Ismailism

“ The best of rulers without good ministers is predestined to failure.
To add to a falling house must always be a desperate remedy. No other course seemed open to Ismail, if he was really to cope with the slave-trade. So long as the basin of the Upper Nile remained in the hands of the ‘Khartoumers,’ the sources of the traffic flowed as briskly as ever, and at the same time the Red Sea ports afforded every facility for export. Accordingly, in 1866 Ismail purchased the districts of Suakin and Massowah from the Turks by an increase of tribute. ”

“ I remembered how the Sheikh Ismail was reputed to be the son of an Efreet and an Arabian princess, and to have lived in that oasis for generations, since the reign of the Sultan Mohammed Nâsir ibn-Kalaûn, who had expelled him from Cairo as a magician. He was said to possess the secrets of Geber and of Avicenna—the great Ibn Sina of Bokhara; to possess the Philosophers' Stone and the Elixir Vitæ. In this pavilion with the bronze door I beheld the magician's treasure-house, guarded, within, by a ginneyeh and, without, by ghouls or black Efreets! ”

“ Upon my business, then, my legitimate business, I found myself with a small company of servants encamped by the Wâdi Araba. At the Wâdi Araba I had a commercial acquaintance, a sheikh of the Mâzi Arabs. Those villains who say that he was a "go-between," that my business was not with him, but through him with a port of the Red Sea, dare not say as much to my face; for there is a law in the land—even in the land of Egypt, now that the British hold power here. ”

“ His own position had to be strengthened, and the country provided with institutions after European models. To these objects Ismail applied himself with energy and cleverness, but without any stint of expense. During the ’sixties and ’seventies Egypt became the happy hunting-ground of self-seeking financiers, to whose schemes Ismail fell an easy and a willing prey. In 1866–1867 he obtained from the sultan of Turkey, in exchange for an increase in the tribute, firmans giving him the title of khedive, and changing the law of succession to direct descent from father to son ”

“ Egypt goes down like the sun at evening. Ismail will be like a withered gourd. To establish order and peace and revenue there, he is sending the man his soul loves, whom the nations trust, to the cities of the desert. If it be well with Gordon, it will be well with the desert- cities. But Gordon asks for one man—an Egyptian—who loves the land and is of the people, to speak for him, to counsel with him, to show the desert tribes that Egypt gives her noblest to rule and serve them. There is but one man—Abdalla the Egyptian. ”

“ There's no man in Egypt Ismail loves and fears so much—"
"Except little Dicky Donovan!"
"That's all twaddle. There's no man Ismail fears so much, because he's the idol of the cafes and the bazaars. He's the Egyptian in Egypt to-day. You talk about me? Why, I'm the foreigner, the Turk, the robber, the man that holds the lash over Egypt. I'd go like a wisp of straw if there was an uprising." ”

“ A great wrong is done by the Arabs every day in this country, and it is no wonder that the tribes treat them badly when they can. Tifum treated Masters Selim and Abdullah cruelly, because he heard that they did the some to the black people. We, thou, and I, Simba, should not have been so good as we are had any other than Sheikh Amer bin Osman been our master.”
“I believe thee, Moto,” replied Simba. “We would not be going back to Zanzibar either, if noble Amer’s son was other than he is. Master Selim is the best Arab living. ”

“ The history of the reigns of Ismail and Tewfik is a grotesque satire upon the preamble of the firman. The non-fulfilment of its prime condition incontestably invalidates it.
And now as to its legality. We venture to think that the firman of 1866 was an immoral transaction. It was not the spontaneous act of the Sultan Abdul Aziz; it was obtained by increasing the Egyptian Tribute. Egypt was at that time already insolvent; so also was Turkey. The Porte required new revenues to pledge for new loans, and in 1871 did pledge this increment of the Egyptian Tribute for a loan of £5,700,000. ”

“ It was a very serious misfortune to Egypt that during his sojourn abroad Ismail had learned many luxurious ways, and had also discovered that European nations were accustomed to make free use of their credit in raising sums of money for their immediate advantage. From this moment Ismail started upon a career which gave to Egypt, in the eyes of the world, a fictitious grandeur, and which made him one of the most talked-of rulers among the cabinets and peoples of the European countries. ”

“ Is this [he said] your service to your Sultan? Does your loyalty consist of mere boast and lip worship? Let those among you who wish to go stand out from the ranks and depart. As for me, I have not advanced 108thus far merely to double back on my track. Let the cowards instantly stand aloof from the brave who have devoted themselves with sword and quiver, soul and hand to our enterprise.
He gave word of command to form columns and march, and not a single man dared to leave the ranks.
On the approach of the Ottoman army to Tabriz, Ismail was at last drawn from his reserve. ”

“ Also the example of Tunis, which the French had first detached from the Empire, and then taken possession of, showed how necessary it was to preserve the connection of Egypt with the Head of the Moslem world. "We are all," he said, "children of the Sultan, and live together like a family in one house. But, just as in families, we have, each of us provinces of the Empire, our separate room which is our own to arrange as we will and where even the Sovereign must not wantonly intrude. ”

“ The Turk has signally failed to rule Egypt; but there are certain Ottoman institutions which are not without claims, as I realized at that moment in regard to Joseph Malaglou: I was thinking, particularly, of the bow-string.
“Already,” said Abû Tabâh, with his sweet but86 melancholy smile, “the heart of the Sheikh Ismail inclined toward the damsel, for whom his soul yearned; and has not it been written that he who heals the breach betwixt man and wife shall himself be blessed? Behold the reward of the peace-maker—which I design as a gift to my sister.” ”

“ Subsequently Sir Moses had an interview with the Sultan himself, on the 6th of November in the same year, 1840, when he obtained from him—as he had formerly done from the Sultan of Morocco—the celebrated firman, which granted to the Jews, everywhere throughout the Turkish dominions, the most complete protection.
In Persia, Bokhara, Yemen, and Central Asia, numerous colonies of Jews exist, engaged as a rule in trade, but also occasionally employed in agriculture. They are not as wealthy, apparently, as their Western brethren. ”

“ In maintaining their sovereignty, the Seveners or Ismailites, were more fortunate than the other sect. Their power first originated with the dynasty of the Fatimites, on the coast and in the interior of Africa, at Mahadia, and Cairo; and, one hundred and fifty years afterwards, in Asia, by the dominion of the Assassins, in the mountainous parts of Irak, and the coasts of Syria. By the oriental historians, the African Ismailites are termed the western, the Asiatic the eastern Ismailites. ”

“ But it is not only the fate of Egypt that is at stake, but in some degree of all the East. It is a strange comment on our ideas of the natural progress of society or of civilization, that the border-land between Asia and Africa, which had on either side of it the greatest empires of antiquity, is to this day overrun by half-savage tribes — true sons of Ishmael, whose hand is against every man, and every man's hand against them. ”

“ The problem therefore which then presented itself for solution was to find a successor for Ismail, in whom the power and prestige of the Khediviate should be revived; a man untainted by the odium of the previous reign, acceptable to the population, and with energy and tact to quench, or at least to contain, the smouldering fires of discontent lighted by the tyranny and trickery which had impoverished the population and brought Egypt to bankruptcy. ”

“ It needed a bureaucracy which it would have been hard to equal for its combination of cowardice and corruption. It needed the whole gang of swindlers—mostly European—by whom Ismail was surrounded.” It was his early encouragement of Arabi, and his introduction of swarms of foreign concession-hunters, which precipitated the “national movement” that led to British occupation. His greatest title to remembrance in history must be that he made European intervention in Egypt compulsory. ”

“ A proof of this is afforded by the answer given to the envoy of Sultan Sandjar, who had been sent from Rei to collect official information concerning the Ismailitic doctrines. He was told by the superiors, “Our doctrine is as follows: we believe in the unity of God, and consider that only as true wisdom, which accords with His word and the commands of the prophet; we observe these, as they are given in the holy book of the Koran; we believe in all that the prophet has taught concerning the creation and the last day, rewards and punishments, the judgment and the resurrection. ”

“ Then Mulai Ismail protested to the people, and the Tolba (scribes) arranged to remove the reproach from the land. So they collected forty of their bravest men and packed them in boxes—one man in a box. They put two boxes on a mule and drove the twenty mules to the courtyard of the palace that the Jew had taken for himself. The man in charge of the mules declared he had a present for the Sultan, and the Unbeliever, whose grave was to be the meeting-place of all the dogs of Taza, gave orders that the boxes should be brought in and set before him. ”

“ Of these Aliites, eventually called Shiáhs, a chief sect, and parent of many heretical branches, were the Ismailites, who took their name, from the seventh Imam, whose return to earth they professed to expect at the end of the World. About A.D. 1090 a branch of the Ismaili stock was established by Hassan, son of Sabah, in the mountainous districts of Northern Persia; and, before their suppression by the Mongols, 170 years later, the power of the quasi-spiritual dynasty which Hassan founded had spread over the Eastern Kohistan, at least as far as Ḳáïn. ”

“ It was true that Ismail had attempted to carry out the great schemes of his grandfather for the regeneration of the Orient, and it is possible that, if the jealousy of European Powers had not prevented the army of Ibrahim Bej from controlling immense territories in Syria and Anatolia, which they had won by conquest, that the regeneration of the Orient might have been accomplished at least a century earlier. No people would have benefited more by the success of Mehemet Ali’s policy than the Christian people who to-day are under the rule of the barbarous Turks. ”

“ He at once left Egypt for Naples, but eventually was permitted by the sultan to retire to his palace of Emirghian on the Bosporus. There he remained, more or less a state prisoner, till his death on the 2nd of March 1895. Ismail was a man of undoubted ability and remarkable powers. But beneath a veneer of French manners and education he remained throughout a thorough Oriental, though without any of the moral earnestness which characterizes the better side of Mahommedanism. ”

“ The Assassins are but a branch of the Ismailites; and these latter, not the Arabs generally as descendants of Ishmael, the son of Hagar, but a sect existing in the bosom of Islamism, and so called from the Imam Ismail, the son of Jafer. In order, therefore, to understand their doctrinal system, and the origin of their power, it is necessary to treat, at some length, of Islamism itself, its founder, and its sects. ”

“ You would ask: What is the secret of Ismail? I would tell you, ask it of Hassan the Handless, of Mustapha, the blind Persian of the Bâb ez-Zuwêla; better still, ask it of any son of the Fàyûm, of any man of the Mâzi. None of them will answer you, for none save Hassan and Mustapha knows the strange truth—Hassan and Mustapha, and Abdûl Moharli ... and no one of these three knows all, nor will reveal what he knows.
Ah! how my heart leapt and how my eyes must have gleamed in the darkness of the tent, yet how cold a fear clutched at the life within me. ”

“ In the person of the Fatimites, the Ismailians had ascended the throne, and deprived the Abbassides of a considerable portion of their empire: but their ambition was not satisfied. The race of the prophet ought not to share the sovereignty230 with the descendants of usurpers, and even the honour of Islamism, and of the doctrine taught and propagated by the imams, required that all Musulmans should be united in the same faith, and pay obedience to a single legitimate pontiff. ”

“ The outbreak of war in Egypt in 1882 was made a pretext by the British Government for the transference of the Consuls to Egypt; and thereafter matters in Asia Minor slid back into the old ruts. The progress of the Greeks and Armenians, the traders of that land, suffered a check; and the remarkable [pg 245] Moslem revival which the Sultan inaugurated in that year (the year 1300 of the Mohammedan calendar) gradually led up to the troubles and massacres which culminated in the years 1896 and 1897. ”

“ If you take an intelligent and prosperous Egyptian, old enough to remember the days of Ismail—for example, a lawyer who has saved enough money to make a considerable investment in land, the prime ambition of every native, a man who speaks a couple of European languages, has had a good education himself, and is very likely sending his son to Oxford or Cambridge—and question him upon British rule in Egypt, he will probably tell you something as follows:—
‘No one who has eyes to see can question the benefit of the British occupation. The country has attained such prosperity as never before. ”