France and the First Saudi State Jumada I, 1442 - January, 2021

Louis Blin

France and the First Saudi State

Louis Blin No. 14 Jumada I, 1442 - January, 2021

Blin, Louis

France and the First Saudi State. / Blin, Louis, - Riyadh, 2020

28 p; 16.5x23cm

ISBN: 978-603-8268-72-8 1- Saudi Arabia - History 2- France I- Title

953.101 dc 1442/3229

L.D. no. 1442/3229 ISBN: 978-603-8268-72-8

4 Table of Contents

Abstract 6 A Failed Alliance with the Grand Sharif Of Mecca 8 The First Saudi State as a Substitute Ally 10 French Intelligence Officers in Arabia 17 Napoleon, a Pioneer in the East 19 Appendix I: Map of al-Dir‘iyyah 22 Appendix II: Letter from Bonaparte to Sharif Ghalib of Mecca 23

5 No. 14 Jumada I, 1442 - January, 2021

Abstract The emergence of the first Saudi state and its territorial expansion coincided with a period of weakening and internal crisis in France, resulting in a lack of interest in political developments in the Arabian Peninsula. But Bonaparte revived the French ambition of undoing the British hold on India by landing in Egypt in 1798. He then failed to forge an alliance against the British with the grand Sharif of Mecca. Once back in France, his interest in developments in the interior of Arabia shows that he was simultaneously exploring the land route to India. In 1803 he instructed his consul in Baghdad, Olivier de Corancez, to get in touch with the Amir Saud ibn Abdelaziz, in case the latter would take Jeddah and thus complete the conquest of the Hedjaz. But the failure of the third head of the first Saudi state to grasp this city, cut short this attempted alliance. Napoleon then sent several agents on mission in the region, in particular Ali Bey al-Abbassi. Other writings testify to the interest of the French in the first Saudi state, in particular those of Fathallah Sayegh, and Joseph Rousseau, the author of the first known map of its capital, al-Dir‘iyya.

6 Figure 1. “A Wahhaby Rider”, drawing by Émile Prisse d’Avennes (1807-1879), “Un Cavalier Wahaby,” in “Moeurs et Coutumes des Wahabys,” Le Magasin Pittoresque, 1847, 8.

7 No. 14 Jumada I, 1442 - January, 2021

Introduction In the 17th and 18th centuries France established many trading posts in ports around the Indian Ocean, particularly on the Indian coast. However, the British managed to replace these almost entirely during the second half of the 18th century in the context of the general weakening of the French monarchy under Louis XV and Louis XVI, leading to the French Revolution in 1789. Far from putting an end to this Franco-British rivalry, the Revolution exacerbated it. The revolutionaries initially focused on protecting French territory from other European monarchies, but in 1798 the Directory(1) instructed Napoleon Bonaparte, who was on his way to Egypt, to “ensure the free and exclusive possession of the Red Sea to the Republic.”(2) He therefore continued France’s territorial expansion, which the Empire brought to its peak until its collapse in 1815, three years before that of the first Saudi state. Bonaparte therefore revived France’s colonial ambitions beyond Egypt. The choice to conquer this country was both a response to the slow maturation of relations between France and Islam and his desire to make Britain relinquish its hold on India. The emergence of the first Saudi state during the last decades of the eighteenth century and its territorial expansion from the 1780s therefore coincided with a period of weakening and internal crisis in France, resulting in its withdrawal from the Indian Ocean and the cessation of its interest in political developments in the Arabian Peninsula. No French writing of the time comments on the creation and rise of the first Saudi state.

In his Travels to Egypt and Syria, which is considered Bonaparte’s breviary in the Near East, Volney scarcely comments on the Red Sea basin, nor a fortiori on Arabia, although the Mamluk Egypt he describes was actively trading on its western shores at that time. He only indicates, in a chapter devoted to the project to penetrate the Isthmus of Suez, that this port shipped goods to “Jeddah,

(1) The Directory or Directorate (Le Directoire) was the governing five-member committee of the French First Republic from 2 November 1795 until 9 November 1799, when it was overthrown by Napoleon Bonaparte in the Coup of 18 Brumaire and replaced by the Consulate. (2) Henri Labrousse, Récits de la Mer Rouge et de l’Océan Indien, (Paris: Économica, 1993), 81.

8 Mecca and Moka. [...] In May 1783, the Jeddah fleet, consisting of twenty-eight sails including four vessels pierced for 60 guns, brought nearly thirty thousand packages of coffee.”(3) The author’s considerations were purely commercial, as the French were interested at the time in the Red Sea as a transit route for Yemeni coffee. However Bonaparte’s innovation in Egypt shifted French representation of the region from a commercial to a global geopolitical project.

A Failed Alliance with the Grand Sharif Of Mecca Bonaparte was fascinated by the Orient and documented it extensively before embarking on his founding journey, which materialized Ottoman fears of Western involvementin its Empire. The influence of Volney’s writings are widely known, but the account of Carsten Niebuhr’s trip to Arabia would have such an impact in France that Bonaparte brought it with him to justify the scientific aspect of his journey when he presented his plan for an expedition to Egypt to the Institut de France in 1798. However, “in the last quarter of the 17th century, the deep tendency of the French Enlightenment was to transform knowledge into political action.”(4) Niebuhr visited Arabia in 1762-63, before the expansion of the first Saudi state, and the French translation of his account appeared in 1773, a year after the German original. However Niebuhr had only visited Hejaz and Yemen and not central Arabia. Bonaparte’s interest in Arabia initially focused on the Red Sea basin as an extension of Egypt; he saw the region less as a goal in itself than as part of a much broader strategic vision. It is therefore with full knowledge of the facts in the Red Sea basin that a month after entering Cairo on August 25 1798, Bonaparte sent the first of a series of letters to the Sharif of Mecca Ghalib ibn Musa’id, assuring him of his “intention to protect the mosques and all the foundations that Mecca and Medina have in Egypt” and that “the caravan of pilgrims will not suffer any interruption” because “we are friends of Muslims and of the religion of

(3) This amounted to 10,000 tons. Constantin-François Volney, Voyage en Égypte et en Syrie en 1783, 1784 et 1785, (Paris: Volland et Dessenne, 1787), tome 1, 207-212. (4) Henry Laurens in Henry Laurens, John Tolan, Gilles Veinstein, L’Europe et l’Islam, quinze siècles d’Histoire, (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2009), 280.

9 No. 14 Jumada I, 1442 - January, 2021

the prophet”. Bonaparte perceived the Sharif of Mecca as a potential ally against both the British and the Ottomans, with whom France had a difficult relationship. This was likely to encourage the latter to turn against his suzerain, as Bonaparte put it in terms which would make his fortune much later on, at the time of the Great Arab Revolt against the Ottomans: “Why is the Arab nation subject to the Turks? [...]”.(5) Beyond his pro-Arab feelings, which saw him including Jesus and Moses as Arab prophets, Bonaparte had grasped the politico-spiritual function of the Sharif of Mecca well having “seen in Islam a political whole that could be mobilized.(6) He challenged the Ottoman domination of the Red Sea: a then Ottoman lake since the Porte controlled both its north and its south shore. Britain, the master of the Indies, then allied with the Ottoman Empire to protect British access to its interests. The Sultan declared war on France in September 1798, at the very time when Sharif Ghalib received Bonaparte’s first letter.

The Sharif answered him, as “Bonaparte’s friend,” although he will prove the contrary, because he would send a contingent to fight him in Upper Egypt, taking the Ottoman side.(7) But at first he would try not to take sides as he came under pressure from Britain. The British maintained a resident in Jeddah who was well placed to intercept Bonaparte’s missives to the Sharif. Like most of his contemporaries in the region, the Sharif saw in their sender an invader with unintelligible ideas, especially with regard to Islam and his claim that he would liberate the peoples of the East from Turkish rule, but understood that his interest laid in dealing with him correctly. Bonaparte’s correspondence shows that he understood the politico-religious importance of the Hejaz and its foreign trade well, as also the components of the economy of the Red Sea

(5) See Henry Laurens, “Napoléon, l’Europe et le Monde Arabe”, in L’Orient dans tous ses états. Orientales IV, (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2017), 57. (6) Laurens, Napoléon l’Europe et le Monde Arabe, 54. (7) On September 29, 1800, the Sultan instructed the Sharif of Mecca to “provide the facilities and assistance necessary for the English fleet in the Red Sea to deter the French invaders from attacking Jeddah and Yanbu with their fleet based in Suez”. Sultan Ghalib’s attachment to Egypt was probably linked to the fact that his mother was Nubian.

10 basin in general. He therefore had informants on not only Egypt but also its foreign trade. The account of Bonaparte’s campaign, La Description de l’Égypte, deals with this in detail, specifying that “fifty or sixty ships come to Suez annually from Geddah.” Bonaparte did his best to keep himself informed of the situation in Jeddah and Mecca, to build cordial relations with these two cities and to accommodate the interests of their inhabitants. He inherited the experienced diplomatic network of the French in Egypt, which kept them well-informed about the country’s situation. In particular, the revolt of the governor of Cairo, Ali Bey al-Kabir (1728-1773) against his Ottoman suzerain in 1769 was followed closely and with empathy in Paris. It had allowed him to get his hands on the Hejaz, although only for four years. Ghalib ibn Musa’id, Sharif of Mecca from 1788, was therefore in an Ottoman bosom of which all, including the French, knew the fragility. French sources had long insisted on Ottoman weakness in the Hejaz, as eloquently stated by Charles Poncet, the first French traveler to report an account of his stay in Arabia, namely in Jeddah in December 1700: “Two days after I arrived at Gedda, the king of Mecca came there with an army of twenty thousand men. He pitched his tents and camped at the gate of the city which leads to Mecca. [...] He forced the Pasha who is in Gedda on behalf of the Grand Lord, to give him fifteen thousand gold crowns, and threatened to drive him out if he did not obey him immediately.”(8) Bonaparte had identified his target well, therefore, unlike the dynamics of the Saudi state and its incessant conflict with the Sharif since 1790-91, on which French sources of the time are silent.

The First Saudi State as a Substitute Ally Bonaparte saw the Sharif of Mecca only as an adjunct to his project, which at first centered on Egypt but soon expanded. Once back in France, his interest in developments in the interior of Arabia shows that he was simultaneously exploring the land route to India. Indeed, “the British victory in Bengal in

(8) See Louis Blin, La Découverte de l’Arabie par les Français. Anthologie de textes sur Djeddah (1697-1939), (Paris: Geuthner, 2019), 51. The “king” is the Sharif of Mecca and the “Grand Lord,” the Sultan of Istanbul.

11 No. 14 Jumada I, 1442 - January, 2021

1757 defined the route to India as the new geopolitical axis which would dominate the following two centuries in the history of the Ancient World. [...] From the 1770s, the passage through Suez began to preoccupy the French and the British.”(9) His vision went beyond the Hejaz, where Ghalib ibn Musa‘id was trying to contain the push from the first Saudi state. Fleeing the latter’s advance to the Red Sea, the Sharif took refuge in Jeddah, where he repulsed the Saudi assault before recovering his capital in July 1803 with Ottoman support. But he had to recognize the suzerainty of Nejd in October 1805 and at least appear to embrace the Wahhabi reform. He admitted that public prayer was no longer held in the name of the Sultan of Istanbul, which was tantamount to entering into rebellion against him. After another attempt to entrench himself in Jeddah, he surrendered without a fight in 1806 while retaining de facto control of the city. The diplomat and orientalist Jean Baptiste Louis Jacques, otherwise known as Joseph Rousseau (1780-1831), relates the events of 1803 in his Memoir on the Three Most Famous Sects of Muslimism, the Wahabis, the Nosaïris and the Ismailis(10): “Emir Seoûd(11) left Mecca to march on Djidda. This time the Wahabis, who up to then had always been victorious, missed their mark. Until then they had attacked only wandering and scattered tribes, or surprised open and undefended places They found Djidda well fortified, its inhabitants galvanized by Ghalèb and Scherif-Pasha(12) and determined to resist them to the last breath, and the various assaults they attempted there failed. Constantly repulsed with losses, they soon lost hope; at the same time the plague ravaged them and they were forced to fall back.” Jean Raymond corroborates Rousseau’s account of the failure of the siege in his Memoir on the Origin of the Wahabys, on the Birth of their Power and on the Influence they Enjoy as a Nation, dated July 10, 1806: “Soout

(9) Laurens, L’Europe et l’Islam, 281. (10) Joseph Rousseau, Mémoire sur les trois plus fameuses sectes du musulmanisme, les Wahabis, les Nosaïris et les Ismaélis, (Paris, with A. Nepveu, 1818), 76 “Muslimism” is an outdated word for Islam. (11) Saud ibn Abdelaziz (1748-1814), grandson of the founder of the first Saudi state. (12) Sherif Pasha commanded the detachment sent by the Porte to aid Sharif Ghaleb against their assailants.

12 (Saud), until then victorious, sees the brilliance of his past victories eclipsed before Jeddah. The strong resistance of the besieged, the loss of his people that he suffered with each attack, and the devastation wreaked by the plague discouraged him.”(13)

Louis Alexandre Olivier de Corancez (1770-1832) also recounts the failure of the first Saudi state to seize Jeddah in 1803, also its success in 1806 in his History of the Wahabis, from their Origin to late 1809.(14) He participated in Bonaparte’s Egypt Expedition before he was posted as a diplomat to Aleppo and Baghdad from 1802 to 1810. Published in 1810, eight years before the publication of Rousseau’s work on a related subject, his book takes up of it however certain formulas, a sign that the author was aware of them before its publication. He also indicates in his preface that he had used another work by Rousseau published in 1809, Description of the Pachalik of Bagdad Followed by a Notice on the Wahabis.(15) Corancez highlights the routing of numerous enthusiastic Saudi fighters waging old-fashioned warfare, facing a weak Ottoman garrison in Jeddah, like the Ottoman Empire of the time, but equipped with modern weaponry: “Until now the Wahabis had always been victorious. They had, in fact, found only open towns: and the superiority of numbers had given them such a marked advantage on the battlefield, that their enemies had scarcely tried to resist them. It was not the same in Jeddah: this city is surrounded by walls that Rhaleb and Schérif-Pasha had repaired.(16) The implacable character of the Wahabis left them no other resource but vigorous resistance. So the Wahabis were stopped in front of the city. Armed with simple spears and matchlocks which they did not know how to use, without any discipline or knowledge of the art of siege, they carelessly attacked the

(13) Jean Raymond, Mémoire sur l’Origine des Wahabys, sur la Naissance de leur Puissance et sur l’Influence dont ils Jouissent en tant que Nation, (Le Caire: Société Royale de Géographie d’Égypte, 1926), 40. (originally a diplomatic dispatch). (14) Louis de Corancez, Histoire des Wahabis, Depuis leur Origine jusqu’à la Fin de 1809, (Paris, Crapard, 1810), 290. (15) Louis de Corancez, Description du Pachalik de Bagdad suivie d’une notice sur les Wahabis, (Paris: Treuttel et Würtz, 1809), 261. (16) In fact the Ottoman Governor Sharif Pasha had fortified Jeddah’s walls.

13 No. 14 Jumada I, 1442 - January, 2021

enemy, who were entrenched behind their battlements from where they could safely pick their victims. Each of their attacks was therefore an easy victory for the besieged. Their disgust at seeing themselves repelled with losses was not the only cause of the discouragement that crept among the Wahabis; a crueler evil, the plague, spread through their army wreaking terrible havoc. There was no other course left for Saud but to lift the siege and withdraw to Dreyeh.”(17)

Bonaparte, who knew Corancez well, charged him in 1803 with a diplomatic mission to Saud ibn Abdelaziz which would probably have changed the course of Arabian history had it not failed in extremis. The episode remained secret until its revelation in 1926 by Auriant (1895-1990),(18) and then sank back into oblivion. Napoleon’s wide-ranging bibliography ignores this minor episode in the epic story of the Emperor, although it demonstrates his diplomatic eclecticism and continued interest in the East long after his Egyptian campaign ended. As Sharif Ghalib ibn Musa‘id‘s situation in Jeddah, besieged by Saud’s army, seemed desperate, Napoleon showed himself willing to change his mind to gain support in the Red Sea and Arabia. Perhaps he also viewed favorably the prospect of the ousting of the Sharif, who had declined his offer of an alliance to fight him instead, as we have seen. Corancez, then stationed in Aleppo, informed his minister Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand of the situation in the Hejaz, and he, knowing Bonaparte’s interest in Eastern matters, passed on the information to him. The First Consul was in Paris maturing his project of empire at that time. He asked Talleyrand by letter on September 28, 1803 “to send a courier to Constantinople with a letter in figures to our agent in Aleppo, to let him know that, if the capture of Mecca and Jeddah were confirmed, he takes the means to write to the chief of the Wahabis. He will first write to him simply that the consul Bonaparte wishes to know if the French who might venture in the Red Sea, or in the regions which he would occupy, would enjoy

(17) Ad-Dir‘iyya, the capital of Saud. (18) Auriant (Alexandre Hadjivassiliou), “Bonaparte et les Ouahabis,” Mercure de France, 15 Janvier 1926, 509-513.

14 his protection, and if, were they to travel in Syria and Egypt, they would be sure to be considered as friends.”(19) Although he did not see the Wahhabis as being able to lead the Arab renaissance that he was calling for, nor, a fortiori, planning any expedition to Arabia, whether maritime or terrestrial, we see that his famous ‘oriental dream’ had indeed brought Bonaparte to consider the constitution of an Oriental empire. But the plan of conquest that Auriant said would have germinated in his mind at that time did not materialize any more than the capture of Jeddah by the Wahhabis.

Corancez addressed his response to his minister on January 9, 1804: “After being driven back to Jeddah and Medina, Soout, whose army was ravaged by a deadly plague, lost the assurance that his first successes gave him, and his reverses restored to his enemies the courage they had lost. [...] As the letter that you authorized me to write to the Waabis should, according to your orders, be delivered to them, Citizen Minister, only as long as the capture of Mecca and that of Jeddah have been confirmed, I must submit at another time the execution of this order and I will wait for further instructions from you” (Corancez writes “Soout ”for “Saud ”and qualifies him as “Sharif of the Waabis”, that is to say of the Wahhabis). The Franco-Wahhabi alliance plans would stop there, but we understand from this correspondence that the affair nearly met success. The opportunist Bonaparte undoubtedly favored the Wahhabi’s expansion, unrecognized in France at the time, as an anti-Ottoman revolt illustrating his conception of a people’s uprising in the East against despotism, which indeed took place after he had broken his alliance with the Ottoman Empire in July 1807(20). Napoleon’s endeavour was in the same scope as his manipulation of Islam as an early political user of this religion, although such a rapprochement seemed unlikely, given European writings on Wahhabis at the time that presented Wahhabism as a sort of armed deism specific to the

(19) Correspondance de Napoléon Ier, Paris, Imprimerie impériale, 1862, vol. 9, 5. (20) We find sympathy for the Wahhabis based on hostility to the Ottoman Empire and the British among the writings of several French authors throughout the 19th century, notably Alexandre Dumas who advocated a Franco-Wahhabi alliance in 1850 in “La Mer Rouge, journal de deux Voyageurs”, L’Ordre, January 29-February 16, 1850.

15 No. 14 Jumada I, 1442 - January, 2021

culture of the desert rather than the formidable politico-religious reform that it was to become. While one cannot know Saud’s reaction to a letter from Napoleon that he never received, he was as hostile to the Ottomans as Napoleon was and therefore might have responded to his advances. It seems more likely, however, that he shared the view of most of his Arab contemporaries, seeing European interference in Arab affairs as Christian aggression against Muslims. The devastation that Bonaparte caused in Egypt proved the danger he represented. The sources at our disposal do not allow us to decide what would have been Saoud’s answer to Napoleon.

16 French Intelligence Officers in Arabia Beyond these hazards, the writings we have gathered highlight Napoleon’s pioneering and constant interest in the first Saudi state, which arose from a region that until then had remained terra incognita for the French. The Emperor’s thirst for knowledge about these potential allies against the British was not confined to the political realm, as shown by the first French text on the Wahhabis, by the Catalan Ali Bey el-Abbassi, who was sent on a mission to Arabia in 1806 by Napoleon. This traveler arrived in Jeddah in January 1807 at the very moment that the Wahhabis took over the city, and witnessed its evacuation by the Ottoman troops. He did not push beyond Mecca, and published his story in 1814,(21) after that of Corancez but before that of Rousseau. In addition to his political function described above, Rousseau had, like any diplomat, been on an information-gathering mission. He had managed to collect enough information from the merchants who circulated between his place of residence, Baghdad, and the capital of the first Saudi state, al-Dir’iyya, to draw its only known map in 1810, which has remained in the French diplomatic archives (see below).

Having become Emperor in December 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte did not stop there: he “envisaged a new Eastern campaign which would see a French army marching on the Indies in agreement with the Ottomans and the Persians(22) but the war in Spain that he initiated in 1808 and the unrealistic character of a Persian-Ottoman alliance together both put an end to the project, if not in his interest in the region altogether.

The Emperor closely followed the consolidation of the power of Muhammad Ali in Cairo from 1805 to 1811 and the latter’s intervention in Arabia from August 1811. in 1812 he sent Vincent-Yves Boutin (1772-1815) to Egypt and Syria in 1812 on an intelligence-gathering mission, within the

(21) Ali Bey el Abbassi (Domingo Badia y Leyblich), Voyages d’Ali-Bey el Abbassi en Afrique et en Asie : pendant les années 1803, 1804, 1805, 1806 et 1807, (Paris, de l’imprimerie de P. Didot l’aîné, 1814), 4 tomes. (22) Laurens, L’Europe et l’Islam, 290.

17 No. 14 Jumada I, 1442 - January, 2021

framework of which the French colonel pushed on to the Hejaz in the midst of the Egyptian army’s campaign. Landing at Yanbu in February 1812, he met the leader of the campaign, Toussoun Pasha, the son of Muhammad Ali, but faced with the uncertainties of the Egyptian conquest he returned to Egypt rather than continuing on to Jeddah. It was the great writer and statesman Alphonse de Lamartine who later popularized another episode of the Emperor’s interest in Arabian developments in the appendix of his famous Voyage en Orient, published in 1835, which relates the peculiar story of Théodore Lascaris de Vintimille (1774-1817) and his Christian dragoman from Aleppo, Fathallah Sayegh.(23) According to the latter’s account, of which Lamartine published a French translation, the two men were to have led an intelligence mission for the Emperor in central Arabia as far as al-Dir‘iyya. Their trip of 1811-1812 (maybe 1814) coincided with the heyday of the first Saudi state and the beginnings of an Egyptian intervention that was still confined to the coast of the Red Sea at the time, but which was to lead the Saudi State to its end. Although the absence of written instructions from Napoleon casts doubt on the authenticity of an official mission and therefore invalidates the thesis drawn from Lamartine’s digest of Sayegh’s account of the dispatch of an agent responsible for studying possible French support for a Wahhabi revolt against the Ottomans, the trip, especially if intended for intelligence-gathering, undoubtedly falls within the context of Napoleon’s oriental ambition and brings new proof of France’s interest in central Arabia at the time, which ended with the fall of Napoleon in June 1815. Sayegh’s rich account, moreover, is the main source of information about central Arabia at the time.

(23) See François Pouillon, « Monsieur de Lamartine au désert : réécriture d’un récit de voyage », in A. Bensa & F. Pouillon (dir.), Terrains d’écrivains. Littérature et Ethnographie, (Toulouse, Anacharsis, 2012), 157-186. Lamartine’s translation shortens by half the original Arabic manuscript, which is kept at the French National Library and has been translated into French by Joseph Chelhod Le Désert et la Gloire : les Mémoires d’un Agent Syrien de Napoléon, (Paris: Gallimard, 1991), 304, then published in Arabic.

18 Napoleon sent several informants to Arabia(24) and attempted alliances with his two main local leaders, the Sharif of Mecca, and the head of the first Saudi state. His sustained interest in Arabia, which has captured little attention from historians, viewed it as a potential ally rather than a goal in itself, but is all the more notable as no other chief of state in the history of France has ever shared such an interest. The sole exception is Aristide Briand, who devoted punctual attention to the Hejaz in 1916 when he decided, as President of the Council of Ministers, to support the Sharif of Mecca’s revolt against Ottoman rule by sending a military mission to Hejaz during the First World War.

Napoleon, a Pioneer in the East The fiasco of the first wave of French imperialism in the Near Eastin 1799, followed by the weakening of France after 1815, immediately benefited its successor in Egypt, Muhammad Ali. Ten years after the end of Napoleon Bonaparte’s oriental adventure, marked by the Franco-Turkish treaty of October 1801, his emulator Muhammad Ali enlisted French aides to carry out his own campaign, starting with the Hejaz in 1811. His son Ibrahim overcame the first Saudi state in April 1818 with the help of the French officer Vaissière. The conquest of al-Dir‘iyya by the Pasha of Egypt therefore was not only in response to the demands of the Porte as commonly reported in the historiography: the Pasha also saw it as the continuation of the process of regeneration of the East initiated by the Emperor, who kept it in mind despite his Egyptian misfortune. During the Restoration (1815) and the Saint- Simonian era in the 1830s France would support Muhammad Ali against the Ottoman Empire, without much success because of its strategic withdrawal during the two decades following the fall of Napoleon. The enthusiasm in Muhammad Ali’s favor in France was such that the first reports of his conquest of Arabia appeared at that time. The main work is the History of Egypt Under

(24) Napoleon sent another intelligence officer to the East, Auguste de Nerciat, who subsequently published a Short report about the Arabs and the Wahabi Sect: Courte Notice sur les Arabes et sur la Secte des Wahabis, (Paris: Impr. de Mme Herisssant Ledou), 1818), 30. Although he never travelled to Central Arabia.

19 No. 14 Jumada I, 1442 - January, 2021

the government of Muhammad Ali, or Recital of the political and military events which took place since the departure of the French until 1823 by Félix Mengin(25) who, far from being limited to the account of the conquest of central Arabia by his son Ibrahim Pasha, draws a socio-political picture of utmost value. The French will follow the news of Arabia and Wahhabism throughout the 19th century with a sustained interest, which contrasts with their lack of knowledge from the 1940s onwards. A proof of that is the systematic presentation of Wahhabism in encyclopedias, almanacs and manuals at all levels, for example in 1834 in the Small Geography for Primary Schools.(26) Even if the French travelers of the nineteenth century did not enter central Arabia, orientalist scholars devoted many texts to it beginning with Jean- Baptiste Eyriès, who published his translation of Essay on the History of the Wahhabis by Jean-Louis Burckhardt in 1835, and Adolphe Noël des Vergers, author of the first French monograph on Arabia, published in 1847.(27)

The Napoleonic “non-event” in the history of the Arabian Peninsula marks the beginnings of a series of developments: Egypt’s transfer of European technology to the Hejaz from 1811, an innovation that was certainly modest as the Egyptians left Arabia as early as 1840 but was historically significant; a growing national feeling, instead of the traditional allegiance to the Caliph, underlies the Wahhabi attacks against the Ottomans; the entry of its regions under Ottoman rule into the game of European political system, marked by the opening of British and French consulates in Jeddah in 1836 and 1839 respectively; the beginnings of Europe’s penetration of the region with the British settlement of Aden in 1839. Without making Bonaparte a deus ex machina, he seems to have precipitated the inevitable general development of Arabia.

(25) Félix Mengin, Histoire de l’Égypte sous le Gouvernement de Mohammed-Aly, ou Récit des événements Politiques et Militaires qui ont eu lieu Depuis le Départ des Français Jusqu’en 1823 3 vol. (Paris: Arthus Bertrand, 1823). (26) Félix Ansart, Petite Géographie à l’usage des écoles primaires, (Paris, L. Hachette, 1834), 216. (27) Adolphe Noël des Vergers, Arabie, (Paris: Firmin Didot Frères, 1847), 524.

20 The knowledge of Napoleon’s conception of the Orient is fundamental to establishing the genesis of relations between France and the Arabian Peninsula and to understanding the later French intellectual and political approach to Arabia, unconsciously anchored in the Napoleonic heritage, as will be French Orientalism in general. From the opening of a consulate in Jeddah forty years after the Egyptian campaign of 1798, to sending a French military mission to support the Sharif of Mecca against the Ottomans a hundred and eighteen years later in 1916, France and its intellectuals will adopt an attitude taking up the self-interested overture of Bonaparte in 1798 with a constancy that will structure relations beyond the vagaries of current events. Although he had not approached the Hejaz, Bonaparte integrated it indirectly into a great European game centered on the Ottoman Empire, which in consequence extended the European balance of power to the borders of British India. He thus sketched what, a century later, would become the Middle East, where internal crises and foreign interference continue to this day. The Egyptian campaign marks the emergence of an Arabia that was not yet Saudi Arabia in French political consciousness. As the founding act of contemporary French-Arab relations and the Arab dimension of the fate of contemporary France and French Orientalism, Bonaparte’s Egyptian adventure aborted due to failure in Syria at the gates of Acre, thus overflowing an Egypt whose future emperor immediately espoused regional integration, including the Red Sea. Ultimately France never had a relationship with the first Saudi state, whose rulers probably had only a vague idea of French designs in the region, although Napoleon kept constantly abreast of its development, which influenced his Eastern policy and that of his successors in France as well as Egypt. Finally, the contrast between the abundance of first-hand documents on these evanescent relationships and most historians’ lack of knowledge of them is regrettable, but this is generally the rule when it comes to French sources on the history of Arabia.

21 No. 14 Jumada I, 1442 - January, 2021 mountain . It breaks away and extends from that of Touéyk to East up 4 leagues West from lower than Dreïyé. Khour Slope of the mountain called El-Dahré , where there are several villages inhabited by Sheikhs or Lawmen. and plowed land. Fruit orchard Garden of Sheikh Saud. filled at Wady Hénifé . Wady wintertime by the torrents which Touéyk. run down the mountain of It extends to the province of Khardj 84 leagues away. Mountain. Touéyk , a suburb dwelt by Saud El-Teréif and his relatives. cadi dwells. Fruit orchards of plowed lands. Ali; mountain allegedly made by and through which the caravans of Dréïyé bound to the western Nejd usually walk. Slope of the mountain called El- Dahré, covered with villages and gardens. Map of Dréïyé and its Drawn up from surroundings. information given by the chaplain of the Emir Saud Prince Wahabis. scale (N.B. one Three-league league = 4 kilometers), caravan march. It is detached Mountain of Khoûr. and extends Touéyk, from that of to East up 4 leagues West from beyond Dréïyé. Sent to His Excellency Monsignor the Minister of External Relations by His Consul General ( signed : Majesty’s Rousseau) Djebéïlé. Hïnié. DRÉÏYÉ. El-Bedjéiri , a suburb where the El-Chekké , an opening in the

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 11 10 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 15 16 10 11 9 5 18 2 4 6 12 ) and its surroundings”, Paris, Archives of the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs ˗ Affairs Archives of the Ministry Europe and Foreign ) and its surroundings”, Paris, al-Dir‘iyyah 14 1 3 17 7 8 13 Appendix I: Map of al-Dir‘iyyah Figure. 2. Joseph Rousseau, “Map of Dr’eiyéFigure. ( La Courneuve, Mémoires et documents, Turquie 28 (1808-1819), folio 91. Turquie La Courneuve, Mémoires et documents,

22 Appendix II: Letter from Bonaparte to Sharif Ghalib of Mecca

At Cairo headquarters on 20 Fructidor(28), Year 6, September 6, 1798

Bonaparte General-in-Chief to the Sharif of Mecca

I hasten to inform you of my arrival in Cairo at the head of the French army, as well as of the measures I have taken to preserve the income allocated to the Holy Mosques of Mecca and Medina. Through the letters that the Divan and the various merchants of this country will write to you, you will see with what care I protect the Imams, the Sharifs, all the lawmen. You will also see that I have appointed for Emir-Hadji, Mustapha Bey, Kyaya(29) of Seyd Aboubekir, Pasha governor of Egypt, and that he will escort the Caravan with forces which will protect it from the incursions of the Arabs.

I very much wish that by your answer you let me know if you wish that I have the Caravan escorted by my troops or only by a corps of cavalry of locals. But in any case make known to all the merchants and the faithful, that the Muslims have no better friend than us, just as the Sharifs and all the men who use their time and their means to educate the people, do not have more Zealous Protectors. That trade not only has nothing to fear, but will be specially protected. I await your response by the return of this mail.

You will also let me know what you may need for either wheat or rice, and I will make sure that everything is sent to you.

Signed Bonaparte Identical copy General Bonaparte’s Secretary Fauvelet Bourrienne (stamp of the Ministry of War, general war deposit) Copy for the Executive Directory (Directoire exécutif)

(28) The twelfth month in the French Republican Calendar. (29) A military grade.

23 No. 14 Jumada I, 1442 - January, 2021

24 Figure 3. Facsimile of a letter from Bonaparte to the Sharif of Mecca, September 6, 1798, Source: Ministry of Armed Forces, Department of History.

25 No. 14 Jumada I, 1442 - January, 2021

About the Author

Dr. Louis Blin has a Ph.D. in Contemporary History from the Sorbonne University. He is a diplomat at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He has been posted in Algeria, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Since October 2015, he oversees the Arab and Muslim World at the Center for Analysis, Planning and Strategy of the MFA in Paris. He is the author of many books on the MENA region, including The French Discovery of Arabia; The Arab World in the albums of Tintin; Alexandria and the Mediterranean, between History and Memory; The Economics of Peace in the Middle East; The Gulf Oil, Peace and War in the Middle East; Algerian contemporary Political elites.

King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies (KFCRIS)

The KFCRIS is an independent non-governmental institution based in Riyadh, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Center was founded in 1403/1983 by the King Faisal Foundation (KFF) to preserve the legacy of the late King Faisal and to continue his mission of transmitting knowledge between the Kingdom and the world. The Center serves as a platform for research and Islamic Studies, bringing together researchers and research institutions from the Kingdom and across the world through conferences, workshops, and lectures, and through the production and publication of scholarly works, as well as the preservation of Islamic manuscripts. The Center’s Research Department comprises specialized research units and experienced researchers who endeavor to produce in-depth analyses in various fields, including Socioeconomics, Cultural Studies, African and Asian Studies. The Center also hosts the Library, which preserves invaluable Islamic manuscripts, the Al-Faisal Museum for Arab Islamic Art, the Al-Faisal Institute for Human Resources Development, the Darat Al-Faisal, and the Al-Faisal Cultural Press, which issues the Al-Faisal magazine and other key intellectual periodicals. For more information, please visit the Center’s website: www.kfcris.com/en

P.O.Box 51049 Riyadh 11543 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Tel: (+966 11) 4652255 Ext: 6892 Fax: (+966 11) 4659993 E-mail: [email protected]