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AFRICA, EMPIRES and SLAVERY

Muhammad Ali was an Albanian Muslim, around thirty at the turn of the century, when he fought as an officer in the Ottoman army against Napoleon's army in Egypt. Following the British defeat of the French in Egypt, the Ottoman Sultan, Salim III, left Muhammad Ali in charge of Egypt and made him a pasha - an honorary title for military and civil commanders. Muhammad was an able organizer and soldier, and in 1807, with some assistance from the French, Muhammad Ali Pasha drove the British out of Egypt, wounding their pride.

In 1811, Muhammad Ali Pasha moved against those independent landed warlords in Egypt called Mamelukes, and he systematically exterminated them. Sultan Salim III, meanwhile had been strangled, and Salim's successors summoned Muhammad Ali Pasha to war against the Wahhabi (wahabi) -- a political and religious force across the Red Sea in Arabia. The Ottoman sultan deemed the Wahhabi heretics. They were in power in all of Arabia except Yemen, and by 1818 Muhammad Ali Pasha drove them from Arabia's most significant region for Muslims, the Hejaz.

Muhammad Ali Pasha had built a modern and professional military modeled on European standards. He was interested in modernization and developed a modern civil service, schools and public works. He sent young people from Egypt's elite to study abroad. He tried to advance Egypt's economy, to replace subsistence cultivation with the production of crops that could be sold. He employed European hydraulic engineers to build irrigation works with steam-driven pumps for pumping water in the drier summer months. Under Muhammad Ali Pasha, one million acres would be added to Egypt's farmland. Cotton growing would increase -- the cotton sold mainly to Britain, whose purchases of cotton from Egypt would rise from 50 million pounds in 1800 to 300 million in 1830. The growing of summer rice and corn, along with winter wheat and barley, and sugar, tobacco and indigo also increased. His projects were paid for by revenues from taxing Egypt's illiterate peasants -- ninety percent of Egypt's population -- whom he forced to labor on his projects, whom he conscripted into his army and whom he despised as barbarians. And peasant revolts he crushed with brutality.

In search of slaves for his army to offset losses of men in Arabia, and in search of gold, Muhammad Ali Pasha, in 1820, sent his army, led by his son, Ismail, southward into the Sudan. Ismail fought the Shakiyya people, a people with horses and a warrior tradition but still with weaponry from the Middle Ages. The Shakiyya were slaughtered, their ears sent to Egypt's capital, Cairo, by the basketful in exchange for bounty payments. Moving farther up the Nile, Ismail, in June 1821, conquered the trading center at Shendi -- where slaves had been a major item of commerce.

After Shendi, Ismail conquered Kordofan. But he found only worn out gold mines. The gold and booty that Muhammad had been hoping for would not be forthcoming. Slaves were shipped to Cairo, but only half survived the journey.

Ismail established himself at Shendi and pursued tax collection. Many people scattered, putting distance between themselves and Egypt's tax agents. Others revolted against Ismail, and, in October 1822, Ismail was assassinated. Muhammad Ali's army retaliated, burning, slaughtering and enslaving, leaving villages gutted and depopulated. By 1825, Egyptians were trying to lure people back from the hills, promising them they would not be taxed. -- for three years, at any rate. People returned to their fields. To maintain their good will, Egypt put tight controls on its occupation forces, to prevent abuses by soldiers. And those who had been local rulers they made subordinate rulers -- as conquerors had been doing for ages.

The area that was to be called the Egyptian Sudan returned to peace -- better for revenues through taxation, which began three years after the refugees returned. From Egypt, people were sent to the Sudan to improve irrigation, advance agriculture and improve pest control. New crops were successfully planted: indigo, sugar cane and fruit trees. The city of Khartoum was built as a seat for Egypt's governors. And the harvesting of slaves continued, with annual raids into the hills of Kordofan and against the Dinka and Shilluk.

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Copyright © 2002 by Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved.