Islam at War: A History

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MULLAHS AND MACHINE GUNS 159

The British rapidly installed the khedive in an Alexandrian palace, but
Cairo and the rest of the country were in the hands of Arabi Pasha. Tewfik
declared Arabi a rebel, depriving him of his political rights, and Arabi
issued afatwahagainst the ruler who had brought the alien foreigners into
the country.
This internal bickering was solved on the night of September 13, as
General Wolseley marched his 17,000 British regulars in a night attack
against Arabi’s 22,000 entrenched Egyptian troops at Tel-el-Kebir, on the
road to Cairo. The defending troops were well dug into an impressive
series of works, but they utterly failed to patrol their front. The Egyptians
believed, even with the British approaching, that a night attack across a
nine-mile stretch of open desert was impossible. This was a sad error, for
Wolseley was a good general and his troops were well drilled. They ar-
rived unnoticed in front of the Egyptian lines and in a stiff fifteen-minute
fight, routed Arabi Pasha’s army, driving it from the works and capturing
its artillery.
Thus by the fall of 1882 Great Britain had acquired Egypt as a part of
her colonial empire. Unknowingly, she had also set herself up to fight two
additional wars, neither of which she really wanted.
Britain had not solved Egypt’s problems, of course, she had inherited
them. Her solution was to place trusted Europeans in charge of various
key financial and military functions. This would, it was hoped, raise the
necessary funds to repay the bank loans, put the country on a paying basis,
and eliminate the corruption of the khedive’s regime. This program ac-
tually worked, and in a reasonably short time money was once again
flowing into Egypt’s treasury and the government beginning to function.
The Egyptian army was also reformed, and British drill sergeants were
introduced to bring the fellahin conscripts into line, while junior British
officers were offered remarkable advancement if they would transfer to
the Egyptian service. As a part of this program, the new English masters
looked to the south and were horrified at what they saw in the Sudan.
The Sudan had labored along unhappily under Egyptian rule. The dis-
tance from Cairo to Khartoum was nearly a thousand miles, and those
miles were either across difficult desert or along the Nile, which although
usefully navigable, was broken by no fewer than five cataracts. Thus, the
isolated province had been largely ignored by the Cairo administration.
The local governors were, therefore, free to extort what taxes they might
from the peoples of the province. The funds thus gathered went almost
exclusively to the governor’s self-enrichment, and neither to Cairo, nor to
the benefit of the Sudanese people. The governor’s soldiers were hated
bashi-bazouks,descended from the sultan’s levies, and very foreign to the

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