Muslim Scholars and the Public Sphere in Mehmed Ali Pasha's

Home , Ahmed Cevdet Pasha, Alemdar Mustafa Pasha, Ali Pasha of Ioannina, Askeri, Cairo Citadel, Deli (Ottoman troops)

Muslim Scholars and the Public Sphere in Mehmed Ali Pasha’s Egypt, 1801-1841

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

Patrick Scharfe

Graduate Program in History

The Ohio State University

2015

Dissertation Committee:

Jane Hathaway, Advisor

Carter Findley

Scott Levi

Patrick Scharfe

2015

Abstract

Although it is universally acknowledged that Islam was one of the pillars of the Ottoman

Empire, modern scholars have placed little emphasis on Muslim scholars or the contested interpretations of sacred law (sharīʿa) in describing the empire’s political dynamics. In the early nineteenth century, however, both played a significant role in the debates that pervaded the empire and its provinces, especially those surrounding European-inspired military reform. Indeed, although often studied without regard for the Ottoman context, the case of early nineteenth-century Egypt exemplifies many of these trends. After the withdrawal of Napoleonic forces from Egypt in 1801, a series of Ottoman governors sought to impose a local analog to the reforms known as the nizam-ı cedid (“new order”), spearheaded in Istanbul by Sultan Selim III. Due partly to the opposition of many Muslim scholars (ʿulamāʾ), these efforts lacked legitimacy and fell victim to a popular uprising in

1805, led by scholars such as ʿUmar Makram. Rather than advocating a rejection of

Ottoman rule by “native” Egyptians, the protestors acted on Ottoman religio-political ideology and opposed the ostensibly arbitrary rule of the reformists, for reasons similar to those of the rebels who overthrew Selim III in 1807. Many believed that the next governor, Mehmed Ali (governor of Egypt, 1805-1848), would govern in a more limited and just fashion, but Mehmed Ali’s regime was much more radical and invasive than any before. He succeeded in defanging public opinion by turning elite scholars against

ii populist ones, particularly ʿUmar Makram, a man of obscure background who had become the head of the Prophet’s descendants in Egypt (naqīb al-ashrāf). Imposing military reform and peasant conscription, Mehmed Ali depended on sympathetic scholars to woo public opinion, which they did through manuscript chronicles and treatises; these treatises, written according to the logic of Islamic scholarship, attempted to convince a skeptical public of the regime’s compliance with sharīʿa. At least one treatise on behalf of military reform, written by an Algerian scholar visiting Cairo named Ibn al-ʿAnnābī

(d. 1851), influenced Sultan Mahmud II’s chief scholarly ideologue, Esad Efendi, who translated the work shortly after it was written. Thus, although Mehmed Ali is often considered irreligious and credited with putting Egypt on a separate path, his official ideology was thoroughly dependent on religio-political appeals (including Turcophone

Sufism) with pan-Ottoman validity. Mehmed Ali’s government still faced opposition from many Muslim scholars, such as Ḥasan al-Quwaysnī (d. 1838), who believed the new order was at odds with sacred law; however, earlier forms of public debate were no longer possible. Before 1830, scholars such as the chronicler al-Jabartī maintained their autonomy by relying on the wealth of countless endowments (Arabic waqf), the growth of which had been a symptom of decentralization and privatization in the empire. Under

Mehmed Ali, such possessions were curbed, and many classically trained Muslim scholars had to enter government service in such fields as printing, writing for the official gazette, education, and medicine. Egypt had entered nineteenth-century modernity, but at great cost to the autonomy of its intellectuals.

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Dedication

To my parents, for their love and encouragement

Acknowledgments

This dissertation would not have not been possible without the help of many very generous and intellectually stimulating friends and mentors. Long before I began this project, I benefited in many ways large and small from the academic environment at Ohio

State University as a doctoral student. Since the very beginning of my graduate education, my advisor Jane Hathaway has been the formative influence on my academic and professional life, and she has influenced me in countless other ways too. I arrived at

Ohio State at a young age, and I was fortunate to be able to absorb her insights not only in class, but also in many more conversations where I observed how a mature scholar approaches Egypt and the Ottomans specifically. I thank Prof. Hathaway especially for her painstaking comments and suggestions on my drafts, in addition to help with documents and concepts. Needless to say, this project would not have happened without her guidance.

Carter Findley has also been a very influential presence in my graduate education.

Prof. Findley took the time to voluntarily tutor a group of graduate students in Ottoman language and paleography, helping us look at some of the most interesting documents I have yet seen. Without this experience, I would have arrived in the Egyptian archives unable to read vast swathes of documents. Prof. Findley has also helped with specific documents since then, for which I am grateful.

Prior to my dissertation, I did not have the chance to work with Prof. Scott Levi, my third committee member, as much as I would have liked, but I have always appreciated his insights and genuineness. Another academic mentor whom I have benefited from is Selim Kuru of the University of Washington. Prof. Kuru is incredibly skilled at teaching paleography (at the beloved Ottoman and Turkish Summer School, on

Cunda Island); he also helped me with certain documents that are significant for this dissertation. Professors John Brooke and Ying Zhang, both at Ohio State, also provided me with helpful guidance.

The archival research contained in this dissertation was made possible by a year- long fellowship from the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE), administered by the wonderful Djodi Deutsch. In the Egyptian National Archives, Radi Mohamed Gouda was my indispensable key to survival in a sometimes alienating bureaucratic world. It was through Dr. Gouda’s expertise in reading very difficult court records that I was able to gain proficiency in that inexact science. His friendship and insights in a time of

Egyptian instability, but also of hope, will not be forgotten. Prof. Sayyid Ashmawy of

Cairo University served as my academic advisor during my time at ARCE (2011-2012) and provided me with useful references. Further grants from Ohio State’s Mershon

Center allowed me to follow up the research that I began under the aegis of ARCE.

Many other doctoral students also contributed to this project through their ideas, conversation, and generous help: Mohamed Abdou, Semra Bayraktar, Irfana Hashmi,

Stephanie Honchell, Sanja Kadric, Ian Lanzilotti, Oscar Aguirre-Mandujano, Saba

Nasseri, Doğa Öztürk, Junaid Quadri, Nir Shafir, and Ali Gibran Siddiqui.

Vita

June 2003 ...... William J. Fremd High School

June 2007 ...... B.A. History, Northwestern University

June 2010 ...... M.A. History, Ohio State University

2010 to present ...... Graduate Teaching Associate, Department

of History, The Ohio State University

Publications

“Portrayals of the Later Abbasid Caliphate: A Reappraisal of the Buyid-Era Caliphs in

Arabic Chronicles, 334/945-447/1055.” Journal of Abbasid Studies 1, no. 2 (2014): 108-

142.

Fields of Study

Major Field: History

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Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii

Dedication ...... iv

Acknowledgments...... v

Vita ...... vii

Note on Transliteration ...... 1

Introduction: Conceptualizing Islam in Ottoman Politics ...... 3

Chapter 1: Al-Azhar at the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century...... 39

Chapter 2: Religious Authority and Reform in Egypt, 1801-1805 ...... 78

Chapter 3: Muslim Scholars in Power? Mehmed Ali’s Early Years ...... 105

Chapter 4: Return to Centralization: Remaking Egypt’s Endowments ...... 138

Chapter 5: Military and Political Reform in Islamic Discourse ...... 171

Chapter 6: The Pasha’s ʿUlamāʾ: Scholars and Sufis Linked to Mehmed Ali ...... 203

Chapter 7: Al-Azhar Under a Reforming Government ...... 234

Conclusion ...... 256

Bibliography ...... 261

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Note on Transliteration

As a multilingual society, Ottoman Egypt had two dominant languages – Arabic and Ottoman Turkish – rather than just one, setting aside minority tongues. Although

Egyptian Arabic was the spoken language of the majority, Ottoman Turkish was the working language of the provincial authorities in Cairo from the Ottoman conquest in the early sixteenth century until well after the death of Mehmed Ali Pasha in 1849. The main exceptions to this were Egypt’s court registers, nearly all of which were kept in formal

Arabic. Significantly, Egypt’s localized military households, which dominated provincial politics for most of the eighteenth century and then played a role in the early nineteenth century, preferred to speak Turkish, despite their sometimes close links to Egypt’s

Arabic-speaking notables. Cairo’s Muslim scholars were of mixed origins, mostly native

Arabic speakers to be sure, but not exclusively so.

Therefore, I have used in this dissertation both Arabic and Turkish transliteration according to the method suggested by the International Journal of Middle East Studies.

This style employs diacritical markings for Arabic, but not for Turkish, including

Ottoman Turkish. Turkish transliteration instead follows modern Turkish orthography.

The greatest difficulty lies in choosing between Arabic and Turkish transliteration styles for individual names and terms. Multilingual societies necessarily share vocabulary and concepts among their various linguistic communities, and so many terms could be

1 transliterated in either Arabic or Turkish orthography. I have tried, to the greatest extent possible, to use either Arabic or Turkish transliteration depending on which linguistic context is a closer fit for each individual name or term. For example, the names of native

Turkish speakers have been given in Turkish orthography, and the converse is true for

Arabic speakers. Of course, given the prevalence of bilingual people and of concepts spanning more than one linguistic context, any transliteration system will be imperfect.

Introduction: Conceptualizing Islam in Ottoman Politics

A. Were the Ottomans Imperial Secularists?

The western perception of the Ottoman Empire has come a long way from the days in which the Ottoman leadership was viewed as an instrument of “Muslim fanaticism.” Present-day study of the Ottoman Empire, especially its Anatolian heartland, takes a starkly different approach. As if in direct reaction to the distaste for religious

“fanaticism” that so animated European imperial powers as well as the early Turkish

Republic itself, it is precisely historical Ottoman tolerance – and its contrast to early modern European intolerance – that makes the Ottomans remarkable in the eyes of many modern-day historians. The arrival of thousands of Sephardic Jewish refugees from Spain in Ottoman territory after 1492 stands as the most commonly recognized example of

Ottoman tolerance. Taking this now-clichéd idea a step further, the sociologist Karen

Barkey has recently argued that the Ottoman state was an “empire of difference” (in her book of the same name), in which a “capacious administration” of ethno-religious differences and local elites took priority over exclusivist religious ideologies and virtually

3 eliminated inter-communal conflict.1 From this perspective, far from being fanatics, the

Ottomans historically embody religious tolerance and a characteristic form of cosmopolitanism beyond the confines of familiar religious and political identities.

If the Ottoman Empire did indeed practice a form of religious toleration, what was the role of Islam in Ottoman politics? Islam is posited as one of the defining features of the Ottoman Empire by writers from Bernard Lewis to Caroline Finkel, and yet Ottoman

Islam remains under-theorized as a pillar of the state and its prevailing political philosophy in comparison to much-discussed endogenous traditions of statecraft and

Persian-derived political ideologies. Karen Barkey puts forward an extreme version of this approach, writing that the role of Islam was strictly circumscribed and instrumentalized within the institutions of the empire – so much so, in fact, that religion as an institution was basically administrative, while Islam as a system of beliefs was restricted to “everyday practice.” In her view, only the example of qāḍīs (Muslim judges) and their sharīʿa courts brought Islamic beliefs and Ottoman governance into close contact. Islam was therefore successfully subordinated to political interests “as an institution of the state, and its practitioners emerge only as state officials,” she writes.2

Thus, from the early period onward, the cosmopolitan and “secular” officialdom built a religious hierarchy that was allegedly “subjugated to the state.” As a sociologist rather than a historian, Barkey offers an example that is particularly instructive in showing how interpretations of the Ottoman Empire are assimilated by scholars generally. Her

1 Karen Barkey, Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 130. 2 Ibid., 105. 4 interpretation nearly elides the role of Islam altogether, both ideologically and institutionally, a view that should strike most Ottomanists as untenable. Still, it is not an interpretation that is effectively countered in the existing scholarly literature, which has placed insufficient emphasis on the contested interpretations of Islam and sacred law as a driving force in Ottoman politics.

Of course, the Ottoman Empire was notable for its coordination between religious and bureaucratic elites. Indeed, it has been generally recognized that the Ottoman state was unique in its creation of an empire-wide hierarchy of Islamic scholars, known as the ilmiyye. Religious authority and scholarship in Islam were traditionally decentralized in comparison to European Christianity, and while this continued to be true under the

Ottomans, a centralized hierarchy of ʿulamāʾ (Muslim scholars) working as professors and judges took shape under the authority of the mufti (i.e., one who gives a fatwā, an

Islamic legal opinion) of Istanbul as the “classical” Ottoman Empire arose between 1300 and 1600. In the earliest phase of the Ottoman Empire, the office of kazasker (Arabic qāḍī al-ʿaskar, literally “judge of the army”), which was created by Sultan Murad I in

1363, controlled judicial appointments and the ʿulamāʾ hierarchy generally. This position was split into two by Mehmed II (r. 1444-46, 1451-81) in 1481, one for Anatolia and one for Rumelia (in southeastern Europe), and both remained powerful in part because of their presence on the Imperial Council (Divan-i Hümayun). Mehmed II transformed the structure of the religious establishment and virtually created the ilmiyye as it existed and evolved for centuries thereafter.

Significantly, the kanunname (law code) of MeḥmedII is the first Ottoman text to unambiguously refer to the mufti of Istanbul as Şeyhülislam (Arabic shaykh al-Islām) and the “head of the [Muslim] scholars” (ulema’nın reisi).3 In addition, this law code asserts that the Şeyhülislam, alongside the sultan’s tutor (hoca), outranks all the viziers except the grand vizier (vezir-i azam).4 The superiority of the Şeyhülislam was acknowledged in court protocol, according to which the sultan would rise to greet the Chief Mufti – but no others. The unparalleled status of the Şeyhülislam was altered only in 1836, when the rank of his office was made equal to those of the grand vizier and the commander of the army.5 To be sure, many of the ʿulamāʾ were integrated into state officialdom, but the position of the most prominent leaders of the scholarly hierarchy was exceptionally strong.

While the position of muftis was historically independent of the state, the

Ottomans endowed official muftis and their fatwās with state-backed authority. In contrast, the Mamlūk Sultanate of Cairo – one of the most significant predecessors of the

Ottoman Empire – invested the highest legal authority in a state tribunal (the maẓālim court), which was headed by a Mamlūk official, not a Muslim scholar.6 Although the

Ottomans linked the ʿulamāʾ to the state more tightly than ever, distinguished scholars of

Islamic law have variously asserted that the Ottomans brought the role of muftis to

3 Admittedly, much of this text originated under Mehmed II’s successor, Bayezid II; see Uriel Heyd, Studies in Old Ottoman Criminal Law, ed. V. L. Ménage (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), 7-18. 4 Esra Yakut, Şeyhülislamlık: Yenileşme Döneminde Devlet ve Din (Istanbul: Kitap Yayınevi, 2005), 28. 5 Yakut, Şeyhülislamlık, 15. 6 Wael Hallaq, Sharīʿa: Theory, Practice, Transformations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 209. 6

“unprecedented heights”7 and that the Ottomans “took Islam more seriously” than did predecessor states.8 Thus, the image of Ottoman Islam as “subjugated to the state” hardly begins to describe the true picture. Influence ran in both directions as the Ottoman state became ever more closely linked to (Sunnī) Islam. Indeed, writing of Selim I’s conquest of the Arab Middle East in the early sixteenth century, Heath Lowry goes so far as to suggest that the subsequent “implantation of a centuries old Islamic bureaucratic tradition” altered the multicultural nature of the ascendant empire, commenting wryly that “the question of who conquered whom is debatable.”9 One need not accept these musings to recognize that orthodox Islam became increasingly important to the empire from the sixteenth century onward.10

Despite the central role of religious functionaries in much of Ottoman politics and public life, historians have typically drawn upon texts that display what has been called the “empiricism of Ottoman secular officialdom” to understand Ottoman political culture.11 Outside the archives, such sources mainly consist of a well-known canon of political advice literature (nasihatnames, i.e., “advice for rulers,” often associated with tropes of imperial decline), bureaucratic memoranda (layihas), and other texts from within the administrative elite, rather than Islamically-oriented scholarship. Furthermore,

7 Haim Gerber, State, Society, and Law in Islam: Ottoman Law in Comparative Perspective (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 79. 8 Joseph Schacht, An Introduction to Islamic Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 89. 9 Heath Lowry, The Nature of the Early Ottoman State (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press 2003), 96. 10 For a new approach to the development of Islamic law under the Ottomans, see Guy Burak, “The Second Formation of Islamic Law: The Post-Mongol Context of the Ottoman Adoption of a School of Law,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 55, no. 3 (2013): 579-602. 11 Şerif Mardin, “Religion and Secularism in Turkey,” in The Modern Middle East: A Reader, eds. Albert Hourani, Philip S. Khoury, and Mary C. Wilson (London: I. B. Tauris, 1993), 348. 7 even such prominent bureaucratic literati as Mustafa Ali (d. 1600) received fully Islamic madrasa educations, calling into question the characterization of such figures as

“secular”. The neglect of religion and intellectual history has been acknowledged by scholars to be the “great lacuna” in Ottoman studies.12 In contrast to some social and legal historians,13 intellectual and political historians have made little use of fatwā collections (or fatwās appearing in other archival and narrative sources), fiqh literature, and other treatises in established Islamic genres (with the exception of biographical dictionaries), despite the proliferation of these writings. Even more strikingly, the religious and ideological content of well-known texts, such as major chronicles, has mostly been passed over in silence rather than analyzed. Exceptions to this tendency exist, notably in Lewis Thomas’s useful Study of Naima, which places the imperial historian Mustafa Naima (d. 1716) in his full intellectual context,14 but such efforts have rarely been expanded upon.

Nonetheless, we can find evidence of the powerful role of the ilmiyye in shaping the ideal of Ottoman politics, rather than vice versa, in the writings of the bureaucratic elite that so dominate our understanding of Ottoman political culture thus far. Certainly, combatting corruption within the ilmiyye, as well as the effective administration of the sharīʿa-based judiciary, were top concerns for Ottoman bureaucrats, but this did not

12 Jane Hathaway, “Rewriting Eighteenth-Century Ottoman History,” Mediterranean Historical Review 19, no. 1 (2004): 29-53. 13 In social history, see, for example, Judith E. Tucker, In the House of the Law: Gender and Islamic Law in Ottoman Syria and Palestine (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998), 1-36. The recent work of Guy Burak is an important exception in the field of intellectual history: Guy Burak, “The Second Formation of Islamic Law.” 14 Lewis Thomas, A Study of Naima, ed. Norman Itzkowitz (New York: New York University Press), 1972. 8 imply the necessity of a religious establishment subordinated to other elements of the state. One of the most famous exemplars of the “declinist” advice literature genre of the seventeenth-century Ottoman Empire was Koçi Bey (d. after 1648), and though this writer was educated in the palace and not in a madrasa, he emphasized the importance of a well-organized and autonomous ʿulamāʾ hierarchy. Arguing that the permanence of sacred law (şer’-i şerifin bekası) is ultimately based on the ʿulamāʾ, the organization of such scholars is one of the most important tasks of din ü devlet – a famous doublet meaning religion and state.15 Like many other advice literature authors, he looks back to the sixteenth century as an ideal age of the Ottoman state. This was not only because of the era’s perceived lack of corruption, and it was certainly not because of the subordination of the ʿulamāʾ to the administrative elite. His main complaint with the system of his own time was that well-qualified scholar-officials were too quickly removed from office on weak grounds, particularly the Şeyhülislam and judges such as the kazaskers, while, for example, previous Şeyhülislams had held their offices for life.16

By the seventeenth century, Koçi Bey writes, scholarly officeholders lived in fear of removal, while untrained candidates, even low-level bureaucrats, flooded the system.17

Obviously then, a “secular” official like Koçi Bey insisted on the independence of the ilmiyye, not only its bureaucratic efficiency.

Interestingly, in his study on the development of the Ottoman state (based mainly on nasihatname writers such as Koçi Bey), the historian Rifaat Abou-El-Haj mentions

15 Koçi Bey, Koçi Bey Risaleleri, ed. Seda Çakmakcıoğlu (Istanbul: Kabalcı Yayınevi, 2007), 214. 16 Ibid., 217. 17 Ibid., 216. 9 that the power and material support held by the ʿulamāʾ remained quite strong throughout

Ottoman history. Still, Abou-El-Haj writes, “Remarkably enough, this historiographical issue must be counted among the least studied in Ottoman scholarship.”18 While the paucity of information on such topics has begun to be addressed in recent years, most general discussions of Ottoman politics have little to say about the ilmiyye or religious ideologies in the empire. These discussions will often include the intrigues of prominent

Şeyhülislams such as Feyzullah Efendi (d. 1703),19 but such figures are often portrayed merely as additional claimants to power in a Machiavellian struggle – not as actors within an ideological conflict over the identity of the empire and its policies. Muslim scholars are barely distinguished from bureaucratic functionaries, and the voluminous sources associated with them remain largely unexplored.

For a more balanced understanding of Ottoman politics, administration, and public debate, it would be more appropriate to view the Ottoman elite neither as one- dimensional Muslim ghāzīs (holy warriors, especially in the early period),20 nor as imperial universalists whose connection to religion was purely instrumental. Instead, we should be thoroughly cognizant of the crucial, although not exclusively dominant, role of

Islamic political discourse in shaping and legitimizing Ottoman politics. Tolerant and cosmopolitan as it may have been, shorn of its connection to evolving Islamic political

18 Rifaat Abou-El-Haj, Formation of the Modern State: the Ottoman Empire, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2005), 47. 19 On the dynamics of Feyzullah Efendi’s dominance through household-building, see Michael Nizri, Ottoman High Politics and the Ulema Household (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). 20 The classic expression of this view can be found in Paul Wittek, The Rise of the Ottoman Empire: Studies in the History of Turkey, 13th-15th Centuries, ed. Colin Heywood (Milton Park, Abingdon: Routledge, 2012). 10 and religious discourses, Ottoman political culture is not fully comprehensible. In other words, what is lacking is a plausible sense of the Ottoman “lifeworld,” to borrow a term from Jürgen Habermas,21 particularly regarding the intersection of religion and politics.

Habermas’s concept of the “public sphere” has been regarded as a uniquely Western and secular phenomenon, and while there has been some discussion of religion as an element within the public sphere,22 few have attempted to explore analogous public spheres in

Islamic and otherwise non-Western societies. The Ottoman Empire circa 1800, with its coffeehouses, Sufi networks, independent scholars, and fierce dissent, provides an entry point into just such a society, with regard to both the provinces and the imperial capital.

Taking Mehmed Ali’s Cairo as its focus, this dissertation aims to explore the intense religio-political debates regarding military and political reform in the early nineteenth century and the place of Muslim scholars in shaping the terms and outcome of those debates.

Fortunately, several studies have already illuminated our understanding of

Ottoman history by integrating religious ideology and the ilmiyye hierarchy into the broader stream of imperial politics. Richard Repp and Madeline Zilfi have undertaken the pioneering research needed to understand the political and institutional functioning of the state religious hierarchy, both in the early period and the “post-classical” phase.23 In

21 For his description of the historical genesis of the public sphere, see Jürgen Habermas, The Transformation of the Public Sphere, trans. Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989), 14-26. 22 However, these studies have been focused on thoroughly modern milieus, which is less helpful for the Ottoman case prior to the late nineteenth century: Jürgen Habermas, “Religion in the Public Sphere,” European Journal of Philosophy 14, no. 1 (2006): 1-25. 23 Richard Repp, The Mufti of Istanbul (London: Ithaca Press, 1986); Madeline Zilfi, The Politics of Piety: the Ottoman Ulema in the Postclassical Age (1600-1800) (Minneapolis, MN: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1988). 11 particular, Zilfi’s research on the rise of the Kadızadeli movement vividly portrays how that movement transformed (and failed to transform) Ottoman politics as a whole. Other studies have demonstrated the powerful role of ʿulamāʾ outside the formal state hierarchy, especially Sufi shaykhs who could at times take on an extraordinary role in winning over elite political figures. Butrus Abu-Manneh has excavated the “Islamic roots” of the Gülhane edict of 1839,24 which was often considered to be the ultimate example of westernizing tendencies in the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire. His scholarship has illuminated not only the way in which Naqshbandī Sufi networks and ideology impacted the Gülhane edict, but also how such phenomena cast a shadow over

Ottoman politics as a whole in the early nineteenth century.

This is not to imply that such transitions in the Ottoman Empire were experienced only in religio-political terms, but rather that this was an important element in Ottoman political culture that has been underappreciated. However, Ottoman Islam was by no means omnipresent as a factor in any period, since Ottoman political culture was impacted by a wide range of influences. For example, Ottoman edicts (singular ferman) and political treatises often refer to long-established practice (mu’tad-ı kadim) as a basis of legitimacy for administrative practices. Such claims are certainly familiar both to defterologists steeped in Ottoman archival materials and those who have read the nasihatname writers of the sixteenth century onward. Furthermore, Persian models of just politics – including ancient Persia and medieval dynasties such as the Timurids – also

24 Butrus Abu-Manneh, “The Islamic Roots of the Gülhane Rescript,” Die Welt des Islams 34, no. 2 (1994): 173-203. For the context of the edict, see Carter Findley, Turkey, Islam, Nationalism, and Modernity: A History, 1789-2007 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 47-49. 12 played an important role in influencing the thinking of bureaucratic authors. Linda

Darling has recently traced the ancient concept of the “circle of justice” from

Mesopotamia and Sasanian Persia to Ottoman political thought.25 Thus, claims to political legitimacy and value could be quite complex and draw on multiple sources.

B. Islamic Politics and the Progress of Ottoman Reform

Even so, claims to Islamic legitimacy became particularly important as the

Ottoman Empire came under heavy external pressure in the eighteenth century. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, following the devastating peace of Karlowitz in

1699, the Ottomans began to rely more and more on the Islamic practice of meşveret

(Arabic mashwara or shūrā) to generate internal consensus on such crucial matters as war and peace. Meşveret is an Islamic term meaning “consultation,” especially between a monarch and his advisors; the term is ultimately derived from the Qurʾān.26 In the midst of exhausting wars, the Ottoman leadership resorted to formal consultations throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and such consultations were consciously

Islamic in character. Not surprisingly, a very frequent location for a meşveret session was at the residence of the current Şeyhülislam. The formal logic of sharīʿa scholarship was on display among the many ʿulamāʾ present at such gatherings, but this did not necessarily result in hidebound conservatism.27 The frequency of these sessions, also

25 Linda Darling, A History of Social Justice and Political Power: The Circle of Justice from Mesopotamia to Globalization (New York: Routledge, 2012). 26 Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. “Mashwara,” by Bernard Lewis. 27 Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. “Madjlis al-Shūrā,” by Carter Findley. 13 called meclis-i şura, increased over time during the successive crises of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and their Islamic character did not abate as the empire increasingly imported Western technologies and organizational methods.28

The ilmiyye hierarchy itself came more and more under the control of a limited number of aristocratic lineages, but its prestige and wealth grew concomitantly. Madeline

Zilfi has pointed to the eighteenth-century creation of a “palace madrasa” and the establishment of formal lessons (huzur dersleri) as a sign of the sultans’ increasingly ritualized piety, a practice which also boosted the “legalist Islam” of the ʿulamāʾ.29 As for wealth, salaries do not even begin to capture the true income of the scholars at the top of the pyramid. According to Mouradgea d’Ohsson, the Şeyhülislam received an income of

500,000 kuruş yearly, much of which came from fees paid by newly appointed officials of the ilmiyye (payments known as bohça beha).30 Although such spectacular sums were rare, many ʿulamāʾ had access to substantial income through the supervision of waqfs

(pious endowments). By the late eighteenth century, the power of the ʿulamāʾ was more entrenched than ever, both ideologically and materially.

With the rise of the Ottoman religious elite, the early nineteenth-century ideological showdown surrounding European-style military reform and other innovations

28 For a vivid portrayal of one of these meetings, see the description of the meclis-i meşveret held in 1716 before the Ottomans declared war on the Habsburgs: İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, Osmanlı Tarihi, 9 vols. (Ankara, Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1947-), IV, part 1, 112-113. In this case, some members of the ilmiyye expressed objections to imperial policy, even though it was backed by a fatwā from the Şeyhülislam. 29 Madeline Zilfi, “A Medrese for the Palace,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 11, no. 2 (1983): 184-191. 30 Ignatius Mouradgea d’Ohsson, Tableau général de l’Empire othoman, 7 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie de Monsieur, 1790), IV, part 2, 610-611. The exchange rate of the kuruş to the British pound sterling was about eleven to one in this period: Şevket Pamuk, A Monetary History of the Ottoman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 193. 14 was inevitably cast in heated religio-political terms. Ultimately, as we will see, Muslim scholars found themselves playing significant roles on both sides of the political divide.

These nineteenth-century figures, however, were not the inheritors of a stagnant,

“traditional” past, but rather the representatives of an elite that had been transformed over the previous century and in recent decades.

For many scholars, though, the dawn of the nineteenth century has been seen as a clean break in the narrative of Ottoman history, dominated by the wholesale adoption of

Western ideas. The tendency of this perspective is to regard the early nineteenth century as a time in which secular westernizers (including European advisors resident in Istanbul and Cairo) burst on the scene and ultimately triumphed over religiously-motivated reactionaries. In his general history of the Ottoman Empire, the twentieth-century Turkish historian İ.H. Uzunçarşılı has described the background to the reign of Selim III (1789-

1808) and the rise of military reform almost exclusively in terms of eighteenth-century

European advisors working in the empire, particularly French advisors such as the

Hungarian-born French military officer Baron de Tott.31 Much emphasis is placed on developments that foreshadow later westernization and secularism. Likewise, the sociologist Şerif Mardin has traced the “foundations of a secular state” to the reign of

Mahmud II (1808-1839). While he mostly points to events in the last few years of that sultan’s reign, he cites the Sened-i Ittifak of 1808 (a pact between the sultan’s government and local notables) as a moment in which the “process of democratization”

31 Uzunçarşılı, Osmanlı Tarihi, V, 59. 15 was introduced for the first time.32 This claim is implausible, not only because the alleged rights of local notables were a dead letter soon after the pact was composed, but more importantly because Mahmud was among the most autocratic and centralizing of

Ottoman sultans. By the same token, Bernard Lewis’s claim that the ideas of the French

Revolution “struck root in the soil of Islam” during the reign of Selim III is far from evident, since – as he admits – the contemporary evidence is “mostly negative” regarding the influence of European culture in that period.33

By contrast, the conservative perspective is portrayed as a straightforward

“reaction” (irtica) against progressive Europeanizers, and this reaction is regarded as being dominated by the Janissaries and the ʿulamāʾ as a whole, with few exceptions.

Their opposition to the reforms of Selim III is drawn in stark terms of the conservatives’ xenophobia. Uzunçarşılı emphasizes that Tayyar Mahmud Pasha, a leading political opponent of Selim III’s nizam-ı cedid (“new order”), was outraged that the women of the sultan’s harem had begun to wear the clothing of the “infidel.”34 More nuanced critiques of the period’s centralizing reforms have not yet seen the light of day in modern scholarship, despite the fact that such critiques exist from the eighteenth century onward.

On the other hand, scholars have drawn attention to the fact that Ottoman Islam at the beginning of the nineteenth century was not monolithic and reactionary; on the contrary, numerous leading members of the ilmiyye hierarchy vigorously supported the reforms of

32 Şerif Mardin, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (Montreal: McGill University Press, 1964), 95. In addition, Sultan Mahmud failed to even sign the document: Findley, Turkey, Islam, Nationalism, and Modernity, 35-36. 33 Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, 3rd ed. 34 Uzunçarşılı, Osmanlı Tarihi, V, 83. 16

Selim III and Mahmud II as well as Mehmed Ali Pasha himself.35 Furthermore, Şerif

Mardin has recognized not only the existence of reformist ʿulamāʾ in the early nineteenth century, but also the links of other Muslim scholars to the “Young Ottomans” decades later.36 Still, overall, there has not been sufficient effort to integrate the role of Ottoman

Islam into our understanding of the crises that gripped Ottoman politics from the eighteenth century through the early nineteenth century.

In Egypt specifically, the sense of discontinuity and of a clean break with the past is even starker, due mainly to the extraordinary figure of Mehmed Ali Pasha (d. 1849), known in Arabic as Muḥammad ʿAlī. Once again, there has been a tendency to read later developments into the events of an earlier transitional period. For example, Afaf Lutfi al-

Sayyid Marsot concludes in her book on the Mehmed Ali era that this remarkable wālī

(governor) not only created a new power center in Cairo, but that he “inevitably” set

Egypt on the path of separateness and national consciousness (albeit while still “clinging” to an Ottoman identity himself).37 In fairness, associations between Mehmed Ali Pasha and Egyptian national identity have been fostered mainly by official Egyptian nationalist thinking, not necessarily by historians like Marsot. Nonetheless, defining the nature of the proto-“khedival” regime founded by Mehmed Ali has proven a challenge to generations of historians, as this regime was a political formation neither indigenous to

Egypt per se, nor a European colonial construction, nor a creation of the Ottoman sultan.

35 See Uriel Heyd, “The Ottoman Ulema and Westernization in the Time of Selim III and Mahmud II,” in Studies in Islamic History and Civilization, ed. Uriel Heyd (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1961), 63-96. 36 Şerif Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962; reprint Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000). 37 Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid Marsot, Egypt in the Reign of Muhammad Ali (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 263. 17

More recently, Khaled Fahmy has largely corrected the widespread associations between the pasha and Egyptian identity by demonstrating his primarily personal ambitions and his attachment to Ottoman identity.38 Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu’s overview of Ottoman- language printed material in nineteenth-century Egypt and Heath Lowry’s research on

Mehmed Ali’s mosque complex in his hometown of Kavala (present-day Greece) have both strengthened our understanding of the association between Mehmed Ali, nineteenth- century Egypt, and Ottoman culture.39 This study takes the Ottoman cultural and political world in the early nineteenth century as a key departure point for understanding the politics of Mehmed Ali’s regime in Egypt (and vice versa).

C. Were the Egyptian ʿUlamāʾ in Some Sense Ottoman?

Given the far-flung religious networks that have always characterized global

Islam, the Ottoman context must certainly have had great significance for the religious institutions and culture of Ottoman Egypt, in both the eighteenth century and the

Mehmed Ali period. However, the existing literature is far from clear with regard to such linkages, and Egypt-specific paradigms have been preferred for understanding the role of the ʿulamāʾ in Ottoman Egypt. The influential scholar Albert Hourani placed the Muslim scholars of the Arab Middle East in the context of urban notables generally, who acted as

38 Khaled Fahmy, Mehmed Ali: From Ottoman Governor to Ruler of Egypt (Oxford: Oneworld, 2009); idem, All the Pasha’s Men: Mehmed Ali, His Army, and the Making of Modern Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 39 Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, The Turks in Egypt and Their Cultural Legacy: An Analytical Study of the Turkish Printed Patrimony in Egypt from the Time of Muhammad ‘Ali with Annotated Bibliographies, (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2012); Heath Lowry and İsmail E. Erünsal, Remembering One’s Roots: Mehmed Ali Paşa of Egypt's Links to the Macedonian Town of Kavala (Istanbul: Bahçeşehir University Press, 2011). 18

“traditional and ʿnatural’ leaders” of the Muslim town-dwellers. The ʿulamāʾ in particular were especially significant as “spokesmen for popular grievances and demands.”40

Elaborating upon this argument, Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid Marsot writes that Muslim scholars played a mediatory role between the masses (raʿāyā) and the ruling military elite in the

Ottoman era. In times of crisis, the religious elite could “communicate the will of the people to the rulers” and even lead a “mob” to press their demands, aided by agitation at

Friday sermons (khuṭbas).41 From this perspective, the ʿulamāʾ could act as proto- nationalist tribunes of the people against an alien ruling elite, whether that elite was

Istanbulite or rooted in the Georgian military households of Cairo.42 However, Marsot concedes that the influence of the ʿulamāʾ could just as easily run in the opposite direction, with the religious elite serving as makers and manipulators of public opinion on behalf of a “rapacious” elite.43 In either case, the emphasis is on a mediatory role of the

ʿulamāʾ, who are considered to inhabit a social and ideological context separate from the

“alien” rulers.

Crucial to this interpretation is the idea that a socio-cultural gulf separated the

“native” ʿulamāʾ from the various components of the ruling elite, including the localized

Georgian military households dominating the ranks of the beys and regimental officers,

40 Albert Hourani, “Ottoman Reform and the Politics of Notables,” in The Beginnings of Modernization in the Middle East: The Nineteenth Century, eds. William R. Polk and Richard L. Chambers (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1968), 46-47. 41 Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid Marsot, “The Ulama of Cairo in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” in Scholars, Saints, and Sufis: Muslim Religious Institutions in the Middle East since 1500, ed. Nikki R. Keddie (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), 153. 42 Eadem, Protest Movements and Religious Undercurrents in Egypt: Past and Present (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University, Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, 1984), 3. 43 Eadem, “The Ulama of Cairo in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” 153. 19 the Ottoman military and administrative elites from the pasha (the Ottoman viceroy) down to ordinary soldiers, and even Turcophone ʿulamāʾ and religious groups resident in

Cairo. Michael Winter’s overview of the Ottoman period in Egypt argues for ethnic antipathy between the Ottoman ruling class and the Egyptian populace from the conquest onward, despite the obvious mutual sympathy between Egyptian elite Muslim scholars and the grandee households. Winter cites the chronicler Ibn Iyās (d. ca. 930/1524), himself a scion of the elite of the Mamlūk Sultanate and a witness to the Ottoman conquest by Selim I in 1517, who deeply resented the Ottomans and was part of

Egyptians’ “general feeling that the standing of Islam and Shariʿa had weakened since the Ottoman conquest.”44 This included distaste for the application of Islamic law by a new Ottoman judge (qāḍī). The chronicler’s many complaints about Ottoman rule and culture were crowned by his declaration that the qāḍī was “more ignorant than an ass, and had no understanding of the religious law.”45 Winter argues not only that such views predominated in the post-conquest period (despite the special connections of Ibn Iyās to the defeated regime),46 but also that ethnic tensions held throughout the Ottoman period in Egypt.

Most significantly for our purposes, Winter writes that the ʿulamāʾ “class” in

Egypt was “quite homogeneous” in ethnic terms, i.e., that the religious elite was Arabic- speaking and of Egyptian peasant origin (Arabic plural fallāḥūn).47 To be sure, there was

44 Michael Winter, Egyptian Society Under Ottoman Rule, 1517-1798 (London: Routledge, 1992), 12. 45 Ibid., 11. 46 He also cites comments by a Turcophone chronicler that common people welcomed the greater social equality that the downfall of the Mamlūk elite had brought: Ibid., 12. 47 Ibid., 115. 20 a strong connection between Egyptian fallāḥ migrants and the social mobility made possible by religious institutions such as al-Azhar. The rectors of al-Azhar before the mid-nineteenth century were virtually all of provincial peasant origin (with the exception of Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār, a Cairene of Maghribī origin, d. 1835), an extraordinary fact in itself.48 However, Winter’s contention that “Turkish” ʿulamāʾ, and by extension all non-

Egyptians, were detached from the Egyptian context is far too sweeping. Al-Azhar – with its dazzling array of riwāqs, residence halls based mainly on ethnic or regional origin – is famously diverse, and a number of Egyptian intellectual luminaries of non-Egyptian background spring to mind for the Ottoman period, including the Jabartī family (of

Djiboutian origin) and the towering scholar Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī (a sharīf – descendant of the Prophet – of northern Indian origin by way of Yemen). The age of Mehmed Ali Pasha in the early nineteenth century was also illuminated by influential ʿulamāʾ of non-

Egyptian origin, from places as far-flung as Algeria, Palestine, and Istanbul itself.

Of course, the question of specifically Ottoman cultural and religious influence is an important one, and so Winter’s portrayal of ethnic homogeneity among religious scholars is meant to emphasize the cultural gulf between Arabophone and Turcophone scholars. As he admits, Turkish-speaking immigrants of Anatolian and Balkan origin

(Arabic Rūmī) were the largest migrant community in Cairo.49 The seventeenth-century

Ottoman traveler Evliya Çelebi (d. ca. 1684) was a witness to the thriving community of

Turcophone students and dervishes as well as soldiers and bureaucrats in Cairo. To be

48 Marsot, “The Ulama of Cairo in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” 157. 49 Winter, Egyptian Society Under Ottoman Rule, 114. 21 sure, ethno-linguistic self-segregation appears to have been widespread, as some Sufi orders in particular were associated primarily with Rūmī soldiers and students. The

Mevlevi and Bektaşi orders (Arabic singular ṭarīqa) are believed to have had less appeal for Arabic-speakers in Egypt.50 Still, even taking self-segregation into account, a number of important Turkish-speaking Sufis and scholars made an impact on Cairene religious life, guaranteeing that Azharī shaykhs, whether Arabic-speaking or not, were familiar with religious developments throughout the Ottoman world. The connections of Azharīs to Istanbul and the Ottoman elite are still emerging in recent scholarship.51

The religious politics of Sufism and Sufi orders was of great importance in the

Ottoman Empire and its provinces, particularly during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and it is in this category that the impact of Ottoman religious life on Egypt may be assessed to be greater. Above all, the Khalwatiyya order (Turkish Halvetiyye) arose in fourteenth-century Tabriz, but was first brought to Egypt by Turkish-speaking Sufis.

Most famously, İbrahim-i Gülşeni arrived in Cairo and founded a Khalwatī branch order prior to the Ottoman conquest, but soon won their favor and established a lasting convent

(Turkish tekke) in Cairo.52 Gülşeni’s branch remained limited mainly to Turkish-speakers and non-Arabs, but other Khalwatī dervishes followed, most of them again Rūmīs. One

50 One Bektaşi lodge in Cairo was located among the barracks of the ʿAzeban corps, who were predominantly Turkish-speaking: Evliya Çelebi, Evliya Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi, eds. Seyit Ali Kahraman et al., 10 vols. (Beyoğlu, Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 1996-2007), X, 137. This topic requires further research, however. 51 See for example Stefan Reichmuth, The World of Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī (1732-1791): Life, Network and Writings (Cambridge: Gibb Memorial Trust, 2009). 52 B. G. Martin, “A Short History of the Khalwati Order of Dervishes,” in Scholars, Saints, and Sufis: Muslim Religious Institutions in the Middle East since 1500, ed. Nikki R. Keddie (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1972), 297. 22 of these was the Karabaşiyye order, which was founded in the mid-seventeenth century by the Anatolian dervish Karabaş Veli (d. 1686). Despite his close links to Ottoman elite in Istanbul, he was forced into exile by Meḥmed IV and ended his life in Cairo, where he initiated several murīds (Sufi disciples).53

In the eighteenth century, Muṣṭafā b. Kamāl al-Dīn al-Bakrī (d. 1749), a Syrian

Khalwatī from Damascus who had been initiated into the Karabaşiyye, travelled to Egypt and established a wildly successful branch of the order. At times, he journeyed to Syria in the company of the rising Ottoman bureaucrat Ragib Mehmed Pasha.54 By the second half of the eighteenth century, the network which was established by al-Bakrī attained

“unrivalled supremacy” among the ʿulamāʾ of al-Azhar.55 Importantly, al-Bakrī himself did not regard his Sufi activity as the founding of a separate order, even though his network later became known as the Khalwatiyya-Bakriyya. Instead, he regarded himself as a faithful exponent of the Karabaşiyye.56 Thus, Ottoman Egypt was hardly shielded from broader trends in the empire as a whole because of ethnic and geographical divisions. The Khalwatiyya was also of great significance in the imperial center, where it had (successfully) borne the brunt of attacks by the puritanical Kadızadeli movement against Sufi “innovations” in the seventeenth century.57

53 Karim Kara, “Karabaş Veli,” Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi; hereafter DİA. 54 Martin, “A Short History of the Khalwati Order of Dervishes,” 292. 55 Winter, Egyptian Society Under Ottoman Rule, 137. 56 Frederic De Jong, “Mustafa Kamal al-Din al-Bakri (1688-1749): Revival and Reform of the Khalwatiyya Tradition?” in Eighteenth Century Renewal and Reform in Islam, eds. Nehemia Levtzion and John O. Voll (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1987), 124. 57 Zilfi, Politics of Piety, 133-143. 23

Winter largely adopts the paradigm of the ʿulamāʾ as mediators to describe their overall role in provincial politics. Winter’s portrayal of the religious elite’s political dilemmas is more vivid than Marsot’s: Islamic scholars were “torn,” he writes, between their own interests, which could be satisfied by the provincial grandees, and their “moral responsibility as spokesmen, although sometimes reluctant and timid ones, of the Muslim community at large.”58 Thus, Winter is quick to dispel any illusions that the ʿulamāʾ guaranteed just Islamic rule in Ottoman times or even any representation of the “will of the people.” Nonetheless, he argues that the ʿulamāʾ served instead to “deter the worst kinds of misrule.”59 In one major episode, the Shaykh al-Azhar ʿAbd Allah al-Sharqāwī led mass protests in Cairo in 1794 against the imposition of new taxes in the countryside, which happened to affect his personal tax farms (iltizāms). He was joined by people of numerous quarters of Cairo and achieved the abolition of the taxes, only to see them re- imposed later.60

This well-known incident has been recently re-interpreted by Lars Bjørneboe, who argues that the social unrest of the time did not always indicate that the ʿulamāʾ mediated between protesters and the ruling class. Instead, since this 1794 episode involved the interests of al-Sharqawī directly, the protests may have indicated the

ʿulamāʾs ability to “mobilize and control the people in support of their cause.”61 Protests against “excessive” taxation were advocated not to protect the peasants, but rather to

58 Winter, Egyptian Society Under Ottoman Rule, 108. 59 Ibid., 126. 60 Ibid., 125-6. 61 Lars Bjørneboe, In Search of the True Political Position of the Ulama: An Analysis of the Aims and Perspectives of the Chronicles of ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Jabarti (1753-1825) (Damascus: The Danish Institute, 2007), 65. 24 protect the ʿulamāʾs tax farm income. In this view, the ʿulamā appear not as actors mediating between the rulers and the ruled, but rather as a social group within the ruling elite that could draw on popular support.

Bjørneboe’s approach is very plausible, particularly in examples similar to the one just cited. Still, none of the preceding approaches takes into account the possibility that

“moral responsibility [to] the Muslim community” may involve more than simply the courage to stand up to oppressive rulers. The dictates of justice according to Islamic government may at times be ambiguous and controversial even to the most pious of

Muslims. Take, for example, the famous case of religious conflict in 1711, in which

Turkish-speaking students in Cairo agitated against Sufi practices. These students were inspired by the Anatolian mystic Birgili Mehmed and the subsequent Kadızadeli movement that had colored politics in Istanbul during the previous century. Winter reads this conflict as primarily ethnic, since both Cairo’s religious elite and their puritanical opponents condemned each other with what Winter interprets as ethnic epithets.62

However, as Rudolph Peters notes, the incident was quite complex. The Egyptian

ʿulamāʾ, for example, were not without sympathy for the students’ condemnation of Sufi

“innovation.”63 To reduce the incident to communal tension alone, without linking it to similar conflicts in Istanbul arising from the Kadızadeli movement, is to strip this conflict of a general Ottoman religious context that must have been well-understood by both

62 Winter, Egyptian Society under Ottoman Rule, 152-155. 63 Rudolf Peters, “The Battered Dervishes of Bab Zuwayla: A Religious Riot in Eighteenth Century Cairo,” in Eighteenth Century Renewal and Reform in Islam, eds. Nehemia Levtzion and John O. Voll (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1987), 93-115; for another account of the conflict, see Barbara Fleming, “Die Vorwahhabitische Fitna im Osmanischen Kairo 1711,” in İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı’ya Armağan (Ankara: Türk Tarihi Kurumu, 1976), 55-65. 25 sides. While institutions such as al-Azhar and provincial Sufi orders retained their autonomy, the religious elite of Egypt were a part of the Ottoman world and not an external actor.

Accordingly, while most scholars in the Arab provinces did not belong to the formal ilmiyye hierarchy, the eighteenth-century Ottoman trend toward increasing

ʿulamāʾ wealth and power held true in the provinces as well. The most famous lineages in

Egypt were those of the Sādāt and Bakrī families, which led the influential Egyptian

Wafā’iyya and Bakriyya Sufi orders respectively. Vast waqf holdings supervised by these and other Egyptian ʿulamāʾ supplemented normal salaries in Cairo as in Istanbul.

According to Daniel Crecelius, the late eighteenth century marks the rise of Muslim scholars in politics, and he notes the immense favor shown to the ʿulamāʾ by the late eighteenth-century grandee Muḥammad Bey Abū al-Dhahab. Crecelius argues that the

“entire character of Muḥammad Bey’s regime was religious” and that this provincial leader had the “image of a model Muslim prince,” especially in the eyes of al-Jabartī.64

The eighteenth century also witnessed the emergence of the Shaykh al-Azhar from relative insignificance at the end of the previous century to pre-eminence as the leading religious dignitary of Egypt.65 The influence and wealth of the Cairene ʿulamāʾ in the eighteenth century naturally had consequences for political development in the province

64 Daniel Crecelius, The Roots of Modern Egypt: A Study of the Regimes of ʻAli Bey al-Kabir and Muhammad Bey Abu al-Dhahab, 1760-1775 (Minneapolis: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1981), 139-144. 65 Idem, “The Emergence of the Shaykh al-Azhar as the Pre-Eminent Religious Leader in Egypt,” in Colloque international sur l’histoire du Caire, eds. André Raymond, Michael Rogers, and Magdi Wahba (Cairo: Ministry of Culture of the Arab Republic of Egypt, 1972), 109–23. 26 of Egypt during the nineteenth century, just as the ilmiyye in the imperial center had an important impact on the political development of the empire as a whole.

D. Mehmed Ali Pasha and Egypt’s Muslim Scholars

While religious discord of the kind witnessed during the Kadızadeli controversies did not prove decisive in Ottoman Egypt, devout Muslims did disagree profoundly during the crises of the early nineteenth century, and such conflicts shed even clearer light on how ideological conflicts functioned within the Ottoman Empire as a whole and among the ʿulamāʾ in particular. This dissertation focuses particularly on ideological conflict in the period of Mehmed Ali Pasha, the wālī of Egypt in the first half of the nineteenth century. In the best-known historical account of Mehmed Ali’s rise, the Egyptian chronicler and scholar ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Jabartī (d. 1240/1825) gives us a narrative in which the ʿulamāʾ and their ability to impact the public sphere as a whole play an unmistakable part. In fact, it is clear that the harnessing of the ʿulamāʾ and their political influence is one of the great challenges that Mehmed Ali faced early on, alongside his deadly battles against Egypt’s military households. Far more than just a struggle between narrowly “reactionary” interest groups and broadminded reformers, this era would also have been experienced by those who lived it as a dramatic religio-political turning point for society as a whole, not just quarrelling elites. This should be immediately evident from al-Jabartī’s writing, which is infused with the chronicler’s own pugnacious conception of just Islamic politics and Mehmed Ali’s violations thereof.

Generally speaking, events in Cairo and Istanbul were closely linked during the first decades of the nineteenth century, despite the tendency (particularly by historians of

Egypt) to view Cairo in isolation. It was clearly not a coincidence that religio-political opposition to Ottoman reform in both cities peaked between 1805 and 1810, although with different results. In Istanbul, Ataullah Efendi, a powerful Şeyhülislam, and his ally

Köse Mustafa Pasha, the deputy (qāʾimmaqām) of the grand vizier, overthrew the reforming Sultan Selim III and held power for most of a year. In Cairo, on the other hand, the popular religious and political opposition was led by the shaykh ʿUmar Makram, but this revered figured was soon outmaneuvered and exiled by the wily pasha, Mehmed Ali.

While events in Istanbul are generally interpreted according to the “reactionaries and progressives” paradigm indicated previously, Mehmed Ali’s foes have been regarded in a somewhat different light. In accordance with her conception of the ʿulamāʾ as representatives of the indigenous townspeople, Marsot writes of ʿUmar Makram as the charismatic leader of a popular rebellion against a tyrannical pasha.66 Daniel Crecelius is perhaps more restrained in his evaluation of the “non-ideological” responses of the

ʿulamāʾ to Mehmed Ali’s centralization,67 but Marsot is certainly not alone in her assessment. ʿUmar Makram’s statue stands prominently in that great focal point of rebellion in the contemporary era, Cairo’s Tahrir Square. A mosque named in his honor is also located on the square, and khaṭībs (preachers) of this mosque (e.g., Maẓhar Shāhīn) have been associated with revolutionary sentiments in recent years. Therefore,

66 Marsot, “The Ulama of Cairo in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” 162-163. 67 Daniel Crecelius, “Nonideological Responses of the Egyptian Ulama to Modernization,” in Scholars, Saints, and Sufiss: Muslim Religious Institutions in the Middle East since 1500, ed., Nikki R. Keddie (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1972), 167-210. 28 associations between ʿUmar Makram’s name and popular rebellion are still very much a living phenomenon.

Less than two decades after these struggles, the religious and political landscape inhabited by the ʿulamāʾ looked quite different. By the early 1820s, key members of the religious elite had swung behind the reforming Sultan Mahmud II as well as his rival in

Cairo. Muslim scholars penned numerous justifications for military and political reform, along with testimonials to the virtues of obedience to religiously-sanctioned authority.

This is not to imply that dissent surrounding sensitive religious and cultural issues had been fully stamped out. Resentment persisted at al-Azhar and among lower-ranking

ʿulamāʾ, but Mehmed Ali’s new institutions, including the press, the official gazette, and the new schools, co-opted large numbers of classically-trained Islamic scholars. Most crucially, however, influential scholars provided convincing justifications for Mehmed

Ali’s autocratic and centralizing reforms.

Little has been written on the religious and intellectual history of Ottoman Egypt, but the paucity of scholarship is particularly striking for the Mehmed Ali period, given that the latter part of the nineteenth century is so celebrated for its renewal of Islamic thought in Egypt. While there have been some attempts to link famous names like

Muḥammad ʿAbduh to their predecessors,68 the clearest glimpses into the intellectual landscape of the period can be found in Peter Gran’s Islamic Roots of Capitalism,69 which is primarily an intellectual biography of Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār, albeit placed within the

68 Indira Falk Gesink, Islamic Reform and Conservatism: Al-Azhar and the Evolution of Modern Sunni Islam (London: Tauris Academic Studies, 2010). 69 Peter Gran, The Islamic Roots of Capitalism: Egypt, 1760-1840 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979). 29 context of Egypt’s religious and socio-economic development. Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār, a powerful Shaykh al-Azhar close to the pasha, was both intellectually prolific and politically influential. Gran provides valuable biographical information on al-ʿAṭṭār, including his years spent outside Egypt.

Such pan-Ottoman connections were, as this study will demonstrate, of great significance for the politics of Mehmed Ali era, even in the context of ongoing tension and eventual military conflict with Sultan Mahmud II. From a very early stage, Mehmed

Ali Pasha had coveted the province of Damascus, a desire that finally brought about a war against the sultan’s armies in 1831. In a major battle outside the central Anatolian city of Konya in December 1832, Mehmed Ali’s son İbrahim Pasha decisively defeated, and then captured, Grand Vizier Mehmed Reşid Pasha.70 A state of chronic warfare did not, however, stop the circulation of bureaucrats, Sufi shaykhs, and Muslim scholars and judges; similarly, the policies and religio-political ideology of the two regimes mirrored each other to some extent during the 1830s. Mehmed Ali’s occupation of Syria and other territories continued until the intervention of European states in 1840. After that, his powers – even in Egypt itself – were curtailed under the terms of multiple treaties imposed on him beginning in 1841.71 Due to implementation of those treaties, and the

Ottoman reforms of the Tanzimat,72 the authoritarianism of the earlier part of the century abated somewhat. This dissertation focuses on the period before the major turning points

70 Fahmy, All the Pasha’s Men, 160-167; Marsot, Egypt in the Reign of Muhammad Ali, 222-226. 71 The Treaty of Balta Limanı, which opened the empire up to European trade, was signed by the Ottomans in 1838, but not applied to Egypt until 1841. Then, another treaty in 1841 stripped Mehmed Ali and his son İbrahim of their territories outside Egypt and Sudan and dismantled many state monopolies: Marsot, Egypt in the Reign of Muhammad Ali, 232-238. 72 For an overview of the Tanzimat, see Findley, Turkey, Islam, Nationalism, and Modernity, 76-132. 30 circa 1840. In the first four decades of the century, Mehmed Ali’s government confronted, and then attempted to co-opt, the Muslim scholars who were so influential in

Egypt’s public sphere.

E. An Overview of the Sources

Mehmed Ali is one of the best-known figures of the Ottoman world and the modern Middle East, but scholarship concerning the man and his regime has traditionally taken a distinctly Eurocentric approach. His governorship, sometimes misleadingly referred to as a “reign,” has been generally viewed in the context of what was known in the nineteenth century as the “Eastern Question,” namely the problems resulting from the relative weakness of the Ottoman Empire vis-à-vis other powers, especially Russia, and the diplomatic consequences thereof. Accordingly, the period has often been analyzed through the prism of European military and diplomatic records. Egypt specialists such as

Marsot have taken an interest in Mehmed Ali’s political centralization and his fascinating economic experiments, although the latter have sometimes been questionably labelled attempts at national economic development. Sources in the Egyptian National Archives have been utilized impressively by such historians to understand the pasha’s new institutions, particularly in Khaled Fahmy’s groundbreaking study of Mehmed Ali’s army, All the Pasha’s Men.

In a time apparently dominated by blood and iron, our understanding of early nineteenth-century political ideology, cultural life, and religion has remained more limited, both for Egypt and for the imperial center. Mehmed Ali is celebrated for his

31 successful educational and translation initiatives, but despite the arrival of Egyptian students in France, such efforts were focused above all on the transmission of practical knowledge, not the absorption of European political or cultural concepts. Butrus Abu-

Manneh writes that European “literary books or works on cultural subjects” were translated into Ottoman Turkish only beginning in 1859.73 While this is less categorically true for Egypt, one should not be misled into believing that the first half of the nineteenth century was a time of profound westernization in Egypt by the mere existence of educational missions to Europe. For example, Mehmed Ali commissioned a translation of

Machiavelli, a thinker who would have appreciated the pasha’s political instincts, but was ultimately unimpressed, preferring instead the fourteenth-century Islamic ideas developed by Ibn Khaldūn in his Muqaddima.74 As a result of the first (partial) Ottoman Turkish translation of the Muqaddima in 1143/1730,75 the Ottoman reception of Ibn Khaldūn’s political philosophy broadened over the course of the eighteenth century, and so the pasha’s philosophical inclinations reflect a contemporary Ottoman understanding of the world. From this perspective, İhsanoğlu’s aforementioned overview of Ottoman culture in nineteenth-century Egypt is far more reflective of the period than weakly supported and oversimplified perceptions of westernization.

Furthermore, literary sources from the period remain largely unexplored, with the exception of al-Jabartī, whose chronicle ʿAjāʾib al-āthār fī al-tarājim wa-l-akhbār (The

73 Butrus Abu-Manneh, Studies on Islam and the Ottoman Empire in the 19th Century, 1826-1876 (Istanbul: Isis Press, 2001), 7. 74 İhsanoğlu, The Turks in Egypt and Their Cultural Legacy, 154. 75 Tahsin Özcan, “Pîrîzâde Mehmed Sâhib Efendi,” DİA. The Ottoman-language Muqaddima was published in Egypt in 1275/1859: İhsanoğu, The Turks in Egypt and Their Cultural Legacy, 345. 32

Marvelous Compositions of Biographies and Chronicles) extends up to the year

1236/1821. Surprisingly, however, al-Jabartī’s writings have generally been utilized as a pool of information for the eighteenth century rather than as a politically engaged text of the Mehmed Ali period. In fact, al-Jabartī’s fierce critique of Mehmed Ali’s ongoing reforms constitutes a major contribution to the political and intellectual history of the time. Indeed, his work is significant for the Ottoman Empire as a whole, during a time in which dissenters against reform began to face increasingly harsh repression. His work was not published until more than a half century later, and even then, the published version was a somewhat edited version of the original manuscript. This dissertation is one of the first studies to make use of the new critical edition of ʿAjāʾib al-āthār, published by Shmuel Moreh in 2013.76 This edition also includes revealing marginal comments written by Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār concerning his travels, intellectual activities, and political views.

Given the bitterness expressed by al-Jabartī, it should not be surprising that

Mehmed Ali commissioned an official history of his governorship around this time, which was written in Arabic by the Azharī shaykh Ibn al-Rajabī under the title Tārīkh al- wazīr Muḥammad ʿAlī Bāshā.77 The official narrative found in this work stands in direct contrast to al-Jabartī’s criticisms, but it was circulated in manuscript form only and not published until 1998.

76 ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Jabartī, Al-Naṣṣ al-kāmil li-kitāb ʿAjāʾib al-āthār fī al-tarājim wa-l-akhbār, ed. Shmuel Moreh (hereafter ʿAjāʾib, ed. Moreh), 5 vols. (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 2013). 77 Ibn al-Rajabī, Tārīkh al-wazīr Muḥammad ʿAlī Bāshā, ed. Daniel Crecelius (Cairo: Dār al-Āfāq al- ʿArabīyya, 1997). 33

Other literary sources have remained equally obscure compared to some archival and (especially) European sources. The best nineteenth-century Ottoman Turkish overview of the period is found in a manuscript entitled İber ül-beşer fi ül-karn il-salis aşer (Models of Humanity in the Thirteenth Century [of the Islamic calendar]), written by

Mehmed Arif Bey, a high-ranking Ottoman Egyptian official.78 In addition, there are a number of inshāʾ and poetry collections from the period that will be utilized in this dissertation. Despite the strong preference of both genres for style over substance, such sources provide glimpses into the religious and intellectual consciousness of the period usually absent from archival documents. In some ways, the historical value of the inshā’ genre, which consists of formal letters written for diplomatic, administrative, and even private purposes, is only beginning to be recognized.79 One significant collection from the period was composed by Hayret Efendi (d. 1240/1824-1825), the secretary (divan efendisi) of Mehmed Ali. Although written in a particularly difficult form of Ottoman

Turkish, it includes correspondence with a staggering range of figures from the empire as a whole, including various Şeyhülislams and prominent ʿulamāʾ. These and other literary sources, including biographical dictionaries, provide testimony of the cultural output and pan-Ottoman linkages of Mehmed Ali’s Egypt.

78 Mehmed Arif Efendi, İber ül-beşer fi ül-karn il-salis aşer (Egyptian National Library, MS Sīn 5992); Mehmed Arif Efendi, ʿIbar al-bashar fī al-qarn al-thālith ʿashar, 2 vols., trans. Muḥammad Asʿad Bik (Cairo: Egyptian National Library, 1945). 79 For an overview of the inshā’ genre and a close examination of a Buyid-era collection, see Klaus Hachmeier, Die Briefe Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm al-Ṣābis (st. 384/994 A.H./A.D.): Untersuchungen zur Briefsammlung eines berühmten arabischen Kanzleischreibers mit Erstedition einiger seiner Briefe (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 2002). 34

Some of the foregoing sources were published in the nineteenth century, but formal Islamic scholarship as well as other genres continued to be written in manuscript form for most of the century. Islamic perspectives have been neglected within the history of Ottoman political thought, and in attempt to address this lacuna, works that were written for and (to a lesser extent) against the kind of reforms put in place by Mehmed

Ali will be analyzed here. Most notably, an extensive defense of Ottoman military and political reform authored in 1242/1826 by Ibn al-ʿAnnābī, an Algerian mufti teaching at al-Azhar, proved to be influential in Istanbul as well as Cairo. This work, al-Sāʿī al-

Maḥmūd fī taʾlīf al-junūd (The Praised Effort to Organize the Troops, a pun on Sultan

Mahmud II’s name), inspired the composition of a related work, Bulūgh al-maqṣūd fī taʾlīf al-ʿasākir wa-l-junūd (The Attainment of Intention in Organizing the Soldiers), written by Ibrāhīm al-Saqqā, a young scholar and future khaṭīb of al-Azhar. These and other manuscripts, written according to the logic of Islamic scholarship, including unpublished biographical and juristic (fiqh) works, will be treated in this study.

While narrative sources contain key insights concerning religio-political interventions in the public sphere, archival sources also provide evidence regarding the place of the ʿulamāʾ and their institutions in the ongoing political process, and I have found relevant documents in a number of units in the Egyptian National Archives (Dār al-

Wathāʾiq al-Qawmiyya). Of course, sharīʿa court records (sijillāt) are a staple of

Ottoman studies in general and are of great importance for any study of Muslim scholars and officials; among these, I have found the waqf supervision appointments (taqārīr al- naẓar) to be especially revealing. Given that the provincial government could appoint and

35 remove waqf supervisors depending on political circumstances, these appointments may be viewed as an index of political favor toward specific ʿulamāʾ, while also providing evidence of their social history.

However, bureaucratic evidence regarding Muslim scholars and officials can be found in documents generated by many different arms of the state, not only sharīʿa courts. One fascinating source is linked to the financial administration of Ottoman Egypt: the ruznamçe (alternatively ruzname, Arabicized form rūznāmja). Literally, the word means “little daybook” in Persian – and is coincidentally related to the modern word for

“newspaper” in that language – but it refers to a range of documents regarding expenditures. This set of financial records has barely begun to be utilized in western scholarship, despite the fact that they provide the only archival evidence of the functioning of the Ottoman provincial state in Egypt outside of the sijillāt and the

Ottoman archives in Istanbul. For our purposes, waqf expenditures and detailed budgets and salaries of al-Azhar contained in the ruznamçe may be considered particularly relevant.

Unfortunately, due to a fire in the Citadel in 1235/1820,80 few of the archival records kept by Mehmed Ali’s executive organs during his early years have survived, but the existing archival materials will be used intensively in the second half of this dissertation. The registers of the Maʿiyye-i Seniyye (“Exalted Entourage”), the pasha’a highest executive council, are one major set of sources. Despite references to “the pasha’s

80 ʿAbd al-Rahmān al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib al-āthār fī al-tarājim wa-l-akhbār, 4 vols. (Būlāq: Dār al-Ṭibāʿa al- ʿĀmira, 1879-80), IV, 309. The dīwān of the pasha’s kethüda, apparently the site of many documents, was burned down. 36 cabinet” by some authors, this body was less similar to a European cabinet than it was to the Imperial Council in Istanbul, in that it consisted of his entourage and ministers alike.

The deliberations of the Maʿiyye-i Seniyye focused especially (although far from exclusively) on supra-Egyptian affairs, including Mehmed Ali’s correspondence with

Istanbul. In fact, this body’s sole surviving register prior to 1820 consists only of the pasha’s correspondence with the sultan.81

In contrast, the registers of the Divan-ı Hidivi (“Khedival Council”)82 have a greater tendency to focus on Egyptian matters. This body evolved from dīwān of the

Ottoman wālī of Egypt. One indication of this is that Mehmed Ali’s Divan-ı Hidivi was headed by a divan efendisi (council secretary), a title that was not original to Mehmed

Ali’s administration.83 Ottoman Turkish was the sole language of such official organs, whose records contain particularly valuable information about al-Azhar and Muslim scholars, mostly (though not always) elites. While the crucial formative years of Mehmed

Ali’s rule must be explored through other sources, detailed petitions and decrees provide

81 Al-Maʿiyya al-Saniyya, daftar no. 866 (new code: 3001-002051, Years 1222-1228), Dār al-Wathāʾiq al- Qawmiyya (hereafter DWQ). 82 It is worth remarking that the title “khedive” (Ottoman Turkish hidiv) was in no sense an official position held by Mehmed Ali Pasha. Although hidiv was an official title granted to Ismail Pasha in 1867 in recognition of Egypt’s autonomous status, it is anachronistic to refer to Mehmed Ali as a khedive. Hidiv was a common, albeit informal honorific for the governor of Egypt by the middle years of Mehmed Ali’s governorship, but this has little political significance. Persian by origin, the word refers variously to a king, great prince, or “excellent man”: F. Steingass, A Comprehensive Persian-English Dictionary (Beirut: Librarie du Liban, 1892, 1975), 450. 83 Hüseyin Efendi, Ottoman Egypt in the Age of the French Revolution, trans. Stanford J. Shaw (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964), 35-36, 76-77; Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib al-āthār, III, 267. Like virtually all other titles used by the Mehmed Ali regime, the title divan efendisi was commonly employed by other vizier and pasha households. The mektupçu (corresponding secretary) of Şeyhülislam Feyzullah Efendi (d. 1115/1703) was also known by this term: Michael Nizri, Ottoman High Politics and the Ulema Household, 77. Despite its characteristically Ottoman origins, the Divan-ı Hidivi subsequently evolved into Egypt’s Interior Ministry after the death of Mehmed Ali Pasha: Felix Konrad, Der Hof der Khediven von Ägypten: Herrscherhaushalt, Hofgesellschaft und Hofhaltung 1840-1880 (Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, 2008), 102-105. 37 important evidence about the often tense interactions between the ʿulamāʾ and the provincial government after 1820.

Chapter 1: Al-Azhar at the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century

Despite the prominent position of Cairo’s al-Azhar among Islamic educational institutions in the Otttoman world (and globally in the present day), little archival research has been done concerning the structure and administration of this powerful mosque-madrasa. Fortunately, a series of Azharī financial registers has survived that sheds light on the functioning of al-Azhar, other elements of the scholarly elite, and the relationship between religious elites and the provincial government. Moving beyond

Albert Hourani’s “politics of notables” approach to the ʿulamāʾ,84 we can see Ottoman

Egypt’s most prominent scholars as autonomous state elites who could cooperate with, and accept patronage from, military and administrative elites for a range of pragmatic, religious, or other ideological reasons. They often responded, however, to lower-ranking scholars who could rely on independent resources and were deeply involved in shaping public opinion. By examining their material resources, we can gain a better understanding of the nature of scholarly power and influence.

84 Albert Hourani, “Ottoman Reform and the Politics of Notables,” in The Beginnings of Modernization in the Middle East, eds. William R. Polk and Richard L. Chambers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1968), 41-68. This view of the ʿulamāʾ as privileged intermediaries between the provincial state and the populace in general is essentially adopted by such historians as Michael Winter. 39

A. Al-Azhar and Politics in Ottoman Egypt

Despite – or perhaps because of – al-Azhar’s immense fame as a mosque and place of learning, there has been a tendency for certain myths to attach themselves to this institution as a historical madrasa, starting with the very earliest period. It is true that al-

Azhar mosque was among the earliest constructions of al-Qāhira al-Muʿizziyya (i.e.,

Fāṭimid Cairo, distinct from the original settlement of Fusṭāṭ), holding its first prayers in

361/972.85 However, it was neither the only Fāṭimid institution of learning, nor was it especially important. Al-Azhar was a significant religious center for the practice of

Ismāʿīlī Shīʿism, but recent scholarship indicates that a permanent madrasa was not established at al-Azhar under the Fāṭimids, to say nothing of a “university.” The very concept of the madrasa first arose as a Sunnī concept in the eastern Islamic world and was not associated with Ismāʿīlī Shīʿism in that period.86

After Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s Ayyūbid dynasty attained power in 567/1171, al-Azhar was converted into a Sunnī mosque, but Friday prayers were transferred to the mosque of al-

Ḥākim, a larger space.87 At the same time, educational institutions proliferated, as the

Ayyūbids sought to reproduce the success of madrasas such as the Niẓāmiyya of

Baghdad. In total, about twenty-five madrasas were built,88 the most prominent of which

85 Mustafa Uzun, “Ezher,” DİA. 86 Paul E. Walker, “Fatimid Institutions of Learning,” Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 34 (1997): 186-189. An early Fāṭimid vizier, Ibn Killis, did endow study circles (singular ḥalqa) in Shīʿī fiqh, but there is no evidence that this lasted beyond the early Fāṭimid period. 87 Bayard Dodge, Al-Azhar: A Millenium of Muslim Learning (Washington: Middle East Institute, 1974), 35. 88 Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Munʿim al-Khafājī, Al-Azhar fī alf ʿāmm, 2 vols. (Beirut: ʿĀlam al-Kutub), I, 84. 40 was the Ṣalāḥiyya madrasa built by Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn near the tomb of the celebrated jurist al-

Shāfiʿī (d. 204/820). While al-Azhar functioned as a madrasa and regained its status as

Friday mosque (jāmiʿ) in the subsequent Mamlūk period, the well-known traveler Ibn

Baṭṭūṭa does not mention it during his visit in the fourteenth century.89 In many ways, the pre-eminence of the Ṣalāḥiyya lasted into the early Ottoman era. Thus, Ibn Iyās, writing just after the Ottoman conquest, terms the Ṣalāḥiyya, rather than al-Azhar, “the citadel of the ʿulamāʾ.”90

Historically, many Arab nationalist scholars have considered the Ottoman period a time of “degradation” for al-Azhar (and for Arab lands generally), accusing the

Ottoman elite of “isolation” from the people and “arrogance” toward Egyptians.91

Scholars now recognize that the Ottoman period saw the steady rise of al-Azhar as a political and intellectual force in Egypt and beyond. By the end of the sixteenth century,

Mustafa Ali ranked al-Azhar as the fifth most important mosque in the Islamic world, and this development has been traced directly to Ottoman patronage, since the waqfs of al-

Azhar were regularly replenished even as others were exhausted.92 The title of Shaykh al-

Azhar seems to have emerged relatively late, in the second half of the seventeenth century. Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Khurashī (d. 1190/1689-1690) is often cited as the first Shaykh al-Azhar on the basis of al-Jabartī’s testimony,93 although an earlier

89 Ibn Baṭṭuṭa, Riḥlat Ibn Baṭṭuṭa (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1964), 23-56. 90 Winter, Egyptian Society under Ottoman Rule, 115, citing Ibn Iyās, Badāʾiʿ al-zuhūr fī waqāʾiʿ al-duhūr, ed. Muḥammad Muṣṭafā, 5 vols. (Cairo: n.p., 1380 [1961]), V, 427. 91 ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Muḥammad al-Shinnāwī, Al-Azhar jāmiʿan wa-jāmiʿatan, 2 vols. (Cairo: Maktabat al- Anjlū al-Miṣriyya, 1983-.), I, 153-155. Al-Shinnāwī’s ambivalent approach provides an interesting window into twentieth-century Arab attitudes toward the Ottoman period. 92 Doris Behrens-Abouseif, Egypt’s Adjustment to Ottoman Rule (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994), 92. 93 Crecelius, “The Emergence of the Shaykh al-Azhar,” 109; al-Jabartī, ʿAjā’ib, I, 65. 41 chronicler gives the name of a certain Sulṭān al-Marāḥī (d. 1076/1665) as Shaykh al-

Azhar.94 By the eighteenth century, the position was contested politically, surely a sign of its pivotal role. Many of the earliest shaykhs of al-Azhar belonged to the Mālikī school of

Islamic law (madhhab), which was particularly influential in Upper Egypt, but later shaykhs were generally of the Shāfiʿī madhhab.95

Although the Ḥanafī madhhab was quite influential in Ottoman Egypt, no Ḥanafī attained the position of Shaykh al-Azhar until 1870, despite association between the

Ḥanafīs and the Ottoman elite, and this fact has sometimes been used to imply that the

Ottomans kept their distance from al-Azhar as an institution, with the predominance of the Arabic language cited as a key barrier against “Turkish” influence.96 Moreover, al-

Azhar is regarded by some as having maintained full administrative and financial independence by relying on privately-endowed waqfs. While this assertion may have elements of truth, the reality was far more complex. As this chapter will demonstrate, neither the financial administration of al-Azhar nor the Egyptian waqf system was wholly free of state oversight and inference. These administrative practices have roots reaching back to the state-building period of the sixteenth century, as an important study of the endowments known as al-rizaq al-iḥbāsiyya has pointed out.97 Despite maintaining a sense of continuity, the Ottomans sought to rationalize and codify such endowments, which had been established under the Mamlūk Sultanate to support various religious

94 Winter, Egyptian Society under Ottoman Rule, 268. 95 For a fuller list of Azharī shaykhs and their affiliations, see Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid Marsot, “The Ulama of Cairo in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” 157. 96 Al-Shinnāwī, Al-Azhar jāmiʿan wa-jāmiʿatan, I, 163-164. 97 Nicolas Michel, “Les rizaq al-iḥbāsiyya, terres agricoles en mainmorte dans l’Égypte mamlouke et ottoman,” Annales Islamologiques 30 (1996): 191-192. 42 institutions, and eventually to bring them in line with both bureaucratic and religious

(sharʿī) norms.

In addition, the sources are hardly reticent about important links between the

ʿulamāʾ of al-Azhar and the Ottoman elite. The example of the Khalwatī shaykh Muṣṭafā al-Bakrī has already been mentioned, but it was not only cosmopolitan Sufis who were able to form relationships with Ottoman officials in the eighteenth century. The chronicler al-Jabartī writes with obvious pride of the admiration that his own father

Ḥasan received for his scientific knowledge from Kör Ahmed Pasha, a governor of Egypt in the mid-eighteenth century. Ḥasan al-Jabartī (d. 1188/1774) also engaged in direct political activity; he conducted correspondence with Istanbul on behalf of ʿAlī Bey Bulut

Kapan (al-Kabīr, d. 1187/1773) as well as a governor of Syria. He even exchanged letters with Sultan Mustafa III.98 One could cite numerous examples of interactions between

Ottoman elites and various Egypt-based scholars (including non-Egyptian Arabophones and Turcophones),99 and so it is clear that Azharī ʿulamāʾ could engage the wider

Ottoman world as prominent public figures. In the early nineteenth century, Mehmed

Ali’s ambitions were broad enough that such engagement on the part of Cairo’s ʿulamāʾ became necessary to his political project, but such linkages were longstanding.

The political role of the ʿulamāʾ within Egypt, especially such notables as the

Shaykh al-Azhar, has attracted great attention mainly due to the aforementioned

98 David Ayalon, “The Historian al-Jabartī and His Background,” Bulletin of the School of African and Oriental Studies 23, no. 2 (1960): 217-249. 99 For another example, see Stefan Reichmuth, “Islamic Scholarship between Imperial Center and Provinces in the 18th Century: The Case of Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī (d. 1205/1791) and His Ottoman Contacts,” in The Great Ottoman-Turkish Civilisation, ed. Kemal Çiçek, 4 vols. (Ankara: Yeni Turkiye, 2000), III, 357-364. 43 perception of Azharīs as tribunes of the people. However, these discussions tend to elide the distinctions between various classes of scholars. Clearly, the most elite Azharīs worked closely with the grandees and their military-administrative households (Turkish singular kapı, Arabic singular bayt), which dominated Egypt’s political scene, rather than against them. One less common approach to scholarly political action in Ottoman Egypt would be to keep in mind which specific grandees and governors the various shaykhs choose to associate with, thus avoiding a dichotomous view of ʿulamāʾ as either brave popular representatives or craven courtiers. Such relationships could be cultivated for any number of reasons, whether for pragmatic (e.g., material interests), religious (e.g., associations with a particular madhhab or Sufi order), or other policy considerations. The patronage of the grandees and other actors was a valuable asset to the ʿulamāʾ, but this did not foreclose the possibility of acting on principle.

The case of Aḥmad al-Dardīr (d. 1201/1786) demonstrates the political calculus that could go into relationships between shaykhs and grandees. Al-Dardīr was the Mālikī mufti of Egypt (as well as an influential Sufi leader), and thus a duly appointed provincial official, but he could also draw on patronage from as powerful a figure as the sultan of

Morocco,100 who ruled a predominantly Mālikī region. Al-Dardīr could therefore not be considered a tool of individual grandees, but cooperation with grandees and independent action were hardly mutually exclusive. In one case in 1200/1786, when a mamlūk of

Murad Bey pillaged the house of a dervish in the Ḥusayniyya Quarter of Cairo, al-Dardīr was chosen by the angry mob to lead their protest. He agreed, but also entered into

100 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjā’ib, II, 148. 44 negotiations with Murad Bey’s governing partner, İbrahim Bey, the other member of the ruling duumvirate, and succeeded in gaining limited restitution for those wronged.101

Popular protests were an occasionally dramatic feature of Ottoman Egyptian life, but relying on popular sentiment alone hardly constituted a viable political strategy for leading scholar-officials. Of course, from the perspective of those of lesser social status, al-Dardīr’s students for example, the reverse was true, and for this reason, student protests became a feature of eighteenth-century Ottoman Egypt, not unlike contemporary

Istanbul.

Less obviously, the ʿulamāʾ shaped perceptions of political legitimacy in Ottoman

Egypt not only through their public religious practice and their alliances with political figures, but also through their writings. Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī (d. 1205/1791), probably the most prominent eighteenth-century Azharī (and a close friend of al-Jabartī), wrote a genealogical treatise on the Ayyūbids dedicated to Muḥammad Bey Abū al-Dhahab, and despite the apparently historical interest of this work, it has been understood in the context of an ideological effort to link Egypt’s grandee households, which employed mamlūks, to the historical Mamlūk Sultanate, which emerged from the Ayyūbid dynasty.102 In the seventeenth century, a more fanciful genealogical work drew on the ancient folk belief that ethnic Circassians, whose homeland is in the Caucasus, are descended from the Quraysh, the Arabian tribe from which the Prophet Muḥammad was descended.103 Circassians were the ethnic group from which most military slaves were

101 Ibid., I, 103; Jane Hathaway, “The Role of the ʿUlama in Social Protest in Late Eighteenth-Century Cairo,” unpublished M.A. Thesis, University of Texas at Austin, 1986, 29-31. 102 Reichmuth, The World of Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī, 62. 103 Jane Hathaway, A Tale of Two Factions: Myth, Memory, and Identity in Ottoman Egypt and Yemen 45 purchased in the seventeenth century and thus were the most common ethnic group among the grandees at that time.

Other scholars wrote works attempting to defend the legitimacy of the Ottomans, a dynasty that did not, of course, make any spurious claims to Arabian descent. One such work written at al-Azhar by the Ḥanbalī scholar al-Marʿī b. Yūsuf (d. 1033/1624) was deemed sufficiently important to merit a translation into Ottoman Turkish.104 In a period apparently dominated by endless feuding among military elites, the ʿulamāʾ of Ottoman

Egypt participated in the shaping of political discourse, just as their counterparts in

Istanbul did, and not only in consciously political works like historical accounts or panegyrics.105 Without question, Azhar-trained intellectuals generally wrote according to the rigorous norms of Islamic scholarship, but that need not blind us to the ways in which their writings could be subtly politicized, even in cases in which contemporary politics was not the stated subject matter.

Although these topics remain open to debate, the foregoing exposition of various aspects of al-Azhar and its shaykhs in Ottoman Egypt is intended to demonstrate that many of the themes of this dissertation – the changing material interests of the ʿulamāʾ, their links to the Ottoman center, and their role in engaging the state and the public sphere – should not be seen as unique features of the Mehmed Ali period, but rather have deep roots in the religio-political culture of Ottoman Egypt. Any understanding of the

(Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003), 151-156. 104 Kasım Kırbıyık, “Merʿî b. Yûsuf,” DİA. 105 For an example of how scholarly histories became entangled in seventeenth-century politics, see Adam Sabra, “The Second Ottoman Conquest of Egypt,” in The Islamic Scholarly Tradition: Studies in History, Law, and Thought in Honor of Professor Michael Allan Cook, eds. Asad Q. Ahmed, Behnam Sadeghi, and Michael Bonner (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 149-178. 46 early nineteenth century cannot regard Egypt as a blank slate upon which the pasha projected his extraordinary power, but rather as an established political culture that had to be engaged rather than dictated to.

B. The Structure of al-Azhar: Archival and Literary Evidence

The ʿulamāʾ of al-Azhar – jamāʿat ʿulamāʾ al-Azhar, as archival records refer to them – were led not only by the Shaykh al-Azhar, usually a Shāfiʿī, but also by the chief muftis of the two other leading madhhabs: the Ḥanafīs and Mālikīs. There were waqfs devoted to al-Azhar as a whole as well as to the specific madhhabs; these were administered by the muftis.106 The thousands of people active at al-Azhar were generally known as the mujāwwirīn, a term semantically related to “proximity,” but which referred in classical Islamic texts to those who applied themselves to worship (iʿtikāf) and the acquisition of knowledge at particular mosques.107 The term was associated historically with the religious immigrant populations of Mecca and Medina, in addition to students and teachers at al-Azhar. In the early eighteenth century, a copy of a sultanic decree

(mühimme) spoke of 400 Azharī ʿulamāʾ who had submitted an official petition to the dīwān in Cairo concerning a failure to distribute sufficient rations. The protests connected to this incident attracted 4,000 to 5,000 students to the mosque.108

106 For example, see al-Jabartī, ʿAjā’ib, II, 147. 107 Nebi Bozkurt, “Mücâvir,” DİA; Edward Lane, “ʿ-k-f,” Form VIII, Arabic-English Lexicon, 8 parts in 1 vol. (New York: F. Ungar Publishing Co.,1955-56), part 5, 2121. 108 Cited in Winter, Egyptian Society Under Ottoman Rule, 116. 47

For the nineteenth century, the Egyptian bureaucrat ʿAlī Mubārak provides an estimate of the registered population of students and professors at al-Azhar in the year

1293/1875: 361 shaykhs and 10,780 students (al-ṭalaba al-mujāwwirīn).109

Approximately half of each of these populations belonged to the Shāfiʿī madhhab; the rest consisted of smaller numbers of Ḥanafīs and Mālikīs and a handful of Ḥanbalīs.

Aside from students and teachers, others depended on the charity of al-Azhar, which provided food and housing for indigent persons (fuqarāʾ al-Azhar), some of whom were students. Al-Azhar’s practice of providing charitable services to the poor and homeless was a feature of both the Ottoman and Mamlūk eras.110 In these respects, al-Azhar resembled the mosques of Mecca and Medina, which also hosted a population of so- called mujāwwirīn and provided donations to local fuqarāʾ.

What sustained this large dependent population was a permanent and generous system of food rations (Arabic singular jirāya). Alongside rations distributed to specific shaykhs, student subgroups, and institutions within al-Azhar, the budgets of al-Azhar recorded in the registers of the Egyptian ruznamçe (the “little daybook” of expenditures) list a single figure as the general rations of “students and indigent people of al-Azhar”

(jirāyat fuqarāʾ wa-mujāwwirīn al-Azhar). The earliest complete budgets of al-Azhar, from the years just prior to Mehmed Ali’s ascension to wālī of Egypt in 1220/1805, are notable for their insights into al-Azhar’s finances at a time when the scholarly elite was at the height of its political power. The documents are entitled “Register of Grain

109 ʿAlī Mubārak, Al-Khiṭaṭ al-Tawfīqiyya al-jadīda li-Miṣr wa-l-Qāhira wa-mudunihā wa-bilādihā al- qadīma wa-l-shahīra, 20 vols. (Cairo Maṭbaʻat Dār al-Kutub wa-l-Wathāʼiq al-Qawmiyya, 2004-), IV, 36. 110 Bayard Dodge, Al-Azhar: A Millenium of Muslim Learning, 69-70; ʿAlī Mubārak, Al-Khiṭaṭ al- Tawfīqiyya al-jadīda, IV, 32-34. 48

Expenditures” (Daftar ghilāl maṣrūf) and contain a range of yearly grain rations, including those paid to individual shaykhs and bureaucrats (kutabāʾ).111 The grain in question is wheat (ḥinṭa), and figures are given mainly in ardabbs, a unit of volume, not weight, which varied depending on the period and crop in question. In the early nineteenth century, one ardabb is believed to have been equivalent to five bushels (182 liters).112

These subsidies for the residents of al-Azhar quarter and its indigent persons took widely varying forms over the course of the Ottoman period. At the end of the sixteenth century, when Istanbul still managed provincial finances directly, other religious institutions received somewhat comparable cash payments from the treasury. In the budget for 1005-1006/1596-1597 published by Stanford Shaw, al-Azhar is said to receive two subsidies exclusively for Ramaḍān festivities, although these are substantial sums:

6,739 paras and 12,000 paras, listed separately.113 A single religious notable, the Shaykh al-Bakrī, received a considerably larger stipend (33,000 paras).114 Among individual religious establishments, two Sufi convents (singular zāwiya), the first of which was a presumably Turcophone zāwiya of the Khalwatī order, are the next wealthiest: 8,080

111 Dīwān al-Rūznāmja, daftar no. 5993 (new code: 3001-012002, Year 1219/1804), p. 1, DWQ. Prior to the beginning of the nineteenth century, financial registers record the income of various shaykhs and waqfs, but not al-Azhar as a whole. These records employ a specialized blend of Ottoman Turkish and Arabic, although the vocabulary is overwhelmingly Arabic. The difficult script employed by the bureaucrats of the ruznamçe is unique to Egypt and known as kırma (“broken” in Turkish). For information on this script, see Layla ʿAbd al-Latif Aḥmad, Dirāsāt fī tārīkh wa-muʿarrikhī Miṣr wa-l-Shām ibān al-ʿaṣr al-ʿuthmānī (Cairo: Maktabat al-Khānjī, 1980), 347-356. 112 André Raymond, Artisans et commerçants au Caire au XVIIIe siècle, 2 vols. (Damascus: Institut Français de Damas, 1973-73; reprinted Cairo: Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1999), I, lvi. 113 Stanford Shaw, The Budget of Ottoman Egypt 1005-1006/1596-1597 (The Hague: Mouton, 1968), 188, 200. 114 Ibid., 182. 49 paras and 4,270 paras respectively.115 Far more significant for the Ottomans’ religious prestige was the management of the pilgrimage (ḥajj), which consumed untold sums of the provincial budget. The significance of the ḥajj is most obviously reflected in this period by the pre-eminence of the Commander of the Pilgrimage among the Egyptian grandees.116

The steady increase of Azharī grain rations from the mid-eighteenth century to the early nineteenth century is remarkable. Eighteenth-century registers are much less systematic than those of the early nineteenth century, but some significant figures can be located. In a register entitled “Register of Yearly Salaries of the Great Shaykhs” for the years 1165-1167/1751-1753, the overall figure provided to the “students and indigent people” of al-Azhar is 545 ardabbs of grain.117 (For reasons that are unclear, this ration applied to the period from the beginning of 1165 through the month of Shawwāl in 1166.)

As in the late sixteenth century, the first page of this document lists a much a larger figure for the “needs of the pilgrims” (muhimmāt al-ḥajjāj): 7762 ardabbs of grain. By comparison, the burden of Azharī rations on state coffers was comparatively light.

Fifty years later, in the year 1219/1804-1805, the overall figure provided to al-

Azhar’s “students and indigent people” had risen to 2487 ardabbs (perhaps about 12,500 bushels). This was in spite of the almost continual political and economic turmoil that had transpired in the preceding half century. The document gives an additional figure of

115 Ibid., 187. 116 The Faqārī and Qāsimī military factions competed fiercely over the post in the seventeenth century as one of the main loci of power in the province: Hathaway, A Tale of Two Factions, 7. 117 These figures are from the years 1751-1753 CE: Dīwān al-Rūznāmja, daftar no. 5555 (new code: 3001- 011255, Years 1165-1167), DWQ. 50

904 ardabbs of grain received from ʿawāʾid, probably meaning customary dues collected by the Azharīs. The total of these two figures is considerable, but it would still be difficult to sustain a virtual city-within-a-city on this amount of grain, even though that figure was a historic high.118 The rationing and upkeep of al-Azhar’s scholarly and indigent populations was therefore distributed not only via a single ration, but also through individual shaykhs and other associations within al-Azhar. Of course, such “great shaykhs” redistributed these rations to their students and other clients.

Apart from student-teacher relationships, the most significant elements of Azharī student life in the Ottoman period were the student residential institutions known as riwāqs (Arabic plural arwiqa).119 Outside the context of al-Azhar, riwāq is mainly an architectural term, often referring to covered porticos or colonnades with a roof supported by pillars, although it could be applied to structures of various kinds.120 Al-Zabīdī defines the word quite simply: “the front portion of the house” (muqaddam al-bayt).121 Riwāq was likely first applied to al-Azhar in a purely architectural sense before the establishment of residence halls or even a permanent madrasa. The term does have long associations with the students of Mecca and Medina, but as a term for student lodgings in

118 It has been estimated that at least twelve bushels of grain are necessary to feed a single person in a year: William J. Hudson, “Vision 2020: Food Abundance, Trade, and the Natural Advantage of America,” in Rational Readings on Environmental Concerns, ed. Jay Lehr (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1992), 581. 119 Brief English-language overviews of the riwāq system can be found in Dodge and Heyworth-Dunne: Dodge, Al-Azhar: A Millenium of Muslim Learning, 201-206; J. Heyworth-Dunne, An Introduction to the History of Education in Modern Egypt, (London: Luzac and Co., 1938), 25-28. 120 Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s. v. “Riwāḳ,” by Nasser Rabbat. 121 Murṭaḍā ibn Muḥammad al-Zabīdī, Tāj al-ʿarūs min jawāhir al-qāmūs, ed. ʿAbd al-Sattār Aḥmad Farrāj, 42 vols. (Kuwait: Maṭbaʻat Ḥukūmat al-Kuwayt, 1965-), XXV, 271-280. He does not define the term’s usage in the context of al-Azhar, however. 51

Egypt, riwāq is first encountered in the Khiṭaṭ of al-Maqrīzī (d. 845/1442),122 a Mamlūk- era compendium of Cairene topography and history. However, al-Maqrīzī uses the term in a general sense without reference to the specialized riwāqs that proliferated in the

Ottoman period.

Ultimately, what emerged was a number of student residences in or near the al-

Azhar mosque complex based usually, although not always, on the students’geographic origin or religious commonalities. Even today, one can still see plaques in the interior of al-Azhar commemorating individual riwāqs, one of which is the Maghribī (i.e., North

African) riwāq. In all, ʿAlī Mubārak gives a total of thirty-eight such residences.123 The majority of these were based on geographic origin both within Egypt and outside of

Egypt, although not necessarily according to familiar geographic categories. The Riwāq al-Burniyya, for example, encompassed a range of West African origins, from Senegal to the desert regions of the Sahel,124 and must have taken its name from the Borno state of northern Nigeria, which had been in existence for centuries by the time of ʿAlī Mubārak.

Some of these more far-flung riwāqs may have come into existence only in the nineteenth century, but the Islamic networks of al-Azhar were already global by the eighteenth century. Although al-Jabartī does not mention Borno, he does assert that an Egyptian Sufi travelled as far as Java,125 a region which gained its own riwāq in the eighteenth century,126 not to mention the fact that al-Zabīdī was born in northern India. Like that of

122 Cited in al-Shinnāwī, Al-Azhar jāmiʿan wa-jāmiʿatan, I, 255. 123 ʿAlī Mubārak, Al-Khiṭaṭ al-Tawfīqiyya al-jadīda, IV, 36. 124 Al-Shinnāwī, Al-Azhar jāmiʿan wa-jāmiʿatan, I, 264. 125 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjā’ib, II, 89. 126 Al-Shinnāwī, Al-Azhar jāmiʿan wa-jāmiʿatan, I, 266. 52 the Javanese, al-Azhar’s Indian riwāq was founded by Abdurrahman Kethüda in the mid- eighteenth century.

Other riwāqs, however, were based on religious affiliation or could even be open to all. For instance, the Ibn Muʿammar riwāq was open to those who could not find housing elsewhere. The Ḥanafī and Ḥanbalī riwāqs are obvious examples of riwāqs based on religious affiliation, and the Aqbughāwiyya, originally founded as a separate madrasa in the Mamlūk era, was customarily the “headquarters” of the Mālikī madhhab of Egypt.127 As centers of Mālikī activity, however, the Maghribī and especially the

Ṣaʿīdī (Upper Egyptian) riwāqs were much more significant; the aforementioned shaykh

Aḥmad al-Dardīr acted as both Mālikī mufti and shaykh of the Ṣaʿīdī riwāq.128 One of the most interesting riwāqs was certainly that of the blind, from which Shaykh al-Azhar

Hasan al-Quwaysnī (d. 1254/1838) emerged, by far one of the most significant religious figures of Mehmed Ali-era Egypt.

The riwāq shaykhs were often among the most powerful ʿulamāʾ in Ottoman

Egypt, both by wealth and by influence, and were usually teachers (singular mudarris) as well. Al-Jabartī himself served as shaykh of the Jabart riwāq, and he provides important evidence regarding the nature of the riwāq system. Jabart itself is a toponym etymologically related to the modern country name Djibouti, but the riwāq itself took in students from a number of East African regions, including Ethiopia and Somalia (known as Zaylaʿ). Al-Jabartī states that his ancestors immigrated from Jabart, which he explicitly

127 Dodge, Al-Azhar: A Millenium of Muslim Learning, 204. 128 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjā’ib, II, 147. 53 equates with Zaylaʿ, explaining that Jabart is located in Ḥabasha (greater Ethiopia).129

The date that he gives for his ancestor’s arrival in Egypt is the beginning of the tenth hijrī century (i.e., possibly before the Ottoman conquest in 923/1517), and his family assumed the post of shaykh of the Riwāq al-Jabart soon after. His ancestors, including his father

Ḥasan, headed the riwāq,130 and he mentions other teachers from the riwāq in his chronicle, so it is clear the riwāqs were places of both residence and study. Court sijills almost never contain the appointment of riwāq shaykhs, since these were internal matters for the riwāqs; shaykhly posts could also be passed from father to son, as in the case of al-Jabartī. The riwāqs kept their own sijills, for financial reasons as well as for the maintenance of their libraries, among other reasons, and these records were kept by kātibs (secretaries), at least in major riwāqs.131

To be sure, some riwāqs were of far greater wealth and influence than others. One of the wealthiest riwāqs was that of the Upper Egyptians (Arabic plural Ṣaʿāʾida), which had benefited from the patronage of Abdurrahman Kethüda al-Qazdağlī (d. 1190/1776), who built an extension of al-Azhar that included a new Upper Egyptian riwāq, and he endowed it with generous waqfs.132 Smaller riwāqs did not necessarily have associated waqf properties, although it is likely that the Riwāq al-Jabart did, given that the Jabartī family held numerous waqfs. The smallest riwāqs received only modest grain rations or none at all, while the larger ones controlled both grain rations and autonomous waqfs, usually provided by wealthy donors, including both state and non-state elites. With such

129 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, I, 385; see also Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. “Djabart,” by E. Ullendorff. 130 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, I, 388. 131 On the organization of the riwāqs, see al-Shinnāwī, Al-Azhar jāmiʿan wa-jāmiʿatan, I, 247-250. 132 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, II, 5; Dodge, Al-Azhar: A Millenium of Muslim Learning, 201. 54 properties at the disposal of the shaykh, it seems clear that the riwāqs were not simply a means of organizing student housing arrangements, but could also be major power centers to a degree that has not been fully appreciated. After all, a large proportion of the leading ʿulamāʾ, such as al-Dardīr and ʿAbd Allāh al-Sharqāwī (d. 1227/1812), also happened to be riwāq shaykhs, especially among those who did not control a major Sufi order.

The case of the latter is particularly striking. Though he had been Shaykh al-

Azhar for some time during the late eighteenth century, an unpleasant incident taught al-

Sharqāwī that his power was limited without control of a riwāq. A group of students who were also his followers were living in the Ṭaybarsiyya madrasa, which (like the

Aqbughāwiyya) was originally independent, but came to be regarded as a part of al-

Azhar, when al-Sharqāwī made arrangements to transfer them to the nearby Ibn

Muʿammar riwāq. Unfortunately, though, a scuffle soon broke out with the existing residents at the Ibn Muʿammar riwāq, and the shaykh of that riwāq also opposed the newcomers. Finding his students thus stranded, al-Sharqāwī drew on the support of a female student, who contacted İbrahim Bey through his daughter. İbrahim Bey was persuaded to build a new and separate riwāq.133 This new residence became known as the

Sharqāwiyya, as it was intended for students from the shaykh’s home province of

Sharqiyya in the eastern Nile Delta, and it was provided with support similar to other riwāqs. Thus, control of a riwāq secured not only material resources, but also human

133 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, IV, 161-162. This woman was also a jurist (faqīha) in her own right. 55 resources who could be integrated into patronage networks or mobilized in times of need, at least in the years just prior to Mehmed Ali’s rise to power.

As for the riwāqs’ material resources, the figures given in the ruznamçe registers demonstrate that these were considerable. In the year 1219/1804-1805, the North African riwāq (Riwāq al-Sādāt al-Maghāriba) was the single largest recipient of grain rations aside from the fuqarāʾ and mujāwwirīn of the mosque as a whole.134 This riwāq received

1488 ardabbs of wheat as rations (in addition to 240 ardabbs as customary dues), compared with 2487 ardabbs for the mosque overall. The second largest recipient of grain rations was the riwāq of Greater Syria (Riwāq al-Shawwām, including Palestinians,

Lebanese, etc.), which was issued 876 ardabbs of wheat, with a special entry for the children of the shaykh, who were issued fifty ardabbs. Interestingly, despite its recent vintage, al-Sharqāwī’s riwāq is the fourth largest recipient of grain, slightly more than the longstanding Upper Egyptian riwāq, although both are outstripped by the Ibn Muʿammar riwāq. (The Riwāq al-Sharqāwiyya is even explicitly listed as having its own “treasury.”)

This register lists only the leading riwāqs and included only a few others aside from those already mentioned. While the riwāqs left unmentioned certainly received rations as well, their absence may be taken as a sign of relative weakness.

What is apparent from these kinds of registers is how involved the Egyptian authorities were in managing some of the basic needs of al-Azhar. The Azhar grain rations, known in Arabic as jirāya, were administered by the Egyptian authorities. Their administration through the ruznamçe makes this clear, as does the early eighteenth-

134 Dīwān al-Rūznāmja, daftar no. 5993 (new code: 3001-012002, Year 1219), DWQ. 56 century mühimme cited earlier. Furthermore, an Ottoman-language note attached to the

1219 register indicates how longstanding these practices were, shaped by decades of evolving patronage. Under a section devoted to the salaries of the ağas of al-Azhar,135 the note explains that the salaries of these ağas put in place by Abdurrahman Kethüda remained in effect, a total of over 600 kuruş yearly.136 Al-Azhar, its riwāqs, and its scholars did have their own waqfs, but this should not lead us to exaggerate the financial and institutional autonomy of the mosque and those linked to it. The administration of al-

Azhar was nearly as bound up with elite politics as any other key base of power in

Ottoman Egypt.

C. The Salaries and Wealth of the Great Shaykhs

However, institutional patronage of al-Azhar by the provincial state was far from the only source of scholarly wealth. A number of scholars also received direct support in the form of individual stipends and even more held various kinds of private wealth. By looking at individual scholars, we see two important tendencies. First, many of the most elite scholars were state officials, partly reliant upon support from the central or provincial state, although not exclusively. Second, both elite scholars and a great many others derived their support from more diffuse sources of private wealth, particularly waqf holdings. In light of such diversified resources, the majority of lower- rankingʿulamāʾ cannot be considered mouthpieces of local grandees or the imperial state,

135 The function of these ağas is not at all clear in the context of the document. 136 Dīwān al-Rūznāmja, daftar no. 5993 (new code: 3001-012002, Year 1219), DWQ. 57 but rather must be seen as autonomous social actors and thus potential participants in an

Ottoman public sphere.

A small group of scholar-officials did receive their salaries directly from Istanbul.

In Egypt, the leading representative of the imperial ilmiyye was of course the qāḍī of

Cairo (Turkish Mısır mollası), and neither this official nor the qāḍīs of lesser cities such as Alexandria received stipends from the provincial government in Cairo. Likewise,

Egypt’s naqīb al-ashrāf, the official head of the descendants of the Prophet (singular sharīf, plural ashrāf), continued to receive a salary of over 1000 kuruş from Istanbul in the early nineteenth century,137 despite the fact that this office had been “localized” by the second half of the eighteenth century; in other words, the Egyptian naqīb was no longer appointed from Istanbul, but rather from among the Egyptian scholarly notables, especially the Bakrī and Sādāt families.138 Thus, even when Istanbul provided the salary, the imperial state could not necessarily exert direct control.

A wider array of stipends was paid from the coffers of the provincial government, and these figures are provided in archival documents. Like the jirāya of Azharī riwāq shaykhs, these salaries distributed to key notables are denominated in ardabbs of wheat.

In 1219/1804-1805, for example, these shaykhs received stipends under the bookkeeping heading “Istiḥqāq Mashāyikh ʿUẓẓām,” or “Dues of the Great Shaykhs,” which were paid from the from provincial ruznamçe. With the exception of a gargantuan salary paid to

137 Mühimme-i Mısır 12, No. 251 (Şevval 1224/October 1809), Başbakanlık Arşivi, Istanbul (hereafter BOA). 138 On this office, see Michael Winter, “The Ashrāf and Niqābat al-Ashrāf in Egypt in Ottoman and Modern Times,” Asian and African Studies (Haifa) 19, no. 1 (1985): 32-36. 58

ʿUmar Makram, the naqīb al-ashrāf (head of the descendants of the Prophet),139 few of them received more than 100 ardabbs of wheat. The head of the Shādhilī Sufi order in

Egypt, Shaykh al-Jawharī, received over 300 ardabbs, but the other shaykhs, including such figures as al-Dawākhilī and al-Mahdī al-Ḥifnāwī, were given much more humble grain rations; in contrast, what seem to be the children of an Ottoman Şeyhülislam were given nearly 200 ardabbs of wheat.140

By comparison, Hüseyin Efendi, the ruznameci, who was secretary of the ruznamçe and considered the highest-ranking bureaucrat in Egypt, received 971 ardabbs of grain in 1226/1811,141 more than most scholars but less than the most prominent riwāq shaykhs, who had additional sources of income. Though they fell far short of the wealth of the Islamic hierarchy in Istanbul, certain Egyptian ʿulamāʾ were recipients of some state largess regardless of their educational functions within al-Azhar and its riwāqs.

Beyond official salaries, some ʿulamāʾ controlled large numbers of tax farms

(iltizāms), like other members of Ottoman Egypt’s upper and middle classes. They also held urban revenue sources (muqāṭaʿāt), which could be very lucrative.142 Low-status

ʿulamāʾ also acted as small businessmen, while elite ʿulamāʾ were often linked to merchants by family relationships. A full comparison of their rural iltizām holdings with those of other elite social categories has not yet been made, although it is clear that even the most prominent scholars did not approach the military households in their control of

139 See below and chapter 3, “Muslim Scholars in Power? Mehmed Ali Pasha’s Early Years.” 140 Dīwān al-Rūznāmja, daftar no. 5993 (new code: 3001-012002, Year 1219), p. 5-9, DWQ. 141 Dīwān al-Rūznāmja, daftar no. 6105 (new code: 3001-012941, Years 1226-1227), DWQ. 142 André Raymond, Artisans et comerçants au Caire, II, 424-428. 59 tax revenues. Likewise, leading merchants far surpassed the ʿulamāʾ in commercial resources.

Still, we can find other important sources of scholarly wealth in the court registers

(sijills). The considerable difficulty involved in locating specific figures in the voluminous and paleographically challenging sijills and other records has meant that scholars have only rarely attempted to link the narrative histories found in the chronicles to the scattered data of the sijills. One notable exception is the historian Afaf Lutfi al-

Sayyid Marsot, who has provided an overview of the waqfiyyas of three key shaykhs: al-

Sharqāwī, al-Sādāt, and ʿUmar Makram.143 The wealth of the leading shaykhs was dispersed across a variety of holdings, so it can be difficult to estimate figures that might be helpful for the sake of comparison, but the use of waqf documents listing the endowments in the possession of a particular person can provide a broad understanding of an individual’s overall waqf holdings.

Despite his prominence in the ruznamçe registers as a recipient of various salaries

(including those for his children, his religious institutions, etc.), not to mention his position as Shaykh al-Azhar, the waqfiyyas registered to al-Sharqāwī between 1802 and

1805 are actually more modest than those of his counterparts. His holdings were more likely to be in rural real estate than others, although he managed to obtain other sources of income, including a salary from the Janissaries of Egypt (known locally as the

Mustaḥfiẓān) as well as control of some jawālī revenues (a tax on non-Muslims).144 In

143 Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid Marsot, “The Wealth of the Ulama in Late Eighteenth-Century Cairo,” in Studies in Eighteenth Century Islamic History, eds., Thomas Naff and Roger Owen (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1977), 205-216. 144 On this tax, see Seyyid Muhammed es-Seyyid, “Cevâlî”, DİA. 60 contrast, the waqfiyya of the Shaykh al-Sādāt indicates considerable holdings of everything from a coffeehouse to Sufi lodges (singular zāwiya).145 Certainly, Abū al-

Anwār al-Sādāt is portrayed by al-Jabartī as an extremely wealthy, if venal scholar and

Sufi leader.146

Al-Sādāt’s private holdings must therefore have greatly exceeded his salaries from the provincial treasury, which came in two forms: first, the expenses of his order’s ancestral Sufi center (zāwiyat al-Sādāt al-Wafāʾiyya, 54 ardabbs); and second, his personal grain income (75 ardabbs).147 While significant, this income was not much different from that of other elite shaykhs or bureaucrats, such as ʿUthmān Efendi, a

Mevlevi shaykh (64 ardabbs). In contrast, the revenue dues of naqīb al-ashrāf ʿUmar

Makram in the same year are on an altogether different scale. Waqf revenues from a number of official sources are set aside not only for the naqīb, but also for his relatives, children, and freed mamlūks. The cumulative total of these revenues is 1595 ardabbs of wheat, a figure which is more than fifty percent of the grain rations issued to the students and indigent persons of al-Azhar as a whole.

The income sources attributed by Marsot to ʿUmar Makram, which include buildings in Cairo, land in his home town of Asyut, and a salary from the jawālī taxes,148 were considerable, but these must have been overshadowed by the grain revenues that he received directly from the provincial state. Nonetheless, as we will see, in this case as in many other cases, such official salaries provided to leading ʿulamāʾ were often more a

145 Marsot, “The Wealth of the Ulama in Late Eighteenth-Century Cairo,” 212-214. 146 See al-Sādāt’s biography in Al-Jabartī, ʿAjā’ib, IV, 185-198. 147 Dīwān al-Rūznāmja, daftar no. 5993 (new code: 3001-012002, Year 1219), DWQ. 148 Marsot, “The Wealth of the Ulama in Late Eighteenth Century Cairo,” 214-215. 61 response to the vagaries of public opinion than an attempt to raise the status of scholarly client figures. ʿUmar Makram received an official stipend not because the governor of

Egypt saw him as a client, but rather because of his numerous supporters among the populace who demanded that he be honored.

A full inventory of scholars’ wholly private wealth (i.e., wealth unconnected to official salaries, tax farms, or endowments) can be found among the court registers in the form of probate records (Arabic mukhallafāt). Such records have been utilized for their great potential as a source of social history as a whole, but it is also possible, if not necessarily easy, to locate the legal testaments of major political and religious figures as well. By the late eighteenth century, nearly all deceased Muslims in Egypt whose relatives chose to register their possessions are to be found in the Qisma al-ʿAskariyya, which, despite its name, was no longer limited to military and political figures as it had been in the early centuries of Ottoman rule and now included obscure men and women from the religious and commercial classes. Conversely, deceased non-Muslims were registered in the Qisma al-ʿArabiyya.

Not all deceased political or religious figures were necessarily entered in the probate records in the Qisma al-ʿAskariyya, and the only major religious figure of the early nineteenth seems to be Muḥammad al-Amīr al-Mālikī (“al-Kabīr,” d. 1232/1817).

By cooperating with Mehmed Ali, he managed to retain his position as Mālikī mufti as well as shaykh of the ʿArabiyya Sufi order until his death and was succeeded in all offices by his son Muḥammad al-Amīr (“al-Ṣaghīr,” d. 1246/1830-1). His mukhallafāt lists his total assets at approximately 571,000 kuruş (~41,000 pounds sterling ca. 1815),

62 an impressively high figure, especially considering the difficulties faced by many ʿulamāʾ under Mehmed Ali Pasha. However, his net assets – subtracting debts and money promised for pious purposes – were estimated at 300,000 kuruş.149 Beyond hard currency

(held in French francs), his most valuable property is a spinning mill (maghzil), valued at

108,000 kuruş. Of course, these properties and cash savings were just a portion of his overall resources, which also included official salaries and supervision of various endowments.

D. The ʿUlamāʾof Late Ottoman Egypt: Public Sphere or Official

Clerisy?

Leaving aside private property, tax farms, state salaries, and personally endowed waqfs, there is still another source of income that is better documented and may even have been more lucrative. Supervisor-ships (singular naẓāra) of endowments established by other donors provided another avenue through which many shaykhs could secure their material autonomy, and this form of access to wealth sheds considerable light on scholars’ relationship with the authorities. The registers of one particular court in Cairo,

Maḥkamat Miṣr al-Sharʿiyya (the “Sharīʿa Court of Egypt”), are devoted exclusively to appointments to supervisory positions over various endowments (taqārīr al-nazar); unsurprisingly, ʿulamāʾ both powerful and obscure are strongly represented among the ranks of these supervisors.

149 Al-Qisma al-ʿAskariyya, daftar no. 264 (new code: 1003-001213, Years 1232-1233), no. 42 (10 Muḥarram 1233), DWQ. 63

In many cases, especially when the terms of an endowment deed did specify a new supervisor, the chief qāḍī of Egypt (or perhaps in practice his kātib, or secretary)150 could exercise discretion in appointing waqf supervisors. Since many endowments were centuries old, including numerous examples dating to the Mamlūk period, it was possible for the chief judge to award supervisory positions over wealthy endowments to favored religious notables, or even fairly obscure scholars. The stipulations of the original endowments seem to have been respected, but there was also latitude to appoint favored shaykhs as waqf supervisors, especially in the absence of a legitimate supervisor (bi- ḥukm farāghihi). It was possible to stipulate that the original waqf holders lacked the competence (ṣalāḥiyya) to carry out their work, a condition that was that certainly open to politicization. Accordingly, ʿulamāʾ who fell from favor could also be removed from such positions. Such appointments are illustrative of the state’s influence, however incomplete, over Egyptian waqfs, and the role of these endowments in solidifying alliances between populist ʿulamāʾ and the provincial government. Thus, although waqfs constituted a form of private wealth often controlled by Muslim scholars, the provincial government could exert at least some influence over this wealth.

On the other hand, although the state could potentially intervene in the affairs of private waqfs, the Ottoman era also saw the reverse phenomenon, because salaries granted by the provincial state began to be seen increasingly as private waqfs, a very

150 See chapter 7 for archival evidence concerning the significance of chief qāḍī’s secretary. However, Edward Lane refers to the chief judge’s “deputy” (nāʾib) as the real power within the judiciary: Edward William Lane, An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians: The Definitive 1860 Edition, ed. Jason Thompson (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2003), 156-7. On the role of the qāḍī’s deputy in Ottoman Egypt, see Jane Hathaway, The Arab Lands Under Ottoman Rule, 1516-1800 (Harlow, Essex, U.K.: Pearson/Longman, 2008), 119. 64 complex phenomenon. This issue, obviously a contentious one from the perspective of the treasury, was complicated by the memory of the Mamlūk Sultanate. If we are to believe the Egyptian historian al-Isḥāqī (d. 1623), forty percent of all land in Egypt was held in waqf at the time of the Ottoman conquest (923/1517).151 A century later, the

Ḥanafī shaykh ʿĪsā al-Ṣafṭī (d. 1143/1730-1)152 claims that prior to the Ottoman conquest two-thirds of all land in Egypt was endowed for “good works (khayrāt), pious deeds

(qurubāt), mosques, schools, and Sufi residences (ribāṭāt).”153 In describing these

Mamlūk-era endowments, al-Ṣafṭī refers first to irṣād (endowment from the provincial treasury, bayt al-māl), but then equates this concept with waqf.154

However, these Ottoman-era generalizations should be read in light of Nicolas

Michel’s work concerning the evolution of the rizqa al-aḥbāsiyya (plural rizaq, endowed income from land and other sources legally controlled by the state) from the late Ayyūbid era through the early nineteenth century. Michel demonstrates that waqf and rizqa emerged as distinct medieval legal concepts, although confusion between the two terms was common even in the Mamlūk era.155 Significantly, the rizqa could often resemble an iqṭāʿ (land grant or “fief”) more closely than a waqf, a reality that is particularly apparent in the case of the rizaq al-jayshiyya (lands in mortmain for military salaries). Rizqas were

151 Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Muʿtī al-Isḥāqī, Kitāb akhbār al-uwal fī man taṣarrafa fī Miṣr min arbāb al- duwwal (Cairo: Al-Maṭbaʻa al-Yamaniyya, 1310/1892-3), 143-144. 152 On this scholar, see al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, I, 157. 153 ʿĪsā al-Ṣafatī, ʿAṭiyyat al-Raḥmān fī ṣiḥḥat al-jamārik wa-l-aṭyān (Cairo: n.p., 1314), 20-21. I was not able to locate this book, but the quote is included in Muḥammad ʿAfīfī, Al-Awqāf wa-l-ḥayāh al-iqtiṣādiyya fi Miṣr fi al-ʿaṣr al-ʿuthmānī (Cairo: Al-Hayʾa al-Miṣriyya al-ʿĀmma lil-Kitāb, 1991), 27. 154 On the idea of irṣād in Ottoman Egypt, see Kenneth M. Cuno, “Ideology and Juridical Discourse in Ottoman Egypt: The Uses of the Concept of Irṣād” Islamic Law and Society 6, no. 2 (1999): 136-163. 155 Nicolas Michel, “Les rizaq al-iḥbāsiyya,” 118-119. 65 created as a result of administrative decisions, albeit on an unsystematic basis, to pay the salaries of a range of figures including irrigation managers, village notables, guards, and local qāḍīs.156 Although such “benefices” were mainly land-based, rizqa income could come from other sources as well.

These salaries were recognized in the Kanunname-i Mısır,157 acknowledging a strong local desire for continuity; however, the rizqas were audited strictly in the sixteenth century, and the military stipends were (theoretically) abolished. Over time, there was a powerful tendency to transform rizqas into waqfs in all but name, which

Michel refers to as the “late Islamization” of the rizqas, mainly in the eighteenth century.158 By that period, the rizqa al-aḥbāsiyya served mainly pious purposes, and its original intent and legal meaning had been forgotten, even by historians like al-Jabartī.159

Thus, the “endowments” of the Mamlūk era differed considerably from those of the

Ottoman era, because the latter eluded state supervision, allowed for the instrusion of sharʿī norms, and benefited various kinds of ʿulamāʾ in particular.

At the very least, the provincial state had difficulty maintaining control over the broad outlines of waqf administration in Egypt. Even as these lucrative rizqa salaries evolved into waqfs, the sheer extent of endowed land ballooned extraordinarily in the

Ottoman period, with only a handful of centralizing provincial governors (such as Kul

Kıran Mehmed Paşa, d. 1029/1620) attempting to stem the tide of endowment growth, as

156 Ibid., 108-109. 157 Aḥmad Fuʼād Mutawallī, ed., Qānūn nāma Miṣr (Cairo: Maktabat al-Anjlū al-Miṣriyya, 1986), 30-31 (Turkish text). 158 Nicolas Michel, “Les rizaq al-iḥbāsiyya,” 187-188. 159 For his description of historical waqf development: al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, IV, 93-95. 66

Muḥammad ʿAfīfī has pointed out.160 In contrast, unlike certain Ottoman wālīs, and later

Mehmed Ali Pasha, the Egyptian grandees usually did not interfere with the growth of waqf properties. Indeed, in their bid to profit from Ottoman decentralization, eighteenth- century power brokers such as the Janissary officer Abdurrahman Kethüda (d.

1178/1776)161 accelerated the treasury’s loss of such lands, and waqf properties became especially pervasive in the eighteenth century.162

By the second half of the eighteenth century, the provincial ruznamçe registers increasingly include not only the official rizqa salaries (many of which continued to claim Mamlūk precedents), but also a much wider array of waqfs on a region-by-region basis.163 These waqf listings among the ruznamçe records may be an alternate method of financing the stipends paid to favored scholars and others, but it is clearly also significant that the Maḥkamat Miṣr al-Sharʿiyya, a court that extensively and exclusively handled waqf appointments, was first established in the second quarter of the eighteenth century,164 before which point such issues were handled more sporadically by the main

Cairo court (al-Bāb al-ʿĀlī). Furthermore, the vast majority of these apppointments refer to endowed urban properties, not landed rizqas in the countryside, and the locations of

160 ʿAfīfī, Al-Awqāf wa-l-ḥayāh al-iqtiṣādiyya, 65-68. This was in line with broad Ottoman concerns, especially from the seventeenth century onward, that the spread of waqfs was depriving the treasury of needed income: John Robert Barnes, An Introduction to Religious Foundations in the Ottoman Empire (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1986), 61. 161 On the background of Abdurrahman Kethüda, see Jane Hathaway, The Politics of Households in Ottoman Egypt: The Rise of the Qazdağlıs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 84-86. 162 For statistical evidence of eighteenth-century growth in endowments, see Daniel Crecelius, “Incidences of Waqf Cases in Three Cairo Courts: 1640-1802,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 29, no. 2 (1986): 176-189. 163 For an example of a early nineteenth-century register listing large waqfs, see Dīwān al-Rūznāmja, daftar no. 4666 (new code: 3001-000122, Year 1222), DWQ. 164 The very first register is from the years 1724-1727: Maḥkamat Miṣr al-Sharʿiyya, daftar no. 1 (new code: 1017-003501, Years 1137-1140), DWQ. 67 these urban waqfs are usually specified with precision. It is true that if a shaykh was appointed manager of an endowed Sufi shrine in Cairo, such a shrine might have been attached to rizqa properties as well (although this is rarely mentioned explicitly). Still, the overwhelmingly urban nature of these endowments means that they tended to be commercial properties rather than rural rents.

Given the endless proliferation of waqf properties and also appointments to supervisory positions, it is worth asking who controlled these appointments. Certainly, some elements of the “state,” whether provincial grandees, the wālī, or even the Istanbul- appointed judge nominally in charge of these appointments, could exert influence over waqf appointments. On the other hand, many counterexamples exist. There are numerous cases in which the appointment is clearly linked to patronage on the part of Egyptian scholarly notables. Most obviously, a set of endowments was attached to al-Azhar as a whole (awqāf al-Azhar) that do not seem to have been particularly vulnerable to intervention on the part of the provincial state. In addition, many particular court cases often foreground the role of the scholarly patron by beginning with the formula “in the presence of…” (bi-maḥḍar…) or “with the knowledge of…” (bi-maʿrifat…) followed by the name of the patron. For example, in 1245/1830 (during the Mehmed Ali era), a client

(tābiʿ) of Muḥammad al-Mahdī, the chief mufti of Egypt, was appointed to supervise the waqf of Yusuf Ziya Pasha (dated 1216/1801) upon the death of Muḥammad al-Maḥrūqī, head of the overseas merchants corporation (shāhbandar) and a close confidant of

Mehmed Ali Pasha. Al-Mahdī is noted as having been physically present for the appointment to this supervisory position, which also carried an income of 3,250 kuruş

68 from treasury revenues (kharāj mīrī).165 When a patron is listed at the beginning of a waqf appointment, this figure is most commonly a scholarly notable.

Thus, waqf administration was controlled in large part by ʿulamāʾ of various backgrounds, although most were far less eminent than al-Mahdī. Waqf supervisory appointments (for both scholars and non-scholars) occurred in most cases upon the death of the appointee’s father, whereupon the deceased’s son often sought to have his appointment duly ratified by the authorities. Even so, most new waqf supervisors did not even feel the need to seek an official record for their authority. Many leading scholars, who inevitably would have passed numerous waqfs on to their children after their deaths, are absent from the registers of the Maḥkamat Miṣr al-Sharʿiyya in the years of their deaths. This is true, for example, in the case of ʿAbd Allāh al-Sharqāwī, who is known to have possessed the full gamut of scholarly income sources. Al-Sharqāwī is unusual in that both before and after his death, his children are listed in various records as receiving salaries and/or waqf incomes; nonetheless, he and his children do not appear among the waqf appointments of 1812/1227, the year of his death.166 This indicates that his waqf supervisory positions must have been (at least partly) transferred to his children without a formal court document. In a similar manner, al-Azhar’s endowments (awqāf al-Azhar), which were under the unambiguous authority of the Shaykh al-Azhar, do not appear in court documents until the middle of the Mehmed Ali period; only then does the transfer

165 Maḥkamat Miṣr al-Sharʿiyya, daftar no. 34 (new code: 1017-003533, Years 1244-1249), no. 145 (12 Ramaḍān 1245), DWQ. This is an indication of how certain favored Azharī scholars continued to hold significant power throughout the Mehmed Ali era. 166 Maḥkamat Miṣr al-Sharʿiyya, daftar no. 26 (new code: 1017-003526, Years 1226-1228), DWQ. 69 of these endowments’ collective supervision to each new Shaykh al-Azhar begin to be recorded at the time of appointment.167

The preceding excursus into the sources of scholarly income is relevant for our purposes because the nature of Egyptian scholars’ material autonomy was absolutely central to their intellectual autonomy in the public sphere. Above all, it was the institution of the waqf that made this material and intellectual autonomy possible. This fact has not gone wholly unnoticed; the waqf has even been connected with the idea of the public sphere in the Ottoman Empire by Miriam Hoexter.168 However, Hoexter emphasizes the influence of Muslim scholars over public administration as a result of the religious associations of endowments, taking as an example the massive Awqāf al-Ḥaramayn, vast imperial endowments with properties in many provinces, whose revenues were set aside for Mecca and Medina. However, whatever their ideological associations may have been, these very large endowments remained under central control to an even greater extent than other aspects of provincial governance. In the eighteenth century, for example, the

Awqāf al-Ḥaramayn remained directly tied to the Ottoman palace since they were supervised by the Ottoman Chief Harem Eunuch.169 Insofar as scholars could influence administration in these situations, they did so at the pleasure of the imperial authorities.

Instead, I would argue that the pervasiveness and growth of countless smaller endowments diffused throughout Ottoman society had a much greater effect than that of

167 The earliest case is possibly that of Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār in 1246/1830: Maḥkamat Miṣr al-Sharʿiyya, daftar no. 34 (new code: 1017-003533, Years 1244-1249), no. 306 (8 Dhū al-Qaʿda 1246), DWQ. 168 Miriam Hoexter, “The Waqf and the Public Sphere,” in The Public Sphere in Muslim Societies, eds. Miriam Hoexter, Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, and Nehemia Levtzion (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), 119-138. 169 Hathaway, The Politics of Households in Ottoman Egypt, 140. 70 centrally controlled waqfs. Because waqfs did indeed have religious associations, they disproportionately fell into the hands of educated scholars, who in turn gained an independent source of income. Since scholars were able to manage their own financial affairs (due largely to waqf income) and their own educational institutions (e.g., by having a major say in choosing the Shaykh al-Azhar), it stands to reason that this institutional autonomy would impact Ottoman Egypt’s intellectual history and even its politics. It is likely due to these developments that by the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Egyptian ʿulamāʾ had gained unprecedented independence and were even in a position to voice harsh criticisms of the Ottoman Egyptian political order. Most large endowments were controlled by political patronage, but countless, much smaller endowed properties were not.

It is true that the most famous waqfs in Ottoman Egypt were endowed by major political figures, but these were by no means representative of waqf properties as a whole.

In the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, tax farms known as iltizāms were increasingly held by wealthy Egyptian commoners, so it should come as no surprise that the growth of endowments – which are in principle a wholly private form of property holding – was also based on the increasing wealth of less elite groups. The rise of affluent

Egyptian merchants and land-holders has been documented by Nelly Hanna170 and

Kenneth Cuno,171 and this socio-economic trend must surely have had an impact on

Egyptian intellectual history, because the endowed wealth of these classes went a long

170 Nelly Hanna, Artisan Entrepreneurs in Cairo and Early-Modern Capitalism (1600-1800) (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2011), 80-103. 171 Kenneth Cuno, The Pasha's Peasants: Land, Society, and Economy in Lower Egypt, 1740-1858 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 48-63. 71 way in stimulating and financing the intellectual enterprises of Egypt’s Muslim scholars.

Unfortunately, even the basic trends of Ottoman and Ottoman Egyptian intellectual history remain understudied, let alone intellectual history’s complex links to economic change.

Interestingly, Nelly Hanna has attempted to link these socio-economic changes to

Egyptian intellectual history,172 but her approach has exclusively focused on (ostensibly) new forms of literature rather than “traditional” genres such as poetry and history- writing, which continued to be dominant over emergent genres like autobiography.

Likewise, Dana Sajdi has emphasized the role of “noveau literacy” and authorship in reshaping eighteenth-century Syrian intellectual life and political consciousness,173 clearly implying that works authored by self-identified ʿulamāʾ were hopelessly staid and rigid. As the following chapters will demonstrate, it is not tenable to view Muslim scholars as rigidly traditional and incapable of generating change, especially in light of their political activism in the early nineteenth century.

Likewise, just as the ability of Ottoman Egyptian scholars to act independently is thrown into particularly sharp relief in early nineteenth-century politics, so too did

Egypt’s Muslim scholars and other intellectuals increase their political engagement and intellectual autonomy over the course of the Ottoman period. From the medieval period into the early Ottoman era, most politically engaged Arabic (and Ottoman Turkish) writing had generally emanated from state-backed elites, either directly or in the form of

172 Nelly Hanna, In Praise of Books: A Cultural History of Cairo's Middle Class, Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2003). 173 Dana Sajdi, The Barber of Damascus: Nouveau Literacy in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Levant (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2013). 72 writers who sought patronage from imperial courts, provincial governors, and the like.

Many of the first Muslim historians specializing in contemporary events (i.e.,

Zeitgeschichte, to borrow a term from German) were bureaucrats (for example, the

Buyid-era official Miskawayh, d. 421/1030), a practice that was institutionalized by the

Ottomans with the creation of the imperial historian (vakanüvis) at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Despite the survival of a few private diaries,174 pre-modern historians of the Middle East were usually either figures attached to the imperial court (e.g.,

Silahdar Fındıklılı Mehmed Ağa, d. 1139/1726-7),175 prominent scholar-officials (e.g., the chief qāḍī of Damascus Ibn Khallikān, d. 681/1282),176 or aristocratic scions of various military and religious elites (e.g, the Ottoman Egyptian historian Ibn Abī al-Surūr al-Bakrī al-Siddīqī, d. 1087/1676).177 The Mamlūk-era historian al-Maqrīzī (d. 845/1442) paints a portrait of his society that is just as vivid – and even as critical of power – as that of al-Jabartī, but al-Maqrīzī had served in major legal-judicial and bureaucratic roles before emerging as a historian and social commentator.178 This is generally in line with

Jürgen Habermas’s observation that the pre-modern public sphere was dominated by royal and aristocratic courts and was generally overdetermined by considerations of public intellectuals’ social and legal status.179

174 George Makdisi, “Autograph Diary of an Eleventh-Century Historian of Baghdād,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 18, no. 1 (1956): 9-31. 175 Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. “Silāḥdār, Findiḳlili Meḥmed Agha,” by Christine Woodhead. 176 Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. “Ibn Khallikān,” by J.W. Fück. 177 Cevat İzgi, “Bekrî, İbn Ebû Surûr,” DİA; Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. “Al-Bakrī, Ibn Abī’l- Surūr,” by Stanford Shaw. 178 Al-Maqrīzī had served in the Mamlūk dīwān at the Cairo Citadel and as muḥtasib (market and trade overseer) of Cairo. He was offered the chief judgeship of Damascus, but declined: Eymen Fuâd es-Seyyid, “Makrîzî,” DİA. 179 Habermas, Transformation of the Public Sphere, 5-14. 73

However, in eighteenth-century Egypt, as in other contemporaneous regions of the Ottoman Empire,180 this was very often not the case. This was a time in which soldiers of non-elite origin181 and lower-ranking scholars182 began to shape the period’s political and historical consciousness more and more. In the early Mehmed Ali era, two historical chronicles, those of al-Jabartī and Muṣṭafā al-Qalʿāwī (d. 1230/1815),183 were written by Muslim scholars who were neither salaried scholar-officials nor clients of the military and administrative elites. Despite al-Jabartī’s illustrious father, neither of these men can be found among the salaried shaykhs of the ruznamçe records at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and it seems clear that they drew their incomes from privately endowed income sources.184 In Istanbul during the same era, the role played by endowments in providing employment for quasi-independent scholars is likewise indicated by the chronicle of Cabi Ömer Efendi (d. after 1229/1814), a minor waqf functionary who provides rich details on the Istanbul of his time.185 Such independent and politically engaged works are less common in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, but this was not a function of the “backwardness” of Ottoman culture, but rather

180 See for example this biographical sketch of the eighteenth-century barber and contemporary history- writer Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad, known as Ibn Budayr: Sajdi, The Barber of Damascus, 37-76. 181 For an example, see Aḥmad Damurdāshī (d. 1755), Al-Damurdashi's Chronicle of Egypt, 1688-1755: Al- Durra al-musana fi akhbar al-Kinana, ed. and trans. by Daniel Crecelius and ʻAbd al-Wahhab Bakr (Leiden: Brill, 1991). Among other examples, Sajdi cites an obscure Damascene Janissary, Ibn al-Siddīq (fl. 1771), as the author of a chronicle: Sajdi, The Barber of Damascus, 103-106. 182 Two important eighteenth-century chronicles were written by obscure Azharīs, Yūsuf al-Mallawānī (d. 1719) and Aḥmad Çelebi (d. 1737) respectively. 183 A short biography of Muṣṭafā al-Qalʿāwī can be found in al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, IV, 237. 184 Daniel Crecelius has called al-Jabartī “independently wealthy,” which seems a fair characterization: Daniel Crecelius, “Reviewed Work: In Search of the True Political Position of the ‘Ulama by Lars Bjørneboe,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 40, no. 4 (2008): 682-684. 185 See Cabi Ömer Efendi, Cabi Tarihi: Tarih-i Sultan Selim-i Salis ve Mahmud-i Sani: Tahlil ve Tenkidli Metin, 2 vols., ed. Mehmet Ali Beyhan (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 2003). 74 of the repressive and authoritarian atmosphere that held sway in Mehmed Ali Pasha’s

Egypt and under Sultan Mahmud II’s sultanate.

One way of reconceptualizing the role of Muslim scholars and other intellectuals around the turn of the nineteenth century is to consider the socio-economic changes occurring in later Ottoman Egypt in the much broader political context of Ottoman decentralization. In a widely cited article, Ariel Salzmann has argued that the Ottoman

“old regime” of the eighteenth century, which devolved considerable fiscal and political authority to provincial authorities, was not a result of Ottoman decline, but rather a sign of Ottoman adaptiveness in the face of the peculiarly modern circumstances of the time.186 Extending this argument further, Salzmann’s monograph Tocqueville in the

Ottoman Empire speculates that the decentralized vision of Ottoman governance exemplified by the Charter of Federation (Sened-i Ittifak, 1808), though ultimately ignored by Sultan Mahmud II, may have been an alternative “path to the modern state,” a

“rival path” that could perhaps have mitigated the “new despotism” of the Ottoman governments from Selim III onward.187

Although the viability of decentralized governance in the nineteenth-century is obviously questionable, one could nonetheless draw a parallel between this political order, which allowed power to flow downward, and the intellectual atmosphere of

Ottoman Egypt at the end of the eighteenth century. Old social hierarchies had thoroughly broken down, thanks largely to the political trends documented by Salzmann

186 Ariel Salzmann, “An Ancient Regime Revisited: Privatization and Political Economy in the Eighteenth- Century Ottoman Empire,” Politics and Society 23 (1993): 393-423. 187 Ariel Salzmann, Tocqueville in the Ottoman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 179-191. 75 and others, although also to much deeper economic trends. Significantly, by the second half of the eighteenth century, Egyptian court registers do not distinguish between the ruling (askeri) class and the subject class (reaya).188 These momentous social changes must surely be connected to the diffusion of politically engaged intellectual activity away from appointed scholar-officials (and other elites) toward lesser figures with neither official status nor access to powerful patrons. Crucially, Muslim scholars were not backward-looking opponents of these changes, which were reflective of “modern” conditions, but instead could often personify them. A small elite of salaried scholar- officials did remain an official clerisy, but just below this class stood a much more independent, and increasingly influential, stratum of educated Muslim scholars, ready to engage in public debate.

Granted, patronage relationships between powerful military figures and a kaleidoscope of merchants, ʿulamāʾ, and others also proliferated in eighteenth-century

Egypt. On balance, though, it is still fair to say that Ottoman Egyptian intellectuals at the beginning of the nineteenth century had greater autonomy than in the past. Like the

“federalist alternative” represented by the Sened-i Ittifak, these characteristically eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century intellectual trends were cut short by the emergence of the nineteenth-century state, which fostered a repressive atmosphere in both Cairo and Istanbul. Of course, though few modern scholars have recognized it,

188 See, for example, the probate records of the Qisma al-ʿAskariyya (DWQ), which at the end of the seventeenth century still required at least a formal affiliation with a military regiment. This is in line with broader Ottoman trends: Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. “ʿAskarī,” by Bernard Lewis; André Raymond, “Soldiers in Trade: The Case of Ottoman Cairo,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 18, no. 1 (1991): 16-37. 76

Mehmed Ali Pasha did patronize politically-oriented intellectual activity, but he did so on his own terms. During the first two decades of his rule, at least three politically and/or historically significant manuscripts were authored by Muslim scholars in the service of the pasha, including two chronicles and one political treatise.189 However, Mehmed Ali’s assertion of control over Egypt’s waqf system ultimately proved to be an important and controversial part of his early years as governor. Although he never sought to abolish waqfs as a legal category, as is sometimes implied,190 Mehmed Ali’s assault on Ottoman

Egypt’s waqf system thoroughly undermined the autonomy of Egypt’s intelligentsia.

189 See chapter 5. 190 The French were much more radical in their handling of endowments during the colonization of Algeria than Mehmed Ali was in Egypt. On the French seizure of waqf properties in Algeria, see John Ruedy, Modern Algeria: The Origins and Development of a Nation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 50-51. 77

Chapter 2:

Religious Authority and Reform in Egypt, 1801-1805

With the withdrawal of the French army from Egypt in 1216/1801, a power vacuum emerged that a number of different actors attempted to fill, most notably the elite factions of Istanbul itself, which sent a series of pashas to act as provincial governor between 1216/1801 and 1220/1805, all of them unsuccessful. Because the imperial center took a direct hand in Egyptian provincial affairs during these four years, the era has often been seen as the final period of Ottoman rule in Egypt.191 While this characterization misleadingly implies that the accession of Mehmed Ali Pasha as wālī (governor) of Egypt in 1220/1805 ended the Ottoman period in Egyptian history, the unstable time between the French invasion and Mehmed Ali Pasha’s consolidation of power was indeed profoundly shaped by the dynamics of Ottoman politics emanating from political struggles in Istanbul. Of course, the greatest controversy of the time was that of the military and political reforms accompanying the nizam-ı cedid of Selim III.

191 Marsot even concludes her chapter on Mehmed Ali’s seizure of power by implying that the inevitable “Egyptianization of government” in Egypt was already beginning: Marsot, Egypt in the Reign of Muhammad Ali, 59. In fact, the reverse was closer to the truth, because Egypt saw significant growth and in-migration of Turcophone officials (see below). 78

A. Al-Jabartī, the ʿUlamāʾ, and a Provincial Nizam-ı Cedid

Even more than the momentous events of Mehmed Ali’s regime and Sultan

Mahmud II’s abolition of the Janissaries in 1826, the brief French occupation of Egypt

(1213-1216/1798-1801) has been regarded as the signal event inaugurating the modern age in the “Middle East.” However, there is no evidence to support this interpretation, except in the sense that European perceptions and future ambitions in the region were profoundly shaped by Napoleon Bonaparte’s ill-conceived adventure in Egypt and neighboring lands. Juan Cole has summarized the more recent scholarly perspective on the Napoleonic invasion by commenting that the Army of the Orient’s “innovations” did not really outlast the invasion in any meaningful sense.192 This is not to argue that the

French interlude had no impact whatsoever, especially in light of the remarkable curiosity displayed by al-Jabartī in his three (!) chronicles commemorating the unforgettable political drama of the time. However, the real progenitor of nineteenth-century modernity in Egypt as it (eventually) took shape, namely Mehmed Ali, was not present for these events. Like many in the Ottoman Empire, Mehmed Ali took a strong interest in

Napoleon and his military exploits, but not as a figure in Egyptian politics specifically.193

Instead, the French were most significant as a stimulus for a revived Ottoman military presence in the country. A young military commander known as Kavalalı

Mehmed Ali Serçeşme accompanied the Ottoman invading force that, with heavy British naval support, forced the French to evacuate; although this army was largely Albanian,

192 Juan Cole, Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 245. 193 A history of Napoleon’s career (Tarih-i Napolyon Bonaparta) was published under Mehmed Ali, but it was a translation from Italian: İhsanoğlu, The Turks in Egypt and Their Cultural Legacy, 157. 79

Mehmed Ali himself was not.194 However, even prior to Mehmed Ali’s rise to power, the new regime led by Mehmed Husrev Pasha was determined to re-order the province, and his forces were capable of challenging the localized households, headed by sancak beyis of largely Georgian origin, that during the late eighteenth century dominated Ottoman

Egypt politically and militarily. Only one year after assuming power in Cairo and already locked in a major struggle with such grandees as Mehmed Bey al-Alfī (d. 1221/1807, a mamlūk of Murad Bey), his efforts did not satisfy Sultan Selim III, who wrote to him impatiently: “We have sent you numerous soldiers and ordered you to fight the traitors….

We do not know why there is a delay in carrying out the orders. If it is for lack of soldiers or funds, then we will provide troops and financial support.”195 This was clearly another wave of centralizing control directed against the provincial grandees, who had for years resisted Istanbul’s attempts to assert its dominance. In 1200/1786, the forces of Gazi

Hasan Pasha had tried and failed to tame them.196 This time, however, Selim III’s efforts were more ambitious than those of previous decades.

Husrev Pasha, who ultimately became a lifelong rival of Mehmed Ali, had long been a supporter of military reform. His patron, the vizier Küçük Hüseyin Pasha, was instrumental in bringing about the nizam-ı cedid early in Selim III’s reign and later undertook a thorough restructuring of the navy as Kapudan Pasha (Grand Admiral).197

Serving as Küçük Hüseyin’s kethüda (deputy), Husrev participated in the liberation of

Egypt from French occupation and emerged as wālī of Egypt in 1216/1801. After

194 Lowry, Remembering One’s Roots, 1-3. 195 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, III, 231. 196 Mahir Aydın, “Cezayirli Gazi Hasan Paşa,” DİA. 197 Nejat Göyünç, “Küçük Hüseyin Paşa,” DİA. 80 enforcing stricter regulation of Egypt’s military regiments, his promise to confirm waqf and iltizām holdings after the chaos of the French occupation turned into a reluctance to confirm even those who had genuinely held such rights before 1798.198 Such a policy would be sure to alienate many elite and non-elite ʿulamāʾ. These acts resemble time- tested Ottoman strategies of reform and centralization aimed at the revival of traditional virtues and the assertion of state power.

Husrev Pasha’s relationship with the scholarly elite was mostly distant. In the first part of his governorship, he did enjoy popularity all around for his success in establishing peace: “At the beginning of his rule, the thirsty thought he was water itself,” as al-Jabartī puts it.199 However, many elite shaykhs had not relinquished their ties to the beylical elite. The elite ʿulamāʾ attended the wedding of İbrahim Bey’s daughter,200 despite the fact that Ibrāhīm had become persona non grata since the arrival of the Ottoman army.

Husrev also distrusted Shaykh Abū al-Suʿūd al-Bakrī (d. 1227/1813), the head of the aforementioned influential Khalwatī Sufi order, and had him removed from his position as the Shaykh al-Sajjāda (head shaykh) of his family and order.201 Lastly, even his attempts to placate the ʿulamāʾ were viewed as awkward and ineffective. On two occasions, he made donations to the mujāwwirīn of al-Azhar, but his donations were marred by politicized favoritism, according to al-Jabartī.202 The pasha did hold multiple political meetings at the home of Abū al-Anwar al-Sādāt (d. 1228/1813), the shaykh of

198 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, III, 198. 199 Ibid., 210. 200 Ibid., 197-198. 201 Ibid., 210. 202 Ibid., 231. This contention is supported by al-Azhar’s financial records; see below. 81 the other great Sufi order in Egypt, the Wafā’īs. Al-Sādāt seems to have established other connections among the Ottoman elites in Egypt as well, because the aging shaykh was impelled to intervene on behalf of certain Turcophone officials, his allies, who were threatened after the downfall of Husrev Pasha.203

Still, despite the cooptation of a few shaykhs such as al-Sādāt, Husrev Pasha had few scholarly allies, and this was dangerous in a political culture where the ritualized conferral of religious legitimacy was a central political tool. Particularly telling is

Husrev’s exploitation of the shrine of Sīdī Aḥmad al-Badawī in Tanta, later a locus of dissent in the Mehmed Ali era. It was the most revered shrine in all of Egypt, particularly among the masses of Cairo and Lower Egypt, and so the pasha did himself no favors by ruthlessly exploiting the shrine’s resources. The intendants of the shrine complained that their homes had been destroyed by the pasha’s agents and that over 300,000 riyāls had been confiscated from them.204 While his motives behind this confiscation is not fully clear, it is consistent with the later attitudes of Mehmed Ali’s government.

Similarly, the archival records of the ruznamçe indicate that Husrev Pasha deprived Egypt’s religious establishment of much of its traditional wealth. The first complete Azharī budget (titled Murattabāt jawālī ʿala ʿulamāʾ Jāmiʾ al-Azhar wa-l- arwiqa) dates from Husrev’s tenure (1217/1802-1803), and the intent of the document appears to have been to create a thorough accounting of al-Azhar’s income in order to transfer as many resources as possible to the riwāq of students from the core Ottoman

203 Ibid., 246. 204 Ibid. 259, 318. 82 lands (Riwāq al-Arwām). The first several pages of the document consist of a long list of salary-holders within that riwāq, including its shaykh, a Seyyid Hüseyin Efendi, and the shaykh of its funduq (hostel), a certain Hasan Efendi al-Manṣūrī. Its total income was listed at 148,416 kuruş.205 (Opting to pay scholarly salaries in currency rather than grain was another departure from custom.) In contrast, the North African riwāq, which re- emerged only two years later as the wealthiest riwāq with nearly 1500 ardabbs of grain, received only 4575 kuruş.206 Even the Kurdish riwāq, not particularly well known at al-

Azhar, received more: 10,222 kuruş. This could only have been a calculated strategy to establish a clientage relationship with more pliant ʿulamāʾ, as opposed to the independent-minded scholarly elite.

However, the most important aspect of Husrev’s attempt to secure his own power base was the creation of a provincial nizam-ı cedid in Egypt. According to al-Jabartī, seeking to reduce his dependence on his Albanian irregular troops, Husrev Pasha first pressed a group of African pilgrims into his service as a small detachment to accompany him on trips outside of Cairo. They were given tight-fitting blue and red uniforms in the

French style and were even trained by a few Frenchmen in Cairo. Eventually, the pasha began to confiscate slaves, both African and otherwise, to serve in nizam-ı cedid units.207

Husrev became confident that this motley collection of soldiers would allow him to dispense with the Albanians and other unreliable elements.

205 Dīwān al-Rūznāmja, daftar no. 5962 (new code: 3001-024240, Year 1217), p. 1, DWQ. 206 Ibid., 4. 207 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, III, 222. 83

It is in this year, 1217/1802, and not earlier, that al-Jabartī mentions the nizam-ı cedid (Arabic al-niẓām al-jadīd) for the first time in his chronicle ʿAjāʾib al-athār. The army of Selim III and other controversial innovations had been in existence for about ten years by that date, so this demonstrates not only that al-Jabartī’s writing is deeply Cairo- centric, but also that such empire-wide developments did reach the provinces, albeit not in the same way that they emerged in Istanbul. There is something faintly ridiculous about his description of these troops, kidnapped from their masters and dressed in a garb which, he says, at once resembles that of Egyptian mamlūk soldiers and that of Greek marines. Moreover, since he mentions that the pasha enlisted “any Frenchmen he could find” as drill sergeants, al-Jabartī seems to impugn the professionalism within these divisions of unsystematically recruited troops. Skepticism toward the nizam-ı cedid was widespread (not only in Egypt), and so al-Jabartī’s testimony is of great value as one of the clearest expressions of dissent from the period. For our purposes, his view of military reform is significant as a reflection of political attitudes and ideology among Muslim scholars.

Still, al-Jabartī’s descriptions of reform in a specifically military sense are relatively mild, here as elsewhere. What is more outrageous to him is what he regards, from a number of perspectives, as Husrev’s oppressive and unethical policies. The wālī confiscated a large number of homes in Cairo, including that of Shaykh al-Bakrī, where he lodged his harem.208 He had great ambitions for his new military force, so one of his main projects was the building of a grand new barracks (Turkish kışla) on the ruins of

208 Ibid., 226, 242. 84 certain buildings close to his palace. The pasha himself took part in the building and brought a strange mix of people in to help. These included Bedouins, Albanian troops,

French consultants, and non-Muslims of many backgrounds, all accompanied by the boisterous sounds of “Turkish” bands, Syrian drummers, and other musicians.209 Al-

Jabartī’s emphasis on the presence of such disreputable elements as dancing girls and on the concentration of Greek and Coptic Christians, Jews, and Frenchmen clearly implies that Husrev’s government was tainted by unsavory moral and religious associations.

Thus, he writes, people were subject to the “malice of the Christian enemies” under

Husrev’s government. His criticisms echo to some degree those made by opponents of the nizam-ı cedid in Istanbul, such as Tayyar Pasha (d. 122/1808), who claimed that the new troops had become “mustachioed Franks” and criticized the harem women’s alleged embrace of western fashions.210

Husrev Pasha did indeed have good relations with the French. Niqūlā al-Turk, in the service of the Lebanese Maronite prince Bashīr II al-Shihāb, wrote in his chronicle that Husrev was enraged by anti-French riots in Cairo.211 Even more revealingly, one of

Husrev’s letters to the French foreign minister Talleyrand, in which he praises

Bonaparte’s political and military skills, has survived in French translation. The letter also promises full protection for French commercial interests.212 At the same time,

209 Ibid., 225-226. 210 Uzunçarşılı, Osmanlı Tarihi, V, 83. 211 Niqūlā ibn Yūsuf al-Turk, Chronique d'Égypte, 1798-1804 (Cairo: Imprimérie de l'Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale, 1950), 153. Niqūlā al-Turk was an Istanbul-born Melkite Catholic, not a “Turk” in the modern sense. 212 Georges Douin, L'Égypte de 1802 à 1804: Correspondance des consuls de France en Égypte (Cairo: Published for the Royal Geographic Society of Egypt by the Imprimérie de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale du Caire, 1925), 26-27. 85

Husrev – and the Ottoman central authority – were furious at the British for backing the

Egyptian grandees. To the French, the beys had simply been bought by the British.

Al-Jabartī’s antipathy toward Husrev Pasha’s closeness with certain ethnoreligious others, including the French, is significant, but such criticism is actually weaker than the overt moral opprobium placed on the most burdensome aspects of

Husrev’s policies. (No such criticism is lodged against al-Jabartī’s most revered beylical hero, al-Alfī, who was very close to the British.) Under Husrev, he writes, the people were subject to “ten plagues,” and most of these were not moral or cultural in nature. In addition to the “malice of Christian enemies,” he claims, people faced forced labor, increased taxation, and reduced wages. Extraordinary taxes were levied in the countryside specifically to finance the pasha’s building projects, and the exactions were systematic rather than sporadic in nature, as the abuses of many of the beys had been. Al-

Jabartī notes that even as Egyptians suffered from rapacious tax-collection, high-quality silver was being sent regularly from the mint in Cairo to Anatolia.213 This was likely the result of policies spurred by centralization, at least in part.

Al-Jabartī’s friend and fellow Azharī Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār (d. 1250/1835) also expressed hostility toward the policies followed by the Ottoman military occupiers of

Egypt. Indeed, he did so in much blunter terms than al-Jabartī. In a marginal comment to al-Jabartī’s manuscript, he writes that “this group (ṭāʾifa) … crossed the boundaries [of

God], innovated new oppressions, persecuted Muslims, and brought about all manner of

213 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, III, 237. 86 debauchery and iniquity. May God destroy them.”214 By referring to boundaries (ḥudūd), al-ʿAṭṭār employs a word with unmistakeably religious associations; most commonly, the term ḥudūd refers to specific violations of Islamic criminal law,215 but a broader sense of noncompliance with God’s law may also be meant. Although he is far less precise in defining how exactly boundaries were crossed, the rhetoric of al-ʿAṭṭār’s outburst parallels the Islamic overtones in al-Jabartī’s criticisms of Husrev Pasha as well as his anger at the poor discipline of the occupying soldiers.

By narrating such troubles, al-Jabartī (and his religio-political commentary) is both a crucial voice of the public sphere and a sensitive observer of public opinion. In fact, Egypt was not the only province subject to these new levies: people in Syria were also in distress, al-Jabartī writes, and as a result they are said to have appealed to Cezzar

Ahmed Pasha, the governor of Sidon (d. 1218/1804), for help. One of the signature policies of Selim III was the creation of a new treasury, separate from existing treasuries, which was called the İrad-ı Cedid Hazinesi (“New Revenue Treasury”), established to provide an independent funding source for the new-style army, and so the nizam-ı cedid period led to a genuine increase in state tax-collection efforts throughout the empire. This new bureaucracy, headed by its own defterdar (financial official), was founded simultaneously with the nizam-ı cedid itself and placed levies on a range of goods, from the alcoholic beverage rakı to livestock.216 Not surprisingly, these levies generated a great

214 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, ed. Moreh, III, 105. 215 Hallaq, Sharīʿa: Theory, Practice, Transformations, 311-320. 216 Ziya Enver Karal, Selim III’ün Hatt-ı Hümayunları: Nizam-ı Cedid, 1789-1807, 2 vols. (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1942-1946), II, 87. 87 deal of discontent among Ottoman subjects, and Egypt and Syria were not exempt from these developments, either, as al-Jabartī indicates.

In preferring to criticize arbitrary policies and autocratic government over military reform, al-Jabartī resembles certain Istabulite critics of Selim III, many of whom were not self-interested Janissaries, but rather intellectuals who rejected Selim’s policies on the grounds of political ideology. For example, a now-obscure text with the memorable title of Nizam-ı Atik (The Old Order),217 composed in 1804 by the bureaucrat Ömer Faik

Efendi,218 advances a critique of nizam-ı cedid policies that parallels al-Jabartī’s criticisms of Husrev in many respects. Rather than dismissing military reform altogether, he prefers a gradual imposition of new military techniques and bemoans the imposition of unnecessary taxes on the peasantry in order to fund the new policies.219 More broadly,

Ömer Faik insists on the Islamic identity of the empire, and he calls for more generous funding for ʿulamāʾ, descendents of the Prophet, and other pious figures, and especially for strict compliance with sharīʿa.220 It was this last point in particular, the difficulty of reconciling the new policies with sacred law, that resonated among critics of the nizam-ı cedid from Cairo to Istanbul.

In al-Jabartī’s account of Husrev Pasha’s tenure, the elite ʿulamāʾ are secondary, although the same is true of the Egyptian (Mısırlı) beys, except for distant battles fought

217 Ömer Faik Efendi, Nizam-ı Atik (Istanbul University Library, MS İbn ül-Emin 2839), cited in Osman Özkul, Gelenek ve Modernite Arasında Osmanlı Ulemâsı (Istanbul: Birharf Yayınları, 2005), 377 n. 9. I have not yet been able to access this manuscript directly, but its contents are summarized in pp. 376-381 of Özkul’s work. 218 Ömer Faik Efendi is included in Sicill-i Osmani, III, 559. 219 Özkul, Gelenek ve Modernite Arasında Osmanlı Ulemâsı, 379-380. 220 Ibid., 377-378. 88 by some of these men against the pasha’s troops. İbrahim Bey himself had been placed under arrest by Husrev. One significant development of this period was the appointment of ʿUmar Makram (d. 1238/1823) as naqīb al-ashrāf of Egypt. A certain Rūmī by the name of Yusuf, originally a dervish from the (heavily Turcophone) Khān al-Khalīlī area of Cairo, had managed to gain appointment as naqīb al-ashrāf by traveling to Istanbul and claiming to be an Azharī shaykh, although he was neither that nor, in all likelihood, a member of the Prophet’s family at all.221 As a result of public meetings in which the ashrāf denounced him, Yusuf Efendi was deposed, and ʿUmar Makram was appointed by the sultan to the post of naqīb al-ashrāf as well as the associated position of shaykh of the

Ḥabbāniyya madrasa. Having come to high office through the power of public opinion,

ʿUmar Makram would remain associated with the power of popular activism for the rest of his life.

Despite his apparent strength, Husrev’s miscalculations undid his hard work, as was the case for Selim III. One nineteenth-century Ottoman evaluation of his tenure as wālī is far more positive than that of al-Jabartī, praising him as brave, but he is also criticized for stubbornness and for attempting too much at once.222 Husrev’s reliance on the newly-trained troops was premature, and he soon faced a rebellion as a result of his failure to pay the salaries of his original, predominantly Albanian invasion force. The leader who emerged among these troops was Tahir Pasha, an Albanian who spoke little

221 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, III, 204-205, 211. 222 Tayyarzade Ata, Tarih-i Ata, 5 vols. (Istanbul: Yahya Efendi Matbaası, 1291-1293 [1874-1876]), II, 123. 89

Turkish and no Arabic.223 Tahir’s troops defeated Husrev, who fled Cairo and apparently continued to levy poll taxes until finally captured.224

Tahir gained recognition as qāʾim-maqām (Turkish kaymakam, stand-in for a deposed governor) and later received a ferman recognizing him as wālī of Egypt.

According to French consular reports, Tahir Pasha had secured the patronage of grand vizier Yusuf Pasha, a rival to Grand Admiral Küçük Hüseyin Pasha, the patron of

Husrev. This political shift also resulted in massacres of certain Frenchmen and their allies, presumably because of their association with Husrev and his military and political projects.225 For most of the ʿulamāʾ, the change was welcome. İbrahim Bey, an ally of

Tahir and now free from house arrest, contacted the elite shaykhs and requested their cooperation; in fact, İbrahim conferred with ʿUmar Makram prior to entering Cairo.226

The defeat of Husrev restored the leading role of the ʿulamāʾ, although the Shaykh al-

Sādāt now found many of his former allies persecuted or out of favor.

Thus, despite their lack of military power, the ability of the Muslim scholars to shape Ottoman Egyptian political discourse could be decisive in provincial high politics, particularly in the years after the French invasion. Given their lack of legitimacy, the

French force had leaned heavily on the ʿulamāʾ to both administer Egypt and provide the public face of their regime. The majority of the members of the French-led dīwān in

223 Mehmed Süreyya, Sicill-i Osmani, III, 244. 224 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, III, 245. 225 Douin, L'Égypte de 1802 à 1804, 55. 226 There is also evidence that the Egyptian grandees formulated their political statements in the same language as the ʿulamāʾ. For example, when the beys wrote to the sultan regarding their opposition to Husrev, it was largely in the same terms as many ʿulamāʾ. For example, they write that when Husrev fled to Damietta, he imposed “illicit taxes” (mukūs), the same pejorative term used by Ibn al-ʿArūsī, with deep roots in Islamic discourse: al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, III, 258-259. 90

Cairo from 1798 to 1801 were Azharī scholars, and their conduct during this period has been the subject of much discussion up to the present day.227 It is likely that some scholars who wrote chronicles of the French invasion were partly motivated by a desire to justify (or conceal) their collaboration with the “infidel” occupation; arguably, scholars such as Ismāʿīl al-Khashshāb (d. 1230/1815), al-Sharqāwī, and even al-Jabartī himself may fall into this category.228

As a result of that very recent history, historians have plausibly argued that the prestige and political power of the ʿulamāʾ in Egypt was higher than ever after the French withdrawal. This is quite marked in the reports of French consuls, who typically met with the leading shaykhs of any city they visited. In fact, the French had at least one Muslim scholar on their payroll even after the withdrawal of the French army, although they admitted that this Alexandrian scholar had little influence.229 Ironically then, far from bringing about a secular Enlightenment in Egypt, the French had temporarily strengthened religious elements in the province. This was, incidentally, also the case at the imperial center, where the need for imperial unity against French aggression strengthened Ottoman religious and conservative elements generally.230 The political

227 For a full study of the subject, see Lars Bjørneboe’s In Search of the True Political Position of the Ulama. A briefer overview can be found in Cole, Napoleon’s Egypt, 74-75. 228 Certainly, most of al-Jabartī’s work is very forthright; only his Maẓhar al-taqdīs, written after the departure of the French, is considered questionable. See more below on this work: ʻAbd al-Raḥmān al- Jabartī, Maẓhar al-taqdīs bi-zawāl dawlat al-Faransīs, ed. Muḥammad ibn Ḥasan ibn ʻAqīl Mūsā al-Sharīf (Jeddah: Dār al-Andalus al-Khaḍrāʼ, 1999). The chronicles of al-Khashshāb and al-Sharqāwī have also been published: Ismāʻīl al-Khashshāb, Al-Tārīkh al-musalsal fī ḥawādith al-zamān wa-waqāyiʻ al-dīwān, 1800-1801, eds. Muḥammad ʻAfīfī and André Raymond (Cairo: Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 2003); ʿAbd Allāh al-Sharqāwī, Tuḥfat al-nāẓirīn fī-man waliya Miṣr min al-mulūk wa-l-salāṭīn, ed. Riḥāb ʻAbd al-Ḥamīd al-Qārī (Cairo: Maktabat Madbūlī, 1996). 229 Douin, L'Égypte de 1802 à 1804, 13. 230 Stanford Shaw mentions this for both Cairo and Istanbul, albeit separately: Stanford J. Shaw, Between Old and New: The Ottoman Empire under Sultan Selim III, 1789-1807 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard 91 conflict in which the ʿulamāʾ of Cairo and Istanbul were engaged was thoroughly characteristic of the early nineteenth-century Ottoman world, namely a struggle between

“conservatives” and “reformists” over the desirability of state centralization and military reform.

B. The Failure of Further Ottoman Centralization Efforts in Egypt

In the first decade of the nineteenth century, Selim III’s centralization efforts were clearly faltering, besieged on all sides: a Serbian uprising, a new Wahhābī state in Arabia, and revolts by aʿyān (local notables) throughout the empire. In Egypt, the situation was not much different. The governorship of the Albanian Tahir Pasha was absurdly brief, and so the power vacuum that resulted from Husrev Pasha’s fall again allowed room for the beys of Egypt and the ʿulamāʾ to renew their longstanding connections. The leading beys, including İbrahim Bey and al-Bardīsī, took up residence in the citadel of Cairo, and the Turcophone Janissaries who had been sent from Istanbul were expelled. Interestingly, the anti-Ottoman Wahhābīs of Arabia were even allowed to correspond with the ʿulamāʾ of al-Azhar, sending a long letter to a Maghribī shaykh, which resulted in a divided response from the Azharī shaykhs.231

The Ottoman center had no intention of allowing this state of affairs to continue, especially because the competing factions of Istanbul persisted in trying to extend their influence over the province. Although Cairo was vulnerable to revolts on the part of the

University Press, 1971). 231 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, III, 255-257. 92

Egyptian beys and the various military forces stationed there, Alexandria remained an

Ottoman stronghold. There, an Egypt-based Kapudan Pasha (admiral), typically a client of Grand Admiral Küçük Hüseyin Pasha, commanded a small fleet. After the collapse of

Husrev Pasha’s regime in Cairo, Seydi Ali Pasha was appointed wālī of Egypt, and he was forced to remain in Alexandria for an extended period. Seydi Ali had originally been a client of Küçük Hüseyin, who awarded him the governorship of Tripoli, Libya, for which reason he was known as Trabulsi. 232 This stint as governor, however, did not go well, and al-Jabartī remarks that Seydi Ali feared the confiscation of his assets or even execution for his failures.

Ultimately, Seydi Ali joined a competing faction, namely that of Grand Vizier

Yusuf Ziya Pasha. Yusuf Pasha was not only a rival of Küçük Hüseyin, but also the liberator of Egypt from French rule and the leader of the conservative faction that had been strengthened by the Napoleonic invasion. The heads of these two vast patronage networks differed in both their levels of zeal for reform (though Yusuf Pasha did not actually oppose the nizam-ı cedid) and in their foreign policy orientations; Stanford Shaw writes that Yusuf Pasha generally looked to the British for support, Küçük Hüseyin to the

French.233 So pervasive were these factional and patronage politics that during the struggle to drive Husrev Pasha out of Egypt, one kāshif (subprovincial governor) told an

Ottoman official who had recently arrived in the port city of Rosetta that in supporting

Tahir Pasha against Husrev, he was fighting against “everyone on the side of Küçük

232 Sicill-i Osmani, III, 553. 233 Shaw, Between Old and New, 197. 93

Hüseyin Pasha,” but not against any of Yusuf Pasha’s clients.234 This attitude may have also had echoes among the anti-reformist ʿulamāʾ. It was to Yusuf Pasha, after all, that al-

Jabartī dedicated his Maẓhar al-taqdīs bi-zuwwāl dawlat al-Faransīs (The Manifestation of Holiness: The End of French Rule), a work that established his reputation in Istanbul and was twice translated into Ottoman Turkish.

Seydi Ali, who spoke “little Arabic,” proved an incompetent governor and soon found enemies on all sides. The French consul complained that the pasha favored the

British – albeit not to the same extent as the Egyptian beys, who were seen as virtual tools of Britain.235 Furthermore, the entire European community of Alexandria was incensed at the poor discipline of Seydi Ali Pasha’s troops, who held training exercises in the European quarter of Alexandria; the French consul Drovetti even writes that he only narrowly escaped being injured by these exercises. The full gamut of European consuls from Sweden to Italy submitted a formal complaint to the pasha, reproaching him for malicious neglect.236 Only the Kapudan Pasha of Alexandria, Hurşid Pasha, receives consistent praise from French diplomats.237 This should probably not be surprising, because Hurşid’s patron, Grand Admiral Küçük Hüseyin Pasha, was the foremost representative of the pro-French faction in Istanbul.

Interestingly though, what appeared to European residents in Alexandria to be a case of mere indiscipline was actually yet another expression of the profound political crisis gripping the empire, drawing in soldiers, ʿulamāʾ, and ordinary people. According

234 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, III, 259. 235 Douin, L'Égypte de 1802 à 1804, 93. 236 Ibid., 97-101. 237 Ibid., 126. 94 to al-Jabartī, Ali Pasha had again attempted to train a portion of his troops in the “French style,” a move that was received very poorly among the soldiery. After daily training in

Manshiyya Square in central Alexandria, the soldiers marched back to their barracks while European onlookers gawked from their windows. Perhaps as a form of protest against the new military regulations, the Ottoman troops fired shots at the Europeans.238

The Europeans fired back, both literally and in the form of a written diplomatic protest, which argued that Ali Pasha’s troops showed animosity toward Europeans in general.239

Instead of finding an acceptable diplomatic solution, as Hurşid Pasha advocated,

Seydi Ali Pasha tried to mobilize support from within Alexandria’s public sphere, calling on the elite ʿulamāʾ and aʿyān (notables, usually including the leading scholars) to sign a document testifying to the justice of his administration. However, he had already squandered the goodwill of local elites by deposing Alexandria’s qāḍī when the latter would not do his bidding.240 Most significantly, the leading representative of the

Alexandrian scholars, Shaykh Muḥammad al-Masīrī al-Mālikī, was in a strong enough position to lead the notables in successfully defying the pasha. In French consular documents, al-Masīrī is termed “the idol of the population of Alexandria, of Egypt, and of all Turkey [sic],”241 and European diplomats met with him frequently. This source also claims Ali Pasha imprisoned and nearly executed the shaykh, while al-Jabartī writes that

Ali Pasha later allowed him to attending the provincial dīwān, albeit grudgingly.242 In a

238 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, III, 266. 239 Douin, L'Égypte de 1802 à 1804, 109. 240 Ibid., 113. 241 Ibid., 116. 242 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, III, 266. 95 pattern that was repeated throughout the empire in this period, anti-reformist ʿulamāʾ and soldiers united to thwart what they regarded as a tyrannical reform agenda.

In al-Jabartī’s biographical note on him, Seydi Ali Pasha Trabulsi is denounced neither for his half-hearted attempts at military reform nor for his doomed intrigues against his beylical opponents, but rather for his tyrannical violations of life and property.

This is typical of the chronicler’s view of the responsibilities of political leaders. The final comment on Ali Pasha’s corruption concerns his disrespect toward al-Masīrī, whom the pasha slandered as a “counterfeiter.” Apparently, Seydi Ali never missed a chance to insult al-Masīrī by such slights as pointing the soles of his feet toward the great shaykh.243

In Cairo, the Egyptian beys, and their ʿulamāʾ allies, remained firmly in control.

Ali Pasha was never able to enter the city except by permission of such figures as İbrahim

Bey. In Shawwāl 1218/February 1804, Seydi Ali was assassinated by al-Bardīsī’s soldiers for attempting to assert control of the capital. While this certainly displeased

Selim III, the Ottoman sultan was willing to cooperate with the beys, at least temporarily, so long as he was able to secure certain core interests. For example, in 1218/1803, while

Ali Pasha was still in Alexandria, Selim III granted forgiveness to the beys and acknowledged İbrahim Bey as shaykh al-balad (ruler of Cairo) in exchange for the continued collection of revenues for the İrad-ı Cedid Hazinesi (“New Revenues

Treasury”), set aside for the new army.244 This must have been the real meaning of a

243 Ibid., 276. 244 Douin, L'Égypte de 1802 à 1804, 109. 96 ferman, preserved in the Cairo archives, recognizing İbrahim Bey as shaykh al-balad and calling on him to accept “the order [niẓām] which has been established in Egypt.245 Thus, the politics of the pan-Ottoman nizam-ı cedid permeated early nineteenth-century local politics in such provincial cities as Cairo and Alexandria to far greater degree than has been recognized up to this point.

Accordingly, ʿulamāʾ support for the beys was not unconditional, particularly when the beys collected extraordinary taxes on behalf of Istanbul or for their own purposes. In the chronicle of Niqūlā al-Turk, İbrahim Bey is said to have convoked the

ʿulamāʾ of Cairo, asking for their prayers and support, only to be rebuked by Ibn al-

ʿArūsī, son of a renowned Shaykh al-Azhar. In the face of corruption and illegal taxation

(mukūsāt), Ibn al-ʿArūsī asks rhetorically, “How can we simply pray?”246 While Niqūlā al-Turk does have the tendency to portray the ʿulamāʾ as the keys to popular support, and thus as “representatives of the people,” most elite scholar-officials still acted as ideological and political allies of the beys, who had the support of most of the Egyptian population for intertwined practical and ideological reasons: the beys opposed the new- style military discipline and new taxation supported by powerful elements at the imperial center and their clients. Without question, the elite ʿulamāʾ remained intimately connected to beylical patronage networks, with many powerful friends.

The leading beys appeared to be in an excellent position around this time, and in late 1218/1804 they celebrated the death of their “great enemy,” as Niqūlā al-Turk puts it,

245 Amīn Sāmī, Taqwīm al-Nīl, 3 vols. (Cairo: Al-Maṭbaʿa al-Amīriyya, 1334-1355 [1916-1936]), II, 180. 246 Niqūlā al-Turk, Chronique d'Égypte, 193. 97

Grand Admiral Küçük Hüseyin Pasha.247 This did not prevent the Grand Admiral’s faction from persisting in exerting its influence over Egypt; Hüseyin Pasha’s client, the

Admiral of Alexandria Hurşid Pasha, was appointed wālī of Egypt upon Ali Pasha’s death. One of the new wālī’s first tasks was to win over the Azharīs, who had locked the gates to their quarter even before his arrival, asking for patronage for the religious establishment and reduced taxation throughout Egypt, an agenda which was contrary to

Hurşid’s intentions.248

The pasha did make good faith efforts toward winning over the scholarly establishment, partly by accepting its improved financial position. According to ruznamçe documents, the total income of al-Azhar rose from 173,000 kuruş after the

French withdrawal (in 1217/1802, under Husrev Pasha) to 772,889 kuruş in 1218/1803, when İbrahim Bey re-emerged as shaykh al-balad in Cairo. Such a sharp increase could only have been a reward for the bey’s scholarly allies, but this figure was confirmed in

1219/1804, when Hurşid was firmly ensconced in Cairo.249 The budget of al-Azhar from that year (analyzed in depth above)250 signaled a new strategy for Ottoman governors.

Whereas Husrev had attempted to shift resources toward the Rūmī riwāq to the exclusion of others, Hurşid acknowledged the pre-eminence of Egypt’s most deeply- rooted shaykhs and riwāqs, patronage networks that he could not attempt to control directly. Hurşid also included the leading shaykhs in his dīwān, distributed gifts, and attended weddings, as well as ceremonies such as the Ḥusaynī mawlid (a birthday

247 Ibid., 211. 248 Ibid., 250. 249 Dīwān al-Rūznāmja, daftar no. 5993 (new code: 3001-012002, Year 1219), final page, DWQ. 250 See chapter 2. 98 celebration for the Prophet’s grandson), held by the Shaykh al-Sādāt at the Shrine of

Imam Ḥusayn, famous for allegedly preserving the head of that revered figure.251 The

Ḥusaynī Shrine was the most important religious institution controlled by Abū al-Anwār al-Sādāt, and he also built an extravagant home adjacent to the shrine.252

As this and many other examples indicate, al-Sādāt may have been less of an ally of the beylical elite and more willing to cooperate with Egypt’s Istanbul-linked centralizing elites than were other shaykhs. Being near to the Khān al-Khalīlī, the

Ḥusaynī Shrine was predominantly frequented by Turkish speakers, and this may have facilitated contacts between the Shaykh al-Sādāt and influential Ottomans. Immediately after the expulsion of the French from Cairo, both Küçük Hüseyin and Yusuf Ziya Pasha visited this shrine before going anywhere else, and the latter was entertained at al-Sādāt’s home.253 Then, in the wake of al-Sādāt’s defense of Ottoman officials linked to Husrev

Pasha, Osman Bey al-Bardīsī was hostile toward him and attempted to extract a forced loan from him. In an indication of the versatility of al-Sādāt’s connections, al-Bardīsī was blocked from doing so by the daughter of İbrahim Bey.254

Al-Sādāt also defended Yusuf Efendi, the Turcophone former naqīb al-ashrāf appointed under Husrev Pasha, from Hurşid Pasha’s persecution and succeeded in freeing this ex-naqīb from detention at the home of ʿUmar Makram, the incumbent naqīb.255 He did so, of course, in spite of the fact that Yusuf Efendi had been condemned as an

251 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, III, 308. 252 Al-Jabartī writes that al-Sādāt’s lavatories gave off an offensive odor in the mosque: Ibid., IV, 190. 253 Ibid., III, 187-188. 254 Ibid., 276. 255 Ibid., 318-319. 99 imposter by most Egyptian ʿulamāʾ. While his motives in this episode are obscure, al-

Sādāt’s actions belie the supposed unity of the ʿulamāʾ, often taken for granted by Niqūlā al-Turk and even al-Jabartī. In this episode, al-Sādāt appears neither as a tribune of the people nor as a puppet of those in power, but rather as an independent power broker who had forged ties with the Ottoman elites who arrived after the end of the French occupation.

Despite his best efforts, Hurşid Pasha’s attempts to win over the majority of the

ʿulamāʾ were ultimately fruitless. Most fundamentally, the shaykhly elite was so intimately connected to the Egyptian beys that any centralizing wālī would have to fight.

For example, when the pasha arrested a leading bey, ʿAlī al-Madanī, an ally of al-Alfī, a number of shaykhs lodged a collective protest. The reason was that Shaykh al-Jawharī, head of the Shādhilī Sufi order in Egypt, was the father-in-law of ʿAlī al-Madanī. In the end, this bey was released upon payment of a fine.256 Similarly, the pasha accused Sitt

Nafīsa, wife of the deceased Murad Bey (d. 1215/1801), of having a slave girl engage in intrigue on behalf of his beylical rivals, which prompted a response from the ʿulamāʾ elite, including the naqīb al-ashrāf ʿUmar Makram, Shaykh al-Sādāt, and Shaykh al-

Amīr, head of the Mālikī madhhab at al-Azhar.257 The pasha also relied on the ʿulamāʾ to correspond with the beys, a signal not only of the shaykhs’ moral authority, but also of their closeness to Egypt’s localized military elites.

256 Ibid., 310-311; Niqūlā al-Turk, Chronique d'Égypte, 259. 257 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, III, 295-296. 100

The pasha continued to offend the ʿulamāʾ in other ways as well. Shaykhs were prompted to protest (e.g., by shutting down al-Azhar) on account of multiple slights, including confusion over the end of Ramadan,258 the murder of a faqīh (jurist) at the hands of an Albanian officer,259 and continued harassment of the custodians of the shrine of Sīdī Aḥmad al-Badawī of Tanta.260 In the case of the murdered jurist, a gathering of shaykhs at the home of Shaykh al-Azhar ʿAbd Allāh al-Sharqāwī very nearly secured the

Albanian officer’s conviction, which was foiled only by an unwillingness of witnesses to come forward. Scholarly activism only increased in significance under Hurşid Pasha, and

Niqūlā al-Turk mentions ʿUmar Makram as a key leader of popular protest already in

1804, well before Hurşid’s downfall.

In the face of such difficulties, not to mention the ongoing war with the beys of

Egypt, Istanbul was willing to back its clients in Cairo with somewhat more resources that it had during most of the late eighteenth century. For example, a sultanic edict promised the arrival of supplies directly from the Imperial Armory (cebehane),261 an institution that was itself being restructured with French help at the time. Hurşid Pasha, for his part, continued to try to establish a nizam-ı cedid army in Egypt, and he hoped for support from the imperial center. For months, rumors spread throughout Cairo that a powerful military contingent, trained in the new style, would arrive. In the end, al-Jabartī reports with ironic detachment, fewer than 100 troops disembarked in Alexandria to join

258 Ibid., 315. 259 Ibid., 317-318. 260 Ibid., 318. 261 The order is dated Muḥarram 1220 (April 1805): Taqwīm al-Nīl, II, 193. 101

Hurşid’s forces.262 Further rumors of Ottoman reinforcements (e.g., of irregular deli contingents from Syria) were similarly underwhelming. Without a very high level of commitment from the imperial center, only a cunning policy capable of manipulating

Egypt’s internal factions would be sufficient to allow a centralizing government to take hold, and Hurşid Pasha was not equal to this task.

Even prior to Hurşid’s arrival, the ʿulamāʾ had begun to draw closer to Mehmed

Ali, who was still commander and paymaster of the force of several thousand Albanian troops who had been stationed in Cairo ever since the French withdrawal. For example, in

1218/1804, when leading beys such as Mehmed al-Alfī and al-Bardīsī needed to pay their troops after many delays, they attempted to impose the firda, a head tax, on the people of

Cairo, as Husrev Pasha had, but this unpopular measure was opposed by Mehmed Ali.

When protests emerged, centered on al-Azhar, Mehmed Ali not only forced the cancellation of the tax; he also sent his kethüda, or deputy, to al-Azhar to proclaim the abolition of the tax, thereby winning support from the Azharīs and the public at large.263

(Mehmed Ali’s kethüda, a position that changed hands several times, later became immensely powerful and remained a liaison with the Azharī shaykhs.)264 Shortly thereafter, Mehmed Ali facilitated Hurşid’s installation as governor, possibly as a counterweight to the beys. In fact, al-Jabartī portrays Mehmed Ali as forcing the

(Istanbul-appointed) qāḍī to legitimate the new appointment.265

262 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, III, 300. 263 Ibid., 283. 264 This practice, like many others under Mehmed Ali, may well have emerged at the time of Husrev Pasha or earlier; for example, Husrev’s deputy was charged with distributing gifts to the Azharīs: Ibid., 210. 265 Ibid., 285. 102

Upon Hurşid’s arrival, the leading Azharīs shut their doors against the newly- appointed pasha, even as they sent a deputation to Mehmed Ali to press their demands. In response, Mehmed Ali largely satisfied their requests for patronage and promised to continue to oppose unjust taxation.266 This incident is recorded only by Niqūlā al-Turk, an eyewitness who ends his account before Mehmed Ali’s seizure of power, but not by al-Jabartī, whose eventual bitterness toward Mehmed Ali does not seem to allow much room to praise this clever upstart. In contrast, Niqūlā al-Turk calls him a “lion” for his bravery and intelligence.

It was only in retrospect that Mehmed Ali’s “devilish machinations” (dasāʾis shayṭāniyya), in al-Jabartī’s phrase, became apparent. Mehmed Ali had kept his intentions and even his ethnic background highly ambiguous. At one point, after Husrev

Pasha’s downfall, all “the Ottomans (ʿuthmāniyya), Turks (atrāk), and foreigners from

Syria and Aleppo” had been ordered out of Cairo,267 but Mehmed Ali – whose background was Turcophone, in contrast to the Albanian troops he commanded – did not leave. (Mehmed Ali was born to a Turkish-speaking family in the city of Kavala, now in

Greece, and an archival document has since surfaced in which Mehmed Ali’s son İbrahim states that their family had roots near Konya, now in central Turkey.)268 It is most likely for this reason that people began to believe that Mehmed Ali himself was Albanian, an idea reflected in French consular documents and still widely believed today in Egypt.269

266 Niqūlā al-Turk, Chronique d'Égypte, 1798-1804, 250. 267 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, III, 253. 268 Lowry, Remembering One’s Roots, 2. 269 For the claim by a French consul that Mehmed Ali was Albanian, see Georges Douin, Mohamed Aly, pacha du Caire (1805-1807): Correspondance des consuls de France en Égypte (Cairo: Published for the Royal Geographic Society of Egypt by the Imprimérie de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale du 103

Given that Mehmed Ali had sowed confusion about his very identity, it is no wonder that he was able to engage in secret talks with a range of actors, including Ottoman clients, the beys, French diplomats, and the scholarly elite. His Machiavellian manipulation of

Egypt’s political forces, the ʿulamāʾ very much included, was skillful and ultimately legendary.

The burgeoning sympathy for Mehmed Ali felt by the scholarly elite and other elements in Cairo began to strike deep roots. Believing Mehmed Ali to be in ideological agreement with those opposed to the centralization efforts of the ʿuthmāniyya (i.e., the

Ottoman elite and its clients), the ʿulamāʾ and other anti-reformist elements in Cairo thought they had found a champion in this obscure soldier. Beleaguered by three successive pashas between 1801 and 1805 – all of whom had attempted to impose a “new order” on the province through new military forces, expanded taxation powers, and the subordination of old elites (including the beys and even the ʿulamāʾ at times) – the scholarly elite in particular began to believe that Mehmed Ali could offer a robust alternative to further centralization attempts. As it turned out, of course, this was a gamble with momentous consequences.

Caire, 1926), 31. 104

Chapter 3:

Muslim Scholars in Power? Mehmed Ali’s Early Years

With Hurşid Pasha increasingly unpopular and unable to maintain order, Cairo witnessed what French observers termed a “revolution.” Far from being an early manifestation of Egyptian nationalism, this revolt, led by Mehmed Ali and his scholarly allies, drew on both elite and popular support as well as multiple ethnolinguistic elements. Once in power, Mehmed Ali Pasha initially cooperated with the scholarly elite as a whole, but increasingly showed his true colors as a centralizing governor in the mold of his nizam-ı cedid predecessors, albeit with less dependence on Istanbul. Mehmed Ali relied on support from the naqīb al-ashrāf ʿUmar Makram to repel a British occupation force, but objected to the naqīb’s sympathic position toward popular dissent. Exploiting divisions among the leading Azharīs, the pasha forced ʿUmar Makram into exile in order to tame the unruly public sphere that had enabled his own rise to power.

A. Revolution in Cairo: Reinterpreting Mehmed Ali’s Seizure of Power

Despite being one of the most complex and significant events in nineteenth- century Egyptian history, the 1220/1805 uprising that brought Mehmed Ali Pasha to power left behind surprisingly few contemporary (or near-contemporary) narratives. 105

Other than the chronicles of al-Jabartī and al-Qalʿawī, there do not appear to have been many Arabic-language accounts dealing with these events. The Ottoman imperial historian (singular vakanüvis) Cevdet Pasha, who wrote the most celebrated nineteenth- century Ottoman chronicle (Tarih-i Cevdet, covering the years 1774-1826), relies mostly on al-Jabartī, sometimes word for word, indicating that he had access to al-Jabartī’s still- unpublished manuscript.270 European – particularly French – sources are available, but these texts’ etic perspective may conceal as much as they reveal regarding social history and popular political ideology, which provide much of the interest of this episode.

Narratives composed decades later by authors linked to Mehmed Ali Pasha tend to gloss over his seizure of power and the attendant popular protests that made it possible, and these works do not discuss the role of Egypt’sʿulamāʾ in leading a popular uprising on Mehmed Ali’s behalf, which is so evident in al-Jabartī’s account. For example, Arif

Mehmed Efendi (d. ca. 1292/1875), a high ranking bureaucrat under Mehmed Ali, is the author of what is apparently the only nineteenth-century Turkish-language manuscript focusing on the controversial Mehmed Ali and his ruling elite, and this text is very laconic about Mehmed Ali’s rise to power. Fearing that he would meet the fate of previous wālīs, Arif Mehmed writes, Mehmed Ali did not seek the position of governor, but no one else could end the conflict in Egypt due to a power vacuum after the withdrawal of the French, the British, and the Ottoman fleet.271

270 Ahmed Cevdet Pasha, Tarih-i Cevdet, 12 vols. (Istanbul: Matbaa-yi Ümeyre, 1270-1301 [1853-1883]), VIII, 50-53. For more on the Tarih-i Cevdet, see Zeki Arıkan, “Tarih-i Cevdet,” DİA. It is possible that a contemporary Ottoman account may exist in an unpublished manuscript (covering 1804-1806) by imperial historian Ahmed Asım Efendi (d. 1235/1819), although I have not been able to access this chronicle: Ahmed Asım Efendi, Tarih (Istanbul: Istanbul University, MS TY 6014). 271 Arif Mehmed Efendi, ʿIbar al-bashar, I, 2. 106

Likewise, the Azharī shaykh Ibn al-Rajabī, who composed a history of Mehmed

Ali’s rule at the request of Mehmed Ali himself in the 1820s, frames the pasha’s early years solely in terms of conflict with the Egyptian beys, with no mention of ʿUmar

Makram or any other shaykhs.272 In the same vein, Rifāʿa Rāfiʿ al-Tahṭawī, Mehmed

Ali’s education minister, educated at al-Azhar and one of the first Egyptians to study in

France, justifies Mehmed Ali’s assumption of power by his defeat of Egypt’s mamlūk beys.273

In contrast to these panegyric accounts, later historians have conventionally interpreted the broad-based uprising against Hurşid Pasha’s provincial regime as an early proto-nationalist moment in Egyptian history. This view has been put forward most clearly by Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid Marsot, who cites a number of factors in arguing that the populace of Cairo demonstrated a form of national consciousness in the face of foreign oppression. Certainly, the broad popular participation of Cairenes both rich and poor found in al-Jabartī’s narrative was a remarkable phenomenon. As a result, the leadership shown by the religious elite, predominantly composed of native Egyptians and Arabic- speakers, has been held up as evidence that the Egyptian masses had found their “natural leaders,” based at least partly on ethnic affinity.274

272 Ibn al-Rajabī, Tārīkh al-wazīr Muḥammad ʿAlī Bāshā, 94-99. 273 Rifāʿa Rāfiʿ al-Tahṭawī, Manāhaj al-albāb (Cairo: n.p., 1869), 136-137. 274 Marsot, “The Ulama of Cairo in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” 40. Discussing the 1805 rebellion, Daniel Crecelius also speculates, “The opportunity to choose a native Egyptian ruler was missed for, very simply, there was neither an Egyptian candidate nor a regular native military force to defend the people’s choice”: Crecelius, “Nonideological Responses of the Egyptian Ulama to Modernization,” 176. In reality, there was no thought of a “native Egyptian ruler” or of a “native military force,” because the uprising itself was not animated by ethnic national feeling (see below for details). 107

Recent scholarship on the early nineteenth century continues to interpret the period through the prism of budding nationalist sentiment. In his editor’s introduction accompanying the publication of the first critical edition of al-Jabartī’s ʿAjāʾib al-āthār,

Shmuel Moreh interprets certain marginalia by Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār on al-Jabartī’s autograph manuscript as evidence of al-ʿAṭṭār’s nationalist hostility toward the Ottomans, which in turn is meant to explain his later participation in Mehmed Ali’s government.275 Although neither the Ottoman Egyptian religious elite of 1805 nor the populace at large had been formally exposed to Enlightenment political thought, Egyptian national feeling is believed to have arisen naturally in response to Ottoman misrule.

This teleological reading of events, which seeks to dignify Egyptian history by arguing that Egyptians were not laggards in the race to achieve national consciousness, flattens the richness and complexity of al-Jabartī’s original account. Far from being a homogeneous uprising of the oppressed Egyptian masses, the instability that rocked Cairo near the end of Hurşid Pasha’s governorship resulted from a multiethnic popular movement that drew support from diverse elements and classes in Ottoman Egyptian society, led by the religious elite and united in their opposition to Hurşid’s many overreaches. Their objections were not to Ottoman rule tout court, but rather a certain kind of autocratic Ottoman rule by a palace-dependent pasha, bent on imposing unprecedented reforms.

The most dangerous discontent faced by Hurşid came neither from Istanbul nor from the native Egyptians, but rather from a force of irregular troops that had arrived in

275 Shmuel Moreh, introduction to ʿAjā’ib, ed. Moreh, 13. 108

1219/1804 from Syria. In his efforts to establish an independent base of military power, he had failed to secure a nizam-ı cedid army, despite rumors that thousands of troops had arrived by sea; instead, he asked for, and received, a large force of irregular troops

(Turkish deliler, Arabic plural dalāt), an Ottoman military category referring to irregularly recruited troops who did not formally belong to the Ottoman military (askeri) class. (Literally, deli means “crazy” in Turkish, a hyperbolic reference to their bravery.)

During the vizierate of Yusuf Ziya Pasha, the central government attempted to impose new discipline on local deli regiments in the service of provincial wālīs.276 They were not, in any case, the wholly irregular troops known as başı bozuk or broken headed and so may be seen as a compromise between traditional Ottoman troops and a genuine

European-style army. Hurşid’s acquisition of these troops was therefore yet another strategy to realize the “New Order” agenda of his predecessors.

However, the arrival of the Syrian delis did not strengthen the pasha’s hand, but rather exposed the weakness of his rule. Though 500 of them had been ordered to fight the Wahhābīs in Arabia, the troops instead forcibly quartered themselves in the district of

Birkat al-Fīl.277 Despite such excesses, which outraged the ʿulamāʾ especially, the new troops ultimately allied with Hurşid’s enemies due to his inability to pay their wages.

Mehmed Ali Serçeşme, then still engaged in armed conflict with the Egyptian beys, recognized an opportunity and held secret talks with the delis, stressing that he only sought to guarantee their pay.278 Having won the support of the ʿulamāʾ earlier on, not to

276 Abdülkadir Özcan, “Deli,” DİA. 277 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, III, 306-307. 278 Ibid., 327. 109 mention the loyalty of his own Albanian soldiers, Mehmed Ali had assembled a powerful coalition. Nonetheless, even though he had won de facto power in Cairo, it took more to formally depose Hurşid Pasha, the recognized wālī of Egypt per sultanic edict.

In contemporary French consular reports, however, the hand of Mehmed Ali was not as visible as it was to al-Jabartī in retrospect. For the French diplomats, the leadership role of the ʿulamāʾ seems to have been the most striking feature of the period. Two leading Azharī scholars, ʿAbd Allah al-Sharqāwī, the Shaykh al-Azhar, and Sulaymān al-

Fayyūmī (rarely mentioned by al-Jabartī), are referred to as “guarantors of public stability,” and Hurşid Pasha treated them as such.279 French reports also note that the various elite shaykhs were in a sufficiently strong position to issue an ultimatum to the pasha, demanding that the delis be withdrawn from Cairo within three days.280 The various military forces stationed in Cairo clashed with each other and the populace, but the religious elite maintained its independence and moral authority.

However, the elite shaykhs could not dictate to the pasha or the military commanders, but rather acted mainly in response to public opinion. In Ṣafar 1220 (May

1805), rumors spread like wildfire among the urban populace that Hurşid Pasha would implement more centralizing taxation measures, this time allegedly a tax on property according to lists drawn up by the French.281 Protests against the depredations, including rape and pillage, of the delis had been ongoing for weeks and al-Azhar had been closed in

279 Douin, Mohamed Aly, pacha du Caire, 12. 280 Ibid., 20. 281 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, III, 329. 110 protest, but in al-Jabartī’s telling, yet more “illegal” taxation was the final straw that drove people onto the streets.282

In lieu of an unauthorized military coup, the religious elite took the initiative in both legitimating and carrying out Hurşid Pasha’s deposition. The focal point of the resistance was not al-Azhar, however. Instead, the shaykhs assembled alongside furious protesters at the residence of the chief judge of Egypt (Bayt al-Qāḍī).283 Nor could the

Azharīs legally depose a duly appointed governor; it was the Istanbul-appointed qāḍī who sought to do so by summoning his allies among the highest ranking state officials, none of them native Egyptians, including two prominent eunuchs, Beşir Ağa and Said Ağa al-

Wakīl (i.e., representative of the Chief Eunuch).284 Whereas the French diplomats write that “the shaykhs” pressed their demands to the pasha,285 al-Jabartī’s text demonstrates that the Egyptian shaykhs and the protesters recognized the necessity of having partners among imperial elites who had arrived from outside the province. Obviously then, the cries of “Destroy the Ottoman!” (ahlika al-ʿUthmanlī) heard at demonstrations in front of the Bayt al-Qāḍī were not directed against the Ottoman elite as a whole, because these protesters were seeking support from the elite Ottoman qāḍī and other major officials.

The slogan, which was uttered in the singular,286 was instead targeted against Hurşid

282 Ibid., 328-329. 283 Bayt al-Qāḍī is north of al-Azhar, just east of the Bayn al-Qaṣrayn thoroughfare. 284 A short biography of Said Ağa can be found in al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, IV, 77-78. Beşir Ağa is mentioned elsewhere as a “black kapıcı başı” (i.e., representative of the Ottoman palace): al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, III, 340. Many eunuchs were black, specifically Abyssinian, and the name Beşir became common among eighteenth-century eunuchs due to the impact of of the Chief Eunuch Hacı Beşir Ağa (d. 1159/1746): Jane Hathaway, Beshir Agha: Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman Imperial Harem (Oxford: Oneworld, 2006), 26-27. 285 Douin, Mohamed Aly, pacha du Caire, 27. 286 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, III, 329. The published English translation, for example, erroneously translates the slogan in the plural: ‘Abd al-Raḥmān al-Jabartī, ʻAbd al-Raḥmān al-Jabartī’s History of Egypt. 5 vols., eds. Thomas Philipp and Moshe Perlmann (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1994), III, 507, trans. Moshe 111 specifically, the Ottoman client. It was more than just the “native elite” and the Egyptian populace that supported the rebellion, contrary to the assertions of much previous scholarship.287

The ultimatum, which the protesters coded as a petition (Turkish arzuhal), demanded that troops not be quartered in people’s homes, as well as the end of extraordinary taxes and confiscations, and although Hurşid sent a conciliatory response, this succeeded in mollifying neither the naqīb, ʿUmar Makram, nor the Ottoman qāḍī; the two then jointly decided to secure the pasha’s deposition in favor of Mehmed Ali. Thus, the Turcophone qāḍī had emerged as a figure of equal importance to or greater importance than the famous ʿUmar Makram. When certain beys raised questions about the legal basis (sanad sharʿī) of Hurşid’s deposition, the leading ʿulamāʾ gathered again in the chief judge’s residence and produced a fatwā (formal ruling according to the sharīʿa) against the pasha.288 The text of this fatwā was sent to Istanbul, and it has since been published in a collection of Ottoman documents:

Question: The sultan chooses one of his servants as governor of Egypt. However,

although this governor should rule justly, if he has oppressed the people and

brought the province to a condition of ruin, is there support in sharīʿa (şer’i bir

müsaade) – relying on multiple imperial edicts in the possession of Egypt’s

people from time immemorial – to remove such a governor from his palace, to

choose another another in his place until the appointment of another from

Permann. 287 See, for example, Marsot, Egypt in the Reign of Muhammad Ali Pasha, 43. 288 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, III, 330. 112

Istanbul, and to make war against this governor and his soldiers, as a result of his

continued oppression and his refusal to leave his palace and to heed the advice of

the qāḍī of Cairo and his deputy (Mısır’ın Şeyhülislam ve naibi)?

Answer: Yes.289

Signed first by the qāḍī, then the Ḥanafi, Shāfiʿī, and Malikī muftis of Egypt, the text claims support from both sharīʿa and imperial edicts and refers to the duty of the wālī to follow the advice of the qāḍī.

Another striking affirmation of the centrality of religio-political ideology and of the chief judge’s crucial role in the uprising comes in the form of a debate between the rebellious ʿulamāʾ and one of Hurşid’s supporters, held at the house of an Albanian commander. In al-Jabartī’s account, ʿUmar Makram argues, “Those in authority (ūlū al- amr) are the ʿulamāʾ, the bearers of the sharīʿa, and the just sultan.” When told by

Hurşid’s supporter that the qāḍī, who had declared Hursid a sinful rebel (ʿāṣī), is an

“infidel,” ʿUmar Makram responds, “He is your own qāḍī!”290 He uses the latter’s fatwā as his trump card.

This line of argumentation implies that the qāḍī’s participation was ideologically crucial, but the same was also true from a practical perspective. After publicly rejecting the pasha’s attempts to satisfy his critics, the qāḍī also answered Hursid’s private inquiries with a hostile rebuke.291 Later, when fighting broke out, Mehmed Ali’s deputy

289 Attila Çetin, Kavalalı Mehmed Ali Paşa’nın Mısır Valiliği: Osmanlı Belgelerine Göre (Istanbul: A. Çetin, 1998), 102. 290 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, III, 331. 291 Ibid., 329-330. 113 made plans with the Azharī shaykhs together with the chief judge.292 The Ottoman qāḍī was an indispensable element of the pasha’s overthrow, a fact that narratives of anti-

Ottoman rebellion fail to acknowledge.

Why would this elite scholar and functionary be so willing to humiliate Hurşid

Pasha, a future grand vizier with powerful friends in the capital? For reasons that are unclear, al-Jabartī mentions the judge’s full name only once,293 preferring to call him simply “the qāḍī.” Other sources indicate that Şeyhzade Hasan Hafız Efendi was appointed qāḍī of Cairo in Jumādā al-Awwal 1219 (August 1804),294 and according to the

Sicill-i Osmani, he had already served as military judge (kazasker, an office second only to the Chief Mufti, or Şeyhülislam) in 1215/1800,295 shortly after the appointment of

Ömer Hulusi Efendi as Şeyhülislam. This was at the height of the Napoleonic invasion of

Egypt, a period in which Selim III had retreated from reforming zeal to bolster imperial unity. It is therefore likely that Hasan Efendi shared the anti-reformist attitudes of Ömer

Hulusi,296 the man who appointed him. Thus, Istanbul’s factional conflicts rooted in religio-political ideology spilled over into provincial politics and intersected with urban protests nearly a thousand miles from the capital.

Further evidence of the religio-political nature of the uprising (i.e., that it was not a communal uprising against “Turkish” exploitation) is the multiethnic composition of the rebels. Not only were Mehmed Ali’s troops predominantly Albanian, but the populace

292 Ibid., 333. 293 Ibid., 349. 294 Taqwīm al-Nīl, II, 191. 295 Sicill-i Osmani, II, 163. Whether he was kazasker of Rumelia or Anatolia is unspecified. 296 Shaw terms Ömer Hulusi Efendi a “reactionary”: Shaw, Between Old and New, 373. 114 of Cairo itself was highly heterogeneous due to Cairo’s far-flung commercial and religious linkages. Al-Jabartī stresses at multiple points that ʿUmar Makram’s urban militias included native Cairenes, North Africans, and Turks from the Anatolian countryside (awlād al-balad wa-l-maghāriba wa-l-atrāk).297 By specifying their participation, especially in public rituals like street parades, the chronicler emphasizes a pan-Ottoman base of support for the vision of just governance advanced by oppositional

ʿulamāʾ.

Of course, autonomous, predominantly Cairene urban militias also sprang up, and they were not always under the command of shaykhs like ʿUmar Makram. One of the most remarkable urban leaders during the 1805 uprising was Ḥajjāj al-Khuḍarī, a strongman from the neighborhood of Rumayla Square, near the citadel, and head of the greengrocers’ guild. Although many scholars cooperated with and fought alongside al-

Khuḍarī, there remained a social gulf between the religious elite and such figures. Sure enough, not long after the imperial center accepted Mehmed Ali’s governorship as a fait accompli in Rabīʿ al-Thānī 1220 (July 1805), ʿUmar Makram and the other shaykhs offered to tell the urban militias to lay down their arms (during the day, at any rate) on the condition that the various deli forces that had arrived under Hurşid Pasha be sent home.298 Al-Khuḍarī, on the other hand, fled to the still-undefeated beys, who were led by Mehmed al-Alfī, a former mamlūk of Murad Bey and head of a large household, only to return in Dhū al-Ḥijja 1220 (February 1806) asking for forgiveness.299

297 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, III, 331, 335. “Atrāk” implies rough-hewn, rural Anatolians. 298 Ibid., 337. 299 Ibid., 351. Many years later, he was executed, apparently in revenge: Ibid., IV, 279. 115

To contemporary French consuls, these events amounted to nothing less than a popular revolution, which they explicitly compared with the French Revolution of

1789.300 The urban populace, led by ʿUmar Makram, clashed with Ottoman troops, yielding images that they inevitably interpreted through the prism of their own recent history. Later historians seized on these comments as evidence of an Egyptian analog to

European turmoil. However, as we have seen, the rebellion linked a wide range of actors, including high-level Ottoman officials, rich Cairo merchants, soldiers of many ranks and ethnicities, and comparatively poor Cairenes. Their intention was not to reject Ottoman rule, but rather to restore it to its perceived ideal.

A far more fitting analogy to these events would be the stunning fall of Sultan

Selim III in 1222/1807, the so-called Kabakçı Mustafa Rebellion of 1807, which was followed by the abolition of his nizam-ı cedid army and most of its attendant reforms. In both cases, control of urban space passed from troops under the control of the Ottoman leadership to a motley array of military forces and urban protesters. In the case of

Istanbul in 1807, that meant rebellious sentries known as yamaks under a Kabakçı

Mustafa (the early leader of the rebellion, whose troops were largely Albanian and

Circassian), anti-reformist Janissaries, and the urban populace, including thousands of discontented theological students,known as softas. At the same time, elite Ottoman religious and political figures orchestrated the course of events; in Istanbul, notable figures included the grand vizier’s deputy (qāʾimmaqām) Köse Musa Pasha and most significantly Şeyhülislam Ataullah Mehmed Efendi. Emerging as the real power in the

300 Douin, Mohamed Aly, pacha du Caire, 35. 116 wake of the rebellion, he and his ʿulamāʾ allies issued fatwās declaring the sultan’s overthrow legal due to his unlawful “innovations” and violations of the sharīʿa.301 Just as in Cairo, all these elements were united by their opposition to years of policies that they regarded as illegal, unnecessary, and ultimately tyrannical. The parallels between the

Kabakçı Mustafa Rebellion of 1807 and the 1805 popular uprising in Cairo are, in fact, hard to overlook.

Indeed, many Egyptian ʿulamāʾ apparently made this connection, because after the failure of the rebellion and the accession of Sultan Mahmud II (1223/1808), only some indeterminate portion of mosque preachers (baʿḍahum) recited the new sultan’s name in the Friday prayers (khuṭba); others refused to mention his name.302 Of course,

Egyptians were not in a position to participate in these events, and the political factions of the time were in any case complicated. Al-Jabartī himself seems to have sympathized chiefly with Bayraktar Mustafa Pasha (d. 1808/1223), leader of the 1808 counter-coup that sought to restore Selim to the throne, rather than the rebels or Selim III’s leading reformers. He criticizes the Janissary rebels for taʿaṣṣub (fanaticism or partisanship) in the early stages of the rebellion, but uses the loaded term fitna (civil war or dissension, especially among Muslims) only when the conflict spread to the military camp of

Mustafa Pasha, who was then engaged in holy war against the Russian Empire.303

301 The text of key fatwās can be found in Cabi Ömer Efendi, Cabi Tarihi, I, 130-131. Another imperial edict (hatt-ı hümayun) drawn up by the Şeyhülislam and his allies refers to itself as a hüccet-i şer’iyye (authorization in sharīʿa): Ibid., 147. An overview of the 1807 rebellion can be found in Shaw, Between Old and New, 378-383. The failure of the pasha’s and sultan’s own troops (the delis and the nizamis respectively) to protect their leaders may be regarded as another similarity between the two rebellions. 302 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, IV, 80. 303 Ibid., 79-80. Al-Jabartī also condemns the “abominable manner” in which Selim’s officials were executed, although the chronicler also mentions that these men fled to the “homes of the Christians,” a 117

Mustafa was a complex character, an autonomous Rumelian notable (Arabic plural aʿyān) and an early opponent of the nizam-ı cedid who later came to support Selim III.304

As the driving force behind the “federalist” Sened-i Ittifak, Mustafa Pasha was hardly a centralizer in the mode of such figures as Grand Admiral Küçük Hüseyin Pasha, so al-

Jabartī’s sympathy for him does not contradict his skepticism of reform, whether in the

Egyptian context or elsewhere. It does, however, foreshadow the tendency of many

ʿulamāʾ to temper their populist activism in the face of European aggression.

B. The ʿUlamāʾ in Authority? The Early Years of Mehmed Ali’s Rule

Although he was a dominant presence in the first decade of the nineteenth century

(and later became one of the most celebrated Egyptian political figures), the background of the Asyut-born ʿUmar Makram is rather obscure. Al-Jabartī records only one position that he held prior to the naqibate: supervisor of the Jawhariyya riwāq.305 In this sense,

Mehmed Ali Pasha’s two most important early critics, al-Jabartī and ʿUmar Makram, had a shared background as shaykhs of minor riwāqs, a position with real intellectual and financial independence. Furthermore, although al-Jabartī does not mention any direct contact, the two men must have had many mutual friends. ʿUmar Makram’s library, which was donated to the Egyptian National Library in the early twentieth century,

rather unflattering detail. 304 Shaw, Between Old and New, 347-364, 386-405. For a lengthier biography, see İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, Meşhur Rumeli Âyanlarından Tirsinikli Ismail, Yılık-oğlu Süleyman Ağalar ve Alemdar Mustafa Paşa (Istanbul: Maarif Matbaası, 1942). 305 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, III, 163. The Jawhariyya riwāq was a residence inhabited by the students of the Madrasat al-Jawhariyya, a Mamlūk-era school that was considered part of al-Azhar: ʿAlī Mubārak, Al- Khitat al-Tawfiqiyya al-jadīda, IV, 47-48. 118 includes a manuscript on Ḥanafī jurisprudence composed by the elder Jabartī, Ḥasan. The manuscript was copied in the late eighteenth century by Ḥasan al-Jabartī’s student ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Bashbīshī (d. 1207/1792-3), ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Jabartī’s childhood Qurʾān teacher.306

Judging from the manuscripts in his personal library, ʿUmar Makram was a man of conventional religious interests, with only a minor interest in the natural sciences. Like most Upper Egyptians, he belonged to the Mālikī madhhab, and like Egyptians from many backgrounds, including al-Jabartī, he seems to have belonged to the Shādhilī Sufi order. His library includes numerous manuscripts concerning the history of Shādhilī

Sufism, especially the noted Alexandrian holy man Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Mursī (d.

686/1287).307 This order was certainly orthodox, in contrast to certain heterodox popular orders, and had been considered elite at the beginning at the Ottoman period,308 but by the later period, the order must have grown even more widespread: the Shādhilī prayer manual (Dalāʾil al-khayrāt), an analysis (sharḥ) of which was also in ʿUmar Makram’s library,309 was the runaway “bestseller” of Ottoman Egypt, as Nelly Hanna describes it.310

It should be noted that although the Wafāʾiyya order headed by the aristocratic Shaykh al-Sādāt was a branch of the Shādhiliyya, the Shaykh al-Jawharī held the title of Shaykh al-Sāda al-Shādhiliyya (Head of the Noble Men of the Shādhilī Order).311

306 Ibid., II, 247-248. 307 See for example Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya, Fihris maktabat Makram (Cairo: Maṭbaʻat Dār al-Kutub al- Miṣriyya, 1933), 81, 82, 83. 308 For a general survey of Sufi orders in Ottoman Egypt, see Winter, Egypt Under Ottoman Rule, 124-161. 309 Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya, Fihris maktabat Makram, 85. 310 Hanna, In Praise of Books, 94-96. 311 See for example Maḥkamat Miṣr al-Sharʿiyya, daftar no. 26 (new code: 1017-003526, Years 1226- 1228), no. 215 (12 Rabīʿ al-Awwal 1228), DWQ. 119

Of course, despite the deep cultural commonalities that they shared with the educated Ottoman public, powerful religious officials such as ʿUmar Makram, let alone an imperial Chief Mufti like Ataullah Efendi, were hardly voices emanating from the public sphere in any Habermasian sense. As noted in the previous chapter, the most prominent ʿulamāʾ were salaried government employees who not uncommonly received annual or monthly sums that could make powerful bureaucrats albeit not military commanders, envious. In Ottoman parlance, ʿUmar Makram was nakib ül-eşraf kaymakamı (the Egyptian representative of the Ottoman imperial naqīb, head of the descendants of the Prophet Muḥammad), and according to an imperial order (mühimme) sent from Istanbul shortly after his eventual removal, Egypt’s naqīb al-ashrāf received a salary of 1040 kuruş from the imperial treasury, i.e., from Istanbul.312 In addition, he received a yearly salary from the provincial ruznamçe: 1596 ardabbs of grain (ḥinṭa) in the year 1219/1804-1805, plus over 200 more ardabbs for his relatives and freed slaves.313 Significantly, he had been absent from the ruznamçe register in 1217 (1803-

1804, i.e., prior to his appointment as naqīb), so this income was not a product of custom, but rather of a particular political moment.

In the context of such power, there would seem to be little room for “public reason,” in Jürgen Habermas’s vivid phrase, on the part of Muslim scholars. Literary production for the market is central to Habermas’s idea of public reason. For Habermas, wide readership due to a commercial book market is what moved intellectual and cultural

312 Mühimme-i Mısır 12, no. 251 (Şevval 1224/October 1809), BOA. 313 Dīwān al-Rūznāmja, daftar no. 5993 (new code: 3001-012002, Year 1219), final page, DWQ. 120 output away from being a form of “conspicuous consumption,” fuelled by patronage by aristocratic and other state elites, and toward a kind of a “bourgeois” public sphere.314

However, more recent historians engaged with the public sphere in early modern Europe argue for more expansive interpretation of the concept, including the intersections of public reason and religion, the circulation of manuscript, rather than just print, polemics, and the state’s interactions with public opinion.315 Furthermore, as we have seen, there were ways for the Egyptian ʿulamāʾ to achieve independence from the ruling elite without necessarily producing texts for mass consumption. With a certain measure of financial independence thanks above all to waqf income, Egypt’s Muslim scholars could safely engage in public discourse for its own sake.

Because public debate raged far below the elite level, debate and activism emerging from within al-Azhar cannot be viewed as products of a hierarchical state institution. The leading shaykhs were provincial officials intimately involved with

Ottoman Egypt’s power politics, but their authority depended on the dynamics of public opinion and popular protest centered on al-Azhar mosque and its thousands of students, both of which were inextricably tied to Cairo’s urban life. Both al-Jabartī’s chronicle and

French consular reports indicate that the religious elite’s political intervention in the 1805 uprising was prompted by the public’s rage against Hurşid Pasha, particularly among

Azharīs. Continued influence over state policy would depend on both the mobilization of public opinion and astute political maneuvering.

314 Habermas, Transformation of the Public Sphere, 38. 315 Peter Lake and Steven Pincus, “Rethinking the Public Sphere,” in The Politics of the Public Sphere in Early Modern England, eds. Peter Lake and Steven Pincus (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), 1-30. 121

Disappointment among the ʿulamāʾ with Mehmed Ali Pasha’s new regime came swiftly. Al-Jabartī notes that Mehmed Ali immediately began to impose extraordinary taxes to stabilize his finances, and he did so, at least initially, with the consent of the elite shaykhs, who were seeking stability. They also attached the condition that this should not become a pattern,316 but they lacked leverage to guarantee this, although they did secure the withdrawal of most of the hated delis. Within the first year of Mehmed Ali’s rule, the pasha’s kethüda (deputy), a certain Mehmed Ağa, displayed marked brutality in assessing village taxes, and so many irregular levies were imposed that al-Jabartī was moved to comment that these excesses could only be a sign of the Day of Resurrection (yawm al- qiyāma).317 French sources concur that taxes imposed on “all classes” led to a return of popular discontent by 1806, and certain obscure shaykhs were arrested for taking part in protests.318 Within a matter of months, Mehmed Ali had disabused large numbers of his former supporters of any notion that he represented just government. On the other hand, this did not mean he was any different from his Ottoman or beylical predecessors, which is probably the reason why the religious elite could not yet imagine the autocracy

Mehmed Ali would later establish.

War also flared up with the Egyptian beys, who had remained in Upper Egypt and other regions of the countryside, and the beys attempted to revive their longstanding cooperation with the ʿulamāʾ. This was most pronounced in Alexandria, which British troops were able to occupy in 1222/1807. As noted previously, the British had an

316 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, III, 345. 317 Ibid., 334, 354. 318 Douin, Mohamed Aly, pacha du Caire, 137. 122 excellent relationship with the Egyptian beys, in contrast to the French. Mehmed Bey al-

Alfī, who emerged as the pasha’s bravest adversary, was so close to the British that he actually spent time in England. Much to Mehmed Ali’s dismay, the famous Alexandrian shaykh Muḥammad al-Masīrī did not resist the British occupation, and his sympathy for al-Alfī became known well before the British landed.319 By the time the British withdrew, al-Masīrī had fled to Beirut to teach at the Grand ʿUmarī Mosque; he never returned.

Conveniently, this silenced one of the most troublesome voices of the public sphere in

Alexandria, a city that later figured prominently in the pasha’s centralizing and modernizing plans.

Rumors of tension between Mehmed Ali and ʿUmar Makram began to circulate early on, but cooperation between Mehmed Ali and the scholarly notables remained intact. Significantly, in 1221/1806, when the admiral Musa Pasha arrived in Alexandria with a fleet manned by nizam-ı cedid troops to take Mehmed Ali’s place as wālī of Egypt, the religious elite was indispensable in securing his position. The Shaykh al-Azhar ʿAbd

Allāh al-Sharaqāwī and the naqīb ʿUmar Makram signed a formal petition, reproduced in full by al-Jabartī, to Musa Pasha and the sultan. Because Istanbul had decided to allow

İbrahim Bey to return as shaykh al-balad in Cairo, the petition argued that the Egyptian beys had been guilty of crimes including the murder of Seydi Ali Pasha as well as

Anatolian pilgrims. Mehmed Ali’s actions, on the other hand, were justified as necessary

319 Ibid., 114; Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, IV, 51. 123 to fight “bandits” (ashqiyāʾ) and “tyrants” (ṭughāt).320 A leading Azharī, Sulaymān al-

Fayyūmī, travelled to Alexandria to deliver it personally.321

Shaykhly support for Mehmed Ali Pasha was genuine. ʿUmar Makram, for example, informed the pasha of al-Alfī’s diplomatic overtures, and on one occasion the naqīb acted as tax collector for a military campaign against the beys.322 Elite shaykhs were also willing to muzzle expressions of dissent from among the ʿulamāʾ. When one locally revered and Azhar-educated shaykh from the Nile Delta city of Banhā quixotically petitioned the pasha and his deputy over an illegal seizure of land in that city, the elite shaykhs ridiculed the man’s complaint – and the Kethüda Bey, Mehmed Ali’s deputy, gratuitously murdered some of his pupils.323 Having helped to elevate Mehmed

Ali to wālī by acclamation, the elite scholars were willing to act as his surrogates. ʿUmar

Makram continued to sign Mehmed Ali’s messages to the Porte until 1224/1809,324 providing religious legitimacy to secular decisions. In return, scholar-officials held extraordinary power; ʿUmar Makram actually supervised the endowments of Cairo’s storied Manṣūrī Hospital, founded by the Mamlūk sultan Qalāwūn (earliest waqf dated

685/1286),325 the largest medical institution in Egypt.326 It was not unusual for ʿulamāʾ to

320 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, IV, 13-14. 321 Douin, Mohamed Aly, pacha du Caire, 63. 322 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, IV, 7. 323 Ibid., 64. 324 ʿUmar Makram’s refusal to sign one of Mehmed Ali’s petitions in 1224/1809 signals that doing so was common practice: al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, IV, 97. 325 Linda Northrup, “Al-Bīmāristān al-Manṣūrī – Explorations: The Interface Between Medicine, Politics, and Culture in Early Mamluk Egypt,” in History and Society During the Mamluk Period (1250-1517), ed. Stephan Conermann (Bonn: Bonn University Press, 2014), 108 ft. 9. 326 Maḥkamat Miṣr al-Sharʿiyya, daftar no. 28 (new code: 1017-003528, Years 1227-1230), no. 1 (13 Rajab 1228), DWQ. On the Manṣūrī Hospital in the seventeenth century, see Evliya Çelebi, Evliya Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi, X, 144. Evliya Çelebi calls the hospital Bimarhane-i abadan dar üş-şifa-yı Sultan Kalavun. 124 be connected to medicine (al-Azhar apparently had its own timarhane, or mental hospital),327 although it is unclear in this case exactly what involvement Shaykh ʿUmar would have had with this hospital.

The British occupation of Alexandria and subsequent attempts to send their troops inland provided another major impetus for unity between the Mehmed Ali government and the ʿulamāʾ writ large. Interestingly, one of the meetings orchestrating the defense of northern Egypt was held by the elite shaykhs and notables at the residence of the chief judge (Bayt al-Qāḍī) without the participation of Mehmed Ali. Though the British incursion had been conceived as a way of bolstering the beys against their enemies, most of them opposed the invasion and are portrayed as prioritizing their Islamic identity over realpolitik. ʿUmar Makram and the kethüda of the chief qāḍī even convinced them to coordinate resistance against the British with Mehmed Ali.328 ʿUmar Makram once again organized a multiethnic contingent of Cairo residents (including North Africans, Turks, native Cairenes, and men from his hometown of Asyut) to go off to fight.329 The British were routed outside the Delta city of Rosetta, where resistance was led by the local naqīb.

As in 1805, a broad array of social strata, from elite Ottoman judges to urban migrants, had mobilized in accordance with cherished religio-political values.

In retrospect, it may be hard to understand the impact that the abortive British invasion had on Ottoman and Egyptian observers. For the second time in less than a

327 Ibid., 143-144. 328 These Egyptian shaykhs argued that the British were fervent Christians, in contrast to the French, whose creed was “freedom and equality”: al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, IV, 49. The chief judge’s Turcophone kethüda Mustafa Efendi carried out the negotiations due to the grandees’ preference for Turkish. 329 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, IV, 50. 125 decade, Egypt had been invaded by “infidel” forces. Similarly, around this time, in a bid to pressure the Ottomans to open the Bosphorus straits,330 British ships sailed perilously close to the capital. Unsurprisingly, then, when the British were forced to evacuate

Alexandria, an effusive dispatch in the name of Sultan Mustafa IV (Selim’s short-lived successor, d. 1223/1808) was sent to Mehmed Ali and a number of his officials, including the naqīb al-ashrāf, bestowing on them robes of honor.331 Years later, when Ibn al-

Rajabī’s panegyric history termed Mehmed Ali “the holy warrior vizier” (al-wazīr al- mujāhid) for his protection of Egypt from the infidels, the reference was to his defeat of the half-hearted 1807 British invasion.332 The incident deepened Egyptian anxiety about foreign military threats, laying the groundwork for future military reform.

Some architectural evidence can also be adduced to illustrate the accomodations made by the early Mehmed Ali regime toward Egypt’s cultural and religious norms. In order to commemorate the death of their former leader, Mehmed Ali Pasha’s Albanian troops constructed a mosque on behalf of the murdered Tahir Pasha in the district of

Birkat al-Fīl. Whereas later structures built by Mehmed Ali Pasha and his associates typically looked to Istanbulite models for architectural inspiration, the Tahir Pasha

Mosque boasts minarets in the local (or so-called neo-Mamlūk) style.333 Likewise, whereas most of Mehmed Ali Pasha’s architecture boasts Ottoman Turkish inscriptions in

330 Virginia H. Aksan, Ottoman Wars 1700-1870: An Empire Besieged (Harlow, Essex, U.K.: Pearson/Longman, 2007), 242-243. The British were also concerned about Franco-Ottoman rapprochement at a time when Napoleon had achieved many military successes. 331 Mühimme-i Mısır 12, no. 219 (Ramazan 1222/November 1807), BOA; Taqwīm al-Nīl, II, 209. 332 Ibn al-Rajabī, Tārīkh al-wazīr Muḥammad ʿAlī, 234. 333 Ḥasan ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Tārīkh al-masājid al-athāriyya, 2 vols. (Cairo: Maṭbaʻat Dār al-Kutub al- Miṣriyya, 1946), I, 357-359. 126 a grand Persianized style, the Tahir Pasha Mosque features an inscription in Arabic poetry, despite the fact that the man whom it honors barely spoke any Turkish, let alone

Arabic.

In return for the shaykhs’ loyalty, Mehmed Ali allowed al-Azhar significant autonomy in his first years of rule. Al-Jabartī writes that two factions had formed within al-Azhar, centered on al-Sharqāwī, the Shaykh al-Azhar, and Muḥammad al-Amīr, the mufti of the Mālikī madhhab. Since the latter’s supporters were more numerous, al-Amīr was favored by the pasha. For example, he was awarded the position of “high supervisor”

(nāẓir aʿlā) of al-Azhar, a position that had been defunct for some time.334 Although this position is obscure, court registers show that al-Amīr was also granted multiple supervisory positions at this time, including one appointment (in 1221/1806) formely held by a family linked to the Badawī shrine.335 This populist Sufi order would face sustained difficulties under Mehmed Ali Pasha, not dissimilar to its status under Husrev

Pasha, and judging from the latter appointment, it is possible that the pasha’s distrust began early on.

Later, al-Sharqāwī was put under house arrest, an action which the pasha claimed was due solely to scholarly infighting. Al-Sharqāwī was restored to freedom by the intercession of the qāḍī of Cairo, Arif Efendi.336 As we will see, Arif Efendi, the son of

334 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, III, 348-349. This is likely his only reference to the position of nāẓir aʿlā, but it refers to the management of the physical upkeep of the mosque itself. 335 Maḥkamat Miṣr al-Sharʿiyya, daftar no. 25 (new code: 1017-003525, Years 1221-1226), no. 38 (13 Dhū al-Ḥijja 1221), DWQ. 336 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, IV, 19. 127 pioneering reformer Halil Hamid Pasha (d. 1199/1785), did not escape the notice of

Mehmed Ali Pasha either and later became a crucial link between Cairo and Istanbul.337

Archival evidence also indicates that Mehmed Ali continued to cultivate good relations with a large number of Muslim scholars during his early years in power. For example, in early 1223/1807, around the time of the British occupation of Alexandria,

ʿUmar Makram was awarded supervision of the waqf of Ali Efendi, son of Osman Ağa

Kaftancı (“the caftan-maker”), including its revenues minus expenses (Arabic rīʿ, meaning “proceeds”).338 These documents do not list any income figures, but if the waqf had been established by a family of soldiers and bureaucrats, as the titles “Ağa” and

“Efendi” indicate, a substantial income is likely. Since the waqf included thousands of square meters of urban property, this sort of supervisory position obviously reflected

ʿUmar Makram’s political connections.

C. Failed Uprising: The Fall of the Naqīb ʿUmar Makram

Relations between Mehmed Ali’s government and the elite shaykhs began to deteriorate at a quickening pace when the burden of taxation finally threatened the

ʿulamāʾ. However, elite scholars were not the only targets of Mehmed Ali’s burgeoning centralizing impulses; less wealthyʿulamāʾ also began to feel the squeeze. Ottoman

Egypt’s land tenure was subdivided into a complex array of abstruse legal categories.339

337 See chapter 5. 338 Maḥkamat Miṣr al-Sharʿiyya, daftar no. 25 (new code: 1017-003525, Years 1221-1226), no. 194 (23 Ṣafar 1223), DWQ. 339 For an overview of land tenure in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Egypt, see Cuno, The Pasha's Peasants. 128

The ʿulamāʾ and their institutions benefited particularly from tax exemptions for charitable and/or religious purposes. Rizqa land, for example, essentially consisted of rural land grants designed to support mosques, schools, and other charitable institutions; accordingly, these lands were tax-free or nearly so. Many shaykhs, alongside wealthy and upper middle-class people from many backgrounds, also held usyā land, which was also tax-free, albeit for different reasons. It is believed that usyā arose from lands abandoned by the peasants.340 The most common way in which elites controlled land was through iltizām (tax farming), but while many ʿulamāʾ held iltizāms, thousands of others from almost any moderately wealthy social category did, too.

Al-Jabartī traces the rise of new taxation on waqf property and related rizqa lands to the policies of Yusuf Ziya Pasha immediately following the French evacuation from

Egypt. He claims that waqf property had been respected by all governments since the time of Salāḥ al-Dīn in the fifth century hijrī (the twelfth century C.E.). In this sense, he shows his profoundly nineteenth-century perspective, because he is very acute in identifying historical change taking place in his own time. Yusuf’s agents began to demand official registration for waqf lands, many of which had been held for generations.

Under Mehmed Ali Pasha, all manner of obstacles were put in place against those who still had not registered. 341 In this and many other respects, the “revolution” that brought

Mehmed Ali to power did not generate a break in policymaking, but rather created a circuitous route to the same destination.

340 Cuno, The Pasha's Peasants, 36. 341 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, IV, 93-95. 129

In Jumādā al-Awwal 1224 (June-July 1809), the pasha decided to push the envelope by taxing the hitherto exempt lands of rizqa and usyā, albeit only in the Nile

Delta province of al-Buḥayra. This sent an unmistakable signal to the public; however, because the scholarly notables were already committed to supporting Mehmed Ali’s regime, the first protests came from students and lower-ranking ʿulamāʾ, who had no official positions to lose. A relative of a well-known sayyid (descendant of the Prophet) was arrested for his complaints concerning these matters. Shortly thereafter, a crowd of people, including relatives of the prisoner, male and female, gathered at al-Azhar, where they staged, in effect, a public demonstration. Perhaps because the naqīb al-ashrāf was responsible for his fellow descendants of the Prophet and their legal affairs,342 the protesters appealed to ʿUmar Makram, who in turn attempted to appeal to Mehmed Ali

Pasha.343 Refusing to meet with the pasha, ʿUmar Makram submitted a petition to the divan efendisi, the secretary of the Mehmed Ali’s governing council.

Al-Jabartī stresses the Machiavellian, conspiratorial nature of Mehmed Ali’s governing style in general and his handling of this incident in particular. At the same time, he argues that while the pasha had “plotted” to break up the unity of the leading

Azharīs, it was also true that they were all too willing to cooperate. The scholars involved in the conspiracy, Shaykh al-Azhar al-Sharqāwī, Muḥammad al-Dawākhilī (d.

1233/1816), Muḥammad al-Mahdī al-Ḥifnī (d. 1230/1814), and especially al-Jabartī’s former mentor the Shaykh al-Sādāt are portrayed as being jealous of ʿUmar Makram’s

342 In normal circumstances, legal cases involving sayyids technically could not be tried in normal sharīʿa courts, lest a descendant of the Prophet be condemned by those of a lesser lineage. 343 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, IV, 95. 130 power and charisma. In conjunction with other officials, including the pasha’s interpreter

(tercüman) Abdullah Bektaş and the divan efendisi, they agreed to manage al-Azhar and

Egypt’s other religious institutions without ʿUmar Makram. Meanwhile, the latter did not back down from his demand that the pasha withdraw the new taxes on rizqa and usyā land. Rejecting the excuse that such taxes were exceptional and applied to only one province, he refused to meet with the pasha until his, and the people’s, demands were met. He was motivated not by a direct assault on his own privileges, which were indeed more secure than ever, but rather by revulsion toward policies he found illegitimate.

In a revealing comment allegedly uttered by Shaykh al-Mahdī, ʿUmar Makram was declared to be little more than a glorified waqf administrator (jābī waqf), similar to a guild leader (ṣāḥib ḥirfa).344 By this logic, ʿUmar paled in status when compared to the genuine scholarly notables. The class snobbery implicit in this statement, real or apocryphal, indicates that ʿUmar was seen as middle class in some sense. Interestingly, waqf administrators, who were often ʿulamāʾ, are clearly ascribed to that category, equivalent to prosperous artisans. Indeed, ʿUmar Makram came from such an obscure background that even his father’s name remains unclear.345 (Thus, it is not possible to verify his status as a sharīf.) Most importantly, there is little evidence that ʿUmar established any clientage relationship with an Egyptian grandee, although he did play a

344 Ibid., 96. 345 His only published biography indicates that according to waqf documents, his father’s name may have been either Sulaymān or Ḥusayn: Muḥammad Farīd Abū Ḥadīd, Sīrat al-Sayyid ʻUmar Makram (Cairo: Maṭbaʻat Lajnat al-Ta'līf wa-l-Tarjama wa-l-Nashr, 1937), 52. 131 symbolic role in certain negotiations between the Ottoman governor and the Egyptian beys on two occasions in the late eighteenth century.346

This is quite different from most scholar-officials. Al-Mahdī, for example, was the son of a prominent scholar, and he rose to fame and fortune largely through his ties to

Ismāʿīl Bey, who had been a mamlūk of Ali Bey al-Kabīr (d. 1187/1773) and later shaykh al-balad (i.e., “mayor” of Cairo and thus the dominant grandee in Egypt). Al-Mahdī was engaged in numerous kinds of economic activity, from commodities trading to tax farming, and he took official positions unrelated to scholarship (e.g., in the mint and in the official slaughterhouse).347 Al-Mahdī was thus a scholar-official wholly immersed in the provincial state and its patronage networks, whereas ʿUmar drew his prestige from other sources.

Finally, on the 17th of Jumādā al-Akhira 1224 (July 30, 1809), the pasha issued a ferman expelling ʿUmar Makram from Cairo. He was also dismissed from the office of naqīb al-ashrāf, and the Shaykh al-Sādāt was invested in his place. According to al-

Jabartī, it was the shaykhs themselves who drew up a long list of defamatory accusations against the honorable ex-naqīb. Among these, according to al-Jabartī, were the claims that he had included converted Jews and Copts on the registers of the descendants of the

Prophet; that he had aided al-Alfī in thwarting Hurşid Pasha; and that he was seeking the overthrow of Mehmed Ali by fomenting sedition among commoners of all stripes, including Upper Egyptians and North Africans.348 Most of this was untrue, and a number

346 Ibid., 193, 226. 347 Ibid., IV, 233-234. 348 Ibid., 100. 132 of shaykhs refused to endorse this betrayal, but there is certainly truth in the idea that

ʿUmar Makram had incited the unruly commoners of Cairo against the pasha. It was equally true, however, that the commoners’ activism against Mehmed Ali’s policies had driven ʿUmar Makram to unsuccessfully challenge state policy.

Perhaps surprisingly, the bitter affair of ʿUmar Makram is also recounted in Arif

Mehmed Efendi’s laudatory (and anecdotal) history of Mehmed Ali Pasha and his ruling elite, entitled İber ül-beşer fi ül-karn il-salis aşer (Models of Humanity in the Thirteenth

[Islamic] Century). The tragic story of the popular naqīb may simply have been too well- known to be left unexplained, and the version provided by Arif Mehmed Bey differs considerably from al-Jabartī’s. Arif Bey notes that before coming to power, Mehmed Ali had sought the support of shaykhs like ʿUmar Makram, because Egyptians at that time regarded their soldiery (cünd taifesi) as corrupt and disreputable. However, Arif Efendi notes that Mehmed Ali did not want a governing partner, which prompted ʿUmar

Makram to condemn the pasha as “treacherous” (muḥtāl, a term which in Islamic law indicates the debtor of a claim) to his fellow shaykhs. Mehmed Ali therefore sought the naqīb’s removal. However, Arif Efendi writes that the Shaykh al-Sādāt argued in favor of reconciliation with ʿUmar Makram and tried to refuse the naqibate, only to have his hand kissed profusely by the pasha, at which point he relented.349 By contrast, al-Jabartī blames the elite shaykhs in general, and especially his former mentor al-Sādāt, for drawing up the letter; the chronicler also includes other accusations allegedly made by al-

349 Arif Mehmed Efendi, ʿIbar al-bashar, II, 52-53. 133

Sādāt that were not included in the actual dispatch (e.g., that ʿUmar Makram incited the murder of Seydi Ali Pasha in 1218/1804).350

Arif Efendi’s narrative attributes the falsehoods in the letter directly to Mehmed

Ali’s dishonest behavior. In those days, he writes, Mehmed Ali often lied in his dispatches to Istanbul, and the pasha is said to have asked the shaykhs to confirm the accusation that ʿUmar Makram had registered converted Copts among the descendants of the Prophet. As in al-Jabartī’s account, the Ḥanafī mufti of Cairo, al-Ṭahṭawī, refused to do so, but according to Arif Efendi, the other shaykhs were surprised to learn that the pasha had relented and refrained from punishing al-Ṭahṭawī; he was even allegedly assigned a secret stipend.351 More plausibly, al-Jabartī writes that this mufti was removed from his position the following year.352

The later account must have been intended to portray the pasha in a slightly better light than was commonly thought, and it may also have sought to defend the Shaykh al-

Sādāt from charges of wrongdoing. The Sādāt family, after all, remained powerful in

Egypt well into the twentieth century. Arif Efendi writes that the gift of 10,000 kuruş bestowed on al-Sādāt by the pasha was enough to make other members of the ruling elite envious, including the pasha’s deputy.353 This may have been a way to indicate the honor in which al-Sādāt was held by Mehmed Ali.

However, although some of Arif Efendi’s account could perhaps be true, some of his claims are demonstrably untrue. The original Ottoman-language text of Mehmed Ali

350 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, IV, 194. 351 Arif Mehmed Efendi, ʿIbar al-bashar, II, 54 352 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, IV, 100. 353 Arif Mehmed Efendi, ʿIbar al-bashar, II, 54. 134

Pasha’s dispatch to the sultan can be found in one of the few surviving early registers of any kind of the Mehmed Ali era, and it contains many of the falsified charges mentioned by al-Jabartī. Citing al-Sharqāwī and al-Mahdī by name, the document begins with a vague condemnation of the naqīb’s “inappropriate interference in the matters of wālīs and qāḍīs” (haric-i vazifesi olan ümur-ı vülat u quzat itale-i dest bî-münasibet). ʿUmar

Makram’s specific misdeeds are alleged to include the taking of bribes in court and, more fancifully, the enrollment of 7,000 Copts and Egyptian peasants (kıbti ve fellah taifesinden) in the register of the Prophet’s descendants. As a result, it is claimed that the

Prophet’s descendants and the ʿulamāʾ of Egypt have requested that al-Sādāt be appointed in ʿUmar Makram’s stead.354 Although it was deception, the pasha had to at least make the case that public opinion was behind his decision. One month later, this message earned a response from Istanbul, focused mainly on the financing of the

Egyptian naqīb’s salary.355 The removal of most provincial high officials did not warrant this kind of response, but the ideological role of elite religious offices – and their impact on the public sphere – made them uniquely significant.

Furthermore, despite the falsity of the allegations, the fears that Mehmed Ali’s dispatch played upon were quite real. First, by appealing to the authority of “wālīs and qāḍīs,” the letter makes reference to offices whose appointments remained typically under imperial control. For example, whereas the Egyptian naqibate had been in the hands of local notables for centuries, major qāḍīs continued to pass through the rotation

354 Al-Maʿiyya al-Saniyya, daftar no. 866 (new code: 3001-002051, Years 1222-1228), no. 19 (Shaʿbān 1224), DWQ. 355 Mühimme-i Mısır 12, No. 251 (Şevval 1224), BOA. 135

(nöbet) system of the imperial ilmiyye, and this continued to be the case throughout the

Mehmed Ali era. Second, although ʿUmar Makram had not been thus engaged, widespread forgery of sharīf status was an empire-wide phenomenon as early as the seventeenth century, often bemoaned in the Arab and southeastern Anatolian provinces.356 This flood of commoners into the ranks of the Prophet’s descendants should be seen in the context of the breakdown of social status hierarchies already mentioned,357 with the dilution of ashrāf status as a sort of religious parallel to the virtual collapse of the askeri (“military”) class in eighteenth-century Ottoman Egypt. Indeed, ʿUmar’s own descent cannot be traced. Although he may have been of Prophetic lineage, the fact that his father’s name is unclear means that he could not have been of elite birth in any sense.358

Because official sharīf status gradually lost its meaning, the most common

Ottoman-era term for a Prophetic descendant, sayyid, began its evolution into a modern general honorific for any man (i.e., current Arabic usage), parallel to the evolution of western honorifics like monsieur.359 This was yet another signal of the decline of old hierarchies, which enabled impressively broad participation in politics as a result of

356 Hülya Canbakal, Society and Politics in an Ottoman Town: ʿAyntāb in the 17th Century (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 77. 357 See chapter 1. 358 Abū Ḥadīd, Sīrat al-Sayyid ʻUmar Makram, 52. 359 Canbakal, Society and Politics in an Ottoman Town, 77. Originally meaning “lord” or “master,” in early Islamic history, the term sayyid was applied narrowly to the descendants of the Prophet’s grandson al- Ḥusayn, while sharīf was applied to Prophetic descendants more broadly. Persian- and Turkish-speaking lands were notable for preferring sayyid over sharīf, and this apparently affected Arabic usage during the Ottoman era: Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., s.v. “Sharīf,” by C. van Arendonk and W.A. Graham. 136 indigenous socio-political developments, well before the influence of western-derived

Enlightenment ideologies.

As implied in his dispatch to the sultan, Mehmed Ali would in fact seek to reconstitute social hierarchies, although not in the manner desired by the sultan. The removal of ʿUmar Makram, the figure most receptive to public opinion, opened the floodgates to a series of increasingly intrusive policies, which put renewed power into the hands of official elites. And just as the Azharī protesters had feared, it was the overturning of the waqf system that had the greatest effects on Egypt’s Muslim intellectuals.

137

Chapter 4:

Return to Centralization: Remaking Egypt’s Endowments

After 1809, Mehmed Ali Pasha generated increasing resentment among many

ʿulamāʾ who were particularly shocked at his centralizing reform of Egypt’s system of religiously-oriented endowments, policies which undermined their socio-economic power base. The pasha had continued success in his efforts to co-opt certain elements of the scholarly elite, but a repressive atmosphere was perceived by many other scholars, who were now shorn of their material independence. Thus, the reform of Egypt’s endowments, which occurred alongside many other policy changes in taxation and administration, was a major turning point for most Egyptian intellectuals.

Egypt had a very particular history with regard to endowment law, and this had an impact on early nineteenth-century developments. Due to the existence of the overlapping concepts of the rizqa al-iḥbāsiyya and waqf, greater state oversight of such properties had always been required in Egypt, and two significant (albeit poorly understood) offices had developed under the Mamlūk Sultanate: the Nāẓir al-Aḥbās (supervisor of the rizaq al- iḥbāsiyya) and the Nāẓir al-Awqāf (supervisor of waqfs).360 There are also examples of

360 Nicolas Michel, “Les rizaq al-iḥbāsiyya,” 119. Michel writes that the offices were distinct, but were united in at least one case. 138

Mamlūk-era efforts to confiscate rizqas alongside iqṭāʿs,361 thus demonstrating that the

Mamlūk sultans did not consider the former deserving of the legal protections accorded to waqfs.

In the aftermath of the Ottoman conquest, the position of Nāẓir al-Awqāf was apparently re-established, and there are other scattered references to a Nāẓir Nuẓẓār al-

Awqāf (Supervisor of Waqf Supervisors) later in the Ottoman period.362 Court records also contain references to a Dīwān Muḥāsabāt al-Awqāf (Ministry of Waqf Accounting) and Dīwān al-Rizaq (Ministry of Rizqas).363 The former may have been linked to the

Awqāf al-Ḥaramayn, for which specific “accounting scribes” (kuttāb al-muḥāsaba) are mentioned. As for the Dīwān al-Rizaq, countless ruznamçe registers listing rizqa salaries have survived. Despite the policy of maintaining these pious salaries, attributed to Selim

I,364 Egyptian governors prior to the era of the nizam-ı cedid had always possessed a bureaucratic infrastructure designed to regulate or even crack down on the autonomy of endowment supervisors. Nonetheless, this local history of endowment regulation was not the main impetus for Egyptian endowment reform in the early nineteenth century, which instead emerged from late eighteenth-century Istanbul.

361 Ibid., 119. 362 On the appointment of a Nāẓir al-Awqāf in 928/1522, see Bahaeddin Yediyıldız, “Vakıf: Tarih,” DİA. On the Nāẓir Nuẓẓār al-Awqāf, see Muḥammad ʿAfīfī, Al-Awqāf wa-l-ḥayāh al-iqtiṣādiyya, 74-75. 363 Muḥammad ʿAfīfī, Al-Awqāf wa-l-ḥayāh al-iqtiṣādiyya, 76-79. 364 Al-Isḥāqī, Akhbār al-uwal, 144. 139

A. Waqf Reform in Egypt under Sultan Selim III

Writing in the second half of the nineteenth century, Arif Efendi attributes remaking of the Egyptian waqf system to Ottoman initiatives, not to Mehmed Ali Pasha himself. He cites a sultanic edict from the reign of Selim III, thus casting Mehmed Ali as the agent of the sultanic will, and argues that nineteenth-century endowment reforms put an end to “one-thousand years” of corruption.365 This argument parallels the one put forward in al-Jabartī’s account, which cites the policies of Yusuf Ziya Pasha, Selim III’s grand vizier. Thus, the sources are in agreement that the drastic changes in property relations brought about by Mehmed Ali Pasha can be understood only in the context of

Ottoman reform.

More recent scholars have traced the shift in Ottoman policy toward endowments somewhat further back into the eighteenth century, to the reign of Abdülhamid I (1774-

1789). Granted, the most important changes in the eighteenth century related to the management of waqfs under the direct control of the sultan himself, the Evkaf-ı Hümayun

(Imperial Endowments). These properties included the Awqāf al-Ḥaramayn (Turkish

Evkaf-ı Haremeyn, endowments for the two holy cities, Mecca and Medina), under the authority of the Chief Eunuch (Darüssaade Ağası), but administered locally by various provincial notables. In 1775, Abdülhamid I created a new endowment administration outside of the control of the Chief Eunuch to manage certain endowments, an entity that ultimately evolved into the Evkaf-ı Hümayun Nezareti (Ministry of Imperial

365 Arif Mehmed Efendi, ʿIbar al-bashar, I, 86. 140

Endowments), officially created by Sultan Mahmud II in 1242/1826.366 Though this administration was not originally designed to regulate small-scale private waqfs, the imperial government under Mahmud II eventually began to do so.

In Egypt, after the end of the French occupation (1216/1801), the imperial government seems to have had a freer hand to attempt far-reaching reforms than elsewhere. However, as in Istanbul, the first priority was always the re-ordering of the imperial waqfs. Established in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,367 the Awqāf al-

Ḥaramayn had particularly rich properties in Egypt. By the eighteenth century, the maintenance of these agricultural lands was in the hands of numerous intermediaries. As the late eighteenth-century Egyptian ruznameci (chief scribe of the ruznamçe) Hüseyin

Efendi put it, agents (Arabic singular mubāshir) collected endowment income from the tax collectors and in turn gave these “taxes” to the supervisors, namely the shaykh al- balad (“mayor” of Cairo, an eighteenth-century position held by Egyptian grandees) and the wakīl (representative) of the Chief Eunuch.368 Our understanding of the role of the

Chief Eunuch’s wakīls is still somewhat limited, but these men were usually either members of Egypt’s military regiments, beys, or eunuchs themselves.369 Based on the evidence that follows, most early nineteeth-century wakīls seem to have been eunuchs.

By this period, the indirect method of waqf management was bemoaned by the

Ottoman officials as inefficient and corrupt, so not long after Grand Vizier Yusuf Ziya

366 Barnes, An Introduction to the Religious Foundations of the Ottoman Empire, 69-71. 367 Jane Hathaway, The Arab Lands Under Ottoman Rule, 103-105. 368 Hüseyin Efendi, Ottoman Egypt in the Age of the French Revolution, 56-58. See also Jane Hathaway, “Eunuch Households in Istanbul, Medina, and Cairo,” Turcica 40 (2009): 291-303. 369 Jane Hathaway, “The Role of the Kizlar Agasi in 17th-18th Century Ottoman Egypt,” Studia Islamica 75 (1992): 146. 141

Pasha arrived in Egypt, efforts were made to put the system in order. Following the issuance of an imperial edict (hatt-ı şerif), Egypt’s sultanic waqfs were subject to a strict audit of revenues and expenses.370 Said Ağa, an Ethiopian eunuch who accompanied

Yusuf Pasha as the wakīl of the Chief Eunuch, is labelled by al-Jabartī as the one who

“opened the gate of inspection on the lands of the Awqāf al-Ḥaramayn,” which resulted in terror on the part of “the people,” i.e., the provincial administrators of the endowment lands.371 However, al-Jabartī also views Said Ağa as a relatively mild agent of imperial power, preferring to blame the scribes attached to the Awqāf al-Ḥaramayn for alleged abuses against waqf subcontractors. Said himself is said to have disciplined the rapacious scribes.372 There was certainly change afoot, but its scope was still limited in some sense.

Whatever the intentions of the Chief Eunuch and his clients, the Zeitgeist among

Ottoman officials clearly pointed toward reduced autonomy among both multazims (tax farmers) and waqf supervisors. This was a worrying trend for many affluent Egyptians, who typically benefited from these sorts of rents. According to one theory touted by an

Ottoman qāḍī in Egypt, the Ottoman re-conquest of Egypt after its non-Muslim occupation meant that all land now belonged to the sultan by right of conquest. By this logic, privately held properties (amlāk, a relatively narrow category in Ottoman law,373 but one which may have included waqfs in this context) would have to be purchased from the treasury or face seizure by the state. This argument echoed longstanding disputes over

370 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, III, 198. 371 Ibid., III, 222; IV, 77. 372 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, IV, 77. 373 On freehold land (Arabic mulk) and its limits, see Halil İnalcık, ed., with Donald Quataert, An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 128, 140. 142 the nature of land tenure under Islamic law and in the Ottoman Empire,374 but Egyptian jurists, as was the case throughout the eighteenth century,375 argued passionately in favor of the rights of various kinds of property holders,376 especially those possessing rizqas.

Although the Egyptian jurists continued to win the legal debate over the nature of property rights, Husrev Pasha’s agenda for endowment reform was nonetheless very aggressive. Not content with re-ordering the imperial waqfs and general tax collection, the pasha also appointed minor officials (aʿwān) to audit waqfs in general, even those supporting village mosques.377 In his writing about these issues, al-Jabartī gives yet another indication of the blurring of waqf and rizqa.378 He is actually referring in this case to rizqa (endowed income from lands legally owned by the public treasury) as well as more conventional waqf properties, because village mosques were quite often funded from rizqa income.379 Al-Jabartī, who as a waqf supervisor had a vested interest in opposing such audits, writes that the process was corrupt, intended only to squeeze bribes out of the less powerful supervisors, but not from the well-connected or the “self- proclaimed notables” (mutajawwahīn).

The Ottoman officials in charge of this process demanded numerous documents from each rizqa holder, and if these documents were provided, a massive ḥulwān

374 On the “right of conquest,” see Cuno, The Pasha's Peasants, 22; İnalcık, ed., with Quataert, An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 102-103. For a broader discussion of the debates about land tenure in Islamic law and their relation to Egyptian history, see Baber Johansen, The Islamic Law on Land Tax and Rent: The Peasants’ Loss of Property Rights as Interpreted in the Hanafite legal literature of the Mamluk and Ottoman Periods (London: Croom Helm, 1988). 375 For a series of eighteenth-century examples, see Cuno, “Ideology and Juridical Discourse in Ottoman Egypt: The Uses of the Concept of Irṣād,” 136-163. 376 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, III, 191-192. 377 Ibid., III, 198. 378 On waqf and rizqa, see chapter 1. 379 Michel, “Les rizaq al-iḥbāsiyya,” 108. 143 payment, typically required only for non-endowed tax farms (paid upon the death of a tax farmer, in exchange for the confirmation of the new tax farmer’s rights),380 was then requested.381 The ensuing outcry did cause a policy shift, however, and the defterdar

Şerif Efendi, working closely with Shaykh al-Mahdī,382 promised to confirm the rizqa deeds in exchange for the payment of a smaller tax (māl ḥimāya, “protection money”).

Although this did constitute a tax on endowments, it did not cause an outcry,383 probably because the payment of māl ḥimāya was not unprecedented.384 Following this, further efforts were put on hold by political instability.

In the chaos of the “Ottoman interlude” between the French occupation and

Mehmed Ali’s governorship, little more was attempted regarding the extension of state power over Egypt’s vast endowment properties. Nonetheless, a precedent for centralizing reform had been set not only for conventionally taxable (mīrī) land, but also for religiously sensitive endowment properties, despite the fierce opposition of Egyptian jurists.

B. Mehmed Ali’s Taxation of Traditionally Exempt Endowments

Confusingly, al-Jabartī places many details concerning endowment reform of

Husrev Pasha’s government (1216-1218/1801-1803) in the latter part of his chronicle,

380 Conventionally, a ḥulwān payment amounted to three years of tax revenues: Hüseyin Efendi, Ottoman Egypt in the Age of the French Revolution, 60. 381 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, IV, 94. 382 Ibid., IV, 234. 383 Ibid., 95. 384 However, the māl ḥimāya was most associated with levies imposed by Cairo’s urban military regiments: André Raymond, Artisans et commerçants au Caire au XVIIIe siècle, II, 634-635, 641. 144 dedicated to the rule of Mehmed Ali Pasha. For example, many of the worst difficulties that rizqa holders had in securing their deeds, mentioned by al-Jabartī under the year

1224 (1809-1810), are blamed on Ramiz Abdullah Pasha, then serving as an ordinary bureaucrat (though later appointed Grand Admiral).385 The measures attributed to Ramiz

Abdullah and the defterdar Şerif Efendi certainly took place under Husrev, not Mehmed

Ali.

Under the early governorship of Mehmed Ali, the trigger that brought about a shift back toward the intrusive regulation of endowments may again have been a policy emanating from Istanbul. A client of Yusuf Ziya Pasha (his silahdar, or sword-bearer) arrived in 1224/1809, with an edict (marsūm) requesting payments owed to him on various Egyptian tax concessions (e.g., farāghāt, a broad term for tax concessions, possibly including rizqas).386 Although it is not wholly clear that the new edict caused the change in policy, the arrival of the silahdar is directly followed by a discussion of new registers designed by Mehmed Ali’s government to facilitate the collection of taxes from both tax farms and rizqas. Clearly the possibility of taxing the rizqas is of great – and worrying – significance for al-Jabartī. These early Mehmed Ali-era measures, introduced briefly and vaguely, are then traced to more specific endowment-related measures taken under Husrev Pasha, which are discussed at length.

As described in the previous chapter, the events that ultimately caused ʿUmar

Makram’s downfall were the protests at al-Azhar, based mostly on rumors that rizqa and

385Mehmet Ali Beyhan, “Râmiz Abdullah Paşa,” DİA. 386 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, IV, 93. 145 usyā land would be taxed in a single Delta province, because it was (correctly) believed that this policy would eventually spread. In the wake of the failure of these protests and the deposition of ʿUmar Makram, the most immediate effect was that the control of

Egypt’s many religious institutions, largely managed via waqf appointments, began to be reshuffled. Many of the spoils went to ʿUmar Makram’s scholarly rivals. The pasha made

Shaykh al-Mahdī, for example, the administrator of the waqf of the Sinan Pasha Mosque in Būlāq and of the tomb of Imām al-Shāfiʿī, founder of Egypt’s most widespread school of Islamic law, located in al-Qarāfa cemetery.387 Only days after ʿUmar Makram’s exile from Cairo, court records indicate that Mehmed Ağa Kethüda, Mehmed Ali’s deputy, had assumed control of the Fāṭimid-era mosque of al-Ḥākim, as well as its madrasa and various waqfs.388 Although the document does not specify who had managed these institutions before, it seems likely that this transfer was also connected to ʿUmar

Makram’s fall.

Al-Jabartī emphasizes the personal ambitions of leading scholars such as al-

Mahdī, but Mehmed Ali Pasha was already putting control of Egypt’s endowments into the hands of his close allies. In addition to appointing his kethüda to supervise a number of religiously-oriented endowments, the pasha also made his şimşirci (sword-bearer)

Hasan Ağa supervisor of a small Sufi shrine in 1222/1807.389 This was a sign of things to come because Mehmed Ali, a thoroughgoing practitioner of “household government,”390

387 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, IV, 99. 388 Maḥkamat Miṣr al-Sharʿiyya, daftar no. 25 (new code: 1017-003525, Years 1221-1226), no. 352 (12 Rajab 1224), DWQ. 389 Maḥkamat Miṣr al-Sharʿiyya, daftar no. 25 (new code: 1017-003525, Years 1221-1226), no. 82 (end of Rabīʿ al-Thānī 1222), DWQ. 390 Robert Hunter, Egypt Under the Khedives, 1805-1879: From Household Government to Modern 146 sought to place his clients in virtually every sphere of Egyptian society, including its religious institutions.

Even more significant was Muḥammad al-Maḥruqī, the scion of a line of renowned merchants; his father Aḥmad had served as head of the consortium of overseas merchants (shāhbandar)391 under the duumvirate of Murad and İbrahim Beys and later held key positions under the French and the Ottoman occupations, including director of the mint (nāẓir al-ḍarbkhāna).392 After his father’s death, the younger Maḥruqī inherited the latter position and apparently that of shāhbandar, just prior to the ascension of

Mehmed Ali Pasha. He continued to amass new positions, as attested in the court records; for example, in 1225/1810, he was appointed supervisor of an eighteenth-century wakāla

(an urban caravanserai)393 associated with the coffee trade.394 More importantly for our purposes, al-Maḥruqī benefited directly from ʿUmar Makram’s exile because in

1228/1813, four years after the latter’s expulsion, the naqīb’s largest endowments were finally confiscated. In that year, the court registers declare al-Maḥruqī’s appointment as supervisor of the Manṣūrī Hospital and supervisor of the (presumably gigantic) “estate”

(mīrāth) of Abdurrahman Kethüda, which must have been a series of waqfs. These posts were managed in practice by ʿUmar Makram’s wakīl, Shaykh Muṣṭafā al-Yamanī,395 who would probably have been expelled from Cairo alongside his patron, so the document

Bureaucracy (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1984), 14-27. 391 Raymond, Artisans et comerçants au Caire, II, 579-582. 392 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, III, 323-326. 393 On the function of wakālas, see Raymond, Artisans et comerçants au Caire, I, 251-260. 394 Maḥkamat Miṣr al-Sharʿiyya, daftar no. 25 (new code: 1017-003525, Years 1221-1226), no. 437 (Jumadā al-Awwal 1225), DWQ. 395 ʿUmar Makram’s library also included a history of the city of Zabīd, among other Yemen-related manuscripts: Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya, Fihris maktabat Makram, 76. 147 justifies the office transfer by ḥukm farāgh (judgment of vacancy).396 This is the language through which an eminently political act is made legal in the eyes of an Islamic court.

The four-year delay between ʿUmar Makram’s exile and the confiscation of his endowments is a sign of the caution that Mehmed Ali Pasha employed in his interactions with the elite shaykhs. Although al-Jabartī emphasizes the pasha’s greed and ambition, archival documents demonstrate that the new regime preserved some continuity in its relations with al-Azhar. If the ruznamçe register of 1219/1804-5 signalled a high-water mark of scholarly wealth and power, these salaries were maintained, perhaps surprisingly, at equally high levels. In fact, in a budget register dated to the end of 1227/1812, the

Azharī grain rations were virtually identical to those of eight years earlier. The overall figure provided to the students and indigent persons (fuqarāʾ wa-mujāwwirīn) of the

Azhar quarter remained exactly 2487 ardabbs of grain. With minor variations, the same was true of the major riwāqs. The only discernible difference was a handful of new salaries, including one for the pasha’s kethüda (murattab al-kaḥyā katkhudā): an estimable 658 ardabbs of grain.397

Even in al-Jabartī’s chronicle, which depicts the pasha as cunning and the elite shaykhs as craven, Mehmed Ali’s conciliatory policy is sometimes noticeable. In one case, the pasha’s use of forced labor in a building project – which had already been attempted by Husrev Pasha – earns a stern rebuke from Shaykh al-Mahdī and a surprisingly explicit threat of deposition, which caused Mehmed Ali to relent.398 Al-

396 Maḥkamat Miṣr al-Sharʿiyya, daftar no. 25 (new code: 1017-003525, Years 1228-1230), no. 1 (13 Rajab 1228), DWQ. 397 Dīwān al-Rūznāmja, daftar no. 6105 (new code: 3001-012941, Years 1226-1227), DWQ. 398 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, IV, 108. 148

Jabartī does strongly emphasize the ingratitude of the government after Shaykh al-Sādāt’s betrayal of ʿUmar Makram, vividly describing confiscations that apparently occurred after the death of Muḥammad Abū al-Anwār al-Sādāt and the installment of his nephew

Aḥmad Abū al-Iqbāl (d. 1273).399 The Sādāt family did lose control of the Shrine of

Ḥusayn to Muḥammad al-Maḥrūqī, and an edict issued by the pasha in 1227/1812 began the consolidation of the Bakrī family’s control over Egypt’s Sufi orders,400 an important nineteenth-century phenomenon. On the other hand, Abū al-Anwār al-Sādāt cultivated a close relationship with İsa Ağa, who became Chief Eunuch under Mahmud II,401 a valuable connection for reasons already mentioned. For the rest of the century, the Sādāt lineage retained its aristocratic status.402

Mehmed Ali moved cautiously because he was planning to alter the tax-exempt status of rizqa land, the key source of income for many ʿulamāʾ. A meeting on the question of taxation was held in 1225/1810 at the home of İbrahim Bey (later Pasha),

Mehmed Ali’s illustrious son who was then defterdar of Egypt. It was at this point that the taxation of endowed lands was proposed; al-Jabartī puts the suggestion itself into the mouth of Eyüp Kethüda al-Fallāḥ, a regimental officer. Because the history of the Fallāḥ household stretches back to the early eighteenth century,403 it seems that Egypt’s local

399 Ibid., 196. 400 For a translation of the edict, see Frederic de Jong, Ṭuruq and Ṭuruq-linked Institutions in Nineteenth Century Egypt: A Historical Study in Organizational Dimensions of Islamic Mysticism (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1978), 192-193. 401 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, IV, 119-120. On İsa Ağa, see Sicill-i Osmani, III, 612. Court registers also show a vast set of waqfs managed by Aḥmad Abū al-Iqbāl: Maḥkamat Miṣr al-Sharʿiyya, daftar no. 28 (new code: 1017-003528, Years 1228-1230), no. 233 (Rabīʿ al-Awwal 1228), DWQ. 402 For an overview, see Muḥammad Tawfīq Bakrī, Kitāb Bayt al-Sādāt al-Wafāʼiyya (Cairo: Maktabat al- Thaqāfa al-Dīniyya, 2004). 403 Hathaway, The Politics of Households, 54. Eyüp Kethüda al-Fallāḥ’s biography can found in Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, IV, 296. 149 military elite was also willing to reduce the wealth of the ʿulamāʾ. Shaykh al-Sharqāwī, the Shaykh al-Azhar, did not hesistate to call the officer evil to his face, but it was too late. The pasha justified such taxation by arguing that the state of disrepair of so many of

Egypt’s mosques and public works demonstrated the irrelevance of rizqa holdings.404

This was essentially the same argument that Arif Efendi put forth a half century later, claiming that waqfs had become “food for the foolish” and that most waqfs

(including rizqa land) had not provided any income at all to their intended beneficiaries.

In addition, he criticizes the Egyptian beys who gathered wealth unjustly (min al-ḥalāl wa-l-ḥarām) and preferred to create family waqfs (singular waqf ahlī) as a corrupt way of passing on resources to their children and wives.405 This criticism of the family waqf, and not just the misuse of rizqas, points to the more radical limitations on endowments that developed later in the Mehmed Ali period.

The imposition of taxes on rizqa lands was carried out in 1229/1814, in conjunction with the famous abolition of tax farming (iltizām).406 The seizure of Egypt’s tax farms prompted a petition from the leading shaykhs, written by al-Mahdī, and public protests by a large group of women, as had occurred on previous occasions. However, the measure seems not to have provoked universal outrage from the various classes of

ʿulamāʾ. Significantly, the Azharīs did not cease their teaching, despite the disturbing

404 Ibid., 123-124. 405 Arif Mehmed Efendi, ʿIbar al-bashar, I, 86-87. 406 On changes in taxation and land tenure in the early Mehmed Ali period, see Cuno, The Pasha’s Peasants, 103-120. The seizure of Upper Egypt’s tax farms occurred two years earlier, in 1227/1812: al- Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, IV, 141-142. 150 protests.407 The protesters were also said to be mostly “military wives,” but not necessarily other classes of women.

On the other hand, the new policies obviously did threaten the interests of

Egyptian scholars of all backgrounds: the taxation and strict auditing of rizqa land throughout Egypt. The revenues from rizqa land were henceforth to be divided evenly between the beneficiaries and the provincial treasury. Furthermore, endowments that had not been verified after the arrival of the Ottomans in 1216/1801 would be confiscated. In discussing these events, al-Jabartī describes the negative impact of rizqa confiscations on mosques and religious ceremonies (al-masājid wa-l-ʿashāʾir), but he is also highly critical of the mismanagement of Egyptian endowments. He is in agreement with Arif

Efendi on the overall situation prior to reform: “Most of the administrations of the great districts [of rizqa land]… were without beneficiaries.”408 At the same time, an equal emphasis is placed on the new government’s caprice and harshness in carrying out its policies.

Modern scholars have justifiably asked whether the “hard times” for al-Azhar and the Egyptian ʿulamāʾ, visible in al-Jabartī’s account, were as widespread and severe as he implies.409 For example, a panegyric history of the early Mehmed Ali era, written by the

Azharī shaykh Ibn al-Rajabī in 1238/1822-1823, makes no mention of ʿUmar Makram or any betrayal of the Egypt’s scholarly classes. Ibn al-Rajabī also expresses severe disdain

407 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, IV, 203-204. 408 “Muʿẓam idārāt dawāʾir ʿuẓamāʾ al-nawāḥī wa-tawassuʿātuhim wa-maḍāyyufuhim allatī kānat taḥt aydihim bi-ghayr istiḥqāq….” For his description of these changes, see al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, IV, 209-211. 409 E.g., Cuno, “Ideology and Juridical Discourse in Ottoman Egypt: The Uses of the Concept of Irṣād,” 161. 151 for the Egyptian grandees of the pre-Mehmed Ali era, a highly likely motivation for his support for Mehmed Ali Pasha. This antipathy toward Ottoman Egyptian military elites may well be sincere, because he writes that he himself had been oppressed by two of these men in particular, a Janissary ağa known as Zülfikar and a client of Lacin Bey,410 who plundered Ibn al-Rajabī’s share (ḥiṣṣa) of a tax farm.411 If this is representative, could the stability of Mehmed Ali’s rule have perhaps benefited Egypt’s Muslim scholars overall?

Alas, the answer is probably not. Al-Azhar’s grain rations did remain considerable for many years (e.g, in 1233/1818-1819),412 and the new policies did not target all of Egypt’s religious institutions or the endowments that supported them.

However, there is a palpable change in atmosphere in the Egyptian court registers around the time of the new tax policies. In the waqf appointment register of 1228-1230 (1813-

1815), Turkish-style names (e.g., “al-Islāmbūlī,” “al-Qibrizlī”) and ranks such as ağa outnumber appointments of Azharīs, in contrast to those of previous years. In this period, rather than funding scholarship or pious works, endowments are more often an instrument to support Mehmed Ali’s government and policy goals: the Sudanese slave

410 Lacin Bey (d. 1201/1787), who was killed fighting Cezayirli Hasan Pasha, was an ally of İbrahim Bey: al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, II, 92, 109, 133; Ibid., III, 63. 411 Ibn al-Rajabī, Tārīkh al-wazīr Muḥammad ʿAlī Bāshā, 114. This event may have occurred decades earlier, if this is the same Lacin Bey mentioned by al-Jabartī. Unfortunately, al-Rajabī’s date of birth is unknown. 412 Grain rations in 1233/1818 had not fallen, but also had not grown, since the beginning of Mehmed Ali’s governorship: Dīwān al-Rūznāmja, daftar 3001-0012952 (Year 1233), DWQ. 152 trade,413 the management of customs imposts at Būlāq,414 and the cultivation of ties with

Ottoman eunuchs.415

The pasha’s relationship with Ottoman imperial eunuchs was highly sensitive due to the eunuchs’ control of the Awqāf al-Ḥaramayn, as well as their influence in the Holy

Cities themselves. For this reason, in the first inshāʾ (epistolary) collection printed at the

Būlāq Press, that of the secretary (divan efendisi) Hayret Efendi (d. 1240/1824-1825), letters to the Chief Eunuchs are given pride of place at the beginning of the text, before even the letters to grand viziers.416 This collection includes genuine letters, similar to letters found in the Egyptian archives. Regarding the endowments, despite the continuing presence of imperial eunuchs in Egypt, Mehmed Ali succeeded in securing the appointment of his own agents as the Chief Eunuch’s wakīl: first the kethüda Mehmed

Lazoğlu in 1227/1812; later Ahmed Ağa, brother of the kethüda, who held the position until at least 1233/1218.417 According to al-Jabartī, Ahmed Ağa employed “devilish scribes” who, in effect, continued the work toward regulating and/or seizing endowed lands, 418 begun under Yusuf Pasha. As a result, Mehmed Ali’s letters to the Chief

413 Maḥkamat Miṣr al-Sharʿiyya, daftar no. 28 (new code: 1017-003528, Year 1228-1230), no. 31 (End of Dhu al-Ḥijja 1228), DWQ. Al-Maḥrūqī and Shaykh al-Bakrī seem to have been involved in the slave trade as well: Maḥkamat Miṣr al-Sharʿiyya, daftar no. 28 (new code: 1017-003528, Year 1228-1230), no. 209 (End of Dhu al-Ḥijja 1228), DWQ. 414 Maḥkamat Miṣr al-Sharʿiyya, daftar no. 28 (new code: 1017-003528, Year 1228-1230), no. 6 (ca. Rajab 1228), DWQ. 415 Maḥkamat Miṣr al-Sharʿiyya, daftar no. 28 (new code: 1017-003528, Year 1228-1230), no. 10 (5 Ramaḍān 1228), DWQ; Ibid., no. 198 (ca. Rajab 1228), DWQ. The eunuch in these cases was Cezayirli Ali Ağa, who became Ağa of the Old Palace shortly thereafter: Sicill-i Osmani, III, 556. 416 Hayret Darendevi, İnşa-yı Hayret Efendi (Būlāq: Dār al-Ṭibāʿa al-ʿĀmira, 1240 [1824-25]), 8-62. 417 Under Mehmed Ali, clients of the palace initially remained the supervisors of the Awqāf al-Ḥaramayn: Taqwīm al-Nīl, II, 221, 237. Then, in 1227/1812, Mehmed Lazoğlu was appointed wakīl of the Chief Eunuch: al-Jabarti, IV, 145. An appointment deed to this position for Ahmed Ağa is preserved in Hayret Efendi’s collection: Hayret Darendevi, İnşa-yı Hayret Efendi, 8-9. 418 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, IV, 158. 153

Eunuchs mostly deal with supplies to the Holy Cities from these endowments, not their direct management. This did not mean, however, that the eunuchs and their clients lost all influence in Egypt; for example, probably just after the reconquest of the Holy Cities in

1233/1818, a hefty stipend of eighty paras per day was assigned to Abdullah Ağa, the chief of the eunuchs who guarded the Prophet’s tomb in Medina (a post very often held by a former Chief Eunuchs),419 and this income was to be given to Cevher Ağa, another eunuch who was the representative of the imperial treasury in Egypt.420 As we will see, such stipends were part and parcel of Mehmed Ali’s pan-Ottoman charm offensive, directed at a very wide range of high officials.

The trend toward sidelining Azharīs from their eighteenth-century roles in favor of more politically useful actors continued through the 1820s, and clients of the pasha replaced Azharīs and religious dignitaries from various Sufi orders on numerous occasions. In 1238/1823, Muḥammad al-Maḥrūqī, ever the loyal surrogate of the pasha, assumed control over another staggering series of waqfs, including the imperial endowment of the Mamlūk Sultan Barsbāy (d. 841/1438), which had been in the possession of the head of the Demirdaşiyye Sufi order,421 a predominantly Turcophone order with deep roots in Egypt.422 Thus, it seems that speaking Turkish did not generate a favored status in the eyes of Mehmed Ali Pasha.

419 Hathaway, Politics of Households, 141. 420 Hayret Darendevi, İnşa-yı Hayret Efendi, 10-11. Cevher Ağa was a eunuch from the Ottoman palace, not a client of Mehmed Ali Pasha: Sicill-i Osmani, II, 92. 421 Maḥkamat Miṣr al-Sharʿiyya, daftar no. 31 (new code: 1017-003530, Year 1235-1237), no. 114 (14 Shaʿbān 1238), DWQ. 422 Muhammed Seyyid el-Celyend, “Muhammed Demirtaşî,” DİA. 154

Of course, supervisors of state-backed endowments were necessarily creatures of government patronage, not autonomous intellectuals, but it was also true that non-elite

Azharīs were losing control of endowments in general, not only rizqa lands. To give a prosaic example, a certain Ahmad Ağa, identified as Urfalı (i.e., from the southeastern

Anatolian city of Urfa), was appointed supervisor of the shrine of the holy man (al-ʿārif billah) ʿAbd Allāh Abū Shaʿbān al-Rammāḥ, and in doing so he replaced a deceased

Azharī.423 In the same month, another Urfalı took charge of weighing duties (wazn bi-l- qabbān) at a large group of caravanserais (singular khān), mostly near al-Azhar, replacing a certain Shaykh Ḥasan ʿAbd Allāh al-Qabbānī, a resident of the quarter of al-

Azhar.424 This is not to say that Egyptian ʿulamāʾ were actually excluded from managing

Egypt’s many endowed institutions – elite scholar-officials were still very powerful – but the sudden presence of Anatolian non-scholars is certainly of interest.

Significantly, this was a period in which Mehmed Ali was actively subsidizing the immigration of large numbers of men from Turcophone parts of the Ottoman Empire, who then held a wide range of positions.425 These newcomers were wholly dependent on the pasha, unlike the indigenous and indigenized ʿulamāʾ of al-Azhar and the Sufi orders.

The supervisor-ships lost by Azharīs in the preceding examples were precisely the kinds

423 Maḥkamat Miṣr al-Sharʿiyya, daftar no. 32 (new code: 1017-003531, Years 1238-1239), no. 69 (20 Muḥarram 1238), DWQ. 424 Maḥkamat Miṣr al-Sharʿiyya, daftar no. 32 (new code: 1017-003531, Years 1238-1239), no. 79 (8 Muḥarram 1238), DWQ. 425 For many examples of Mehmed Ali’s subsidies for immigration during the early 1820s, see Muḥammad Ṣābir ʿArab, ed., Al-Sulṭa wa-ʿarḍḥālāt al-maẓlūmīn min Muḥammad ʿAlī (1820-1823 mīlādī) (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat Dār al-Wathāʾiq al-Qawmiyya, 2009), 368, 371. 155 of positions that could potentially offer financial autonomy to Muslim scholars, which was a problem for the new regime.

As the case regarding al-Azhar’s caravanserais already hints, Egyptian ʿulamāʾ under Mehmed Ali Pasha were in a situation parallel to (and linked to) that of the merchants. As Pascale Ghazaleh has recently observed, in early nineteenth-century Egypt

“existing social and business networks were superseded, as a new group of allies gathered around the viceroy. During this period, state accreditation, rather than trustworthiness or reputation among peers, became the most important factor in establishing a career as a merchant.”426 Just as the development of the European public sphere depended on a powerful bourgeoisie, Egypt’s merchants and its Muslim intellectuals rose and fell in unison.

To be clear, Mehmed Ali did not confiscate Egypt’s endowments as a whole, and certainly not all privately held waqfs. Instead, he taxed and strictly limited the extent of rizqa land, a form of landholding the status of which was often conflated with, but was not identical to conventional waqf. Concurrently, the pasha strictly limited scholarly access to endowment supervisory positions. In a sense, the heated debate among eighteenth-century jurists concerning the nature of irṣād (i.e., rizqa, endowments from the public treasury) was decided to the detriment of those who argued that irṣād should be treated as equivalent to waqf. Thus, the majority opinion of Egyptian jurists (and not coincidentally their livelihoods) was ignored according to the needs of the authorities.

426 Pascale Ghazaleh, “Trading in Power: Merchants and the State in Nineteenth Century Egypt,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 45 (2013): 72. 156

After this twist of fate, however, endowment law did not cease to be a major concern of jurists. Instead, the focus of debate shifted from irṣād, now firmly under the control of the regime, to the nature of private waqf itself. The more radical phase was still to come, but already in the 1820s, there is evidence of debates between those scholars who advocated interpretations of Islamic law congenial to viceregal autocracy and those who did not. A well-preserved manuscript of the late 1820s, kept in the library of the

Ḥanafī riwāq of al-Azhar, records another dispute between Alexandrian and Cairene

ʿulamāʾ, this time concerning the jurisprudence of the waqf inheritance. Entitled Risāla fī al-waqf (Treatise on Waqf), the manuscript was composed by the Ḥanafī mufti of Egypt,

Muḥammad Amīn al-Mahdī (d. 1247/1831), who succeeded his father as mufti in

1230/1815. The essay recounts a case heard at the Dīwān al-ʿĀlī (the governor’s council) most likely in 1246/1829, in which a man by the name of Qāsim seeks to control half of the income (rīʿ, “proceeds”) from a waqf endowed by his grandfather. Because this eighteenth-century family waqf had reached the third generation, there were then three beneficiaries instead of two, as specified in the original deed.

Using abstruse reasoning, al-Mahdī debates the Algerian (“Cezayirli”) Ḥanafī scholar Muḥammad ibn al-ʿAnnābī (d. 1267/1851).427 Ibn al-ʿAnnābī asserts that Qāsim can claim half of the waqf’s income (rather than one-third), arguing that endowments should be kept intact by whole branches of a family, not divided equally among all descendants of the endower. There may also have been a gender element in this, because

Qāsim’s suit was against two female relatives, and al-Mahdī points out that the original

427 For more on this scholar and his background, see chapter 5. 157 deed did not favor men over women.428 Ultimately, al-Mahdī determined the outcome of the case, and so the majority opinion of Cairo’s ʿulamāʾ prevailed over that of (some of) their Alexandrian interlocutors.

As usual, it is difficult to determine the political valence of such a legal dispute, but the involvement of Ibn al-ʿAnnābī is very suggestive, given that his later views on waqf law were quite shocking to many jurists, but very congenial to Mehmed Ali Pasha.

Perhaps he sought to establish greater flexibility in the judicial application of endowment conditions (shurūṭ), potentially a boon to the state, or to reduce the interminable complexity of waqf disputes. In any case, more treatises on the jurisprudence of waqf and inheritance followed in the later years of the Mehmed Ali era, and it seems that those who favored a more literal (and thus more expansive and secure) reading of the legal privileges of endowments were on the defensive. As a result, many Azharīs, on a personal level, found it harder to earn a living and therefore faced the same dilemma as

Egypt’s merchants: the need for “state accreditation” where once none was needed.

C. Al-Azhar in the Shadow of Mehmed Ali Pasha, 1809-1821

These controversial questions seem to have been ignored by Mehmed Ali’s supporters, who preferred to defend his rule in other ways. The claims of Mehmed Ali

Pasha’s government to religious legitimacy are explained in a straightforward fashion in the first chapter of Ibn al-Rajabī’s chronicle.429 According to this view, Mehmed Ali

428 Muḥammad Amīn al-Mahdī, Risāla fī al-waqf (Cairo: Al-Azhar University Library, Fiqh Ḥanafī, MS No. 65923), fol. 2r. 429 Ibn al-Rajabī, Tārīkh al-wazīr Muḥammad ʿAlī Bāshā, 83-92. 158

Pasha put an end to corrupt judicial appointments, patronized the various schools of law

(not only the Ḥanafīs, it is claimed), and efficiently maintained Egypt’s mosque infrastructure. This apologetic chronicle indirectly alludes to the controversies surrounding rizqa land by claiming that Mehmed Ali had cared for many ruined mosques and provided salaries to custodians of important sites such as the Shrine of Ḥusayn and the Tomb of Imām al-Shāfiʿī. 430

Ibn al-Rajabī’s mention of the pasha’s soldiers (ajnād) who repaired ruined mosques and Sufi establishments is partly a reference to the activities of Silahdar

Süleyman Ağa. How to restore damaged religious sites seems to have been a major question of the period; for example, the only panegryic poem dedicated to ʿUmar

Makram in the dīwān of Ismāʿīl al-Khashshāb praises the naqīb as a reviver of such mosques.431 Süleyman Ağa is accused by al-Jabartī of using the remains of these sites to build large and profitable caravanserais and marketplaces and condemned as “the greatest calamity,”432 but it is clear that Mehmed Ali’s government was not responsible for the ruin of mosques. There was a controversy over how to rebuild urban spaces after years of instability, and despite some success, the government took criticism over the manner in which sites were restored.

For Ibn al-Rajabī, the ʿulamāʾ, or at least the elite scholar-officials, remained in authority, because the pasha’s kethüda regularly consulted with them in order to make

430 Ibid., 194-195. 431 “Aḥyayta yā ibn Rasūl Allāh mundarasan / min al-masājid min athār amjād”: Ismāʻīl ibn Saʻd al- Khashshāb, Dīwān Ibn al-Khashshāb, ed. ʻAbd al-Ḥamīd Hindāwī (Cairo: Dār al-Āfāq al-ʻArabiyya, 2006), 66. 432 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, IV, 313-314. 159 policy. (This was true.) Still, the author’s vague and defensive claims of Mehmed Ali’s respect for the ʿulamāʾ seem rather unconvincing in the context of Egyptian scholars’ political and administrative defeats. This account is contemporary with the events it describes, but it is far from unbiased. In fact, the History of the Vizier Mehmed Ali Pasha

(Tārīkh al-wazīr Muḥammad ʿAlī Bāshā) was commissioned by the pasha himself. He first approached Muḥammad al-ʿArūsī (d. 1245/1828), who was then Shaykh al-Azhar, but al-ʿArūsī suggested Ibn al-Rajabī, about whom little is known.433 He was an Azharī, a

Shāfīʿī by legal school, and a Shādhilī by Sufi affiliation; his biography indicates that he was also the author of a work on mystical theology, which would presumably shed light on his Sufism. All in all, this was not an unusual background, which indicates that

Mehmed Ali Pasha could indeed find support among some mainstream Azharīs, even allowing for flattery and exaggeration in his writing.

This must have been a minority perspective among scholars, however. Aside from al-Jabartī’s intense criticism of the pasha and his agents, there are two interesting pieces of contemporary literary evidence of Azharī antipathy toward Mehmed Ali from Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār (d. 1250/1835) during the decade after ʿUmar Makram’s exile. These writings have only come to light in recent years, subsequent to the publication of Peter Gran’s book-length study of al-ʿAṭṭār,434 an Azharī shaykh, medical doctor, and intellectual polymath. Both of these sets of documents indicate pronounced antipathy toward

Mehmed Ali’s regime and toward Ottoman centralization more generally. This is

433 Ibid., 54. See also ʿUmar Riḍā Kaḥḥāla, Muʿjam al-muʾallifīn, tarājim muṣannifī al-kutub al-ʻArabiyya, 15 vols. (Damascus: Muʾassisat al-Risāla, 1957-1961), I, 678. 434 Peter Gran, Islamic Roots of Capitalism. 160 especially interesting because al-ʿAṭṭār later emerged as the pasha’s most important scholarly ally.

First, the Israeli Arab scholar Butrus Abu-Manneh has translated and analyzed a group of letters sent by al-ʿAṭṭār to the Ḥanafī mufti of Jerusalem, Ṭāhir al-Ḥusaynī, whom al-ʿAṭṭār had met during his journey to Istanbul and Syria. The letters that can be dated are from between 1225/1811 and 1229/1814, a crucial period for the history of the

ʿulamāʾ in Egypt, and they largely deal with the sale of books to Shaykh Ṭāhir, including books from the library of his friend ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Jabartī. Al-ʿAṭṭār discusses the difficulty of find book buyers at the time, so Abu-Manneh reads the sale of books as an indication of economic hard times for scholars.435

One other passage in the letters strongly supports this interpretation. After his arrival in Cairo in 1229/1814, al-ʿAṭṭār got married and then faced financial difficulties, writing, “I had to work hard to secure a living as my situation and the prevailing conditions are not unknown to you. I have no means to provide a living except teaching which is an unsaleable commodity nowadays, especially if added to it [my] indolence and unwillingness to associate with people.”436 Although this is an indirect commentary on

Egyptian conditions, it does seem to indicate deterioration in the condition of Egypt’s scholars, as a result of the “prevailing conditions.”

Even more valuable are Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār’s marginal notes on the autograph manuscript of al-Jabartī’s chronicle ʿAjāʾib al-athār. These brief notes were first

435 Butrus Abu-Manneh, “Four Letters of Šayḫ Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār to Šayḫ Ṭāhir al-Ḥusaynī of Jerusalem,” Arabica 50, no. 1 (2003): 84-85, 92. 436 Ibid., 94. 161 published in 2013 by Shmuel Moreh as footnotes to the critical edition of the chronicle.

These comments were written during al-ʿAṭṭār’s travels to the Turkish-speaking parts of the empire (bilād al-rūmiyya) and later Syria, a journey that began in 1217/1803. In contrast to the less direct evidence of al-ʿAṭṭār’s views found in his letters, his marginalia are downright vitriolic. His hostile outburst against the Ottoman army of Yusuf Ziya

Pasha has already been mentioned.437

Other marginalia are even more revealing, especially those dating to the first decade of Mehmed Ali’s rule. One of these comments, at the end of Shawwāl 1224 (late

December 1809), asserts that the most powerful Muslim statesmen of his time are the

Albanians (akbar al-wuzarā al-islamiyyīn [sic] fī hadha al-waqt wuzarā al-arnāwūṭ).438

He specifically mentions four governors: İbrahim Pasha of Scutari (present-day Shkodër,

Albania), Ali Pasha of Morea, İbrahim Pasha of Berat (present-day Albania),439 and

Tepedelenli Ali Pasha of Ioannina (Turkish Yanya, in present-day Greece). The last was the best-known of these figures, famous for maintaining an automonous regime despite intense pressure from successive Ottoman sultans.440 Al-ʿAṭṭār disdains these figures, but his hostility derives from a belief that the quality of Ottoman viziers had declined, not

437 See chapter 2. 438 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjā’ib, ed. Moreh, III, 313; see also Shmuel Moreh, “The Egyptian Historian ʻAbd al- Raḥmān al-Jabartī: His Life, Works, Autographs, Manuscripts and the Historical Sources of ʻAjāʼib al- Ǎthār,” Journal of Semitic Studies, Supplement 32 (2014): 344. Moreh misidentifies Tepedelenli Ali Pasha (d. 1822) as Tabdanlī ʿAlī Pasha, following al-ʿAṭṭār’s slight spelling mistake, and incorrectly states that this group of viziers represented the good viziers of the past: Moreh, “The Egyptian Historian ʻAbd al- Raḥmān al-Jabartī,” 216. Al-ʿAṭṭār’s comment gives the impression that he is praising these men, but he is merely stating the fact that they are powerful. Of course, Tepedelenli Ali Pasha was also very much alive at that time. 439 Bārāṭ, in al-ʿAṭṭār’s orthography, is a misspelling of Barāt. İbrahim Pasha was the son of Tepedelenli Ali Pasha. 440 Robert Zens, “Provincial Powers: The Rise of Ottoman Local Notables (Ayan),” History Studies 3, no. 3 (2011): 433-447. 162 from “hatred” for the Ottomans or ethnic hostility toward Albanians, as Moreh contends.441 Elsewhere, he praises the former grand vizier Ragib Pasha,442 a well-known intellectual,443 lamenting that the viziers of his own day could not even correctly pronounce the Fātiḥa (the opening chapter of the Qurʾān).

This lament obviously expresses nostalgia for the past while critiquing the course that Ottoman politics had taken. Still, why did he focus on the Albanians in particular? I believe that these comments are best read alongside his furious tirades against the ruling regime in Egypt. His passionate rhetoric in a marginal comment written in 1226/1811 is worth quoting in full: “May God scatter the outrageous tyrants who have transgressed the boundaries and who have in Egypt commited oppressive acts (maẓālim) that were never perpetrated by the Magians (al-majūs) and the Jews. May God destroy them as He did

ʿĀd and Thamūd.444 Amīn, amīn, amīn.”445 A separate comment from the next year prays that those who try to destroy Egypt be dispersed soon (ʿan qarīb).446 These outbursts are unquestionably attacks on the ruling order in Egypt at the time, that of Mehmed Ali

Pasha. Interestingly, these comments essentially continue his rhetorical assault against

Yusuf Ziya Pasha’s army, found in a previous marginal comment; the rhetoric is virtually

441 Moreh, “The Egyptian Historian ʻAbd al-Raḥmān al-Jabartī,” 221. 442 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjā’ib, ed. Moreh, I, 299; see also Moreh, “The Egyptian Historian ʻAbd al-Raḥmān al- Jabartī,” 338. 443 For example, Ragib Pasha was the first major Ottoman poet published by the Būlāq press: İhsanoğlu, The Turks in Egypt and Their Cultural Legacy, 193. 444 For a description of these ancient Arabian cities, see Roberto Tottoli, “ʿĀd,” Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān; Reuven Firestone, “Thamūd,” Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān. 445 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjā’ib, ed. Moreh, III, 313; see also Moreh, “The Egyptian Historian ʻAbd al-Raḥmān al- Jabartī,” 344. Amīn is the Quranic equivalent of “amen.” 446 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjā’ib, ed. Moreh, II, 14; see also Moreh, “The Egyptian Historian ʻAbd al-Raḥmān al- Jabartī,” 340. Moreh does not mention these fascinating outbursts in his analysis of the marginalia: Moreh, “The Egyptian Historian ʻAbd al-Raḥmān al-Jabartī,” 220. 163 identifical (e.g., “transgressed the boundaries”). Thus, scholars such as al-ʿAṭṭār (and al-

Jabartī, as we have seen) did not distinguish between Mehmed Ali’s policies and the policies of the centralizing viziers of the nizam-ı cedid era and beyond.

Al-ʿAṭṭār’s criticisms of the illiterate and/or Albanian viziers should be read in light of his hostility toward Mehmed Ali’s government at this stage in his life. Mehmed

Ali was of course famously illiterate, and his soldiers and administrators were heavily

(albeit far from exclusively) Albanian in composition. The army that formed his initial power base in Egypt was of course primarily Albanian. In addition, Mehmed Ali often misrepresented himself as Albanian, at least to European visitors.447 The fact that French consuls residing in Egypt in 1805 believed that Mehmed Ali was himself Albanian implies that there was widespread confusion about Mehmed Ali’s origin in Egypt at the time, as noted above,448 a confusion that persists to this day. By attacking “ignorant” viziers, many of them Albanian, Shaykh Ḥasan is also critiquing the ruling regime in his own homeland.

Finally, the date of his comment attacking the “tyrants” in Egypt is worth noting:

Ṣafar 1226 (March-April 1811) was a year and a half after the exile of ʿUmar Makram, a major turning point in the eyes of his friend al-Jabartī. Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār, who was intensely homesick for Cairo and planning to return, was surely aware of events there. Therefore, it is highly likely that his political attitudes were shaped by the turbulence in Egypt at that time, especially the conflict between Mehmed Ali Pasha and the majority of the ʿulamāʾ.

447 Fahmy, All the Pasha’s Men, 1. 448 See chapter 2. 164

Al-ʿAṭṭār expresses a virtual fixation on his homeland (waṭanī al-aṣlī). For example, 1226/1811, al-ʿAṭṭār asks God to allow him to return to Egypt so that he can return to al-Azhar, and he goes so far as to call Jaffa, where he was residing at the time,

“the ugliest of the lands of God and the lowest of spots.”449 Moreh reads this homesickness not only as a form of patriotism, but also as the beginning of Egyptian nationalism.450 This reading cannot be sustained for a number of reasons. First and most obviously, a love of homeland, even the phrase al-waṭan al-aṣlī, was a longstanding part of Ottoman culture, so the idea that this sort of feeling has something to do with modern nationalism is anachronistic. Second, the boundaries transgressed by the Ottoman army and Mehmed Ali’s government were not national or geographical, as Moreh argues, but rather religio-political. Ragib Pasha, who served as governor of Egypt in the mid- eighteenth century, did not need to be a native Egyptian to win al-ʿAṭṭār’s praise. The controversies of Ottoman politics in the age of the nizam-ı cedid permeated the entire

Ottoman world (and indeed beyond, into Iran)451 and cannot be reduced to a matter of budding nationalism in a single territory.

These comments are expressions of political ideology in the broadest sense, but more specifically, the politics of al-Azhar remained frustrating and sometimes

449 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjā’ib, ed. Moreh, III, 313; Moreh, “The Egyptian Historian ʻAbd al-Raḥmān al-Jabartī,” 344. 450 These notes signify, he writes in his Arabic introduction, “the beginning of the consciousness of patriotic belonging to Egypt and national belonging to the Arabs rather than religious belonging to the Ottoman Empire.” (bidāyat al-waʿī bi-l-imtināʾ al-waṭanī ilā Miṣr wa-l-qawmī ilā al-ʿArab badalan min al-imtināʾ al-dīnī al-sulṭa al-ʿuthmāniyya): Shmuel Moreh, introduction to ʿAjā’ib, ed. Moreh, 13. 451 Following the Ottomans, the Qajars of Iran used the term niẓām-i jadīd to describe the new-style army created by ʿAbbās Mirzā, the governor of Azerbaijan in the early nineteenth century: Encyclopedia Iranica, s.v. “Army vi. a. Qajar Period,” Encyclopedia Iranica 165 humiliating, even for the most powerful shaykhs. In al-Jabartī’s telling, a sordid and deceitful procedure was used to select the new Shaykh al-Azhar after the death of al-

Sharqāwī in 1227/1812. Mehmed Ali claimed that he would accept the decision made by a gathering of Azharī scholars, but the consensus choice of the scholars – the powerful

Muḥammad al-Mahdī – was rejected in favor of Muḥammad al-Shannawānī, the candidate of the minority. Al-Shannawānī did not even teach at al-Azhar itself, but rather at a smaller nearby mosque, al-Fakahānī.452 Al-Shannawānī, fearing al-Mahdī’s anger, went into hiding after his appointment, hardly an auspicious sign for his tenure as Shaykh al-Azhar.

Even Mehmed Ali’s closest scholarly allies were not immune to betrayal. An

Azharī by the name of Muḥammad al-Dawākhilī, one of the conspirators against ʿUmar

Makram and then briefly naqīb al-ashrāf, was for a while a close companion of the pasha, only to be ignominiously exiled from Cairo in 1231/1816 on the grounds that he had behaved arrogantly toward other notables.453 Prominent scholar-officials such as al-

Bakrī and al-Mahdī did continue to hold important offices and supervise lucrative endowments, as the court registers testify, but the pasha’s inner circle became smaller and smaller.

Mehmed Ali clearly inclined more toward the Ottoman qāḍīs than toward the

Azharīs, despite the fact that he could not control the appointments of the former. The convocation of shaykhs in 1227/1812 had been held under the authority of the qāḍī

452 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, IV, 164. 453 Ibid., 243-244. 166

Mustafa Behcet Efendi, a pioneering medical scientist who served as hekimbaşı (chief physician) to Selim III and Mahmud II.454 Behcet Efendi likely had a hand not only in the selection of the non-entity al-Shannawānī over the powerful al-Mahdī, but also in the removal of the independent-minded head of the Syrian riwāq.455 Thus, one could say that

Mehmed Ali relied on the Ottoman ilmiyye in the process of defanging the Azharī public sphere and the leading figures that emerged from that milieu, whatever their geographical backgrounds.

In an administrative coup, the chief qāḍīs managed to eliminate judges from the non-Ḥanafī madhhabs,456 which al-Jabartī adduces as evidence of a general increase in their power. Of course, despite the claims of Ibn al-Rajabī, this was equally a sign of the waning official power of the other madhhabs, particularly the Shāfiʿī and Mālikī schools, which were somewhat more widespread among the Azharīs than the Ḥanafī madhhab.

Al-Jabartī argues that the qāḍīs’ heightened significance was due to the end of the restraint once placed on them by the Egyptian beys; according to this view, the shift in power among scholar-officials in Egypt was not solely attributable to the pasha. Once again, the trends of the Mehmed Ali period can be traced back to the Ottoman occupation of Yusuf Ziya Pasha.

Mehmed Ali was now securely in control and could afford to show mercy to his former opponents. Seeking mutual reconciliation, the pasha and the ex-naqīb residing in

454 Literate in Latin and Italian, Behcet Efendi composed a number of medical manuscripts: Nil Sarı, “Behcet Mustafa Efendi,” DİA. On his role in the reign of Mahmud II, see Uriel Heyd, “The Ottoman Ulema and Westernization in the Time of Selim III and Mahmud II,” 32. 455 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, IV, 164 456 Ibid., 248. 167 the Delta city of Ṭanṭā began to exchange letters. ʿUmar Makram requested that he be allowed to go on pilgrimage to Mecca, a request that implicitly flattered the pasha, who had recently re-conquered the Holy Cities. The expulsion of the “Kharijites” (a term equating the Wahhābīs with an insurgent movement in early Islam that rejected Sunnism and Shī‘ism alike)457 from the Holy Cities was at the core of Mehmed Ali’s religious legitimacy in this period; the earliest biography of the pasha was written during precisely this period to commemorate his defeat of the first Saudi state (1233/1818).458

For his part, the pasha was financially generous to the former naqīb. Archival registers indicate that ʿUmar Makram may have been deprived of his ruznamçe salaries for a few years, but not for long. At the end of 1227 (the beginning of 1813), the gigantic sum of 1829 ardabbs of grain was restored to him and his dependents, far more than any other of the “great shaykhs” received.459 This put him among the wealthiest religious figures in Egypt, even in his exile.

Finally, in 1234/1819, ʿUmar began his pilgrimage and arrived in Cairo to much fanfare.460 He was then given permission to stay in Cairo, where he resided for two years.

Though he had intended to live out his days quietly, most in Cairo still viewed him as a symbol of public opinion and popular participation in politics. In 1821, Mehmed Ali

457 “Kharijite” was a common appellation for rebels in the Ottoman Empire, particularly those deemed heretical, but the term appears with great consistency in descriptions of the Wahhābīs in this period, beginning with the refutation of Wahhābism written by Sulaymān ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (d. ca. 1795), brother of the movement’s founder Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (d. 1206/1792). For this work, see Sulaymān ibn ʻAbd al-Wahhāb al-Najdī, Al-Ṣawāʻiq al-ilāhiyya fī al-radd ʻalā al-Wahhābiyya (Beirut: Dār Dhū al-Fiqār, 1997). 458 Anonymous, Al-Washī wa-l-ṭirāz fī fatḥ al-Ḥijāz (Princeton University Library, Garrett Rare Books and Manuscripts Collection, MS Islamic Manuscripts, Garrett No. 36L). I have not yet been able to access this manuscript. 459 Dīwān al-Rūznāmja, daftar no. 6105 (new code: 3001-012941, Years 1226-1227), DWQ. 460 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, IV, 301. 168 placed another burdensome tax on the Egyptian countryside: individual houses were to be assessed levies of at least five kuruş while those owning multiple houses could be taxed up to twenty kuruş; these were considerable sums for Egyptian peasants, affluent or poor.461 In a dispatch to his kethüda in Rajab 1237 (April 1822), Mehmed Ali wrote that

Shaykh al-Azhar Muḥammad al-ʿArūsī and the Mālikī mufti al-Amīr (known as al-

Ṣaghīr) had endorsed this plan, but that a group of over 200 “dissolute persons”

(falātiyya) and “hashish smokers” (ḥashshāshīn) had staged a public protest. In a follow- up letter, the pasha also blamed ʿUmar Makram for refusing to call on the protestors to stand down.462 According to the twentieth-century Egyptian historian ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-

Rāfiʿī, the protesters had actually compelled the leading shaykhs to present their demands to the pasha’s kethüda in the Citadel. Al-Rāfiʿī also asserts that the pasha thought that

ʿUmar Makram was behind the protests, although in reality he had nothing to do with them.463 Regardless, the incident was enough to prompt ʿUmar’s final exile to Ṭanṭā, where he died before the end of Rabīʿ al-Thānī 1238 (mid-January 1823).464

As the preceding example indicates, contrary to al-Jabartī’s observation that there was “nothing left in the pot” after ʿUmar Makram so far as popular activism was concerned, stability in Cairo was by no means guaranteed. Perhaps for this reason,

Mehmed Ali continued to patronize certain ʿulamāʾ on his own terms; after ʿUmar

Makram’s death, the shaykh’s family even retained control of the tomb (and

461 Abū Ḥadīd, Sīrat al-Sayyid ʿUmar Makram, 215-216. 462 ʿAbbās Ḥāmid, ed., Al-Awāmir wa-l-mukātabāt, I, 58. 463 ʿAbd al-Raḥman Bik al-Rāfiʿī, Tārīkh al-ḥaraka al-qawmiyya wa-taṭawwur niẓām al-ḥukm fī Miṣr, 3 vols. (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Nahḍa, 1929-), III, 94-95. 464 Maḥkamat Miṣr al-Sharʿiyya, daftar no. 32 (new code: 1017-003531, Years 1238-1239), no. 84 (25 Rabīʿ al-Thānī 1238), DWQ. 169 endowments) of Asyut’s most outstanding scholar, Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī (d.

911/1505).465 However, the pasha did not want to allow independent power bases to persist.

Critical narrative accounts do not appear after al-Jabartī’s chronicle breaks off in

1236/1821 – for the very good reason that criticism was met with violence – but this does not mean that religiously inspired critiques of viceregal autocracy had lost their relevance.466 As we will see, archival evidence testifies that Mehmed Ali Pasha was never as all-powerful as he appeared and that thoroughgoing critiques of his rule, often linked to Muslim scholars, continued to circulate. On the other hand, political discourses that buttressed his style of governance, including works written with state patronage, likewise appealed to very specific ideas in Islamic law and were taken seriously by the public at large. We can now turn to examine those ideas directly.

465 Ibid. The family member in question is listed as the sharīf Ṣāliḥ, son of Ḥusayn, son of Muḥammad “the Tall.” If Ḥusayn is the name of ʿUmar Makram’s father, as the biographer Abū Ḥadīd conjectures, then this would be his brother. ʿAbd al-Raḥman al-Rāfiʿī mentions the name Ṣāliḥ as ʿUmar Makram’s grandson (as a conduit for communication with Mehmed Ali), but the Ṣāliḥ in this document cannot have been his grandson: ʿAbd al-Raḥman Bik al-Rāfiʿī, Tārīkh al-ḥaraka al-qawmiyya, III, 93. 466 A nineteenth-century French translator, in contact with the Jabartī family, wrote that al-Jabartī’s own son had been murdered by “assassins”: Alexandre Cardin, “Note biographique du tracteur sur l’auteur” to ʻAbd al-Raḥmān Jabartī with Niqūlā ibn Yūsuf al-Turk, Journal d’Abdurrahman Gabarti, pendant l'occupation française en Égypte: suivi d'un précis de la même campagne, trans. Alexandre Cardin (Paris: Dondey- Dupré, 1838), 2; David Ayalon, “The Historian al-Jabartī and His Background,” Bulletin of the School of African and Oriental Studies 23, no. 2 (1960): 248. Although the identity of this son, a government employee according to Cardin, had been unclear, I was able to confirm that al-Jabartī’s son Khalīl did indeed predecease his father – and that Khalīl was a government employee (“Khalīl Efendi”): Maḥkamat Miṣr al-Sharʿiyya, daftar no. 33 (new code: 1017-003532, Years 1239-1244), no. 149 (27 Ramaḍān 1240), DWQ. Cardin’s use of the term “assassin” suggests that the motivation was political, potentially as retaliation against al-Jabartī himself, although this is not certain. Al-Jabartī was said to have cried himself into blindness as a result of the murder. 170

Chapter 5:

Military and Political Reform in Islamic Discourse

As the progenitor of Egypt’s nineteenth-century modernity, Mehmed Ali is generally not associated with an Islamic political outlook. However, religio-political justifications of reform were in fact an indispensable part of the success of the new

Ottoman policies in the early nineteenth century. State efforts to win over public opinion culminated in the late 1820s with a series of political treatises trumpeting the Islamic necessity of military and political reform, above all, the European-style conscripted armies and their niẓāmī troops. The first of these texts, and probably the most important, was that of Ibn al-ʿAnnābī, a visiting Algerian instructor at al-Azhar, whose treatise had not been commissioned under official patronage but rather had emerged organically from

Egypt’s Islamic public sphere, as I will describe below. Writings of this kind directly answer the fierce objections to reform raised by figures such as al-Jabartī. Although

Mehmed Ali’s repression meant that Egypt’s intelligentsia were no longer free to criticize official policies in their writings, this did not mean that the political attitudes of Egypt’s public sphere had become irrelevant. Winning over public opinion through persuasion continued to be very important, and this required new strategies.

171

A. Ideologies and Context of Military Reform in the Age of Mehmed Ali

Mehmed Ali Pasha was of a practical rather than intellectual bent; after all, he had once boasted to a visiting European, “The only books I ever read… are men’s faces, and I seldom read them amiss.”467 He was said to have been illiterate until late in life, and it may be no coincidence that he and his ruling elite left behind relatively few literary sources. For this reason, in conjunction with archival sources, the history of the bureaucrat Arif Mehmed Efendi, who had migrated from the city of Drama (in today’s

Greece) to Egypt in 1241/1825-6,468 is an important repository of the collective memory of the regime. The first half of this work is devoted to biographies of important officials under Mehmed Ali, but the second is a series of recollections inspired by Lütfi Pasha’s official Ottoman chronicle, the first volume of which was published in 1290/1873.469

Arif Efendi begins his recollections by describing the origins of Mehmed Ali’s new-style army. He writes with pride that the Egyptian troops were the first to bear the name of cihadiyye (i.e., holy warriors),470 but he does not dwell extensively on the religious associations of the new-style army. After all, Mehmed Ali’s most religiously significant act, the reconquest of the Hijaz, was accomplished without military reform.

Instead, Arif points out that Mehmed Ali had been impressed with the French army’s capabilities in Egypt, having seen it in action, and emphasizes the depredations of

467 Charles Augustus Murray, A Short Memoir of Mohammed Ali, Founder of the Vice-royalty of Egypt (London: B. Quaritch, 1898), 4, cited in Fahmy, All the Pasha’s Men, 7. 468 Sicill-i Osmani, III, 274. 469 Ahmed Lutfi, Tarih-i Lutfi, 8 vols. (Istanbul: Matbaa-ı Âmire, 1290-1306 [1873-1889]), I, 420. 470 Arif Mehmed Efendi, ʿIbar al-bashar, II, 1. 172

Ottoman troops in Egypt, arguing that the new-style army brought “joy to the Egyptians” because it was an improvement over its corrupt predecessors, particularly the

Janissaries.471 On the other hand, Arif Efendi acknowledges that mass conscription

“weighed upon their souls.” He portrays Mehmed Ali defensively rebuking a poet for exaggerating the number of troops, insisting that he had not conscripted too many troops.472

Although the efficiency of French troops did inspire him, Ottoman models of military reform were even more central to Mehmed Ali’s politics. Like al-Jabartī,

Mehmed Ali admired Alemdar Mustafa Pasha,473 the complex provincial notable who briefly revived the nizam-ı cedid under the name sekban-ı cedid after the fall of Selim III.

This reflected in large part Mehmed Ali’s antipathy toward the Janissary corps and other entrenched interest groups in the Ottoman military. Furthermore, Khaled Fahmy has already drawn attention to the use of Selim III’s military plans, as opposed to French alternatives, as the basis of Mehmed Ali’s army.474 Most scholars familiar with the period are thus aware of connections between the new-style Egyptian and Ottoman armies.

Even so, the extent of the interconnectedness of military reform in Cairo and

Istanbul in the early 1820s has not yet been sufficiently recognized. For example, Fahmy cites the late nineteenth-century Ottoman historian Lutfi Pasha to the effect that Mehmed

Ali refused to aid in the creation of Mahmud II’s niẓāmī troops in any sense,475 but other

471 Ibid., 1-2. 472 Ibid., 2-3. 473 Ibid., II, 7. 474 Fahmy, All the Pasha’s Men, 79-82. 475 Ibid., 54. 173 sources show this to have been untrue. Interestingly, Ottoman literary sources dealing with the so-called “Auspicious Event” (Vakʿa-i Hayriyye), the Janissary rebellion in

1241/1826 that ended in the destruction of their regiment, indicate that Mehmed Ali’s allies and troops were already playing a major role in Sultan Mahmud II’s reforms.

Rather than importing Europeans, Mahmud found it prudent to rely on Muslim military instructors of military science, so he requested Egyptian officers (of Turkish, Circassian, and Arab origin)476 to train his troops. Just prior to the destruction of the Janissaries, the pasha also donated 10,000 kuruş to the Imperial Arsenal (Tersane-i Amire).477 Within a few years, political exigencies shifted, and tension between Istanbul and Cairo increased, but this does not detract from Mehmed Ali’s willingness to aid Ottoman military reform early on.

Strikingly, Mehmed Ali’s all-important agent in Istanbul (kapı kethüdası), Necip

Mehmed Efendi, was one of two major targets of the Janissaries’ ire during the Vakʿa-i

Hayriyye.478 Necip Efendi, later Necip Pasha, was not only Mehmed Ali’s agent but also supervisor of the Imperial Gunpowder Works (Baruthane-i Amire). Due to his close links with Egyptian military instructors in Istanbul,479 the rebels apparently saw him as a representative of military reform in general; he only barely escaped death, and his home

(hanesi) was sacked.480 In addition, in Esad Efendi’s official account, proponents of

476 Taqwīm al-Nīl, II, 174; see also Esad Efendi, Üss-i Zafer (Istanbul, n.p., 1243 [1828]), 64. 477 ʿAbbās Ḥāmid, ed., Al-Awāmir wa-l-mukātabāt, I, 159. 478 Their other target was the grand vizier: Howard A. Reed, “The Destruction of the Janissaries by Mahmud II in June 1826,” unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Princeton University, 1951, 194-195; Esad Efendi, Üss-i Zafer, 72-75. 479 Ibid., 64, 73, 90. 480 Ibid., 73. 174 military reform are portrayed as relying on the opinions of the muftis of Egypt and the

Hijaz in their verbal disputes with the rebels.481 Finally, Mehmed Ali himself brought about the extirpation of the Janissaries in the lands under his control, not only in Egypt, but also in Crete and the Morea,482 which he had received in exchange for putting down the Greek nationalist revolt of 1821. Therefore, at this initial stage, military reforms in

Cairo and Istanbul were interwoven. This is significant for our purposes, because the

Islamic political discourse of the time similarly does not distinguish between military reform in Cairo and Istanbul.

How did military reform in the early 1820s intersect with the contested Islamic politics of Ottoman reform? In Egypt, scathing writers such as al-Jabartī and, in his early years, Ḥasan al-ʿĀttar had invested their rejection of Ottoman reform with religio- political meaning, and Husrev Pasha did not effectively counter this hostility. Likewise, the failure of Selim III’s reform project was due in no small part to that sultan’s failure to engage in the religio-political debate that was ongoing during his reign. For example, the so-called Koca Sekbanbaşı Risalesi, a reformist text (probably composed in 1804)483 that did engage opponents of the nizam-ı cedid, refers only to criticism found in allegedly

“unclean” coffeehouses, wine taverns, and workshops. As the title already indicates

(Hülasat ül-Kelam fi Redd il-Avam, meaning The Summary of Speech in Response to the

481 Ibid. 88-89. “Ulema-i alem ale ül-hüsus Haremeyn-i muhteremeyn ve Ümm ül-Dünya’da olan mezahib-i erbaa müftileri fetva itaasıyla....” I am not aware of any official fatwās recorded in Egyptian sources. 482 Taqwīm al-Nīl, II, 323. On the 1826 seizure of the Egyptian Sufi lodge of the Bektaşiyye order (associated with the Janissaries), see Frederic De Jong, Sufi Orders in Ottoman and Post-Ottoman Egypt and the Middle East: Collected Studies (Istanbul: Isis Press, 2000), 40. 483 This treatise was probably not composed by a soldier with the rank of sekbanbaşı, and its true author is unknown. However, its intended audience seems to have been Prince Mustafa, the future Sultan Mustafa IV: “Koca Sekbanbaşı Risalesi,” DİA. 175

Commoners), these critics are said to be people ignorant of politics congregating in coffeehouses, barbershops, and wine taverns.484 The text thus elides mention of the

Islam-oriented opposition to Selim-era reforms while also neglecting to make the case for military and other reforms in terms of Islamic law. Selim’s reformist officials had absorbed (at least partly) the eighteenth-century European esprit de système,485 but they had not suffiently integrated their new political thinking into Ottoman religio-political discourse. This was obviously the case in Egypt as well, where Husrev Pasha had made little effort to persuade skeptical observers of the Islamic licitness of his policies.

As noted in chapter 3, elite elements within the Ottoman ilmiyye were crucial in bringing about Selim III’s downfall, and in contrast to the reformists, they relied on explicitly religious arguments in justifying their actions.486 Indeed, one of the scholarly ringleaders of the rebellion, Münib Efendi,487 had been engaged with the jurisprudence of warfare for years before Selim’s fall. He produced both an Ottoman Turkish translation and an analysis (sharḥ) of a medieval commentary on the Kitāb al-siyar al-kabīr, one of the most famous works of jurisprudence dealing with war and politics, originally written by the early Ḥanafī jurist Muḥammad al-Shaybānī (d. ca. 189/805). Münib Efendi’s text comments on a previous sharḥ of al-Shaybānī’s text, that of the later Ḥanafī Muḥammad al-Sarakhsī (d. ca. 483/1090).488 Although it may be easy to ignore such

484 Anonymous, Koca Sekbanbaşı Risalesi, ed. Abdullah Uçman, (Istanbul: Tercüman, 1975), 31. 485 Findley, Turkey, Islam, Nationalism, and Modernity, 34. 486 On Münib Efendi’s role in the overthrow of Selim III, see Cabi Ömer Efendi, Cabi Tarihi, I, 144, 147. 487 See Ahmet Özel, “Mehmed Münib Ayntabi,” DİA. 488 For the translation, see Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad Sarakhsī and Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan al-Shaybānī, Tercüme-i şerh-i Siyer-i kebir (Istanbul: n.p., 1241 [1825-26]). For Münib’s sharḥ, see Münib Efendi (Muḥammad Munīb ibn ʻAbd Allāh al-ʻAyntābī), Kitāb taysīr al-masīr fī sharḥ al-Siyar al-kabīr (University of Michigan Library, Special Collections Islamic Manuscripts Library, Isl. MS 206). 176 supercommentaries as too abstruse to matter historically, Münib Efendi’s active role in contemporary politics, the dedication of his sharḥ to Sultan Selim and grand vizier Yusuf

Ziya Pasha,489 and the printing of Münib Efendi’s translation of al-Sarakhsī’s Sharḥ al- siyar al-kabīr in 1241/1825-1826 all indicate otherwise.

Sultan Mahmud II seems to have learned from the mistakes of Selim III, because he was very fastidious in winning over the ilmiyye to the cause of military reform prior to the destruction of the Janissaries. Conveniently, tension between the Istanbulite ilmiyye and the Janissaries was evident in the years after Mahmud’s accession; already in 1814,

Şeyhülislam Mekkizade Asım Efendi forced the dismissal of a Janissary ağa due to the latter’s harsh punishment of some theological students (singular softa).490 In another case, a madrasa teacher who had spoken out against the Janissaries was forced into exile.

Mahmud seized on divisions between these two longstanding centers of power and aggressively courted the ʿulamāʾ. Shortly before reviving a new-style army in the capital, the sultan increased the salaries of the madrasa teachers, promoted them en masse, and distributed books on the Prophet’s life.491 Finally, just as Mehmed Ali termed his army the Cihadiyye, Mahmud called his new troops the Asakir-i Mansure-yi Muhammediyye

(“The Victorious Muhammadan Soldiers”).

The sultan’s efforts paid off: whereas the medrese students had risen up against

Selim III in 1807, they supported Mahmud II when he needed it most and flooded the streets chanting anti-Janissary slogans in 1826. In early accounts of the incident, the

489 Münib Efendi, Kitāb taysīr al-masīr, fols. 20-21. 490 Reed, “The Destruction of the Janissaries,” 45. 491 Ibid., 100-102, citing Ahmed Cevdet Pasha, Tarih-i Cevdet, 12 vols. (Istanbul: n.p., 1309 [1891]), XII, 138-139, 146. 177 support of religious elements in Istanbul is presented as crucial to the sultan’s success.492

At the military reform council that preceded the abolition of the Janissaries, five of the twelve partipants were ʿulamāʾ, and three of these were known allies of Mehmed Ali

Pasha, including the aforementioned qāḍī Behcet Efendi.493

The Islamic politics of the struggle against the Janissaries has been strangely underemphasized, especially when one considers the major public monument that resulted from the Vakʿa-i Hayriyye: the so-called Meşihat Kitabesi. Engraved in

1241/1826 at the former Janissary Ağa’s residence (Ağa Kapısı, adjacent to the

Süleymaniye Mosque), the inscription is written from the perspective of the ʿulamāʾ and decries Janissary perfidy: “How many times did they counsel [them], that despised gang /

But they did not listen to the words of the ʿulamāʾ.” Of the sultan, the text proclaims, “In one hand he took a sword, in the other a fatwā.”494 The site itself was transformed into the residence of the Şeyhülislam (Fetva Kapısı), a message that was anything but subtle.

In Egypt, Mehmed Ali had come to power with the support of the ʿulamāʾ, so he focused on coopting pliable scholars rather than continuing to woo them overall, as we have seen. Even so, from the very beginning, the religio-political valence of the new-style army was recognized by many, including the pasha, as crucial to its success. This meant

492 For a narrative of the Auspicious Event, including the prominent role of the ʿulamāʾ and the softas, see Reed, “The Destruction of the Janissaries,” 197-229; Ottoman sources clearly indicate that many kinds of ʿulamāʾ (kibar-ı ulema ve mevali ve müderrisin ve talebe-i ‘ulum) gathered to demonstrate in public on behalf of the sultan: Esad Efendi, Üss-i Zafer, 76. Accordingly, Avigdor Levy considers the support of the Ottoman ʿulamāʾ “decisive” in allowing Mahmud II’s policies to succeed: Avigdor Levy, “The Ottoman Ulema and the Military Reforms of Mahmud II,” Asian and African Studies 7 (1971): 38. 493 Howard Reed, “The Destruction of the Janissaries,” 118-120. See chapter 5 of this dissertation for an overview of Mehmed Ali’s relationship with the imperial ilmiyye. 494 “Nice nash ettiler, o şerzeme-yi mekruhe / Ulemanın sözüne eylemediler isğa”; “Bir eline kılıç aldı, bir eline fetva”. Many thanks to Nir Shafir for providing a photograph, transcription, and translation of the inscription. 178 more than naming his conscripted army the “Cihadiyye” or calling its soldiers “the noblest servants of religion and the [Islamic] community,”495 as he did in one of the very first orders to the army’s commanders in Muḥarram 1237 (September 1821). Everything depended on the legitimacy of the military reform, because Mehmed Ali was facing not only challenges from his Albanian soldiers, but also peasant revolt against conscription, taxation, and the legitimacy of the government. In 1239/1824, an obscure Shaykh

Raḍwān declared himself mahdī (the “divinely guided one” ushering in the end of the world) and Mehmed Ali an infidel. Backed by 30,000 peasants, the shaykh staged a revolt that apparently spread among the new conscripts as well, but was defeated thanks to the pasha’s expertly trained troops.496 Limited uprisings among peasants and bedouins were not uncommon in Ottoman Egypt, but the appearance of a purported mahdī indicates deep religio-political turmoil of an unusual kind.

In 1237/1822, even before the introduction of conscription in Lower Egypt,

Mehmed Ali seems to have been employing Muslim preachers in Upper Egypt to “attract

[the peasants’] minds” to serving in the new army. Furthermore, he recalled that the

French invaders had formed divisions of Coptic soldiers during their brief occupation, implicitly relying on religious identity, and the pasha wondered why this should not be even more effective among Muslims: “If that was the case with the Copts, it will certainly be more so with the [Muslim] peasants whose hearts have been inflamed by their piety and their zeal in defending Islam.”497

495 Raʾūf ʿAbbās Ḥāmid, ed., Al-Awāmir wa-l-mukātabāt al-ṣādira ʿan ʿAzīz Miṣr Muḥammad ʿAlī, 2 vols. (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat Dār al-Kutub wa-l-Wathāʿiq al-Miṣriyya, 2010), I, 70. 496 Fahmy, All the Pasha’s Men, 95-96. 497 An archival document from the Maʿiyye-yi Seniyye, cited in Fahmy, All the Pasha’s Men, 98. 179

Although this was by no means a solution to the problem of peasant resistance, the government certainly took real steps toward recruiting effective military imams.

Among other Azharīs, the up-and-coming scholar Rifāʿa Rāfiʿ al-Ṭahṭāwī (already a beloved student of Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār in his early twenties and a tutor to some of the pasha’s elite)498 sought employment as a military imam in 1240/1825, mainly because it paid better than the alternatives (bi-sabab taḍayyuq al-ʿaysh).499 The pasha also seems to have subsidized the migration of Turcophone imams to take their places alongside other

Turcophones as military leaders; for example, in 1237/1822, a certain Kütahyalı İsmail

Efendi, imam of the Artillery Regiment (Topçiyye) of Alexandria submitted a petition to the government demanding the hefty salary that he had been promised.500 In Istanbul,

Mahmud II also took the role of military imams seriously and even established regimental muftis in addition to low-ranking imams. Whereas Janissary regiments had often relied on public readings of legendary Hamzaname stories to rouse their zeal,501

Mahmud instead instructed his military muftis and imams to read aloud the sections of al-

Sarakhsī’s commentary on al-Shaybānī’s Kitāb al-siyar al-kabīr glorifying holy war.502

This book had, of course, been translated into Ottoman Turkish by Münib Efendi, albeit with different political intentions. Although probably less evocative than the Hamzaname

498 See chapter 6; al-Sayyid Ṣāliḥ Majdī, Ḥilyat al-zaman bi-manāqib khādim al-waṭan: Sīrat Rifāʿa Rāfiʿ al-Ṭahṭāwī (Cairo: Maktabat Muṣṭafā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1958), 25. 499 Ibid., 30. 500 ʿArab, ed., Al-Sulṭa wa-ʿarḍḥālāt al-maẓlūmīn, 272. 501 Among the Janissaries, the most widespread version of the Hamzaname, which recounts the legendary exploits of the early Muslim convert Hamza b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib (d. 3/625), was that of the Turkish poet Hamzavi (d. 815/1412-1413): Nurettin Albayrak, “Hamzanâme,” DİA. 502 Ahmet Özel, “Mehmed Münib Ayntabi,” DİA. 180 in the eyes of ordinary soldiers, the commentary drove home a message of Islamic legal rectitude.

One could claim that these were legitimizing measures rather than essential features of military reform, but the subsequent proliferation of Islamic texts defining the legal status of the new armies and their polical underpinnings under sharīʿa demonstrates the degree to which the Ottoman elite and educated public took these ideological dimensions of reform seriously. Many such texts were written by key officials or, more tellingly, by those who went on to become major officials, thanks partly to their useful intellectual services. Very few modern and/or western scholars have mentioned these texts at all, and none in much depth, so it is worthwhile to examine these works more closely for what they reveal about the political ideology of the Mehmed Ali era, a period too often studied through the narrow lens of “westernization” alone.

B. Ibn al-ʿAnnābī’s Political Philosophy

Although poets such as Shaykh Galib had praised Sultan Selim III in Islamic terms,503 it appears that no rigorous argument in favor of reform based on sharīʿa had been put into writing before the abolition of the Janissaries. To be sure, a fatwā had been issued jointly by the Şeyhülislam and other officials at an imperial meşveret (consultative council),504 but it was actually a visiting Algerian mufti, temporarily teaching at al-Azhar, who put forth the most thorough intellectual case on behalf of Sultan Mahmud II’s new

503 See chapter 6. 504 Esad Efendi, Üss-i Zafer, 15-22. 181 army. This text was equally congenial to Mehmed Ali, because the philosophical arguments in favor of both armies were identical.

Muḥammad b. Maḥmūd al-Jazāʾirī, known as Ibn al-ʿAnnābī (d. 1267/1851), was born in the city of Algiers in 1189/1775 to a long line of Ḥanafī muftis.505 His great- grandfather Ḥusayn had held the office of chief mufti of Algiers in the early eighteenth century, and his grandfather Muḥammad had been the Ḥanafī qāḍī of the city a few decades later. Apparently, his father and grandfather were both buried in Egypt, 506 so he may have had connections there to begin with. Ibn al-ʿAnnābī himself was first appointed qāḍī of Algiers and the Algerian dey’s secretary of correspondence with the bey of Tunis in the time of the dey Ahmed Pasha (r. 1220-1223/1805-1808). He was re-appointed qāḍī under some subsequent deys. He later served as representative of the Algerian deys to the sultan of Morocco, but left for an extended sojourn in Egypt and the Hijaz in 1235/1819-

1820,507 although he had already made the ḥajj at least once before. He had begun teaching at al-Azhar by Shaʿbān 1241 (March 1826); that, in any case, is the date of his ijāza (a certificate licensing him to teach various religious texts) in the Azhar Library.508

The chains of transmission (singular isnād) contained in this document are mainly

Algerian, so at that point he was a relative newcomer to Egypt.

505 For a biography of this figure oriented toward Algerian history, see Abū al-Qāsim Saʿd Allāh, Al-Muftī al-jazāʾirī Ibn al-ʿAnnābī: Rāʾid al-tajdīd al-islāmī (1775-1850) (Algiers: Al-Sharika al-Waṭaniyya li-l- Nashr wa-l-Tawzīʿ, 1976). 506 Ibid., 29. 507 Ibid., 30. 508 Muḥammad b. Maḥmūd b. al-ʿAnnābī, Thabt shaykh al-ʿAnnābī (Cairo: Al-Azhar University Library, MS No. 53067), fol. 3r. 182

Prior to arriving in Egypt, his involvement in Algerian politics is obscure, but Ibn al-ʿAnnābī had obviously developed well-defined political and theological views far in advance of his time at al-Azhar. One significant impetus for his embrace of Ottoman military reform may have been Algeria’s conflicts with France (triggered by the

Napoleonic invasion of Egypt) and the United States in the early part of the nineteenth century, namely the “Barbary Wars.” Like Egypt and much of Ottoman Europe, Algeria found itself on the front lines of conflict with western military powers. More specifically, a key French trading town in Algeria, known as Bastion, was located near ʿAnnāba (later known as Bône under French rule), the scholar’s ancestral city. The French were expelled from this stronghold in the early nineteenth century, but regained their position just before Ibn al-ʿAnnābī departed for Egypt.509 Firsthand experience of French rule must undoubtably have shaped his thinking.

When the Janissary corps was abolished in Dhū al-Qaʿda 1241 (June 1826), al-

Azhar was still sufficiently politicized that the events could unleash debates among the scholars of the mosque. In his manuscript, Ibn al-ʿAnnābī writes, “My honored brothers and I have engaged in discourse… in which some have expressed their concerns [about matters of military reform]. The suggestion was directed toward me that I write a response in the [formal] mode. Therefore it became necessary for me to grant their wishes, and I focused on simplicity in order to suit the occasion….”510 Ibn al-ʿAnnābī completed the manuscript, entitled Al-Saʿī al-Maḥmūd fī taʾlīf al-junūd (The Praised

509 Kemal Kahraman, “Cezayir: Osmanlı Dönemi,” DİA. 510 Muḥammad b. Maḥmūd b. al-ʿAnnābī, Al-Saʿī al-Maḥmūd fī niẓām al-junūd, Istanbul, Süleymaniye Library, MS Hüsrev Paşa 00042, fol. 2r. 183

Effort to Form the Troops), in the first half of 1242 (late 1826). The title is, of course, a play on the name of the reigning sultan, Mahmud II. In many later copies, taʾlīf (meaning to join together, form, or tame) is changed to niẓām (order),511 obviously a more politically evocative term. For example, this is how the text is referred to in its earliest

Ottoman Turkish translation.512

However, the original phrase is itself another play on words, what is called jinās

(paranomasia, or playing on similar-sounding words) in Arabic prosody, with religious rather than political overtones. The phrase taʾlīf al-junūd alludes to the Quranic idea of taʾlīf al-qulūb (reconciliation or gathering of hearts), found not coincidentally in Sūrat al-

Anfāl (“The Spoils [of War]”).513 In that sūra, God reminds the believers that He has

“reconciled” the hearts of the believers and thereby allowed them to achieve some success in battle against the corrupt Meccans who control the Sacred Mosque (Masjid al-

Ḥarām). God also implores the believers to enjoy the lawful spoils of war, but no more than that. Aside from being a call for unity and motivation in battle, taʾlīf al-qulūb had taken on grander associations mainly because of the development of the term “heart” in

Islamic thought.514 Sufism, for example, was often called the “science of hearts” (ʿilm al- qulūb),515 and so the “reconciliation of hearts” has connotations of cosmic harmony. By alluding to this term in his manuscript’s title, Ibn al-ʿAnnābī implies that a new military

511 Saʿd Allāh, Al-Muftī al-jazāʾirī Ibn al-ʿAnnābī, 54. 512 This is not the title of the Turkish translation, but rather the Arabic title mentioned by the translator: Ibn al-ʿAnnābī, Kevkeb ül-mesud fi kevkebet il-cunud, trans. Esad Efendi (Istanbul, Süleymaniye Library, MS Esad Efendi 02363), fol. 4r. 513 Qurʾān 8:63. 514 For an introduction, see Jane Dammen McAuliffe, “Heart,” Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān. 515 For an example of a Sufi thinker who thought deeply about the “heart,” see Saeko Yazaki, Islamic Mysticism and Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī: The Role of the Heart (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2013). 184

(and political) order can generate unprecedented levels of unity and harmony within the

Muslim community.

Al-Saʿī al-Maḥmūd was composed less than a year after the abolition of the

Janissaries. Although the author takes a formal approach in the body of the text, relying mainly on Prophetic ḥadīth, stories of the Companions (ṣaḥāba), and legal reasoning, his introduction is somewhat frank. He admits first of all that certain military policies of the sultan, such as the tightening (taḍayyuq) of army uniforms and the adoption of foreign military techniques, had prompted hatred in many groups of people (istakraha dhalik anās). Furthermore, in “recent times” (fī al-aʿṣār al-ākhira), the “tyrants of the infidel nations” have organized their troops and introduced methods of subterfuge (funūn al- ḥiyal), and although God “disappointed their hopes,” they did have some success: “It became necessary to inquire about [these methods] and to train in those skills and subterfuges that they [the Europeans] had established, and so the Islamic soldiers were organized according to an analogous ‘new order’ (niẓāman jadīdan)….”516

How could this somewhat imitative approach be justified in the eyes of God and sacred law? First, Ibn al-ʿAnnābī interprets the duty of jihād in the broadest way, claiming that this duty embraces all the narrower aspects of war and sacred law that he sets out in the course of his treatise, from the recruitment and training of soldiers to the selection of military flags. He credits the “exoteric and esoteric power” of the Qurʾān for the positive developments in “weapons and gunpowder works” that occurred for

516 Ibn al-ʿAnnābī, Al-Saʿī al-Maḥmūd, fol. 1v. 185 approximately 800 years following its revelation.517 What this periodization of military history means is not fully clear, but Ibn al-ʿAnnābī may be referring to the conquest of

Constantinople in 1453, often regarded as a quasi-eschatological event; this event also occurred approximately 800 years after the life of the Prophet. In any case, he would seem to imply that Muslim military prowess had receded since that time, ignoring the many victories of Sultan Süleyman and others.

It must be said that opponents of reform could take an equally pessimistic view of the state of Muslim military capabilities: in one of his marginal comments on al-Jabartī’s manuscript, Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār expresses awe of French troops’ performance in Egypt.

Regarding Yusuf Pasha’s forces (and the Egypt-based soldiers who joined it, ahl al-bilād wa-l-mamālīk al-Miṣriyya), al-ʿAṭṭār points out that these men could not free Egypt without the help of the English.518 Broad agreement across the political spectrum existed, therefore, on the necessity of more effective armies for the purpose of waging holy war.

Al-Saʿī al-Maḥmūd, however, does not dwell much on history or the details of contemporary events but turns almost immediately to justifying the legality of the military reforms of the 1820s.

To make this case from within the Islamic legal tradition, Ibn al-ʿAnnābī tends to favor a handful of legal authorities on the jurisprudence of war and politics, such as al-

Sarakhsī, the Ottoman Şeyhülislam Ebussüud Efendi (d. 982/1574), and especially Abū

Bakr Muḥammad al-Ṭurṭūshī (d. 520/1126), an Andalusian Mālikī jurist who lived in

517 Ibid., fol. 2v. 518 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjā’ib, ed. Moreh, III, 105. 186

Fāṭimid Egypt and composed the Sirāj al-Mulūk (Lamp of Kings), an important “mirror for princes” and political treatise. As an Andalusian, al-Ṭurṭūshī also witnessed warfare between European Christian and Muslim states, and Ibn al-ʿAnnābī quotes him on this topic: “Do not disdain your enemy, for it would be disgraceful; nor should one ignore him.”519 By contrast, al-Jabartī mentions al-Ṭurṭūshī only once and even then as a dubious authority (“contrary to the creed” on the subject of ḥalāl food)520 followed by certain scholars in Alexandria, the city where both al-Ṭurṭūshī and Ibn al-ʿAnnābī eventually settled.

However, these general statements and appeals to authority would hardly have been sufficient to convince skeptical readers, so the author goes into great detail on individual topics in each of his chapters. As peasant resistance made clear, mass conscription was the most controversial of Mehmed Ali Pasha’s policies. This was less true of Mahmud II’s army, the founding ordinance of which stipulated that all troops were to be volunteers.521 Although this did not reflect reality, fewer troops were ultimately conscripted in Anatolia. Despite its lesser revelance outside Egypt, conscription was chosen by Ibn al-ʿAnnābī as the topic of the first chapter of his treatise.

In this way, although Mehmed Ali’s name is not mentioned at all, it is nonetheless true that his policies loom even larger in the text than those of the sultan.

519 Ibn al-ʿAnnābī, Al-Saʿī al-Maḥmūd, fol. 3r. 520 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, IV, 316. The Būlāq edition refers to Imām al-Ṭarshūshī, a nonexistent authority. This is corrected in the critical edition of Shmuel Moreh: al-Jabartī, ʿAjā’ib, ed. Moreh, IV, 370. 521 On the “voluntariness” of early Ottoman conscription, see Veysel Şimsek, “The First ‘Little Mehmeds’: Conscripts for the Ottoman Army, 1826–53,” Osmanlı Araştırmaları / The Journal of Ottoman Studies 44 (2014): 282-283. 187

Ibn al-ʿAnnābī defines conscription (tajnīd) as the gathering of assistants (aʿwān) and helpers (anṣār, a reference to the Medinan supporters of the Prophet) for holy war and the protection of Islam. He begins by citing a Prophetic ḥadīth addressed to the Anṣār of Medina, warning that some among them would incite hatred against the tribal baʿth

(calling forth, awakening) of men for holy war. For that reason, he refers to those who call up troops as bāʿithūn, going so far as to argue that the recruiters of soldiers are as praiseworthy as martyrs.522 Similarly, he places great stress on the necessity of raising money for the army, equating the funding of armies with holy war itself.523 There are tales elsewhere relating to Mehmed Ali’s genuine anxiety over his ability to financially support his troops in his early days,524 so this was very much a contemporary concern in

1826. These claims by the author would also have contributed to justifying the deeply unpopular fiscal measures undertaken by the pasha throughout his governorship.

Following this same method, involving ḥadīth as well as a handful of juristic authorities, Ibn al-ʿAnnābī extends his analysis to sixteen issues in total concerning the jurisprudence of war, from the choosing of flags to the licitness of learning military arts from the “infidels” (kafara).525 One particularly important issue, the disciplining of

522 Ibn al-ʿAnnābī, Al-Saʿī al-Maḥmūd, fol. 7r-8v. 523 Ibid., 10r. 524 Arif Efendi, ʿIbar al-bashar, II, 3. 525 The chapter headings within the “military matters” section are as follows: 1) On Conscription; 2) On the Ordering of Troops; 3) On the Dividing of Soldiers into Groups (Fī taṣnīf al-jund); 4) On Fixing the Number of Troops; 5) On Leaders and Experts in the Army; 6) On the Branding (and/or Punishment, taswīm) of Troops; 7) Tightening of Troops’ Clothing; 8) Specifying the Work of Troops; 9) On the Determining of Flags, Banners and Related Matters; 10) On Training for Military Purposes; 11) On Fortresses, Trenches, Weapons, and Projectile Equipment; 12) On the Tricks (ḥiyal) of War; 13) On Supply (ḥazm); 14) On Mercy Toward the Weak, the Application of Justice, and the Granting of Rights to the Deserving; 15) On the Gathering of Consensual Opinion; 16) On the Licitness of Learning Sciences of Weaponry from the Infidels. For this list in Arabic, see Saʿd Allāh, Al-Muftī al-jazāʾirī Ibn al-ʿAnnābī, 61- 62. 188 troops, has been shown by Khaled Fahmy to be an obsession in the pasha’s military planning and contentious in Egyptian practice,526 but it is given relatively short shrift by the mufti. To be sure, in discussing the Islamic basis of military disciplinary practices, he uses a term with appropriately coercive overtones, taswīm. Though generally uncommon, this word is present in Qurʾān and ḥadīth,527 and for its second verbal form (sawwama, or taswīm as a verbal noun), Edward Lane gives various meanings, including putting animals out to pasture, allowing someone to stand in judgment, or branding an animal such as a horse.528 In the Qurʾān, in any verbal form, the term refers either to the punishment of wrongdoers or to the branding (of angels and horses),529 and Ibn al-

ʿAnnābī cites Quranic verses and ḥadīth with both meanings.

However, it seems to be the latter meaning of physical branding that is the main focus, as in one ḥadīth in which the Prophet is said to have walked between columns of men branding or tattooing each group with a mark (shiʿār).530 This tradition is adduced not merely to show veneration for the Prophet, but in an attempt to justify the widespread tattooing of conscripts practiced by Mehmed Ali’s regime. Both conscripts and convicts were forcibly tattooed by the authorities lest they run away; for example, marine recruits were given the tattoo of a ship and an anchor.531 (This was in addition to the tezkere identification document that each peasant was required to carry.)532 By justifying such

526 Fahmy, All the Pasha’s Men, 112-159. 527 See Qurʾān 2:49; 3:14; 3:125; 7:141; 7:167; 11:83; 51:34; 14:6. 528 Edward Lane, “S-w-m,” Form II, Arabic-English Lexicon, part 4, 1474-1475. 529 The branding of horses is meant in a conventional sense. However, in the Qurʾān, angels were “branded” (taswīm) by God to give them a mark a distinction. This was therefore a positive sense of the term. 530 Ibn al-ʿAnnābī, Al-Saʿī al-Maḥmūd, fol. 16v. 531 Fahmy, All the Pasha’s Men, 106. 532 Ibid., 125-126. 189

“marking,” the text alludes to widespread dissatisfaction with the practice as well as its pervasiveness, at least in the public imagination.

Thus, it was not discipline in general that needed justification, but rather the most controversial or unprecedented practices. For example, during Mehmed Ali’s abortive first attempt to impose a nizam-ı cedid in 1230/1815, al-Jabartī writes that the pasha gave his (then mostly Albanian) soldiers new clothing that was “tightly bound and disfiguring of their appearance and dress” (malābis muqammaṭa wa-yughayyar shaklahum wa- zayyahum).533 Despite his skepticism of reform in general, al-Jabartī’s response to military reform is mostly muted rather than hostile, so dissatisfaction with the new uniforms must have been sufficiently pronounced among the troops to merit this kind of mention. Similar objections to the new uniforms had been famously voiced by the

Janissaries prior to their abolition. Accordingly, Ibn al-ʿAnnābī devotes an unusually large section to the matter of the “tightening and shortening” of uniforms. In his examples, he mainly recounts ḥadīth in which figures from Islamic history happen to have worn short or tight clothing.534 His argument is aided by the fact that exceptions to the sunna (the well-trodden path of the Prophet) regarding dress and other matters have traditionally been made in cases of travel and warfare.

A close examination of the third chapter, “On the Dividing of Soldiers into

Groups,” reveals another controvery, one usually associated with the late nineteenth century: the question of ethnicity within the military. Ibn al-ʿAnnābī cites several ḥadīths

533 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, IV, 222. The final word is present only in Moreh’s critical edition. 534 Ibn al-ʿAnnābī, Al-Saʿī al-Maḥmūd, fol. 17r. 190 on the tribal organization of the early Muslim armies and then clarifies the contemporary relevance of these stories: “In these narrations, the Prophet of God, peace be upon him, recruited various groups divided into units, separated from each other.... He ordered the soldiers to guard against disunity and division, for by the mixing of different groups they are exposed to the outbreak of civil war (fitna) because of the difference in their natures and the inclination of each group to those related to them, in accordance with human nature.”535 Although the early ordinances of the Ottoman army did deal with the topic of ethnicity,536 it seems likely that these passages are intended to justify the separation of

Turcophone, Arabophone, and other groups of soldiers within Mehmed Ali’s army.

Al-Saʿī al-Maḥmūd is mostly apologetic in nature, and this is valuable in itself due to the text’s broad influence and as a case study of how Ottoman Muslim scholars of the manuscript age could engage in political debates via formal argumentation. However, the most ideologically significant aspect of this manuscript emerges in the final section, in which Ibn al-ʿAnnābī moves from narrowly military issues to politics writ large (umūr siyāsiyya). His argument remains thoroughly rooted in the Islamic tradition, but compared with previous chapters – which rely overwhelmingly on Qurʾān and hadīth and provide little commentary – the section on politics engages in straightforward rational argumentation to a much greater extent.

The mufti begins by defining politics, siyāsa, according to its original Arabic root: sāsa, as in sāsa al-raʿiyya (“regulating the subjects”). If done correctly, according to

535 Ibid., 13r. 536 In fact, Ottoman regulations from the 1840s (and possibly earlier) dictate that army units should be heterogeneous rather than homogeneous: Şimsek, “The First “Little Mehmeds,”291-293. 191

“proper measures and sound opinions and customs,” then law (qānūn) is established to manage behavior (adāb), the common good (maṣāliḥ), and the ordering of social conditions (intiẓām al-aḥwāl).537 Later, he writes that the result of good governance is

“the development of the world and the hereafter” (ʿimārat al-dunyā wa-l-ākhira).538

Some of the language here draws on the classical Ottoman rhetoric of the public good so favored by Mehmed Ali Pasha, expressed through words that appear again and again in official documents proclaiming the benefits of his rule. Examples of such rhetoric are many, including maṣlaḥa (the proper course and common good),539 ʿimāra (building up),540 refāhiyya (prosperity).541 This was a pragmatic, even materialist approach to the state’s raison d’être that arguably tended to converge with certain norms of contemporary

European governments, albeit without any democratic pretensions or aspirations. Muslim scholars such as Ibn al-ʿAnnābī and Ibn al-Rajabī seem to have engaged in this rhetoric as well.

However, the main purpose of Ibn al-ʿAnnābī’s foray into political philosophy is to intervene in longstanding controversies among Muslim theologians concerning the status of siyāsa under sacred law. He distinguishes between just and unjust politics

(ʿādila and ẓālima): “Just politics defends against many injustices, repels the corrupt (ahl

537 Ibn al-ʿAnnābī, Al-Saʿī al-Maḥmūd, fol. 53v. 538 Ibid., fol. 54v. 539 The earliest law establishing the meclis-i şura (consultative council) begins, “As is necessary for the common good….” (Hasb ül-icab meslehet zımnında): Zübde-i müzakere-i erbab-ı dâniş-i hazret-i dâver-i Mısr (Būlāq: Dār al-Ṭibāʿa al-ʿĀmira, 1244 [1828]), 4. 540 Ibn al-Rajabī uses ʿimāra and taʿmīr in his chapter headings. 541 In the introductory article of the official gazette (Vekayi-i Misriyye), all manner of contributions to the commonweal are promised: Ibrāhīm ʿAbduh, Tārīkh al-Waqāʾiʿ al-Miṣrīyya, 1828-1942 (Cairo: Muʿassasat Sijill al-ʿArab, 1983), 68. 192 al-fasād), and reaches the intentions of sacred law (maqāṣid al-sharīʿa). For the sacred law requires progression toward it, and it is a wide gate, in which intellects may easily be led astray.”542 He acknowledges that the possibility of improper “widening” would “open the gates of injustice,” but he nonetheless insists that this should not be grounds for overreaction. He criticizes two opposing groups, one denying the politics of sacred law

(siyāsa sharʿiyya) altogether, the other “walking the path of excess” (ṭarīq al-tafrīṭ) by preferring man-made politics and the common interests of the community (maṣlaḥat al- umma) alone. Here Ibn al-ʿAnnābī does not hold back: “This is ignorance and falsehood,” he writes of these “imams of infidelity.”543

Though this position may sound predictable, in reality it was far from being so.

By the late medieval period, siyāsa as an idea in Sunnī jurisprudence had accrued many negative connotations. The Mamlūk-era historian and scholar al-Maqrīzī deemed the word itself “satanic” in origin.544 The great theologian Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 1111), whose influence was unparalleled even in late Ottoman Egypt, was less flippant, but only barely less pessimistic: siyāsa was to be mistrusted if it moved even slightly beyond the scope of jurisprudence as defined by scholars,545 which it invariably did. Following al-

Ghazālī, a great many ʿulamāʾ of the late medieval and early modern periods assumed

542 Ibn al-ʿAnnābī, Al-Saʿī al-Maḥmūd, fol. 54r. 543 Ibid. 544 Ovamir Anjum, Politics, Law and Community in Islamic Thought: The Taymiyyan Moment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 105; see also Youssef Rapoport, “Royal Justice and Religious Law: Siyāsah and Sharīʿah under the Mamluks,” Mamluk Studies Review 16 (2012): 71-102. 545 Anjum, Politics, Law and Community, 106. 193 that political leaders always tended toward tyranny,546 an attitude that intuitively seems to match the religio-political analysis in al-Jabartī’s chronicle.

Although it is not possible to rule out Ottoman precedents to his stance, Ibn al-

ʿAnnābī appears to have been innovative in reaffirming the validity of siyāsa sharʿiyya – alternatively called qānūn al-sharīʿa (sultanic, civil, and/or “secular” law that is consistent with sacred law), to cite another apparently paradoxical term that he employs.

In this context, it is no coincidence that he relies so heavily on al-Ṭurṭūshī’s Sirāj al- mulūk. According to one recent scholar,547 al-Ṭurṭūshī’s work predates the rise of hostile attitudes toward siyāsa among scholars in the late medieval period; the Sirāj al-mulūk assumes that politics and sacred law necessarily go together. Following that example, Ibn al-ʿAnnābī seeks to ensure the harmonious integration of the two through the “avoidance of coarseness” (tark al-faẓāẓa, citing al-Ṭurṭūshī) as well as consultation (mushāwara) of learned people, especially the ʿulamāʾ.548

The importance of this apparent turn toward siyāsa in the early nineteenth century has been noted by Khaled Fahmy, and the writings of Ibn al-ʿAnnābī provide important context to this topic. Given that in the sixteenth century siyaset (Ottoman for siyāsa) was restricted mainly to criminal punishments imposed on the sultan’s own servants,549

Fahmy emphasizes the significance of the fact that Mehmed Ali’s basic governing law is named the Siyasetname.550 Against this historical backdrop, Fahmy asserts that Mehmed

546 Ibid., 107. 547 Ibn al-ʿAnnābī, Al-Saʿī al-Maḥmūd, fol. 56r. 548 Ibid., 56r-56v. 549 Heyd, Studies in Old Ottoman Criminal Law, 264-265. This was siyāsa only in a radically restricted sense, because the word in Arabic refers to “governance” in general. 550.Fahmy, All the Pasha’s Men, 140. 194

Ali’s labelling of his broadest political legislation as a work of siyaset indicates that the word “came to acquire its original meaning,” that of government and politics more generally.551

In light of the Islamic scholarship from al-Ghazālī through Ibn al-ʿAnnābī, one might put this slightly differently: siyāsa had not lost its original meaning, at least not in scholarly writings, but it had been stigmatized by those who were skeptical of political authority. Ibn al-ʿAnnābī’s writing may mark an influential turning point after which siyāsa began to lose its negative connotations. For example, he describes the separation of troops by ethnicity and/or culture as “good management” (ḥusn al-siyāsa),552 and thanks to copiously cited ḥadīths, this is certainly not meant to be viewed as separate from sacred law, let alone contrary to it.

In Egypt, Ibn al-ʿAnnābī’s influence on the relationship between politics and sharīʿa was not purely intellectual. As noted in the previous chapter, a manuscript detailing a waqf dispute indicates that he had made a name for himself as a mufti in

Alexandria by the late 1820s,553 although he was not the official mufti. He soon left

Egypt without planning to return, travelling first to Tunisa in 1244/1829. Just prior to its occupation by the French in 1830, he returned to Algeria. His appointment as mufti of

Algiers may or may not have predated the French invasion, but he is known to have served under French rule. The mufti eventually spoke of armed insurrection against the

551 Ibid., 141. 552 Ibn al-ʿAnnābī, Al-Saʿī al-Maḥmūd, fol. 13r. The phrase ḥusn al-siyāsa was also common in Ottoman political discourse; for example, Selim III commended Husrev Pasha’s alleged political skills using this term: al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, III, 231. 553 See chapter 4. 195 colonizers,554 which earned him jail and then exile from the French authorities, but also centuries of fame among the Algerian people. As a result, he returned to Alexandria sometime in the 1830s, where he was officially appointed mufti. As chief jurisprudent of the port of Alexandria, he had become a high official of the Mehmed Ali regime.

It was in this capacity that he served in the Majlis al-Aḥkām (Council of

Judgments), an Egyptian “Supreme Court” founded in the last year of Mehmed Ali’s life

(1265/1849).555 This court embodied the fusion of siyāsa and sharīʿa in that its judgments drew on sacred law without being limited to formal Islamic jurisprudence, not even in theory.

His influence was not limited to Egypt, however. Surprisingly, Al-Saʿī al-

Maḥmūd did not merely become known in Istanbul, where numerous manuscripts have survived; the manuscript was translated into Ottoman Turkish under the less evocative title Kevkeb ül-Mesud fi Kevkebet il-Cünud (The Joyful Star: The Grouping of Soldiers) in Shawwāl 1244 (April 1829),556 less than two years after its composition. Even more significantly, the text’s translator was none other than Esad Efendi (Sahaflar Şeyhizade, d. 1264/1848), unquestionably one of the leading ʿulamāʾ of Mahmud II’s sultanate. In addition to other posts, he held the position of official imperial historian (vakanüvis) from

1241/1825 until his death, and he composed the canonical account of the destruction of the Janissaries, entitled Üss-i Zafer (The Foundation of Victory). This book was printed

554 Saʿd Allāh, Al-Muftī al-jazāʾirī Ibn al-ʿAnnābī, 34. 555 Aḥmad Fatḥī Zaghlūl Bik, Al-Muḥāmā (Cairo: Maṭbaʻat al-Maʻārif, 1900), appendices, 63-66. One author misleadingly implies that this court was functioning in the 1830s: Byron Cannon, Politics of Law and the Courts in Nineteenth-Century Egypt (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1988), 24. 556 Ibn al-ʿAnnābī, Kevkeb ül-Mes'ud fi Kevkebet il-Cünud, fol. 161r. 196 in Shawwāl 1243 (April 1828),557 a year and a half after the “Auspicious Event” itself.

Because Al-Saʿī al-Maḥmūd was written in the first half of 1242 (near the end of 1826), it is quite possible (or perhaps likely) that Esad Efendi had access to Ibn al-ʿAnnābī’s text while composing his own chronicle. Üss-i Zafer is exceedingly careful to provide Islamic interpretations for the events it describes, so it would not be surprising if its author had made use of existing works of Islamic scholarship, particularly when the subject matters are as closely aligned as those of Üss-i Zafer and Al-Saʿī al-Maḥmūd.

Even if Al-Saʿī al-Maḥmūd did not directly influence the composition of Üss-i

Zafer, the earlier text was still the first of its kind in the empire, and it did gain influence in the capital more quickly than one would expect. Remarkably, debates among Azharī scholars prompted the composition of a partisan political work whose ideas were soon absorbed into Ottoman imperial ideology; public discourse among provincial scholars could thus make an impact on the empire as a whole. Furthermore, although Ibn al-

ʿAnnābī was effectively of aristocratic background, he wrote Al-Saʿī al-Maḥmūd as teacher and traveler at al-Azhar without a major appointment and apparently without seeking patronage in Egypt; that he was eventually absorbed into Mehmed Ali’s government was basically an accident of colonialism. Arguably, despite all the repression of the Egyptian regime, the Azharī public sphere still mattered in unexpected ways.

C. The Career of Ibrāhīm al-Saqqā, Preacher of al-Azhar

557 Esad Efendi, Üss-i Zafer, 259. 197

Among students given an ijāza by Ibn al-ʿAnnābī in the 1820s was Ibrāhīm b.

ʿAlī al-Saqqā (d. 1298/1880),558 who went on to become one of the most famous Azharīs of the nineteenth century, although he is mostly forgotten today. Arif Efendi includes an entry about him, calling him the “most knowledgeable of Azharī scholars.” Arif Efendi’s comments concerning al-Azhar in the Mehmed Ali era overall are included under this entry, effectively making this scholar the representative of all Azharīs in the text.559 Born in Cairo toward the end of 1212 (midyear 1798), Ibrāhīm al-Saqqā is portrayed in the numerous biographies of him as a scholarly prodigy from a young age. An early work on the life of Rifāʿa al-Ṭahṭāwī calls al-Aṭṭār, al-Ṭahṭāwī, and al-Saqqā the three stars of al-

Azhar in the 1820s. Although the author may be indulging in a bit of hindsight, al-Saqqā did share some commonalities with the other two figures in this trio, notably the willingness to look outside conventional sources of knowledge at al-Azhar. A biographical dictionary of Shāfiʿī scholars notes that Shaykh Ibrāhīm sought out knowledge that “had never before been read at al-Azhar,” such as the tafsīr (Qurʾān exegesis) of Ebussüud Molla, most likely a reference to the tafsīr entitled Irshād al-ʻaql al-salīm, written by the sixteenth-century Ottoman Şeyhülislam Ebussüud.560 Ironically, perhaps, the age of Mehmed Ali did not end the Ottoman era in Egypt, but rather brought

558 The following are a selection of biographies of him: Ilyās Zakhūrā, Mirʾāt al-ʻaṣr, 3 vols. in 2 (Cairo: n.p., 1897-1916), I, 233; Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Ḥaḍrāwī, Nuzhat al-fikar fī mā maḍā min al-ḥawādith wa-l-ʻibar fī tarājim rijāl al-qarn al-thānī ʻashar wa-l-thālith ʻashar: qiṭʻah minhu, 2 vols. (Damascus: Manshūrāt Wizārat al-Thaqāfah, 1996-), I, 44-46; ʿAlī Mubārak, Al-Khiṭaṭ al-Tawfīqiyya al-jadīda, XII, 118; Aḥmad al-Ḥusaynī, Sharḥ umm al-musammā bi-murshid al-anām li-birr umm al-imām (Egyptian National Library, MS Tārīkh Taymūr ʿArabī 1411). 559 Arif Efendi, ʿIbar al-bashar, I, 17-18. 560 Al-Ḥusaynī, Sharḥ umm al-musammā bi-murshid al-anām, 64. 198 about an intensification of intellectual connections between Turcophone and Arabophone zones of the empire.

Al-Saqqā showed a willingness to bridge the gap between the Shāfiʿī and Ḥanafī madhhabs at a time when the latter was ascendant, and this may well have contributed to his success; he even composed a treatise on the differences among the four Sunnī legal schools, entitled Manāsik al-ḥajj ʿalā madhāhib al-arbaʿa (Ceremonies of Pilgrimage

According to the Four Schools of Law).561 On turning twenty, he became an instructor at al-Azhar, and before age thirty (i.e., before 1242/1826),562 he was appointed the khaṭīb

(preacher) of the mosque, a post which he held for the rest of his life. He left behind a voluminous collection of sermons, published within his lifetime and considered famous by ʿAlī Mubārak.563

Al-Saqqā was also commissioned to write an abridgment of Ibn al-ʿAnnābī’s treatise, although it is not clear exactly when. Entitled Bulūgh al-maqṣūd: Mukhtaṣar Al-

Saʿī al-Maḥmūd fī talʿīf al-ʿasākir wa-l-junūd (The Attainment of Intention: A Summary of The Praised Effort to Form the Soldiers and Troops), the manuscript indicates that the text was composed at the behest of the pasha himself,564 and this would probably have occurred in the late 1820s, when this form of scholarly propaganda would have been at its most potent.

561 ʿAlī Mubārak, Al-Khiṭaṭ al-Tawfīqiyya al-jadīda, XII, 118. 562 Zakhūrā, Mirʾāt al-ʻaṣr, I, 233. 563 Ibrāhīm al-Saqqā, Kitāb Ghāyat al-umniyya fī al-khuṭab al-minbariyya (Cairo: n.p., 1864); ʿAlī Mubārak, Al-Khiṭaṭ al-Tawfīqiyya al-jadīda XII, 118. 564 Ibrāhīm al-Saqqā, Bulūgh al-maqṣūd: Mukhtaṣar al-Saʿī al-Maḥmūd fī talʿīf al-ʿasākir wa-l-junūd (Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya, MS Furūsiyya Taymūr 31), fol. 2. 199

Bulūgh al-maqṣūd follows the text it summarizes fairly closely, and the chapter headings are virtually identical. The manuscript must have been composed with an

Egyptian audience in mind; however, it is also true that Al-Saʿī al-Maḥmūd was already partly adapted for Egyptian circumstances. The main difference between the two works is that the later text omits many of the original one’s ḥadīth references (or relegates these citations to the margins) and emphasizes the key takeaway points of each section in straightforward language. In a great many cases, al-Saqqā quotes directly from Al-Saʿī al-

Maḥmūd, but seems to slightly shift the emphasis. If anything, an even greater stress is placed on obedience to the Islamic state. In the introduction, for example, al-Saqqā asserts that whoever breaks the unity of the jamāʿa (the Muslim collective) “will die in ignorance.”565 The functions of the state are all-inclusive: “The duty of the leaders of the

Muslims and their commanders is to organize the troops, to choose [leading] men, to summon their hearts by granting what is right, to make ready various technologies and financial resources, to fix [public] opinion, and to undertake everything that has been done in the past regarding sacred law….”566

The latter phrase, the “fixing of opinion” (tasdīd al-raʾy) occurs in Al-Saʿī al-

Maḥmūd,567 but only in its final chapter, whereas the phrase is much more frequent in

Bulūgh al-maqṣūd. Both works include a short chapter entitled Fī ijtimāʿ al-kalima (“On the Gathering of Consensual Opinion”), but neither work includes so direct a call for the

565 Ibid., 4. 566 Ibid. “ʿAlā ayimmat al-Muslimīn wa-umarāʾihim min tanẓīm al-junūd wa-intikhāb al-rijāl wa-istijlāb qulūbihim bi-badhl al-mustaḥiqq wa-tahyiʿat al-adwāt wa-l-dhakhāʾir wa-tasdīd al-raʾy wa-l-akhd bi-jamīʿ mā sabaqa min iqāmat al-sharʿ.” 567 Ibn al-ʿAnnābī, Al-Saʿī al-Maḥmūd, fol. 57r. 200 repression of dissent as in the introductory section of Bulūgh al-maqṣūd. Despite the authoritarianism implied in this formulation, there is also an implication that there was a public sphere requiring suppression. In an earlier age, the suppression of rebellion

(ʿiṣyān) would probably have taken precedence over that of mere opinion. In early nineteenth-century Cairo, the situation was reversed.

Perhaps in an effort to offset this dictatorial control over public opinion, al-Saqqā points to the necessity of consultation with the learned (mushāwara). As in the case of tasdīd al-raʾy, consultation is mentioned briefly in the political chapter of Al-Saʿī al-

Maḥmūd, but the term is again more common in Bulūgh al-maqṣūd, from the introduction onward. The idea of consultation is not well-developed in these texts, however; al-Saqqā only refers vaguely to “acts of consultation and reliance upon those of virtue and proper opinion as well as everything that has been done in the past to establish sacred law

(sharʿ).”568 Although one may wish to read this as a merely pro forma endorsement of mushāwara, consultative bodies in which ʿulamāʾ participated actually proliferated under

Mehmed Ali regime, and so there is good reason to believe that this ideology was much more than a convention. Indeed, as we will see, there is evidence that many scholar- officials felt comfortable enough in these forums to put forth real criticisms of existing policies.

More to the point, it is not difficult to see why al-Saqqā could support repression on the one hand and consultation on the other. If the ʿulamāʾ were to be consulted, then select Azharīs such as al-Saqqā and those like him could speak on behalf of all scholars

568 Al-Saqqā, Bulūgh al-maqṣūd, 4. 201 while silencing alternative views. Indeed, al-Saqqā was in some ways literally the mouthpiece of the regime. Not only the preacher of Egypt’s most important mosque, he is said to have presided over “countless” festivities, both public (religious and otherwise) and those restricted to the viceregal household (ḥaflāt khidiwiyya).569 If Mehmed Ali’s government harmed the interests of Azharīs overall, it was not because he had no scholarly clients.

Al-Saʿī al-Maḥmūd, its abridgment by Ibrāhīm al-Saqqā, and the panegyric history of Ibn al-Rajabī were all addressed to Egypt’s once-uncontrollable public sphere, even though the field of debate was now subject to an authoritarian regime. Unlike a great many earlier political writings, these treatises were not addressed to Ottoman bureaucrats who were charged with making policy, but rather to an educated audience of mostly independent-minded or even recalcitrant ʿulamāʾ. Despite their shrinking material autonomy, these intellectuals were still able to think for themselves, and so Mehmed

Ali’s government found it advantageous to engage them on their own terms. This was in some sense a new development, because previous Ottoman regimes had not found it necessary to justify their policies to the educated public in such a religiously rigorous form.

569 Al-Ḥusaynī, Sharḥ umm al-musammā bi-murshid al-anām, 65. 202

Chapter 6:

The Pasha’s ʿUlamāʾ: Scholars and

Sufis Linked to Mehmed Ali

In addition to dampening opposition by means of force and propaganda, another powerful weapon in the pasha’s arsenal was cooptation. Mehmed Ali sought scholarly allies throughout the empire and was willing to pay for them. In many cases, especially his patronage of various Sufi orders, this financial support was often provided due to sincere piety. Equally important were the skills that Azharīs and other classically trained scholars could offer his nascent institutions, from the printing press to the schools.

Although some Azharīs expressed anxiety over the nature of these institutions, al-Azhar as a whole became an integral participant in these projects. Overall, neither the

Turcophone, Sufi-oriented scribes nor the Azharīs in the service of the pasha could afford to regard themselves as truly independent of the regime.

A. Courting the Ottoman ʿUlamāʾ

When browsing the inshāʾ collection of Mehmed Ali’s early dīwān secretary

Hayret Efendi (d. 1240/1824-1825), one gets the sense that the letters contained therein

203 are an epitome of Mehmed Ali’s relations with the Ottoman elite as a whole. Indeed, the book was exactly that, meant to trumpet the pasha’s productive relationships with the full range of Ottoman officials as well as his complete acceptance into that elite, despite being more a private collection of the author than a government archive. Prior to his definitive break with the sultan in the late 1820s, Mehmed Ali undertook a wide-ranging charm offensive, and this collection includes letters from that period. To publicize his place in the elite, Mehmed Ali distributed copies of the book to fellow Ottoman governors in other provinces.570 As noted in chapter five, the book begins with his correspondence with various Chief Eunuchs, followed by grand viziers and other figures.

Scholar-officials from the elite ranks of the Ottoman Islamic hierarchy were naturally included as well. Based on this work, as well as archival sources, it is possible to explore what kind of relationship with the Ottoman ilmiyye the pasha sought to cultivate.

Despite being verbose and artificial in the extreme, the letters in Hayret Efendi’s inshāʾ collection do match authentic letters found in archival collections from the early

1820s.571 In general, the letters include vague and highly stylized expressions of mutual support or, alternatively, offers of “gifts,” usually in cash. For example, in 1236/1821

Mehmed Ali gave cash “gifts” to a series of officials beginning with the grand vizier and

Şeyhülislam at 15,000 kuruş apiece.572 Beyond appealing to whoever happened to be in power, the pasha maintained relationships with influential and/or aristocratic scholar- officials. Among Hayret Efendi’s letters, three are addressed to Halil Paşazade Arif

570 Taqwīm al-Nīl, II, 367. 571 Compare, for example, the following letters to Sıddik Molla: Hayret Darendevi, İnşa-yı Hayret Efendi, 305-306; ʿAbbās Ḥāmid, ed., Al-Awāmir wa-l-mukātabāt, I, 88. 572 ‘Abbās Hāmid, ed., Al-Awāmir wa-l-mukātabāt, I, 37. 204

Beyefendi, two to Mustafa Behcet Efendi, three to Sıddik Efendi, and four to

Ismetbeyzade Arif Beyefendi, known as Arif Hikmet Bey.573 All of these men served as

Egypt’s qāḍī at least once, and it was during their judge-ships that Mehmed Ali built lasting alliances with them. To that end, a new heading was added to the ruznamçe registers that listed scholarly salaries. Probably beginning in the year 1227/1812, when

Sıddik Efendi was in office, there is an entry for the kazasker, i.e., the chief qāḍī of Egypt

(termed “military judge” for historical reasons allegedly arising from the time of Selim

I).574 Although this magistrate was appointed (and paid) from Istanbul, a grain ration of

400 ardabbs was awarded from the provincial budget.575 Al-Jabartī had noted Mehmed

Ali’s preference for Ottoman qāḍīs over Egypt-based ʿulamāʾ, and this came to be reflected in the budget as well.

Arif Bey (d. 1237/1821-1822),576 son of the important reformist grand vizier Halil

Hamid Pasha (d. 1199/1785), arrived as qāḍī in 1221/1806,577 and the friendship between him and Mehmed Ali turned into a lasting alliance. Al-Jabartī puts considerable emphasis on the festivities held at the beginning of 1229/1814 to mark the wedding of Arif Bey’s daughter Fatma Zehra and Mehmed Ali’s son İsmail Paşa,578 who was killed in the Sudan in 1238/1822. Despite her husband’s early death, Fatma Zehra stayed in Egypt for decades and became known as Mısırlı Hanım (the “Egyptian Lady”) after her return to

573 Hayret Darendevi, İnşa-yı Hayret Efendi, 299-318. See below for more information on these scholars. 574 Hüseyin Efendi, Ottoman Egypt in the Age of the French Revolution, 95. 575 Dīwān al-Rūznāmja, daftar no. 6105 (new code: 3001-012941, Years 1226-1227), DWQ. 576 Sicill-i Osmani, III, 272. 577 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, IV, 18. 578 Ibid., IV, 197-198. 205

Istanbul.579 With this connection secure, the pasha could then leverage his influence. In the mid-1820s, he implored Arif Bey to lobby the Şeyhülislam and other officials to support his goals in Greece,580 the independence of which the sultan and pasha were determined to prevent. Even the final break between Cairo and Istanbul did not dampen

Mehmed Ali’s and Arif Bey’s relationship; after the first war between Mehmed Ali and the sultan, Arif Bey’s son Mehmed Raşid Bey served at least once as qāḍī of Egypt. This was the only major post he held.581

Just as influential among Mehmed Ali’s allies were Mustafa Behcet Efendi (d.

1249/1834),582 Sıddik Efendi (d. 1240/1825),583 and the future Şeyhülislam Arif Hikmet

Bey (d. 1275/1859).584 As in the case of Arif Bey, Mehmed Ali sought to lean on these obviously influential figures to achieve his political goals. In one long dispatch, he beseeched Sıddik Efendi – the kazasker of Rumelia, a former imperial naqīb al-ashrāf, and the grandson of two Şeyhülislams – to secure the appointment of his son İbrahim

Pasha, the wālī of Jidda on the western coast of Arabia, as governor of the rebellious province of Morea (in present-day Greece).585 Over time, as diplomacy turned to war, this correspondence seems to have dwindled somewhat, but it did not cease entirely. In the

1830s, in the midst of war against the sultan’s army, Mehmed Ali had some success in his

579 Sicill-i Osmani, III, 272. 580 For the pasha’s letter to Arif Bey, see ʿAbbās Ḥāmid, ed., Al-Awāmir wa-l-mukātabāt, I, 193. His policy goals in Greece are laid out in a long letter to the Şeyhülislam in the same collection: Ibid., 194-196. 581 Sicill-i Osmani, II, 354. 582 Mustafa Behcet served as qāḍī of Egypt twice (arriving in 1227/1812 and 1235/1820). On his involvement in the politics of al-Azhar, see chapter 4. 583 Sicill-i Osmani, III, 226-227. Sıddik Efendi’s maternal grandfather was briefly Şeyhülislam under Selim III, although he did not evince much enthusiasm for reform: Mehmed İpşirli, “Yahyâ Tevfik Efendi,” DİA. 584 Mustafa L. Bilge, “Arif Hikmet Bey,” DİA. 585 ʿAbbās Ḥāmid, ed., Al-Awāmir wa-l-mukātabāt, I, 118. 206 efforts to win over some of the ʿulamāʾ of Anatolia to his vague idea of the “renewal of the sultanate” (tecdid-i saltanat).586 According to Butrus Abu-Manneh, Mahmud averted this danger by means of shrewd scholarly appointments that courted the supporters of the

Khālidī suborder of Naqshbandī Sufis,587 a rising intellectual movement founded by

Shaykh Khālid al-Baghdādī (d. 1242/1827).588

Of Mehmed Ali’s scholarly correspondents, Arif Hikmet and Mustafa Behcet were both present on the small imperial council that led to the “Auspicious Event” and the abolition of the Janissaries.589 It can be no accident that these scholars (probably including Arif Bey, son of a famously executed grand vizier) were of a reformist political bent and therefore congenial to the pasha. Lest this be seen as coincidental, Hayret

Efendi’s correspondence also includes letters from his former patron Şakir Pasha,590 and there is very little overlap between Şakir’s correspondence and that of Mehmed Ali. Şakir

Pasha had numerous letters sent to the former vakanüvis Mütercim Asım Efendi, who puts forward serious criticisms of Selim III in his chronicle,591 as well as the exiled rebel

586 Ali Fuad, “Mısır Valisi Mehmed Ali Paşa,” Türk Tarih Encümeni Mecmuası 19 (1928): 66. As Butrus Abu-Manneh points out, it is unclear what exactly this “renewal” would have entailed: Butrus-Abu Manneh, “Mehmed Ali Paşa and Sultan Mahmud II: The Genesis of a Conflict,” Turkish Historical Review 1 (2010): 19-20. 587 Ibid., 21. 588 See Sean Ezra Foley, “Shaykh Khalid and the Naqshbandiyya-Khalidiyya, 1776-2005,” unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Georgetown University, 2007. The Khālidīs in turn arose from the Mujaddidī suborder of the Naqshbandiyya, founded by Ahmad-i Sirhindi (d. 1034/1624). For a recent study of Sirhindi’s ideas, see Arthur F. Buehler, “Sharīʿat and ʿUlamā in Aḥmad Sirhindī’s ‘Collected Letters,’” Die Welt des Islams 43, no. 3 (2003): 309-320. On the spread of the Mujaddidiyya in the Ottoman world, see Butrus Abu-Manneh, “Sheikh Murād al-Bukhārī and the Expansion of the Naqshbandī-Mujaddidī Order in Istanbul,” Die Welt des Islams 53 (2013): 1-25. Atallah S. Copty, “The Naqshbandiyya and Its Offshoot, the Naqshbandiyya- Mujaddidiyya in the Ḥaramayn in the 11th/17th Century,” Die Welt des Islams 43, no. 3 (2003): 321-348. 589 This council promulgated the Eşkinci Ordinance, which called for the training of Janissaries along the lines of the nizam-ı cedid: Reed, “The Destruction of the Janissaries,” 118-120. 590 Probably Şakir Ahmed Pasha (d. 1235/1819-1820), wālī of the province of Morea: Sicill-i Osmani, III, 125. 591 Özkul, Gelenek ve Modernite Arasında Osmanlı Ulemâsı, 373-376. 207 cleric Münib Efendi, who had signed the fatwā deposing the same sultan. Şakir Pasha even granted the latter revenues (arpalık) from the district of Tire (in present-day İzmir province) as a sign of goodwill.592 Needless to say, Mehmed Ali Pasha sought friendship from very different factions of the Ottoman ilmiyye, ideologically speaking.

B. Mehmed Ali and the Scholars of the Holy Cities

The Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina provided another important channel through which Mehmed Ali spread his influence among Ottoman scholars. Of course, without an extensive examination of Wahhabism and the religious politics of the Hijaz, it will not be possible here to determine the exact nature of Mehmed Ali’s policies in the

Holy Cities, but we can look at his policies in that region as a part of his overall strategy.

As archival evidence attests, provisions for the Holy Cities and salaries for their scholars were a major concern from the early days of Mehmed Ali’s government. Mecca and

Medina were conquered by the pasha in 1813 and 1816 respectively, and rebuilding the

Holy Cities became a major point of cooperation between Cairo and Istanbul. A letter in

Hayret Efendi’s collection from Mehmed Ali to the Chief Eunuch discusses the

Mahmudiyye Medresesi in Medina (founded in 1238/1822 and named for the reigning sultan)593 and requests that the appointment of a certain teacher by the name of

592 Hayret Darendevi, İnşa-yı Hayret Efendi, 331-332. 593 The name of this madrasa does not necessarily imply that it was solely the sultan’s project; Mehmed Ali’s canal between the Nile and Alexandria, built on the backs of so many Egyptian peasants, was also named after Mahmud, despite little to no involvement from Istanbul. On the other hand, the Mahmudiyye Medresesi in Cairo, built in 1750 and named for Mahmud I, was an imperial initiative, and its construction was overseen (from Istanbul) by the Chief Eunuch. 208

Süleyman, a shaykh from Istanbul’s Süleymaniyye Mosque, be confirmed.594 The letter implies that the pasha was very much involved in the administration of this madrasa. In the same period, a new system of stipends for the mujāwwirīn of Mecca and Medina was established by Mehmed Ali,595 and the financial registers of the indigent persons of the

Holy Cities were sent to the Chief Eunuch for inspection.596 The victorious pasha also wrote to the Chief Eunuch declaring that he would put the management of the Holy Cities on a “new basis.”597 The exact nature of such reforms is outside the scope of this dissertation, but the pasha clearly did not limit his administrative energies to Egypt. Of course, control of the Hijaz also afforded Mehmed Ali countless opportunities to influence government officials whenever they traveled on pilgrimage, not only members of the Ottoman ilmiyye but also scholars from the whole Muslim world.

It is very likely that the application of Mehmed Ali’s ambitious governing strategies prompted events in the Hijaz that paralleled those in Egypt. After Mehmed Ali

Pasha sent his son İbrahim to establish a new regime in Arabia, two interesting (albeit vague) dispatches from the sultan show that Mehmed Ali had attempted to appoint two ideologically-charged scholar-officials in the city of Medina after the reconquest of the

Holy Cities in the second decade of the nineteenth century. In 1234/1819, Sultan

Mahmud II ordered the exile of these scholars, Jamal al-Layl Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn,the Shāfiʿī mufti of Medina, and Abū Bakr Efendi,the Ḥanafī mufti of Medina.598 In the edicts, the

594 Hayret Darendevi, İnşa-yı Hayret Efendi, 10. 595 ʿAbbās Ḥāmid, ed., Al-Awāmir wa-l-mukātabāt, I, 33. 596 Taqwīm al-Nīl, II, 278. 597 Ibid. 598 For a biography of Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn, see al-Ḥaḍrāwī, Nuzhat al-fikar, I, 423-424; On the powerful Jamal al-Layl clan, see Anne Bang, Sufis and Scholars of the Sea: Family Networks in East Africa, 1860-1925 209 sultan writes that these scholars threatened to provoke disorder (ikhtilāl). In the case of the first scholar, this was done by interfering with “what does not concern him” (fīmā la yaʿnīhu); in the case of the second, he had meddled with “matters of ideas” (umūr al- khaṭra).599 The two men had apparently been favored by İbrahim Pasha’s new government, but they caused such tumult among locals that the matter prompted imperial intervention. Although this controversy requires further investigation, it seems quite likely that Mehmed Ali had sought to consolidate religious and intellectual power in the

Hijaz in a manner similar to his strategy in Cairo. It is no wonder then that the Istanbulite officials in Esad Efendi’s chronicle speak of the political fatwās of the muftis of Egypt and the Holy Cities as a collective.600

Both of the exiled Hijazi scholars went to Egypt. The Ḥanafī mufti, Abū Bakr

Efendi, must have remained in Mehmed Ali Pasha’s favor, because a certain Abū Bakr al-Dahāwī held office as qā’im maqām (the deputy in an official’s absence) for the chief qāḍī of Egypt in 1237/1822.601 (The incumbent qāḍī in question was Arif Hikmet Bey.)

According to a nineteenth-century biographical dictionary, the other mufti, Zayn al-

ʿĀbidīn al-Shāfiʿī, was hosted at one of Mehmed Ali’s palaces, where he exhorted the pasha to treat the Azharīs well. In response, Mehmed Ali offered to allow Zayn al-

ʿĀbidīn to bring a number of Azharīs to Medina, whom he promised to support financially. The shaykh accepted this offer, and accompanied by these Azharīs, he

(London: Routledge Curzon, 2003), 25. I have not been able to locate biographical information concerning Abū Bakr Efendi. 599 Taqwīm al-Nīl, II, 279. 600 See chapter 5. 601 Maḥkamat Miṣr al-Sharʿiyya, daftar no. 32 (new code: 1017-003531, Years 1237-1239), p. 14 (End of Dhū al-Qaʿda 1237), DWQ. 210 returned to Medina to serve as naqīb al-ashrāf (since he was a descendant of the

Prophet). He passed away there in 1240/1824-1825.602 In the years that followed, these and other men, it seems fair to assume, facilitated Mehmed Ali’s influence over the scholars of the Hijaz. The ruznamçe registers,603 as well as many other documents,604 record that Mehmed Ali paid grain rations to the qāḍīs of Mecca and Medina from the

Egyptian treasury, presumably in addition to their imperial salaries. These yearly payments were set at 366 ardabbs of grain for each of the two judges.

By patronizing ʿulamāʾ in the Hijaz, whether these were local scholars or not,

Mehmed Ali Pasha extended his religio-political influence to two of the most ideologically sensitive cities in the empire. He also integrated the public sphere to a greater extent than in the past. Not only was the migration of Azharīs to the Hijaz subsidized, but communication between al-Azhar and the scholars of the Holy Cities was conducted through the pasha’s Divan-ı Hidivi.605 Because a similarly controversial religio-political ideology was imposed in both provinces, it seems that analogous protests were the result.

C. Patronage of Sufi Orders by the Mehmed Ali Regime

In forging these relationships, Ottoman pashas and scholar-officials did not interact on a wholly political level. As Butrus Abu-Manneh has shown in numerous

602 Al-Ḥaḍrāwī, Nuzhat al-fikar, I, 424. 603 Dīwān al-Rūznāmja, daftar 3001-0012952 (Year 1233), DWQ. 604 Taqwīm al-Nīl, II, 415. 605 Dīwān al-Khidiwī, daftar 732, p. 51 (early 1242), DWQ. This particular exchange of letters indicates that the Shaykh al-Azhar was directly involved in subsidizing the Holy Cities. 211 articles about the Naqshbandiyya,606 affiliation with Sufi orders was one of the most salient features of scholarly participation in Ottoman politics in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Here, the usually Macchiavellian Mehmed Ali Pasha betrayed his deep piety and even, perhaps, a driving ideology behind his politics. This did not make him unique within the Ottoman elite – whose acceptance he craved – because countless sultans and viziers had patronized a range of Sufi orders, most notably the Mevlevis,

Naqshbandīs, and Khalwatīs. However, this does not mean that patronage of Sufism in the early nineteenth century was just a generic tradition. Instead, Sufism interacted with

Ottoman politics in a historically particular way.

Sultan Selim III’s political deployment of Sufism is well-known and provided important cultural background to the policies of the Mehmed Ali era. Under Selim III, devotion to the Mevlevi order had unusually great significance as a feature of the sultan’s public piety and self-image.607 Selim had been trained in Mevlevi musical composition from a young age,608 and he remains the best known composer among all Ottoman sultans. Under the pen-name (mahlas) İlhami, he wrote spiritual poetry in a similar vein.

This personal devotion translated into public acts of generosity toward the Mevlevi order

(Arabic ṭarīqa) to which he belonged.609 While also expressing his personal convictions, such patronage also functioned as a counterweight to the Janissaries’ Bektaşi order and

606 See Abu-Manneh, Studies on Islam and the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century, 1826-1876. 607 George W. Gawrych, “Şeyh Galib and Selim III: Mevlevism and the Nizam-ı Cedid,” International Journal of Turkish Studies 4 (1987) 91-114. 608 Nuri Özcan, “Selim III: Mûziki,” DİA. 609 He repaired three of the main Mevlevi dervish lodges of Istanbul (Beşiktaş, Galata, Kasımpaşa) and supported the training of young Mevlevi composers (e.g., the highly successful Hamamizade İsmail Dede Efendi, d. 1262/1846): Nuri Özcan, “Hamâmîzâde İsmâil Dede Efendi,” DİA. 212 other anti-reform groups.610 Unfortunately for Selim, the head of the order, the “Konya

Çelebi” Hacı Mehmed (d. 1230/1815), ultimately aligned himself with the sultan’s enemies.

Modern scholars have remarked especially on Selim’s friendship with the famed

Mevlevi poet Shaykh Galib (d. 1213/1799). Appointed in 1791 as shaykh of the Galata lodge (mevlevihane), Galib soon became the recipient of the sultan’s financial support and was viewed with affection within the sultan’s household; it was even rumored that he had an affair with Beyham Sultan, one of the Selim’s sisters.611 In his poetry, Galib’s support for the sultan’s military reforms was unwavering and thoroughgoing: far more than simple panegyrics to the sultan, poems were specifically dedicated to reformed army corps such as the bombadiers and the mortar (humbaracı) corps, the Imperial Gunpowder

Works, and the nizam-ı cedid army itself.612 Galib was therefore in some sense an official poet and ideologue of Selim’s policies. Despite Selim’s failure to convincingly frame his policies in the context of Islamic law, his very public embrace of Mevlevism was a crucial element in the Islamic politics of Ottoman reform. Although insufficient for

Selim’s purposes, Mevlevi Sufism continued to play a major role after his deposition.

Shaykh Galib, for example, was one of the very first Ottoman poets whose works were printed by Mehmed Ali’s Būlāq press; the 1252/1836 printing of Galib’s Divan at Būlāq was the first and most important edition of his poetry.613

610 Abdülbaki Gölpınarlı, Mevlana’dan sonra Mevlevilik (Istanbul: İnkilap Kitabevi, 1953), 34, cited in Victoria Rowe Holbrook, “The Intellectual and the State: Poetry in Istanbul in the 1790’s,” Oriente Moderno 18/79 (1999): 245. 611 Gawrych, “Şeyh Galib and Selim III,” 108. 612 Holbrook, “The Intellectual and the State: Poetry in Istanbul in the 1790’s,” 233-251. 613 İhsanoğlu, The Turks in Egypt and Their Cultural Legacy, 193-194, 393 n. 22; Galib, Divan-i Şeyh 213

Predominantly Turcophone orders such as the Mevleviyye were not mass phenomena, but they were nonetheless influential. In Cairo, the center of Mevlevism was the Mevlevi tekke, founded sometime before 1016/1607 and located near the Sultan

Hasan Mosque,614 just below the Citadel. In the seventeenth century, Evliya Çelebi describes a vibrant, multi-story lodge with a hall for the order’s mystical rituals.615 Later, the arrival of the Ottoman army in 1216/1801 provided renewed stimulus for this ṭarīqa in Cairo. Not only did Husrev Pasha generously support Turcophone scholars, probably including many Mevlevis, but a new set of endowments for Cairo’s Mevlevis was established by Yusuf Ziya Pasha in 1216/1801,616 not long after his arrival in the city.

Instability in Cairo could well have hindered further efforts to support elite

Turcophone Sufism in Cairo until the accession of Mehmed Ali Pasha. In terms of major new building projects, Mehmed Ali Pasha undertook many of his earliest religious patronage projects outside of Egypt. He did arrange for the repair of Egyptian mosques damaged in the chaos of recent decades, in addition to allowing the building a new mosque in honor of the murdered Albanian commander Tahir Pasha.617 However, these

Galib (Būlāq: Dār al-Ṭibāʿa al-ʿĀmira, 1252 [1836]). With a publication date of Rajab 1252 (October 1836), Galib was probably the third poet to be printed at Būlāq, just months after Ragib Pasha (d. 1763) and Nef’i (d. 1635). Other contemporary Mevlevi poets followed, e.g., Leylâ Hanım, Divan-ı Leylâ Hanım (Būlāq: Dār al-Ṭibāʻa al-Bāhira, 1260 [1844]). 614 The exact founding date of the tekke is apparently unknown, but the first relevant waqfiyya, registered by Yusuf Sinan Pasha, the Ottoman governor of Egypt, dates from 1016/1607. For a transcription of this waqfiyya, albeit without its subsequent marginalia, see Giovanni Canova, “Iscrizioni e documenti relativi alla takiyya dei dervisci Mevlevi del Cairo,” Quaderni di Studi Arabi 17 (1999): 123-146. See also Giuseppe Fanfoni, “The Foundation and Organization of the Cairo Mawlawiyya,” Quaderni di Studi Arabi 17 (1999): 105-106; idem, “Il Complesso architettonico dei dervisci Mewlewi in Cairo,” Rivista degli studi orientali 57 (1983): 77-92; James Dickie, “The Mawlawi Dervishery in Cairo,” AARP: Art and Archaeology Research Papers 15 (1979): 9-15. 615 Evliya Çelebi, Evliya Çelebi Seyahatnâmesi, X, 139. 616 Daniel Crecelius, Fihris waqfīyyāt al-ʿaṣr al-ʿuthmānī al-maḥfūẓa bi-Wizārat al-Awqāf wa-Dār al- Wathāʾiq al-Tārīkhiyya al-Qawmiyya bi-l-Qāhira (Cairo: Dār al-Nahḍah al-ʻArabīyah, 1992), 14. 617 See chapter 3. 214 projects paled in comparison to what the pasha undertook in his home city of Kavala in the province of Morea. His huge religious complex (külliye) in Kavala, built from ca.

1808-1821, contained a madrasa, a fountain, a library, and living quarters for students, among other pious works. The waqfiyya of the complex and its inscriptions have now been carefully reproduced and analyzed; the earliest waqfiyya dates to 1228/1813.618 (In some ways, this pious foundation was paralleled by the pasha’s slightly later sabīl-kuttāb

– fountain and school – built just south of al-Azhar in 1821, which was also an educational complex lacking a mosque.)619 Although neither of these institutions included a tekke, the original waqfiyya of the Kavala complex stipulates the weekly practice of the

Naqshbandī dhikr,620 a mystical exercise involving the repetition of certain words or phrases. (Among Naqshbandīs, silent dhikr predominated, and even communal dhikr was often silent, as Dina Le Gall points out.)621 However, this should not lead us to believe that Mehmed Ali’s only Sufi inclination was toward the Naqshbandī order. Mehmed Ali patronized multiple Sufi orders as a part of his political strategy, and there are not many other traces of support for the Naqshbandiyya on the part of Mehmed Ali himself. As I will point out below, it is possible that the pasha’s affinity for Mevlevism was deepest of all, for reasons both cultural and political.

618 Lowry, Remembering One’s Roots, 35. 619 Agnieszka Dobrowols and Khaled Fahmy, Muhammad ʻAli Pasha and His Sabil: A Guide to the Permanent Exhibition in the Sabil Muhammad ʻAli Pasha in al-Aqqadin (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2004). 620 Lowry, Remembering One’s Roots, 182-183, 185. 621 Citing figures like Nev‘izade Atai (d. 1045/1635) and Evliya Çelebi, Dina Le Gall writes, “Observers everywhere have pointed to the silent method of dhikr… as the hallmark of Naqshbandī devotional practice.” Despite the practice of vocal dhikr by some in the order, the Naqshbandī preference for silent dhikr predated the spread of the Mujaddidī and Khālidī movements within the order: Dina Le Gall, A Culture of Sufism: Naqshbandīs in the Ottoman World, 1450-1700 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005), 113-115. 215

In 1234/1818, before the completion of his educational complexes in Kavala and

Cairo, the pasha wrote grandly to the Chief Eunuch that he intended to bring forth pious works in the Holy Cities that would equal “the viziers of the past, such as Sinan Pasha,

Mehmed Pasha, and Yusuf Pasha,”622 and so he requested permission to build a tekke in each of the two Holy Cities.623 When the two tekkes were finished, they came to be known as the “Egyptian tekkes,” especially famed for distributing food to the poor as well as the mujāwwirīn in their respective cities.624 Unfortunately, not many details of these tekkes are known. These are the only Sufi lodges known to have been founded by

Mehmed Ali himself, and I have not found information linking these tekkes to a specific order.

Nonetheless, Mehmed Ali stayed in regular contact with prominent Sufis throughout the empire, and it is through such correspondence that his affinity for

Mevlevism is made clear. Among the various letters in Hayret Efendi’s collection are two to Mevlevi dignitaries in Konya: one to the head of the order and another to the postnişin of Konya. Because the term postnişin was equivalent among the Mevleviyye to shaykh or dede,625 the two addressees are likely the same person: Mehmed Said Hemdem Çelebi, son and successor of Hacı Mehmed Çelebi. The first of these letters, dated 1238/1823 in

622 It is difficult to determine which viziers Mehmed Ali is referring to, at least based on the published version of this letter. However, he is likely trying to assert his status among the great Ottoman viziers; ; thus, Sinan Pasha is probably the great admiral Koca Sinan (d. 1596), and Yusuf Pasha may be the grand vizier and grand admiral Koca Yusuf (d. 1800). 623 ʿAbbās Ḥāmid, ed., Al-Awāmir wa-l-mukātabāt, I, 27. 624 Ibrahīm Rifʿat Ḥilmīzāda, Mirʾāt al-ḥaramayn, aw al-riḥlāt al-Ḥijāziyya wa-l-hajj wa-mashāʿiruhu al- dīniyya: Maḥallāt bi-miʾāt al-ṣuwar al-shamsiyya, 2 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Maʿrifa, 1982?), I, 184-185, 424- 425. The tekkes’ charitable deeds were funded by the Egyptian ministry of endowments into the twentieth century. 625 Literally, the “one who sits on the fur”: Mehmet Zeki Pakalın, Osmanli Tarih Deyimleri ve Terimleri Sözlüğü, 3 vols. (Istanbul: Milli Eğitim Basimevi, 1946-1956), II, 779-780. 216 an archival copy,626 expresses strong admiration for the Mevlevi order and its distinctive mystical ritual (Arabic samāʿ)627 and offers 5000 kuruş to pay for the house repairs of one of the shaykh’s relatives.628 This was just one early example of numerous cash gifts bestowed by the pasha on the influential Mevlevi dervishes. In 1246/1830, Mehmed Ali sent ten ardabbs of rice and 100 French riyāls for the purchase of sweets to the shaykh of the Mevlevi tekke in Galata,629 the lodge once headed by the poet Galib. In fact, Selim III himself had pursued an analogous strategy; in addition to the public display of his

(genuine) spirituality, the sultan had sent regular gifts to Konya, including a precious drapery for the tomb of the order’s founder, Jalāl al-Dīn Rumī (d. 672/1273).630

Mehmed Ali pursued this strategy over a very long timespan. An archival document from 1254/1838, at the height of Ottoman-Egyptian tension, refers to a monthly salary of 500 kuruş for the indigent persons of the Mevlevi tekke of Konya. At that time, the yearly stipend of the shaykh of the tekke, the Çelebi Efendi, was 1383 kuruş, in addition to other grain salaries. Far from being a one-time gift, these payments were handled by the Egyptian ruznamçe and the ministry of endowments (evkaf divanı).631

These amounts may have equalled or surpassed those provided by Mahmud II.632 Clearly,

Mehmed Ali Pasha’s financial support for the Mevlevis grew impressively over the

626 ʿAbbās Ḥāmid, ed., Al-Awāmir wa-l-mukātabāt, I, 87. 627 For a description of the origins, history, and rituals of the Mevlevi order, see Franklin D. Lewis, Rumi: Past and Present, East and West: The Life, Teachings and Poetry of Jalâl al-Din Rumi (Oxford: Oneworld, 2000), 423-466. 628 Hayret Darendevi, İnşa-yı Hayret Efendi, 304-305. 629 ʿAbbās Ḥāmid, ed., Al-Awāmir wa-l-mukātabāt, I, 297. 630 Holbrook, “The Intellectual and the State,” 248; Gawrych, “Şeyh Galib and Selim III,” 107. 631 Dīwān al-Khidiwī, daftar 0004-000506, no. 376 (Years 1253-1254), DWQ. 632 Similar sums of money are mentioned in Serdar Ösen, “İbrahim Paşa’nın Konya’yı İşgalı Esnasında Mehmet Said Hemdem Çelebi’nın Tutumu,” Turkish Studies (Ankara) 8 (2013): 223. 217 course of his rule in Egypt, and this was not fully paralleled in his relationships with other Sufi orders.

The Mehmed Ali government also facilitated the movement of Sufis between

Egypt and Anatolia. Hayret Efendi’s (undated) letter addressed to the postnişin of Konya promises support for a certain Mustafa Ağa, a Mevlevi returning from Egypt to his home city,633 possibly Konya. In 1238/1823 a few dervishes, almost certainly Mevlevis, requested funds for travel from Egypt to Anatolia as though it were their right. They were granted aid, and the governor (ḥākim) of Damietta was ordered to provide them with a ship.634 In 1242/1827, one of the Çelebi’s clients, a certain Ömer Ağa who had visited

Egypt, was sent back to Konya on a ship with a Sudanese slave girl, to be presented as a gift to the Çelebi Efendi.635

Mehmed Ali’s motives were not wholly cynical, but as usual, he was still seeking political gain as a result of these interactions. The Mevlevis could help sway public opinion in many parts of the empire, and Konya itself was of major strategic significance.

Most famously, Mehmed Ali’s son İbrahim Pasha won a great victory over the sultan’s army just outside of Konya in Rajab 1248 (December 1832). Afterward, the Egyptian army occupied Konya, but Mehmed Said Hemdem Çelebi fled the city to a mevlevihane in nearby Karahisar. Sultan Mahmud rewarded the Çelebi Efendi with the governorship

(mütesellimlik) of the region as well as 40,000 kuruş to repair the dervish lodge; in return, he wrote back with prayers that İbrahim Pasha be defeated. For his part, İbrahim could

633 Hayret Darendevi, İnşa-yı Hayret Efendi, 314-315. 634 ʿArab, ed., Al-Sulṭa wa-ʿarḍḥālāt al-maẓlūmīn, 243. 635 Dīwān al-Khidiwī, daftar 733, no. 116 (12 Shawwāl 1242), DWQ. 218 only write stern letters to the Çelebi Efendi, with empty threats to install the latter’s son as the new head of the order.636 The Mevleviyye thus refused to repudiate their historical links with the Ottoman dynasty. Unfortunately for Mehmed Ali, his “investments” in the

Anatolian Mevleviyye did not pay off.

Meanwhile, in Egypt, Mehmed Ali Pasha granted Mevlevism a distinctive status.

One of the first surviving edicts of his governorship was addressed to the dervishes of the

Mevlevi tekke of Cairo. On 29 Jumādā al-Awwal 1220 (24 August 1805), less than two months after taking power, Mehmed Ali issued a ferman guaranteeing the automatic

(kıta-ı ruhsat ü cevaz göstermeyerek) payment of 200 paras every month to the dervishes of the Mevlevi tekke, headed by a certain Aziz (Dede). This money was to be disbursed from the treasury of the tarihçi (datekeeper)637 attached to the office of the divan efendisi, at that time Mehmed Tahir Efendi.638 Assuming this continued to be the case over the long term, this explains the rarity of Mevlevi dervishes in the registers of the ruznamçe; they received their income from other branches of the Egyptian treasury. It is felicitous that this document is one of the few early fermans (perhaps the earliest) to survive from

Mehmed Ali’s first years in power, because it demonstrates his commitment to the

Mevlevi order from the very beginning.

636 Ösen, “İbrahim Paşa’nın Konya’yı İşgalı Esnasında Mehmet Said Hemdem Çelebi’nın Tutumu,” 225- 228. 637 Officially, the tarihçi affixed the date to any ferman or berat (certificate): Pakalın, Osmanli Tarih Deyimleri, III, 402. 638 Jean Deny, Sommaire des archives turques du Caire (Cairo: Published for the Royal Geographic Society of Egypt by the Imprimérie de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale du Caire, 1930), plate VII. 219

According to another source,639 this Cairo tekke’s large, still-extant semahane (a hall for the performance of Mevlevi samāʿ) was constructed in 1225/1809. Subsequent construction activities are also recorded in 1234/1818.640 By contrast, despite the longstanding presence of the Naqshbandiyya in Egypt,641 no government-sponsored lodge was constructed until 1268/1851-1852, in the period of Abbas Hilmi Pasha.642 This is not to say that Mehmed Ali did not patronize the Naqshbandiyya or that it did not thrive in

Egypt, but simply that Mevlevism enjoyed a certain distinction.

As if to demonstrate the centrality of the Mevlevis, the historian and bureaucrat

Arif Efendi includes only one Sufi shaykh among his biographies, İbrahim Efendi (d.

1265/1868-1869), shaykh of the Mısır Mevlevihanesi (Cairo’s Mevlevi lodge). In his typical manner, Arif Efendi uses this section to expound on the post-Napoleonic history of the tekke, among other topics. He claims, predictably again, that the tekke had been in a state of ruin before Mehmed Ali and that its waqfiyya had become unreadable.643 For that reason, the pasha restored the lodge and provided an appropriate monthly salary to its shaykh, the allegedly ḥashīsh-addled Fikri Dede (d. 1838).

639 Fanfoni, “The Foundation and Organization of the Cairo Mawlawiyya,” 108, citing ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Fahmī, “Bayn adab al-maqāma wa-fann al-ʿimāra bi-l-Madrasa al Saʿdiyya (Qubbat Ḥasan Sadaqa),” Majallat al-Majmaʿ al-ʿIlmī al-Miṣrī 52 (1970-1971): 44 n. 2. 640 Fanfoni, “The Foundation and Organization of the Cairo Mawlawiyya,” 108. 641 Al-Jabartī’s friend and teacher al-Zabīdī was connected to Mujaddidī movement within the Naqshbandiyya: Reichmuth, The World of Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī, 12-13. 642 ʿAlī Mubārak, Al-Khiṭaṭ al-Tawfīqiyya al-jadīda, VI, 58. 643 Arif Efendi, ʿIbar al-bashar, I, 31. This is a strange assertation, considering that the waqfiyya survived and has now been read and transcribed by one modern scholar; see Giovanni Canova, “Iscrizioni e documenti relativi alla takiyya dei dervisci Mevlevi del Cairo,” Quaderni di Studi Arabi 17 (1999): 129- 140. 220

Fikri Dede’s successor as shaykh of Cairo’s mevlevihane was Nakşi Mustafa

Dede (d. 1854), a noted poet and composer.644 Nakşi Dede had already arrived in Egypt in 1825, and his musical aptitude was a boon to his reputation in Cairo. The Mehmed Ali government was very assiduous in promoting the importation of Turcophone musical culture to Egypt, particularly of the Sufi variety, and the Mevlevis, of course, were preeminent among the ṭarīqas in terms of musical reputation because of their distinctive samāʿ. An order from the pasha to his agent in Istanbul in 1253/1837 requests that the latter purchase four male slaves to be delivered to a certain dervish by the name of

Arnavutoğlu İsmail Efendi, who was then to train each of them in a classic instrument of

Sufi music, including the ney (reed flute) and the tambur (a long-necked string instrument).645 In 1848, “Deli” İsmail Dede, the chief musician of the Galata

Mevlevihanesi, was invited to Egypt by Abbas Pasha,646 who had only recently been appointed wālī of Egypt in place of his deceased uncle İbrahim and his terminally ill grandfather, Mehmed Ali.

To organize his musical programs, Mehmed Ali appointed a “Chief of Musicians”

(raʾīs al-mūsīqiyyīn) sometime before 1249/1834,647 thus showing a greater proclivity toward musical culture than is generally acknowledged. Soon, even Azhar-trained scholars were writing treatises about music with the intent of defending or aiding state- backed initiatives. A treatise entitled Al-Sayf al-yamānī bi-man aftā ḥall samāʿ al-alāt wa-l-aghānī (The True Sword: The Legality of Listening to Instruments and Songs) was

644 Nuri Özcan, “Nakşi Mustafa Dede,” DİA. 645 İhsanoğlu, The Turks in Egypt and Their Cultural Legacy, 54. 646 Nuri Özcan, “Deli İsmâil Dede Efendi,” DİA. 647 Taqwīm al-Nīl, II, 417. 221 composed by Muṣṭafā al-Būlāqī (d. 1263/1847),648 the Mālikī mufti of Egypt and a close associate of the viceregal elite.649 To cite another example, Shihāb al-Dīn Muḥammad, a student of Ḥasan of al-ʿAṭṭār with Sufi affliations of his own,650 joined Abbas Hilmi’s court as a musician and composed a music theory treatise as well.651

Although the role of these cultural associations cannot be underestimated, deeper philosophical affinities between Mehmed Ali’s governing ideology and Mevlevi ideas of politics should also be taken into account. As expressed in poetry like that of Shaykh

Galib, Mevlevism envisioned a charismatic sultanate after the model of a Sufi shaykh. By extension, this charismatic authority could be projected onto the sultan’s deputies such as the Egyptian governor. Although I have not yet been able to locate any Mevlevi panegyrics to Mehmed Ali,652 evidence of charismatic ideas of political authority can be found in the legally-oriented texts of the previous chapter. Ibrāhīm al-Saqqā cites an alleged ḥadīth (usually considered weak) containing the ancient Persian saying that the ruler is the “shadow of God on earth.”653 Ibn al-ʿAnnābī cites numerous stories about the

Sasanian emperor Khusrau I Anushirvan (r. 531-579), mixed in with ḥadīth or stories

648 Muṣṭafā al-Būlāqī, Al-Sayf al-yamānī bi-man aftā ḥall al-alāt wa-l-aghānī (Egyptian National Library, MS 20620 Bā). 649 On al-Būlāqī’s friendships with certain leading figures, see ʿAlī Mubārak, Al-Khitat al-Tawfiqiyya al- jadīda, IX, 95. 650 Shihāb al-Dīn was a client of Abdurrahman Sami Pasha (see below), and his dīwān suggests that he became a Khalwatī Sufi, potentially a Cerrahi like his mentor. Sami Pasha may even have been his shaykh, because one of Shihāb al-Dīn’s poems praises Sami Pasha in quasi-mystical terms, calling him “the celestial sphere encompassing every meaning” (al-falak al-muḥīṭ bi-kull maʿnā): Shihāb al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, Dīwān (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat Muḥammad Shāhīn, 1277 [1861]), 60-61, 180. 651 Khayr al-Dīn Ziriklī, Al-Aʿlām: Qāmūs tarājim li-ashhar al-rijāl wa-l-nisāʾ min al-ʿArab wa-l- mustaʿribīn wa-l-mustashrifīn (Beirut: Khayr al-Dīn al-Ziriklī, 1969-70; reprint Beirut: Dār al-ʿIlm lil- Milāyīn, 1980), VI, 38. 652 However, such works may well exist, e.g., Anonymous, Mısır Valisi Mehmed Ali Paşa’ya Sunulan Türkçe Şiirler Kitabı (Būlāq: Dār al-Ṭibāʿa al-ʿĀmira, 1242 [1826]). 653 Al-Saqqā, Bulūgh al-maqṣūd, 54. 222 from the Abbasid caliphate.654 Ibn al-Rajabī also writes that none but “Kisrā

Anūshirwān” had undertaken building projects similar to those of Mehmed Ali,655 another reference to this monarch, commonly held up as a model of pre-Islamic justice and grandeur. In this sense, Mehmed Ali Pasha resembled Mahmud II, who also promoted himself as charismatic and autocratic. For example, the sultan commissioned a book from his Şeyhülislam, Yesincizade Abdülvehhab Efendi, on the necessity of absolute obediance to the sultan.656 Although Ottoman rulers often desired obedience, the extent to which Mehmed Ali and Mahmud II went to assert their absolute power reflected a particularly authoritarian Zeitgeist, a reaction against the influence of the public sphere in preceding decades. Accordingly, these leaders sought religio-political allies who were most useful to that agenda, many of whom were Sufis.657

D. ʿUlamāʾ in the New Institutions

If the Mevlevis and certain other Sufis represented the kind of Muslim intellectuals most congenial to Mehmed Ali, this did not mean that non-elite scholars of other affiliations were useless to his political project. In fact, classically trained intellectuals remained more indispensable than ever not only for the purposes of legitimacy, but also to staff many of his most important new institutions, including the printing press, the official gazette, and a series of new schools. What these scholars

654 E.g., Ibn al-ʿAnnābī, Al-Saʿī al-Maḥmūd, 57v. 655 Ibn al-Rajabī, Tārīkh al-wazīr Muḥammad ʿAlī Bāshā, 183. 656 Yesincizade Abdülvehhab Efendi, Khulāṣat al-burhān fī iṭāʻat al-sulṭān ([Istanbul]: n.p., 1247 [1832]). 657 Like Mehmed Ali, Mahmud II generally favored the Mevlevis whenever possible. Numerous examples can be found in Kemal Beydilli, “Mahmud II,” DİA. 223 lacked, however, was the real degree of independence that many intellectuals had enjoyed into the early years of the nineteenth century.

The close connection between Mehmed Ali’s “modern” institutions and

“traditional” Islamic educational institutions was already apparent in his earliest projects, including the külliye in Kavala. The complex as a whole was managed by ʿulamāʾ (the

Ottoman Şeyhülislam was assigned the sole right to appoint teachers in the original charter),658 but it soon acquired a new kind of school: a mühendishane (engineering school), completed in 1236/1820-1821.659 This was the same year that two similar schools were built in Būlāq and the Citadel of Cairo.660 Early descriptions were recorded by the Italian traveller Giambattista Brocchi,661 but outside of European sources,662 these important experiments, including their links to earlier Ottoman mühendishanes,663 have been little investigated. Among the known instructors at the Cairo engineering schools were Osman Nureddin Efendi (director of the Būlāq school, a French- and Turkish- speaking Albanian), Xavier Pascale Costa (the Italian director of the Citadel school), and other Europeans.

658 Lowry, Remembering One’s Roots,181. 659 Lowry notes that the inscription to the mühendishane refers to the building exclusively as a madrasa rather than as a mühendishane: Lowry, Remembering One’s Roots, 142-143. However, this does not necessarily indicate any hesitation to describe the purpose of the building; the term madrasa was used to describe many early “secular” education institutions, e.g., the madrasat al-handasa of the Citadel. The use of the word madrasa could even be a stylistic choice based on the poetic meter of the inscription, if nothing else. 660 Heyworth-Dunne, An Introduction to the History of Education in Modern Egypt, 108-109. 661 Giambattista Brocchi, Giornale delle osservazioni fatte ne' viaggi in Egitto, nella Siria e nella Nubia, 5 vols. in 3 (Bassano: A. Roberti, 1841-43), 176-178. 662 A summary of the order establishing the Citadel school can be found in ʿAbbās Ḥāmid, ed., Al-Awāmir wa-l-mukātabāt, I, 29. 663 The fırst Ottoman mühendishane was founded as a school for naval engineers in 1189/1775: Kemal Beydilli, "Mühendishâne-i Bahrî-i Hümâyun," DİA. This was followed by additional engineering schools under Selim III. 224

Whether Azharīs were involved in the administration of the early mühendishanes is not known, nor is the origin of any of the students during the 1820s, except for the fact that both “Turks” and “Arabs” attended. The Mālikī mufti al-Būlāqī is said to have been close to the teachers of the Būlāq engineering school (although he did not teach there himself) and composed mathematical manuscripts as a result,664 presumably before becoming chief mufti in the early 1830s. His connections to the mühendishane could even have contributed to his appointment as mufti. A biographer of al-Ṭahṭawī also points out that in the early 1820s, al-Ṭahṭawī could have taught at a school run by the pasha’s kethüda for the pasha’s elite slaves, but chose not to in favor of teaching at al-

Azhar.665

The significance of Azharīs in the Citadel mühendishane is underlined by an edict from the pasha to the director of the army (Cihadiyye naziri) in 1249/1834. In this document, the students (mujāwwirīn) of al-Azhar who join the school are to receive at least forty kuruş monthly “according to their knowledge and skills,” in contrast to earlier

Azharīs who received as little as fifteen kuruş.666 These figures are in line with the stipends mentioned by Brocchi.667 Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār probably had something to do with this order: since many of his students went into government service, he may also have

664 ʿAlī Mubārak, Al-Khitat al-Tawfiqiyya al-jadīda, IX, 95. These mathematical works must have been influenced by the mathematics taught at the mühendishane; accordingly, this is an early example of the new institutions’ influence on Azharī intellectuals. 665 Majdī, Ḥilyat al-zaman bi-manāqib khādim al-waṭan, 29. These mamlūks were linked to Mehmed Ali’s regime, not the earlier Egyptian grandees. 666 ʿAbbās Ḥāmid, ed., Al-Awāmir wa-l-mukātabāt, I, 375. 667 Brocchi, Giornale delle osservazioni fatte ne' viaggi in Egitto, 176. 225 pursued a strategy of bringing Azharīs into the mühendishane, especially at a time (ca.

1249/1834) when he was particularly energetic in promoting reform.668

More colorful are the observations of the French doctor Antoine Clot (d. 1868), known in Egypt as Clot Bey for his role as director of the School of Medicine at Abū

Zaʿbal and later Qaṣr al-ʿAynī, both in Cairo.669 In his memoirs, Clot notes that virtually all of his students were from al-Azhar.670 Emphasizing their supposed ignorance of subjects such as astronomy as well as their religious “fanaticism,” he describes the process by which he won their trust in the late 1820s. Shaykh al-Azhar Muḥammad b.

Aḥmad al-ʿArūsī (d. 1245/1829-1830) was very much involved in supervising the school, especially because Clot found it advantageous to befriend al-ʿArūsī. Clot had been told by Osman Bey not to dissect cadavers, but was able to win over al-ʿArūsī by comparing the inner workings of the human body with those of a clock.671 Prominent ʿulamāʾ attended the schools’ exams regularly from the beginning,672 and Clot’s memoirs preserve a glowing letter from al-ʿAṭṭār, who took a great interest in medicine,673 calling the French doctor “l’ornement de l’esprit de la culture.”674

In Clot’s telling, the elite scholars were more amenable to dissection than the students. He claims to have convinced them to participate in dissection by beginning with

668 See chapter 7. 669 Khaled Fahmy, “The Anatomy of Justice: Forensic Medicine and Criminal Law in Nineteenth-Century Egypt,” Islamic Law and Society 6, no. 2 (1999): 224-271; Amira el Azhary Sonbol, The Creation of a Medical Profession in Egypt, 1800-1922 (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1991), 21-51. 670 Antoine Barthélemi Clot, Mémoires de A.-B. Clot Bey, Publiés et annotés par Jacques Tagher, ed. Jāk Tājir (Cairo: Publications de la Bibliothèque Privée de S.M. Farouk, 1949), 65-66. 671 Ibid., 70-72. 672 Ibid., 90. 673 Gran, Islamic Roots of Capitalism, 103. 674 Clot, Mémoires de A.-B. Clot Bey, 134. 226 the body of an African non-Muslim.675 This could not have been wholly effective, since

Clot suffered a (failed) assassination attempt by one of his students in 1829.676

Nonetheless, in light of support by scholars such al-ʿArūsī, not known as a great reformist, al-Azhar and its students should still be seen as crucial early participants in nineteenth-century Egyptian medicine. Students at Abū Zaʿbal must have gone on to hold a range of positions, probably bringing their Azharī connections with them. Given al-

Azhar’s involvement in administering the school, it seems unlikely that Azharī medical texts would have been totally unaffected by western medicine. Scholars have not yet examined al-Azhar’s early nineteenth-century medical manuscripts, so this topic requires further research. However, since we know that Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār despaired of formally introducing modern sciences into the Azharī curriculum,677 direct links were not yet possible.

In the case of the Būlāq printing press (opened in 1237/1821), the relationship between Egyptian ʿulamāʾ and Mehmed Ali’s regime was even more productive. Early on, the press was supervised by Osman Bey and the Syrian Christian Niqūlā al-

Musābikī,both of whom had studied printing in Europe, and overseen by the pasha’s kethüda, Mehmed Lazoğlu, but below this level, all of the press’s early known employees were Azharīs. Much of this work required technical rather than literary skills; this was true of the three division heads, all Azharīs, who managed the press’s iron casters

675 Ibid., 72. 676 Ibid., 73. 677 Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār, Ḥāshiyat Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār ʿalā sharḥ al-Jalāl al-Maḥallī ʿalā Jamʿ al-jawāmiʿ lil-Imām Ibn al-Subkī. Wa-bi-hāmishi Taqrīr li-ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Shirbīnī ʿalā Jamʿ al-jawāmiʿ, 2 vols. (Cairo: Al- Maṭbaʻa al-ʻIlmiyya, 1316 [1898]), II, 225. 227

(musābikūn), printers (ṭabbāʿūn), and typesetters (ṣaffāfūn).678 The integration of Azharīs into the Būlāq press further intensified during Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār’s tenure as Shaykh al-

Azhar. One archival document demonstrates that al-ʿAṭṭār and the supervisor of the press, a certain Abdülkerim Efendi, collaborated in 1247/1831 to train another fifty Azharīs at the press: thirty as printers and another twenty as typesetters (huruf cemʿ edecekler).679 In fact, al-ʿAṭṭār’s involvement was aggressive enough to provoke a negative response:

Shaykh al-Harāwī, the editor of medical books, feuded with al-ʿAṭṭār over his choice of proofreaders.680

By the 1830s, a large number of Azharīs had become proofreaders (muṣaḥḥiḥūn) and editors (muḥarrirūn) at the press, a fact that is reflected in the court registers. Judging from these entries, considerable status accrued to editors and proofreaders. One rather grandiose entry in 1246/1831 for Shaykh Muḥammad al-Nabrāwī al-Shāfiʿī al-Azharī gives his title as “Editor of Books of [Mystical] Wisdom” (muḥarrir kutub al-ḥikma) in large letters and then goes on to list al-Nabrāwī’s new appointments as supervisor of the waqfs of the Manṣūrī Hopital, the mosque and tomb of Sultan Qalāwūn, and the structures commissioned by Abdurrahman Kethüda.681 These were precisely the endowments once supervised by ʿUmar Makram, but confiscated in favor of Muḥammad al-Maḥrūqī, and later the Mālikī chief mufti Muḥammad al-Amīr (al-Ṣaghīr). By the

1830s, Azharī scholars could move between “modern” and “traditional” institutions

678 Abū al-Futūḥ Raḍwān, Tārīkh Maṭbaʻat Būlāq wa-lamḥat fī tārīkh al-ṭibāʻa fī buldān al-Sharq al-Awsat (Cairo: Al-Maṭbaʻa al-Amīriyya, 1953), 61. 679 Dīwān al-Khidiwī, daftar 776, no. 70 (7 Jumadā al-Awwal 1247), DWQ. 680 Al-Waqāyiʿ al-Miṣriyya, no. 25 (25 Ṣafar 1248), DWQ. 681 Maḥkamat Miṣr al-Sharʿiyya, 1017-003533 (1244-1249), no. 274 (14 Rajab 1246), DWQ. 228 relatively easily, and doing so could be highly beneficial to their careers, as in this case.

Al-Nabrāwī’s connection to wisdom literature is also significant; the proclivity of

Mehmed Ali’s elite for mystical ḥikma has been noted by Peter Gran, who points out that ḥikma, or mystical wisdom literature, was usually linked with Sufism and the ideas of the medieval mystic Ibn ʿArabī.682

ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Safaṭī (d. 1264/1847-1848), one of the few productive

Arabophone littérateurs of the later Mehmed Ali decades, is notable as an example of how ʿulamāʾ could work within the pasha’s new institutions without severing their links to al-Azhar and other religious institutions. al-Safaṭī served as an editor at the Būlāq press and is known today as the compiler of the first printed edition of The Thousand and One

Nights (dated 1251/1835-1836). To contemporaries, he was better known as the author of a noted dīwān of poetry. Whatever its literary merits, his poetry skews toward ikhwāniyyāt (friendship poetry), mostly addressed to other Azharīs, with the notable exception of the Istanbulite scholar-official Arif Hikmet Bey.683 He corresponded most often with the Shaykh al-Azhar Ḥasan al-Quwaysnī, a fierce critic of Mehmed Ali Pasha and rival of Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār,684 but little with al-ʿAṭṭār. His main Sufi affiliation appears to have been the Badawī order, dedicated to the beloved saint Aḥmad al-Badawī (d.

675/1276), which ran counter to the inclinations of Mehmed Ali’s elite. From these relationships, one may surmise, provisionally at least, that al-Safaṭī was aligned with skeptics of Mehmed Ali’s regime. This did not stop him from celebrating the printing of

682 Gran, Islamic Roots of Capitalism, 186 683 ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Safaṭī, Talāqī al-arab ilā murāqī al-adab (Egyptian National Library, MS Adab 1107). 684 See chapter 7. 229 various books however, such as the Golestan of Saʿdī, nor did his integration in Azharī networks decline as a result of working for the press. Though probably culturally aligned with oppositional thinking, he could still participate in and celebrate some of the regime’s achievements.

In archival documents, it is evident that Shaykh al-Azhar al-ʿArūsī attempted to maintain some supervision over the Būlāq press even in its early days. In a petition to the

Divan-ı Hidivi (the “khedival” incarnation of the provincial Divan-ı Ali) from Ramaḍān

1241 (April 1826), he calls on three employees of the press to carry out their work carefully and without error.685 These were presumably the three division heads of the press, and given that those positions had been held exclusively by Azharīs just a few years before, these men were probably also Azharīs. If this document betrays some anxiety about the accuracy of printing, another petition from the same shaykh indicates the opposite: in Rabīʿ al-Awwal 1241 (October 1826), al-ʿArūsī called on employees of the press to allow him to distribute certain printed books, unfortunately not specified, at low prices for “general benefit.”686 Although this was still a very early stage of the press’s history, some educational books had already been printed on topics such as logic and the Arabic language.687 Alternatively, this request may have had something to do with the destruction of the Janissaries, which had occurred just a few months earlier.

Toward the end of 1241, the only new book in press at Būlāq was a Mamlūk-era treatise on the virtues of jihād;688 obviously, the printing of this book had a political intent that

685 Dīwān al-Khidiwī, daftar 729, no. 68 (7 Ramaḍān 1241), DWQ. 686 Dīwān al-Khidiwī, daftar 732, no. 12 (8 Rabīʿ al-Awwal 1242), DWQ. 687 For a list of the earliest books printed in Egypt, see Raḍwān, Tārīkh Maṭbaʻat Būlāq, 446-479. 688 Ibn Naḥḥās (d. 1411), Mukhtaṣar mashariʿ al-ashwaq ilā maṣāriʿ al-ʿushshāq (Cairo: Dār al-Ṭibāʿa al- 230 foreshadowed later efforts to justify military reform. In any case, the Shaykh al-Azhar believed that he could use the newly-printed books for his own benefit, even if his exact intent is obscure.

One further institution was heavily staffed by Azharīs: the official gazette Vekayi- i Misriyye (al-Waqāyiʿ al-Miṣriyya in Arabic). Secondary sources are in disagreement about the early editors of the gazette, but archival sources clarify the issue. At its inception in 1244/1828, the original Turkish-language chief editor of the paper was Aziz

Efendi, an influential scribe who went on to publish a collection of letters in

1249/1833.689 By 1246/1830, the head editor of the Turkish section was Abdurrahman

Sami Efendi, a Morean immigrant, Cerrahi Sufi,690 and later a close advisor to Mehmed

Ali.691 An Arabic translation was added a year after the gazette’s creation, and Ḥasan al-

ʿAṭṭār was its first editor. Upon appointment as Shaykh al-Azhar in Ṣafar 1246 (1830), he was allowed to choose a deputy to serve in his stead with a impressive salary of 330 kuruş monthly.692 Mentioned only as Şeyh Muhammed in the Ottoman-language edict, this must have been Shihāb al-Dīn Muḥammad, whose biography states that he succeeded his teacher al-ʿAṭṭār as chief editor of the Arabic section.693 Strangely, even though

Azharīs were involved in writing the brief reports, the gazette includes little information about the affairs of religious politics, Egyptian endowments, or private events of most

ʿĀmira, 1242 [1826]). 689 Aziz Efendi, Fülk-i Aziz (Alexandria: n.p., 1249 [1833]). 690 On Sami Pasha’s role in the Cerrahiyye, see Mehmed Cemâl Öztürk, Cerrahilik (Fatih, İstanbul: Gelenek, 2004), 121. 691 Sicill-i Osmani, III, 7-8. 692 Dīwān al-Khidiwī, daftar 770, no. 49 (24 Ṣafar 1246), DWQ. 693 Al-Ḥusaynī, Sharḥ umm al-musammā bi-murshid al-anām, 48. 231 kinds. One reason for this is that the gazette mostly focuses on the new institutions and their activities. In addition, as one modern scholar has argued,694 one of the primary motivations behind the Vekayi-i Misriyye was to trumpet the benefits of Mehmed Ali’s administration to a pan-Ottoman audience, especially as the so-called “Ottoman-

Egyptian” conflict intensified. If that is correct, then it stands to reason that Mehmed

Ali’s building projects, for example, would be more likely to impress Istanbulite power- brokers than the internal workings of al-Azhar and the affairs of its scholars.

Given the persistent involvement of al-Azhar – both its students and its shaykhs – in shaping and serving Mehmed Ali’s Egypt, the image of Egyptian ʿulamāʾ in the early nineteenth century as mere bystanders is more than a little unfair. By virtue of the presence, or even predominance, of Azharī students across a range of institutions, al-

Azhar became involved in their affairs by necessity. Nor did ʿulamāʾ cease to be Azharīs when they took positions at the Būlāq press or elsewhere, as the case of the editor al-

Nabrāwī demonstrates. Furthermore, the pervasive presence of Muslim scholars in

Mehmed Ali’s institutions was by no means anomalous; this was similarly true within

Mahmud II’s administration, even in his hospitals and military schools.695

However, there were costs to such participation. Most of those Azharīs who managed to thrive in the new environment became mere employees of the pasha’s government, and this seriously reduced the autonomy of the Egyptian public sphere. To take the example of poetry, in the first decades of the nineteenth century, the young

694 See Orhan Koloğlu, İlk gazete, ilk polemik (Istanbuk: Kaynak Yayınları, 2014). 695 Levy, “The Ottoman Ulema and the Military Reforms of Mahmud II,” 36-37. Despite the knowledge of European medical science shown by Chief Physician Mustafa Behcet Efendi, the curricula of the new medical schools he supervised diverged little from those of madrasas; this was not the case in Egypt. 232

Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār could establish his reputation as a poet and intellectual while avoiding dependence on any ruler or centralized institution. In contrast, the best-known poets between 1830 and 1850, Shihāb al-Dīn Muḥammad and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Safaṭī, were salaried employees, and al-ʿAṭṭār himself gave up his previous independence in exchange for an influential role in politics.696 The reality of the intellectuals’ thorough dependence on a dictatorial regime should temper our understanding of the origins of the nineteenth- century nahḍa, or Arab intellectual “renaissance.” Before Mehmed Ali, Egyptian intellectual output had arguably been just as fertile, albeit less engaged with European ideas. In the realm of politics, participation and debate were certainly set back. By the second quarter of the nineteenth century, dissent was still possible, but oppositional

ʿulamāʾ had to reckon with the new environment.

696 Indeed, al-Jabartī writes that after the death of the poet Ismāʿīl al-Khashshāb (d. 1230/1815), Ḥasan al- ʿAṭṭār “gave up writing poetry and prose (taraka naẓm al-nathr wa-l-shiʿr) except by necessity or to get (material) support from the people of the age (nafāq ahl al-ʿaṣr),” and his anxieties increased: al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, IV, 239. Clearly, a difficult change in the cultural atmosphere had taken place. 233

Chapter 7:

Al-Azhar Under a Reforming Government

In a time as disorienting as the early nineteenth century, it would have been strange if the ʿulamāʾ of al-Azhar had succeeded in maintaining a splendid isolation, although these scholars are sometimes credited with precisely that. In fact, Mehmed Ali sought to remake al-Azhar, as he had done the rest of Egyptian society. He patronized al-

Azhar’s Turcophone residential college (Riwāq al-Arwām), the heads of which had usually been trained for service in the pan-Ottoman Islamic hierarchy. The pasha also found a dynamic Arabophone ally in the form of Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār, despite the antipathy of many Azharīs toward al-ʿAṭṭār’s appointment as Shaykh al-Azhar. Eventually, critics of

Mehmed Ali’s centralization and reform projects, such as the courageous blind shaykh

Ḥasan al-Quwaysnī, found a way to voice their dissent within the pasha’s new institutions rather than disdaining them altogether.

A. The Evolution al-Azhar: Turcophone Influence and Reform

Even before Mehmed Ali Pasha’s rule, Ottoman reform had not left al-Azhar untouched. As described in chapter three, ruznamçe financial registers drawn up under

Husrev Pasha testify to that governor’s desire to shift resources among Azharīs away 234 from Arabophone ʿulamāʾ and toward Turcophones. Although Turkish-speaking scholars and Sufis had struck deep roots in Egypt since before the Ottoman conquest, not all groups of Turcophones were equally indigenized, and some had stronger links to the

Istanbulite elite than others. The affinity of centralizing reformists, including Mehmed

Ali, for the Mevlevis especially has been outlined in the preceding chapter, but the other orders did not necessarily thrive; the confiscation of the Demurdaşiyye’s endowments in favour of one of the pasha’s agents has been described in chapter four.

Under Mehmed Ali, al-Azhar’s Rūmī riwāq (Turkish ervam rıvakı, Turcophone students and scholars from Anatolia) belonged to the category of favored groups. In the court registers, the Rūmīs were the only riwāq that consistently secured waqf appointments through the first few decades of the nineteenth century; other riwāqs received virtually none. For example, in one early case (1225/1810), the shaykh of the riwāq, Seyyid Hüseyin Efendi, was appointed supervisor of a large Mamlūk-era waqf, which included a ṣahrīj and maktab (i.e., a Qurʾān school over a fountain, or sabīl- kuttāb).697 Also telling were the circumstances in which the Egyptian naqīb al-Dawākhilī fell from grace a few years later. Al-Dawākhilī had participated in ʿUmar Makram’s removal and was a favorite of the pasha for some time thereafter. However, in

1231/1816, al-Dawākhilī was abruptly deposed as naqīb and exiled from Cairo. His prime offense had been cheating Seyyid Hüseyin of money owed to the latter for the purchase of a slave girl; other offenses included opposing the judgments of the chief qāḍī

697 Maḥkamat Miṣr al-Sharʿiyya, daftar no. 25 (new code: 1017-003525, Years 1221-1226), no. 457, DWQ. 235 and his assistants.698 The qāḍī at this time was Moralızade Mehmed Hamid Efendi (d.

1240/1825), a Naqshbandī scholar who, according to the Sicill-i Osmani, “showed firmness toward Mehmed Ali in the implementation of sharīʿa judgments.”699 This was very much an ideological objection to the pasha’s governing style. In response, by deposing al-Dawākhilī, Mehmed Ali could placate a skeptical qāḍī and show respect for the Rūmī riwāq. He did so at the expense of a well-connected Egyptian Azharī, however.

The respect displayed by the pasha for the shaykhs of the Turcophone riwāq became more and more ostentatious over time. At the end of Muḥarram 1242 (beginning of September 1826), Seyyid Hüseyin was provided with a ship to travel to Istanbul via

Alexandria.700 Given the timing, it is possible that Hüseyin was serving as a quasi-official envoy to the sultan or government officials, in order to relay congratulations for the victory over the Janissaries. At the very least, Mehmed Ali wanted to strengthen the connections between Turkish-speaking Azharīs and certain influential figures in Istanbul.

In 1252/1836, the shaykh of the Rūmī riwāq, Abdülhalim Efendi, perhaps newly appointed, was invited to a ceremony at the Divan-ı Hidivi, where he was presented with a robe of honor and a ceremonial oar (kürek) by the leading ʿulamāʾ.701 It appears that some ʿulamāʾ did not attend, and the question of whether their non-attendance was permissible was put before a special consultative council (the Meclis-i Ali, or High

698 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, IV, 243-244. 699 “Mehmed Ali Paşa’ya ahkam-i şeriyyeyi tebliğde metanet izhar eyledi”: Sicill-i Osmani, II, 106. 700 Dīwān al-Khidiwī, daftar 729, no. 443 (End of Muharram 1242), DWQ. 701 Dīwān al-Khidiwī, daftar 821, no. 329 (16 Jumadā al-Awwal 1252), DWQ. 236

Council).702 Needless to say, other riwāq shaykhs and ʿulamāʾ were not feted in a similar manner, and these scholars reacted with understandable recalcitrance.

Who were the shaykhs of the Rūmī riwāq, and why did the pasha choose to show these men such favor? According to al-Jabartī, the first nineteenth-century shaykh of the riwāq following the French withdrawal was Yusuf Efendi, the putative sayyid whose stint as naqīb was discussed in chapter three. When Yusuf alienated those under his authority,

Seyyid Hüseyin Efendi was appointed in his stead, an upright man in the eyes of al-

Jabartī.703 He held this post from the time of Husrev Pasha through the late 1820s.

It seems likely that Seyyid Hüseyin Efendi is identical to the entry under this name in the Sicill-i Osmani, with a death date of 1254/1839.704 Seyyid Hüseyin went on to serve as the chief qāḍī of Damascus under Egyptian occupation in 1252/1837.

Accordingly, he also appears in the Syrian biographical dictionary of ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-

Bayṭār (d. 1917), where he is described as a pious and ascetic man; he was buried in

Damascus.705 The Sicill-i Osmani gives the southwestern Anatolian town of İsparta as his origin; by the eighteenth century, İsparta’s largest tekke was its mevlevihane,706 so one might suspect that he belonged to that order. Inevitably, these skeletal biographies are of limited utility, but investigation of his role in the occupation of Syria could yield further insights into the role of this influential Anatolian Azharī.

702 On the Meclis-i Ali, see below. 703 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, III, 203-204 704 Sicill-i Osmani, II, 223. 705 ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Bayṭār, Ḥilyat al-bashar fī tārīkh al-qarn al-thālith ʻashar, 3 vols. (Damascus: Majammaʿ al-Lugha al-Arabiyya, 1961-1963), I, 553. 706 Ekrem Sarıkçioğlu, “XVIII. Yüzyılın İlk Yarısında İsparta'da Sosyo-Ekonomik ve Kültürel Hayatı (170 ve 171 Şer’iyye Sicillerine Göre),” unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Süleyman Demirel University, 2004. 237

By 1246/1830, Hüseyin Efendi had been replaced by Süleyman Raşid Efendi, who is given the title “Honorable Teacher at the Imperial Palace” (fakhr al-mudarrisīn bi-dār al-salṭana al-ʿāliyya).707 As such, this shaykh was a very elite Istanbulite scholar.708 In contrast to other riwāq shaykhs, all the Rūmī shaykhs of the Mehmed Ali period at least bore the title of efendi,709 which probably indicates that they had held official positions in the Ottoman ilmiyye before arriving in Cairo. This contrasts with the more informal structure that had developed within al-Azhar over the course of the

Ottoman centuries, whereby riwāq shaykhs were chosen by acclamation; most did not even receive an official grain ration and instead relied on endowment income. Mehmed

Ali’s preference for credentialed scholar-officials over other upstarts show his admiration for Ottoman hierarchies, which was in harmony with his systematizing impulses.

Furthermore, the fluid membership of the Rūmī riwāq facilitated the pasha’s efforts to forge new connections throughout the empire.

Even so, Mehmed Ali could not dominate al-Azhar with fellow Turkish-speakers alone. In this endeavor, he ultimately found an ally in Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār, although precisely how this came about is somewhat unclear. As we have seen, around the time of ʿUmar

Makram’s exile, al-‘Attār was in full agreement with his friend al-Jabartī about the state of Egypt. His early biographer Aḥmad Bey al-Ḥusaynī (d. 1332/1914)710 focuses mainly

707 Maḥkamat Miṣr al-Sharʿiyya, daftar no. 34 (new code: 1017-003533, Years 1244-1249), no. 199 (7 Ṣafar 1246), DWQ. The appointment is to supervise the endowments of a shrine and fountain near the Ḥusaynī Shrine. 708 This Süleyman Raşid Efendi seems to match an entry of the same name (d. 1252/1836) in the Sicill-i Osmani describing a descendant of the aristocratic Feyzullahzade family of ʿulamāʾ. He is said to have acquired high judicial office (mahrec mollası) before his death: Sicill-i Osmani, III, 97. 709 Numan Efendi is the name of another Rūmī riwāq head (ca. 1250/1834) who appears in the archives. 710 Al-Ziriklī, Al-Aʿlām, I, 94. Al-Ḥusaynī’s biographical compilation was never published. 238 on the shaykh’s prolific intellectual output, not the evolution of his political attitudes. Al-

Ḥusaynī writes simply that al-ʿAṭṭār met with Mehmed Ali regularly and that the latter respected him greatly, which led to his appointment as Shaykh al-Azhar.711 One political treatise was composed by the mature Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār, an apologia for the Ottoman caliphate,712 and this work gives an idea of the views he adopted. Like Ibn al-ʿAnnābī, al-

ʿAṭṭār stresses the importance of effective siyāsa in order to apply sacred law.713 His comments are made in general terms, and the manuscript is undated, although it may have been written in the late 1820s, when there was a spate of political writings (e.g., by

Ibn al-ʿAnnābī and others). In any case, this is a far cry from his earlier denunciations of

“tyrants who exceed all bounds.”714 Indeed, one of his marginal comments in al-Jabartī’s manuscript seems to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the Ottoman caliphate. Al-ʿAṭṭār concurs with al-Jabartī’s reference to an alleged Prophetic ḥadīth prophesying that the caliphate would become mere mulk (worldly kingship) thirty years after the Prophet’s death (i.e., after the death of the caliph ʿAlī in 661).715 By contrast, his defense of the

Ottoman caliphate even includes a section justifying the Umayyad caliphate, which succeeded ʿAlī.716 If this was sincere, al-ʿAṭṭār’s religio-political views must have changed drastically over time.

711 Al-Ḥusaynī, Sharḥ umm al-musammā bi-murshid al-anām, 37. 712 Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār. Risāla fī taḥqīq al-khilāfa wa-manāqib al-khilāfa al-ʿUthmāniyya (Egyptian National Library, MS 380 Makhṭūṭāt al-Zakiyya ʿArabiyya). 713 Ibid., 1. 714 See chapter 4. 715 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjā’ib, ed. Moreh, I, 14; Moreh, “The Egyptian Historian ʻAbd al-Raḥmān al-Jabartī,” 337. 716 Al-ʿAṭṭār. Risāla fī taḥqīq al-khilāfa, 9. 239

Not all Azharīs were willing to make peace with the regime so quietly, however.

For that reason, al-ʿAṭṭār seems to have been transformed into a symbol of the regime’s oppressiveness in the eyes of the oppositional scholars. When he assumed office as

Shaykh al-Azhar in 1246/1831, protests broke out in the neighborhoods surrounding the mosque. In what may have been a humbling moment, al-ʿAṭṭār was compelled to send a petition to the Divan-ı Hidivi requesting that the pasha’s troops not intervene to put down the tumult by force,717 which would have squandered any goodwill he had left at al-

Azhar.

Nor was that the end of Azharī denunciations of the alliance between al-ʿAṭṭār and Mehmed Ali. The following year (1247/1831-1832), the Shaykh al-Azhar faced apparently more adroit opposition led by the shaykh of the riwāq of the blind, Ḥasan al-

Quwaysnī. The early biographer al-Ḥusaynī, ostensibly relying on eyewitness testimony, writes that al-ʿAṭṭār’s patronage of Ibn al-Ḥusayn, the head of the Maghribī (North

African) riwāq, had become controversial. Al-ʿAṭṭār’s various opponents “conducted intrigues into [Ibn al-Ḥusayn’s] rightful affairs and reported them to the governor of

Egypt” (dassū fī ḥaqqihi ilā wālī iM ṣr).718 What this means is obviously ambiguous, but there is some evidence in the court registers of Ibn al-Ḥusayn’s influence in that year. In

Jumadā al-Awwal 1247 (October 1831), Ibn al-Ḥusayn was appointed to supervise two waqfs, supporting structures near the Zuwayla Gate, established by a migrant from Izmir

717 Dīwān al-Khidiwī, daftar 756, no. 204 (9 Muḥarram 1246), DWQ. 718 Al-Ḥusaynī, Sharḥ umm al-musammā bi-murshid al-anām, 40. 240 who had only recently passed away.719 Presumably, someone from the family of the deceased would have been more appropriate to manage these endowments.

Although admittedly speculative, it is plausible that Azharīs resented the favoritism shown toward Ibn al-Ḥusayn in matters of endowments or otherwise.

Corruption in endowments was a particularly sensitive issue, because this implied a direct violation of sharīʿa. Whatever the ultimate reason, al-Quwaysnī seized on the scandal to call for al-ʿAṭṭār’s resignation, an unprecedented step.The biographer al-Ḥusaynī attributes such actions to sheer envy. In another anecdote, he claims that certain scholars tried to fabricate corruption charges within the Maghribī riwāq and invaded the privacy of al-‘Attār’s home in the process.720 This group was allegedly led by Muṣṭafā al-ʿArūsī

(d. 1239/1876), the son and grandson of two past rectors of al-Azhar and a future appointee to that post. If al-ʿArūsī’s son still represented the moderate politics of his father, al-ʿAṭṭār must have been isolated indeed. Multiple factions within al-Azhar had turned against him.

None of this, however, made a real difference. In al-Ḥusaynī’s account, Mehmed

Ali simply told the Azharīs to cease their agitation. In reality, he went much further than that. In Muḥarram 1248 (June 1832), on the occasion of a public festival, a group of prominent (although unspecified) ʿulamāʾ submitted a petition to the pasha’s kethüda requesting the release of certain detainees who had “made inappropriate statements in past movements.”721 This could only have referred to arrests made in the tumult that had

719 Maḥkamat Miṣr al-Sharʿiyya, daftar no. 34 (new code: 1017-003533, Years 1244-1249), no. 380 (7 Ṣafar 1247), DWQ. 720 Al-Ḥusaynī, Sharḥ umm al-musammā bi-murshid al-anām, 41. 721 ʿAbbās Ḥāmid, ed., Al-Awāmir wa-l-mukātabāt, I, 339 241 accompanied al-ʿAṭṭār’s first two years as Shaykh al-Azhar. As in the past, Mehmed Ali did not hesitate to use force to silence public dissent, and it is not clear when or if the arrested scholars were freed. On the other hand, the very fact that such dissent seemed ineradicable meant that the pasha continued to be vulnerable in the court of public opinion, despite his victorious army.

Al-ʿAṭṭār’s reforms of al-Azhar soon demonstrated that his opponents had not been irrational in their hostility toward his appointment. Archival documents indicate that unlike previous rectors, al-ʿAṭṭār visited the pasha’s highest executive council to have an open-ended discussion about “certain reforms within al-Azhar” (cami-i mezkurde bazı nizametına dair).722 Considering that not long before the term had been controversial even in a military context, the use of the word nizam to refer to the reorganization of a revered religious institution indicates an ominous quickening of the pace of reform. At the same time, this was even more obviously true in Istanbul, where a new apparatus centered on the Şeyhülislam’s office (Fetvahane-i Ali) brought previously autonomous figures, including elite professors and judges, under the supervision of the Chief Mufti.723

One result of these discussions was a long edict forbidding independent preachers and Qurʾān reciters, issued by the Divan-ı Hidivi in 1250/1835 in the name of the Shaykh al-Azhar.724 Although the matter in question may seem minor, the decree gave sweeping powers to the Shaykh al-Azhar to control public religious practice virtually everywhere in

Egypt. The text cites the danger of assorted rabble who pass themselves off as shaykhs

722 Al-Maʿiyya al-Saniyya, daftar 44, no. 473 (6 Jumadā al-Ākhira 1248), DWQ. 723 On ilmiyye reform after the abolition of the Janissaries, see İlhami Yurdakul, Osmanlı İlmiye Merkez Teşkilâtı’nda Reform: 1826-1876 (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2008). 724 Dīwān al-Khidiwī, daftar 801, no. 79 (20 Ṣafar 1250), DWQ. 242 and recite the Qurʾān in the streets, markets, and coffeehouses, and so such preachers must be forbidden. This was an attempt to control the public sphere in a very literal way; it is easy to imagine such preachers using their recitations to make destabilizing social or political statements.

However, as if to give the decree Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār’s personal stamp, exceptions are made for certain shopkeepers, with only the perfume sellers (Arabic sing. ʿaṭṭār) mentioned specifically. Of course, this had been the profession of the powerful shaykh’s father, as his name indicates. Significantly, Egypt’s mosques, schools, and waqf administrators (cevami ve medaris ve mütevelliler) are among those called upon to implement the new regulation alongside the police. Thus, the authority of the Shaykh al-

Azhar now extended to both the “secular” arms of the provincial state and to private (or quasi-private) organizations.

Here, perhaps for the first time, the Shaykh al-Azhar exercises legal and disciplinary power over Egyptian Islam in general, rather than merely serving as a religio-political advisor to the ruler or as an administrator limited in power to the mosque-madrasa itself. Such a ruling would probably have been more appropriate to the chief qāḍī or the Ḥanafī mufti, particularly if the decision had been issued in the form of a fatwā, which it was not. Mehmed Ali had often relied on qāḍīs, whose legal authority was indisputably greater than that of the Shaykh al-Azhar. However, with an energetic scholarly centralizer in power at al-Azhar, it was considered expedient to omit reference to the qāḍī altogether.

243

Unfortunately, I have not yet been able to locate other decrees relating to the reform of al-Azhar in this period. The registers of the ruznamçe, however, indicate that far-reaching financial reforms were undertaken in the 1830s, almost certainly as a result of Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār’s efforts. By the time of the register from 1257/1841, the system of

Azharī grain rations had vanished. Instead, cash stipends were distributed monthly in kuruş. The main beneficiaries of the reforms were the mujāwwirīn of the Turcophone riwāq, headed in that year by a certain Molla Mustafa Efendi (possibly identitical to

Nakşi Mustafa, the Mevlevi shaykh discussed in the preceding chapter). In 1257/1841, the riwāq’s monthly stipends added up to 12,124 kuruş collectively.725 Despite dramatic devaluations of the kuruş,726 this was still a considerable sum. In contrast, the Syrian and

North African riwāqs received stipends of only 2099 and 4056 kuruş respectively. A number of non-Arabophone riwāqs, including those of the “Sulaymāniyya”727 and the

Kurds, were also awarded respectable stipends.

In short, this was the system that Husrev Pasha had tried and failed to implement after the end of the French occupation four decades earlier. The Rūmīs were made preeminent, and more manageable cash stipends replaced the venerable distribution of grain rations. The image of al-Azhar as untouched by the changes of the early nineteenth- century is unsustainable, at least from the perspective of organization, if not necessarily of instruction.

725 Dīwān al-Rūznāmja, daftar 3001-012041 (Year 1257), DWQ. 726 The Egyptian currency was linked to that of Istanbul until 1834, so the rapid decline of both currencies occurred in tandem: Pamuk, A Monetary History of the Ottoman Empire, 177-178. 727 This was the riwāq of the Afghan and Central Asian students; it was said to host relatively few students, but also to contain a library of over 300 books: al-Shinnāwī, Al-Azhar jāmiʿan wa-jāmiʿatan, I, 265. 244

B. Petitioning the State: Scholarly Activism after 1821

As the Azharī mutiny against Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār’s appointment demonstrates, control over the public sphere was not as simple as promulgating a decree. Resistance was always possible, and especially in the case of Muslim scholars, it was not necessarily scattershot and futile, but rather could take a coherent, ideological form. As we have seen, an attentive reading of al-Jabartī demolishes the fallacy of the one-dimensional,

“reactionary” opponent of reform found in contemporary European accounts of Muslim scholars (e.g., the generally acute A. A. Paton),728 because the objections of al-Jabartī and others to early nineteenth-century Ottoman governance were anything but unconsidered or reactionary. This conservative philosophical outlook was carried on by other scholars into the later years of Mehmed Ali’s rule, most notably Ḥasan al-Quwaysnī, al-ʿAṭṭār’s successor as Shaykh al-Azhar in 1250/1835. Like other oppositional figures, including al-

Jabartī and ʿUmar Makram, he first became known as a riwāq shaykh. As shaykh of the riwāq of the blind, he was heir to a tradition of activism.729 He also composed a few manuscripts on logic and inheritance law and soon gained a reputation as a major scholar.

He appears twice in al-Jabartī’s chronicle among gatherings of prominent ʿulamāʾ, and he conventionally appears in scholarly biographies as an essential scholar to claim as a

728 A. A. Paton, A History of the Egyptian Revolution, From the Period of the Mamelukes to the Death of Mohammed Ali, 2 vols. (London: Trübner and Co., 1863), II, 267-279. 729 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, III, 27-28; Marsot, “The Ulama of Cairo in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” 162. 245 teacher. Thus, al-Ṭahṭāwī’s biographer asserts that al-Ṭahṭāwī studied with al-Quwaysnī, even though al-Ṭahṭāwī’s patron (al-ʿAṭṭār) was the archrival of the blind shaykh.730

Whatever his role in scholarship, al-Quwaysnī stands out more as a popular leader than as a jurist or mentor of students. He appears in the court registers most often in connection with the shrine of Aḥmad al-Badawī in Tanta. The extremely populist Badawī

Sufi order, dismissed by al-Jabartī, for example, as vulgar and unorthodox,731 was regarded with skepticism by many Ottoman governors, including Husrev Pasha. In the

1820s, Mehmed Ali cracked down on the unruly mawlid (birthday festival) of Aḥmad al-

Badawī: a petition in 1237/1822 describes how the pasha’s soldiers, sent to keep watch over the mawlid, expelled the notables of the order from their own homes and then took up residence in those houses.732 That scandal was presumably resolved, but the incident did show the government’s antipathy toward such gatherings and the order itself. In

1245/1830, al-Quwaysnī was awarded the position of intendant (khādim) of the Badawī

Shrine and its waqfs. Shortly thereafter, he sent an indignant petition to the Divan-ı

Hidivi, claiming that the shrine was in a state of disrepair and that this had harmed certain blind people.733 Al-Quwaysnī obviously did not shy away from confronting the government with unwelcome criticisms.

Even the normally staid biographical literature contains some of the blind shaykh’s bitter criticisms of the regime. In one anecdote, he is said to have complained to al-Amīr al-Ṣaghīr, the Mālikī mufti, that the scholars of al-Azhar were starving while the

730 Majdī, Ḥilyat al-zaman bi-manāqib khādim al-waṭan, 23-24. 731 Many of his remarks about the order are condescending or hostile, e.g., al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, III, 451. 732 ʿArab, ed., Al-Sulṭa wa-ʿarḍḥālāt al-maẓlūmīn, 266. 733 Dīwān al-Khidiwī, daftar 756, no. 96 (10 Dhū al-Qaʿda 1245) DWQ. 246 ruler lived in the lap of luxury. Despite the mufti’s subsequent denunciation of his colleague, the pasha is said to have graciously provided al-Quwaysnī with honorary guards; al-Amīr, cursed by the shaykh, dies soon thereafter. In another story, the shaykh criticizes the high official Habib Efendi for allowing taverns to spread in Alexandria.

Though Habib is furious, Mehmed Ali prevents him from retaliating and duly closes several taverns.734 These stories read as morality tales, but perhaps surprisingly, they seem to have had some factual basis. In 1245/1830, just before al-Amīr’s death, al-

Quwaysnī really was presented with honorary guards (siqilli ağaları).735 Other petitions of a culturally sensitive nature during his tenure as Shaykh al-Azhar are recorded in archival sources; for example, in 1254/1838 al-Quwaysnī criticized the presence of an

Armenian settlement near the Mosque of Imām al-Shaʿrāwī.736 This kind of petition seems to echo the anxieties voiced earlier by al-Jabartī concerning Mehmed Ali’s perceived favoritism toward Armenians, embodied most famously by the merchant and high official Boghos Bey (d. 1844).

However, rather than being in sympathy with the shaykh, Mehmed Ali could only have been conciliatory out of an abundance of caution, thanks to al-Quwaysnī’s numerous supporters. Judging by his haughty treatment of Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār, al-Quwaysnī must have assumed that he had a more compelling claim to the rectorship of al-Azhar, and perhaps this had inflamed the protests against al-ʿAṭṭār in the first place. When his

734 Al-Ḥaḍrāwī, Nuzhat al-fikar, I, 277-278. 735 Dīwān al-Khidiwī, daftar 756, no. 97 (21 Dhū al-Qada 1245), DWQ. 736 Dīwān al-Khidiwī, daftar 0004-000506, no. 387 (Years 1253-1254), DWQ. Although mosques with similar names exist today, I was not able to locate any mosque by this name among ʿAlī Mubārak’s descriptions of the Friday mosques (jawāmiʿ) of Cairo: ʿAlī Mubārak, Al-Khitat al-Tawfiqiyya al-jadīda, IV-V. 247 turn to take power finally came in 1250/1835, forty-two ʿulamāʾ accompanied him to the ceremony as his entourage (maḥḍar),737 which did not occur at the time of al-ʿAṭṭār’s appointment.

Al-Quwaysnī was not the only criticial shaykh that Mehmed Ali was forced to placate. James Augustus St. John, an English traveller in the 1820s and 1830s, made the acquaintance of the Alexandrian shaykh Ibrāhīm, called by the nickname Ibrāhīm

“Pasha” in al-Jabartī’s chronicle. In 1235/1820, Ibrāhīm had provoked the hostility of both the government and the scholars of Cairo by arguing, in scholarship and preaching, that food prepared by Christians and Jews was not licit for Muslims to eat (ḥalāl), in contravention of a Qur’ānic verse. This prompted not only a rebuke from al-Azhar, but his exile to Libya.738 Eventually, though, Ibrāhīm returned with the pasha’s acquiescence, promising to adhere to orthodoxy. Describing the shaykh a few years later, St. John writes that he was “a determined enemy of Mohamed Ali, and constantly holds up, in his sermons, all his innovations and improvements to public execration.”739 Ibrāhīm “Pasha” was not the only shaykh to use his sermons for the purpose of activism. In 1845, according to a European diplomatic report, another shaykh by the name of ʿAlī Khafājī is said to have agitated against Christians and insulted the cross; he was then exiled to

Tanta.740 If such preachers could find a constituency in Mehmed Ali’s Egypt, it is no wonder that al-Quwaysnī was not quite so objectionable to the government.

737 Taqwīm al-Nīl, II, 432. 738 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, IV, 316-317. 739 James Augustus St. John, Egypt and Nubia: Their Scenery and Their People: Being Incidents of History and Travel, From the Best and Most Recent Authorities, including J.L. Burckhardt and Lord Lindsay (London: Chapman and Hall, 1845), 33. 740 Athanasios G. Politēs, Le conflit turco-égyptien de 1838-1841 et les dernières années du règne de 248

Al-Quwaysnī was most able to influence early “khedival” government by working within the consultative structures that had originally been designed for participation, however limited. Mehmed Ali and his scholarly ideologues believed it was the right and, indeed, the duty of the regime to enforce public unanimity (ijtimāʿ al-kalima and tasdīd al-raʾy), but this was tempered in theory and practice by the idea of consultation, which referred to consultative bodies and other forums in which select notables were allowed and expected to petition the provincial government. This was not necessarily a new innovation; the institution of the provincial Divan-ı Ali had had this kind of function for centuries,741 and new consultative assemblies increasingly gained acceptance in the eighteenth century, at least in Istanbul.

Nonetheless, beginning in the 1820s, an impressive number of such bodies began to proliferate and to become institutionalized in Mehmed Ali’s Egypt. The incineration of most of the pasha’s records before 1820 may (yet again) obscure the origins of these practices, but there is interesting evidence regarding oversight of the judicial system. Al-

Jabartī writes that the abolition of the non-Ḥanafī judgeships and the declining role of

Egyptian jurists opened the door to the sort of corruption practiced by the Ottoman qāḍīs, who began to charge exhorbitant fees from those who needed to use the services of the courts. By early 1231/1816, even the pasha recognized that there was a problem, and so

Mohamed Aly, d'après les documents diplomatiques grecs (Cairo: Published for the Royal Geographic Society of Egypt by the Imprimérie de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale du Caire, 1931), 157- 158. 741 For an exploration of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Divan-ı Ali and various forms of petitioning, see James Baldwin, “Islamic Law in an Ottoman Context: Resolving Disputes in Late 17th / Early 18th-century Cairo,” unpublished Ph.D. thesis, New York University, 2010. 249 he convened a secret council of elite ʿulamāʾ that exluded the qāḍī.742 However, the petition to the qāḍī that resulted from this meeting, which called for the cancellation of unjust fees, was also ineffective, unfortunately.

A much later entry among the documents of the pasha’s so-called “Exalted

Entourage,” the high executive council that consisted of his close advisors, sheds light on how the judicial oversight was extended over time. A petition submitted by al-Quwaysnī in Jumadā al-Awwal 1251 (September 1835), i.e., at the beginning of his tenure as

Shaykh al-Azhar, makes reference to a tertibname (a law of reform)743 from the year

1237/1821-1822 concerning the fees charged by the chief qāḍī of Cairo. The document refers to necessary attention and involvement in the affairs of the court, as required by the tertibname. In this case, complaints are put forward that the court has continued to charge fees over the legal limit of twenty percent, and the text asserts that the ʿulamāʾ, i.e., probably al-Quwaysnī himself, have tried repeatedly to abolish these “outrages” (ulema hazretleri işbu muhacimesini defaʿaten refʿ etmek ʿuzmetlerine dokunulacağı).744

Mehmed Ali’s legislation therefore built consultation and scholarly oversight into its structures beginning circa 1820. Whereas al-Jabartī had criticized the arbitrary justice of the regime informally in his chronicle (and thus in the public sphere), al-Quwaysnī could make a very similar critique two decades later within the government’s own structures.

742 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, IV, 248-250. 743 Although this context is of course different, tertibname is best known as a term for military regulations under Mahmud II: Pakalın, Osmanli Tarih Deyimleri, III, 471. Indeed, one could argue that the spread of military terminology to different spheres of government, such as the judiciary, reflects the mentality of the pasha’s government. 744 Al-Maʿiyya al-Saniyya, daftar 65, no. 477 (11 Jumadā al-Awwal 1251), DWQ. 250

The first permanent new consultative assembly appears to have been the Meclis-i

Şura (the “Consultative Council”), founded in 1240/1824-1825.745 Certainly, the use of the religiously evocative term shūrā was meant to show that the government took compliance with sacred law seriously, and in practice, Azharīs did participate in this council regularly.746 The historian Arif Efendi became one of the first secretaries of the

Meclis-i Şura upon arriving in Egypt in 1241/1825-1826.747 More ambitious was the

Meclis-i Ali (“High Council”), consisting of many social categories including merchants, bureaucrats, and ʿulamāʾ, and it took on both judicial and administrative functions. Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār had a leading role in creating this new assembly in 1250/1834,748 and the

Meclis-i Ali seems to have been particularly useful for Azharīs.

With these new options suddenly available, there was an upsurge in petitions from the ʿulamāʾ to the government in Cairo. Previously, as in the case of the jailed Azharīs, dissenting scholars had needed to rely on the personal intercession of the pasha’s kethüda, the main liaison between the regime and al-Azhar.749 In the first year of al-

Quwaysnī’s tenure as Shaykh al-Azhar, a number of petitions made the voice of Azharīs heard in administration, particularly in the field of judicial reform. Thanks to numerous entreaties from Azharīs and others, the chief scribe (baş katib) of the qāḍī was removed from office with the assent of the Divan-ı Hidivi.750 This may not have solved the

745 For the law establishing this council, see Zübde-i müzakere-i erbab-ı dâniş-i hazret-i dâver-i Mısr, 4-9. 746 See, for example, Taqwīm al-Nīl, II, 372. 747 Sicill-i Osmani, III, 274. 748 Taqwīm al-Nīl, II, 424; ʿAbbās Ḥāmid, ed., Al-Awāmir wa-l-mukātabāt, I, 395. 749 For this reason, the Divan-ı Kethüda would likely be one of the richest sources on al-Azhar under Mehmed Ali. Unfortunately, I have not yet been able to access it. 750 Dīwān al-Khidiwī, daftar 815, no. 467 (18 Rajab 1252), DWQ. 251 problem completely, because the qāḍī continued to drag his feet on the issue by not responding to various messages.751 Even so, around the same time, the qāḍī of

Alexandria, considered disreputable by many ʿulamāʾ in the city, was removed under widespread pressure.752 These were a rare victories for the many scholars who deeply resented what was, in their view, an arbitrary government led by Mehmed Ali.

The most difficult issue of all remained, as ever, the changing status of waqf properties under the new regime. The final years of Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār’s tenure as Shaykh al-Azhar seem to have been associated with new reforms at an increasing tempo, and matters of endowments were no exception. Entitled Sijill ḥisābāt al-awqāf al-khayriyya min sanat 1251 (1835 C.E.),753 the first comprehensive register of major Egyptian endowments was compiled just after al-ʿAṭṭār’s death. The Shaykh al-Azhar must have had a hand in the undertaking, because it directly affected al-Azhar and its component parts. The unveiling of this mass audit may have occurred on 12 Rabīʿ al-Awwal 1251

(July 18, 1835), when the pasha held an audience in the presence of the ʿulamāʾ announcing new regulations for all Egyptian endowments.754

This resulting compilation of over 600 double pages attempted a full accounting of the income and expenditures of all properties associated with each waqf. Although I was not able to access these documents directly,755 it is clear that the endowments being audited were not only those controlled directly by the provincial state, but any notable

751 Dīwān al-Khidiwī, daftar 829, no. 467 (11 Jumadā al-Awwal 1253), DWQ. 752 ʿAbbās Ḥāmid, ed., Al-Awāmir wa-l-mukātabāt, I, 443. 753 Daniel Crecelius, “The Organization of Waqf Documents in Cairo,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 2, no. 3 (1971): 272. 754 ʿAbbās Ḥāmid, ed., Al-Awāmir wa-l-mukātabāt, I, 442. 755 My request to work in the Egyptian Ministry of Endowments was never granted. 252 endowments whatsoever, as Mehmed Ali sought to extend his ability to regulate and monitor the Egyptian economy. According to figures provided by Daniel Crecelius,756 the three largest endowments by income were (in descending order) those of the Gülşeni Sufi order, Abdurrahman Kethüda,757 and the Manṣūrī Hospital founded by the Mamlūk sultan

Qalāwūn. Among the riwāqs, the richest endowment belonged, naturally, to the Riwāq al-

Arwām (24,488 kuruş). The Turcophones were followed closely by the Maghribīs

(22,365 kuruş), who had been favored by Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār, as we have seen.

This was an effort to regulate waqf finances, not to expropriate their wealth wholesale, but many ʿulamāʾ seem to have taken a cynical view of these measures. At the very least, scholarly oversight was necessary, and so in Ṣafar 1251 (June 1835), two new advisors from among the ʿulamāʾ (and two further advisors from among unspecified aʿyān) were chosen to work with the supervisor of the ministry of endowments (evkaf divanı).758 A short time later, the head of the evkaf divanı was actually replaced in the presence of al-Quwaysnī and otherʿulamāʾ, and it was promised that the ministry would take into account the “necessities of sacred law” (iktiza-yı şer’iyye).759 The new endowments supervisor (nazir-i evkaf), Mehmed Said Efendi, was himself a scholar, descended from an aristocratic ilmiyye family; he was later appointed chief judge of

756 Daniel Crecelis, “The Waqf of Muhammad Bey Abu al-Dhahab in Historical Perspective,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 23, no. 1 (1991): 75. 757 The endowments of Abdurrahman Kethüda, along with those of the Manṣūrī Hospital, had once been held by ʿUmar Makram; see chapter 4. 758 Taqwīm al-Nīl, II, 437. 759 Dīwān al-Khidiwī, daftar 816, no. 109 (22 Ṣafar 1251), DWQ. 253

Egypt in 1258/1842.760 This was probably done to reassure public opinion at a time when the regulation of endowments was becoming stricter.

Despite this apparent concession from the pasha, certain scholars – almost certainly including al-Quwaysnī – continued to petition the Divan-i Hidivi and other bodies to secure what they considered to be settled law according to the sharīʿa. In Dhū al-Qaʿda 1251 (March 1836), following meetings with the ʿulamāʾ at the Meclis-i Şura, the pasha sent out two orders declaring the impermissibility of istibdāl,761 the selling or exchange of waqf properties. The first order was to the supervisor of the endowments ministry, instructing him to prevent the chief qāḍī from allowing istibdāl except by the express permission of the endowments ministry. The following day, another order was sent to the chief qāḍī, denouncing the practice of istibdāl and stressing its incompatibility with the sharīʿa.762 The dispatch also made specific reference to a waqf established by the deceased bey al-Alfī, once Mehmed Ali’s enemy, at the well-known Mausoleum of

Sayyida Nafīsa in Cairo; this pious endowment must have affected the interests of certain

ʿulamāʾ directly.763

In this incident, the Azharī ʿulamāʾ placed their trust not in the chief qāḍī, despite that official’s time-honored role in tradition and law, but rather in the “modern” institutions of Mehmed Ali Pasha: the endowments ministry and the consultative councils. The language of the order given to the qāḍī provides evidence of how the

760 Sicill-i Osmani, III, 31. 761 On istibdāl, see Dina Ishak Bakhoum, “The Waqf System: Maintenance, Repair, and Upkeep,” in Held in Trust: Waqf in the Islamic World, ed. Pascale Ghazaleh (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2011), 181. 762 Taqwīm al-Nīl, II, 461. 763 I have not found any other references to this waqf. 254

Muslim scholars could find common ground with a pragmatic regime that had little use for limitations on its power. Not only does the order make reference to legality under sharīʿa; it also underlines the practical benefits of properly functioning endowments.

Adherence to the original conditions of the endowments would also result in the

“development of the country and the properity of the believers” (ʿimāriyyat al-bilād wa- rafāhiyyat al-ʿubbād).764 As noted in chapter 5 such were the material terms that the pasha’s elite often thought in, but in this case, such rhetoric suited sharīʿa-conscious scholars quite well.

Thus, although the political freedoms and forms of participation at al-Azhar that had come into existence during the Ottoman era had been decimated, at least the ideology of mashwara (consultation) was not an empty shell. Like many ideologies, it was self- serving, because consultation could take place only within strict limits. The Azharīs were being drawn into a nineteenth-century system of administration that they could influence but certainly not control. And yet the practice of consultation also led to new possibilities that Egypt’s Muslim scholars could take seriously and engage with. They had been cut down to size, but could not be ignored.

764 Taqwīm al-Nīl, II, 461. 255

Conclusion

The 1830s represented the high-water mark of the centralizing and autocratic impulses of both Mehmed Ali Pasha and Sultan Mahmud II. In Cairo, Mehmed Ali’s ambitions to re-order Ottoman politics were crowned by the promulgation of his

Siyasetname,765 a legal code that attempted to rationalize the various bureaucracies under his control. Despite the image of westernization that dominates our understanding of the period, the claims to authority put forth by both Mehmed Ali and his rival, Sultan

Mahmud II, in Istanbul were overwhelmingly grounded in religio-political discourses

(more than, for example, custom), and this was expressed in a number of books and manuscripts that sought to justify military reform in particular, including the works of

Esad Efendi and Ibn al-ʿAnnabī. In fact, Islam and influential Muslim scholars pervaded the political culture of the era; Mehmed Ali patronized Sufi shaykhs and other, mainly

Turcophone, ʿulamāʾ while often relying on classically-trained scholars and Sufi-oriented

765 On the Siyasetname, see Raouf Abbas Hamed, “The Siyasatname and the Institutionalization of Central Administration Under Muhammad Ali,” in The State and Its Servants: Administration in Egypt from Ottoman Times to the Present, ed. Nelly Hanna (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1995), 75-87. However, this article is insufficiently grounded in Ottoman sources and does not make reference to the Ottoman-language text itself, which was published at Būlāq in 1253/1837. 256 bureaucrats to run his new institutions. As Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu has remarked, religious works held a “conspicuous” and prominent place among the early publications of the

Būlāq press.766 This was an inseparable part of the Ottoman world of the nineteenth century that has too often been regarded as anachronistic or ignored in favor of models that are more appropriate to the second half of the century.

Moreover, Islamic political discourses in this period matter not because they represented something unchanging about Ottoman society, but because they were so contested, so fought over. In the intense controversies of the first few decades of the nineteenth century, we have been able to look closely at one of the most widely contested public debates of Ottoman history and of Middle Eastern history more generally. Many subsequently important phenomena, including nationalism and print culture, played little to no part in the struggles over the nizam-ı cedid and its consequences. Some historians have tried – and still try – to find antecedents to Egyptian nationalism in the uprising of

1220/1805 and in the Mehmed Ali regime that followed, but the period remained profoundly Ottoman in many ways. How could it have been otherwise, when the dominating figure in Egypt at the time was not even comfortable in Arabic?767 Mehmed

Ali Pasha not only had an Ottoman mentality; his policies were in some respects a continuation of those that were unsuccessfully imposed on Egypt by Husrev Pasha (ca.

1802) in such matters as waqf law.

766 İhsanoğlu, The Turks in Egypt and Their Cultural Legacy, 183-193. 767 He preferred that all his communications be in Ottoman Turkish: Fahmy, All the Pasha’s Men, 72. 257

The terms of the debate in this period were polarized between those who believed strongly in limits placed on political authority by the sharīʿa and those who advanced a more charismatic and autocratic idea of leadership that allowed for dramatic new undertakings by the state. These ideas traversed present-day national boundaries, since

ʿulamāʾ in Cairo wrote on behalf of Sultan Mahmud’s policies while those in Istanbul cited the fatwās of muftis in the Hijaz and Egypt. This is not to say that the debate was conducted only via religio-political ideas, but it would be hard to deny that Islamic ideas of politics were heavily instrumentalized by both sides and often with great sincerity.

Interestingly, in hindsight, neither side of the controversy can be considered wholly without merit. Those who were, in modern parlance, on the “wrong side of history,” due to their hostility to the reforming regimes, may appear more sympathetic today. One of these dissenters, the chronicler al-Jabartī has too often been regarded as a primarily eighteenth-century figure,768 when his writings and mentality are in fact immensely revealing of the atmosphere in Egypt during the early nineteenth century. As present-day historians such as Khaled Fahmy have shown, the advent of modern disciplinary power in the Ottoman Empire had more than its share of dark sides, from violent conscription and corporal punishment to economic confiscations. Those who saw these acts as unjust, such as al-Jabartī, often conceived of their objections in terms of the pasha’s violations of sacred law.

768 Shmuel Moreh knows al-Jabartī better than anyone, but surely Moreh does injustice to al-Jabartī’s impassioned dissent against the Mehmed Ali government in the nineteenth century by calling him simply “a giant historian of the eighteenth century.” This is Moreh’s conclusion in the very last sentence of his recent study: Moreh, “The Egyptian Historian ʻAbd al-Raḥmān al-Jabartī,” 336. 258

Equally important were the social, economic, and political realities that made possible the participation of a wide range of Muslim scholars in shaping Ottoman

Egyptian political debates, especially in the earlier part of the Mehmed Ali era. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, Egypt’s intellectuals, known for the most part as

ʿulamāʾ, had managed to consolidate a good deal of autonomy from imperial and provincial elites. They did not by any means cease to work, correspond, and establish personal links with these elites, but thanks to various robust sources of wealth, gaining access to patronage was not the only way to make a living as a Muslim scholar. As

Cairo’s court registers indicate, the numerous endowments that had mushroomed in

Egypt during three centuries of Ottoman rule had in many cases fallen into the hands of

ʿulamāʾ high and low. Yes, the classic system of grain rations that sustained al-Azhar’s students and shaykhs derived from the revenues of the provincial treasury, but this was only one piece of the puzzle as far as the wealth of Muslim scholars was concerned. For the oppositional shaykhs ʿUmar Makram, al-Jabartī, and al-Quwaysnī, the riwāqs at al-

Azhar that each of these men supervised at one time or another (the Jawhariyya,

Jabartiyya, and that of the blind) did not necessarily receive any grain rations whatsoever, as archival evidence indicates. In a time of political decentralization, intellectuals of various backgrounds could emerge in Egypt’s public sphere, due to the breakdown of historical hierarchies and the diffusion of material resources. To be sure, this was not an egalitarian world, but there was room for voices that had been marginal in the past.

Inevitably, many of these people were of Egyptian origin, even though Cairo’s intellectual scene was famously diverse.

259

Unfortunately for those who saw this as a just socio-political order, it was not destined to last. Political decentralization had reached its greatest extent by the end of the eighteenth century, but only after the French invasion did the ʿulamāʾ reach the height of their power. (To use one barometer of importance, the mid-eighteenth-century grain rations of al-Azhar were only a small fraction of what they became in the early nineteenth century.) Like any centralizing leader, Mehmed Ali Pasha sought to weaken those who could challenge his power, including the most deeply-rooted and broadly-supported

Muslim scholars. As the example of al-Quwaysnī shows, no Egyptian governor, not even one as powerful as Mehmed Ali, could wholly dispense with the scholars of al-Azhar and their audacious ideas of justice. Nonetheless, for better or worse, these ʿulamāʾ could not avoid being co-opted and drawn into involvement with new political structures that had unprecedented resources and technologies at their disposal.

260

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