History of Ottoman Egypt

Egypt was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1517. Egypt was always a difficult province for the Ottoman Sultans to control. It remained dominated by the semi-autonomous Mameluks until it was conquered by the French in 1798. After the French were expelled it was ruled by the Albanian Muhammad Ali of Egypt and his descendants who pulled Egypt even further out of Ottoman control. This lasted until 1882 when the British invaded and Egypt became a de facto colony of Britain.

Early Turkish Period

After the conquest of Egypt the Ottoman sultan Selim I left the country, leaving his viceroy Khair Bey with a guard of 5000 janissaries, but otherwise made few changes in the administration of the country. The country was regraded as a vassal state, not a province, of the empire.

The history of early Ottoman Egypt is a competition for power between the Mamelukes and the representatives of the Ottoman Sultan.

The register by which a great portion of the land was a fief of the Mamelukes was left unchanged, allowing the Mamelukes to quickly return to postions of great influence. The Mameluke emirs were to be retained in office as heads of twelve sanjaks into, which Egypt was divided; and under the next sultan, Suleiman I, two chambers were created, called the Greater Divan and Lesser Divan, in which both the army and the ecclesiastical authorities were represented, to aid the pasha by their deliberations. Six regiments were constituted by the conqueror Selim for the protection of Egypt; to these Suleiman added a seventh, of Circassians.

In 1527 the first survey of Egypt under the Ottomans was made, the official copy of the former registers having perished by fire; this new survey did not come into use until 1605. Egyptian lands were divided into four classes: the sultans domain, fiefs, land for the maintenance of the army, and lands settled on religious foundations.

It was the practice of the Sublime Porte to change the governor of Egypt at very short intervals, after a year or even some months. The third governor, Abmad Pasha, hearing that orders for this execution had come from Constantinople, endeavoured to make himself an independent ruler and had coins struck in his own name. His schemes were frustrated by two of the emirs whom he had imprisoned and who, escaping from their confinement, attacked him in his bath and killed him.

The constant changes in the government seem to have caused the army to get out of control at an early period of the Ottoman occupation, and at the beginning of the 17th century mutinies became common; in 1013 AH (1604) the governor Ibrahim Pasha was murdered by the soldiers, and his head set on the Bab Zuwflla. The reason for these mutinies was the attempt made by successive pashas to put a stop to the extortion called the tulbah, a forced payment exacted by the troops from the inhabitants of the country by the fiction of debts requiring to be discharged, which led to grievous ill-usage.

In 1609 something like civil war broke out between the army and the pasha, who had on his side some loyal regiments and the Bedouins. The soldiers went so far as to choose a sultan, and to divide provisionally the regions of Cairo between. them. They were defeated by the governor Mahommed Pasha, who on February 5, 1610 entered Cairo in triumph, executed the ringleaders, and banished many others to Yemen. The contemporary historian speaks of this event as a second conquest of Egypt for the Ottomans. A great financial reform was now effected by Mahommed Pasha, who readjusted the burdens imposed on the different communities of Egypt in accordance with their means.

With the troubles that beset the metropolis of the Ottoman empire, the governors appointed thence came to be treated by the Egyptians with continually decreasing respect. In July 1623 there came an order from the Porte dismissing Mustafa Pasha and appointing Ali Pasha governor in his place. The officers met and demanded from the newly-appointed governors deputy the customary gratuity; when this was refused they sent letters to the Porte declaring that they wished to have Mustafa Pasha and not Ali Pasha as governor. Meanwhile Ali Pasha had arrived at Alexandria, and was met by a deputation from Cairo telling him that he was not wanted. He returned a mild answer; and, when a rejoinder came in the same style as the first message, he had the leader of the deputation arrested and imprisoned. Hereupon the garrison of Alexandria attacked the castle and rescued the prisoner; whereupon Ali Pasha was compelled to embark. Shortly after a rescript arrived from Constantinople confirming Mustafa Pasha in the governorship.

Similarly in 1631 the army took upon themselves to depose the governor, in indignation at his execution of Kits Bey, an officer who was to have commanded an Egyptian force required for service in Persia. The pasha was ordered either to hand over the executioners to vengeance or to resign his place; as he refused to do the former he was compelled to do the latter, and presently a rescript came from Constantinople, approving the conduct of the army and appointing one Khalil Pasha as Mustafa's successor. Not only was the governor unsupported by the sultan against the troops, but each new governor regularly inflicted a fine upon his outgoing predecessor, under the name of money due to the treasury; and the outgoing governor would not be allowed to leave Egypt till he had paid it. Besides the extortions to which this practice gave occasion the country suffered greatly in these centuries from famine and pestilence. The latter in the spring of 1619 is said to have carried off 635,000 persons, and in 1643 completely desolated 230 villages.