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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 emp |
