[BLANK_AUDIO] And how did Egypt differ from other Arabic speaking lands? After all, in Egypt in this period, we speak of Egyptian nationalism, something we do not speak of in countries like Syria or Iraq. So how did Egypt differ? Egypt differed from other Arab speaking lands in the sense that Egypt was a very separate independent case [UNKNOWN]. Egyptian nationalism emerged against a very specific reality that existed only in Egypt and not in other Arab countries. And that is the British occupation. There was therefore a specific Egyptian, rather than Arab, Muslim, or Ottoman content, to the nationalist movement that emerged in Egypt. It had a specific geographical and political definition. During the 19th century, as we have already seen, Egypt underwent a series of radical changes, the foundations of the modern state in Egypt, built by Muhammad Ali. Egypt underwent an economic revolution of sorts. Basing the economy on an export-oriented agriculture, particularly the growing of cotton for export and the sugar industry. There was considerable social change in Egypt in the 19th century. The new school system, the printing press, generalism, and legal reform. All of that was very similar to other parts of the Ottoman Empire. And like in other parts of the empire, the introduction to the world of ideas and the lifestyle of Europe. Egypt in the 1870s was Egypt in a situation of bankruptcy and ever-increasing international intervention in Egypt's finances. To ensure payment of the huge debt that the Egyptians had accumulated in the very rapid project of modernization, instituted very much under the rule of Khedive Isma'il. In 1879, Khedive Isma'il was removed by the European powers in favor of his son Tewfik. Egyptian Arabic speaking officers of the Egyptian army began to express ever increasing disapproval of this international influence in Egyptian politics. And this disapproval of the Arabic speaking officers was also representative of more profound trends of social disaffection inside Egypt at that time. There was increasing tension between the Arabic speaking Egyptians and the older upper class of Turco-Circassians officers and the landowning elite, also of Turco-Circassian background, in many places, who had become predominant since Muhammad Ali's assumption of power. This Turco-Circassian elite in part Turkish, that is, Turkish administrators and officers who had remained in Egypt and become very prominent. Or Circassians who had served with the Mamluks and whose origins were in the caucuses and had become part of this new ruling elite in Egypt. And they together with Arab Egyptian landowners were equally interested in the restriction of foreign influence, which naturally eroded their stature too. These are the early beginnings of a very clear cut, openly expressed Egyptian identity. Educated Egyptians were also influenced by new archeological discovery of Egyptians' glorious ancient past. There was a creation of a sense of continuity between Egypt's great pre-Islamic past and its Islamic history. This had great impact on collective identity. If one ventures to study Egypt's pre-Islamic past, one is touching upon a core issue in the Islamic interpretation of history. The pre-Islamic past in the Islamic interpretation of history is known as the Jahiliyya. Jahiliyya, the period of ignorance. There was nothing positive to say about the pre-Islamic past in Egypt. It was this period of ignorance and barbarism that was succeeded by the great civilization of Islam. But if one is beginning to learn, because of the great findings of Pharaoh in Egypt, that the pre-Islamic past in Egypt was something to be proud of, and something to be seen in a very positive light. One is beginning to question the Islamic interpretation of history. And if one is to value Egypt's pre-Islamic past, one is eroding the centrality of Islam in the Egyptian collective identity. Rifa'a al-Tahtawi, who lived from 1801 to 1873 and was one of the leading students in the Muhammad Ali era who studied in Paris from 1826 to 1831. Under the impact of European ideas, that's how we spoke frequently of nations and country, and made it clear that a nation was bound to a specific territory. Egypt was one such country. And the Egyptians were a nation, says Tahtawi, who should love their fatherland like the Europeans love theirs. Tahtawi's writings about Egypt's uniqueness were published in a book on the historical and geographical distinctness of Egypt in 1869. Khedive Isma'il built a national library and a museum. And the introduction of pre-Islamic history in Egypt's schools was becoming an important facet of the evolution of a peculiar, particular Egyptian identity. Writers like Ya'aqub Sanu and Abdallah al-Nadim popularized the terms of Egyptianness and Egyptians in the 1870s and the 1880s, and sound of the slogan of Egypt for the Egyptians. And was against this background that there was ever increasing opposition in Egypt to increasing foreign influence. And this opposition to increasing foreign influence was expressed in the early 1880s in the Urabi Rebellion, a rebellion led by an Arab-speaking Egyptian officer by the name of Ahmed Orabi, who rose against this increasing foreign dominance in Egyptians' internal affairs. There were various reasons for the defi-, disaffection of Ahmed Orabi and his fellow Arabic-speaking Egyptian officers. Their promotion to the highest ranks in the military were blocked by the Turco-Circassian elite. Many lost their jobs in the financial crisis of the 1870s. And in 1881 and 1882, there were repeated uprising of the officers under Ahmed Orabi against the economic situation, against the Turco-Circassian domination, and against increasing foreign intervention in Egypt's domestic financial affairs. Orabi spoke, for the most part, in traditionally Islamic tense, but he also used the slogans of Abdallah al-Nadim, or an Egypt for the Egyptians. From May 1882, Egypt became increasingly rebellious and disorderly. Riots broke out in Alexandria in June. And the European quarter of the city was sacked by the rioters. In July of 1882, the British navy shelled Alexandria. And in September of that year, the British occupied Egypt. This was to be a temporary occupation, the British said. But in the end, it lasted for no less than 70 years. Ahmed Orabi was exiled to Ceylon, today's Sri Lanka. Thus begins a new period in Egypt's history, the period of British occupation. And this period of British occupation generated new forms of political expression, of particularly Egyptian nationalism against the background of the peculiar Egyptian status. A part of the Ottoman Empire directly occupied by the British. And Egyptian nationalism became every more vociferous, especially in the last decade before World War 1. Further expansion of the school system under the British occupation also meant further expansion of a relative freedom of speech that the British did allow in Egypt. More so in Egypt than in the Ottoman Empire. And there was a constant growth of Egyptian national sentiment. The continued competition with the Turco-Circassians over positions in the army and the bureaucracy also contributed to this Egyptian national sentiment. And then, there were other specific incidents and instances that contributed to the sense of Egyptianness. In 1906, there was the very famous, or perhaps one should say infamous, Dinshaway Incident, an incident in which British officers, hunting pigeons in the village of Dinshaway in the delta, got into a fracas with the villagers of Dinshaway, at the end of which, a British officer died. The result was a trial of people of Dinshaway, executions of some of them, the public flogging of many others, and the huge outcry in Egypt against the British occupation, in the name of the Egyptian people. These were also the years in which, in Egypt too, there was influence of the example of Japan. This Asian power that had defeated the Europe power, the European power of the Russians in 1905, which also gave an impetus to the sense of Egyptian nationalism. 1907 was an important year for the establishment of modern style political parties in Egypt. One of these was the nationalist party of al-Hizb al-Watani led by Mustafa Kamil, who lived from 1874 to 1908. And the party that he established in the name of nationalism, Watani in Arabic, was an example of how the Arabic language was beginning to change to incorporate new, modern meanings coming from Europe. Originally, the word watan, which now means national, meant just the place of birth. It now became to mean watan in the French sense of patrie. Watan acquired a new modern meaning in connection with the nationalist idea. [BLANK_AUDIO] It now acquired, like European nationalism, this sense of attachment and loyalty. Kamil was an exciting artist and a writer, but ideologically, very inconsistent. He above all else wanted the British out. He occasional supported the Khedive, occasionally went along with Ottomans or the Islam or secular Egyptian nationalists. Anything that served his immediate political needs. Mustafa Kamil died in 1908 and was succeeded by his far less illustrious companion Muhammad Farid, who was more of an isolationist and usually pro-Ottoman. Another political party established in 1907 was that established by Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid. And the name of that party, Hizb al-Umma, also meant essentially the nationalist party. Umma originally meant community, as in the community of believers. But now, in the modern era, Umma had also come to mean the people in the modern nationalist sense. So Hizb al-Umma also meant the nationalist party if one is to translate from the Arabic into the English. And Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid had been a disciple of Muhammad Abduh, the great, or the greatest one could say, of the Islamic reformers. Abduh himself in his later years had become supportive of Egyptian nationalism. But Ahmad Lutfi took this a few steps further, shifting from westernizing Islamic reform to uncompromising secularism. For Ahmad Lutfi, secular nationalism meant nationalism on a geographic, historic, and linguistic foundation. Nationalism, as far as he was concerned, was not about religious identity. Ahmad Lutfi was a classic European liberal and intellectual giant, known by his generation as [FOREIGN], the philosopher or mentor of the generation. He finally rejected religion as the cohesive element of society. Countries must be guided by national interests, not religious belief. The nation existed independently of the Islamic community. And he, Ahmad Lutfi believed, in a territorially defined nation-state. But as the British historian P.J. Vatikiotis has pointed out, Ahmad Lutfi underestimated the political power inherent in the instinctive adherence of Egyptians to their Islamic heritage. Ahmed Lutfi also differed with those who sought immediate British withdrawal. In his mind, the British presence was actually beneficial. It would enhance the modernization of the Muslims. So he and Muhammad Abduh believed that Egypt was not yet ready for their ideas, and the continuation of the British presence could actually further secular global ideas in Egyptian society. And only after that was achieved, they thought, the, the British should leave Egypt. But there were limits on nationalism in this period before the First World War. Very many people still had a very strong Islamic Ottoman allegiance. And this was indicated in a very strange incident of drawing the border between Egypt and the Ottoman Empire, in a negotiation that was between the Ottomans on the one hand and the British as the de facto rulers of Egypt on the other. In defining the boundary between Egypt and the Ottoman Empire, that boundary which is presently the boundary between Egypt and Israel. That boundary that runs from Rafah on the Mediterranean to Taba and [UNKNOWN] on the Red Sea. In drawing that line in 1906, there was a dispute between the British and the Ottomans on where the line ought to go. The Egyptian public, in this debate, supported the Ottomans against Egyptian territorial claims. Because these territorial claims were being made by the British and the people still felt the strong allegiance to the Ottomans. They were continued sectarian tensions between Muslims and Coptic Christians in Egypt. The Coptic Christians in Egypt were naturally very attracted to the idea of a secular Egyptian nationalist. Secular nationalism for the Christians, like in other parts of the region, was very attractive. It was an ideology that would allow, in the name of seular nationalism, for Christians and Muslims to share an identity as equals. If the community is to remain identified by Islam, it would make it much more difficult for the Christians or for other minorities to enjoy equality with the Muslim majority. So there were tensions between the Copts and the Muslims in Egypt. And these were expressed, for example, in the assassination in 1910 of the Coptic prime minister of Egypt, Butrus Ghali. And he was assassinated by a Muslim who accused the Copts of being too supportive of the European vows. Copts, as a result, became somewhat disappointed in the nationalist movement in Egypt, and there were continued Coptic Muslim suspicions and rivalry. The Copts tended to stress Egyptianness, which, as already mentioned, was far more convenient for them. While Muslims still attached great importance to Egypt's Islamic identity. [BLANK_AUDIO] There was an Arab dimension in Egyptian nationalism, but it wasn't very central. It was much more related to the hostility to the Turco-Circassian elite than to Arab nationalists. And this hostility became increasingly irrelevant as the Turco-Circassians assimilated ever more into Egyptian society. Now, to draw some conclusions from this debate about nationalism. Nationalism arraigned the idea of a select, educated, urban minority. It was not the ideology of the masses, certainly as long as the Ottoman Empire continued to exist. Most people were still influenced in the main by Islamic tradition and by religious identity. Indeed, the old education system had lost, lost much of its power. And it no longer supplied bureaucrats and judges who learned in the new schools. Not to mention the army officers who were at the vanguard of political and social change. But in the villages of the rural Middle East, the old order was still very strong. The supreme mystical religious orders still had much sway over the people and the popular world view. Islam remained an important component of the nationalist movement, and one could not effectively mobilize the masses without it. Islam was still very much at the center, both of Arabism and of Ottomanism. And both of Arabism and of Ottomanism were forms of nationalist defense against the West. They both took pride in the prosperity of Islam, and in political terms, they both sought the preservation of the Muslim empire, albeit in different ways.
