sugar and for goods
manufactured from cotton, flax, and sugarcane. Cairo was also a
transshipment center for overland trade from India and Africa to
Europe.
The plague known as the Black Death devastated Cairo and the
rest of Egypt between 1347 and 1350. The plague killed about 40
percent of the country's population.
Cairo quickly lost its preeminent role as a transshipment center
when the Europeans discovered a maritime route to India and China
around the Cape of Good Hope. Cairo remained Egypt's
administrative and commercial center, but it experienced relative
economic stagnation for the next three centuries. By the time
Napoleon conquered the city in 1798, its population had declined
to approximately 200,000.
During the nineteenth century, the rise of the cotton export
trade, government sponsorship of industrial development, and the
completion of the construction of the Suez Canal in 1869
revitalized Cairo, and the city began to grow again. During the
last half of the nineteenth century, the French approach to urban
planning changed Cairo's layout. Egypt's ruler, Ismail (1863-79),
had been educated in France and aspired to have his capital rival
Paris. To coincide with the ceremonies for the opening of the
Suez Canal, Ismail proposed a design for "modern" Cairo. The
proposal included a wooden replica of La Scala opera house in
Milan. The structure was to host the premier of Giuseppe Verdi's
opera Aida. Ismail's efforts to build a modern Cairo resulted in
a separation--still apparent today--between the western part of
the city, called Al Izbakiya Gardens (which is European) and the
eastern part (which is Arabic).
Cairo has continued to grow rapidly since 1850, when its
population was approximately 250,000. By 1930 the population had
reached 1 million. Throughout the twentieth century, it has been
the most populous city in Africa and the Arab world. Cairo's
development has been most intense since World War II, and has
resulted in a variety of problems. The city's population, growing
about 300,000 per year in the 1980s, has strained urban services
to the breaking point. Public transportation was woefully
inadequate in the late 1980s, with about one of every four buses
out of commission at any given time. Public water supplies, sewer
facilities, and trash collection were all overburdened (see Urban
Society, this ch.). Housing was perhaps the most pressing problem
because persistent shortages of skilled labor and construction
materials hampered efforts to build residential units quickly
enough to meet demand. The demand for moderately priced housing
was especially high. Some people resorted to clandestine and
semilegal housing arrangements; as many as 200,000 wooden,
cardboard, and metal huts were constructed on the roofs of
apartment buildings. An estimated 500,000 people were living in
the mausoleums in the city's cemeteries.
Alexandria is Egypt's second largest city. Located on the
coastline of the Mediterranean Sea, it has been an important port
ever since it was founded by Alexander the Great more than 2,300
years ago. The city declined dramatically during the sixteenth to
eighteenth centuries when its maritime trade with Europe
virtually ceased as a result of new sea routes around Africa to
India. When the French landed at Alexandria in 1798, barely
10,000 people lived in the city. Alexandria grew substantially in
the nineteenth century because of industrialization and Egypt's
emergence as an exporter of agricultural commodities to Europe.
Between 1821 and 1846, Alexandria's population grew from 12,500
to 164,000. By the end of the century, its population had almost
doubled to 320,000. Between 1947 and 1986, Alexandria's
population grew from 700,000 to 2.7 million.
In 1990 Alexandria was a major industrial center that included
two large oil refineries; chemical, cement, and metal plants;
textile mills; and food processing operations. Alexandria is also
the country's most important harbor for exports and imports.
Egypt's third and fourth largest cities, Giza and Shubra al
Khaymah, are part of Greater Cairo. The rapid growth of these
cities since 1947 is directly related to the growth of Cairo.
Giza (1986 population 1.6 million), opposite the Nile River
island of Ar Rawdah, is the location of Cairo University and the
famed Pyramids of Giza. Shubra al Khaymah (1986 population
500,000), on the Nile north of Cairo's Bulaq quarter, is a
manufacturing suburb with a heavy concentration of textile
factories.
As of 1989, Egypt had nine other cities with populations greater
than 200,000. In the Delta were Al Mahallah al Kubra with a
population of 375,000, Tanta with 365,000, Al Mansurah with
335,000, Az Zaqaziq with 260,000, and Damanhur with 215,000.
These five cities were local administrative, commercial, and
manufacturing centers. At the northern and southern termini of
the Suez Canal were Port Said with a population of 358,000 and
Suez with 271,000. In Upper Egypt were Asyut on the Nile with a
population of 250,000 and Al Fayyum, an oasis with a population
of 215,000. Five other cities had populations ranging between
150,00 and 200,000. These included Al Minya, Aswan, and Bani
Suwayf in Upper Egypt; Kafr ad Dawwar in the Delta; and Ismailia
(Al Ismailiyah) on the Suez Canal.
***Emigration
The 1986 census estimated that 2.25 million Egyptian nationals
were working outside the country. Only small numbers of
Egyptians, primarily professionals, had left the country in
search of employment before 1974. Then, in that year, the
government lifted all restrictions on labor migration. The move
came at a time when oil-rich Arab states of the Persian Gulf and
neighboring Libya were implementing major development programs
with funds generated by the quadrupling of oil revenues in 1973.
By 1975 an estimated 500,000 Egyptians, mostly single, unskilled
men, were working on construction sites in Libya, Saudi Arabia,
Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. At least 50,000 others were
employed elsewhere in the Middle East. By 1980 more than 1
million Egyptians were working abroad. That number doubled by
1982. The emergence of foreign job opportunities alleviated some
of the pressure on domestic employment. Many of these workers
sent a significant portion of their earnings to their families in
Egypt. As early as 1979, these remittances amounted to US$2
billion, a sum equivalent to the country's combined earnings from
cotton exports, Suez Canal transit fees, and tourism (see
Remittances, ch. 3).
The foreign demand for Egyptian labor peaked in 1983, at which
time an estimated 3.28 million Egyptians workers were employed
abroad. After that year, political and economic developments in
the Arab oil-producing countries caused a retrenchment in
employment opportunities. The Iran-Iraq War decline in oil prices
forced the Persian Gulf oil industry into a recession, which
caused many Egyptians to lose their jobs. Up to 1 million workers
returned home. Most of the expatriate workforce remained abroad
but new labor migration from Egypt slowed considerably. In late
1989, the number of Egyptian workers abroad still exceeded 2.2
million.
The majority of Egyptian labor migrants expected to return home
eventually, but thousands left their country each year with the
intention of permanently resettling in various Arab countries,
Europe, or North America. These emigrants tended to be highly
educated professionals, mostly doctors, engineers, and teachers.
Their departure caused a serious "brain drain" for Egypt. Iraq
and, to a lesser extent, Kuwait were the Arab countries most
likely to accept skilled Egyptians as permanent residents. Iraq,
which sought agriculturists trained in irrigation techniques,
encouraged Egyptian farmers to move to the sparsely populated but
fertile lands in the south. Outside of the Arab countries, the
United States was a preferred destination. Between 1970 and 1985,
about 45,000 Egyptians immigrated to the United States.
In 1989 there were several thousand Americans, Europeans, and
other non-Arabs in Egypt working on projects sponsored by foreign
governments, international agencies, and private charitable
groups. The United States stationed more than 2,000 diplomatic
personnel in the country. The majority of these personnel worked
for the United States Agency for International Development (AID),
which managed the largest of the many economic aid programs in
Egypt. Projects financed by AID during the 1980s included
irrigation networks, rural sanitation systems, pest control,
family planning, and communications development.
Since 1948 Egypt has been a haven for Arab refugees and
political dissidents. The number of exiles has fluctuated in
response to political developments in other Arab countries and to
Egypt's relations with the different regimes. In 1989 Egypt was
host to several thousand Palestinian refugees and hundreds of
exiles from Libya, Sudan, and various countries of the Arabian
Peninsula, especially the Yemen Arab Republic (North Yemen) and
the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (South Yemen). Egyptian
accusations that Libya had sponsored terrorist acts against
Libyan exiles in Egypt fueled tension between the two countries
in the late 1970s and 1980s.
***Minorities
Although the ancestors of the Egyptian people include many races
and ethnic groups, including Africans, Arabs, Berbers, Greeks,
Persians, Romans, and Turks, the population today is relatively
homogeneous linguistically and culturally. Nevertheless,
approximately 3 percent of Egyptians belong to minority groups.
Linguistic minorities include small communities of Armenians and
Greeks, principally in the cities of Cairo and Alexandria; groups
of Berber origin in the oases of the Western Desert; and Nubians
living in cities in Lower Egypt and in villages clustered along
the Nile in Upper Egypt. The Arabic-speaking beduins (nomads) in
the Western and Eastern Deserts and the Sinai Peninsula
constitute the principal cultural minority. Several hundred
Europeans, mostly Italians and French, also lived in Egypt.
In 1989 an estimated 350,000 Greeks constituted Egypt's largest
non-Arab minority. Greeks have lived in Egypt since before the
time of Alexander the Great. For centuries they have remained
culturally, linguistically, and religiously separate from the
Egyptians. In 1990 the majority of Greeks lived in Alexandria,
although many resided in Cairo.
Armenians have also lived in Egypt for several centuries,
although their numbers have declined as a result of heavy
emigration since the 1952 Revolution. In 1989 the Armenian
community in Egypt was estimated at 12,000. Cairo was
traditionally the center of Armenian culture in Egypt, but many
Armenians also lived in Alexandria.
An estimated 6,000 Egyptians of Berber origin lived in the
Western Desert near the border with Libya. They were ethnically
related to the Berber peoples of North Africa. The largest Berber
community lived in Siwah Oasis. The Berbers are Muslims, but they
have their own language, which is not related to Arabic, and
certain unique cultural practices.
About 160,000 Nubians, also Muslims, lived in Egypt in 1990.
Most Nubians lived in cities, especially Cairo, Alexandria, and
urban areas along the Suez Canal. In the past, Nubians had lived
in villages along the Nile from Aswan southward to about 500
kilometers inside Sudan. Before the construction of the Aswan
High Dam forced their resettlement, three linguistically separate
groups of Nubians lived in this region--the Kenuzi in northern
Nubia; the beduin-descended Arabs in central Nubia; and the
Fadija-speaking people in southern Nubia near Abu Simbel (Abu
Sunbul). Isolated geographically and politically for centuries,
the Nubian Valley was only rarely under the control of any
central government. Until Egypt's 1952 Revolution, Nubia lacked
strong political links with Lower Egypt. Nevertheless, Nubia had
persistent economic ties to the rest of Egypt. Since at least the
nineteenth century, Nubian men have migrated to the cities of
Lower Egypt, where they typically worked for several years at a
time as merchants and wage laborers. Nubian society adapted to
the migrants' prolonged absences. Complex kinship and property
relations enabled men to leave and still take care of their
families, guard their wives, and ensure protection of their herds
and crops.
After 1952 the central government increased its involvement in
Nubia, mostly by building schools and public health services.
With the construction of the Aswan High Dam, the government's
involvement in the area destroyed Nubia, as water inundated the
Nubian Valley. In 1963 and 1964 the government resettled
approximately 50,000 Nubians to thirty-three villages around Kawm
Umbu, about fifty kilometers north of the city of Aswan. As
compensation, the government gave the Nubians new land and homes
and provided them with some financial support until their new
holdings were productive.
Nubians were dissatisfied with their resettlement for several
reasons. They did not like their government-built, cement-block
houses, which were uncomfortable and vastly different in design
from their old homes. Further, their resettlement at Kawm Umbu
disrupted family ties and ignored historical rivalries among the
three Nubian ethnic groups. The government also required the
Nubian farmers to join agricultural cooperatives and pressured
them to cultivate sugarcane, a crop that had not been part of
their traditional culture. Dissatisfaction with the resettlement
program led many to migrate to cities. A large number of migrants
rented their land to sharecroppers and tenants from Upper Egypt.
After the Aswan High Dam was completed in 1971, a handful of
Nubians left the resettlement area and returned to Nubia, where
they established farming villages along the shores of Lake
Nasser. By the early 1980s, Nubians had constructed at least four
villages, complete with traditional homes.
Egypt's largest minority group consisted of several tribes of
beduins who traditionally lived in the Eastern and Western
Deserts and the Sinai Peninsula. Because the beduins spoke Arabic
dialects, the government did not consider them ethnic minorities.
Nevertheless, almost everyone in Egypt--including the
beduins--considered these people as culturally distinct. The
beduins have historically been nomads, but since the nineteenth
century, most tribes have adopted sedentary agricultural
life-styles, in response to various government incentives (see
Social Organization, this ch.). Among the beduins, traditional
tribal social structure comprised lineage segments linked to
specific territories, water, and pasture. Descent was
patrilineal, and most beduins sought patterns of kinship and
marriage that would strengthen the bonds between patrilineally
related males. A patrilineage acted as a corporate group that
shared the home territory's resources and lived together for most
of the year. In the event of a feud, the group would collectively
seek revenge, either through the death of the other group's males
or through collective payment of compensation. A family's
livelihood depended on its sheep, goats, and camels. Inheritance
customs usually kept the family herds in the hands of fathers,
sons, brothers, and cousins related through the male line.
In 1990 the total number of beduins in Egypt ranged between
500,000 and 1 million--less than 1 percent of the country's
population. Over the centuries, their numbers fluctuated as
governments alternately ignored and persecuted them. In the
1890s, beduins comprised as much as 10 percent of the total
population. During the twentieth century, sedentarization and
urban migration have caused many beduins to become assimilated
into Egypt's dominant culture.
Since the 1952 Revolution, Egypt has intensified its efforts to
persuade beduins to abandon their nomadic life-style. The beduins
of the Western Desert generally resisted pressure to become
farmers. Some beduins engaged in the profitable trade of
smuggling goods across the Libyan border into Egypt while others
became involved in the hotel and restaurant business in the
summer tourist town of Marsa Matruh. The beduins in the Eastern
Desert continued to maintain close ties with nomads on the
Arabian Peninsula and profited from the high demand for meat and
livestock in Saudi Arabia. The Aswan High Dam submerged some
summer pasture and disrupted some migratory routes along the Red
Sea coast that beduins customarily used in bringing their herds
to Nubia during that season. Beduin settlements tended to be
overcrowded, a situation that exacerbated feuding among various
lineages. And, as beduin herds encroached on cropland, friction
between agriculturists and pastoralists intensified. An
increasing number of beduin families began to emulate tribal
leaders by sending sons to college to prepare them for civil
service careers in local government.
**Social Organization
In 1989 Egypt remained under the social, political, and cultural
dominance of an elite, a pattern it has retained since pharaonic
(see Glossary) times. Although the personal, ideological
orientation, and cultural values of the ruling class changed
drastically after the 1952 Revolution, the gulf between the urban
elite and the popular masses remained large. A group called the
Free Officers came to power in 1952. The group, which included
people such as Gamal Abdul Nasser (former president of Egypt),
Anwar as Sadat (also former president of Egypt), and Husni
Mubarak (current president of Egypt), played an instrumental role
in carrying out the 1952 Revolution. The Free Officers, along
with their civilian allies, comprised a strongly nationalistic
cadre who believed the former ruling class had betrayed the
country's welfare to foreign interests. The Free Officers, many
of whom were not from the top social classes, altered the
country's structure of wealth and power. But according to some
scholars, the Free Officers' policies merely changed the
membership of the elite rather than causing its demise.
The prerevolutionary elite rose to their position of power
through the country's entry into the world agricultural commodity
market in the nineteenth century (see Rural Society, this ch.).
The upper classes consisted of the royal family, absentee
landlords, professionals, and business people (merchants,
financiers, and a few industrialists). A disproportionately large
number of foreigners belonged to the elite groups in Cairo and
Alexandria. Opportunities for social mobility changed in response
to the transformation of the country's economy. A prosperous
landowning family, for example, might choose to secure its status
by sending one son to Al Azhar University for a career in
religion and another to one of the newly established secular
universities while encouraging still another to manage the
family's estates.
The civil bureaucracy established by Muhammad Ali (1805-49) and
elaborated under British hegemony provided a career for sons of
middle- and upper middle-class families. It gave employment to
the growing number of Egyptian professionals (mostly lawyers,
doctors, and engineers) and fueled the expansion of secular
education. The government bureaucracy employed the sons of
landlords, of prosperous farmers, and of civil servants
themselves.
Despite the major social changes in Egypt between 1800 and 1950,
the upper-class elite continued to dominate politics in the
country. The educated middle class increasingly resented the
elite's control of government. This resentment was particularly
strong among military officers because their middle-class origins
impeded their advancement to the top decision-making ranks. Among
these military officers were the Free Officers.
Egypt's new political elite pledged to rid the country of
foreign influences and to broaden economic opportunities for the
general population. Nasser implemented numerous socialist
policies designed to alter the pattern of class stratification.
The June 1967 War, however, halted government initiatives for
redistributing wealth. Beginning in 1974, the government
introduced a series of laws intended to restore and promote
private ownership of previously socialized sectors of the
economy. These new policies, known as infitah (opening or open
door; see Glossary), helped consolidate the class structure. In
1989 Egypt continued to be a country with a skewed distribution
of wealth; about 2,000 families had annual incomes in excess of
E35,000 (for the value of the Egyptian pound--see Glossary)
while more than 4 million people earned less than E200.
***Urban Society
Although the majority of Egyptians lived in villages as recently
as 1988, cities, which have been important in Egypt for more than
2,000 years, continued to be important. Traditional urban society
was more heterogeneous than in most other areas of the Middle
East. Quarters, segregated along religious and occupational
lines, were effectively self-governing in their internal affairs.
As in villages, kinship relations provided a basis for
solidarity, and relationships among families frequently overrode
differences in wealth and social position. Prosperous families
assumed leadership roles and took responsibility for their less
fortunate kin and neighbors. The rapid urbanization that began in
the nineteenth century created large residential and industrial
suburbs and led to the emergence of a professional middle class
and a working class. Nevertheless, elite wealthy families that
had ruled Egypt for generations, and in some cases for centuries,
continued to dominate the cities until the early 1950s.
The postrevolutionary ruling elite was believed by many to have
come from rural backgrounds. In reality most of the elite came
from the urban middle class and were sons of mid- and low-ranking
bureaucrats. A few members of the new elite came from the ranks
of the old elite, although most influential members of the new
elite were military officers. Most of these officers held
positions in the government agencies that were in charge of
national security, but others also held important positions in
local government and the diplomatic service. Below the top
echelons of government, however, the military played a less
important role. This situation was reflected in the fact that
since 1952, only about 6 percent of individuals in lower-level
administrative posts had attended a military college. Educated
bureaucrats from the middle and upper-middle classes continued to
fill the bulk of civil service posts. Since 1952 three of every
four bureaucrats have come from cities, with one of every two
coming from Cairo. About a third had fathers who were civil
servants. Although the military's formal presence in the
bureaucracy was limited, officers clearly made the most important
decisions. The emergence of a military elite led to a new kind of
civil servant, the officer-technocrat. Politically ambitious
professionals had a significant incentive to join the officers
corps, and officers were motivated to acquire professional
training (see Training and Education, ch. 5).
Although the prerevolutionary elite lost its status as the
ruling class, it was not eliminated. The land redistribution
program of the 1950s and socialist policies of the 1960s
compelled many old elite families to sell agricultural and
industrial properties that had been important sources of their
wealth. Nevertheless, most of these families were able to
maintain their social and economic positions through their
domination of the prestigious professions. The old elite had
highly valued education before the revolution, and many families
had sent at least one son abroad for professional training. Thus,
the old elite had lost its political influence after the 1952
Revolution, but its investments in education enabled its
offspring to emerge as the doctors, engineers, and top-level
administrators of the new regime.
After 1974 the government encouraged the growth of private
enterprise through infitah policies, and a large number of people
from old elite families emerged as part of a new class of wealthy
contractors, financiers, and industrialists. Many of these
people, who had held senior-level civil service positions,
switched to private practice, industry, or commerce because their
government salaries had been relatively low. A person holding a
ministerial-level position in government could earn up to 1,000
percent more by taking a post in the private sector. Joint
ventures between Egyptian and foreign firms, partnerships for
Egyptians in foreign firms, and commissions for Egyptians dealing
with private companies all contributed to the formation of a new
entrepreneurial class. By 1990 prerevolutionary elite families
remained financially secure and socially prominent and had
regained some political influence.
The middle class, emulating the old elite, recognized the link
between higher education and prestigious civil service jobs. The
government, which had initiated the development of secular
education as part of the effort to staff the civil bureaucracy
with trained personnel, has provided a secure, well-paid position
to virtually every college-educated applicant since the 1920s.
Prior to the 1952 Revolution, postsecondary education was costly,
and middle-class families who were determined to send at least
one son to college usually endured considerable financial
hardship. Most middle-class youth could not afford to attend
college, but they could still gain entry into the less
prestigious, lower civil-service ranks by obtaining a high school
diploma. Before 1950 secondary schools were not free, but
middle-class families could generally afford the fees. As an
increasing number of middle-class high school graduates sought
government employment, the bureaucracy became overstaffed with
poorly paid, white-collar workers who had little prospect of
advancement into top administrative positions, most of which were
held by university graduates. Frustration among low-ranking civil
servants was an important factor leading to the 1952 Revolution.
After the 1952 Revolution, the Free Officers increased
career-advancement opportunities in government, improved pay
scales in the civil service, and expanded public education
opportunities at all levels. To meet middle-class demands for
equitable access to higher education, the government abolished
college and university fees and introduced competitive admission
based on special entrance examinations. The state continued to be
the principal employer of college graduates. A government decree
in 1964 required the civil service to offer jobs to all Egyptians
holding degrees from postsecondary colleges and institutes.
During the early and mid-1960s, when Egypt's economy was
socialized, the public sector employed thousands of new mid- and
upper-rank administrators, as well as tens of thousands of high
school graduates. The annual increase in the number of university
graduates soon greatly exceeded the number of positions available
in the civil service. By the mid-1970s, the civil service
employed more than 1.3 million people, and overstaffing became a
serious problem in all government ministries. After the
government introduced the infitah in 1974, it no longer felt
obliged to hire every college graduate. Individual ministries
determined the number of new positions that needed to be filled
each year; once the quota was met, the names of other applicants
were placed on waiting lists. During the 1980s, an average of
250,000 college graduates were waiting at any given time to be
called for government jobs; the typical applicant remained on the
waiting list for more than three years. This situation caused
unrest among middle- and lower-middle-income students who had
hoped that higher education would be their ticket to upward
mobility.
Whereas the middle class was preoccupied with education and
civil service careers, most urban Egyptians, who belonged to the
lower class, were concerned about earning a livelihood in an
economy characterized by persistent and extensive unemployment
and underemployment (see Employment, ch. 3). In terms of
occupations and incomes, the lower class was very heterogeneous
and comprised three main groups: service providers, skilled
workers, and unskilled laborers. The first group included
artisans, bakers, barbers, butchers, carpenters, office and sales
clerks, cobblers, drivers, household and hotel domestic workers,
janitors, small shopkeepers, tailors, street vendors, waiters,
and numerous other providers of urban services. The majority of
service workers were involved in the large informal sector of the
economy; they were not covered by minimum wage laws and did not
participate in the social security program. A few service
workers, primarily talented artisans and enterprising
shopkeepers, earned sufficient money to support a family without
the assistance of a second income; the more successful among them
actually merged into the lower middle class. The majority of
service workers, however, were generally unable to provide
adequate food and shelter for a family on the income from one
job.
The second lower-class group consisted of skilled workers who
were usually employed in private or public factories. Many also
worked in the construction industry as electricians, masons,
mechanics, painters, and plumbers. Workers in this group tended
to prefer jobs in the public sector, which employed approximately
42 percent of the industrial labor force in the 1980s, because
government-owned manufacturing enterprises guaranteed job
security, paid salaries that were at or above the legal minimum
wage, and provided benefits such as routine promotions, raises,
paid holidays, and sick leave. Most skilled workers were
generally more financially secure than most service workers.
Nevertheless, the typical working male who headed a household
found it difficult to support a family on one income. To
supplement family incomes, most workers held two jobs, permitted
their wives or unmarried daughters to work, or received
remittances from family members working abroad. Many skilled
workers also migrated to other Arab countries where they received
higher salaries.
Unskilled laborers comprised the poorest stratum of urban
society. Most of them either lacked permanent jobs or were
employed in low-wage, menial jobs such as street sweeping, trash
collection, sewage-system maintenance, and grave digging. Males
with no skills frequently found temporary work on construction
sites, especially in Greater Cairo. Intermittent work was also
available on the docks of Alexandria and the cities along the
Suez Canal. During the 1980s, unskilled workers headed most of
the estimated 35 percent of urban households with incomes below
the poverty line. According to a study by AID, about half of
Egypt's urban population lived in absolute poverty, and most of
these lived in households headed by unskilled workers.
The infitah generally had an adverse impact on the lower class.
Despite the substantial rise in wages after the mid-1970s, real
incomes failed to keep pace with the rampant inflation. Although
extensive government subsidies on basic necessities alleviated
the worst effects of inflation, most lower-class families spent
up to 75 percent of their budgets on food. When the government
announced in January 1977 that it would eliminate subsidies on
selected "luxury" items, including beer, French bread, refined
flour, and granulated sugar, the poor rioted in cities throughout
the Delta and Nile Valley. In Cairo the police were unable to
control the violence, and the government called in the army to
restore order. The government canceled its plan to abolish
certain subsidies, and since 1977, it has periodically expanded
the whole subsidy program.
In addition to the food subsidies, some members of the
lower-class benefited from remittances sent to them from family
members who were working abroad. About nine of every ten
Egyptians working in other countries were from the lower class.
At least 1 million poor families received remittances from
fathers or sons who were working in Libya or the Arab countries
of the Persian Gulf. The remittances raised household incomes by
between 100 percent and 700 percent, resulting in significantly
higher living standards. The absence of so many workers had also
created a general shortage of trained personnel, a situation that
permitted skilled workers to bargain for increasingly higher
wages. In the early 1980s, for example, a free-lance tile-setter
could earn about as much in one week as a government minister
could earn in a month.
Although the living standards of poor families receiving
remittances improved after 1974, the lower class, like the middle
class, was generally skeptical of the infitah. Both classes
benefited from Nasser's policies, which expanded access to
education and employment opportunities, but they generally
believed that reduced government spending on social programs,
pared public sector employment, and increased incentives for
private enterprise would undermine gains achieved in the 1950s
and 1960s. The upper class, which accounted for less than 10
percent of the total population, supported the infitah because
they benefited from policies aimed at easing import-export
restrictions and from programs designed to attract foreign
investment.
***Rural Society
Until the time of Napoleon's invasion, Mamluk fief holders,
large landowners, and the chiefs of nomadic tribes controlled
rural Egypt. This rural elite--a small fraction of the
populace--derived its wealth from land, livestock, and the
collection of taxes on commission. Beduin shaykhs lived among and
were related to the tribal people over whom they exercised
jurisdiction. The large landowners lived in villages and were
usually related to some of the other families. The fief holders,
predominantly Turkish and Circassian in origin, had the most
tenuous links to the villages because they tended to reside in
cities and often brutalized the peasants on their estates. Most
fellahin (sing., fellah; peasant, from the Arabic verb, falaha,
to till the soil), were socioeconomically similar. Village
headmen allocated families usufruct right to village land, but
the village as a whole was responsible for tax payments.
Rural society changed during the nineteenth century. Rulers made
it easier for individuals to own land, and they held individuals
responsible for tax payments. Large land grants to court
favorites and extensive land registration frauds resulted in
concentrated landholdings and an increased number of people who
owned large pieces of land. During this period, the government
gave tribal shaykhs substantial land grants but required that
they permanently farm and occupy their parcels. The move caused
many beduins to give up their nomadic way of life. Settled
beduins gradually became liable for the same taxes imposed on the
fellahin.
Granting land (and government administrative posts) only to
shaykhs undermined tribal loyalty and solidarity. The process
created a class of wealthy landholders within tribes, and the
landlord-tenant relationship proved inimical to the strongly
egalitarian traditions of beduin society. As tribal loyalties
weakened, shaykhs began marrying prosperous settled Egyptian
women, while poorer nomads married within the masses of peasants.
Many of the beduin and nontribal owners of large amounts of land
pursued economic opportunities in the growing cities and became
absentee landlords. Many absentee landlords specialized in
commodity trading and controlled Egypt's expanding agricultural
exports. They also became involved in the urban credit market.
The fellahin sharecroppers who tilled the land of absentee owners
became increasingly indebted to the local, usually usurious,
moneylenders because their share of crops generally provided
insufficient income to support a family for the entire period
between harvests.
Private ownership of land and increased production of export
crops, especially cotton, also resulted in the emergence of
landholders, who owned mid-sized plots of five to fifty feddans.
This group competed only marginally with the landed elite but was
prosperous by rural standards. In 1990 these mid-sized landowners
continued to play an integral role in rural society.
Class differentiation increased among the fellahin throughout
the nineteenth century. Small landholders with one to five
feddans became poorer but were better off than tenants and
sharecroppers. The tenants and sharecroppers were better off than
a growing class of landless villagers who earned their
livelihoods from casual agricultural labor. (By the end of the
nineteenth century, one of every four people in rural areas owned
no land.) Landowners who became indebted or fell into tax arrears
easily lost their holdings. Until 1926 the government could
expropriate land if its owner owed as little as E2 in back
taxes.
From the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, large
estates continued to consolidate their holdings while small farms
fragmented further with each passing generation. From 1896 to the
eve of the first land-reform legislation in 1952, the number of
landowners with parcels of fewer than five feddans had nearly
tripled. The number of large landowners with holdings of at least
fifty feddans declined gradually in the same period. Large
landowners controlled 33 percent of all cultivated land by 1952
(only 0.5 percent of all landowners were large landowners). In
contrast, about 75 percent of all rural property owners were
peasants with holdings of less than one feddan. This group owned
only 13 percent of the land. The average-sized holding in the
under-five-feddan range dropped by 50 percent. The number of
mid-sized holders (owning six to fifty feddans) dropped from
about 12 percent to 5 percent of all landowners, although their
share of cultivated land remained nearly constant at 30 percent.
Frequent incidents of peasant unrest accompanied the changes in
rural Egypt. Peasant uprisings, which were usually localized,
were all sparked by complaints such as high taxes, intolerable
landlord imposts, corv es, foreclosures, and rising rents. Some
protests spread throughout a district or region and required
extensive military intervention to restore control. Uprisings
often took on religious or messianic overtones. By 1950 when an
estimated 60 percent of the rural population was landless, it was
not uncommon for groups of discontented sharecroppers and tenants
to try to seize the land they cultivated.
The Free Officers made land reform a priority after the 1952
Revolution. Continuing into the 1960s, the Free Officers
promulgated measures that distributed about 700,000 feddans of
land to about 318,000 peasant households, i.e., 13 percent of the
cultivated land to 10 percent of the country's rural families. A
law in 1952 limited individual landownership to 200 feddans. The
law also prevented owners from transferring more than 100 feddans
to members of their immediate families; excess holdings had to be
sold to small farmers or tenants. The law also limited the amount
of cash rents and the percentage of the harvest that absentee
owners could collect from tenants and sharecroppers. A law in
1961 limited individual ownership to 100 feddans; another law in
1969 limited it to 50 feddans. These land reforms failed to
eliminate large landowners, but they did reduce the group's share
of cultivated land from 33 percent of the total to 15 percent
between 1952 and 1975.
Peasant smallholders (with fewer than five feddans) were the
main beneficiaries of the reforms. In 1952 they owned about 35
percent (2.1 million feddans) of Egypt's cultivated land. By 1965
they owned 52 percent (3.2 million feddans). Although several
thousand tenant and sharecropping families were able to purchase
tiny parcels (none greater than five feddans) and join the ranks
of smallholders, the majority of landless villagers did not
benefit from the reforms. Landlords' creativity in exploiting the
surplus rural labor market thwarted government efforts to assist
these landless villagers. Landlords also learned how to
circumvent legislation designed to guarantee sharecroppers half
of the harvest. By the 1980s, the combination of rapid population
growth, increasing production costs, and high rates of inflation
had eroded the gains of the smallholders. An estimated 44 percent
of all rural families lived below the officially defined poverty
level.
Peasants who owned between eleven and fifty feddans were able to
increase their landholdings by purchasing excess land from large
landlords. This group of peasants comprised 2.5 percent of all
landowners in 1952 and 3 percent in 1965. By the latter date,
this group owned 24 percent of all cultivated land.
In 1990 rural society was just as stratified as it had been
before the initiation of land reform in 1952. Approximately
11,000 large landowners (those owning more than fifty
feddans--less than 0.3 percent of all owners) were still at the
top of the social hierarchy. These large landowners were
typically absentee landlords and renters who worked in urban
areas as merchants, civil servants, professionals, or corporate
managers. Although wealthy, they lacked the prerevolutionary
landowning elite's influence in rural areas, and their impact on
village social relations tended to be limited. Nevertheless, they
continued to be influential in national politics and exercised
indirect influence in rural areas through their diverse ties to
large peasant owners.
The second stratum of rural landowners consisted of two peasant
groups, medium holders owning six to ten feddans and large
holders owning eleven to fifty feddans. Although this second
stratum accounted for only 5.5 percent of all rural landowners,
it owned one-third of all the cultivated land. Both groups'
holdings were large enough to generate profits from agriculture,
and the more prosperous individuals among the groups tended to
fill the political role previously held by the large landlords.
Large peasant owners in particular exercised significant
influence in local and even regional politics. The large holders
tended to be commercial farmers with extensive ties to domestic
capital and were frequently involved in subsidiary marketing,
livestock, and transport enterprises. In most villages, at least
one of the peasant families with medium or large landholdings was
descended from a lineage that most members of the community
considered superior. Farmers in this second stratum have also
experienced substantial occupational mobility since 1952. A
typical family with several sons would send one or more of them
to university to prepare for careers in the civil service, the
military, or the professions.
Peasant smallholders (those owning fewer than five feddans)
comprised 94 percent of all Egyptian landowners. In general,
holdings of fewer than five feddans were too small for profitable
agriculture. Consequently, smallholders had to supplement their
incomes by working on the land of larger owners, by engaging in
other agricultural activities such as raising livestock, or by
finding seasonal work in urban areas. Many smallholders rented
their plots for part or all of the year to other peasants,
especially to those who owned between five and ten feddans. About
one-quarter of all land owned by smallholders was leased to
larger owners.
Since 1952 there have been no reliable statistics on the number
of landless villagers. Although landlessness decreased between
1952 and 1965, it has been rising since the late 1960s.
Throughout Egypt the landless constituted perhaps as much as 40
percent of the rural population; the majority lived in the
villages of the Delta and Upper Egypt. Landless peasants
supported their families by cultivating land for absentee owners
as tenants and sharecroppers; by working as agricultural laborers
for large peasant owners; by providing village services such as
carpentry, blacksmithing, machinery maintenance, and livestock
herding; and by migrating to cities and other Arab countries in
search of short- and long-term employment. Remittances from adult
males working away from home and (stimulated by labor shortages
in agriculture) combined to outpace a rise in rural wages
inflation and helped to alleviate poverty among the landless
peasants--the poorest villagers--in the 1980s.
In 1989 approximately 50 percent of Egypt's population lived in
villages. In the past, urban residents had little or no contact
with the villagers who produced their food. Most peasants were
suspicious of urban landlords and government officials whose
presence in the villages coincided with the collection of rent
and taxes. But in the twentieth century, extensive rural-urban
contacts developed as a result of large-scale migration to the
cities, the establishment of government services in villages, and
the mass media. Nevertheless, a sharp distinction between rural
and urban areas persisted. Wide disparities existed between
cities and villages in amenities, services, and educational and
health facilities. Mortality rates, especially for infants, and
illiteracy rates were notably higher in rural areas (see
Population; and Health and Welfare, this ch.).
In the 1980s, temporary migration in search of wage labor was
particularly common among villagers in Upper Egypt; men left
their families in the care of relatives during the slack
agricultural seasons. In some Nubian villages, for example, all
males between the ages of eighteen and forty-five were gone for
much of the year. Migrants served as intermediaries between rural
and urban Egypt and as agents of social change in the village.
Because of the increasingly important role of nonagricultural
work in the Delta, many villagers found new occupations that
resulted in social cleavages. For example, the opportunity to
earn a living independent of their fathers permitted men to
exercise more freedom from traditional authority figures. Higher
education provided upward mobility for substantial numbers of
rural children and led to new social distinctions within
villages.
The basic unit of village organization was the patrilineal
lineage or clan. Composed of various families descended from a
common male ancestor four to six generations in the past, a
lineage inhabited a specific quarter of the village. Lineages,
controlled by elder males, were an integral force in village life
and politics. Families gained their identity not as autonomous
entities but as part of their larger lineage.
Lineages had a corporate identity with a recognized leadership
pattern. A man's closest social contacts were with his brothers
and cousins. A guest house was used to entertain visitors at the
lineage's expense. Various lineages vied for power and influence
within the village. The interests of the lineage were frequently
more important than the interests of individuals. Propinquity was
crucial in settling disputes within a lineage. In conflicts with
outsiders, individuals were expected to unite in the interests of
their lineage. Propinquity was so important in rural society that
to suggest a person had no kin was a profound insult.
Lineages and a general disapproval of the public display of
wealth blunted many of the economic disparities within and among
village clans. Still, religious feasts and rites of passage
provided an opportunity for lineages to display their wealth.
Lineages usually invited other lineages to extravagant weddings
and other celebrations. Several religious festivals required
wealthy people to distribute meat to the less fortunate. Return
from the hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) called for elaborate
decorations in the pilgrim's house. In general, the socially
acceptable means of displaying wealth helped integrate prosperous
individuals into the community rather than separate them from it.
A number of changes in the 1980s limited the influence of
lineages. In the past, lineage elders maintained their authority
by controlling land. But the recent increase in pressure on land
has meant that fewer young men would inherit large plots. Many of
these young men, realizing they would never own a substantial
piece of land, have migrated to cities and other countries and
are no longer influenced by their elders. The prevalence of
nuclear families in cities has also eroded lineage ties.
**Family and Kinship
***Importance of Kinship
The family remained the most significant unit of Egyptian
society in 1989, and kinship played an important role in
virtually all social relations. An individual's social identity
was closely linked to his or her status in the network of kin
relations. Socialization of children emphasized integration among
their kin group. An important goal of marriage was to ensure the
continuity of a family. A husband and wife were not considered a
family until they produced their first child. After the child's
birth, the parents were addressed as father and mother of
Muhammad or Amal or whatever was the name of their child. The
most deeply held values--honor, dignity, and security--were
derived by an individual only as part of a larger kin group.
Kinship as a first principle was evident from the most essential
to the most trivial aspects of social organization.
Egyptians reckoned descent patrilineally, and the ideal family
was an extended family consisting of a man, his wife (or wives),
his single and married sons and their wives and children, as well
as his unmarried daughters. Younger members of the family
deferred to older members, and women deferred to men. The
political and economic upheavals of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries had only limited impact on this family structure. The
traditional Sunni religious code for Muslims (see Islam, this
ch.) defined most Muslims' family matters (marriage,
guardianship, and inheritance) while canon law defined these
matters among Christians. The father controlled families'
possessions and income. Even though adult male heads of household
wielded immense authority within the family, traditional
expectations of parental responsibilities prevented most fathers
from exercising the full extent of their powers.
Although an extended family that lived together was considered
the ideal, it was not common. A nuclear family consisting of
parents and their unmarried children was the norm in cities. Even
in rural areas, nuclear families accounted for approximately 80
to 90 percent of all households. Nevertheless, relations with
in-laws, grandparents, nieces, and nephews continued to have an
impact on the lives of most adults. Newly married couples
typically set up their households near the homes of the groom's
parents and married brothers. Tensions between wives and their
mothers-in-law, as well as tensions among wives of brothers,
often disrupted the extended family's harmony.
Both patrilineal descent and the patrilocal extended family
functioned differently for men and women. Men were the preferred,
valued members of the lineage. A son's birth was occasion to
celebrate, whereas the birth of a daughter, especially if she was
the first child, was generally greeted with ambivalence. Men were
valued both as providers and as progenitors because descent was
reckoned through males. Men remained with their consanguineous
kin throughout their lives. Lineages commonly kept property in
the hands of their males through marriages among cousins. If
daughters married within their paternal lineage, then the
property they might inherit and transfer to their children would
remain within the lineage. For a beduin male or a villager, the
ideal bride was the daughter of his father's brother. More than
50 percent of the marriages in rural areas and among the urban
lower class were endogamous. Marriage between relatives has been
declining among the urban middle and upper classes since the 1952
Revolution, and by the 1980s, most marriages in these social
groups were exogamous.
For most men, marriage marked the transition to adulthood.
Married men were expected to defer to their fathers, but they
still had considerable autonomy because of their responsibility
for their families' livelihoods and households. For most women,
marriage meant leaving their families' homes and sometimes their
home areas. In most cases, marriage merely substituted a woman's
dependence on her husband for dependence on her father.
A woman retained membership in her patrilineage regardless of
her marital status. Indeed, if members of her lineage were
feuding with members of her husband's lineage, the wife was
expected to side with her paternal family. A woman was entitled
to make demands of her father and brothers, especially in case of
marital difficulties, throughout her life. Most women generally
preferred to live near home and thus tried to avoid marriages
with men whose families lived in other cities or villages.
Geographical proximity to patrilineal kin served as a source of
emotional support in the early years of marriage when women were
most vulnerable to divorce. Women in villages often asked their
brothers to hold their inheritances for them. This move helped
prevent mistreatment of the women by their in-laws. A divorced
woman could have her brother return the inheritance to her as her
children approached adulthood.
***Attitudes Toward Women
Rural and lower-class Egyptians generally believed that women
were morally inferior to men. Women were expected to defer to
senior male relatives, to avoid contact with men who were not
kin, and to veil themselves in public. As children women learned
to accept dependency on their fathers and older brothers. After
marriage women expected their husbands to make all decisions.
Early married life could be a time of extreme subordination and
insecurity. The new wife usually lived with or near her husband's
family and was expected to help her mother-in-law with household
chores. A young wife was under considerable pressure from her
husband and his family until she bore a son. Barrenness was a
woman's worst possible misfortune, and not giving birth to a son
was almost as bad. Women who had only daughters were derogatorily
called "mothers of brides." Most families continued having
children until they had at least two sons. As the length of a
woman's marriage increased, and her sons matured, her position in
the family grew more secure. A woman was at the peak of her power
when her sons were married because she could then exercise
influence over her sons' children and wives.
Patrilineal families valued honor (ird). The sexual behavior and
reputation of the women of a lineage were the most important
components of a family's honor. A bad reputation for one woman
meant a bad reputation for the whole lineage. Honor was essential
to social life; without it even a minimal social standing in the
community was impossible. Men were especially interested in
maintaining honor. Women were always on their best behavior
around men from other families because they were afraid of
getting a bad reputation. A bad reputation could disgrace the men
of her family. A disgraced husband could restore his status,
however, through divorce. Most disgraced fathers and brothers in
rural and lower-class urban families, however, believed that
honor could only be restored by killing the daughter or sister
suspected of sexual misconduct. Family members who murdered the
women were prepared to accept legal penalties for their actions.
Women have traditionally been preoccupied with household tasks
and child rearing and have rarely had opportunities for contact
with men outside the family. But since the 1952 Revolution,
social changes, especially in education, have caused many women
to spend time in public places among men who were not related to
them. To limit women's contact with these men, practices such as
veiling and gender segregation at schools, work, and recreation
have become commonplace. Furthermore, lower-class families,
especially in Upper Egypt, have tended to withdraw girls from
school as they reached puberty to minimize their interaction with
men. Lower-class men frequently preferred marriage to women who
had been secluded rather than to those who had worked or attended
secondary school.
Egypt's laws pertaining to marriage and divorce favored the
social position of men. Muslim husbands were traditionally
allowed to have up to four wives at a time in accordance with
Islamic religious custom, but a woman could have only one husband
at a time. A Muslim man could divorce his wife with ease by
saying "I divorce thee" on three separate occasions in the
presence of witnesses. A woman wishing to dissolve a marriage had
to instigate legal proceedings and prove to a court that her
husband had failed to support her or that his behavior was having
a harmful moral effect on the family. The laws required men to
support their ex-wives for only one year after a divorce, and the
fathers gained custody of the children. A man faced few or no
penalties if he refused to provide equal support to his wives or
if he refused to pay alimony to his divorced wife. Divorce was
much more difficult for Copts than it was for Muslims. Common law
regulated the marriages and divorces of Copts.
After decades of debate, the government amended the laws
relating to personal status in 1979. The amendments, which became
known as the "women's rights law," were in the form of a
presidential decree and subsequently approved by the People's
Assembly. The leading orthodox Islamic clergy endorsed these
amendments, but Islamist groups opposed them as state
infringements of religious precepts and campaigned for their
repeal. The amendments stated that polygyny was legally harmful
to a first wife and entitled her to sue for divorce within a year
after learning of her husband's second marriage. The amendments
also entitled the first wife to compensation. A husband retained
the right to divorce his wife without recourse to the courts, but
he was required to file for his divorce before witnesses at a
registrar's office and officially and immediately to inform his
wife. The divorced wife was entitled to alimony equivalent to one
year's maintenance in addition to compensation equivalent to two
years' maintenance; a court could increase these amounts under
extenuating circumstances such as the dissolution of a long
marriage. The divorced wife automatically retained custody of
sons under the age of ten and daughters under twelve; courts
could extend the mother's custody of minors until their
eighteenth birthdays.
In 1985 Egyptian authorities ruled that the amendments of 1979
were unconstitutional because they had been enacted through a
presidential decree while the People's Assembly was not in
session. A new law reversed many of the rights accorded to women
in 1979 (see The Limits of Incorporation: The Rise of Political
Islam and the Continuing Role of Repression, ch. 4). A woman lost
her automatic right to divorce her husband if he married a second
wife. She could still petition a court to consider her case, but
a judge would grant a divorce only if it were in the interests of
the family. If a divorce were granted, the judge would also
determine what was an appropriate residence for the divorced
woman and her children.
The changes in divorce legislation in 1979 and 1985 did not
significantly alter the divorce rate, which has been relatively
high since the early 1950s. About one in five marriages ended in
divorce in the 1980s. Remarriage was common, and most divorced
men and women expected to wed again. Seven out of ten divorces
took place within the first five years of marriage, and one out
of three in the first year. The divorce rate depended on
residence and level of education. The highest divorce rates were
among the urban lower class, the lowest rates among the villagers
of Upper Egypt. Throughout the country, as much as 95 percent of
all divorces occurred among couples who were illiterate.
***Changing Status of Women
Since the early 1970s, women's status has been changing, mostly
because an increasing number of women have joined the
nonagricultural workforce. According to government estimates, the
number of working women doubled from 500,000 to 1 million between
1978 and 1980. By 1982 women accounted for 14 percent of all
wage-earning and salaried employees throughout the country.
Although substantial numbers of women were in the professions,
particularly education, engineering, and medicine, most women
held low-paying jobs in factories, offices, and service
industries. Half of all employed women held jobs such as street
cleaners, janitors, hotel and domestic servants, and hospital
aides. In 1990 women accounted for more than 12 percent of all
industrial workers; most female factory workers were in textiles,
food processing, and pharmaceuticals.
**RELIGION
Religion has traditionally been a pervasive social force in
Egypt. For more than 1,000 years, the country has been mostly
Islamic. Still, there is an indigenous Christian minority, the
Copts, which accounted for as much as 8.5 percent of the total
population. Other Christians living in the country included
approximately 750,000 adherents of various Latin and Eastern
Catholic rites, Greek and Armenian Orthodox churches, and
Protestant denominations; many of these Christians emigrated
after the 1956 War. An estimated 1,000 Jews lived in Egypt as of
1990. These Jews were a fragment of a community of 80,000 who
lived in the country before 1948. Egypt's Constitution of 1971
guarantees freedom of religion (see Islam, this ch.).
Religious fervor increased among all social classes after
Egypt's defeat in the June 1967 War. Pious individuals commonly
blamed Egypt's lack of faith for the country's setbacks. The
resurgence in public worship and displays of devotion persisted
in the late 1980s. A relaxation of press censorship in 1974
stimulated the growth of religious publications. Religiously
inspired political activism and participation in Sufi orders
intensified among the urban, educated, formerly secular-minded
segments of the populace.
***Islam
In 610 Muhammad (later known as the Prophet), a merchant member
of the Hashimite branch of the Quraysh clan that ruled the
Arabian town of Mecca, began to preach the first of a series of
revelations that Muslims believe were given him by God through
the angel Gabriel. A fervent monotheist, Muhammad denounced the
polytheism of his fellow Meccans. His vigorous and continuing
censure earned him the bitter enmity of Mecca's leaders, who
feared the impact of Muhammad's ideas on Mecca's thriving
business based on pilgrimages to numerous pagan religious sites.
In 622 Muhammad and a group of followers left for the town of
Yathrib, which became known as Medina (the city). Their move, or
hijra (Hegira), marks the beginning of the Muslim calendar, which
is based on the lunar year and is several days shorter than the
solar year. Muhammad continued to preach in Medina, defeated his
detractors in Mecca in battle, and consolidated both temporal and
spiritual leadership of all Arabia by 632, the year of his death.
Muhammad's followers compiled the Quran (also seen as Koran), a
book containing the words that had come directly to the prophet
from God. The Quran serves as the holy scriptures of Islam.
Muhammad's sayings and teachings were compiled separately and
referred to as the hadith. The Quran and the hadith form the
sunna, a comprehensive guide to the spiritual, ethical, and
social life of the orthodox Sunni Muslim.
The shahada (profession of faith) succinctly states the central
belief of Islam: "There is no god but God (Allah), and Muhammad
is His Prophet." Muslims repeat this profession of faith during
many rituals. Reciting the phrase with unquestioning sincerity
designates one a Muslim. The God about whom Muhammad preached was
known to Christians and Jews living in Arabia at the time. Most
Arabs, however, worshipped many gods and spirits whose existence
was denied by Muhammad. Muhammad urged the people to worship the
monotheistic God as the omnipotent and unique creator. Muhammad
explained that his God was omnipresent and invisible. Therefore,
representing God through symbols would have been a sin. Muhammad
said God determined world events, and resisting God would have
been futile and sinful.
Islam means submission (to God). One who submits is a Muslim.
Muslims believe that Muhammad is the "seal of the prophets" and
that his revelations complete the series of biblical revelations
received by Jews and Christians. They also believe that God is
one and the same throughout time, but his true teachings had been
forgotten until Muhammad arrived. Muslims recognized biblical
prophets and sages such as Abraham, Moses, and Jesus (known in
Arabic as Ibrahim, Musa, and Isa, respectively) as inspired
vehicles of God's will. Islam, however, reveres only their
messages as sacred. Islam rejects the Christian belief that Jesus
is the son of God. Islam accepts the concepts of guardian angels,
the Day of Judgment (or the last day), general resurrection,
heaven and hell, and eternal life of the soul.
The duties of the Muslim form the five pillars of the faith.
These are the recitation of the shahada; daily prayer (salat);
almsgiving (zakat); fasting (sawm); and hajj, or pilgrimage. The
believer prays in a prescribed manner after purification through
ritual ablutions each day at dawn, midday, midafternoon, sunset,
and nightfall. Prescribed genuflections and prostrations
accompany the prayers, which the worshipper recites facing Mecca.
Whenever possible men pray in congregation at the mosque with an
imam (see Glossary), or prayer leader. On Fridays corporate
prayer is obligatory. The Friday noon prayers provide the
occasion for weekly sermons by religious leaders. Women may also
attend public worship at the mosque, but they are segregated from
the men. Most women who pray, however, do it at home. A special
functionary, the muezzin, intones a call to prayer to the entire
community at the appropriate hour; people in outlying areas
determine the proper time from the sun. Public prayer is a
conspicuous and widely practiced aspect of Islam in Egypt.
Early Islamic authorities imposed a tax on personal property
proportionate to one's wealth and distributed the revenues to the
mosques and to the needy. In addition, many believers made
voluntary donations. Although almsgiving is still a duty of the
believer, it is no longer enforced by the state and has become a
more private matter. Many properties contributed by pious
individuals to support religious and charitable activities or
institutions were traditionally administered as inalienable
waqfs.
Ramadan, the ninth month of the Muslim calendar, is a period of
obligatory fasting in commemoration of Muhammad's receipt of
God's revelation, the Quran. Throughout the month, everyone
except the sick, the weak, pregnant or nursing women, soldiers on
duty, travelers on necessary journeys, and young children are
enjoined from eating and drinking during daylight hours. Adults
excused from the fasting are obliged to observe an equivalent
fast at their earliest opportunity. A meal breaks each daily fast
and inaugurates a night of feasting and celebration. Wealthy
individuals usually do little work for all or part of the day.
Because the months of the lunar calendar are shorter than the
months of the solar year, Ramadan falls at different times each
year. For example, when Ramadan occurs in summer, it imposes
special hardship on farmers who do heavy physical labor in the
fields in the daytime.
At least once in their lifetimes, all Muslims who are
financially and physically capable are expected to make a
pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca to participate in special
rites held there during the twelfth month of the lunar calendar.
Muhammad instituted this requirement, modifying pre-Islamic
custom, to emphasize sites associated with Allah and Abraham,
whom Arabs believe founded monotheism and is the ancestor of
Arabs through his son Ishmael (Ismail). More than 20,000
Egyptians made pilgrimages to Mecca each year in the late 1980s.
Traditionally the departure of Egypt's pilgrims climaxed in the
ceremony of mahmal, during which the national gift of carpets and
shrouds for the Kaaba shrine and the tomb of Muhammad at Medina
were presented. The pilgrims would later deliver the gifts.
Once in Mecca, pilgrims, dressed in the white, seamless ihram,
refrain from activities considered unclean. Highlights of the
pilgrimage include kissing the sacred black stone;
circumambulating the Kaaba, the sacred structure reputedly built
by Abraham that houses the stone; running seven times between the
hills of As Safa and Al Marwa in reenactment of Hagar's desperate
search for water after Abraham had cast her and her son Ismail
out into the desert; and standing in prayer on Mount Arafat. Id
al Adha, a major Islamic festival celebrated worldwide, marks the
end of the hajj. Each family, if it has the financial means,
slaughters a lamb on Id al Adha to commemorate an ancient Arab
sacrificial custom. The returning pilgrim is accorded the
honorific hajj or hajji before his or her name.
****Early Developments
During his lifetime, Muhammad was the spiritual and temporal
leader of the Muslim community. He established the concept of
Islam as a complete, all-encompassing way of life for individuals
and society. Islam teaches that Allah revealed to Muhammad the
immutable principles of correct behavior. Islam therefore obliged
Muslims to live according to these principles. It also obliged
the community to perfect human society on earth according to holy
injunctions. Islam generally made no distinction between religion
and state; it merged religious and secular life, as well as
religious and secular law. Muslims have traditionally been
subject to the sharia (Islamic jurisprudence, but in a larger
sense meaning the Islamic way). A comprehensive legal system, the
sharia developed gradually during the first four centuries of
Islam, primarily through the accretion of precedent and
interpretation by various judges and scholars. During the tenth
century, legal opinion hardened into authoritative doctrine, and
the figurative bab al ijtihad (gate of interpretation) gradually
closed. Thereafter, Islamic law has tended to follow precedent
rather than to interpret law according to circumstances.
In 632, after Muhammad's death the leaders of the Muslim
community consensually chose Abu Bakr, the Prophet's
father-in-law and one of his earliest followers, to succeed him.
At that time, some people favored Ali, the Prophet's cousin and
husband of his favorite daughter Fatima, but Ali and his
supporters (the Shiat Ali, or party of Ali, commonly known as
Shia) eventually accepted the community's choice. The next two
caliphs (from khalifa, literally successor)--Umar, who succeeded
in 634, and Uthman, who took power in 644--enjoyed the
recognition of the entire community. When Ali finally succeeded
to the caliphate in 656, Muawiyah, governor of Syria, rebelled in
the name of his murdered kinsman, Uthman. After the ensuing civil
war, Ali moved his capital to Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq),
where in a short time he, too, was murdered.
Ali was the last of the so-called four orthodox caliphs. His
death marked the end of the period in which all Muslims
recognized a single caliph. Muawiyah then proclaimed himself
caliph from Damascus. The Shia, however, refusing to recognize
Muawiyah or his line of Umayyad caliphs, withdrew, causing
Islam's first great schism. The Shia supported the claims of
Ali's sons and grandsons to a presumptive right to the caliphate
based on descent from the Prophet through Fatima and Ali. The
larger faction of Islam, the Sunni, claimed to follow the
orthodox teaching and example of the Prophet as embodied in the
sunna.
Early Islam was intensely expansionist. Fervor for the new
religion, as well as economic and social factors, fueled this
expansionism. Conquering armies and migrating tribes swept out of
Arabia and spread Islam. By the end of Islam's first century,
Islamic armies had reached far into North Africa and eastward and
northward into Asia. Among the first countries to come under
their control was Egypt, which Arab forces invaded in 640. The
following year, Amr ibn al As conquered Cairo (then known as
Babylon) and renamed the city Al Fustat. By 647, after the
surrender of Alexandria, the whole country was under Muslim rule
(see The Arab Conquest, 639-41, ch. 1). Amr, Egypt's first Muslim
ruler, was influenced by the Prophet's advice that Muslims should
be kind to the Egyptians because of their kinship ties to Arabs.
According to Islamic tradition, Ismail's mother, Hagar, was of
Egyptian origin.
Amr allowed the Copts to choose between converting to Islam or
retaining their beliefs as a protected people. Amr gave them this
choice because the Prophet had recognized the special status of
the "People of the Book" (Jews and Christians), whose scriptures
he considered perversions of God's true word but nevertheless
contributory to Islam. Amr believed that Jews and Christians were
people who had approached but not yet achieved the perfection of
Islam, so he did not treat them like pagans who would be forced
into choosing between Islam and death. Jews and Christians in
Muslim territories could live according to their own religious
laws and in their own communities if they accepted the position
of dhimmis, or tolerated subject peoples. Dhimmis were required
to recognize Muslim authority, pay additional taxes, avoid
proselytism among Muslims, and give up certain political rights.
By the ninth century A.D., most Egyptians had converted to Islam.
Amr had chosen Al Fustat as the capital of Islamic Egypt because
a canal connected the city to the Red Sea, which provided easy
access to the Muslim heartland in the Arabian Peninsula. He
initiated construction of Cairo's oldest extant mosque, the Amr
ibn al As Mosque, which was completed in 711, several years after
his death. Successive rulers also built mosques and other
religious buildings as monuments to their faith and
accomplishments. Egypt's first Turkish ruler, Ahmad ibn Tulun,
built one of Cairo's most renowned mosques, the Ibn Tulun Mosque,
in 876.
A Shia dynasty, the Fatimids, conquered Egypt in 969 and ruled
the country for 200 years (see The Tulinids, Ikhshidids,
Fatimids, and Ayyubids, 868-1260, ch. 1). Although the Fatimids
endowed numerous mosques, shrines, and theological schools, they
did not firmly establish their faith (known today as Ismaili Shia
Islam--see Glossary) in Egypt. Numerous sectarian conflicts among
Fatimid Ismailis after 1050 may have been a factor in Egyptian
Muslim acceptance of Saladin's (Salah ad Din ibn Ayyub)
reestablishment of Sunni Islam as the state religion in 1171. Al
Azhar theological school, endowed by the Fatimids, changed
quickly from a center of Shia learning to a bastion of Sunni
orthodoxy. There were virtually no Ismailis in Egypt in 1990,
although large numbers lived in India and Pakistan and smaller
communities were in Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, and several
countries in East Africa.
****Contemporary Islam
Prior to Napoleon's invasion, almost all of Egypt's educational,
legal, public health, and social welfare issues were in the hands
of religious functionaries. Ottoman rule reinforced the public
and political roles of the ulama (religious scholars) because
Islam was the state religion and because political divisions in
the country were based on religious divisions. During the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, successive governments made
extensive efforts to limit the role of the ulama in public life
and to bring religious institutions under closer state control.
The secular transformation of public life in Egypt depended on
the development of a civil bureaucracy that would absorb many of
the ulama's responsibilities in the country.
After the 1952 Revolution, the government assumed responsibility
for appointing officials to mosques and religious schools. The
government mandated reform of Al Azhar University beginning in
1961. These reforms permitted department heads to be drawn from
outside the ranks of the traditionally trained orthodox ulama. At
the same time, the government established a number of modern
faculties, including medicine, engineering, and commerce. The
media periodically campaigned against the ulama as old-fashioned
members of a "priestly caste."
As of 1990, Egyptian Islam was a complex and diverse religion.
Although Muslims agreed on the faith's basic tenets, the
country's various social groups and classes applied Islam
differently in their daily lives. The literate theologians of Al
Azhar University generally rejected the version of Islam
practiced by illiterate religious preachers and peasants in the
countryside. Most upper- and middle-class Muslims believed either
that religious expression was a private matter for each
individual or that Islam should play a more dominant role in
public life. Islamic religious revival movements, whose appeal
cut across class lines, were present in most cities and in many
villages.
Today devout Muslims believe that Islam defines one's
relationship to God, to other Muslims, and to non-Muslims. They
also believe that there can be no dichotomy between the sacred
and the secular. Many devout Muslims say that Egypt's governments
have been secularist and even antireligious since the early
1920s. Politically organized Muslims who seek to purge the
country of its secular policies are referred to as "Islamists."
Orthodox ulama found themselves in a difficult position during
the wave of Islamic activism that swept through Egypt in the
1970s and 1980s. Radical Islamists viewed the ulama as puppets of
the status quo. To maintain their influence in the country, the
ulama espoused more conservative stances. After 1974, for
example, many Al Azhar ulama, who had acquiesced to family
planning initiatives in the 1960s, openly criticized government
efforts at population control. The ulama also supported moves to
reform the country's legal code to conform to Islamic teaching.
They remained, nonetheless, comparatively moderate; they were
largely loyal to the government and condemned the violence of
radical Islamist groups.
Egypt's largely uneducated urban and rural lower classes were
intensely devoted to Islam, but they lacked a thorough knowledge
of the religion. Even village religious leaders had only a
rudimentary knowledge of Islam. The typical village imam or
prayer leader had at most a few years of schooling; his scholarly
work was limited to reading prayers and sermons prepared by
others and to learning passages from the Quran. Popular religion
included a variety of unorthodox practices, such as veneration of
saints, recourse to charms and amulets, and belief in the
influence of evil spirits.
Popular Islam is based mostly on oral tradition. Imams with
virtually no formal education commonly memorize the entire Quran
and recite appropriate verses on religious occasions. They also
tell religious stories at village festivals and commemorations
marking an individual's rites of passage. Predestination plays an
important role in popular Islam. This concept includes the belief
that everything that happens in life is the will of God and the
belief that trying to avoid misfortune is useless and invites
worse affliction. Monotheism merges with a belief in magic and
spirits (jinns) who are believed to inhabit the mountains.
Popular Islam ranges from informal prayer sessions or Quran
study to organized cults or orders. Because of the pervasive
sexual segregation of Egypt's Islamic society, men and women
often practice their religion in different ways. A specifically
female religious custom is the zar, a ceremony for helping women
placate spirits who are believed to have possessed them. Women
specially trained by their mothers or other women in zar lore
organize the ceremonies. A zar organizer holds weekly meetings
and employs music and dance to induce ecstatic trances in
possessed women. Wealthy women sometimes pay to have private zars
conducted in their homes; these zars are more elaborate than
public ones, last for several days, and sometimes involve efforts
to exorcise spirits.
A primarily male spiritual manifestation is Sufism, an Islamic
mystical tradition. Sufism has existed since the early days of
Islam and is found in all Islamic countries. The name derives
from the Arabic word suf (wool), referring to the rough garb of
the early mystics. Sufism exists in a number of forms, most of
which represent an original tariqa (discipline or way; pl.,
turuq) developed by an inspired founder, or shaykh. These shaykhs
gradually gathered about themselves murids, or disciples, whom
they initiated into the tariqa. Gradually the murids formed
orders, also known as turuq, which were loyal to the shaykh or
his successors. The devotions of many Sufi orders center on
various forms of the dhikr, a ceremony at which music, body
movements, and chants induce a state of ecstatic trance in the
disciples. Since the early 1970s, there has been a revival of
interest in Sufism. Egypt's contemporary Sufis tend to be young,
college-educated men in professional careers.
****Islamic Political Movements
Islamic political activism has a lengthy history in Egypt.
Several Islamic political groups started soon after World War I
ended. The most well-known Islamic political organization is the
Muslim Brotherhood (Al Ikhwan al Muslimun, also known as the
Brotherhood), founded in 1928 by Hasan al Banna. After World War
II, the Muslim Brotherhood acquired a reputation as a radical
group prepared to use violence to achieve its religious goals.
The group was implicated in several assassinations, including the
murder of one prime minister. The Brotherhood had contacts with
the Free Officers before the 1952 Revolution and supported most
of their initial policies. The Brotherhood, however, soon came
into conflict with Nasser. The government accused the Brotherhood
of complicity in an alleged 1954 plot to assassinate the
president and imprisoned many of the group's leaders. In the
1970s, Anwar as Sadat amnestied the leaders and permitted them to
resume some of their activities. But by that time, the
Brotherhood was divided into at least three factions. The more
militant faction was committed to a policy of political
opposition to the government. A second faction advocated peaceful
withdrawal from society and the creation, to the extent possible,
of a separate, parallel society based upon Islamic values and
law. The dominant moderate group advocated cooperation with the
regime (see Controlling the Mass Political Arena, ch. 4; and
Muslim Extremism, ch. 5).
The Muslim Brotherhood's reemergence as a political force
coincided with the proliferation of Islamic groups. Some of these
groups espoused the violent overthrow of the government while
others espoused living a devout life of rigorous observance of
religious practices. It is impossible to list all the Islamic
groups that emerged in the late 1970s because many of them had
diffuse structures and some of the more militant groups were
underground. Egypt's defeat and loss of territory in the June
1967 War was the main cause for the growth of religiously
inspired political activism. Muslims tended to view the
humiliating experience as the culmination of 150 years of foreign
intrusion and an affront to their vision of a true Islamic
community. Islamic tradition rejected the idea of non-Muslims
dominating Muslim society. Such a state of affairs discredited
Muslim rulers who permitted it to persist. It was, therefore,
incumbent on believers to end the domination and restore the true
supremacy of Islam. As part of their Sunni creed, the most
radical activists adopted jihad (holy war--the Shia sixth pillar
of faith) and committed themselves to battling unbelievers and
impious Muslims. During the 1970s and 1980s, Islamists
perpetrated a number of violent acts, including the assassination
of Sadat in October 1981.
Disruptive social changes and Sadat's relative tolerance toward
political parties contributed to the rapid growth of Islamic
groups in the 1970s. On university campuses, for example, Sadat
initially viewed the rise of Islamic associations (Jamaat al
Islamiyah) as a counterbalance to leftist influence among
students. The Jamaat al Islamiyah spread quite rapidly on
campuses and won up to one-third of all student union elections.
These victories provided a platform from which the associations
campaigned for Islamic dress, the veiling of women, and the
segregation of classes by gender. Secular university
administrators opposed these goals. In 1979 Sadat sought to
diminish the influence of the associations through a law that
transferred most of the authority of the student unions to
professors and administrators. During the 1980s, however,
Islamists gradually penetrated college faculties. At Asyut
University, which was the scene of some of the most intense
clashes between Islamists and their opponents (including security
forces, secularists, and Copts), the president and other top
administrators--who were Islamists--supported Jamaat al Islamiyah
demands to end mixed-sex classes and to reduce total female
enrollment.
As of 1989, the Islamists sought to make Egypt a community of
the faithful based on their vision of an Islamic social order.
They rejected conventional, secularist social analyses of Egypt's
socioeconomic problems. They maintained, for example, that the
causes of poverty were not overpopulation or high defense
expenditures but the populace's spiritual failures--laxness,
secularism, and corruption. The solution was a return to the
simplicity, hard work, and self-reliance of earlier Muslim life.
The Islamists created their own alternative network of social and
economic institutions through which members could work, study,
and receive medical treatment in an Islamic environment.
Islamists rejected Marxism and Western capitalism. Indeed, they
viewed atheistic communism, Jewish Zionism, and Western
"Crusader-minded" Christianity as their main enemies, which were
responsible for the decadence that led to foreign domination and
defeat by Zionists. They were intolerant of people who did not
share their worldview. Islamists tended to be hostile toward the
orthodox ulama, especially the scholars at Al Azhar who
frequently criticized the Islamists' extreme religious
interpretations. Islamists believed that the established social
and political order had tainted the ulama, who had come to
represent stumbling blocks to the new Islamic order. In addition,
Islamists condemned the orthodox as "pulpit parrots" committed to
a formalist practice of Islam but not to its spirit.
The social origins of Islamists changed after the 1952
Revolution. In the 1940s and early 1950s, the Muslim Brotherhood
had appealed primarily to urban civil servants and white- and
blue-collar workers. After the early 1970s, the Islamic revival
attracted followers from a broad spectrum of social classes. Most
activists were university students or recent graduates; they
included rural-urban migrants and urban middle-class youth whose
fathers were middle-level government employees or professionals.
Their fields of study--medicine, engineering, military science,
and pharmacy--were among the most highly competitive and
prestigious disciplines in the university system. The
rank-and-file members of Islamist groups have come from the
middle class, the lower-middle class, and the urban working
class.
Various Islamist groups espoused different means for achieving
their political agenda. All Islamists, however, were concerned
with Islam's role in the complex and changing society of Egypt in
the late twentieth century. A common focus of their political
efforts has been to incorporate the sharia into the country's
legal code. In deference to their increasing influence, the
Ministry of Justice in 1977 published a draft law making apostasy
by a Muslim a capital offense and proposing traditional Islamic
punishments for crimes, such as stoning for adultery and
amputation of a hand for theft. In 1980 Egypt supported a
referendum that proposed a constitutional amendment to make the
sharia "the sole source of law." The influence of the Islamists
temporarily waned in the aftermath of Sadat's assassination in
1981, but the election of nine members of the Muslim Brotherhood
to the People's Assembly in 1984 revived Islamists' prospects. In
1985 the People's Assembly voted to initiate a procedure for the
gradual application of the sharia, beginning with an indefinite
education period to prepare the population for the legal changes;
the next step would be to amend all existing laws to exclude any
provisions that conflict with the sharia. Moves to reform the
legal code received support from many Muslims who wanted to
purify society and reject Western legal codes forced on Egypt in
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
***Coptic Church
The Copts have remained a significant minority throughout the
medieval and modern periods. After the Turks incorporated Egypt
into the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century, they organized
the government around a system of millets, or religious
communities. The Copts were one of the communities. Each
organized religious minority lived according to its own canon law
under the leadership of recognized religious authorities who
represented the millet to the outside world and supervised the
millet's internal communal life. This form of organization
preserved and nourished the religious differences among these
peoples. Most historians believe that the millet system prevented
the full integration of non-Muslims into Muslim life. The system,
which the Ottomans applied throughout their empire, had an
enduring influence on the social structure of all countries in
the Middle East.
The Copts, an indigenous Christian sect, constituted Egypt's
largest religious minority. Estimates of their numbers in 1990
ranged between 3 million to 7 million. The Copts claimed descent
from the ancient Egyptians; the word copt is derived from the
Arabic word qubt (Egyptian). Egypt was Christianized during the
first century A.D., when the country was part of the Roman
Empire. The Coptic Church claims to hold an unbroken line of
patriarchal succession to the See of Alexandria founded by Saint
Mark, a disciple of Christ. Egyptian Christianity developed
distinct dogmas and practices during the more than two centuries
that the religion was illegal. By the fourth century, when
Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman
Empire, Coptic traditions were sufficiently different from those
in Rome and Constantinople (formerly Byzantium; present-day
Istanbul) to cause major religious conflicts. Dissension
persisted for 150 years until most Copts seceded from the main
body of Christianity because they rejected the decision of the
Council of Chalcedon that Christ had a dual nature, both human
and divine, believing instead in Christ's single, divine nature.
The Coptic Church developed separately from other Eastern
churches. The Coptic Church's clerical hierarchy had evolved by
the sixth century. A patriarch, referred to as the pope, heads
the church. A synod or council of senior priests (people who have
attained the status of bishops) is responsible for electing or
removing popes. Members of the Coptic Church worldwide (about 1
million Copts lived outside of Egypt as of 1990) recognize the
pope as their spiritual leader. The pope, traditionally based in
Alexandria, also serves as the chief administrator of the church.
The administrator's functionaries includes hundreds of priests
serving urban and rural parishes, friars in monasteries, and nuns
in convents.
Following Islam's spread through Egypt, Muslims alternately
tolerated and persecuted the Copts. Heavy taxation of Christians
encouraged mass conversions to Islam, and within two centuries,
Copts had become a distinct minority. By the tenth century,
Arabic had replaced Coptic as the primary spoken language, and
Coptic was relegated to a liturgical language.
The Ottoman millet system of drawing administrative divisions
along religious lines reinforced Coptic solidarity. The
dismantling of the millet system during the nineteenth century
helped open new career opportunities for the Copts. Egypt's
Muslim rulers had traditionally used minorities as
administrators, and the Copts were initially the main
beneficiaries of the burgeoning civil service. During the early
twentieth century, however, the British purged many Copts from
the bureaucracy. The Copts resented this policy, but it
accelerated their entry into professional careers.
In the twentieth century, Copts have been disproportionately
represented among the ranks of prosperous city dwellers. Urban
Copts tended to favor careers in commerce and the professions,
whereas the livelihoods of rural Copts were virtually
indistinguishable from their Muslim counterparts. Urban Copts
were stratified into groups of long-time residents and groups of
recent migrants from the countryside. The latter group was often
impoverished and fell outside the traditional urban Coptic
community. The former group included many university professors,
lawyers, doctors, a few prominent public officials, and a
substantial middle echelon of factory workers and service sector
employees.
Anti-Coptic sentiment has accompanied the resurgence of Islamic
activism in Egypt. Since 1972 several Coptic churches have been
burned, including the historic Qasriyat ar Rihan Church in Cairo.
Islamist groups frequently and explicitly denounced Copts in
their pamphlets and prayer meetings. The increasing tensions
between Copts and Muslims inevitably led to clashes in Upper
Egypt in 1977 and 1978 and later in the cities and villages of
the Delta. Three days of religious riots in Cairo in 1981 left at
least 17 Copts and Muslims dead and more than 100 injured.
Isolated incidents of Muslim-Coptic violence continued throughout
the 1980s and during 1990.
Coptic Pope Shenudah III (elected in 1971) blamed government
silence for the increasing violence. He also expressed alarm at
official actions that he said encouraged anti-Coptic feelings. In
1977, to protest a Ministry of Justice proposal to apply sharia
legal penalties to any Muslim who converted from Islam, the pope
called on the Coptic community to fast for five days. As
harassment of Copts increased, Pope Shenudah III canceled
official Easter celebrations for 1980 and fled to a desert
convent with his bishops. Sadat accused the pope of inciting the
Coptic-Muslim strife and banished him in September 1981 to
internal exile. The government then appointed a committee of five
bishops to administer the church. The following year, the
government called upon the church synod to elect a new pope, but
the Coptic clergy rejected this state intervention. In 1985 Husni
Mubarak released Pope Shenudah III from internal exile and
permitted him to resume his religious duties.
***Other Religious Minorities
Egypt's other religious minorities in 1990 included
approximately 350,000 adherents of the Greek Orthodox Church,
175,000 Eastern and Latin Rite Catholics, 200,000 Protestants,
and fewer than 1,000 Jews. The Greek Orthodox Church was
headquartered in Alexandria, where most of its members lived.
Most members of the Greek Orthodox were of Greek origin, but
followers also included Arabs, Armenians, and the affiliated
Coptic Orthodox Church. The Catholics embraced seven distinct
rites that Rome historically authorized to use languages other
than Latin as integral parts of their liturgies. Approximately 85
percent of all Catholics in Egypt belonged to the Coptic Catholic
Church. Other Catholics included followers of the Armenian,
Chaldean, Greek, Latin, Maronite, and Syrian rites. There were
also numerous Protestant churches. The government suspended the
Anglican Church in 1958 after the Anglo-French occupation of the
Suez Canal but permitted it to resume functioning in 1974. The
Anglican Church in Egypt was part of the Episcopal Church in
Jerusalem and the Middle East. Other Protestant churches included
the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Union of Armenian Evangelical
Churches in the Near East, and the Coptic Evangelical Church.
**Education
Prior to the nineteenth century, the ulama and Coptic clergy
controlled Egypt's traditional education. The country's most
important institutes were theological seminaries, but most
mosques and churches--even in villages--operated basic schools
where boys could learn to read and write Arabic, to do simple
arithmetic, and to memorize passages from the Quran or Bible.
Muhammad Ali established the system of modern secular education
in the early nineteenth century to provide technically trained
cadres for his civil administration and military. His grandson,
Ismail, greatly expanded the system by creating a network of
public schools at the primary, secondary, and higher levels.
Ismail's wife set up the first school for girls in 1873. Between
1882 and 1922, when the country was under British administration,
state education did not expand. However, numerous private
schools, including Egypt's first secular university, were
established. After direct British rule ended, Egypt adopted a new
constitution that proclaimed the state's responsibility to ensure
adequate primary schools for all Egyptians. Nevertheless,
education generally remained accessible only to the elite. At the
time of the 1952 Revolution, fewer than 50 percent of all
primary-school-age children attended school, and the majority of
the children who were enrolled were boys. Nearly 75 percent of
the population over ten years of age was illiterate. More than 90
percent of the females in this age group were illiterate.
The Free Officers dramatically expanded educational
opportunities. They pledged to provide free education for all
citizens and abolished all fees for public schools. They doubled
the Ministry of Education's budget in one decade; government
spending on education grew from less than 3 percent of the gross
domestic product (GDP--see Glossary) in 1952-53 to more than 5
percent by 1978. Expenditures on school construction increased
1,000 percent between 1952 and 1976, and the total number of
primary schools doubled to 10,000. By the mid-1970s, the
educational budget represented more than 25 percent of the
government's total current budget expenses. Since the mid-1970s,
however, the government has virtually abandoned the country's
earlier educational goals. Consequently, public investment in new
educational infrastructure has declined in relation to total
educational expenditures; about 85 percent of the Ministry of
Education's budget has been designated for salaries.
From academic year 1953-54 through 1965-66, overall enrollments
more than doubled. They almost doubled again from 1965-66 through
1975-76. Since 1975 primary-school enrollments have continued to
grow at an average of 4.1 percent annually, and intermediate
school (grades seven through nine) at an average of 6.9 percent
annually (for 1985-86 enrollments, see table 2, Appendix). The
proportion of the population with some secondary education more
than doubled between 1960 and 1976; the number of people with
some university education nearly tripled. Women made great
educational gains: the percentage of women with preuniversity
education grew more than 300 percent while women with university
education grew more than 600 percent. By academic year 1985-86,
about 84 percent of the primary-school-age population (more than
6 million of the 7.2 million children between the ages of seven
and twelve) were enrolled in primary school. Less than 30 percent
of eligible youth, however, attended intermediate and secondary
schools. Because as many as 16 percent of Egyptian children were
receiving no education in the 1980s, the literacy rate lagged
behind the expansion in enrollments; in 1990 only 45 percent of
the population could read and write.
Law Number 139 of 1981, which defined the structure of
preuniversity public education, made the nine-year basic cycle
compulsory. Regardless of this law, most parents removed their
children from school before they completed ninth grade. The basic
cycle included six years of primary school and three years of
intermediate school. Promotion from primary to intermediate
school was contingent upon obtaining passing scores on special
examinations. Admission to the three-year secondary cycle (grades
ten through twelve) also was determined by examination scores.
Secondary students chose between a general (college preparatory)
curriculum and a technical curriculum. During the eleventh and
twelfth grades, students in the general curriculum concentrated
their studies on the humanities, mathematics, or the sciences.
Students in the technical curriculum studied agriculture,
communications, or industry. Students could advance between
grades only after they received satisfactory scores on
standardized tests. The Ministry of Education, however, strictly
limited the number of times a student could retake an
examination.
Various government ministries also operated training institutes
that accepted students who had completed the basic cycle.
Training-institute programs, which incorporated both secondary
and postsecondary vocational education, varied in length and
provided certificates to students who successfully completed the
prescribed curricula. Teacher-training institutes, for example,
offered a five-year program. In the academic year 1985-86,
approximately 85,000 students were enrolled in all training
programs; 60 percent of the enrollees were women.
As of 1990, problems persisted in Egypt's education system. For
example, the government did not enforce laws requiring
primary-school-age children to attend school. In some areas, as
many as 50 percent of the formally enrolled children did not
regularly attend classes. There were also significant regional
differences in the primary-school enrollment rate. In urban
areas, nearly 90 percent of the school-age children attended. In
some rural areas of Upper Egypt, only 50 percent attended.
Overall, only half of the students enrolled in primary school
completed all six grades.
The enrollment rate for girls continued to be significantly
lower than for boys. Although increases in the number of girls
enrolled in school were greater than they were for boys in the
1960s and 1970s, boys still outnumbered girls at every
educational level. In 1985-86, for example, only 45 percent of
all primary students were girls. An estimated 75 percent of girls
between the ages of six and twelve were enrolled in primary
school compared with 94 percent of boys in the same age-group.
Girls' primary-school enrollment was lowest in Upper Egypt, where
less than 30 percent of all students were girls. Girls also
dropped out of primary school more frequently than boys. About 66
percent of the boys beginning primary school completed the
primary cycle, while only 57 percent of the girls completed all
six grades. Girls accounted for about 41 percent of total
intermediate school enrollment and 39 percent of secondary school
enrollment. Among all girls aged twelve to eighteen in 1985-86,
only 46 percent were enrolled in school.
The shortage of teachers was a chronic problem, especially in
rural primary schools. Under British rule, educated Egyptians had
perceived teaching as a career that lacked prestige. Young people
chose this career only when there was no other option or when it
would serve as a stepping-stone to a more lucrative career in
law. Despite improvements in training and salaries,
teaching--especially at the primary level--remained a low-status
career. In 1985-86, Egypt's primary and secondary schools
employed only 155,000 teachers to serve 9.6 million pupils--a
ratio of about 62 students per teacher. Some city schools were so
crowded that they operated two shifts daily. Many Egyptian
teachers preferred to go abroad, where salaries were higher and
classroom conditions better. During the 1980s, the government
granted 30,000 exit visas a year to teachers who had contracts to
teach in Arab countries.
Higher education expanded even more dramatically than the
preuniversity system. In the first ten years following the 1952
Revolution, spending on higher education increased 400 percent.
Between academic years 1951-52 and 1978-79, student enrollment in
public universities grew nearly 1,400 percent. In 1989-90 there
were fourteen public universities with a total enrollment of
700,000. More than half of these institutions were established as
autonomous universities after 1952, four in the 1970s and five in
the 1980s. The total number of female college students had
doubled; by 1985-86 women accounted for 32 percent of all
students. In the 1980s, public universities--accounting for
roughly 7 percent of total student enrollment--received more than
one-fourth of all current education-budget spending.
Since the late 1970s, government policies have attempted to
reorient postsecondary education. The state expanded technical
training programs in agriculture, commerce, and a variety of
other fields. Student subsidies were partially responsible for a
15 percent annual increase in enrollments in the country's
five-year technical institutes. The technical institutes were set
up to provide the growing private sector with trained personnel
and to alleviate the shortage of skilled labor. Universities,
however, permitted graduates of secondary schools and technical
institutes to enroll as "external students," which meant they
could not attend classes but were allowed to sit for examinations
and to earn degrees. The policy resulted in a flourishing
clandestine trade in class notes and overburdened professors with
additional examinations. Further, widespread desire for a
university degree led many students in technical institutes to
view their curricula as simply a stepping-stone to a university
degree.
**Health and Welfare
Since the 1952 Revolution, the government has striven to improve
the general health of the population. The National Charter of
1962 stipulated that "the right of health welfare is foremost
among the rights of every citizen." Per capita public spending
for health increased almost 500 percent between 1952 and 1976. As
a result of this spending, the average Egyptian in 1990 was
healthier and lived longer than the typical Egyptian of the early
1950s. For example, life expectancy at birth, only thirty-nine
years in 1952, had climbed to fifty-nine years for men and sixty
years for women by 1989. The crude death rate, which was 23.9 in
1952, had declined to 10.3 by 1990. Its main component, the
infant mortality rate, declined more dramatically in the same
period, from 193 infant deaths per 1,000 live births to 85 per
1,000. Nevertheless, major disparities remained in the mortality
rates of cities and villages as well as in those of Upper and
Lower Egypt. Although mortality and morbidity data were adequate
for establishing general trends, they were not reliable for
precise measurements. Egypt's official infant mortality rate, for
example, was probably understated because parents tended not to
report infants who died in the first few weeks of life. Corrected
estimates of the infant mortality rate for 1990 ranged as high as
113 per 1,000 live births.
Although mortality rates have declined since 1952, the main
causes of death (respiratory ailments and diseases of the
digestive tract) have remained unchanged for much of the
twentieth century. Death rates for infants and children ages one
to five dropped, but children remained the largest contributors
to the mortality rate. Nearly seventeen infants and four children
under five years of age died for each death of an individual
between age five and thirty-four. Children younger than five
years of age accounted for about half of all mortality--one of
the world's highest rates. During the 1980s, diarrhea and
associated dehydration accounted for 67 percent of the deaths
among infants and children. Concern about this health problem
prompted the government to establish the National Control of
Diarrheal Diseases Project (NCDDP) in 1982. With funds provided
by the United States Agency for International Development, NCDDP
initiated a program to educate health care workers and families
about oral-rehydration therapy. NCDDP's efforts helped reduce
diarrhea-related deaths by 60 percent between 1983 and 1988. The
highest rates of infant mortality were in Upper Egypt, followed
by Cairo, Alexandria, and other urban areas; the lowest rates
were in Lower Egypt.
The average Egyptian's nutritional status compared favorably
with that of people in most middle- and low-income countries.
Bread, rice, legumes, seasonal fresh fruits, and vegetables such
as onions and tomatoes constituted the daily diet of a majority
of the population. Middle- and upper-income families also
regularly consumed red meat, poultry, or fish. Caloric intake was
adequate, although there were indications of widespread vitamin
deficiencies. The most recent surveys of nutrition, undertaken in
the late 1970s, revealed that approximately 25 percent of
public-school children were either malnourished or anemic. The
incidence of poor nutrition was highest in rural areas, where
nearly 33 percent of surveyed children were malnourished,
compared with only 17 percent in the cities; among low-income
families, about 50 percent of all children showed indications of
inadequate nutrition.
The major endemic diseases in 1990 were tuberculosis, trachoma,
schistosomiasis, and malaria. Schistosomiasis, carried by blood
flukes and spread to humans by water-dwelling snails, was a major
parasitic affliction. Historically, the disease was most
prevalent in the Delta, where standing water in irrigation
ditches provided an ideal environment for the snails and other
parasites. Those working in agriculture were particularly
susceptible; their prevalence rate was nearly three times that of
nonagriculturists. Debility owing to schistosomiasis could not be
calculated accurately; its severity generally varied depending on
the infected organs, commonly the bladder, genitals, liver, and
lungs. Treatments for the disease are not always effective, and
the main medicines have toxic side effects. The government tried
to control the spread of the disease by educating the population
about the dangers of using stagnant water. According to Ministry
of Health statistics, the incidence of schistosomiasis dropped by
half between 1935 and 1966. One of the negative health
consequences of the Aswan High Dam, however, was an increase in
the incidence of schistosomiasis in Upper Egypt, where the dam
has permitted a change from basin to perennial agriculture with
its continuous presence of standing water.
The Ministry of Health provided free, basic health care at
hundreds of public medical facilities. General health centers
offered routine medical care, maternal and child care, family
planning services, and screening for hospital admittance. These
clinics were usually associated with the 1,300 social service
units or the 5,000 social care cooperatives that served both
urban and rural areas. In addition, in 1990 the Ministry of
Health maintained 344 general hospitals, 280 specialized health
care units for the treatment of endemic diseases, respiratory
ailments, cancer and other diseases, and dental centers. There
were about 45,000 beds in all government hospitals, plus an
additional 40,000 beds available in private health institutes.
The number of trained medical personnel was high relative to most
middle-income countries. In 1990 there were more than 73,300
doctors in the country, approximately 1 physician per 715
inhabitants. There were also about 70,000 certified nurses.
Medical personnel tended to be concentrated in the cities, and
most preferred private practice to employment in public
facilities. Fewer than 30 percent of all doctors and scarcely 10
percent of nurses served in villages.
Although public health clinics were distributed relatively
evenly throughout the country, their services were generally
inadequate because of the shortage of doctors and nurses and the
lack of modern equipment. In both cities and villages, patients
using the free or low-cost government facilities expected a
lengthy journey and a long wait to see a physician; service was
usually impersonal and perfunctory. Dissatisfaction with public
clinics forced even low-income patients to patronize the
expensive private clinics. In rural areas, village midwives
assisted between 50 percent and 80 percent of all births. Even
when women used the maternal care available, prenatal care was
minimal, and most births occurred before trained personnel
arrived.
Further improvements in the health of Egyptians required
increasing the effectiveness of the primary health-care system
and improving public sanitation and health education. In 1990
approximately 25 percent of the total population, including 36
percent of all villagers, did not have access to safe water for
drinking and food preparation. Use of unhygienic water was the
major cause of diarrheal diseases. In addition, more than 50
percent of all families lived in homes that lacked plumbing.
Sewage facilities throughout the country were inadequate.
Increasing the level of women's education would probably help to
decrease the infant mortality rate. Studies have found that
infant mortality decreases as mothers increase their level of
education, even when age and family income are held constant.
Surveys undertaken in the 1970s indicated that 78 percent of the
infants born to illiterate women survived early childhood. That
figure increased to 84 percent for infants born to women who
finished primary school and to 90 percent for infants born to
women with secondary or higher education.
The government also had established 1,300 social service centers
and 5,100 social care cooperatives by 1990. The social service
centers provided instruction in adult literacy, health education,
vocational training, and family planning. The social care
cooperatives had similar services and also provided child care
centers for working mothers, aid for the handicapped, and
transportation for the elderly and infirm. About 65 percent of
the social service centers were in villages; 65 percent of social
care cooperatives were in cities. In many villages, the social
service centers were associated with the local public health
clinic and supplemented the primary health care services. The
overall impact of the centers and cooperatives has been limited
by the lack of funding since the late 1970s.
The government instituted a social security program in the early
1960s to provide pensions, through forced savings, for employees.
Coverage also included unemployment, disability, and death
benefits. In 1990 less than half of the work force participated
in the program. Self-employed individuals and most private sector
workers (including domestics, farm workers, and casual laborers)
were not covered by the program. The overwhelming majority of
participants were civil servants and employees of government
enterprises. Workers in private factories could only participate
in social security if their employers chose to make regular
contributions to the program.
---------------------------
Chapter 2 bibliographic notes:
Although there is extensive English-language literature on
Egypt, few studies treat Egyptian society comprehensively. The
most detailed discussion of Egypt's geography is in W.B. Fisher's
The Middle East. This research has been updated in the article,
"Egypt: Physical and Social Geography," in The Middle East and
North Africa, 1989.
A useful overview of contemporary Egyptian society is Anthony
McDermott's Egypt From Nasser to Mubarak. Although primarily
political science books, Raymond A. Hinnebusch, Jr.'s Egyptian
Politics under Sadat, Robert Springborg's Mubarak's Egypt, and
John Waterbury's The Egypt of Nasser and Sadat all contain
valuable detail about social groups and the impact of the
government's social and economic policies on class structure.
Several scholars have written insightful studies of rural
society. The classic study of traditional village life, first
published in French in the 1930s, is Henry Habib Ayrout's The
Egyptian Peasant. Although Ayrout's data are outdated, his
descriptions of customs, kinship, and farming techniques still
have contemporary relevance. A recent book, Lila Abu-Lughod's
Veiled Sentiments, presents equally thorough descriptions of
customs and kinship patterns among the beduins. Egypt's land
redistribution policies of the 1950s and 1960s have attracted
considerable interest from scholars who have reached very
different conclusions about the impact of the policies. Iliya
Harik's The Political Mobilization of Peasants suggests that the
small peasant owners and the landless benefited most from
redistribution. However, in In a Moment of Enthusiasm Leonard
Binder argues that the land redistribution primarily benefited
and helped to consolidate the class of middle peasants. Hamied
Ansari challenges the theses of Harik and Binder in Egypt: The
Stalled Society. In Family, Power and Politics in Egypt, Robert
Springborg argues that the old landlord class retained
substantial influence and continued to control substantial land
despite official limits on individual holdings.
There are many studies about life in urban Egypt. Among the most
interesting is Unni Wikan's Life Among the Poor of Cairo. This
book, a case study of the family and friends of one lower-class
woman, provides valuable insights into the strength of family
ties in the midst of poverty and adversity. Andrea B. Rugh's
Family in Contemporary Egypt analyzes the various family
adaptation patterns to the social and economic changes that have
been occurring since the 1960s.
Articles in many periodicals address the role of religion in
contemporary Egyptian society. The most useful studies generally
are published in current issues of quarterlies such as the
International Journal of Middle East Studies, Middle East Report,
and Middle East Journal. Giles Keppel's Muslim Extremism in Egypt
is a penetrating study of the role of Islamic political groups in
the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Finally, one of the most valuable ways of gaining insight into
Egyptian society is through the novels, plays, and short stories
of several contemporary writers whose works have been translated
into English. The best-known novelist is Naguib Mahfouz, who won
the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988. His novels, including
Midaq Alley, The Fountain and Tomb, Mirrors, and The Trilogy,
deal with the lives of the poor and the middle class and provide
glimpses into the impact of social, political, and economic
changes on individuals and families. (For further information and
complete citations, see Bibliography.)
***********************
**Chapter 3. The Economy
From the 1850S until the 1930s, Egypt's economy exhibited a
classic Third World dependency syndrome, the essence of which was
reliance on the export of a single, usually primary, commodity.
In the case of Egypt, the commodity was long-staple cotton,
introduced in the mid-1820s during the reign of Muhammad Ali
(1805-49), and made possible by the switch from basin to
perennial, modern irrigation. Cotton cultivation was a key
ingredient in an ambitious program that the Egyptian ruler
undertook to diversify and develop the economy.
Another such ingredient was industrialization.
Industrialization, however, proved for various domestic and
external reasons to be less than successful, and until the 1930s,
virtually no industrial build-up occurred. The failure of
industrialization resulted largely from tariff restrictions that
Britain imposed on Egypt through the 1838 commercial treaty,
which allowed only minuscule tariffs, if any. The isolated
industrial ventures initiated by members of Egypt's landed
aristocracy, who otherwise channeled their investment into land
acquisition and speculation, were nipped in the bud by foreign
competition. The few surviving enterprises were owned by the
foreign community. These enterprises either enjoyed natural
protection as in the case of sugar and cotton processing, or
benefited from the special skills that the foreign owners had
acquired, as in the case of cigarette making by Greeks and Turks.
The beginnings of industrialization awaited the depression of
the late 1920s and 1930s and World War II. The depression sent
cotton prices tumbling, and Britain acceded to Egyptian demands
to raise tariffs. Moreover, World War II, by substantially
reducing the flow of foreign goods into the country, gave further
impetus to the establishment of import-substitution industries. A
distinguishing feature of the factories built at this time was
that they were owned by Egyptian entrepreneurs.
In spite of the lack of industrialization, the economy grew
rapidly throughout the nineteenth century. Growth, however, was
confined to the cotton sector and the supporting transportation,
financial, and other facilities. Little of the cotton revenues
was invested in economic development. The revenues were largely
drained out of the country as repatriated profits or repayments
of debts that the state had incurred to pay for irrigation works
and the extravagance of the khedives.
Rapid economic growth ended in the early 1900s. The supply of
readily available land had been largely exhausted and multiple
cropping, concentration on cotton, and perennial irrigation had
lessened the fertility of the soil. Cotton yields dropped in the
early 1900s and recovered to their former level only in the
1940s, through investments in modern inputs such as fertilizers
and drainage.
The fall in agricultural productivity and terms of trade led to
a stagnation in the per capita gross national product (GNP--see
Glossary) between the end of World War I and the 1952 Revolution:
the GNP averaged E43.0 (for value of the Egyptian pound--see
Glossary), in 1954 prices, at both ends of the period. By 1952
Egypt was in the throes of both economic and political crises,
which culminated in the assumption of power by the Free Officers.
**Structure, Growth, and Development of the Economy
By necessity if not by design, the revolutionary regime gave
considerably greater priority to economic development than did
the monarchy, and the economy has been a central government
concern since then. While the economy grew steadily, it sometimes
exhibited sharp fluctuations. Analysis of economic growth is
further complicated by the difficulty in obtaining reliable
statistics. Growth figures are often disputed, and economists
contend that growth estimates may be grossly inaccurate because
of the informal economy and workers' remittances, which may
contribute as much as one-fourth of GNP (see Remittances, this
ch.). According to one estimate, the gross domestic product
(GDP--see Glossary), at 1965 constant prices, grew at an annual
compound rate of about 4.2 percent between 1955 and 1975. This
was about 1.7 times larger than the annual population growth rate
of 2.5 percent in the same period. The period between 1967 and
1974, the final years of Gamal Abdul Nasser's presidency and the
early part of Anwar as Sadat's, however, were lean years, with
growth rates of only about 3.3 percent. The slowdown was caused
by many factors, including agricultural and industrial stagnation
and the costs of the June 1967 War. Investments, which were a
crucial factor for the preceding growth, also nose-dived and
recovered only in 1975 after the dramatic 1973 increase in oil
prices.
Like most countries in the Middle East, Egypt partook of the oil
boom and suffered the subsequent slump. Available figures suggest
that between 1975 and 1980 the GDP (at 1980 prices) grew at an
annual rate of more than 11 percent. This impressive achievement
resulted, not from the contribution of manufacturing or
agriculture, but from oil exports, remittances, foreign aid, and
grants (see Balance of Payments and Main Sources of Foreign
Exchange, this ch.). From the mid-1980s, the GDP growth slowed as
a result of the 1985-86 crash in oil prices. In the two
succeeding years, the GDP grew at no more than an annual rate of
2.9 percent. Of concern for the future was the decline of the
fixed investment ratio from around 30 percent during most of the
1975-85 decade to 22 percent in 1987.
The post-World War II growth was accompanied by a certain degree
of diversification of the economic structure, although not
without serious flaws in the diversification (see table 3,
Appendix). By 1952 agriculture's share of GDP at fiscal year
(FY--see Glossary) 1959 market prices was 33 percent, industry's
(including mining and electricity) share reached 13 percent, and
the service sectors' share amounted to 54 percent. The
diversification resulted from the decline of agriculture's
contribution to the GDP and the ascendancy of industry and,
particularly, of government services. Agriculture's share in the
GDP dropped by more than half from 1952, stabilizing near 15
percent through most of the 1980s. Industry's share moved in the
opposite direction: from only 13 percent in 1952, it hovered
around 35 percent in the 1980s.
Although the industrial sector's contribution to the GNP rose
during this period, that growth was due to the increase in
energy-related activity, especially oil-drilling. Manufacturing
stagnated and may even have declined. In 1974 (when data for the
subsector became available), manufacturing accounted for 15
percent of GNP, but its share fell to 12 percent in 1986 and
remained there in early 1990. The lackluster performance of
manufacturing was one of the main reasons for the Egyptian
economy's inability to become self-sustaining, and for its
dependence on oil and external financing.
The services (including construction) held relatively steady,
comprising around one-half of GDP, a figure that included the
contributions of the various subsectors. An important subsector
from a developmental viewpoint was the one entitled "other
services"--mostly government services. These averaged 14.2
percent of the growth in GDP in the years from 1952 to 1959 and
32.7 percent of the growth in the years from 1959 to 1969. The
increase resulted primarily from the expansion in the bureaucracy
that followed the 1961 decree guaranteeing government jobs for
all university graduates. The trend continued under Anwar as
Sadat (1970-79), and slowed, or may have reversed under Husni
Mubarak as the state became financially incapable of hiring the
many new job-seeking graduates (see The Role of Government, this
ch.). Although government employment may have encouraged economic
growth temporarily, it impeded it over the long run, competing
for scarce investment funds and exacerbating the trade deficit.
***Infrastructure
In spite of progress in the 1980s, by the end of the decade
Egypt still had a long way to go in expanding and improving
existing services such as housing, transportation,
telecommunications, and water supply. Housing remained
inadequate; urban dwellings were often very crowded, and
residents lived in makeshift accommodations. Housing was
essentially a private activity, and the government tended to
underinvest in the sector. The electric grid reached essentially
all villages in Egypt by the early 1980s, but blackouts in Cairo
and other cities were not uncommon. A major sewage project was
under way. It aimed at revamping and expanding the overflowing,
antiquated network of sewers, pumping stations, and treatment
plants. Some of the work was scheduled for completion by 1991.
With help from the United States Agency for International
Development (AID), telephone lines doubled at the end of the FY
1982-86 Five-Year Plan.
Because infrastructural improvements and additions were costly
and required a long lead time, no relief was anticipated before
the mid-1990s. The FY 1987-91 Five-Year Plan allocated more than
E4.1 billion for infrastructure. The problem that faced the
government was how to balance the badly needed improvement of the
infrastructure against the fact that such investments created
only temporary employment and had small impact on industries that
served or were served by the infrastructure.
***Transportation
Egypt's road and rail network was developed primarily to
transport population and was most extensive in the densely
populated areas near the Nile River (Nahr an Nil) and in the Nile
Delta. Areas along the Mediterranean coast were generally served
by a few paved roads or rail lines, but large areas of the
Western Desert, Sinai Peninsula (Sinai), and the mountains in the
east were inaccessible except by air (see fig. 5). The Nile and a
system of canals in the Delta were the traditional means of
transporting goods, although freight was increasingly carried by
truck or rail. The entire system was unable to keep up with rapid
population growth, particularly in the large urban areas, and
expansion and modernization of all forms of transportation were
under way.
In early 1990, Egypt had more than 49,000 kilometers of roads,
of which about 15,000 kilometers were paved, 2,500 kilometers
were gravel, and the remaining 31,500 kilometers were earthen.
The highway system was concentrated in the Nile Valley north of
Aswan and throughout the Delta; paved roads also extended along
the Mediterranean coast from the Libyan border in the west to the
border with Israel. In the east, a surfaced road ran south from
Suez along the Red Sea, and another connected areas along the
southern coast of Sinai from Suez to the Israeli town of Elat. A
well maintained route circled through several western oases and
tied into the main Nile corridor of highways at Cairo in the
north and Asyut in the south. Large areas of the Western Desert,
the mountainous areas near the Red Sea, and the interior of the
Sinai Peninsula remained without any permanent-surface roads,
however.
The state-owned Egyptian Railways had more than 4,800 kilometers
of track running through the populated areas of the Nile Valley
and the coastal regions. Most of the track was 1.435-meter
standard gauge, although 347 kilometers were 0.750-meter narrow
gauge. Portions of the main route connecting Luxor with Cairo and
Alexandria were double tracked and a commuter line linking Cairo
with the suburb of Hulwan was electrified. Built primarily to
transport people, the passenger service along the Nile was
heavily used.
Less heavily traveled routes provided connections to outlying
areas. A coastal route west from Alexandria to the Libyan border
was being upgraded to allow for increased passenger travel.
Tracks along the Mediterranean coast of Sinai, destroyed during
the June 1967 War, had been repaired, and service was restored
between Al Qantarah on the Suez Canal and the Israeli railroad
system in the Gaza Strip. New ferry boats allowed passengers at
Aswan, the southern terminus of the Egyptian Railways, to connect
with the Sudanese system. A new line intended to export
phosphates was under construction from Al Kharijah in the Western
Desert to the port of Bur Safajah.
The southern leg of the forty-two-kilometer Cairo Metro, the
first subway system in Africa or the Middle East, opened in 1987.
This line, built with the cooperation of France, linked Hulwan in
the south with three main downtown stations, named Sadat, Nasser,
and Mubarak. In 1989 the northeast line opened, extending from
downtown to the suburbs. The city planned to build an east-west
route across the Nile to Giza (Al Jizah). The government hoped
that the subway construction would relieve the extremely jammed
streets, buses, streetcars, and trains.
Although Egypt had sixty-six airfields with paved runways, only
the airports at Cairo and Alexandria handled international
traffic. EgyptAir, the principal government airline, maintained
an extensive international network and had domestic flights from
Cairo and Alexandria to Luxor, Aswan, Abu Simbel (Abu Sunbul),
and Al Ghardaqah on the Red Sea. In 1983 EgyptAir carried 1.6
million passengers. A smaller, state-owned airline, Air Sinai,
provided service from Cairo to points in the Sinai Peninsula. Zas
Passenger Service, the newest airline and the only one that was
privately owned, had daily flights from Cairo to Aswan, Luxor, Al
Ghardaqah, and points in Sinai.
Alexandria was Egypt's principal port and in the early 1990s was
capable of handling 13 million metric tons of cargo yearly.
Egypt's two other main ports, Port Said (Bur Said) and Suez,
reopened in 1975, after an eight-year hiatus following the June
1967 War. Realizing the importance of shipping to the economy,
the government embarked on an ambitious plan in the late 1980s to
build new ports and increase capacity at existing facilities,
including constructing a facility capable of handling up to 20
million metric tons of cargo just west of Alexandria. Bur Safajah
on the Red Sea was being developed to handle phosphate exports,
and the first stage of a new port at the mouth of the Nile's
eastern Damietta (Damyat) tributary opened in 1986.
Egypt had about 3,500 kilometers of inland waterways. The Nile
constituted about half of this system, and the rest was canals.
Several canals in the Delta accommodated ocean-going vessels, and
a canal from the Nile just north of Cairo to the Suez Canal at
Ismailia (Al Ismailiyah) permitted ships to pass from the Nile to
the Red Sea without entering the Mediterranean Sea. Extensive
boat and ferry service on Lake Nasser moved cargo and passengers
between Aswan and Sudan.
The Suez Canal was Egypt's most important waterway and one of
the world's strategic links, being the shortest maritime route
between Europe and the Middle East, South Asia, and the Orient.
Serious proposals for a canal between the Mediterranean and the
Red Sea had been made as early as the fifteenth century by the
Venetians, and Napoleon ordered the first survey of the region to
assess a canal's feasibility in 1799. After several subsequent
studies in the early nineteenth century, construction began in
1859. After ten years of construction and numerous unforeseen
difficulties, the canal finally opened in 1869 (see Suez Canal,
this ch.).
The canal extends 160 kilometers from Port Said on the
Mediterranean to a point just south of Suez on the Red Sea. It
can handle ships with up to sixteen meters draught; transit times
through the length of the canal averaged fifteen hours. Passing
occurs in convoys with large passing bays every twenty-five
kilometers to accommodate traffic from opposite directions.
Traffic patterns have changed considerably over the last century,
reflecting different global priorities: passenger transit has
dropped while the movement of goods, especially petroleum, has
increased dramatically. It was estimated that before the 1967
Arab-Israeli War, 15 percent of the world's total sea traffic
passed through the canal.
***Communications
In addition to its radio and television facilities, which were
well developed, Egypt had a domestic telephone system that in
1984 counted approximately 600,000 telephones, most of them
located in Cairo or Alexandria (see The Political Role of the
Media, ch. 4). Although improvement to the system was under way
in the early 1990s, domestic service was still unreliable. The
quality of international service was better, as international
calls traveled over a variety of high-quality links: submarine
cables to Lebanon and to southern Europe; radio-relay links with
Libya and Sudan; and a ground satellite station just south of
Cairo with two antennas for worldwide telephone, television, and
data transmissions. Egypt was to be a focal part of the Arab
Satellite (Arabsat) communications network linking the various
Arab states, scheduled to be inaugurated in 1991.
**The Role of Government
Muhammad Ali's era saw strong state intervention in the economy;
the subsequent century witnessed a passive state and the
dominance of private foreign and domestic investors. Yet both
failed to achieve economic development or to lift Egypt from
poverty and dependence. The Gamal Abdul Nasser regime (1952-70)
inherited an underdeveloped economy with great inequalities. A
few rich foreigners and nationals controlled the country's
wealth, from large landed estates to manufacturing and commercial
firms, while the bulk of the population was poor and
disenfranchised. The new regime, borrowing from the debates and
programs put forward by various political parties and interests
during the 1930s and World War II, undertook the task of economic
restructuring (see Nasser and Arab Socialism, ch. 1).
The process transformed the state into the dominant economic
agent in the country and culminated in a new economic system
labeled "Arab socialism" in the National Charter issued in 1962.
The government implemented a land reform program that aimed at
eliminating what it referred to as a "feudalist" stratification
of landholding and instead distributing land to small peasants
and the landless. By 1964 a huge public sector had evolved,
including all utilities, communications, and finance as well as
large manufacturing enterprises, transportation, wholesale and
foreign trade, some big retail stores, and construction firms. By
1973 the ratio of public to private in the composition of GDP was
58 to 42 in contrast to 15 to 85 in 1953. The government fixed
the exchange rate of the Egyptian pound, began development
planning, and controlled foreign trade. Nasser nationalized the
Suez Canal in 1956 and in the early 1960s nationalized about 300
key enterprises owned by Egyptian nationals and foreigners. The
private sector came under extensive regulation.
Because of the economic difficulties in the second half of the
1960s, which were exacerbated by the June 1967 War with Israel,
the regime began to reconsider aspects of state controls and its
attitude toward the private sector. A pronounced shift in
orientation, however, awaited Sadat's takeover at the end of
1970.
A combination of economic problems, political considerations,
and his own predilections led Sadat after the October 1973 War,
to declare a new policy he dubbed infitah (opening or open door).
The main ingredients of the policy were to relax existing
government controls over the economy and bureaucratic procedures,
to encourage the private sector, and to stimulate a large inflow
of foreign funds.
The open-door policy succeeded in generating a large inflow of
foreign funds in the form of remittances, foreign grants, and
aid, especially from the United States after the signing of the
Camp David Accords with Israel. The economy also grew at
impressive rates. But the negative side of the policy was that
the country was flooded with imports, and the government was
compelled several times in the 1980s to reimpose import
restrictions (see Imports; Balance of Payments and Main Sources
of Foreign Exchange, this ch.). The income gap between rich and
poor widened, and conspicuous consumption reappeared (see Urban
Society, ch. 2).
Despite the infitah, the government found itself even more
deeply involved in the economy. Subsidies grew from 1 percent of
GDP in 1970 to 11 percent in 1979. The state's contribution to
fixed investment remained high, at 87 percent in 1977. In the
same year, government employment accounted for 32 percent of the
total, but the increased personnel did little to clear up the
bureaucratic snarls that blocked development. Private domestic
and international investment went primarily to housing and
trading companies. Foreign investment remained meager because of
the cumbersome regulations, the bureaucracy, the political
uncertainty, and insufficient incentives.
Mubarak's Gradualism?
Whereas Nasser followed a statist approach to economics and
Sadat, at least in theory, tried to break away from that model
through infitah, analysts found it harder to label Mubarak's
policy. It has variously been called "gradualism," "reform by
stealth," and even "indecisiveness." The president himself seemed
to indicate his commitment to privatization and at the same time
to the public sector, which he once described as the only cushion
for the poor. Analysts attributed this state of affairs to such |
