A 20095- HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIAN REVOLUTION, FROM THE PERIOD OF THE MAMELUKES TO THE DEATH OF MOHAMMED ALI; FROM ARAB AND EUROPEAN MEMOIRS, ORAL TRADITION, AND LOCAL RESEARCH. LABRARY Univarsi Fibald BY A. A. PATON, F.R.G.S., AUTHOR OF "RESEARCHES ON THE DANUBE AND ADRIATIC." VOL. I. LONDON: TRÜBNER & CO., 60, PATERNOSTER ROW. 1863. PREFACE. THIS work comprises a preliminary sketch of Egyptian History from the Moslem conquest down to the end of the 18th century; researches into the curious parts of the history of the French and British Expeditions to Egypt, and a more extended view of the labours of the "Institute of Egypt" than is to be found in the usual histories; an account of the career of Mohammed Ali, and of the Social and Commercial Revolutions which followed in the wake of his military and political operations. The whole-sustained by personal notes and observations, made during my travels and residences in Egypt and Syria during the years 1839-40-41-42-43-45 and 1846,-closes with the Pasha's death. The introductory summary is chiefly taken from the works of Makrizi, as well his history of the Sultans, called "The Book of the Chain of Kings," as his remarkable description of the topography of Cairo, which contains such a mass of truly valuable historical and archæological matter, portions of which I translated with my sheikhs in Cairo. The account of Caliph Hakem, which comes in its proper place, is condensed from De Sacy. That of Sultan Canso el Ghory, is taken b from a very curious MS. collection of excerps from the correspondence of the Venetian agents, and communicated to me in the kindest manner by Mr. Rawdon Brown. Although the French Expedition to Egypt is one of the most remarkable episodes of the career of the most remarkable conqueror and monarch of modern times, yet I should not have attempted to re-write its history, had I not been persuaded that it was possible to invest it with a fresh interest by a new method of treatment. Besides the sources usually resorted to by the historians of the French Republic and Empire, and the recently published fourth and fifth volumes of the "Correspondance de Napoleon 1ier," containing nearly 2,000 documents, long and short, on this expedition, which have aided me in the narrative, I have also embodied the principal parts of the Arab memoirs of the period, so as to show not only how Egypt and the Egyptians appeared to the French and English, but also in what light the Frank invaders and Allies appeared to the Moslems. I have moreover carefully gone through the numerous memoirs of the "Savans," contained in the French "Description de l'Egypte," and have picked out and re-cast, in the general narrative, many curious anecdotes illustrative of the French Expedition, which were buried under this prodigious mass of erudition, and the convertible value of which could scarcely be understood by any writer not familiar with the topography and manners of Cairo. In the record of the career of Mohammed Ali, I have drawn largely on personal impressions and on private and original sources of information. It has been said, that those who write history must not be mere men of letters, but must have had some practical experience in political affairs. In the year 1839 I accompanied Colonel, now Sir George Lloyd, Hodges, Her Majesty's Diplomatic Agent and Consul-General, to Egypt, as private secretary, during the crisis that followed the battle of Nezib, and devoted my leisure time to the study of the modern history of Egypt, and the antecedents of Mohammed Ali. Daily intercourse with his personal friends, as well as with men who had been employed in his various expeditions, and had been attached to his fortunes during the most remarkable phases of his career, was rendered still more interesting by the spectacle of Mohammed Ali's own mind at work in all the eventful proceedings down to the year 1841, when he received the firman of the hereditary investiture of Egypt. In Syria I fulfilled similar functions on the British Staff, under Sir Hugh Rose, during the bloody civil war in mount Lebanon, up to the period of the final departure of the British Staff. After this, having received most liberal encouragement to travel in Egypt, Syria, and other parts of the Ottoman Empire, for the Times, the reader may easily imagine that my opportunities for obtaining a grasp of the epoch have been beyond those of the sedentary man of letters. At the same time, I have not neglected such published materials as were procurable :-the valuable narratives of M. Felix Mengin, who was French Consul at Cairo in the earlier stages of Mohammed Ali's career, and |