France and the First Saudi State Jumada I, 1442 - January, 2021
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
14 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 © King Faisal Center for research and Islamic Studies, 2020 King Fahd National Library Cataloging-In-Publication Data 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”.