u/ismaeil-de-paynes

The North Yemen civil war, also known in Yemen as the 26 September Revolution, was a civil war fought in North Yemen from 1962 to 1970 between partisans of the Mutawakkilite Kingdom and supporters of the Yemen Arab Republic. The war began with a coup d'état carried out in 1962 by revolutionary republicans led by the army under the command of Abdullah al-Sallal. He dethroned the newly crowned King and Imam Muhammad al-Badr and declared Yemen a republic under his presidency. His government abolished slavery in Yemen. The Imam escaped to the Saudi Arabian border where he rallied popular support from northern Shia Zaydi tribes to retake power, and the conflict rapidly escalated to a full-scale civil war.

On the royalist side, Jordan and Saudi Arabia supplied military aid, and Britain offered covert support. The republicans were supported by Egypt (then formally known as the United Arab Republic or UAR) and were supplied warplanes from the Soviet Union. Both foreign irregular and conventional forces were also involved.

Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser supported the republicans with as many as 70,000 Egyptian troops and weapons. Despite several military actions and peace conferences, the war sank into a stalemate by the mid-1960s. Egypt's commitment to the war is considered to have been detrimental to its performance in the June 1967 Six-Day War against Israel.

Once the Six-Day War began, Nasser found it increasingly difficult to maintain his army's involvement in Yemen and began to pull out his forces. The surprising removal of Sallal on November 5 by Yemeni dissidents, who were supported by republican tribesmen, resulted in an internal shift of power in the capital, as the royalists were approaching from the north.

The new republican government was headed by Abdul Rahman al-Eryani, Ahmed Noman, and Mohamed Ali Uthman, all of whom promptly resigned or fled the country. The capital was left under the control of Prime Minister Hassan al-Amri. The 1967 siege of Sana'a became the turning point of the war.

The remaining republican Prime Minister succeeded in keeping control of Sana'a and, by February 1968, the royalists lifted the siege. Clashes continued in parallel with peace talks until 1970, when Saudi Arabia recognized the Republic, and a ceasefire came into effect.

The name Amalekites in Arabian and Islamic heritage refers to a group of Semitic peoples who settled in scattered regions of the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, and Egypt. They are mostly traced back to Amaliq or Amalayq, who was among the children of Laudh ibn Sam ibn Noah, according to what a number of genealogists and Arab historians have mentioned.

They were mentioned in Islamic and Arab sources as belonging to the "Arabized Arabs" or the "extinct Arabs," a designation referring to the ancient Arab peoples who perished before Islam. Genealogists agree that Amaliq ibn Laudh is the father of the Amalekites, the Pharaohs, and the tyrants in Egypt and the Levant, and that his descendants dispersed throughout the lands, so that among them were the people of Oman, the Hejaz, the Levant, and Egypt.

Some modern historians believe that the Amalekites who ruled Egypt are the same as the Hyksos, the shepherd kings who invaded Egypt and ruled it for centuries, while others distinguish between them and the Hyksos, considering the Amalekites to have been an earlier Semitic wave or contemporary with the Hyksos in the rule of the Nile Valley. Jurji Zaydan mentions that historians mean by the Amalekites the ancient Arabs, especially the people of northern Hijaz adjacent to the Sinai Peninsula, who conquered Egypt under the name "Shasu" (the Bedouin shepherds), whom the Greeks call "Hyksos." Arab historians relied in drawing the picture of Amalekite rule in Egypt on a group of diverse sources, some derived from the Torah and Isra'iliyyat (Talmudic and Folkloric tales) and some derived from folkloric Egyptian Coptic narratives.

Among the most prominent who devoted wide space to this topic in their books are: Al-Masudi (Herodotus of Arabs) in "Meadows of Gold" and "Akhbar al-Zaman," Al-Maqrizi in "Al-Khitat" (Exhortations and Consideration), Ibn Taghribirdi in "The Brilliant Stars," ," Ibn Kathir in "The Beginning and the End," Al-Tabari in "The History of Nations and Kings".

All these sources agree that Amalekite rule in Egypt was a decisive period in the history of the Nile Valley, combining military conquest, settlement, interaction with the prophets, and gradual integration into the Egyptian fabric, until their state ended at the hand of the Pharaoh of Moses, so that their memory became part of the Arab historical memory of ancient Egypt.

Ibn Taghribirdi mentioned in "The Brilliant Stars" that those who ruled Egypt, according to the agreement of many historians despite differences among them, from the Pharaohs and others: thirty-two Pharaohs; from the kings of Babylon who ruled Egypt: five; from the Amalekites, who came to it from the Levant: four; from the Romans: seven; and from the Greeks: ten. Al-Masudi mentions that the duration of rule over Egypt by the Pharaohs, Persians, Romans, Amalekites, and Greeks reached one thousand three hundred years.

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Al-Walid ibn Dum'a - Founder of Amalekite Rule in Egypt

Traditional narratives agree that Amalekite rule in Egypt began with an invasion coming from the Levant, at the hand of their king Al-Walid ibn Dum'a (also written "Al-Walid ibn Darma'a" or "Al-Walid ibn Dumgh"), who is described in the sources as "severe in might" and possessing a dense army, so he overcame the kingdom of Egypt after the Coptic state weakened following the rule of the two queens Huriyya and Zalifa. Several narratives mention that Al-Walid ibn Dum'a had set out with a great army moving through countries and subjugating their kings. When he reached the Levant, he sent a slave of his named "Awn" to Egypt, and he conquered it. Then he himself came afterward, ravaged the people of Egypt, took their wealth, and killed a group of their priests.

Sources differ regarding his lineage. It was said he was Al-Walid ibn Amr ibn Arasha, and it was said Al-Walid ibn Dum'a ibn Laudh. Some say that he was among the Amalekites who trace back to Amaliq ibn Laudh ibn Sam ibn Noah.

His rule lasted one hundred and twenty years, according to what Ibn Taghribirdi mentioned in "The Brilliant Stars" and Al-Maqrizi in "Al-Khitat." Among the strangest things traditional sources narrate about Al-Walid ibn Dum'a is that after his rule in Egypt became established, he set out on a military campaign to explore the sources of the Nile and learn what peoples were along its banks. He traveled until he reached "Mount Qamar" (the Mountain of the Moon), from beneath which the Nile is said to emerge, and reached "the Temple of the Sun" and "the Land of Gold" that grows rods of gold. Narratives mention that his absence from Egypt lasted seventy years. During his absence, his slave Awn claimed kingship for himself, denied that he was Al-Walid's slave, claimed he was his brother from Dum'a, and rose against the people, overpowering them by magic. He ravaged the people of Egypt and ruled them for one hundred and twenty years until he perished.

Sources differ regarding the end of Al-Walid ibn Dum'a. It was said that one day he rode a horse and went out hunting, and his horse threw him into a hollow, so he perished. It was also said that a wild beast attacked him and ate his flesh. Al-Maqrizi mentions in "Al-Khitat" that Ain Shams - Heliopolis was built by Al-Walid ibn Dum'a, one of the Amalekite kings; it was also said that Al-Rabban ibn Al-Walid built it, and it was his royal seat.

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Al-Rayyan ibn Al-Walid - The Pharaoh of Joseph

Al-Walid ibn Dum'a was succeeded in the rule of Egypt by his son Al-Rayyan ibn Al-Walid, who is known in Arab and Coptic sources as "Nahraws" or "Naqraws" or "Nabraush." He is described as having been "the strongest of the people of the earth in his time and the greatest of them in kingship."

Arab historians agree that Al-Rayyan ibn Al-Walid is the Pharaoh of Joseph, peace be upon him, that is, the king who lived in the time of the Prophet Joseph and met him in Egypt, who ultimately believed in him and appointed him over the treasuries of Egypt. Ibn Taghribirdi mentions in "The Brilliant Stars": "Then after him ruled Al-Rayyan ibn Al-Walid the Amalekite, and he is the Pharaoh of Joseph, peace be upon him."

Al-Masudi mentions in "Meadows of Gold" that Al-Rayyan ibn Al-Walid "settled in the city of Ain Shams upon his accession to rule, after the kings before him had settled in the city of Memphis." It is narrated that he remitted taxes from the people for three years, opened the treasuries of wealth, and distributed them to the weak, so the people loved him and thanked him. His rule also lasted one hundred and twenty years, which corresponds to what was mentioned about the age of Joseph, peace be upon him, who died at the age of one hundred and twenty.

Sources mention that Al-Rayyan ibn Al-Walid was great in stature, handsome of face, wise, a leader of the people, and majestic, and that he took interest in building the Fortress of Babylon (Qasr al-Sham'), the fortress whose name later became associated with the Islamic conquest of Egypt. Al-Maqrizi mentions that the lighthouse of Alexandria was built in his time or in the time of one after him.

The story of Al-Rayyan ibn Al-Walid in Islamic sources is closely connected to the story of the Prophet Joseph, peace be upon him. It is mentioned that when Joseph reached Egypt and was bought by the Aziz - courtier "Qutfir" ("Potiphar"), Al-Rayyan was the king.

The Aziz was a man of reason, sound judgment, and upright soul, inclined to justice, and he is the one God Almighty mentioned in the Noble Qur'an in the story of Joseph. Ibn Ishaq mentions that the name of the Aziz was Atfir ibn Rajib (and it was said Qutfir), and he was over the treasuries of Egypt, and the king at that time was Al-Rayyan ibn Al-Walid ibn Dumgh.

The famous attempted seduction occurred between Joseph and the Aziz's wife, whose name is disputed: it was said Ra'il bint Ra'il, and it was said Zulaykha. Then Joseph was imprisoned for seven years. When Al-Rayyan saw his famous dream — seven fat cows eaten by seven lean ones, and seven green ears of grain and others dry — he gathered the priests, magicians, and wise men, but they could not interpret it.

Joseph was brought out of prison after he interpreted the dream, and the king was impressed by his interpretation. He appointed him over the treasuries of Egypt and made him the successor to the Aziz after his death. Ibn Khaldun mentions that the king "employed him as the king of Egypt, when he feared years of drought and high prices, over the granaries of crops throughout his kingdom, to estimate their collection and distribution of provisions from them, and gave him free rein in that in all his affairs. He put his ring on him and mounted him on his vehicle, and Joseph at that time was thirty years old."

Among the most prominent features of the story of Al-Rayyan ibn Al-Walid in Arab heritage is that he believed in Joseph and converted to Monotheism at his hands. Ibn Kathir in "The Beginning and the End" and Al-Hanbali in "The Pleasant Companion" mention that Joseph, peace be upon him, "called Al-Rayyan, Pharaoh of Egypt, to faith, and he believed in him."

Ibn Kathir confirms this report in his exegesis, saying: "The king became Monotheist at the hands of Joseph, peace be upon him." This point is central to distinguishing between Al-Rayyan ibn Al-Walid and the Pharaoh of Moses, since the majority of historians and exegetes hold that Al-Rayyan ibn Al-Walid died a believer, while the Pharaoh of Moses was among the most tyrannical disbelievers.

Among the most prominent projects associated with the era of Al-Rayyan ibn Al-Walid was the project of reclaiming the land of Faiyum, supervised by the Prophet Joseph, peace be upon him. Sources narrate that Joseph "worked the Faiyum" in Al-Rayyan's time, and that the people of Egypt complained about him to the king, saying: "He has grown old and his benefit has decreased." The king was informed of that, and he said to him: "I have granted this district to my daughter," and it was a place of water pools. Joseph managed it: he removed its obstacles, led the channel, built the Lahun, and made the water in it measured and weighed, and he finished all of that in four months, and they marveled at Joseph's wisdom.

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Darim ibn Al-Rayyan - The Fourth Pharaoh

After the death of Al-Rayyan ibn Al-Walid, his son Darim ibn Al-Rayyan (called in some sources Drimus) ruled Egypt. He is the fourth Pharaoh according to the Copts, in the classification of Arab historians. Ibn Taghribirdi mentions in "The Brilliant Stars": "Then after him ruled Darim ibn Al-Rayyan the Amalekite." In Darim's time, Joseph the truthful one, peace be upon him, died. Darim became tyrannical and his disbelief intensified, and he departed from the way of his father. Joseph, peace be upon him, was his deputy as he had been with his father, by the command of Al-Rayyan, and Joseph would guide him, so sometimes he accepted from him and sometimes he opposed him.

In his time, a silver mine appeared three days from the Nile, and he extracted from it something immense. He made from it an idol in the name of the moon, because its ascendant was in Cancer. He erected it on the marble palace that his father had built on the east bank of the Nile, and he set around it idols all of silver, clothed them in red silk, and made for them a festival every year.

Then Darim increased in tyranny until he took away every beautiful woman in the city of Memphis from her family; no beautiful woman was heard of in any district but she was brought to him. That spread throughout the kingdom, and the people were disturbed by his deed, until they gathered to depose him.

Some narratives mention that he rode on the Nile, and God sent upon him a violent wind that drowned him near Helwan. Darim appointed after Joseph, Balatis ibn Mansa the priest as vizier, and Balatis permitted him what Joseph had prevented him from, and incited him to harm people and take their wealth.

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Kames ibn Ma'dan - The Fifth Pharaoh

Then after him ruled Kames ibn Ma'dan the Amalekite (also called Aqsamas ibn Ma'dan), and he is the fifth Pharaoh according to the Copts. Ibn Taghribirdi mentions: "Then after him ruled Kames ibn Ma'dan the Amalekite." Kames attempted to demolish the two pyramids, but the wise men of Egypt said to him that the revenue of Egypt would not suffice for their blood, and that they were the tombs of two great prophets, so he refrained from demolishing them.

His rule lasted thirty-one years, according to what Al-Qalqashandi mentioned in "Subh al-A'sha." It is narrated that the lighthouse of Alexandria was built in his time or in the time of one after him. It is also mentioned that the Amalekites continued to rule Egypt for about one hundred years, until their state ended at the hand of Al-Walid ibn Mus'ab, who is the Pharaoh of Moses, peace be upon him.

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Al-Walid ibn Mus'ab - The Pharaoh of Moses and the End of Amalekite Rule

Al-Walid ibn Mus'ab is considered the last of the Amalekite kings in Egypt, and he is the Pharaoh of Moses, whom is mentioned in the Noble Qur'an.

Sources differ greatly regarding his personality. Some sources mention that he was one of the Amalekites themselves, and that he was from the descendants of Al-Rayyan ibn Al-Walid, while other sources assert that he was one of the Copts, and that in the beginning he was the chief of police for Kames the Amalekite.

When the Copts increased, they made him king after Kames, and from that time the Amalekite state in Egypt ended. 

Al-Nuwayri mentions in "The Ultimate Ambition" that the Pharaoh of Moses was "Al-Walid ibn Mus'ab ibn Ashmeer ibn Al-Hawn ibn Amaliq ibn Laudh ibn Sam," which makes him an Amalekite by lineage.

Al-Walid ibn Mus'ab is described in traditional books as having been lame, short in stature, blind in the left eye, with a long beard. He was originally a man from Greater Khorasan or from the city of Balkh, working as a perfumer, then he migrated to Egypt after debts accumulated upon him. It is mentioned that he claimed divinity and said to the Egyptians, "I am your most high lord," so Moses and Aaron, peace be upon them, warned him, but he resisted and pursued them and the Israelites, so he and his army drowned in the sea, as stated in the Noble Qur'an.

Sources narrate that the Pharaoh of Moses was a rebellious tyrant, and that every rebellious tyrant is called a Pharaoh. Qatada mentions that the Pharaohs were three: the first was Sinan ibn Al-Ashl, the companion of Sarah (the wife of Abraham), who was in Egypt in the time of Al-Khalil; and the third was Al-Walid ibn Mus'ab, who is the Pharaoh of Moses. It is mentioned that Mus'ab ibn Nasim (the father of Pharaoh) was in Egypt herding cattle for his people, and he had a wife called Ra'unah. The Pharaoh of Moses was born in mysterious circumstances and was raised in a strange upbringing, until he reached kingship.

It is mentioned that the Pharaoh of Moses lived four hundred years, and was the harshest and most cruel of the Pharaohs toward the Children of Israel, and no one had a longer reign than him. He claimed divinity and said, "I am your most high lord," so Moses and Aaron warned him, but he was arrogant and obstinate, so God drowned Pharaoh and his soldiers in the sea, and with his death the matter of the Amalekites in Egypt came to an end.

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The End of Amalekite Rule and the Reign of Daluka bint Zaba

After the drowning of Pharaoh and those soldiers who were with him, those remaining in the land of Egypt, the offspring, women, boys, and slaves — feared that the kings of the Levant and the Maghreb would invade them. So they made a woman of opinion and resolve called Daluka king over them. She built around Egypt a wall surrounding all its land and cities to protect it from invasion, This wall was called "Ha'it-el-Agouz" (Wall of the Old Woman) and extended from Aswan in the south to al-Arish in the north and a channel was dug behind it.

She placed guard posts and garrisons every three miles, and between them small guard posts every mile. She placed men in every guard post, assigned them provisions, and ordered them to guard their land by night and day. She ordered the men of the guard posts to use bells.

If one of them saw an enemy creeping toward Egypt, or sensed approaching danger, they would strike their bells, and the news would pass from post to post, from tower to tower, through a connected chain of sounds, until news of the invasion reached the heart of Egypt, to the city of Memphis, “in one hour,” and everyone would prepare to face the enemy. Daluka was also said to have built a nilometer at Memphis and at least one pyramid in Egypt.

The trace of this wall remains to this day, and it is known as "the Wall of the Old Woman." Daluka ruled them for thirty years. She established in Egypt the temples and images, mastered the instruments of magic, and placed in the temples images of whoever came from every direction and their animals. She also depicted in them whoever came by sea in ships, and she gathered in these great temples the secrets of nature and the properties of stones, plants, and animals.

if an army came to them from a certain direction, the images in that direction would move, as if warning them of the place of danger. More wondrous still, what they did to these images -tearing or destroying them- would strike the invading army itself in reality. If they cut off the head of an image, the head of the enemy commander would be cut off; if they gouged out its eye, the eye of the invading army would be gouged out; and if they slit open its belly, the bellies of the soldiers would be slit open.

These "barabi" were stronger than any army and deadlier than any weapon, and no king of the earth was able to defeat Egypt throughout Daluka’s reign because of them. Sources mention that Daluka enlisted in building these "barabi" a great sorceress named “Tadura” or “Tadhura,” whom the sorcerers revered and gave precedence in magic. She came to them and made for them this stone house in the middle of the city of Memphis.

After Daluka’s death, a young man from the noble Coptic families named Darkun ibn Baltus was made king over Egypt, and he ruled with her counsel for a long period. When Darkun died, his son Buds succeeded him, and after Buds passed away, his brother Laqas took the throne but died only three years later without leaving an heir. Laqas was followed by his brother Marina, who ruled and was then succeeded by his son Istimaris, a king who became so tyrannical and corrupt that the people rose against him, deposed him, and killed him.

After Istimaris, the sources mention a series of Coptic rulers whose names varied in the traditions, including Baltus ibn Mikakil, then Bawla, and later a king known as the Lame Pharaoh who was eventually defeated by Nebuchadnezzar.

Thus the Amalekite line was already extinguished, and Egypt passed into the hands of Coptic kings whose reigns were marked by internal strife and external threats until the country fell under foreign domination (Persian Achaemenid rule).

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The End ..

"انزل يا موسى" هي ترنيمة روحية أمريكية من أصل أفريقي تصف خروج بني إسرائيل من أرض مصر، مستمدة بشكل خاص من سفر الخروج 5:1، حيث يأمر الله موسى بأن يطالب بالإفراج عن بني إسرائيل من العبودية في مصر. "وَكَلَّمَ الرَّبُّ مُوسَى: اذْهَبْ إِلَى فِرْعَوْنَ وَقُلْ لَهُ: هَكَذَا يَقُولُ الرَّبُّ: أَطْلِقْ شَعْبِي لِيَعْبُدُونِي".

كما هو شائع في الترانيم الروحية، تشير الأغنية إلى الحرية، سواء حرية بني إسرائيل، أو حرية المستعبدين الهاربين. ونتيجة لتلك الرسائل، حُظِرَت هذه الترنيمة من قبل العديد من مالكي العبيد في أمريكا.

المقطع الافتتاحي، كما نشره مغنو اليوبيل في عام 1872:

عندما كان بنو إسرائيل في أرض مصر

أطلق سراح شعبي

اضطُهدوا بشدة حتى لم يستطيعوا الوقوف

أطلق سراح شعبي

When Israel was in Egypt's land
Let my people go
Oppress'd so hard they could not stand
Let my people go

انزل يا موسى

نزولًا بعيدًا في أرض مصر

أخبر فرعون القديم/العجوز

أطلق سراح شعبي

Go down, Moses
Way down in Egypt's land
Tell old Pharaoh
Let my people go

ظاهريًا، تشير الأغنية إلى السرد الكتابي للخروج. وقد حملت تلك القصة معنى روحانياًَ بالنسبة للأمريكيين الأفارقة المستعبدين، لأنهم ربطوا تجاربهم تحت العبودية بتجارب بني إسرائيل تحت العبودية المصرية، وفكرة أن الله سيأتي لنجدة المضطهدين لاقت صدى لديهم. كما تشير "انزل يا موسى" إلى نهر الأردن، الذي يرتبط عادةً في الترانيم الروحية ببلوغ الحرية، لأن فعل الهروب كثيرًا ما كان يتضمن عبور نهر أو أكثر.

وبما أن العهد القديم يعتبر وادي النيل واقعًا إلى الجنوب أكثر، وبالتالي أخفض من القدس وما جاورها من الأماكن، فإن التوجه إلى مصر يعني النزول، بينما الابتعاد عن مصر يعني الصعود. وفي سياق العبودية الأمريكية، التقت تلك الدلالة القديمة لكلمة "نزول" بمفهوم "النزول عبر النهر"، أي نهر المسيسيبي، حيث كانت ظروف المستعبدين أسوأ بشكل فاضح.

كان القس لويس لوكوود، قسيس الكونتراباند، يزور حصن مونرو في عام 1861، سمع مستعبدين هاربين يغنون الأغنية، ودوّن ما سمعه، ونشرها في النهاية في صحيفة المعيار الوطني لمناهضة العبودية. وبعد ذلك بوقت قصير، نُشرت نوتة موسيقية بعنوان "أوه! أطلق شعبي: أغنية الكونتراباند"، بتوزيع هوراس ووترز. وذكر لوكوود في النوتة الموسيقية أن الأغنية من فرجينيا، ويعود تاريخها إلى حوالي عام 1853.

تذكر السيرة الذاتية المعتمدة التي كتبتها سارة برادفورد عن هاريت توبمان، "مشاهد من حياة هاريت توبمان" (1869)، أن توبمان قالت إنها استخدمت "انزل يا موسى" كواحدة من أغنيتين رمزيتين استُخدمتا مع المستعبدين الهاربين للتواصل عند الفرار من ماريلاند. بدأت توبمان عملها في السكك الحديدية تحت الأرض في عام 1850 واستمرت حتى بداية الحرب الأهلية، لذا من الممكن أن يكون استخدام توبمان للأغنية سابقًا للأصل الذي ادّعاه لوكوود. بل إن بعض الناس يفترضون أنها ربما كتبت الترنيمة بنفسها. ويدّعي آخرون أن نات تيرنر، الذي قاد واحدة من أشهر ثورات العبيد في التاريخ، إما كتب الأغنية أو كان مصدر إلهام لها.

تسجيلات الترنيمة:

سجّل مغنو معهد توسكيجي الأغنية لصالح شركة فيكتور في عام 1914.

سجّلت عائلة كيلي الأغنية مرتين: النسخة الحية مُضمنة في ألبومهم "لايف" (1988) ونسخة استوديو في "نيو ورلد" (1990). كما تظهر الأخيرة في ألبومهم التجميعي "ذا فيري بست - أوفر 10 ييرز" (1993).

رباعية البوابة الذهبية (المدة: 3:05؛ سُجلت في عام 1957 لألبومهم "سبيريتشوالز").

سجّلها لويس أرمسترونغ لألبوم عام 1958 "لويس آند ذا غود بوك".

سُجلت "انزل يا موسى" بواسطة جوقة روبرت شو على أسطوانة آر سي إيه فيكتور 33 رقم LM/LSC 2580، حقوق النشر 1964، الوجه الأول، المقطع الثاني، بمدة 4 دقائق و22 ثانية. ملاحظات الغلاف بقلم الكاتب الأمريكي الأفريقي الشهير لانغستون هيوز.

سجّلها بول روبسون في أربعينيات القرن العشرين.

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The Luddites were 19th-century British textile workers who protested the Industrial Revolution by destroying automated factory machinery. The group took their name from Ned Ludd (or "General Ludd"), a mythical leader rumored to have smashed a knitting frame in 1779.

The Luddite movement ended by 1817 due to brutal military suppression, mass executions, severe new laws making machine-breaking a capital offense, and penal transportation.

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In the heart of the Arabian Peninsula, precisely in Najd region, in the middle of the 18th century AD, the voice of Sheikh Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703 - 1792) rose calling for what he considered a pure return to early Islam, to the time of the righteous predecessors, to that golden period in which the Prophet Muhammad and the noble Companions lived.

His call aimed to purify creed of everything he regarded as innovation and polytheism, and to reshape society according to a strict model in which there was no place for innovation in matters of religion. The Wahhabi movement - a name given to the followers of the Sheikh by their enemies - found itself in direct confrontation with everything new and newly introduced, whether in the field of thought, urban development, or technology.

For the followers of this movement, every modern invention, every new tool, and every innovative idea was not merely material luxury, but represented an existential threat to creed and identity, and a foreign innovation in religion that had to be fought with all force.

At the beginning of their movement, the Wahhabi sheikhs used to prohibit all modern manufactured goods that were among the results of civilizational and technological progress, such as the telephone, the telegraph, television, the car, the airplane, and similar things, because they had not existed in the age of the Prophet nor in the age of the Salaf.

This view stemmed from a particular understanding of religion, an understanding that sees everything that did not exist in the time of the Salaf (Predecessors) as a forbidden innovation (Bid'ah), regardless of its benefits or harms. Thus, King Abdulaziz ibn Saud (1876 - 1953) found himself in an extremely sensitive and difficult position; he had to reconcile preserving the purity of the Wahhabi creed upon which his state was founded with the necessity of introducing a kind of openness into his government so that it would harmonize with the contemporary reality of his time.

Therefore, King Abdulaziz agreed to the entry of some manifestations of modernity into his country, such as the telephone, means of transport, motorcycles, and bicycles, something that aroused the resentment and anger of his fanatical followers, who are referred to in the history of the Kingdom as the group "Ikhwan Man Ata'a Allah" (Bretheren of those who obeyed God). They had helped him defeat Sharif Hussein bin Ali during the Second Hejaz–Najd War (1924-1925).

These Ikhwan saw in these manifestations a betrayal of the original Wahhabi approach, so they rebelled against the King, accused him of loyalty to the British infidels and of laxity in religion, and denounced his titles of Sultan and King, the lengthening of his mustache and his garment, and his wearing of the agal (a Saudi hat), and all these manifestations that were new to the Bedouin society in which the Wahhabi movement arose. More than that, they considered the use of the telephone, wireless, and means of transport such as cars to be forbidden innovations, because they were made by the Franks, that is, the infidel West from which nothing should be taken.

Historical sources indicate that one of the hardline followers of Wahhabism attacked the telephone wires in the palace of the Saudi King that connected it to the army center, and cut them to pieces.

King Abdulaziz found himself compelled, in an attempt to appease the fanatical Wahhabis, to issue orders to remove wireless and the telephone in Medina and Taif, because they viewed wireless and telephones as the work of the Devil, and they opposed their use persistently and stubbornly.

This hardline position was not limited to technology alone, but extended to all manifestations of modern life, as the Egyptian writer Ahmed Amin relates that the Wahhabis did not touch intellectual life, did not work to advance it except within the circle of religious education, and did not look at the problems and demands of the present city, and many of them believed that everything beyond their own country was among the Islamic lands in which innovations and misguidance spread.

The Ikhwan Revolt (1929–1930) was a civil war in the Arabian Peninsula where Ibn Saud turned against his former tribal shock troops, the Ikhwan, after they rebelled against his modernization policies and peace treaties with neighboring British-controlled territories.

Among the important reasons that led to the change of position toward technology was that King Abdulaziz fought a decisive war against the group Ikhwan, who were among the harshest wahhabi groups in rejecting manifestations of modernity, and that war ended with their elimination militarily and politically in the Battle of Sabilla in 1929.

Main rebel forces led by commanders like Faisal al-Dawish faced a crushing defeat against Ibn Saud's regular forces. Sporadic uprisings continued through late 1929, but leaders of Ikhwan were eventually captured, executed, or forced to flee (with key leaders handed over by the British).

After breaking their power, the path became paved for the King to adopt many modern technical means without significant opposition from the hardliners, for these Ikhwan were the greatest barrier to any technical or administrative openness. Thus, the retreat of the hardline Wahhabi position on rejecting technology was not the result of a sudden intellectual transformation, but was in part a direct result of the defeat of those hardliners and the disintegration of their power.

Not only were the effects of the defeat of Ikhwan limited to changing the position on technology; rather, they extended to form the seed of the conflict that erupted fifty years later in the 1979 Grand Mosque seizure. For the father of Juhayman al-Otaybi, the leader of the seizure operation, was one of the fighters who stood in the ranks of the Ikhwan against King Abdulaziz at the Battle of Sabilla in 1929, where they were decisively defeated.

The End ...

The Luddites were 19th-century British textile workers who protested the Industrial Revolution by destroying automated factory machinery. The group took their name from Ned Ludd (or "General Ludd"), a mythical leader rumored to have smashed a knitting frame in 1779.

The Luddite movement ended by 1817 due to brutal military suppression, mass executions, severe new laws making machine-breaking a capital offense, and penal transportation.

---------------------------

In the heart of the Arabian Peninsula, precisely in Najd region, in the middle of the 18th century AD, the voice of Sheikh Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703 - 1792) rose calling for what he considered a pure return to early Islam, to the time of the righteous predecessors, to that golden period in which the Prophet Muhammad and the noble Companions lived.

His call aimed to purify creed of everything he regarded as innovation and polytheism, and to reshape society according to a strict model in which there was no place for innovation in matters of religion. The Wahhabi movement - a name given to the followers of the Sheikh by their enemies - found itself in direct confrontation with everything new and newly introduced, whether in the field of thought, urban development, or technology.

For the followers of this movement, every modern invention, every new tool, and every innovative idea was not merely material luxury, but represented an existential threat to creed and identity, and a foreign innovation in religion that had to be fought with all force.

At the beginning of their movement, the Wahhabi sheikhs used to prohibit all modern manufactured goods that were among the results of civilizational and technological progress, such as the telephone, the telegraph, television, the car, the airplane, and similar things, because they had not existed in the age of the Prophet nor in the age of the Salaf.

This view stemmed from a particular understanding of religion, an understanding that sees everything that did not exist in the time of the Salaf (Predecessors) as a forbidden innovation (Bid'ah), regardless of its benefits or harms. Thus, King Abdulaziz ibn Saud (1876 - 1953) found himself in an extremely sensitive and difficult position; he had to reconcile preserving the purity of the Wahhabi creed upon which his state was founded with the necessity of introducing a kind of openness into his government so that it would harmonize with the contemporary reality of his time.

Therefore, King Abdulaziz agreed to the entry of some manifestations of modernity into his country, such as the telephone, means of transport, motorcycles, and bicycles, something that aroused the resentment and anger of his fanatical followers, who are referred to in the history of the Kingdom as the group "Ikhwan Man Ata'a Allah" (Bretheren of those who obeyed God). They had helped him defeat Sharif Hussein bin Ali during the Second Hejaz–Najd War (1924-1925).

These Ikhwan saw in these manifestations a betrayal of the original Wahhabi approach, so they rebelled against the King, accused him of loyalty to the British infidels and of laxity in religion, and denounced his titles of Sultan and King, the lengthening of his mustache and his garment, and his wearing of the agal (a Saudi hat), and all these manifestations that were new to the Bedouin society in which the Wahhabi movement arose. More than that, they considered the use of the telephone, wireless, and means of transport such as cars to be forbidden innovations, because they were made by the Franks, that is, the infidel West from which nothing should be taken.

Historical sources indicate that one of the hardline followers of Wahhabism attacked the telephone wires in the palace of the Saudi King that connected it to the army center, and cut them to pieces.

King Abdulaziz found himself compelled, in an attempt to appease the fanatical Wahhabis, to issue orders to remove wireless and the telephone in Medina and Taif, because they viewed wireless and telephones as the work of the Devil, and they opposed their use persistently and stubbornly.

This hardline position was not limited to technology alone, but extended to all manifestations of modern life, as the Egyptian writer Ahmed Amin relates that the Wahhabis did not touch intellectual life, did not work to advance it except within the circle of religious education, and did not look at the problems and demands of the present city, and many of them believed that everything beyond their own country was among the Islamic lands in which innovations and misguidance spread.

The Ikhwan Revolt (1929–1930) was a civil war in the Arabian Peninsula where Ibn Saud turned against his former tribal shock troops, the Ikhwan, after they rebelled against his modernization policies and peace treaties with neighboring British-controlled territories.

Among the important reasons that led to the change of position toward technology was that King Abdulaziz fought a decisive war against the group Ikhwan, who were among the harshest wahhabi groups in rejecting manifestations of modernity, and that war ended with their elimination militarily and politically in the Battle of Sabilla in 1929.

Main rebel forces led by commanders like Faisal al-Dawish faced a crushing defeat against Ibn Saud's regular forces. Sporadic uprisings continued through late 1929, but leaders of Ikhwan were eventually captured, executed, or forced to flee (with key leaders handed over by the British).

After breaking their power, the path became paved for the King to adopt many modern technical means without significant opposition from the hardliners, for these Ikhwan were the greatest barrier to any technical or administrative openness. Thus, the retreat of the hardline Wahhabi position on rejecting technology was not the result of a sudden intellectual transformation, but was in part a direct result of the defeat of those hardliners and the disintegration of their power.

Not only were the effects of the defeat of Ikhwan limited to changing the position on technology; rather, they extended to form the seed of the conflict that erupted fifty years later in the 1979 Grand Mosque seizure. For the father of Juhayman al-Otaybi, the leader of the seizure operation, was one of the fighters who stood in the ranks of the Ikhwan against King Abdulaziz at the Battle of Sabilla in 1929, where they were decisively defeated.

The End ...

The Luddites were 19th-century British textile workers who protested the Industrial Revolution by destroying automated factory machinery. The group took their name from Ned Ludd (or "General Ludd"), a mythical leader rumored to have smashed a knitting frame in 1779.

The Luddite movement ended by 1817 due to brutal military suppression, mass executions, severe new laws making machine-breaking a capital offense, and penal transportation.

---------------------------

In the heart of the Arabian Peninsula, precisely in Najd region, in the middle of the 18th century AD, the voice of Sheikh Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703 - 1792) rose calling for what he considered a pure return to early Islam, to the time of the righteous predecessors, to that golden period in which the Prophet Muhammad and the noble Companions lived.

His call aimed to purify creed of everything he regarded as innovation and polytheism, and to reshape society according to a strict model in which there was no place for innovation in matters of religion. The Wahhabi movement - a name given to the followers of the Sheikh by their enemies - found itself in direct confrontation with everything new and newly introduced, whether in the field of thought, urban development, or technology.

For the followers of this movement, every modern invention, every new tool, and every innovative idea was not merely material luxury, but represented an existential threat to creed and identity, and a foreign innovation in religion that had to be fought with all force.

At the beginning of their movement, the Wahhabi sheikhs used to prohibit all modern manufactured goods that were among the results of civilizational and technological progress, such as the telephone, the telegraph, television, the car, the airplane, and similar things, because they had not existed in the age of the Prophet nor in the age of the Salaf.

This view stemmed from a particular understanding of religion, an understanding that sees everything that did not exist in the time of the Salaf (Predecessors) as a forbidden innovation (Bid'ah), regardless of its benefits or harms. Thus, King Abdulaziz ibn Saud (1876 - 1953) found himself in an extremely sensitive and difficult position; he had to reconcile preserving the purity of the Wahhabi creed upon which his state was founded with the necessity of introducing a kind of openness into his government so that it would harmonize with the contemporary reality of his time.

Therefore, King Abdulaziz agreed to the entry of some manifestations of modernity into his country, such as the telephone, means of transport, motorcycles, and bicycles, something that aroused the resentment and anger of his fanatical followers, who are referred to in the history of the Kingdom as the group "Ikhwan Man Ata'a Allah" (Bretheren of those who obeyed God). They had helped him defeat Sharif Hussein bin Ali during the Second Hejaz–Najd War (1924-1925).

These Ikhwan saw in these manifestations a betrayal of the original Wahhabi approach, so they rebelled against the King, accused him of loyalty to the British infidels and of laxity in religion, and denounced his titles of Sultan and King, the lengthening of his mustache and his garment, and his wearing of the agal (a Saudi hat), and all these manifestations that were new to the Bedouin society in which the Wahhabi movement arose. More than that, they considered the use of the telephone, wireless, and means of transport such as cars to be forbidden innovations, because they were made by the Franks, that is, the infidel West from which nothing should be taken.

Historical sources indicate that one of the hardline followers of Wahhabism attacked the telephone wires in the palace of the Saudi King that connected it to the army center, and cut them to pieces.

King Abdulaziz found himself compelled, in an attempt to appease the fanatical Wahhabis, to issue orders to remove wireless and the telephone in Medina and Taif, because they viewed wireless and telephones as the work of the Devil, and they opposed their use persistently and stubbornly.

This hardline position was not limited to technology alone, but extended to all manifestations of modern life, as the Egyptian writer Ahmed Amin relates that the Wahhabis did not touch intellectual life, did not work to advance it except within the circle of religious education, and did not look at the problems and demands of the present city, and many of them believed that everything beyond their own country was among the Islamic lands in which innovations and misguidance spread.

The Ikhwan Revolt (1929–1930) was a civil war in the Arabian Peninsula where Ibn Saud turned against his former tribal shock troops, the Ikhwan, after they rebelled against his modernization policies and peace treaties with neighboring British-controlled territories.

Among the important reasons that led to the change of position toward technology was that King Abdulaziz fought a decisive war against the group Ikhwan, who were among the harshest wahhabi groups in rejecting manifestations of modernity, and that war ended with their elimination militarily and politically in the Battle of Sabilla in 1929.

Main rebel forces led by commanders like Faisal al-Dawish faced a crushing defeat against Ibn Saud's regular forces. Sporadic uprisings continued through late 1929, but leaders of Ikhwan were eventually captured, executed, or forced to flee (with key leaders handed over by the British).

After breaking their power, the path became paved for the King to adopt many modern technical means without significant opposition from the hardliners, for these Ikhwan were the greatest barrier to any technical or administrative openness. Thus, the retreat of the hardline Wahhabi position on rejecting technology was not the result of a sudden intellectual transformation, but was in part a direct result of the defeat of those hardliners and the disintegration of their power.

Not only were the effects of the defeat of Ikhwan limited to changing the position on technology; rather, they extended to form the seed of the conflict that erupted fifty years later in the 1979 Grand Mosque seizure. For the father of Juhayman al-Otaybi, the leader of the seizure operation, was one of the fighters who stood in the ranks of the Ikhwan against King Abdulaziz at the Battle of Sabilla in 1929, where they were decisively defeated.

The End ...

"Go down Moses, way down in Egypt Land … Tell Jeff Davis to let my people go."

(اذهب يا موسى، إلى أسفل في أرض مصر... قل لجيف ديفيس أن يطلق سراح شعبي.)

— أغنية روحية أمريكية من أصل أفريقي، من القرن التاسع عشر

من أشهر الأغاني الروحية الأمريكية الأفريقية، وتستند إلى قصة خروج بني إسرائيل من مصر في سفر الخروج. في صيغتها الأصلية يقول النص "قل لفرعون العجوز أن يطلق سراح شعبي"، لكن في زمن الحرب الأهلية استُبدل فرعون باسم جيفيرسون ديفيس (1808 – 1889)، رئيس الكونفدرالية الجنوبية، فصار النشيد تعبيرًا مباشرًا عن تحرير العبيد. غُنيت الأغنية في أوساط السود المستعبدين والمحررين، وتروي بعض المصادر أنها أُديت في سياق الاحتفال بتنفيذ إعلان تحرير العبيد الذي بدأ في 1 يناير 1863. استخدمت الأغنية قصة موسى وفرعون كرمز لمقاومة العبودية.

------------------------

"My Country, my beloved Southern Confederacy." "Now if we fall, all has been in vain and the precious blood spilt has been that of martyrs. I shall have to drag on a weary existence, struggling with dire poverty in a country infested by Yankees, for they will pervade every section like the locust of Egypt."

Mary GreenHow Lee

Winchester diarist

"وطني، الكونفدرالية الجنوبية الحبيبة, والآن إن سقطنا، فقد كان كل شيء عبثًا، والدم الثمين الذي سُفك كان دم شهداء. سأضطر إلى أن أجرّ وجودًا مضنيًا، وأنا أصارع فقرًا مدقعًا في بلد يغصّ باليانكيين، إذ سينتشرون في كل ناحية مثل جراد مصر."

— ماري غرينهاو لي، كاتبة يوميات من وينشستر

ماري غرينهاو لي (1819 – 1907) كانت امرأة من وينشستر بولاية فيرجينيا كتبت يومياتها أثناء الحرب الأهلية الأمريكية، وكانت شديدة الولاء للجنوب الكونفدرالي. عاشت في مدينة تنقلت بين سيطرة الجنوب والشمال، فانعكست في كتاباتها مشاعر الخوف والمرارة من الاحتلال والتغيير. في هذا النص تتخيل ما سيحدث إذا هُزم الجنوب، فترى أن كل التضحيات والدماء ستذهب هدرًا. وتعبّر عن كرهها لليانكيين (الأمريكيين الذين يعيشون في الولايات الشمالية) وخشيتها من انتشارهم في كل مكان في الجنوب مثل جراد مصر الذي ذُكر في سِفر الخروج في العهد القديم.

--------------------------

"O'er Egypt's land of Memory floods are level / And they are thine, O Nile – and well thou knowest / That soul-sustaining airs... and poisons spring where'er thou flowest."

(على أرض مصر، فيضانات الذاكرة مستوية / وهي لك، يا نيل – وأنت تعلم جيدًا / أن النسائم المغذية للروح... والسموم تنبع حيثما تجري.)

— هيرمان ملفيل

نشر هيرمان ملفيل (1819 – 1891) قصيدته الطويلة «كلاريل» عام 1876، وهي رحلة شعرية في الأرض المقدسة استوحاها من زيارته للشرق في خمسينيات القرن التاسع عشر. تدور القصيدة حول شاب أمريكي اسمه كلاريل يصل إلى القدس باحثًا عن معنى الإيمان، فيواجه الشك والاختلاف الديني والوجودي. وفي هذا المقطع يظهر النيل بوصفه رمزًا للذاكرة والخصوبة والقدم، لكنه في الوقت نفسه يحمل السموم إلى جانب الحياة. تعكس هذه الأبيات نظرة ملفيل المتأملة والمتشككة إلى مصر كأرض حضارة عريقة تجتمع فيها الحياة والموت، والعطاء والضرر. ويمكن قراءة المقطع ضمن التوتر الأوسع في القصيدة بين الإيمان والشك، وبين انجذاب الغرب إلى الشرق وقلقه منه.

-----------------------------

"Many Americans in the 1830s equated their country with Egypt, another 'first civilization' … They nicknamed the Mississippi the 'American Nile' and gave the names of Memphis, Cairo, Karnak and Thebes to new towns along its banks."

(كثير من الأمريكيين في ثلاثينيات القرن التاسع عشر ساووا بلدهم بمصر، 'الحضارة الأولى' الأخرى... وأطلقوا على نهر المسيسيبي لقب 'النيل الأمريكي' وأعطوا أسماء ممفيس والقاهرة والكرنك وطيبة لمدن جديدة على ضفافه.)

------------------------------

معركة محطة مصر - Battle of Egypt Station

دارت في 28 ديسمبر 1864 في ولاية مسيسيبي أثناء الحرب الأهلية الأمريكية. وكانت جزءًا من غارة فرسان تابعة لقوات الاتحاد، ارتبطت على الأرجح بعمليات العميد بنجامين غريرسون، التي استهدفت تعطيل سكك حديد الكونفدرالية وخطوط الإمداد والاتصالات. كانت محطة مصر تقع على خط سكة حديد موبايل وأوهايو، وشكّلت المعركة واحدة من عدة اشتباكات في المنطقة بينما كانت قوات الاتحاد تتقدم في الجنوب في الأشهر الأخيرة من الحرب. ويشير اسم «مصر» في هذا السياق إلى موضع محلي في مسيسيبي، وهو واحد من بلدات ومجتمعات أمريكية كثيرة سُميت بأسماء أماكن مصرية، في استمرار للنمط الأوسع لتسمية أماكن في المشهد الأمريكي بمصر.

-----------------------------

"America will become another Egypt to Antiquarians, and her ruins will go back to the oldest periods of the world, showing doubtless that the ancestors of the Montezumas lived on the Nile."

(ستصبح أمريكا مصر أخرى للآثاريين، وستمتد آثارها إلى أقدم عصور العالم، لتُظهر بلا شك أن أسلاف المونتيزوما عاشوا على النيل.)

— كاتب مجهول الاسم في صحيفة The Colored American، مقالة من عام 1839

كتب أحد المساهمين في صحيفة كالارد أمريكان عام 1839 المقالة التي ورد فيها هذا الاقتباس، وكانت الصحيفة من أوائل الصحف الأمريكية الأفريقية في نيويورك واهتمت بقضايا التحرر والمساواة والنهوض بالسود. في تلك الفترة كانت مصر في مخيلة كثير من السود الأحرار رمزًا لحضارة أفريقية قديمة (الأفروسنتريك) ترد على الادعاءات العنصرية التي أنكرت تاريخ الأفارقة. ويتخيل الكاتب أن أمريكا ستصبح في المستقبل مصر أخرى يدرسها علماء الآثار، وأن آثارها ستمتد إلى أقدم عصور العالم. ثم يربط أسلاف مونتيزوما، حكام الأزتك في المكسيك، بأرض النيل.

-------------------------------

"So early as the days of Moses, Egypt had become pre-eminent in laws, learning, and art, as well as in political power... Egypt, which was settled by Mizraim, the son of Ham, was once the most opulent and important empire in the world."

(منذ أيام موسى المبكرة، أصبحت مصر متفوقة في القوانين والعلوم والفنون، وكذلك في القوة السياسية... مصر، التي استوطنها مصرايم بن حام، كانت ذات يوم أكثر الإمبراطوريات ثراءً وأهمية في العالم.)

— هنري بيدلمان باسكوم

هنري بيدلمان باسكوم (1796 – 1850) كان رجل دين ميثوديًا أمريكيًا وأسقفًا في الكنيسة الميثودية الأسقفية الجنوبية، وكان من المؤيدين للعبودية. نُشرت مذكراته في خمسينيات القرن التاسع عشر، وتحدث فيها عن مصر ضمن سياق رحلاته التبشيرية. رأى أن مصر بلغت مكانة متقدمة في القوانين والعلوم والفنون والقوة السياسية منذ أيام موسى، وأنها كانت من أغنى الإمبراطوريات وأهمها في العالم. ونسب استيطان مصر إلى مزرايم بن حام، وهو ما يتفق مع رواية سفر التكوين. في القرن التاسع عشر، ارتبط اسم حام بجدالات العبودية والعنصرية، لكن باسكوم هنا يقر بعلو الحضارة المصرية القديمة. ويعكس النص نظرة بروتستانتية أمريكية إلى مصر بوصفها أرضًا كتابية وحضارة عريقة.

---------------------------

"After Lincoln had finished that celebrated speech in 'Egypt' (as Southern Illinois was formerly designated)..."

(بعد أن أنهى لينكولن تلك الخطبة الشهيرة في 'مصر' (كما كانت تُسمى جنوب إلينوي)...)

— أبراهام لينكولن (1809 – 1865)، مناظرة كوينسي، 1858

كانت منطقة جنوب إلينوي تُعرف باسم «مصر» أو «مصر الصغرى»، ويختلف الباحثون في أصل هذه التسمية. تقول إحدى الروايات إنها تعود إلى شتاء 1830-1831 حين أتلف الصقيع محصول الذرة في شمال إلينوي ووسطها، فاضطر المزارعون إلى السفر جنوبًا لشراء الحبوب، فقالوا إنهم ذاهبون إلى مصر ليشتروا القمح، على غرار قصة يوسف وإخوته في الكتاب المقدس. وترى رواية أخرى أن الاسم مرتبط بنهر المسيسيبي الذي كان يُلقب بـ«النيل الأمريكي»، أو بوجود مدن جنوب إلينوي تحمل أسماء مصرية مثل القاهرة وطيبة والكرنك.

------------------------

"The Egyptians and indeed I believe oppressed races everywhere, regard the American name as the synonym of freedom and equality, and who perhaps have visionary hopes of being taken under American protection here."

(المصريون، بل أعتقد أن الأعراق المضطهدة في كل مكان، يعتبرون الاسم الأمريكي مرادفًا للحرية والمساواة، وربما لديهم آمال خيالية بأن يخضعوا للحماية الأمريكية هنا.)

— ديفيد هيل، رسالة، 1863

كتب ديفيد هيل (1812 – 1873)، وهو سياسي أمريكي من ولاية نيويورك، هذه الرسالة عام 1863، في ذروة الحرب الأهلية الأمريكية. كان هيل سياسيًا ديمقراطيًا شغل مناصب قضائية وتشريعية في نيويورك، وكانت رسالته تعكس انطباعاته عن مصر خلال فترة وجوده هناك. في تلك الفترة كانت مصر تحت حكم الخديوي إسماعيل، وكانت تتعرض لضغوط استعمارية أوروبية متزايدة، بينما كانت الولايات المتحدة غارقة في حربها الأهلية. يصف هيل كيف كان المصريون ينظرون إلى أمريكا كرمز للحرية والمساواة، ربما بسبب إرث الثورة الأمريكية ومبادئها، أو بسبب سمعة الولايات المتحدة كأمة حديثة لا تملك إرثًا استعماريًا في مصر مثل بريطانيا وفرنسا.

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"As for the Pyramids... have drowned in the Nile... As for the religion and love of art of the builders, it is much the same all the world over, whether the building be an Egyptian temple or the United States Bank. It costs more than it comes to."

(أما بالنسبة للأهرامات... فقد غرقت في النيل... أما بالنسبة للدين وحب الفن لدى البناة، فهو نفسه تقريبًا في كل أنحاء العالم، سواء كان البناء معبدًا مصريًا أو بنك الولايات المتحدة. إنه يكلف أكثر مما يعود.)

— هنري ديفيد ثورو

كتب هنري ديفيد ثورو (1817 – 1862) هذا المقطع في كتابه «والدن» الذي نشره عام 1854، وكان ثورو كاتبًا وفيلسوفًا أمريكيًا ومن أعلام المدرسة الترانسندنتالية. في هذا المقطع يتحدث عن الأهرامات ساخرًا من فكرة العظمة الحضارية، ويرى أن الإسراف في البناء الديني والفني لا يختلف كثيرًا بين معبد مصري وبنك أمريكي، فكلاهما يكلف أكثر مما يعود.

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"And the livid Surprise / Cool us to Shafts of Granite – / With just an Age – and Name / And perhaps a phrase in Egyptian."

(والمفاجأة الشاحبة / تبردنا إلى أعمدة الجرانيت – / مع مجرد عصر – واسم / وربما عبارة باللغة المصرية.)

— إميلي ديكنسون

إميلي ديكنسون (1830 – 1886) شاعرة أمريكية عاشت في بلدة أمهرست بولاية ماساتشوستس، وكتبت معظم شعرها في منتصف القرن التاسع عشر دون أن تنشره في حياتها. القصيدة رقم 531 من قصائدها القصيرة التي تتأمل الموت والأبدية والذكرى، وفيها تستدعي صورة المسلات المصرية. تصف كيف تحوّل المفاجأة الشاحبة الإنسان إلى عمود من الجرانيت، فلا يبقى منه إلا زمن واسم وربما عبارة بالهيروغليفية. تعمل مصر هنا كرمز للقدم والخلود، والمسلة كأثر يختزل حياة كاملة في نقش بارد. تعكس الأبيات قلق ديكنسون من الفناء ورغبتها في فهم ما يبقى من الإنسان بعد الموت. كما تظهر كيف كان الشرق القديم حاضرًا في خيال الشعراء الأمريكيين حتى في أعمال شديدة الخصوصية والانعزال مثل شعرها.

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"فرعون / الملك جورج الثالث"

— جوزيف هنتنغتون، من خطبة أُلقيت في كوفنتري، 1781

جوزيف هنتنغتون (1735 – 1794) كان قسًا أمريكيًا من ولاية كونيتيكت، وأحد أشهر خطباء الثورة الأمريكية. ألقى خطبته المعروفة باسم «خطاب على الجسم السياسي» في كوفنتري بولاية كونيتيكت في أبريل عام 1781، أي في خضم الحرب الثورية الأمريكية. صور هنتنغتون في خطبته أمريكا كتكرار مباشر لمملكة اسرائيل القديمة، فقارن بين القبائل الإسرائيلية الثلاثة عشر والمستعمرات الأمريكية الثلاثة عشر، ورأى أن الشعبين يخوضان مقاومة ضد عدو ظالم واحد، فكان فرعون في الرواية الكتابية يقابل الملك جورج الثالث في الثورة الأمريكية. كان هذا النوع من التفسير التاريخي شائعًا في الخطاب الثوري، حيث استُخدمت قصة سِفر الخروج من مصر كرمز للتحرر من الاستعمار البريطاني.

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" في عشرينيات القرن العشرين، كان عمّال يحصدون قصب السكر بالقرب من مونرو. وقد عُرفت مونرو أيضًا باسم «مصر الجنوب» عندما حلّ القمح، الذي زُرع لتلبية مطالب جيش الكونفدرالية، محلّ القطن باعتباره أهم محصول تصديري."

يشير هذا النص إلى مدينة مونرو في ولاية لويزيانا خلال القرن التاسع عشر وبدايات القرن العشرين. في زمن الحرب الأهلية الأمريكية، منع الحصار البحري تصدير القطن من الجنوب، فاحتاجت الكونفدرالية إلى الغذاء، فتوسع زرع القمح في بعض المناطق. ازدهرت مونرو ومنطقتها بهذا التحول حتى لُقبت بمصر الجنوب، في استعارة كتابية تربط الخصب والغلال بمصر القديمة. ثم توثق الصورة في عشرينيات القرن العشرين حصاد قصب السكر قرب مونرو، ما يدل على تنوع الزراعة في المنطقة بعد الحرب. وهكذا يظهر اللقب كيف وظف الأمريكيون اسم مصر رمزًا للغذاء والثراء الزراعي.

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"I rejected the hardened, sullen tempered Pharaoh of England for ever; and disdain the wretch..."

(لقد رفضت فرعون إنجلترا القاسي والعبوس المتجهم إلى الأبد؛ وأحتقر هذا الحقير...)

— توماس باين، من كتيب «الفطرة السليمة»، 1776

توماس بين (1737 – 1809) كاتب ومفكر سياسي إنجليزي المولد انتقل إلى أمريكا وشارك في الثورة الأمريكية. نشر كتيب «الفطرة السليمة» في يناير 1776، ودعا فيه إلى الاستقلال التام عن بريطانيا. استخدم في هذا المقطع لغة توراتية حادة، فسمى الملك جورج الثالث فرعون إنجلترا، وصور الأمريكيين في موقع بني إسرائيل الخارجين من العبودية. كان هذا الخطاب شائعًا في الخطب الثورية، لكن باين كان أكثر راديكالية في توظيفه. وبعد الثورة الأمريكية انتقل إلى فرنسا وتأثر بالثورة الفرنسية، وتبنى بعض الأفكار التي جعلته موضع عداء في الولايات المتحدة. ويُذكر أنه كان من قلة من الأمريكيين الذين تبنوا الرؤية الفرنسية لمصر القديمة كمنصة ثورية، وهو ما زاد في عزوف كثيرين عنه.

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"Twas not long since I left my native shore, / The land of errors and Egyptian gloom"

(لم يمضِ وقت طويل منذ تركت شاطئي الأصلي / أرض الأخطاء والظلام المصري)

— فيليس ويتلي

فيليس ويتلي (1753 – 1784) أول شاعرة أمريكية من أصل أفريقي تنشر كتابًا، وُلدت في غرب أفريقيا واقتيدت إلى بوسطن وهي طفلة، ثم تعلمت القراءة والكتابة في بيت عائلة ويتلي. نشرت قصيدتها «إلى جامعة كامبريدج في نيو إنجلاند» عام 1773، وهي موجهة إلى طلاب جامعة هارفارد، وفيها تحذرهم من الخطيئة وتتحدث عن تحولها إلى المسيحية. تصف في المقطع شاطئها الأصلي بأنه أرض الأخطاء والظلام المصري. يعكس هذا الاستخدام نظرة مسيحية شائعة في القرن الثامن عشر إلى أفريقيا بوصفها أرض وثنية تحتاج إلى نور الإنجيل.

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"It is a peep into the stable of the Egyptian god Apis."

(إنها نظرة خاطفة إلى حظيرة الإله المصري أبيس.)
— توماس جيفرسون، رسالة إلى مدام دي تيسي، 1813

كتب جيفرسون (1743 – 1826) هذه العبارة في رسالة إلى صديقته الفرنسية مدام دي تيسي عام 1813، وكان حينها في بيته الاعتزالي في مونتيسيلو بولاية فيرجينيا. كان أبيس في الدين المصري القديم عجلًا مقدسًا يُعبد في ممفيس (منف) ويُحفظ في حظيرة خاصة، فصارت حظيرته مضربًا لعبادة شيء بليد أو لمسرح يحيط به التقديس الزائف. استخدم جيفرسون الصورة ليسخر من مشهد اجتماعي أو سياسي رآه، وليكشف عن نظرة متعالية إلى طقوس التقديس التي يحيط بها الناس شخصًا أو مؤسسة. تعكس العبارة ثقافته الكلاسيكية وموقفه الجمهوري المناهض للمظاهر الملكية والكهنوتية.

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"Where are those famed piles of human grandeur, / Those sphinxes, pyramids, and Pompey's pillar, / That bid defiance to the arm of TIME—"

(أين تلك الأكوام الشهيرة من العظمة البشرية، / تلك أبو الهول، والأهرامات، وعمود بومبي، / التي تتحدى ذراع الزمن —)

— فيليب فرينو

يُعد فيليب فرينو (1752 – 1832) من أوائل الشعراء الأمريكيين الذين كتبوا عن مصر، وقد نظم قصيدته الدرامية «أهرامات مصر: حوار» عام 1770 وكان عمره آنذاك ثمانية عشر عامًا فقط. تدور القصيدة في مصر وتقوم على حوار بين المسافر والعبقرية والزمن، وتتأمل مصير العظمة البشرية أمام الفناء. يسأل المقطع أين ذهبت الأهرامات وأبو الهول وعمود بومبي (عمود السواري) التي بدت وكأنها تتحدى الزمن. تعكس هذه الأبيات تأثر فرينو بالكلاسيكية الجديدة واهتمامها بالآثار والخرائب وشعور الإنسان بالزوال. كما تظهر كيف صارت مصر في الخيال الأمريكي المبكر رمزًا للقدم والمجد الغابر والسؤال عن مصير الحضارات.

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"I SAW two vultures, gray they were and gorged: / One on a mosque sat high, asleep he seemed... / Yon in the museum mighty Rameses sleeps, / For some new childhood swaddled like a babe. / Osiris and Jehovah, Allah, Christ, / This land hath known, and, in the dawn of time, / The brute-god-creature crouching in the sand... / Ever still Past temple, palace, tomb; the great Nile flows, / Free and more free of bounty as men learn / To use his values."

(رأيت نسرين، كانا رماديين ومتخمين: / أحدهما جلس عاليًا على مسجد، بدا نائمًا... / هناك في المتحف ينام رمسيس العظيم، / ملفوفًا كطفل جديد. / أوزوريس ويهوه، الله والمسيح، / عرفت هذه الأرض، وفي فجر الزمن، / المخلوق الإلهي الوحشي الرابض في الرمال... / لا تزال الماضي معبدًا وقصرًا وقبرًا؛ النيل العظيم يتدفق، / حرًا وأكثر حرية في العطاء كما يتعلم البشر / استخدام قيمه.)
— س. وير ميتشل

س. وير ميتشل (1829 – 1914) كان طبيبًا وشاعرًا أمريكيًا عاش في القرن التاسع عشر وأوائل القرن العشرين، وكتب قصيدته «مصر» أثناء وجوده في القاهرة. نشر القصيدة في مجموعته الشعرية «رهان وقصائد أخرى» عام 1900، وهي تصور مشهدًا من مصر الحديثة حيث يرى نسرين متخمين، أحدهما على مسجد، بينما ينام رمسيس العظيم في المتحف ملفوفًا كطفل. تستحضر القصيدة تعاقُب الأديان على أرض مصر, أوزوريس ويهوه والله والمسيح، وتشير إلى فجر الزمن والعبادة الوثنية. وفي ختام المقطع يظل النيل يتدفق حرًا، ويتعلم البشر استخدام قيمه. تعكس القصيدة نظرة تأملية إلى مصر بوصفها أرضًا عريقة تجتمع فيها الأديان والحضارات

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"In glorifying the name of George Washington, Egypt desires to pay homage to the American people, defenders of the liberties of all peoples, big and little... To exalted America, Egypt, the mother of ancient civilization, sends, with its good wishes, our expression of unalterable confidence in the final triumphs of justice."

(في تمجيد اسم جورج واشنطن، ترغب مصر في تقديم التحية للشعب الأمريكي، المدافع عن حريات جميع الشعوب، الكبيرة والصغيرة... إلى أمريكا السامية، ترسل مصر، أم الحضارة القديمة، مع أطيب تمنياتها، تعبيرنا عن الثقة التي لا تتزعزع في الانتصارات النهائية للعدالة.)

— وفد الشعب المصري، برقية إلى الشعب الأمريكي، 21 فبراير 1922

في عام 1922 كانت مصر تشهد مرحلة حاسمة من نضالها من أجل الاستقلال بعد ثورة 1919 التي في احدى مظاهراتها كان متظاهر مصري يرفع العلم الأمريكي في صورة فوتوغرافية شهيرة، وكان وفد الشعب المصري برئاسة سعد زغلول يسعى إلى إسماع صوت مصر في الخارج. أرسل الوفد هذه البرقية إلى الشعب الأمريكي في عيد ميلاد جورج واشنطن، ونُشرت في صحيفة نيويورك تايمز. جاءت الرسالة في إطار محاولة كسب تعاطف الرأي العام الأمريكي مع القضية المصرية ضد الاستعمار البريطاني. استخدمت الرسالة رمزية واشنطن والثورة الأمريكية لتقريب المسافة بين نضال الشعبين، وقدمت مصر نفسها بوصفها أم الحضارة القديمة. كما عبرت عن ثقة راسخة في انتصار العدالة، في وقت كانت فيه مصر تنتظر اعترافًا دوليًا باستقلالها. وهكذا يكشف النص عن دبلوماسية شعبية مصرية مبكرة وظفت اللغة والمكانة التاريخية لخدمة المطلب الوطني.

I hope you like this post, My sincere regards from Egypt ...

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The United States established diplomatic relations with Egypt for the first time in 1848, when American President James Polk appointed Daniel Smith McCauley as the first envoy to Egypt under the title of Consul General. McCauley and his family moved to Egypt aboard the USS Constitution in 1849, and he remained in his position in Alexandria until his death while holding his position on October 24, 1852.

And in this article, I will narrate about the three American consuls who held their positions during an important period in the history of America and Egypt, which is the period of the Civil War and after it the Reconstruction Era, and I will talk about their interesting tales in Egypt.

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Charles Hale, or the Humanitarian Consul Devoted to His Work

Charles Hale was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on the seventh of June, 1831, into an old family belonging to Boston’s cultural elite. He was the son of Nathan Hale, publisher and editor-in-chief of the “Boston Daily Advertiser,” and he himself was the son of one of the most prominent figures in the history of American journalism. Charles Hale graduated from Harvard College in 1850, and soon became involved in the world of journalism, where he worked as a junior editor at his father’s newspaper, then in 1852 founded a short-lived Boston literary magazine called “Today,” of which only two volumes were issued before it ceased publication.

Hale’s career was not only professional, but also political; he held legislative positions in the Massachusetts House of Representatives and its Senate intermittently between 1855 and 1877, and reached the position of Speaker of the House in 1859. He was the youngest person to hold this position in the history of the state. But a serious illness that afflicted him in the autumn of 1861 drove him to travel abroad, where he visited his old friend “William Thayer,” who held the position of Consul General in Egypt. When Thayer died in Egypt during his tenure as consul in 1864, Secretary of State “William Seward” offered the position to Hale, who sold his share in the newspaper and arrived in Alexandria in August of the same year.

When Charles Hale arrived in Alexandria in August 1864, he found that the chargé d’affaires “Francis Dainese” had severed the consulate’s relations with the Egyptian government because of a dispute over financial claims. The owners of these claims had claimed that they were American protégés, but many of them were not real American citizens, but local subjects who exploited consular protection to extract dubious compensation. When Cairo refused to pay these claims, Dainese considered it an insult to the United States and cut off official contact. Secretary of State William Seward’s instructions to Hale were clear: avoid unnecessary disputes because the country was preoccupied with the Civil War. Therefore, Hale set aside Dainese’s actions and restored friendly relations with the Egyptian government.

In August 1865, Khedive Ismael summoned the young American consul to the Nile Island, and informed him that 900 soldiers of the Egyptian army would soon arrive in Alexandria to be transported on French ships to Mexico to support its ruler, Emperor Maximilian.

This was the second batch of Egyptian and Sudanese soldiers sent to participate in the Mexican Civil War, within the framework of what was known as “the Egyptian-Sudanese Battalion in Mexico.” This intervention had begun for the first time during the era of the Egyptian Viceroy "Said Pasha" in 1863, when 446 Egyptian soldiers joined the conflict, as many diplomats, including Seward, believed that these soldiers were “slaves or bondsmen.” Hale’s predecessor, William Thayer, had protested against this intervention at its beginning in 1863, but Seward remained silent because the United States was preoccupied with its Civil War.

But when Hale informed his foreign minister in the autumn of 1865 that the Egyptian intervention would continue, the American Civil War had ended. Seward responded immediately and wrote a protest in which he said that “the safety of the free republican institutions on this continent requires the abolition of all forms of civil or military forced slavery in this hemisphere.” The American protest was communicated to the French, Egyptian, and Ottoman governments. On this basis, France withdrew its request for Egyptian support, and Egypt did not send new forces to Mexico.

In the autumn of 1865, a few months after the end of the American Civil War, a Danish explorer named Alexandrine Tinne turned to him, asking him to protect a number of African servants who had accompanied her on exploratory journeys to the White Nile. Tinne had paid to register them as students in the American missionary school, but she also wanted Hale to place them under American consular protection, so that they would become persons protected by the United States, even if they did not obtain full citizenship rights.

Hale did not hesitate to respond to this request; rather, he hastened to write a letter to his superiors in the State Department explaining that slavery was still alive and present in Egypt, and that the United States, given “the lofty standing our country occupies at this moment before the world with regard to slavery and the black race,” was obligated to extend protection to persons at risk of enslavement abroad, just as African Americans and their allies were struggling to protect the emancipated from being re-enslaved at home.

To increase pressure on the State Department, Hale pointed out that the British authorities in Egypt had taken similar measures to protect the vulnerable, and that “the same principles that led Great Britain to object to forced labor on the Suez Canal, and to forced domestic slavery in Egypt,” should also apply to the use of American force abroad. But Hale’s endeavor was not ultimately realized.

Hale was active in developing the Egyptian “Consultative Assembly of Deputies,” the system that Khedive Ismael was seeking to establish as part of his modernization project. This activity was manifested in Hale translating the rules and regulations of the Assembly of Representatives of Egypt from Arabic into English, and sending them to the U.S. State Department, where these documents were published in Washington in 1867. He added: “I hope you will find some pleasure in looking at this little booklet, which contrasts strangely with our old connections with Egypt.”

On the twenty-seventh of November, 1866, Hale sent a letter to Seward informing him that he had arrested a man named Walters, who was wearing the uniform of the Papal Zouave Guard of the Vatican, and who had arrived in Alexandria on the twenty-third of the same month aboard the steamer “Tripoli” coming from Italian Naples, and who was believed to be “John Harrison Surratt Jr.” (whose mother Mary Surratt had previously been executed in the same case), one of the conspirators in the assassination of President Lincoln.

He was easily distinguishable among seventy-eight third-class passengers by the Zouave uniform he was wearing, and by his unmistakably American features. Hale said to him immediately: “You are the man I want; you are an American.” He said: “Yes, sir; I am.” So Hale said: “You know without doubt why I want you. What is your name?” He answered immediately: “My name is Walters.” So Hale said: “I believe your real name is Surratt,” and he mentioned his official position as Consul General of the United States during his arrest.

The director of the quarantine quickly arranged sufficient guards from the soldiers, who led the prisoner to a safe place inside the walls of the quarantine. After he reached the prepared place, Hale gave him the usual judicial warning that he was not obligated to say anything, and that anything he said would be written down. He said: “I have nothing to say. I want nothing but what is true.” He declared that he had no passport, no luggage, and no money except six francs.

On the second of December, the following telegram was sent to Washington: “To Seward, Washington. John Surratt, one of the assassins of President Lincoln, has been arrested. There is no doubt about his identity. Hale, Alexandria.” Surratt remained in secure detention until the twenty-first of December, when Hale handed him over aboard the American destroyer “Swatara,” and he was transported to America, and arrived in Washington, D.C., to be tried there.

Hale’s duties were not limited to major political issues, but also included daily commercial and consular affairs. He followed with interest the Egyptian cotton industry, which formed the backbone of international trade in that period. In his report to Seward on the fourteenth of June, 1865, he noted that “the happy tidings of the end of the American war led to a decline in cotton prices in Egypt, which resulted here in Egypt in a financial crisis. Great failures occurred, and there were many cases of suffering and distress.”

He feared that the Egyptian peasants or farmers would not be able to repay the advances they had obtained, usually from European capitalists, so the Khedive intervened with a comprehensive relief arrangement, in which he proposed to provide the peasants with the means to repay their debts, while securing himself with a mortgage on their lands. The amount required for this purpose reached more than one million pounds sterling, to be repaid by the peasants in installments extending over fifteen years with interest.

Hale’s relationship with Khedive Ismael was a good and balanced relationship. Ismael sent a telegraphic message to Charles Hale welcoming his arrival, then came to Alexandria and received him informally, and affirmed to him in the meeting his desire to keep friendly relations with the United States.

On the fourteenth of June, 1865, Hale held a long meeting with the Khedive in his palace at Ras El-Tin in Alexandria, where he expressed to him his heartfelt congratulations on the successful end of the United States war, and noted that the defeat of the Confederate rebels enabled the Khedive to make several useful purchases in England, including two warships and the complete machinery for manufacturing small arms, all of which had been intended for the Confederates. The Wali showed great interest in Egypt’s navy, and felt a natural pride in the safe arrival, a few days earlier, of the Egyptian steam frigate “El-Ibrahimiyya” (named after his father Ibrahim Pasha) at Suez, the first warship flying the Egyptian flag to cross the Cape of Good Hope route.

In 1870, after six years of service in Egypt, Charles Hale submitted his resignation due to poor health, and spent the winter in England to recover. It was recorded in the records of the U.S. State Department that his mission officially ended on May 23, 1870, after his letter of recall was submitted. His resignation was not surprising to those who knew him closely; he had suffered from recurring health problems since his youth, and these problems had been aggravated by the hot Egyptian climate and the pressures of diplomatic work.

After recovering in England, he returned to Boston in 1871, where he was immediately elected to the state Senate, but he resigned in February 1872 to become an assistant to the Secretary of State under the administration of Hamilton Fish. After two years of service, he resigned again and returned to Boston, where he was admitted to the bar on the basis of his experience in presiding over consular courts. He was then re-elected to the House of Representatives, where he served with distinction on the Judiciary Committee, but in July 1876 he suffered a complete collapse due to exhaustion from drafting bills.

Hale was also a writer and publisher, and among his works were “All Men Are Created Equal,” published in Boston in 1856, and “Our Homes Are Our Castles,” published in 1855.

Charles Hale died on the second of March, 1882, in Boston, at the age of fifty-one.

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George Butler, or the Troublemaking Consul

In 1863, the rule of Khedive Ismael Pasha came, and between 1869 and 1878, Ismael recruited about 49 American officers to help modernize the Egyptian army. Interestingly, some of them had served in the Union Army, while others fought for the Confederacy during the American Civil War. Nevertheless, they worked together in Egypt!

These officers participated in the military training of Egyptian soldiers and officers, military engineering projects, survey work, and the campaigns in Africa that aimed to expand Egyptian influence in Sudan and Ethiopia. Many of them called themselves “military missionaries.”

Among all the American figures who came to Egypt during that period, George Harris Butler stands out as a unique case. He was not an officer in the Egyptian army like the others; on the contrary, he was an enemy of the Khedive’s American officers. He held the position of Consul General of the United States in Alexandria, and his story is considered the strangest and most scandalous of the tales of the American mission.

George Harris Butler was born in 1840, but he spent his early years in California, far from his birthplace in Massachusetts. He joined the United States Military Academy at West Point, and graduated from it to begin a short career in the Union Army during the Civil War. He served with the rank of lieutenant in the Tenth Infantry Division, then worked as a supply and coordination officer, before resigning from the army in 1863.

He was the nephew of the famous Union General Benjamin Franklin Butler.

During the Civil War, George served with the rank of first lieutenant in the Union Army within the Tenth Infantry Corps, where he worked in supplies and equipment, but he resigned in 1863. He was a playwright and a talented art critic, and published articles in important magazines. However, his greatest problem was his severe addiction to alcohol, as his bouts of drunkenness constantly dragged him into trouble, despite his family’s attempts to change him.

In 1870, his uncle used his influence to obtain a job for him far from America, and this prestigious job was: Consul General of the United States in Alexandria, Egypt.

(The era of President Ulysses S. Grant, despite his being a man with clean hands, was famous for increasing cases of corruption and favoritism, such as the Black Friday crisis and also the scandal of the Tammany Hall organization, or the Tammany Tiger as the satirical cartoonist Thomas Nast described it.)

George presented his credentials on June 2, 1870, and arrived in Egypt accompanied by his wife, the famous actress Rose Eytinge.

And unlike his predecessor, Charles Hale, who was known for his devotion to his work, and I mentioned in my previous article that he arrested in Alexandria John Surratt, who was one of the participants in the conspiracy to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln, George Butler was the exact opposite.

First, Butler tried to assume his duties without obtaining the exequatur from the Ottoman Sultan (official ratification) for his position. When he presented his credentials, the Khedive followed Egyptian custom and gifted him a horse. Butler knew the rule that prevents American representatives from accepting gifts, but he accepted the gift. He then telegraphed the U.S. State Department asking permission to keep it. When permission was refused, Butler ignored the courtesy owed to the Khedive and gave the animal to the American missionaries in Alexandria “in return for their tireless efforts to improve and raise the religious and social conditions of Egypt’s poor.” Shortly afterward, Minister of Foreign Affairs Nubar Pasha informed Butler of the Khedive’s displeasure, and said that Butler had to pay the price of the horse. And before this matter was settled, a local merchant asked the U.S. State Department to collect from Butler a debt of 400 dollars.

When two American officers in the Egyptian military service challenged one of the consulate employees to a duel, Butler became a party to this farce. He complained to his friend “Thaddeus P. Mott,” who was then the Khedive’s private advisor, that the American officers were showing grave disrespect for the American consulate, and asked him to present the full story to Ismael.

Then, through the columns of the New York Herald, Butler waged a battle against the American missionaries who accused him of misconduct in his position. He publicly flogged one of his critics, the missionary David String, then denied that he had done so. And he struck the Confederate naval officer “Cornelius E. Hunt” with a cane.

When Butler learned that Ismael Pasha intended to grant the Union officer “Vanderbilt Allen” a medal for distinguished service, he informed the Khedive that honoring Allen would bring about the personal and political enmity of the consul. And when U.S. Secretary of State “Hamilton Fish,” based on a complaint from General Charles P. Stone (Chief of Staff of the Egyptian Army at that time and commander of the American mission), warned Butler against such interference, the consul wrote scathing letters to the Khedive, to the Secretary of State, and to the Ministry of War.

As soon as Butler took over the consulate, everything turned upside down. The first thing he did was dismiss all the agents of the American consulate in the different provinces, then he began selling their positions in a public auction to the highest bidder. So if you wanted to become an agent for America in Assiut or Mansoura, for example, you had to pay Butler first!

An American missionary working in Alexandria named Reverend David Strange tried to intervene in defense of those harmed agents. When Butler ignored him, the reverend wrote directly to President Ulysses S. Grant complaining of “malicious corruption and maladministration” in the consulate. But Strange exaggerated in his complaint and mentioned a very scandalous matter: that Butler and his friends were requesting dancers to perform before them “in puris naturalibus” (that is, completely without clothes)!

And so the American consulate in Alexandria turned into something like a nightclub and a dance hall, where corruption reached its peak.

Butler also had a major conflict with the American officers working in the Egyptian army, especially the Confederates. These had come to help the Khedive modernize his army, and in Butler’s view they were political enemies from the time of the Civil War.

In 1870, Khedive Ismael thought of appointing the famous Confederate General P. G. T. Beauregard (the hero of the Battle of Fort Sumter) as commander of the Egyptian army. But Butler used his influence as the new consul to persuade the Khedive to withdraw the offer, and the Khedive responded to him. After a while, Butler justified his position by saying: “There was not room in Egypt for both Beauregard and me.”

And naturally, the anger of the Confederate officers in Egypt ignited, and hatred between the two sides escalated.

On the evening of Friday, the twelfth of July, 1872, while Consul Butler was having dinner in one of the elegant Greek restaurants on the Alexandria Corniche, accompanied by his private secretary “George Wadleigh” (not to be mistaken with Rear Admiral George H. Wadleigh) and one of the consulate employees named “Charles Strulogo,” three of the most prominent former Confederate officers – namely General William Wing Loring, General Alexander Welch Reynolds, and Major William Campbell – were sitting a few meters away from him, eating their food quietly and cautiously, aware that their presence in the same place was a time bomb that could explode at any moment.

When Generals Loring and Reynolds finished their food and rose to leave, they passed by Butler’s table and gave him an ordinary greeting motivated by the military courtesy in which they had been raised, but Major Campbell, who had an old personal dispute with Butler, did not follow their example and instead went on his way without showing any acknowledgment of the consul’s existence at all, as if he had not been in the place at all.

At this, Butler felt that his dignity had been violated, so he could not control himself and instead called out to Campbell in a loud, sharp voice, cutting through the quiet of the restaurant and forcing everyone to turn toward him, saying with clear challenge: “Good evening, Major Campbell!” Campbell stepped back a few steps toward the table and asked him sharply: “Are you addressing me, sir?” Butler replied with biting sarcasm: “Yes, I am addressing you, Major, because I see that you have forgotten how to greet those of my standing.”

A few minutes had not passed before the passing verbal altercation turned into a fistfight, as the four men – Butler and Wadleigh on one side, and Loring and Reynolds on the other rushed into a violent exchange of punches, and plates and glasses were scattered across the restaurant floor.

In the midst of this overwhelming chaos, Secretary Wadleigh heard his boss Butler shout the phrase: “Give it to him, Wadleigh!” and he meant by that the pistol that was in his secretary’s possession. Wadleigh withdrew a few steps back, drew his pistol from under his coat with astonishing speed, and fired successively toward Major Campbell, who was still standing in his place, not expecting matters to reach the point of using a firearm.

The sound of gunfire echoed throughout the restaurant, and Wadleigh fired at Campbell between five and six successive shots. One of them struck Major Campbell in his left leg with a very dangerous wound that tore through the muscles, and blood poured heavily onto the restaurant floor. Campbell let out a resounding cry of pain before collapsing to the ground, holding his wounded leg with both hands, trying to stop the bleeding that was threatening his life.

General Reynolds did not stand idly by, but drew his own pistol and fired one shot toward Wadleigh, but the shot missed its target due to the confusion and darkness, and did not injure anyone. As for Butler, his secretary, and his employee, they did not wait for the police to arrive, but quickly withdrew from the restaurant and disappeared into the crowd of Alexandria’s dark streets.

Butler feared for his life, so he packed his belongings and fled from Egypt aboard a mail steamer immediately, before he could be arrested or face the officers’ revenge!

After his escape, the American government sent General F. A. Starring to investigate what had happened inside the consulate. Butler’s assistant, Strulogo, confessed everything: he said that Butler was in a state of drunkenness most of the time, took bribes, opened letters that did not belong to him, and that he was the one who started shooting at the officers. However, the problem was that Strulogo himself also confessed to receiving his share of the bribes and participating in the assault on Reverend Strange.

Butler returned to America, and the collapse of his life continued; he failed in many jobs. In 1875, he tried to regain some of his professional life when he bought the magazine “Arcadian” in New York and worked as its editor, but the project failed in less than a year. In 1877, he was appointed a special mail agent in the Black Hills region, headquartered in Deadwood. But during his train journey to his new position, he drank to intoxication and became a source of annoyance to the passengers. News of his behavior reached his superior, who fired him immediately.

His wife Rose Eytinge filed for divorce in 1882, and they separated after having two children. In his last days, he spent days in a state of complete drunkenness, living on the streets, and was admitted to mental institutions repeatedly to prevent him from drinking, but every time he came out of them he returned to addiction again.

And in Washington, only one woman stood by his side and tried to protect him, named Josephine Chesney. After his death, people discovered that they had been secretly married for years.

On May 11, 1886, George Harris Butler died at the age of only 45. The New York Times described him in his obituary by saying: “When not disabled by drink, he was a brilliant conversationalist and writer!”

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Richard Beardsley, or the Consul Loved by the Egyptians

Richard Beardsley was born on the ninth of October, 1838, in the city of Elkhart, Indiana, and was the sixth and youngest son of his parents Havilah and Rachel Beardsley. Before the outbreak of the Civil War, Beardsley had already begun to leave his mark on his birthplace, where he designed the first real estate addition bearing his family name in Elkhart, which became known as “Beardsley’s Addition.”

Richard Beardsley’s family belonged to the Episcopal Church, and the Beardsley family was of Puritan Protestant origins, tracing its roots back to William Beardsley, who was one of the founders of the Congregational Church in Stratford, Connecticut. This great-grandfather was described as a “pious Puritan” who made Christianity an inseparable part of his daily life.

When the Civil War broke out, Beardsley volunteered in the Union Navy, where he served as a paymaster aboard the gunboat “Owasco.” He participated in major battles, including the capture of New Orleans and the siege of Vicksburg. He was praised for his bravery in those battles, and his promotion was recommended by Commodore Porter. This military record was what opened the doors of diplomacy to him.

In 1864, as the Civil War was approaching its end, President Abraham Lincoln decided to appoint Beardsley as United States consul in Jerusalem, in appreciation of his services in the war. This appointment was the beginning of his diplomatic career, which would later extend to Egypt. During his time in Jerusalem, he married Isabella Smith, the daughter of Reverend Philip Smith from Ireland, and they had three children. Their second son, Charles, was born in Jerusalem in 1871, which indicates that the family settled in the Middle East during that period.

In July 1872, the consular post in Egypt had become vacant after the humiliating escape of his predecessor George Harris Butler. Beardsley had to restore to the American consulate its lost prestige. Beardsley was officially appointed on July 23, 1872, and arrived in Cairo in September of the same year. His appointment was later accepted by the Senate, and he was reappointed to the position on December 11, 1872. He knew the region well through his service in Jerusalem, and he understood the complexities of the Middle East.

The first thing Beardsley did was move the consulate office from Alexandria to Cairo, becoming the first American consul general to reside permanently in the Egyptian capital. By December 1872, official correspondence was already being issued from Cairo, as is evident from his telegrams to Secretary of State Hamilton Fish.

Only a few months into his new position, Beardsley found himself immersed in one of the most complex issues in the history of modern Egypt: the issue of judicial reform. Egypt at that time was living under the system of “foreign privileges” (Capitulations), which granted subjects of foreign states immunity from Egyptian laws and subjected them instead to the authority of their consuls. This system led to complete legal chaos, as cases were stalled due to conflicts of jurisdiction, and the consular courts were drowning in thousands of cases that could not be resolved.

In September 1873, Beardsley wrote a detailed report to Secretary of State Hamilton Fish on this matter, in which he said that Khedive Ismael and Nubar Pasha had personally asked him for United States support for the judicial reform project. Beardsley explained that the problem was deeper than a mere conflict of jurisdiction: “Legal knowledge was not always the criterion for appointment to these positions, and even the best legal minds might become confused with sixteen different laws to deal with.” He added that many of the consuls general in Egypt were not nationals of the states they represented, and their knowledge of the laws of those states was very incomplete.

Beardsley supported reform, but he was careful to clarify that the United States could not accept a project of this kind without the approval of the Senate, because the matter involved amending existing treaties with the Ottoman State. He informed Nubar Pasha of this position frankly, but at the same time he made clear that the reform project was necessary to improve the administration of justice in Egypt. This balanced position was a model of Beardsley’s style in diplomatic work: supporting reform without exceeding his powers, and understanding Egypt’s needs without sacrificing American interests.

The issue of judicial reform was not the only moral challenge Beardsley faced. In October 1873, he sent a detailed report to Washington about ongoing talks between Britain and Egypt to reach a treaty abolishing slavery. The Khedive was prepared to pledge to abolish the slave trade, criminalize the trade in eunuchs, and abolish all forms of forced slavery except “domestic slavery.”

But the Khedive saw that abolishing domestic slavery was “impolitic, practically impossible, and unjust to his subjects.” Beardsley conveyed these positions to Washington faithfully, but he added his own analysis. He noted that the Egyptian government publicly declared that slavery was illegal, and that any slave who requested his freedom would be immediately freed by the Egyptian authorities.

But he pointed out that the slave trade was still active in every large city in Egypt, although it was carried out in secret for fear of the eyes of foreigners and government officials. He saw that “the complete suppression of the slave trade is the great first step” toward solving the problem, and that domestic slavery would quickly disappear if the authorities were able to suppress the external trade in it.

Beardsley received strict diplomatic instructions on the twenty-ninth of November, 1875, warning him against describing former American officers who had served in the Egyptian army as “American officers” in official correspondence, in order to avoid arousing the sensitivities of Britain, France, and the Ottoman State. The U.S. State Department explained that these men were American citizens by birth but could not be classified as American officers in official communications. These instructions came within the framework of a broader American policy aimed at avoiding provoking and arousing the European and Ottoman powers, which viewed the presence of American officers in the Egyptian army as a threat to their influence in the region.

However, Washington exercised diplomatic pressure to settle the dues of these officers and the estates of those among them who had died, including the Confederate General Alexander Welch Reynolds as well as the Union officer Charles Lushi, who died in Egyptian Alexandria and the Sudanese city of Suakin.

The famous American poet and traveler “Bayard Taylor,” who visited Egypt in 1874, described his meeting with Beardsley as fruitful, pointing to the pivotal role Beardsley played in receiving prominent American figures and facilitating their movements in Egypt. Beardsley attended official occasions at the Khedive’s court, including the theatrical performances hosted by the Khedive, where Mr. Beardsley described one of them as having “been tedious and the plot very simple, with the usual mixture of love and jealousy.”

Beardsley dealt with complex issues related to the judicial privileges of foreigners in Egypt, where all foreign consuls insisted that cases be tried before their consular courts when the plaintiff was Egyptian, according to the Ottoman State’s interpretation of the treaties.

Beardsley realized that these privileges, which had originally been granted as guarantees for foreigners under an unfamiliar legal system, had over time turned into a chaotic system that obstructed the establishment of justice and protected criminals from accountability.

Beardsley described in his reports how “the consular courts are choked with thousands of cases which, because of conflict of jurisdiction, unjust rulings, and the absence of executive authority, can never be settled until some reform is introduced.”

It was this insightful vision that made him strongly support the project of the Mixed Courts, despite his knowledge that it would lead the United States to relinquish some of its judicial privileges in Egypt.

Finally, on January 23, 1876, Richard Beardsley died in Cairo at the age of only 37. His death came as a result of a severe hemorrhage that led to suffocation, according to what was recorded in the records of the U.S. State Department. His death was sudden and shocking to everyone who knew him, especially since he was still in the prime of life, and had only just begun to leave his mark on American diplomacy in Egypt.

But what happened after his death was even more astonishing: the Egyptians, including government officials and public figures, requested that Beardsley be buried in Cairo, and not that his body be transferred to the United States. The Egyptian authorities responded to this request, and Beardsley was buried in the American Cemetery in Cairo.

Moreover, the people of Cairo erected a magnificent memorial for him in appreciation of his services and integrity. This honor was rare for a foreign consul in Egypt at that period, and it reflected the respect that Beardsley had earned during his short years of service. He was not merely a representative of a foreign government, but a man who worked to improve relations between his country and Egypt, and who sought to understand the complexities of Egyptian society instead of issuing prejudgments against it.

The End ...

I hope you like this post, My sincere regards from Egypt ...

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The United States established diplomatic relations with Egypt for the first time in 1848, when American President James Polk appointed Daniel Smith McCauley as the first envoy to Egypt under the title of Consul General. McCauley and his family moved to Egypt aboard the USS Constitution in 1849, and he remained in his position in Alexandria until his death while holding his position on October 24, 1852.

And in this article, I will narrate about the three American consuls who held their positions during an important period in the history of America and Egypt, which is the period of the Civil War and after it the Reconstruction Era, and I will talk about their interesting tales in Egypt.

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Charles Hale, or the Humanitarian Consul Devoted to His Work

Charles Hale was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on the seventh of June, 1831, into an old family belonging to Boston’s cultural elite. He was the son of Nathan Hale, publisher and editor-in-chief of the “Boston Daily Advertiser,” and he himself was the son of one of the most prominent figures in the history of American journalism. Charles Hale graduated from Harvard College in 1850, and soon became involved in the world of journalism, where he worked as a junior editor at his father’s newspaper, then in 1852 founded a short-lived Boston literary magazine called “Today,” of which only two volumes were issued before it ceased publication.

Hale’s career was not only professional, but also political; he held legislative positions in the Massachusetts House of Representatives and its Senate intermittently between 1855 and 1877, and reached the position of Speaker of the House in 1859. He was the youngest person to hold this position in the history of the state. But a serious illness that afflicted him in the autumn of 1861 drove him to travel abroad, where he visited his old friend “William Thayer,” who held the position of Consul General in Egypt. When Thayer died in Egypt during his tenure as consul in 1864, Secretary of State “William Seward” offered the position to Hale, who sold his share in the newspaper and arrived in Alexandria in August of the same year.

When Charles Hale arrived in Alexandria in August 1864, he found that the chargé d’affaires “Francis Dainese” had severed the consulate’s relations with the Egyptian government because of a dispute over financial claims. The owners of these claims had claimed that they were American protégés, but many of them were not real American citizens, but local subjects who exploited consular protection to extract dubious compensation. When Cairo refused to pay these claims, Dainese considered it an insult to the United States and cut off official contact. Secretary of State William Seward’s instructions to Hale were clear: avoid unnecessary disputes because the country was preoccupied with the Civil War. Therefore, Hale set aside Dainese’s actions and restored friendly relations with the Egyptian government.

In August 1865, Khedive Ismael summoned the young American consul to the Nile Island, and informed him that 900 soldiers of the Egyptian army would soon arrive in Alexandria to be transported on French ships to Mexico to support its ruler, Emperor Maximilian.

This was the second batch of Egyptian and Sudanese soldiers sent to participate in the Mexican Civil War, within the framework of what was known as “the Egyptian-Sudanese Battalion in Mexico.” This intervention had begun for the first time during the era of the Egyptian Viceroy "Said Pasha" in 1863, when 446 Egyptian soldiers joined the conflict, as many diplomats, including Seward, believed that these soldiers were “slaves or bondsmen.” Hale’s predecessor, William Thayer, had protested against this intervention at its beginning in 1863, but Seward remained silent because the United States was preoccupied with its Civil War.

But when Hale informed his foreign minister in the autumn of 1865 that the Egyptian intervention would continue, the American Civil War had ended. Seward responded immediately and wrote a protest in which he said that “the safety of the free republican institutions on this continent requires the abolition of all forms of civil or military forced slavery in this hemisphere.” The American protest was communicated to the French, Egyptian, and Ottoman governments. On this basis, France withdrew its request for Egyptian support, and Egypt did not send new forces to Mexico.

In the autumn of 1865, a few months after the end of the American Civil War, a Danish explorer named Alexandrine Tinne turned to him, asking him to protect a number of African servants who had accompanied her on exploratory journeys to the White Nile. Tinne had paid to register them as students in the American missionary school, but she also wanted Hale to place them under American consular protection, so that they would become persons protected by the United States, even if they did not obtain full citizenship rights.

Hale did not hesitate to respond to this request; rather, he hastened to write a letter to his superiors in the State Department explaining that slavery was still alive and present in Egypt, and that the United States, given “the lofty standing our country occupies at this moment before the world with regard to slavery and the black race,” was obligated to extend protection to persons at risk of enslavement abroad, just as African Americans and their allies were struggling to protect the emancipated from being re-enslaved at home.

To increase pressure on the State Department, Hale pointed out that the British authorities in Egypt had taken similar measures to protect the vulnerable, and that “the same principles that led Great Britain to object to forced labor on the Suez Canal, and to forced domestic slavery in Egypt,” should also apply to the use of American force abroad. But Hale’s endeavor was not ultimately realized.

Hale was active in developing the Egyptian “Consultative Assembly of Deputies,” the system that Khedive Ismael was seeking to establish as part of his modernization project. This activity was manifested in Hale translating the rules and regulations of the Assembly of Representatives of Egypt from Arabic into English, and sending them to the U.S. State Department, where these documents were published in Washington in 1867. He added: “I hope you will find some pleasure in looking at this little booklet, which contrasts strangely with our old connections with Egypt.”

On the twenty-seventh of November, 1866, Hale sent a letter to Seward informing him that he had arrested a man named Walters, who was wearing the uniform of the Papal Zouave Guard of the Vatican, and who had arrived in Alexandria on the twenty-third of the same month aboard the steamer “Tripoli” coming from Italian Naples, and who was believed to be “John Harrison Surratt Jr.” (whose mother Mary Surratt had previously been executed in the same case), one of the conspirators in the assassination of President Lincoln.

He was easily distinguishable among seventy-eight third-class passengers by the Zouave uniform he was wearing, and by his unmistakably American features. Hale said to him immediately: “You are the man I want; you are an American.” He said: “Yes, sir; I am.” So Hale said: “You know without doubt why I want you. What is your name?” He answered immediately: “My name is Walters.” So Hale said: “I believe your real name is Surratt,” and he mentioned his official position as Consul General of the United States during his arrest.

The director of the quarantine quickly arranged sufficient guards from the soldiers, who led the prisoner to a safe place inside the walls of the quarantine. After he reached the prepared place, Hale gave him the usual judicial warning that he was not obligated to say anything, and that anything he said would be written down. He said: “I have nothing to say. I want nothing but what is true.” He declared that he had no passport, no luggage, and no money except six francs.

On the second of December, the following telegram was sent to Washington: “To Seward, Washington. John Surratt, one of the assassins of President Lincoln, has been arrested. There is no doubt about his identity. Hale, Alexandria.” Surratt remained in secure detention until the twenty-first of December, when Hale handed him over aboard the American destroyer “Swatara,” and he was transported to America, and arrived in Washington, D.C., to be tried there.

Hale’s duties were not limited to major political issues, but also included daily commercial and consular affairs. He followed with interest the Egyptian cotton industry, which formed the backbone of international trade in that period. In his report to Seward on the fourteenth of June, 1865, he noted that “the happy tidings of the end of the American war led to a decline in cotton prices in Egypt, which resulted here in Egypt in a financial crisis. Great failures occurred, and there were many cases of suffering and distress.”

He feared that the Egyptian peasants or farmers would not be able to repay the advances they had obtained, usually from European capitalists, so the Khedive intervened with a comprehensive relief arrangement, in which he proposed to provide the peasants with the means to repay their debts, while securing himself with a mortgage on their lands. The amount required for this purpose reached more than one million pounds sterling, to be repaid by the peasants in installments extending over fifteen years with interest.

Hale’s relationship with Khedive Ismael was a good and balanced relationship. Ismael sent a telegraphic message to Charles Hale welcoming his arrival, then came to Alexandria and received him informally, and affirmed to him in the meeting his desire to keep friendly relations with the United States.

On the fourteenth of June, 1865, Hale held a long meeting with the Khedive in his palace at Ras El-Tin in Alexandria, where he expressed to him his heartfelt congratulations on the successful end of the United States war, and noted that the defeat of the Confederate rebels enabled the Khedive to make several useful purchases in England, including two warships and the complete machinery for manufacturing small arms, all of which had been intended for the Confederates. The Wali showed great interest in Egypt’s navy, and felt a natural pride in the safe arrival, a few days earlier, of the Egyptian steam frigate “El-Ibrahimiyya” (named after his father Ibrahim Pasha) at Suez, the first warship flying the Egyptian flag to cross the Cape of Good Hope route.

In 1870, after six years of service in Egypt, Charles Hale submitted his resignation due to poor health, and spent the winter in England to recover. It was recorded in the records of the U.S. State Department that his mission officially ended on May 23, 1870, after his letter of recall was submitted. His resignation was not surprising to those who knew him closely; he had suffered from recurring health problems since his youth, and these problems had been aggravated by the hot Egyptian climate and the pressures of diplomatic work.

After recovering in England, he returned to Boston in 1871, where he was immediately elected to the state Senate, but he resigned in February 1872 to become an assistant to the Secretary of State under the administration of Hamilton Fish. After two years of service, he resigned again and returned to Boston, where he was admitted to the bar on the basis of his experience in presiding over consular courts. He was then re-elected to the House of Representatives, where he served with distinction on the Judiciary Committee, but in July 1876 he suffered a complete collapse due to exhaustion from drafting bills.

Hale was also a writer and publisher, and among his works were “All Men Are Created Equal,” published in Boston in 1856, and “Our Homes Are Our Castles,” published in 1855.

Charles Hale died on the second of March, 1882, in Boston, at the age of fifty-one.

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George Butler, or the Troublemaking Consul

In 1863, the rule of Khedive Ismael Pasha came, and between 1869 and 1878, Ismael recruited about 49 American officers to help modernize the Egyptian army. Interestingly, some of them had served in the Union Army, while others fought for the Confederacy during the American Civil War. Nevertheless, they worked together in Egypt!

These officers participated in the military training of Egyptian soldiers and officers, military engineering projects, survey work, and the campaigns in Africa that aimed to expand Egyptian influence in Sudan and Ethiopia. Many of them called themselves “military missionaries.”

Among all the American figures who came to Egypt during that period, George Harris Butler stands out as a unique case. He was not an officer in the Egyptian army like the others; on the contrary, he was an enemy of the Khedive’s American officers. He held the position of Consul General of the United States in Alexandria, and his story is considered the strangest and most scandalous of the tales of the American mission.

George Harris Butler was born in 1840, but he spent his early years in California, far from his birthplace in Massachusetts. He joined the United States Military Academy at West Point, and graduated from it to begin a short career in the Union Army during the Civil War. He served with the rank of lieutenant in the Tenth Infantry Division, then worked as a supply and coordination officer, before resigning from the army in 1863.

He was the nephew of the famous Union General Benjamin Franklin Butler.

During the Civil War, George served with the rank of first lieutenant in the Union Army within the Tenth Infantry Corps, where he worked in supplies and equipment, but he resigned in 1863. He was a playwright and a talented art critic, and published articles in important magazines. However, his greatest problem was his severe addiction to alcohol, as his bouts of drunkenness constantly dragged him into trouble, despite his family’s attempts to change him.

In 1870, his uncle used his influence to obtain a job for him far from America, and this prestigious job was: Consul General of the United States in Alexandria, Egypt.

(The era of President Ulysses S. Grant, despite his being a man with clean hands, was famous for increasing cases of corruption and favoritism, such as the Black Friday crisis and also the scandal of the Tammany Hall organization, or the Tammany Tiger as the satirical cartoonist Thomas Nast described it.)

George presented his credentials on June 2, 1870, and arrived in Egypt accompanied by his wife, the famous actress Rose Eytinge.

And unlike his predecessor, Charles Hale, who was known for his devotion to his work, and I mentioned in my previous article that he arrested in Alexandria John Surratt, who was one of the participants in the conspiracy to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln, George Butler was the exact opposite.

First, Butler tried to assume his duties without obtaining the exequatur from the Ottoman Sultan (official ratification) for his position. When he presented his credentials, the Khedive followed Egyptian custom and gifted him a horse. Butler knew the rule that prevents American representatives from accepting gifts, but he accepted the gift. He then telegraphed the U.S. State Department asking permission to keep it. When permission was refused, Butler ignored the courtesy owed to the Khedive and gave the animal to the American missionaries in Alexandria “in return for their tireless efforts to improve and raise the religious and social conditions of Egypt’s poor.” Shortly afterward, Minister of Foreign Affairs Nubar Pasha informed Butler of the Khedive’s displeasure, and said that Butler had to pay the price of the horse. And before this matter was settled, a local merchant asked the U.S. State Department to collect from Butler a debt of 400 dollars.

When two American officers in the Egyptian military service challenged one of the consulate employees to a duel, Butler became a party to this farce. He complained to his friend “Thaddeus P. Mott,” who was then the Khedive’s private advisor, that the American officers were showing grave disrespect for the American consulate, and asked him to present the full story to Ismael.

Then, through the columns of the New York Herald, Butler waged a battle against the American missionaries who accused him of misconduct in his position. He publicly flogged one of his critics, the missionary David String, then denied that he had done so. And he struck the Confederate naval officer “Cornelius E. Hunt” with a cane.

When Butler learned that Ismael Pasha intended to grant the Union officer “Vanderbilt Allen” a medal for distinguished service, he informed the Khedive that honoring Allen would bring about the personal and political enmity of the consul. And when U.S. Secretary of State “Hamilton Fish,” based on a complaint from General Charles P. Stone (Chief of Staff of the Egyptian Army at that time and commander of the American mission), warned Butler against such interference, the consul wrote scathing letters to the Khedive, to the Secretary of State, and to the Ministry of War.

As soon as Butler took over the consulate, everything turned upside down. The first thing he did was dismiss all the agents of the American consulate in the different provinces, then he began selling their positions in a public auction to the highest bidder. So if you wanted to become an agent for America in Assiut or Mansoura, for example, you had to pay Butler first!

An American missionary working in Alexandria named Reverend David Strange tried to intervene in defense of those harmed agents. When Butler ignored him, the reverend wrote directly to President Ulysses S. Grant complaining of “malicious corruption and maladministration” in the consulate. But Strange exaggerated in his complaint and mentioned a very scandalous matter: that Butler and his friends were requesting dancers to perform before them “in puris naturalibus” (that is, completely without clothes)!

And so the American consulate in Alexandria turned into something like a nightclub and a dance hall, where corruption reached its peak.

Butler also had a major conflict with the American officers working in the Egyptian army, especially the Confederates. These had come to help the Khedive modernize his army, and in Butler’s view they were political enemies from the time of the Civil War.

In 1870, Khedive Ismael thought of appointing the famous Confederate General P. G. T. Beauregard (the hero of the Battle of Fort Sumter) as commander of the Egyptian army. But Butler used his influence as the new consul to persuade the Khedive to withdraw the offer, and the Khedive responded to him. After a while, Butler justified his position by saying: “There was not room in Egypt for both Beauregard and me.”

And naturally, the anger of the Confederate officers in Egypt ignited, and hatred between the two sides escalated.

On the evening of Friday, the twelfth of July, 1872, while Consul Butler was having dinner in one of the elegant Greek restaurants on the Alexandria Corniche, accompanied by his private secretary “George Wadleigh” (not to be mistaken with Rear Admiral George H. Wadleigh) and one of the consulate employees named “Charles Strulogo,” three of the most prominent former Confederate officers – namely General William Wing Loring, General Alexander Welch Reynolds, and Major William Campbell – were sitting a few meters away from him, eating their food quietly and cautiously, aware that their presence in the same place was a time bomb that could explode at any moment.

When Generals Loring and Reynolds finished their food and rose to leave, they passed by Butler’s table and gave him an ordinary greeting motivated by the military courtesy in which they had been raised, but Major Campbell, who had an old personal dispute with Butler, did not follow their example and instead went on his way without showing any acknowledgment of the consul’s existence at all, as if he had not been in the place at all.

At this, Butler felt that his dignity had been violated, so he could not control himself and instead called out to Campbell in a loud, sharp voice, cutting through the quiet of the restaurant and forcing everyone to turn toward him, saying with clear challenge: “Good evening, Major Campbell!” Campbell stepped back a few steps toward the table and asked him sharply: “Are you addressing me, sir?” Butler replied with biting sarcasm: “Yes, I am addressing you, Major, because I see that you have forgotten how to greet those of my standing.”

A few minutes had not passed before the passing verbal altercation turned into a fistfight, as the four men – Butler and Wadleigh on one side, and Loring and Reynolds on the other rushed into a violent exchange of punches, and plates and glasses were scattered across the restaurant floor.

In the midst of this overwhelming chaos, Secretary Wadleigh heard his boss Butler shout the phrase: “Give it to him, Wadleigh!” and he meant by that the pistol that was in his secretary’s possession. Wadleigh withdrew a few steps back, drew his pistol from under his coat with astonishing speed, and fired successively toward Major Campbell, who was still standing in his place, not expecting matters to reach the point of using a firearm.

The sound of gunfire echoed throughout the restaurant, and Wadleigh fired at Campbell between five and six successive shots. One of them struck Major Campbell in his left leg with a very dangerous wound that tore through the muscles, and blood poured heavily onto the restaurant floor. Campbell let out a resounding cry of pain before collapsing to the ground, holding his wounded leg with both hands, trying to stop the bleeding that was threatening his life.

General Reynolds did not stand idly by, but drew his own pistol and fired one shot toward Wadleigh, but the shot missed its target due to the confusion and darkness, and did not injure anyone. As for Butler, his secretary, and his employee, they did not wait for the police to arrive, but quickly withdrew from the restaurant and disappeared into the crowd of Alexandria’s dark streets.

Butler feared for his life, so he packed his belongings and fled from Egypt aboard a mail steamer immediately, before he could be arrested or face the officers’ revenge!

After his escape, the American government sent General F. A. Starring to investigate what had happened inside the consulate. Butler’s assistant, Strulogo, confessed everything: he said that Butler was in a state of drunkenness most of the time, took bribes, opened letters that did not belong to him, and that he was the one who started shooting at the officers. However, the problem was that Strulogo himself also confessed to receiving his share of the bribes and participating in the assault on Reverend Strange.

Butler returned to America, and the collapse of his life continued; he failed in many jobs. In 1875, he tried to regain some of his professional life when he bought the magazine “Arcadian” in New York and worked as its editor, but the project failed in less than a year. In 1877, he was appointed a special mail agent in the Black Hills region, headquartered in Deadwood. But during his train journey to his new position, he drank to intoxication and became a source of annoyance to the passengers. News of his behavior reached his superior, who fired him immediately.

His wife Rose Eytinge filed for divorce in 1882, and they separated after having two children. In his last days, he spent days in a state of complete drunkenness, living on the streets, and was admitted to mental institutions repeatedly to prevent him from drinking, but every time he came out of them he returned to addiction again.

And in Washington, only one woman stood by his side and tried to protect him, named Josephine Chesney. After his death, people discovered that they had been secretly married for years.

On May 11, 1886, George Harris Butler died at the age of only 45. The New York Times described him in his obituary by saying: “When not disabled by drink, he was a brilliant conversationalist and writer!”

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Richard Beardsley, or the Consul Loved by the Egyptians

Richard Beardsley was born on the ninth of October, 1838, in the city of Elkhart, Indiana, and was the sixth and youngest son of his parents Havilah and Rachel Beardsley. Before the outbreak of the Civil War, Beardsley had already begun to leave his mark on his birthplace, where he designed the first real estate addition bearing his family name in Elkhart, which became known as “Beardsley’s Addition.”

Richard Beardsley’s family belonged to the Episcopal Church, and the Beardsley family was of Puritan Protestant origins, tracing its roots back to William Beardsley, who was one of the founders of the Congregational Church in Stratford, Connecticut. This great-grandfather was described as a “pious Puritan” who made Christianity an inseparable part of his daily life.

When the Civil War broke out, Beardsley volunteered in the Union Navy, where he served as a paymaster aboard the gunboat “Owasco.” He participated in major battles, including the capture of New Orleans and the siege of Vicksburg. He was praised for his bravery in those battles, and his promotion was recommended by Commodore Porter. This military record was what opened the doors of diplomacy to him.

In 1864, as the Civil War was approaching its end, President Abraham Lincoln decided to appoint Beardsley as United States consul in Jerusalem, in appreciation of his services in the war. This appointment was the beginning of his diplomatic career, which would later extend to Egypt. During his time in Jerusalem, he married Isabella Smith, the daughter of Reverend Philip Smith from Ireland, and they had three children. Their second son, Charles, was born in Jerusalem in 1871, which indicates that the family settled in the Middle East during that period.

In July 1872, the consular post in Egypt had become vacant after the humiliating escape of his predecessor George Harris Butler. Beardsley had to restore to the American consulate its lost prestige. Beardsley was officially appointed on July 23, 1872, and arrived in Cairo in September of the same year. His appointment was later accepted by the Senate, and he was reappointed to the position on December 11, 1872. He knew the region well through his service in Jerusalem, and he understood the complexities of the Middle East.

The first thing Beardsley did was move the consulate office from Alexandria to Cairo, becoming the first American consul general to reside permanently in the Egyptian capital. By December 1872, official correspondence was already being issued from Cairo, as is evident from his telegrams to Secretary of State Hamilton Fish.

Only a few months into his new position, Beardsley found himself immersed in one of the most complex issues in the history of modern Egypt: the issue of judicial reform. Egypt at that time was living under the system of “foreign privileges” (Capitulations), which granted subjects of foreign states immunity from Egyptian laws and subjected them instead to the authority of their consuls. This system led to complete legal chaos, as cases were stalled due to conflicts of jurisdiction, and the consular courts were drowning in thousands of cases that could not be resolved.

In September 1873, Beardsley wrote a detailed report to Secretary of State Hamilton Fish on this matter, in which he said that Khedive Ismael and Nubar Pasha had personally asked him for United States support for the judicial reform project. Beardsley explained that the problem was deeper than a mere conflict of jurisdiction: “Legal knowledge was not always the criterion for appointment to these positions, and even the best legal minds might become confused with sixteen different laws to deal with.” He added that many of the consuls general in Egypt were not nationals of the states they represented, and their knowledge of the laws of those states was very incomplete.

Beardsley supported reform, but he was careful to clarify that the United States could not accept a project of this kind without the approval of the Senate, because the matter involved amending existing treaties with the Ottoman State. He informed Nubar Pasha of this position frankly, but at the same time he made clear that the reform project was necessary to improve the administration of justice in Egypt. This balanced position was a model of Beardsley’s style in diplomatic work: supporting reform without exceeding his powers, and understanding Egypt’s needs without sacrificing American interests.

The issue of judicial reform was not the only moral challenge Beardsley faced. In October 1873, he sent a detailed report to Washington about ongoing talks between Britain and Egypt to reach a treaty abolishing slavery. The Khedive was prepared to pledge to abolish the slave trade, criminalize the trade in eunuchs, and abolish all forms of forced slavery except “domestic slavery.”

But the Khedive saw that abolishing domestic slavery was “impolitic, practically impossible, and unjust to his subjects.” Beardsley conveyed these positions to Washington faithfully, but he added his own analysis. He noted that the Egyptian government publicly declared that slavery was illegal, and that any slave who requested his freedom would be immediately freed by the Egyptian authorities.

But he pointed out that the slave trade was still active in every large city in Egypt, although it was carried out in secret for fear of the eyes of foreigners and government officials. He saw that “the complete suppression of the slave trade is the great first step” toward solving the problem, and that domestic slavery would quickly disappear if the authorities were able to suppress the external trade in it.

Beardsley received strict diplomatic instructions on the twenty-ninth of November, 1875, warning him against describing former American officers who had served in the Egyptian army as “American officers” in official correspondence, in order to avoid arousing the sensitivities of Britain, France, and the Ottoman State. The U.S. State Department explained that these men were American citizens by birth but could not be classified as American officers in official communications. These instructions came within the framework of a broader American policy aimed at avoiding provoking and arousing the European and Ottoman powers, which viewed the presence of American officers in the Egyptian army as a threat to their influence in the region.

However, Washington exercised diplomatic pressure to settle the dues of these officers and the estates of those among them who had died, including the Confederate General Alexander Welch Reynolds as well as the Union officer Charles Lushi, who died in Egyptian Alexandria and the Sudanese city of Suakin.

The famous American poet and traveler “Bayard Taylor,” who visited Egypt in 1874, described his meeting with Beardsley as fruitful, pointing to the pivotal role Beardsley played in receiving prominent American figures and facilitating their movements in Egypt. Beardsley attended official occasions at the Khedive’s court, including the theatrical performances hosted by the Khedive, where Mr. Beardsley described one of them as having “been tedious and the plot very simple, with the usual mixture of love and jealousy.”

Beardsley dealt with complex issues related to the judicial privileges of foreigners in Egypt, where all foreign consuls insisted that cases be tried before their consular courts when the plaintiff was Egyptian, according to the Ottoman State’s interpretation of the treaties.

Beardsley realized that these privileges, which had originally been granted as guarantees for foreigners under an unfamiliar legal system, had over time turned into a chaotic system that obstructed the establishment of justice and protected criminals from accountability.

Beardsley described in his reports how “the consular courts are choked with thousands of cases which, because of conflict of jurisdiction, unjust rulings, and the absence of executive authority, can never be settled until some reform is introduced.”

It was this insightful vision that made him strongly support the project of the Mixed Courts, despite his knowledge that it would lead the United States to relinquish some of its judicial privileges in Egypt.

Finally, on January 23, 1876, Richard Beardsley died in Cairo at the age of only 37. His death came as a result of a severe hemorrhage that led to suffocation, according to what was recorded in the records of the U.S. State Department. His death was sudden and shocking to everyone who knew him, especially since he was still in the prime of life, and had only just begun to leave his mark on American diplomacy in Egypt.

But what happened after his death was even more astonishing: the Egyptians, including government officials and public figures, requested that Beardsley be buried in Cairo, and not that his body be transferred to the United States. The Egyptian authorities responded to this request, and Beardsley was buried in the American Cemetery in Cairo.

Moreover, the people of Cairo erected a magnificent memorial for him in appreciation of his services and integrity. This honor was rare for a foreign consul in Egypt at that period, and it reflected the respect that Beardsley had earned during his short years of service. He was not merely a representative of a foreign government, but a man who worked to improve relations between his country and Egypt, and who sought to understand the complexities of Egyptian society instead of issuing prejudgments against it.

The End ...

في يوليو عام ١٧٩٨م، وفي واحدة من أخطر اللحظات التي مر بها العالم العربي في العصر الحديث، رست سفن الأسطول الفرنسي بقيادة الجنرال نابليون بونابرت على شواطئ الإسكندرية، لتعلن بداية حملة عسكرية استعمارية كان لها أهداف توسعية لا تقتصر على احتلال مصر فحسب، بل تمتد لتشمل السيطرة على الطرق التجارية في البحر الأحمر، وتهديد الأماكن المقدسة في الحجاز، وضرب العمق الاستراتيجي للدولة العثمانية، بل كان نابليون يحلم بإنشاء إمبراطورية شرقية تمتد من مصر إلى الهند، مستغلاً في ذلك الصراعات الداخلية التي كانت تعاني منها المنطقة، ومستفيداً من ضعف الدولة العثمانية وتخلف جيوشها， وقد كان الهجوم الفرنسي على مصر يعتبر من أوائل الهجمات الاستعمارية الغربية على ولاية عربية من ولايات الدولة العثمانية في التاريخ الحديث، فأعلن السلطان العثماني سليم الثالث الجهاد ضد الفرنسيين الذين احتلوا مصر، واستجاب لدعوته المسلمون في الحجاز والشام وشمال أفريقيا، فكان أن خرجت من الحجاز جموع من المسلمين بقيادة محمد الكيلاني، ليكونوا في طليعة المقاومين للاحتلال الفرنسي.

لم يكد يصل خبر الاحتلال الفرنسي لمصر إلى الحجاز حتى عمت مشاعر القلق والغضب، فقد كان خطر الفرنسيين على الحجاز قائماً وحقيقياً في أذهان جميع الحجازيين، خشية أن يصلوا إلى الأماكن المقدسة في مكة والمدينة، وتهدد الشائعات المتلاحقة بأن نابليون يحاول الاستيلاء عليهما، فكان على الشريف "غالب بن مساعد"، شريف مكة وحاكمها، أن يتخذ جانب الحيطة والحذر، وأن يعمل على تحصين مدينة جدة، وهي الثغر الأقرب إلى مكة المكرمة، وهو أمر كان يتطلب جهداً وأموالاً كثيرة.

وقد وصلت أنباء الاعتداء الفرنسي على مصر والمقدسات الإسلامية في القدس إلى مسامع زعماء الدولة السعودية الناشئة في نجد، وهذا الأمر جعلهم يتخذون قراراً هاماً لتأمين حماية الحرمين الشريفين، مما حثهم على الزحف إلى الحجاز قبل فوات الأوان، والاستعداد لمجابهة الفرنسيين، وقد دارت في عام ١٢١٣هـ/١٧٩٨م محادثات بين الشريف غالب بن مساعد وبين الأمير سعود، وهو العام الذي جاءت فيه الحملة الفرنسية بقيادة نابليون على مصر، وانتهت بالاتفاق على إنهاء حالة الحرب بينهما وإقامة صلح، ليتمكن الشريف غالب من التفرغ لمواجهة الخطر الجديد القادم من مصر.

وكان شيخ في الحجاز يقال له الشيخ الكيلاني، كان مجاوراً بمكة والمدينة والطائف، قد أخذ يدعو الناس إلى الجهاد، ويحرضهم على نصرة الحق والدين، وقرأ بالحرم المكي كتاباً مؤلفاً في معنى ذلك، فاتعظ جملة من الناس، وبذلوا أموالهم وأنفسهم في سبيل الله، واجتمع نحو الستمائة من المجاهدين، وركبوا البحر إلى القصير مع ما انضم إليهم من أهل ينبع وخلافه، وقد كان لهذه الجموع المتحمسة دور بارز في مقاومة الفرنسيين في صعيد مصر، حيث وصفت المصادر الفرنسية نفسها هجمات الحجازيين بأنها المعارك الأكثر شراسة، وأقرت بأن هذه الهجمات كانت أحد الأسباب التي دفعت نابليون بونابرت لإنهاء حملته على الشام والعودة إلى مصر.

وقد كان الدعم الشعبي في الحجاز لمواجهة الحملة الفرنسية على مصر على أشده، حتى أن النساء كن يقدمن حليهن دعماً للجهاد، كما كان للتجار الحجازيين دور هام في جمع التبرعات، وقاموا بتوفير السفن لحمل المؤمن من الأرز والحبوب والمتطوعين والأسلحة كالبنادق الصغيرة والحرب والسيوف، ونزلت كافة الإمدادات القادمة من الحجاز إلى مصر في ميناء القصير على البحر الأحمر.

أما عن الدور العسكري المباشر للحجازيين، فقد نزل السيد طاهر الجيلاني وابن أخته حسن إلى القصير في أول يناير ١٧٩٩م، وعند وصول الأسطول الحجازي من جدة، التقى بأسطول فرنسي صغير كان نابليون قد أمره باحتلال القصير، حيث ضرب الأسطول الفرنسي ضرباً شديداً وفر عائداً إلى السويس، ثم انتقل الحجازيون إلى محافظة قنا وانضموا إلى جيش مراد بك الذي كان يعد لهجوم كبير على الفرنسيين، وفي ٢٢ يناير ١٧٩٩م دارت معركة عنيفة في سهمود، أثبت فيها المجاهدون الحجازيون قوة وصلابة في الهجوم، واستشهد حوالي مائة رجل منهم.

وفي ١٢ فبراير ١٧٩٩م شن المجاهدون الحجازيون ومعهم عدد كبير من الأهالي على مراكز الفرقة ٦١ في قنا هجوماً شرساً، وفي اليوم التالي بادر الحجازيون والأهالي بالهجوم على القوات الفرنسية التي بادرت بالرد باستخدام المدفعية، مما أنزل بالمقاومين هزيمة كبيرة، وبالرغم من قوة نيران المدفعية الفرنسية فإن الأهالي لم يستسلموا، بل استبسلوا في المقاومة غير مكترثين بضعف إمكانياتهم وسوء حالتهم، وتذكر المصادر الفرنسية عدد القتلى من المقاوميين في هذه المعركة بحوالي ٣٠٠ شهيد.

وفي قرية أبو مناع بمحافظة قنا، وفي ١٧ فبراير، تقدم الجنرال فريان نحوها، ووجه الفرنسيون طلقات مدافعهم على القوات الحجازية والمصرية، ولم يستطع هؤلاء تحمل ضربات القنابل طويلاً، ففر عدد منهم إلى الصحراء، وبلغ عدد الشهداء في هذه المعركة حوالي أربعمائة قتيل.

وفي ٣٠ فبراير ١٧٩٩م وصل الشيخ محمد الكيلاني إلى القصير ومعه ستمائة من المجاهدين الحجازيين، وعلى الفور تلقاه أتباعه، فأرسل إلى من بقي منهم في قنا حيث تجمعوا إلى الجنوب منها، وكان الجنرال ديزيه يتحرك من قوص في طريقه إلى أسيوط، وكان الأسطول الفرنسي تحت قيادة القومندان موراندي يتألف من اثنتي عشرة سفينة محملة بالمدافع والذخائر والمؤن الخاصة بالجيش تتقدمها السفينة الحربية إيطاليا التي كانت تحمل ذخيرة نصف الفرقة ٦١ وبعض الرجال المسلحين، وقد كان لهذه السفينة قصة شهيرة في التاريخ المصري، حيث تمكن الثوار المصريون بمساعدة المجاهدين الحجازيين من إغراقها في نهر النيل بنجع البارود التابع لمركز قفط، في واحدة من أعظم الانتصارات التي حققتها المقاومة الشعبية ضد الحملة الفرنسية.

ويذكر الجبرتي أنه عندما عجز الفرنسيون عن أخذ عكا، وعزموا على الرجوع إلى مصر، أرسل بونابرت مكاتبة إلى الفرنسيين المقيمين بمصر يقول فيها: "إن الأمر الموجب للانتقال عن محاصرة عكا خمسة عشر سبباً"، وكان السادس منها قول نابليون: "بلغنا توجه أهل الحجاز صحبة الجيلاني لناحية الصعيد"، وهذا نص تاريخي بالغ الأهمية يثبت أن المقاومة الحجازية في صعيد مصر كانت عاملاً مباشراً في فك الحصار عن عكا، وبالتالي في إفشال المخطط الفرنسي للتوسع في بلاد الشام، وهو ما يعني أن دماء الحجازيين التي سالت في وادي النيل لم تكن فقط دفاعاً عن مصر، بل كانت أيضاً دفاعاً عن الشام والحجاز وكل العالم الإسلامي.

وقد وصف المؤرخ كريستوفر هيرولد في كتابه "بونابرت في مصر" المقاتلين الحجازيين وصفاً ينم عن الإعجاب والرهبة في آن واحد، فقال: "كان أرهب إمداد وصل للمماليك، هم المقاتلون القادمون من الحجاز، الذين عبروا البحر الأحمر بالألوف، وقد زعموا كلهم أنهم من سلالة الرسول، وكانوا يلبسون العمائم الخضراء، ويحملون البنادق والسيوف والرماح والخناجر، وفي خلقهم صلابة تنطلق بها وجوههم.

واقع الأمر، فإن الشريف غالب لم يتورط في إعلان الحرب مباشرة على الفرنسيين، إلا أنه في الوقت نفسه قدم المساعدات من أسلحة وسفن لنقل المجاهدين إلى مصر، ولم يفعل شيئاً ليثني المتطوعين الحجازيين عن الانضمام إلى جيش مراد بك، بل أرسل في الوقت ذاته الرسائل الودية لبونابرت لأن موارده كانت تعتمد إلى حد كبير على ما يصدره من البُن إلى مصر.

ولم يقتصر تأثير المقاومة الحجازية على الجانب العسكري فحسب، بل امتد ليشمل الجانب الاقتصادي أيضاً، فقد أدى الاحتلال الفرنسي لمصر إلى تعطيل طريق الحج المصري، وهو الطريق الحيوي الذي كانت تعتمد عليه مكة في اقتصادها، كما أدى إلى انقطاع التجارة بين مصر والحجاز، وارتفاع الأسعار، وشح العملة، وتوقف ورود الكسوة، ولم يصل الحج المصري بعد الغزو الفرنسي إلا سنة ١٢١٦هـ/١٨٠١م، أي بعد ثلاث سنوات من انقطاعه، وقد تسبب هذا الوضع الاقتصادي الصعب في زيادة معاناة أهل الحجاز، مما جعلهم أكثر إصراراً على مقاومة الفرنسيين وطردهم من مصر، لأن استمرار الاحتلال كان يعني استمرار الحصار الاقتصادي على الحجاز، وتدهور الأوضاع المعيشية لسكانه، وقد أدرك أهل الحجاز هذه الحقيقة مبكراً، فسارعوا إلى تقديم كل ما يملكون من مال وسلاح ورجال للمشاركة في صد العدوان على مصر.

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لقد كان استقرار بعض الحجازيين في مصر أثناء الحملة الفرنسية وبعدها امتداداً طبيعياً، فلم تكن هجرتهم مجرد انتقال عابر، بل كانت توطناً دائماً في وادي النيل، حيث استقر كثير من المجاهدين الحجازيين الذين وفدوا لنصرة مصر في مدن الصعيد، وخاصة في قنا وجرجا وأسيوط وسوهاج، وكذلك في محافظات دلتا النيل وتزوجوا من المصريين وأسسوا عائلات اندمجت في النسيج المصري.

وقد لعبت عائلة الكيلاني، وهي من أكبر العائلات الحجازية ثراءً، دوراً بارزاً في هذه الهجرة والاستقرار، حيث قاد الشيخ محمد الكيلاني بنفسه جيشاً من سبعة آلاف مقاتل إلى الصعيد، وشارك في معارك عنيفة ضد الفرنسيين، ثم بقي كثير من أتباعه وأنصاره في مصر بعد انتهاء الحملة. كما استقر عدد كبير من "أشراف ينبع" الذين أطلق ضباط الحملة الفرنسية عليهم هذا الاسم في مدن الصعيد، حيث سجلت دفاتر التعداد النفوس في قنا وجود أشراف من ينبع الحجازية.

ومن أبرز العائلات التي ارتبط اسمها بالحجاز واستقرت في مصر عائلة الشواربي التي ترجع بنسبها إلى قبيلة بني جرهم الحجازية، وقد أسس سليمان الشواربي جيشاً من الفلاحين لمهاجمة الفرنسيين، وبعد الحملة استقرت هذه العائلة في محافظة الشرقية وبرز منها شخصيات سياسية واجتماعية. كما استقرت عائلة علوان التي انحدرت من الحجاز وشمال اليمن في بلبيس ومحافظات البحيرة والصعيد، وعائلة الفراغلة المنحدرة من قبيلة عسير في سوهاج، وعائلة آل كرسون من الأشراف في جرجا، وعائلات حجازي (نسبة لأرض الحجاز) التي هي تزاوج بين عوام الحجاز وبين المصريين, والتي توزعت فروعها في القاهرة والإسكندرية ودمياط و الدقهلية ومحافظات الدلتا والصعيد.

وقد كان لهذا الاستقرار أثر عميق في الحياة الاقتصادية والاجتماعية المصرية، حيث عمل الحجازيون في تجارة النحاس والعطور والفحم والصيرفة والسمسرة وامتلاك العقارات، واستوطنوا أسواقاً كاملة عرفت بأسمائهم، كما اندمجوا في المجتمع المصري عن طريق التزاوج حتى صار من العسير التمييز بينهم وبين أبناء وادي النيل. وهكذا تحولت جموع المجاهدين الحجازيين التي عبرت البحر الأحمر لنصرة مصر إلى جزء أصيل من شعبها إلى اليوم.

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النهاية ..

Every once in a while I will translate a chapter of this book to English, My sincere regards from Egypt ...

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About the author (The Egyptian Graham Hancock):

Anis Mansour أنيس منصور was born in the city of Mansoura, Egypt, in 1924. He memorized the Noble Quran at the age of nine, then joined Cairo University where he studied philosophy and graduated in 1947. He was appointed lecturer in modern philosophy at the Faculty of Arts, but he soon left teaching to devote himself to journalism. He traveled extensively around the world, documenting his travels in his books, and mastered several languages which enabled him to explore different cultures. He published nearly two hundred books covering philosophy, literature, travel, Occult and Metaphysics.

He had extensive activity in the field of translation, where he translated into Arabic numerous foreign books and literary works, amounting to about 9 plays and about 5 novels from various languages, in addition to 12 books by European philosophers.

During his life, he received many literary awards from Egypt and abroad, most notably an honorary doctorate from Mansoura University, the Golden Knight Award from Egyptian television, and the State Encouragement Prize in Egypt in the field of literature. He also has a statue in the city of Mansoura, reflecting how proud his city is of him. He died in 2011 in Cairo.

some of his books:

- "Studies in American Literature" (1952)

- "Around the World in 200 Days" (1963)

- "Those Who Descended from the Sky" (1971) (UFOlogy)

- "Spirits and Ghosts" (1972)

- "Those Who Returned to the Sky" (1983) (UFOlogy)

- "The Hidden Forces" (1979)

- "The Curse of the Pharaohs" (1989)

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Those Who Descended from the Sky

Chapter 1 - Those words that have survived from thousands of years!

Glory be to the One who took His servant by night from the Sacred Mosque to the Farthest Mosque, whose surroundings We have blessed, to show him some of Our signs. Indeed, He is the All-Hearing, the All-Seeing.

And the people of Noah—when they denied the messengers, We drowned them and made them a sign for mankind, and We prepared for the wrongdoers a painful punishment.

And Noah said, “My Lord, do not leave upon the earth any inhabitant from among the disbelievers. If You leave them, they will mislead Your servants and will not beget except a wicked disbeliever.”

And it was revealed to Noah that none of your people will believe except those who have already believed, so do not grieve over what they have been doing. And build the ark under Our eyes and Our revelation, and do not speak to Me concerning those who have done wrong; indeed, they are to be drowned.

Until, when Our command came and the oven overflowed, We said, “Carry in it two of every kind, and your family—except those against whom the word has already been passed—and those who believed.” But none believed with him except a few. And he said, “Embark in it. In the name of Allah is its course and its anchorage. Indeed, my Lord is Forgiving and Merciful.”

And We certainly sent Noah to his people, and he remained among them a thousand years less fifty years. Then the flood seized them while they were wrongdoers. So We saved him and the companions of the ship, and We made it a sign for all the worlds.

And Noah certainly called upon Us, and how excellent are We as responders. And We saved him and his family from the great distress. And We made his descendants the survivors. And We left for him among later generations: “Peace be upon Noah among the worlds.” Indeed, We thus reward the doers of good. Indeed, he was one of Our believing servants. Then We drowned the others.

And We certainly gave David and Solomon knowledge, and they said, “Praise be to Allah, who has favored us over many of His believing servants.” And Solomon inherited David, and he said, “O people, we have been taught the language of birds, and we have been given from everything. Indeed, this is truly clear favor.” And gathered for Solomon were his troops from among the jinn, mankind, and birds, and they were being marshaled. Until, when they came upon the valley of the ants, an ant said, “O ants, enter your dwellings, lest Solomon and his soldiers crush you while they do not perceive.” So he smiled, laughing at her words, and said, “My Lord, enable me to be grateful for Your favor which You bestowed upon me and upon my parents, and to do righteous deeds that please You, and admit me by Your mercy among Your righteous servants.”

And he inspected the birds and said, “Why do I not see the hoopoe, or is he among the absent? I will surely punish him with a severe punishment, or I will slaughter him, or he must bring me a clear proof.” But he did not remain away long, and he said, “I have encompassed what you have not encompassed, and I have come to you from Sheba with certain news. Indeed, I found a woman ruling them, and she has been given of everything, and she has a great throne. I found her and her people prostrating to the sun instead of Allah, and Satan has made their deeds fair-seeming to them and turned them away from the path, so they are not guided.”

He said, “O chiefs, which of you will bring me her throne before they come to me in submission?” A powerful one from among the jinn said, “I will bring it to you before you rise from your place, and indeed I am strong and trustworthy for it.” The one who had knowledge of the Scripture said, “I will bring it to you before your glance returns to you.” So when he saw it settled before him, he said, “This is from the favor of my Lord, to test me whether I will be grateful or ungrateful. And whoever is grateful is grateful only for his own soul; and whoever is ungrateful, then indeed my Lord is Self-Sufficient, Generous.”

(The Noble Qur’an)

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And God said to Noah, “The end of all flesh has come before Me, for the earth is filled with violence because of them; and behold, I am about to destroy them with the earth. Make for yourself an ark of wood. I am bringing a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh in which there is the breath of life under heaven. Everything on the earth shall die. But I will establish My covenant with you; and you shall enter the ark—you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you. And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every kind you shall bring into the ark to keep them alive with you. For after seven days I will rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights, and I will blot out from the face of the earth every living thing that I have made.” So Noah did all that the Lord commanded him.

(The Bible: Genesis)

And behold, a great wind came from the north: a great cloud and a continuous fire, and brightness was around it, and from its midst was like the appearance of gleaming bronze from the midst of the fire. And from its midst came the likeness of four living creatures, and this was their appearance: they had the likeness of a man, and each one had four faces, and each one had four wings. And their legs were straight, and the soles of their feet were like the sole of a calf’s foot, and they sparkled like the appearance of polished bronze. And there were human hands under their wings on their four sides. And their wings were joined one to another. They did not turn when they went; each one went straight forward. As for the likeness of their faces: the face of a man, and the face of a lion on the right for the four of them, and the face of an ox on the left for the four of them; these were their faces. As for their wings, they were stretched out above. Each one had two joined to one another, and two covering their bodies. As for the likeness of the living creatures, their appearance was like burning coals of fire ... and the fire had brightness, and out of the fire went lightning ... And when they went, they went on their four sides; they did not turn when they went ... And when they went, I heard the sound of their wings like the roar of many waters, like the voice of the Almighty, like the sound of an army. And when they let down their wings ...

(The Bible: Ezekiel)

“… who walks on the wings of the wind. He makes His angels winds, and His servants a flaming fire.”

(The Bible: Psalms)

“I have come to cast fire on the earth ...”

(The Bible: Luke)

“In the third month of the twenty-second year, the scribe saw a circle of fire in the sky … it had no sound … and it had the length and width of the great boat … and he was afraid, and others with him … and he went to Pharaoh … and Pharaoh and many soldiers gathered … and they saw the ball of fire … and they were afraid … and on the next day the balls of fire multiplied in the sky … and no one understood anything … and the men of religion headed to the temples … and Pharaoh asked the scribes to record that …”

(A papyrus sheet in the Egyptian Department of the Vatican Museum)

“And when I was speaking to my sons, the two men soared into heaven … and they shook in the first heaven … and they showed me the stars and their order … and I saw two hundred angels …”

(The Book of Enoch)

“And he said to me: Look behind you at the earth … How does it appear to you? Look at the sea—how do you see it? And he flew in the air four more hours … then he said to me: Look at the earth again … then tell me how it appears? Then look at the sea and tell me how it appears? And the earth appeared to me as a garden, and the sea as if it were a small channel of water … Then he rose into the air four more hours and said to me: Look at the earth? And look at the sea …”

(The Epic of Gilgamesh – Tablet Seven)

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The End of Chapter 1

Soon to translate Chapter 2 titled "Human is that very, very unknown thing!".

I hope you like this post, My sincere regards from Egypt ..

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Saurid ibn Salhouq سوريد بن سلهوق (also known as Saurit) is a folkloric king from Coptic and Arabian medieval heritage. It is said he lived 300 years before the biblical Flood. He is often confused with or identified as the biblical prophet Enoch, the Islamic prophet Idris, and Hermes Trismegistus. He is known as Saurid ibn Salhouq ibn Shiryaq, one of the kings of Egypt before the Flood (The Titans) who lived in the city of Ashmunein - Hermopolis, in Egypt. It is also said his full name was Saurid ibn Salhouq ibn Shiryaq ibn Tumaydun ibn Tadrasan ibn Hoshal.

The reason for building the pyramids was that 300 years before the Flood, Saurid saw in a dream that the earth was overturned with its people. He saw people fleeing, and the stars falling and hitting each other with loud sounds.

This distressed him, and he kept it hidden. Then he saw in another dream that the fixed stars came down to earth in the form of white birds. They seemed to snatch people and throw them between two great mountains. The two mountains closed on them, and the bright stars became dark.

The king woke up terrified. He gathered the chief priests from all parts of Egypt. They were 130 priests. They told him about the Flood.

It is said the king told Philemon, the chief priest, what he had seen. He ordered them to look at the stars to see what events they pointed to in the world. They studied carefully at the time he asked them.

They found a sign would come down from the sky and come out from the earth. It would cover most of the earth. It was a great flood that would leave nothing alive. Then they looked to see if life, kingship, and everything would return as before. They knew it would.

So the king ordered the building of the pyramids. He filled them with talismans, wonders, money, and treasures. He collected in them what the wise men said, all hidden sciences, names of drugs, their benefits and harms, the science of talismans, arithmetic, geometry, and medicine.

All this was explained for those who know their writing and languages. He brought rocks from the area of Aswan. He made their doors 40 cubits under the ground. When he finished them, he covered them with colored brocade from top to bottom. He made a feast for them, attended by all the people of his kingdom.

In the western pyramid, he made 30 storerooms filled with huge amounts of money, tools, and statues made of precious jewels. He put in fine iron tools, weapons that do not rust, glass that folds and does not break, strange talismans, simple and compound drugs, deadly poisons, and other things.

In the eastern pyramid, he made types of astronomical domes and stars, and statues of his ancestors. In the colored pyramid, he placed records of the priests in black granite sarcophagi. With each priest was his scroll. In it were the wonders of his craft, his wisdom, his life story, what he did in his time, and what was and will be from the beginning of time to its end.

He placed on the walls on each side idols that work with their hands all crafts at their levels and amounts. He wrote the description of every craft, its treatment, and what suits it. He did not leave any science without writing and drawing it in the pyramid. He placed in it the money of the planets that were offered to them, and the money of the priests. It was a great thing beyond counting.

The Copts mentioned in their books that on the pyramids there is an inscription. Its translation in English is: "I am Saurid the King. I built these pyramids at such and such time, and I completed their building in six years. Whoever comes after me and claims he is a king like me, let him demolish them in 600 years. He knows that demolition is easier than building. I covered them with brocade when I finished. Let him cover them with mats." In another version: "I am Saurid the King, the King. I built these pyramids at such a time. I completed their building in six years. Whoever comes after me and claims he is a king like me, let him demolish them in 60 years. He knows that demolition is easier than building. I covered them with brocade. Let whoever comes after me cover them with straw mats."

He made a guardian for each pyramid. The guardian of the western pyramid was an idol of veined granite. It was standing, holding something like a spear. On its head was a snake. It would circle, then go to the neck and kill him, then return to its place.

The guardian of the eastern pyramid was an idol of black and white onyx. It had open, shining eyes. It was sitting on a chair, holding a spear. If anyone looked at it, he would hear a sound from it, fall on his face, and not leave until he died.

The guardian of the colored pyramid was a small idol of bahat stone on a base, standing. Whoever looked at it would be pulled to the idol until he stuck to it. He would never leave it until he died.

When he finished all that, he fortified the pyramids with spiritual beings. He sacrificed offerings to them so they would prevent those who wanted them, except one who did works to reach them.

The Copts said in their books that the spirit of the northern pyramid is a beardless boy, pale in color, naked, with large fangs in his mouth. The spirit of the southern pyramid is a naked woman, showing her private part, with large fangs in her mouth.

She seduces a man when she sees him and laughs at him until he comes near her. Then she takes away his mind.

The spirit of the colored pyramid is an old man with a censer from church censers, censing with it. Some people saw him many times walking around the pyramids at noon and at sunset.

When Saurid died, he was buried in the pyramid with his money and treasures. It is said he was buried in the eastern pyramid.

His brother Huraib was buried in the western pyramid. His brother's son, named Karuras, was buried in the last pyramid.

These figures can be analyzed as: Saurid is Soufis, which was the name of King Khufu in the late period. Karuras is Mykerinos, that is Menkaure in Greek. Amsus is only an alteration of the name of the capital, Memphis.

The medieval Egyptian historian Al-Maqrizi in his book "The Plans and Monuments of Maqrizi" and Imam Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti in his book "the Agreeable Discussion of the History of Egypt and Cairo" agreed that the builder of the pyramids is Saurid ibn Salhouq ibn Shariq, king of Egypt. That was 300 years before the Flood.

Al-Mas'udi (Herodotus of the Arabs) in his book "The Book of History" gave more details. He said Saurid was king of Egypt 300 years before the Flood. When he saw the dream, he entered the temple of the sun. He began to supplicate there, rub his cheeks in the dust, and weep.

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The End ...

The story begins, as Arab historians tell it, from the moment when the Nile or the Red Sea swallowed the Pharaoh of Egypt, who was one of the Amalekites (and some Arab historians believe that the Amalekites are the Hyksos, or are descended from the Hyksos!). That tyrannical king who acted arrogantly on earth and claimed divinity, and whom the Egyptians called "Talma ibn Qumus". Arab historians said his name was "Al-Walid ibn Mus‘ab" (and this is an Arabic name, because Arab historians believe that the peoples of Amalek are among the Bedouins who inhabit the Arabian and Levant deserts and roam through them!).

After the ten plagues (though according to Arab historians they are not ten, and the tenth plague of the firstborn is not among them), he set out after the Prophet Moses and the Prophet Aaron, with the Children of Israel with them. Then the sea closed over him, and there drowned with him the nobles of Egypt, its grandees, the prominent men of its people, its magicians, and its soldiers, until no men remained on the land of Egypt except slaves and hired laborers, and of women only those who had not taken part in that accursed pursuit.

Ibn Abd al-Hakim describes this scene in his book "Futuh Misr wa al-Maghrib" (The Conquest of Egypt and the Maghreb), saying that after their drowning there remained in Egypt “not one of the nobles of its people; there remained in it only slaves, hired laborers, and women.” Egypt had emptied of men.

It had become a land without protectors, a kingdom without an army, women without husbands, and a throne without a king. This power vacuum was an easy prey for the covetous kings of the earth, from Syria and the Maghreb, who, as soon as they learned that Egypt was empty of its men, began to cast their eyes toward it and plot to invade it.

In the midst of this despair and resounding void, the noblewomen remaining in Egypt—the greatest of those left of its people—gathered, and they resolved upon a grave matter. Finding no man worthy to assume rule, they decided to appoint one of their women, a woman in whom intellect, knowledge, and experience had come together, and who held a high standing among them. Their choice fell upon “Daluka bint Zaba.”

Daluka was not a young girl, nor a woman in the prime of her youth, but an aged woman who had reached the age of one hundred and sixty years, as most sources mention. Her long life was evidence of her experience, wisdom, and deep trials, and perhaps it was a symbol of the continuity of Egypt itself, which, despite all that had befallen it, was still capable of birth and giving. So the women of Egypt made Daluka queen over them, and she became queen of the country. Women occupied all the other positions surrounding the queen, and matters remained so for a period of time.

But fear continued to dominate the hearts of the “women of rule”—fear that the kings of the earth might discover the secret of Egypt’s weakness and rush upon it as invaders and occupiers. For Egypt, without men, without an army, and without magicians, was an easy morsel for any covetous power. Here appears the genius of Daluka—or rather her legendary trick—which would protect Egypt from the greed of invaders. After gathering the noblewomen, she delivered an eloquent sermon, warning that our country “no one used to covet, nor cast an eye toward it, but our grandees and nobles have perished, and the magicians by whom we were strong have gone.” Then she proposed to them a solution both radical and practical: to build a great fortress enclosing all the land of Egypt, with guard posts placed upon it from every side, because they “did not feel safe that people would covet them.”

And so, by order of the old queen, work began on one of the greatest defensive projects in the history of ancient Egypt, if not the greatest of them all. Arab sources say that she built “a wall with which she enclosed all the land of Egypt—farms, cities, and villages—and before it she made a canal through which water flowed, and she erected bridges and canals.” This wall, later known as the “Wall of the Old Woman,” extended from Aswan in the south to al-Arish in the north, enclosing all Egypt—a wall surrounding all its land and country.

She placed guard posts and garrisons every three miles, and between them small guard posts every mile. She placed men in every guard post, assigned them provisions, and ordered them to guard their land by night and day.

The greatest part of this defensive system was the communication and early-warning system that Daluka invented. She ordered the men of the guard posts to use bells. If one of them saw an enemy creeping toward Egypt, or sensed approaching danger, they would strike their bells, and the news would pass from post to post, from tower to tower, through a connected chain of sounds, until news of the invasion reached the heart of Egypt, to the city of Memphis, “in one hour,” and everyone would prepare to face the enemy.

Arab sources mention that the building of this great wall took only six months! Thus, thanks to this wall and the bell system, Daluka protected Egypt from its enemies, thwarted the schemes of the covetous, and Egypt remained immune from the enemy throughout her lifetime.

Arab historians say that the trace of this wall remained until their own days, known as the “Wall of the Old Woman,” and many of its remains survived in Upper Egypt. But Daluka’s story does not stop at this point of military brilliance; it extends into a more mysterious and exciting world—the world of magic, the barabi and images. Daluka was not an ordinary queen, but a great sorceress, or at least she used great magic to protect Egypt.

Sources mention that Daluka adopted “the barabi and images” in Egypt and perfected the instruments of magic. The "barabi" are the temples or strange buildings she built in the city of Memphis, with four doors in its four directions, and she decorated their walls with strange and wondrous images. In them she drew images of men, horses, mules, donkeys, ships, and boats; she depicted whoever came from every direction and their mounts, whether camels or horses; and she also depicted whoever came by sea in boats from the sea of the Maghreb and Syria.

The strange thing is that these images were not merely decorative carvings, but effective magical tools. Daluka gathered in these "barabi" “the secrets of nature and the properties of stones, plants, and animals, and placed that at times of celestial movements and their connection to heavenly influences.” This means that she linked the earthly world with the heavenly world, and the properties of materials with the properties of the planets, to create a magical defensive system no less complex than the bell system.

Arab sources describe the mechanism of these magical images, saying that “if an army came to them from…” a certain direction, the images in that direction would move, as if warning them of the place of danger. More wondrous still, what they did to these images—tearing or destroying them—would strike the invading army itself in reality. If they cut off the head of an image, the head of the enemy commander would be cut off; if they gouged out its eye, the eye of the invading army would be gouged out; and if they slit open its belly, the bellies of the soldiers would be slit open.

These "barabi" were stronger than any army and deadlier than any weapon, and no king of the earth was able to defeat Egypt throughout Daluka’s reign because of them. Sources mention that Daluka enlisted in building these "barabi" a great sorceress named “Tadura” or “Tadhura,” whom the sorcerers revered and gave precedence in magic. She came to them and made for them this stone house in the middle of the city of Memphis.

It is said that when Daluka built these "barabi", she stipulated to the sorceress that she make for her magic that would prevent enemies. The sorceress agreed, but on the condition that women marry their slaves and hired laborers, and that they not cut off offspring, so that Egypt would not become extinct and be emptied of men forever.

The Egyptian woman would free her slave and marry him, and another would marry her hired laborer. But the ladies of Egypt stipulated upon these “second-class” husbands that they not undertake any matter except with their permission, nor make any decision except after returning to them—otherwise, woe, ruin, and great calamities upon the men.

Ibn Abd al-Hakim says that the Copts remained like that until his day—that is, until his era in the third century After Hijrah. —following those who had passed before them. None of them would sell or buy without saying: “I shall consult my wife” (meaning that Egyptian society at that time was a purely matriarchal society!).

Queen Daluka did not stop at that; she also built the Lighthouse of Alexandria and made it a lookout for any enemy coming toward their land.

Yaqut al-Hamawi says in "Mu‘jam al-Buldan" (Lexicon of Countries): “It was said that the first to build the lighthouse was a woman called Daluka bint Rayya.” Al-Mas‘udi mentions "that most Egyptians and Alexandrians believe that Alexander son of Philip the Macedonian was the one who built it, “and some of them held that Queen Daluka built it and made it a lookout for any enemy coming into their land.”

For Alexander, as al-Mas‘udi observes, “no enemy ever attacked him in this sea, nor did he fear a king who might come to him in his land… so that he would be the one who made it a lookout,” whereas Daluka, who ruled Egypt after it had been emptied of men, was in dire need of a lookout to guard her from enemies. Logic, then, stands on Daluka’s side, even if written history stands on Alexander’s side!

Imam Al-Suyuti says in "Husn al-Muhadara" (the Agreeable Discussion) that its height was a thousand cubits, “and at its top were brass statues, among them a statue that pointed with the index finger of its right hand toward the sun wherever it was in the heavens, turning with it wherever it turned.”

Al-Mas‘udi relates that the Byzantine emperor "Justinian II", in the era of the Umayyad caliph "al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik", sent a cunning servant, who came seeking safe conduct from al-Walid and told him that beneath the Lighthouse of Alexandria were wealth and treasures. He enticed the caliph with this, until he ordered the lighthouse to be demolished and the treasure to be sought !

But how long did this old queen rule? Here the Arab sources differ greatly. Some sources mention that she ruled for twenty years, which is the period mentioned by Ibn Abd al-Hakim, where he says that Daluka “ruled them for twenty years, managing their affairs in Egypt, until a boy from the sons of their grandees and nobles, called "Darkun ibn Balutus", reached maturity, and they made him king over them.” This means that her rule was temporary, merely a transitional period until one of the sons of the nobles who had drowned with Pharaoh grew up, so that rule would return to men once again.

Other sources mention that she ruled for thirty years, which is what Ibn Taghribirdi mentions in his book "al-Nujum al-Zahira" (The Shining Stars). There are sources that go far beyond that, saying that “Daluka remained over the kingship of Egypt for about one hundred and thirty years, and Egypt continued immune from the enemy throughout her lifetime.” Some sources say that when she perished, there assumed rule over Egypt after her a person from the children of the Copts called Darkun ibn Baltus, or Darkun ibn Nakutus, and they made him king over them, and Egypt returned to the rule of men.

It must be noted that Daluka is not entirely unknown in ancient Egyptian history. There is a striking similarity between her and a real historical queen, Queen “Nitocris,” who ruled Egypt at the end of the Sixth Dynasty, in the twenty-second century BCE.

Greek sources, especially Herodotus, mention that Nitocris was an Egyptian queen, that she built a great dam or wall, and that she avenged the murder of her brother and husband by killing his killers, then committed suicide or disappeared.

It seems that the Arabic story of Daluka became mixed with the Greek story of Nitocris, and perhaps Daluka is the Arabic translation or alteration of the name Nitocris. Some go even further, considering that Daluka is Nitocris herself, and that the name changed through translation and oral transmission between Arabs and Greeks over the centuries.

----------------------------------

The End ..

I hope you liked this post, My sincere regards from Egypt ..

The story begins, as Arab historians tell it, from the moment when the Nile or the Red Sea swallowed the Pharaoh of Egypt, who was one of the Amalekites (and some Arab historians believe that the Amalekites are the Hyksos, or are descended from the Hyksos!). That tyrannical king who acted arrogantly on earth and claimed divinity, and whom the Egyptians called "Talma ibn Qumus". Arab historians said his name was "Al-Walid ibn Mus‘ab" (and this is an Arabic name, because Arab historians believe that the peoples of Amalek are among the Bedouins who inhabit the Arabian and Levant deserts and roam through them!).

After the ten plagues (though according to Arab historians they are not ten, and the tenth plague of the firstborn is not among them), he set out after the Prophet Moses and the Prophet Aaron, with the Children of Israel with them. Then the sea closed over him, and there drowned with him the nobles of Egypt, its grandees, the prominent men of its people, its magicians, and its soldiers, until no men remained on the land of Egypt except slaves and hired laborers, and of women only those who had not taken part in that accursed pursuit.

Ibn Abd al-Hakim describes this scene in his book "Futuh Misr wa al-Maghrib" (The Conquest of Egypt and the Maghreb), saying that after their drowning there remained in Egypt “not one of the nobles of its people; there remained in it only slaves, hired laborers, and women.” Egypt had emptied of men.

It had become a land without protectors, a kingdom without an army, women without husbands, and a throne without a king. This power vacuum was an easy prey for the covetous kings of the earth, from Syria and the Maghreb, who, as soon as they learned that Egypt was empty of its men, began to cast their eyes toward it and plot to invade it.

In the midst of this despair and resounding void, the noblewomen remaining in Egypt—the greatest of those left of its people—gathered, and they resolved upon a grave matter. Finding no man worthy to assume rule, they decided to appoint one of their women, a woman in whom intellect, knowledge, and experience had come together, and who held a high standing among them. Their choice fell upon “Daluka bint Zaba.”

Daluka was not a young girl, nor a woman in the prime of her youth, but an aged woman who had reached the age of one hundred and sixty years, as most sources mention. Her long life was evidence of her experience, wisdom, and deep trials, and perhaps it was a symbol of the continuity of Egypt itself, which, despite all that had befallen it, was still capable of birth and giving. So the women of Egypt made Daluka queen over them, and she became queen of the country. Women occupied all the other positions surrounding the queen, and matters remained so for a period of time.

But fear continued to dominate the hearts of the “women of rule”—fear that the kings of the earth might discover the secret of Egypt’s weakness and rush upon it as invaders and occupiers. For Egypt, without men, without an army, and without magicians, was an easy morsel for any covetous power. Here appears the genius of Daluka—or rather her legendary trick—which would protect Egypt from the greed of invaders. After gathering the noblewomen, she delivered an eloquent sermon, warning that our country “no one used to covet, nor cast an eye toward it, but our grandees and nobles have perished, and the magicians by whom we were strong have gone.” Then she proposed to them a solution both radical and practical: to build a great fortress enclosing all the land of Egypt, with guard posts placed upon it from every side, because they “did not feel safe that people would covet them.”

And so, by order of the old queen, work began on one of the greatest defensive projects in the history of ancient Egypt, if not the greatest of them all. Arab sources say that she built “a wall with which she enclosed all the land of Egypt—farms, cities, and villages—and before it she made a canal through which water flowed, and she erected bridges and canals.” This wall, later known as the “Wall of the Old Woman,” extended from Aswan in the south to al-Arish in the north, enclosing all Egypt—a wall surrounding all its land and country.

She placed guard posts and garrisons every three miles, and between them small guard posts every mile. She placed men in every guard post, assigned them provisions, and ordered them to guard their land by night and day.

The greatest part of this defensive system was the communication and early-warning system that Daluka invented. She ordered the men of the guard posts to use bells. If one of them saw an enemy creeping toward Egypt, or sensed approaching danger, they would strike their bells, and the news would pass from post to post, from tower to tower, through a connected chain of sounds, until news of the invasion reached the heart of Egypt, to the city of Memphis, “in one hour,” and everyone would prepare to face the enemy.

Arab sources mention that the building of this great wall took only six months! Thus, thanks to this wall and the bell system, Daluka protected Egypt from its enemies, thwarted the schemes of the covetous, and Egypt remained immune from the enemy throughout her lifetime.

Arab historians say that the trace of this wall remained until their own days, known as the “Wall of the Old Woman,” and many of its remains survived in Upper Egypt. But Daluka’s story does not stop at this point of military brilliance; it extends into a more mysterious and exciting world—the world of magic, the barabi and images. Daluka was not an ordinary queen, but a great sorceress, or at least she used great magic to protect Egypt.

Sources mention that Daluka adopted “the barabi and images” in Egypt and perfected the instruments of magic. The "barabi" are the temples or strange buildings she built in the city of Memphis, with four doors in its four directions, and she decorated their walls with strange and wondrous images. In them she drew images of men, horses, mules, donkeys, ships, and boats; she depicted whoever came from every direction and their mounts, whether camels or horses; and she also depicted whoever came by sea in boats from the sea of the Maghreb and Syria.

The strange thing is that these images were not merely decorative carvings, but effective magical tools. Daluka gathered in these "barabi" “the secrets of nature and the properties of stones, plants, and animals, and placed that at times of celestial movements and their connection to heavenly influences.” This means that she linked the earthly world with the heavenly world, and the properties of materials with the properties of the planets, to create a magical defensive system no less complex than the bell system.

Arab sources describe the mechanism of these magical images, saying that “if an army came to them from…” a certain direction, the images in that direction would move, as if warning them of the place of danger. More wondrous still, what they did to these images—tearing or destroying them—would strike the invading army itself in reality. If they cut off the head of an image, the head of the enemy commander would be cut off; if they gouged out its eye, the eye of the invading army would be gouged out; and if they slit open its belly, the bellies of the soldiers would be slit open.

These "barabi" were stronger than any army and deadlier than any weapon, and no king of the earth was able to defeat Egypt throughout Daluka’s reign because of them. Sources mention that Daluka enlisted in building these "barabi" a great sorceress named “Tadura” or “Tadhura,” whom the sorcerers revered and gave precedence in magic. She came to them and made for them this stone house in the middle of the city of Memphis.

It is said that when Daluka built these "barabi", she stipulated to the sorceress that she make for her magic that would prevent enemies. The sorceress agreed, but on the condition that women marry their slaves and hired laborers, and that they not cut off offspring, so that Egypt would not become extinct and be emptied of men forever.

The Egyptian woman would free her slave and marry him, and another would marry her hired laborer. But the ladies of Egypt stipulated upon these “second-class” husbands that they not undertake any matter except with their permission, nor make any decision except after returning to them—otherwise, woe, ruin, and great calamities upon the men.

Ibn Abd al-Hakim says that the Copts remained like that until his day—that is, until his era in the third century After Hijrah. —following those who had passed before them. None of them would sell or buy without saying: “I shall consult my wife” (meaning that Egyptian society at that time was a purely matriarchal society!).

Queen Daluka did not stop at that; she also built the Lighthouse of Alexandria and made it a lookout for any enemy coming toward their land.

Yaqut al-Hamawi says in "Mu‘jam al-Buldan" (Lexicon of Countries): “It was said that the first to build the lighthouse was a woman called Daluka bint Rayya.” Al-Mas‘udi mentions "that most Egyptians and Alexandrians believe that Alexander son of Philip the Macedonian was the one who built it, “and some of them held that Queen Daluka built it and made it a lookout for any enemy coming into their land.”

For Alexander, as al-Mas‘udi observes, “no enemy ever attacked him in this sea, nor did he fear a king who might come to him in his land… so that he would be the one who made it a lookout,” whereas Daluka, who ruled Egypt after it had been emptied of men, was in dire need of a lookout to guard her from enemies. Logic, then, stands on Daluka’s side, even if written history stands on Alexander’s side!

Imam Al-Suyuti says in "Husn al-Muhadara" (the Agreeable Discussion) that its height was a thousand cubits, “and at its top were brass statues, among them a statue that pointed with the index finger of its right hand toward the sun wherever it was in the heavens, turning with it wherever it turned.”

Al-Mas‘udi relates that the Byzantine emperor "Justinian II", in the era of the Umayyad caliph "al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik", sent a cunning servant, who came seeking safe conduct from al-Walid and told him that beneath the Lighthouse of Alexandria were wealth and treasures. He enticed the caliph with this, until he ordered the lighthouse to be demolished and the treasure to be sought !

But how long did this old queen rule? Here the Arab sources differ greatly. Some sources mention that she ruled for twenty years, which is the period mentioned by Ibn Abd al-Hakim, where he says that Daluka “ruled them for twenty years, managing their affairs in Egypt, until a boy from the sons of their grandees and nobles, called "Darkun ibn Balutus", reached maturity, and they made him king over them.” This means that her rule was temporary, merely a transitional period until one of the sons of the nobles who had drowned with Pharaoh grew up, so that rule would return to men once again.

Other sources mention that she ruled for thirty years, which is what Ibn Taghribirdi mentions in his book "al-Nujum al-Zahira" (The Shining Stars). There are sources that go far beyond that, saying that “Daluka remained over the kingship of Egypt for about one hundred and thirty years, and Egypt continued immune from the enemy throughout her lifetime.” Some sources say that when she perished, there assumed rule over Egypt after her a person from the children of the Copts called Darkun ibn Baltus, or Darkun ibn Nakutus, and they made him king over them, and Egypt returned to the rule of men.

It must be noted that Daluka is not entirely unknown in ancient Egyptian history. There is a striking similarity between her and a real historical queen, Queen “Nitocris,” who ruled Egypt at the end of the Sixth Dynasty, in the twenty-second century BCE.

Greek sources, especially Herodotus, mention that Nitocris was an Egyptian queen, that she built a great dam or wall, and that she avenged the murder of her brother and husband by killing his killers, then committed suicide or disappeared.

It seems that the Arabic story of Daluka became mixed with the Greek story of Nitocris, and perhaps Daluka is the Arabic translation or alteration of the name Nitocris. Some go even further, considering that Daluka is Nitocris herself, and that the name changed through translation and oral transmission between Arabs and Greeks over the centuries.

----------------------------------

The End ..

I hope you liked this post, My sincere regards from Egypt ..

The story begins, as Arab historians tell it, from the moment when the Nile or the Red Sea swallowed the Pharaoh of Egypt, who was one of the Amalekites (and some Arab historians believe that the Amalekites are the Hyksos, or are descended from the Hyksos!). That tyrannical king who acted arrogantly on earth and claimed divinity, and whom the Egyptians called "Talma ibn Qumus". Arab historians said his name was "Al-Walid ibn Mus‘ab" (and this is an Arabic name, because Arab historians believe that the peoples of Amalek are among the Bedouins who inhabit the Arabian and Levant deserts and roam through them!).

After the ten plagues (though according to Arab historians they are not ten, and the tenth plague of the firstborn is not among them), he set out after the Prophet Moses and the Prophet Aaron, with the Children of Israel with them. Then the sea closed over him, and there drowned with him the nobles of Egypt, its grandees, the prominent men of its people, its magicians, and its soldiers, until no men remained on the land of Egypt except slaves and hired laborers, and of women only those who had not taken part in that accursed pursuit.

Ibn Abd al-Hakim describes this scene in his book "Futuh Misr wa al-Maghrib" (The Conquest of Egypt and the Maghreb), saying that after their drowning there remained in Egypt “not one of the nobles of its people; there remained in it only slaves, hired laborers, and women.” Egypt had emptied of men.

It had become a land without protectors, a kingdom without an army, women without husbands, and a throne without a king. This power vacuum was an easy prey for the covetous kings of the earth, from Syria and the Maghreb, who, as soon as they learned that Egypt was empty of its men, began to cast their eyes toward it and plot to invade it.

In the midst of this despair and resounding void, the noblewomen remaining in Egypt—the greatest of those left of its people—gathered, and they resolved upon a grave matter. Finding no man worthy to assume rule, they decided to appoint one of their women, a woman in whom intellect, knowledge, and experience had come together, and who held a high standing among them. Their choice fell upon “Daluka bint Zaba.”

Daluka was not a young girl, nor a woman in the prime of her youth, but an aged woman who had reached the age of one hundred and sixty years, as most sources mention. Her long life was evidence of her experience, wisdom, and deep trials, and perhaps it was a symbol of the continuity of Egypt itself, which, despite all that had befallen it, was still capable of birth and giving. So the women of Egypt made Daluka queen over them, and she became queen of the country. Women occupied all the other positions surrounding the queen, and matters remained so for a period of time.

But fear continued to dominate the hearts of the “women of rule”—fear that the kings of the earth might discover the secret of Egypt’s weakness and rush upon it as invaders and occupiers. For Egypt, without men, without an army, and without magicians, was an easy morsel for any covetous power. Here appears the genius of Daluka—or rather her legendary trick—which would protect Egypt from the greed of invaders. After gathering the noblewomen, she delivered an eloquent sermon, warning that our country “no one used to covet, nor cast an eye toward it, but our grandees and nobles have perished, and the magicians by whom we were strong have gone.” Then she proposed to them a solution both radical and practical: to build a great fortress enclosing all the land of Egypt, with guard posts placed upon it from every side, because they “did not feel safe that people would covet them.”

And so, by order of the old queen, work began on one of the greatest defensive projects in the history of ancient Egypt, if not the greatest of them all. Arab sources say that she built “a wall with which she enclosed all the land of Egypt—farms, cities, and villages—and before it she made a canal through which water flowed, and she erected bridges and canals.” This wall, later known as the “Wall of the Old Woman,” extended from Aswan in the south to al-Arish in the north, enclosing all Egypt—a wall surrounding all its land and country.

She placed guard posts and garrisons every three miles, and between them small guard posts every mile. She placed men in every guard post, assigned them provisions, and ordered them to guard their land by night and day.

The greatest part of this defensive system was the communication and early-warning system that Daluka invented. She ordered the men of the guard posts to use bells. If one of them saw an enemy creeping toward Egypt, or sensed approaching danger, they would strike their bells, and the news would pass from post to post, from tower to tower, through a connected chain of sounds, until news of the invasion reached the heart of Egypt, to the city of Memphis, “in one hour,” and everyone would prepare to face the enemy.

Arab sources mention that the building of this great wall took only six months! Thus, thanks to this wall and the bell system, Daluka protected Egypt from its enemies, thwarted the schemes of the covetous, and Egypt remained immune from the enemy throughout her lifetime.

Arab historians say that the trace of this wall remained until their own days, known as the “Wall of the Old Woman,” and many of its remains survived in Upper Egypt. But Daluka’s story does not stop at this point of military brilliance; it extends into a more mysterious and exciting world—the world of magic, the barabi and images. Daluka was not an ordinary queen, but a great sorceress, or at least she used great magic to protect Egypt.

Sources mention that Daluka adopted “the barabi and images” in Egypt and perfected the instruments of magic. The "barabi" are the temples or strange buildings she built in the city of Memphis, with four doors in its four directions, and she decorated their walls with strange and wondrous images. In them she drew images of men, horses, mules, donkeys, ships, and boats; she depicted whoever came from every direction and their mounts, whether camels or horses; and she also depicted whoever came by sea in boats from the sea of the Maghreb and Syria.

The strange thing is that these images were not merely decorative carvings, but effective magical tools. Daluka gathered in these "barabi" “the secrets of nature and the properties of stones, plants, and animals, and placed that at times of celestial movements and their connection to heavenly influences.” This means that she linked the earthly world with the heavenly world, and the properties of materials with the properties of the planets, to create a magical defensive system no less complex than the bell system.

Arab sources describe the mechanism of these magical images, saying that “if an army came to them from…” a certain direction, the images in that direction would move, as if warning them of the place of danger. More wondrous still, what they did to these images—tearing or destroying them—would strike the invading army itself in reality. If they cut off the head of an image, the head of the enemy commander would be cut off; if they gouged out its eye, the eye of the invading army would be gouged out; and if they slit open its belly, the bellies of the soldiers would be slit open.

These "barabi" were stronger than any army and deadlier than any weapon, and no king of the earth was able to defeat Egypt throughout Daluka’s reign because of them. Sources mention that Daluka enlisted in building these "barabi" a great sorceress named “Tadura” or “Tadhura,” whom the sorcerers revered and gave precedence in magic. She came to them and made for them this stone house in the middle of the city of Memphis.

It is said that when Daluka built these "barabi", she stipulated to the sorceress that she make for her magic that would prevent enemies. The sorceress agreed, but on the condition that women marry their slaves and hired laborers, and that they not cut off offspring, so that Egypt would not become extinct and be emptied of men forever.

The Egyptian woman would free her slave and marry him, and another would marry her hired laborer. But the ladies of Egypt stipulated upon these “second-class” husbands that they not undertake any matter except with their permission, nor make any decision except after returning to them—otherwise, woe, ruin, and great calamities upon the men.

Ibn Abd al-Hakim says that the Copts remained like that until his day—that is, until his era in the third century After Hijrah. —following those who had passed before them. None of them would sell or buy without saying: “I shall consult my wife” (meaning that Egyptian society at that time was a purely matriarchal society!).

Queen Daluka did not stop at that; she also built the Lighthouse of Alexandria and made it a lookout for any enemy coming toward their land.

Yaqut al-Hamawi says in "Mu‘jam al-Buldan" (Lexicon of Countries): “It was said that the first to build the lighthouse was a woman called Daluka bint Rayya.” Al-Mas‘udi mentions "that most Egyptians and Alexandrians believe that Alexander son of Philip the Macedonian was the one who built it, “and some of them held that Queen Daluka built it and made it a lookout for any enemy coming into their land.”

For Alexander, as al-Mas‘udi observes, “no enemy ever attacked him in this sea, nor did he fear a king who might come to him in his land… so that he would be the one who made it a lookout,” whereas Daluka, who ruled Egypt after it had been emptied of men, was in dire need of a lookout to guard her from enemies. Logic, then, stands on Daluka’s side, even if written history stands on Alexander’s side!

Imam Al-Suyuti says in "Husn al-Muhadara" (the Agreeable Discussion) that its height was a thousand cubits, “and at its top were brass statues, among them a statue that pointed with the index finger of its right hand toward the sun wherever it was in the heavens, turning with it wherever it turned.”

Al-Mas‘udi relates that the Byzantine emperor "Justinian II", in the era of the Umayyad caliph "al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik", sent a cunning servant, who came seeking safe conduct from al-Walid and told him that beneath the Lighthouse of Alexandria were wealth and treasures. He enticed the caliph with this, until he ordered the lighthouse to be demolished and the treasure to be sought !

But how long did this old queen rule? Here the Arab sources differ greatly. Some sources mention that she ruled for twenty years, which is the period mentioned by Ibn Abd al-Hakim, where he says that Daluka “ruled them for twenty years, managing their affairs in Egypt, until a boy from the sons of their grandees and nobles, called "Darkun ibn Balutus", reached maturity, and they made him king over them.” This means that her rule was temporary, merely a transitional period until one of the sons of the nobles who had drowned with Pharaoh grew up, so that rule would return to men once again.

Other sources mention that she ruled for thirty years, which is what Ibn Taghribirdi mentions in his book "al-Nujum al-Zahira" (The Shining Stars). There are sources that go far beyond that, saying that “Daluka remained over the kingship of Egypt for about one hundred and thirty years, and Egypt continued immune from the enemy throughout her lifetime.” Some sources say that when she perished, there assumed rule over Egypt after her a person from the children of the Copts called Darkun ibn Baltus, or Darkun ibn Nakutus, and they made him king over them, and Egypt returned to the rule of men.

It must be noted that Daluka is not entirely unknown in ancient Egyptian history. There is a striking similarity between her and a real historical queen, Queen “Nitocris,” who ruled Egypt at the end of the Sixth Dynasty, in the twenty-second century BCE.

Greek sources, especially Herodotus, mention that Nitocris was an Egyptian queen, that she built a great dam or wall, and that she avenged the murder of her brother and husband by killing his killers, then committed suicide or disappeared.

It seems that the Arabic story of Daluka became mixed with the Greek story of Nitocris, and perhaps Daluka is the Arabic translation or alteration of the name Nitocris. Some go even further, considering that Daluka is Nitocris herself, and that the name changed through translation and oral transmission between Arabs and Greeks over the centuries.

----------------------------------

The End ..

I hope you liked this post, My sincere regards from Egypt ..

The story begins, as Arab historians tell it, from the moment when the Nile or the Red Sea swallowed the Pharaoh of Egypt, who was one of the Amalekites (and some Arab historians believe that the Amalekites are the Hyksos, or are descended from the Hyksos!). That tyrannical king who acted arrogantly on earth and claimed divinity, and whom the Egyptians called "Talma ibn Qumus". Arab historians said his name was "Al-Walid ibn Mus‘ab" (and this is an Arabic name, because Arab historians believe that the peoples of Amalek are among the Bedouins who inhabit the Arabian and Levant deserts and roam through them!).

After the ten plagues (though according to Arab historians they are not ten, and the tenth plague of the firstborn is not among them), he set out after the Prophet Moses and the Prophet Aaron, with the Children of Israel with them. Then the sea closed over him, and there drowned with him the nobles of Egypt, its grandees, the prominent men of its people, its magicians, and its soldiers, until no men remained on the land of Egypt except slaves and hired laborers, and of women only those who had not taken part in that accursed pursuit.

Ibn Abd al-Hakim describes this scene in his book "Futuh Misr wa al-Maghrib" (The Conquest of Egypt and the Maghreb), saying that after their drowning there remained in Egypt “not one of the nobles of its people; there remained in it only slaves, hired laborers, and women.” Egypt had emptied of men.

It had become a land without protectors, a kingdom without an army, women without husbands, and a throne without a king. This power vacuum was an easy prey for the covetous kings of the earth, from Syria and the Maghreb, who, as soon as they learned that Egypt was empty of its men, began to cast their eyes toward it and plot to invade it.

In the midst of this despair and resounding void, the noblewomen remaining in Egypt—the greatest of those left of its people—gathered, and they resolved upon a grave matter. Finding no man worthy to assume rule, they decided to appoint one of their women, a woman in whom intellect, knowledge, and experience had come together, and who held a high standing among them. Their choice fell upon “Daluka bint Zaba.”

Daluka was not a young girl, nor a woman in the prime of her youth, but an aged woman who had reached the age of one hundred and sixty years, as most sources mention. Her long life was evidence of her experience, wisdom, and deep trials, and perhaps it was a symbol of the continuity of Egypt itself, which, despite all that had befallen it, was still capable of birth and giving. So the women of Egypt made Daluka queen over them, and she became queen of the country. Women occupied all the other positions surrounding the queen, and matters remained so for a period of time.

But fear continued to dominate the hearts of the “women of rule”—fear that the kings of the earth might discover the secret of Egypt’s weakness and rush upon it as invaders and occupiers. For Egypt, without men, without an army, and without magicians, was an easy morsel for any covetous power. Here appears the genius of Daluka—or rather her legendary trick—which would protect Egypt from the greed of invaders. After gathering the noblewomen, she delivered an eloquent sermon, warning that our country “no one used to covet, nor cast an eye toward it, but our grandees and nobles have perished, and the magicians by whom we were strong have gone.” Then she proposed to them a solution both radical and practical: to build a great fortress enclosing all the land of Egypt, with guard posts placed upon it from every side, because they “did not feel safe that people would covet them.”

And so, by order of the old queen, work began on one of the greatest defensive projects in the history of ancient Egypt, if not the greatest of them all. Arab sources say that she built “a wall with which she enclosed all the land of Egypt—farms, cities, and villages—and before it she made a canal through which water flowed, and she erected bridges and canals.” This wall, later known as the “Wall of the Old Woman,” extended from Aswan in the south to al-Arish in the north, enclosing all Egypt—a wall surrounding all its land and country.

She placed guard posts and garrisons every three miles, and between them small guard posts every mile. She placed men in every guard post, assigned them provisions, and ordered them to guard their land by night and day.

The greatest part of this defensive system was the communication and early-warning system that Daluka invented. She ordered the men of the guard posts to use bells. If one of them saw an enemy creeping toward Egypt, or sensed approaching danger, they would strike their bells, and the news would pass from post to post, from tower to tower, through a connected chain of sounds, until news of the invasion reached the heart of Egypt, to the city of Memphis, “in one hour,” and everyone would prepare to face the enemy.

Arab sources mention that the building of this great wall took only six months! Thus, thanks to this wall and the bell system, Daluka protected Egypt from its enemies, thwarted the schemes of the covetous, and Egypt remained immune from the enemy throughout her lifetime.

Arab historians say that the trace of this wall remained until their own days, known as the “Wall of the Old Woman,” and many of its remains survived in Upper Egypt. But Daluka’s story does not stop at this point of military brilliance; it extends into a more mysterious and exciting world—the world of magic, the barabi and images. Daluka was not an ordinary queen, but a great sorceress, or at least she used great magic to protect Egypt.

Sources mention that Daluka adopted “the barabi and images” in Egypt and perfected the instruments of magic. The "barabi" are the temples or strange buildings she built in the city of Memphis, with four doors in its four directions, and she decorated their walls with strange and wondrous images. In them she drew images of men, horses, mules, donkeys, ships, and boats; she depicted whoever came from every direction and their mounts, whether camels or horses; and she also depicted whoever came by sea in boats from the sea of the Maghreb and Syria.

The strange thing is that these images were not merely decorative carvings, but effective magical tools. Daluka gathered in these "barabi" “the secrets of nature and the properties of stones, plants, and animals, and placed that at times of celestial movements and their connection to heavenly influences.” This means that she linked the earthly world with the heavenly world, and the properties of materials with the properties of the planets, to create a magical defensive system no less complex than the bell system.

Arab sources describe the mechanism of these magical images, saying that “if an army came to them from…” a certain direction, the images in that direction would move, as if warning them of the place of danger. More wondrous still, what they did to these images—tearing or destroying them—would strike the invading army itself in reality. If they cut off the head of an image, the head of the enemy commander would be cut off; if they gouged out its eye, the eye of the invading army would be gouged out; and if they slit open its belly, the bellies of the soldiers would be slit open.

These "barabi" were stronger than any army and deadlier than any weapon, and no king of the earth was able to defeat Egypt throughout Daluka’s reign because of them. Sources mention that Daluka enlisted in building these "barabi" a great sorceress named “Tadura” or “Tadhura,” whom the sorcerers revered and gave precedence in magic. She came to them and made for them this stone house in the middle of the city of Memphis.

It is said that when Daluka built these "barabi", she stipulated to the sorceress that she make for her magic that would prevent enemies. The sorceress agreed, but on the condition that women marry their slaves and hired laborers, and that they not cut off offspring, so that Egypt would not become extinct and be emptied of men forever.

The Egyptian woman would free her slave and marry him, and another would marry her hired laborer. But the ladies of Egypt stipulated upon these “second-class” husbands that they not undertake any matter except with their permission, nor make any decision except after returning to them—otherwise, woe, ruin, and great calamities upon the men.

Ibn Abd al-Hakim says that the Copts remained like that until his day—that is, until his era in the third century After Hijrah. —following those who had passed before them. None of them would sell or buy without saying: “I shall consult my wife” (meaning that Egyptian society at that time was a purely matriarchal society!).

Queen Daluka did not stop at that; she also built the Lighthouse of Alexandria and made it a lookout for any enemy coming toward their land.

Yaqut al-Hamawi says in "Mu‘jam al-Buldan" (Lexicon of Countries): “It was said that the first to build the lighthouse was a woman called Daluka bint Rayya.” Al-Mas‘udi mentions "that most Egyptians and Alexandrians believe that Alexander son of Philip the Macedonian was the one who built it, “and some of them held that Queen Daluka built it and made it a lookout for any enemy coming into their land.”

For Alexander, as al-Mas‘udi observes, “no enemy ever attacked him in this sea, nor did he fear a king who might come to him in his land… so that he would be the one who made it a lookout,” whereas Daluka, who ruled Egypt after it had been emptied of men, was in dire need of a lookout to guard her from enemies. Logic, then, stands on Daluka’s side, even if written history stands on Alexander’s side!

Imam Al-Suyuti says in "Husn al-Muhadara" (the Agreeable Discussion) that its height was a thousand cubits, “and at its top were brass statues, among them a statue that pointed with the index finger of its right hand toward the sun wherever it was in the heavens, turning with it wherever it turned.”

Al-Mas‘udi relates that the Byzantine emperor "Justinian II", in the era of the Umayyad caliph "al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik", sent a cunning servant, who came seeking safe conduct from al-Walid and told him that beneath the Lighthouse of Alexandria were wealth and treasures. He enticed the caliph with this, until he ordered the lighthouse to be demolished and the treasure to be sought !

But how long did this old queen rule? Here the Arab sources differ greatly. Some sources mention that she ruled for twenty years, which is the period mentioned by Ibn Abd al-Hakim, where he says that Daluka “ruled them for twenty years, managing their affairs in Egypt, until a boy from the sons of their grandees and nobles, called "Darkun ibn Balutus", reached maturity, and they made him king over them.” This means that her rule was temporary, merely a transitional period until one of the sons of the nobles who had drowned with Pharaoh grew up, so that rule would return to men once again.

Other sources mention that she ruled for thirty years, which is what Ibn Taghribirdi mentions in his book "al-Nujum al-Zahira" (The Shining Stars). There are sources that go far beyond that, saying that “Daluka remained over the kingship of Egypt for about one hundred and thirty years, and Egypt continued immune from the enemy throughout her lifetime.” Some sources say that when she perished, there assumed rule over Egypt after her a person from the children of the Copts called Darkun ibn Baltus, or Darkun ibn Nakutus, and they made him king over them, and Egypt returned to the rule of men.

It must be noted that Daluka is not entirely unknown in ancient Egyptian history. There is a striking similarity between her and a real historical queen, Queen “Nitocris,” who ruled Egypt at the end of the Sixth Dynasty, in the twenty-second century BCE.

Greek sources, especially Herodotus, mention that Nitocris was an Egyptian queen, that she built a great dam or wall, and that she avenged the murder of her brother and husband by killing his killers, then committed suicide or disappeared.

It seems that the Arabic story of Daluka became mixed with the Greek story of Nitocris, and perhaps Daluka is the Arabic translation or alteration of the name Nitocris. Some go even further, considering that Daluka is Nitocris herself, and that the name changed through translation and oral transmission between Arabs and Greeks over the centuries.

----------------------------------

The End ..

I hope you liked this post, My sincere regards from Egypt ..

The story begins, as Arab historians tell it, from the moment when the Nile or the Red Sea swallowed the Pharaoh of Egypt, who was one of the Amalekites (and some Arab historians believe that the Amalekites are the Hyksos, or are descended from the Hyksos!). That tyrannical king who acted arrogantly on earth and claimed divinity, and whom the Egyptians called "Talma ibn Qumus". Arab historians said his name was "Al-Walid ibn Mus‘ab" (and this is an Arabic name, because Arab historians believe that the peoples of Amalek are among the Bedouins who inhabit the Arabian and Levant deserts and roam through them!).

After the ten plagues (though according to Arab historians they are not ten, and the tenth plague of the firstborn is not among them), he set out after the Prophet Moses and the Prophet Aaron, with the Children of Israel with them. Then the sea closed over him, and there drowned with him the nobles of Egypt, its grandees, the prominent men of its people, its magicians, and its soldiers, until no men remained on the land of Egypt except slaves and hired laborers, and of women only those who had not taken part in that accursed pursuit.

Ibn Abd al-Hakim describes this scene in his book "Futuh Misr wa al-Maghrib" (The Conquest of Egypt and the Maghreb), saying that after their drowning there remained in Egypt “not one of the nobles of its people; there remained in it only slaves, hired laborers, and women.” Egypt had emptied of men.

It had become a land without protectors, a kingdom without an army, women without husbands, and a throne without a king. This power vacuum was an easy prey for the covetous kings of the earth, from Syria and the Maghreb, who, as soon as they learned that Egypt was empty of its men, began to cast their eyes toward it and plot to invade it.

In the midst of this despair and resounding void, the noblewomen remaining in Egypt—the greatest of those left of its people—gathered, and they resolved upon a grave matter. Finding no man worthy to assume rule, they decided to appoint one of their women, a woman in whom intellect, knowledge, and experience had come together, and who held a high standing among them. Their choice fell upon “Daluka bint Zaba.”

Daluka was not a young girl, nor a woman in the prime of her youth, but an aged woman who had reached the age of one hundred and sixty years, as most sources mention. Her long life was evidence of her experience, wisdom, and deep trials, and perhaps it was a symbol of the continuity of Egypt itself, which, despite all that had befallen it, was still capable of birth and giving. So the women of Egypt made Daluka queen over them, and she became queen of the country. Women occupied all the other positions surrounding the queen, and matters remained so for a period of time.

But fear continued to dominate the hearts of the “women of rule”—fear that the kings of the earth might discover the secret of Egypt’s weakness and rush upon it as invaders and occupiers. For Egypt, without men, without an army, and without magicians, was an easy morsel for any covetous power. Here appears the genius of Daluka—or rather her legendary trick—which would protect Egypt from the greed of invaders. After gathering the noblewomen, she delivered an eloquent sermon, warning that our country “no one used to covet, nor cast an eye toward it, but our grandees and nobles have perished, and the magicians by whom we were strong have gone.” Then she proposed to them a solution both radical and practical: to build a great fortress enclosing all the land of Egypt, with guard posts placed upon it from every side, because they “did not feel safe that people would covet them.”

And so, by order of the old queen, work began on one of the greatest defensive projects in the history of ancient Egypt, if not the greatest of them all. Arab sources say that she built “a wall with which she enclosed all the land of Egypt—farms, cities, and villages—and before it she made a canal through which water flowed, and she erected bridges and canals.” This wall, later known as the “Wall of the Old Woman,” extended from Aswan in the south to al-Arish in the north, enclosing all Egypt—a wall surrounding all its land and country.

She placed guard posts and garrisons every three miles, and between them small guard posts every mile. She placed men in every guard post, assigned them provisions, and ordered them to guard their land by night and day.

The greatest part of this defensive system was the communication and early-warning system that Daluka invented. She ordered the men of the guard posts to use bells. If one of them saw an enemy creeping toward Egypt, or sensed approaching danger, they would strike their bells, and the news would pass from post to post, from tower to tower, through a connected chain of sounds, until news of the invasion reached the heart of Egypt, to the city of Memphis, “in one hour,” and everyone would prepare to face the enemy.

Arab sources mention that the building of this great wall took only six months! Thus, thanks to this wall and the bell system, Daluka protected Egypt from its enemies, thwarted the schemes of the covetous, and Egypt remained immune from the enemy throughout her lifetime.

Arab historians say that the trace of this wall remained until their own days, known as the “Wall of the Old Woman,” and many of its remains survived in Upper Egypt. But Daluka’s story does not stop at this point of military brilliance; it extends into a more mysterious and exciting world—the world of magic, the barabi and images. Daluka was not an ordinary queen, but a great sorceress, or at least she used great magic to protect Egypt.

Sources mention that Daluka adopted “the barabi and images” in Egypt and perfected the instruments of magic. The "barabi" are the temples or strange buildings she built in the city of Memphis, with four doors in its four directions, and she decorated their walls with strange and wondrous images. In them she drew images of men, horses, mules, donkeys, ships, and boats; she depicted whoever came from every direction and their mounts, whether camels or horses; and she also depicted whoever came by sea in boats from the sea of the Maghreb and Syria.

The strange thing is that these images were not merely decorative carvings, but effective magical tools. Daluka gathered in these "barabi" “the secrets of nature and the properties of stones, plants, and animals, and placed that at times of celestial movements and their connection to heavenly influences.” This means that she linked the earthly world with the heavenly world, and the properties of materials with the properties of the planets, to create a magical defensive system no less complex than the bell system.

Arab sources describe the mechanism of these magical images, saying that “if an army came to them from…” a certain direction, the images in that direction would move, as if warning them of the place of danger. More wondrous still, what they did to these images—tearing or destroying them—would strike the invading army itself in reality. If they cut off the head of an image, the head of the enemy commander would be cut off; if they gouged out its eye, the eye of the invading army would be gouged out; and if they slit open its belly, the bellies of the soldiers would be slit open.

These "barabi" were stronger than any army and deadlier than any weapon, and no king of the earth was able to defeat Egypt throughout Daluka’s reign because of them. Sources mention that Daluka enlisted in building these "barabi" a great sorceress named “Tadura” or “Tadhura,” whom the sorcerers revered and gave precedence in magic. She came to them and made for them this stone house in the middle of the city of Memphis.

It is said that when Daluka built these "barabi", she stipulated to the sorceress that she make for her magic that would prevent enemies. The sorceress agreed, but on the condition that women marry their slaves and hired laborers, and that they not cut off offspring, so that Egypt would not become extinct and be emptied of men forever.

The Egyptian woman would free her slave and marry him, and another would marry her hired laborer. But the ladies of Egypt stipulated upon these “second-class” husbands that they not undertake any matter except with their permission, nor make any decision except after returning to them—otherwise, woe, ruin, and great calamities upon the men.

Ibn Abd al-Hakim says that the Copts remained like that until his day—that is, until his era in the third century After Hijrah. —following those who had passed before them. None of them would sell or buy without saying: “I shall consult my wife” (meaning that Egyptian society at that time was a purely matriarchal society!).

Queen Daluka did not stop at that; she also built the Lighthouse of Alexandria and made it a lookout for any enemy coming toward their land.

Yaqut al-Hamawi says in "Mu‘jam al-Buldan" (Lexicon of Countries): “It was said that the first to build the lighthouse was a woman called Daluka bint Rayya.” Al-Mas‘udi mentions "that most Egyptians and Alexandrians believe that Alexander son of Philip the Macedonian was the one who built it, “and some of them held that Queen Daluka built it and made it a lookout for any enemy coming into their land.”

For Alexander, as al-Mas‘udi observes, “no enemy ever attacked him in this sea, nor did he fear a king who might come to him in his land… so that he would be the one who made it a lookout,” whereas Daluka, who ruled Egypt after it had been emptied of men, was in dire need of a lookout to guard her from enemies. Logic, then, stands on Daluka’s side, even if written history stands on Alexander’s side!

Imam Al-Suyuti says in "Husn al-Muhadara" (the Agreeable Discussion) that its height was a thousand cubits, “and at its top were brass statues, among them a statue that pointed with the index finger of its right hand toward the sun wherever it was in the heavens, turning with it wherever it turned.”

Al-Mas‘udi relates that the Byzantine emperor "Justinian II", in the era of the Umayyad caliph "al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik", sent a cunning servant, who came seeking safe conduct from al-Walid and told him that beneath the Lighthouse of Alexandria were wealth and treasures. He enticed the caliph with this, until he ordered the lighthouse to be demolished and the treasure to be sought !

But how long did this old queen rule? Here the Arab sources differ greatly. Some sources mention that she ruled for twenty years, which is the period mentioned by Ibn Abd al-Hakim, where he says that Daluka “ruled them for twenty years, managing their affairs in Egypt, until a boy from the sons of their grandees and nobles, called "Darkun ibn Balutus", reached maturity, and they made him king over them.” This means that her rule was temporary, merely a transitional period until one of the sons of the nobles who had drowned with Pharaoh grew up, so that rule would return to men once again.

Other sources mention that she ruled for thirty years, which is what Ibn Taghribirdi mentions in his book "al-Nujum al-Zahira" (The Shining Stars). There are sources that go far beyond that, saying that “Daluka remained over the kingship of Egypt for about one hundred and thirty years, and Egypt continued immune from the enemy throughout her lifetime.” Some sources say that when she perished, there assumed rule over Egypt after her a person from the children of the Copts called Darkun ibn Baltus, or Darkun ibn Nakutus, and they made him king over them, and Egypt returned to the rule of men.

It must be noted that Daluka is not entirely unknown in ancient Egyptian history. There is a striking similarity between her and a real historical queen, Queen “Nitocris,” who ruled Egypt at the end of the Sixth Dynasty, in the twenty-second century BCE.

Greek sources, especially Herodotus, mention that Nitocris was an Egyptian queen, that she built a great dam or wall, and that she avenged the murder of her brother and husband by killing his killers, then committed suicide or disappeared.

It seems that the Arabic story of Daluka became mixed with the Greek story of Nitocris, and perhaps Daluka is the Arabic translation or alteration of the name Nitocris. Some go even further, considering that Daluka is Nitocris herself, and that the name changed through translation and oral transmission between Arabs and Greeks over the centuries.

----------------------------------

The End ..

I hope you liked this post, My sincere regards from Egypt ..

The story begins, as Arab historians tell it, from the moment when the Nile or the Red Sea swallowed the Pharaoh of Egypt, who was one of the Amalekites (and some Arab historians believe that the Amalekites are the Hyksos, or are descended from the Hyksos!). That tyrannical king who acted arrogantly on earth and claimed divinity, and whom the Egyptians called "Talma ibn Qumus". Arab historians said his name was "Al-Walid ibn Mus‘ab" (and this is an Arabic name, because Arab historians believe that the peoples of Amalek are among the Bedouins who inhabit the Arabian and Levant deserts and roam through them!).

After the ten plagues (though according to Arab historians they are not ten, and the tenth plague of the firstborn is not among them), he set out after the Prophet Moses and the Prophet Aaron, with the Children of Israel with them. Then the sea closed over him, and there drowned with him the nobles of Egypt, its grandees, the prominent men of its people, its magicians, and its soldiers, until no men remained on the land of Egypt except slaves and hired laborers, and of women only those who had not taken part in that accursed pursuit.

Ibn Abd al-Hakim describes this scene in his book "Futuh Misr wa al-Maghrib" (The Conquest of Egypt and the Maghreb), saying that after their drowning there remained in Egypt “not one of the nobles of its people; there remained in it only slaves, hired laborers, and women.” Egypt had emptied of men.

It had become a land without protectors, a kingdom without an army, women without husbands, and a throne without a king. This power vacuum was an easy prey for the covetous kings of the earth, from Syria and the Maghreb, who, as soon as they learned that Egypt was empty of its men, began to cast their eyes toward it and plot to invade it.

In the midst of this despair and resounding void, the noblewomen remaining in Egypt—the greatest of those left of its people—gathered, and they resolved upon a grave matter. Finding no man worthy to assume rule, they decided to appoint one of their women, a woman in whom intellect, knowledge, and experience had come together, and who held a high standing among them. Their choice fell upon “Daluka bint Zaba.”

Daluka was not a young girl, nor a woman in the prime of her youth, but an aged woman who had reached the age of one hundred and sixty years, as most sources mention. Her long life was evidence of her experience, wisdom, and deep trials, and perhaps it was a symbol of the continuity of Egypt itself, which, despite all that had befallen it, was still capable of birth and giving. So the women of Egypt made Daluka queen over them, and she became queen of the country. Women occupied all the other positions surrounding the queen, and matters remained so for a period of time.

But fear continued to dominate the hearts of the “women of rule”—fear that the kings of the earth might discover the secret of Egypt’s weakness and rush upon it as invaders and occupiers. For Egypt, without men, without an army, and without magicians, was an easy morsel for any covetous power. Here appears the genius of Daluka—or rather her legendary trick—which would protect Egypt from the greed of invaders. After gathering the noblewomen, she delivered an eloquent sermon, warning that our country “no one used to covet, nor cast an eye toward it, but our grandees and nobles have perished, and the magicians by whom we were strong have gone.” Then she proposed to them a solution both radical and practical: to build a great fortress enclosing all the land of Egypt, with guard posts placed upon it from every side, because they “did not feel safe that people would covet them.”

And so, by order of the old queen, work began on one of the greatest defensive projects in the history of ancient Egypt, if not the greatest of them all. Arab sources say that she built “a wall with which she enclosed all the land of Egypt—farms, cities, and villages—and before it she made a canal through which water flowed, and she erected bridges and canals.” This wall, later known as the “Wall of the Old Woman,” extended from Aswan in the south to al-Arish in the north, enclosing all Egypt—a wall surrounding all its land and country.

She placed guard posts and garrisons every three miles, and between them small guard posts every mile. She placed men in every guard post, assigned them provisions, and ordered them to guard their land by night and day.

The greatest part of this defensive system was the communication and early-warning system that Daluka invented. She ordered the men of the guard posts to use bells. If one of them saw an enemy creeping toward Egypt, or sensed approaching danger, they would strike their bells, and the news would pass from post to post, from tower to tower, through a connected chain of sounds, until news of the invasion reached the heart of Egypt, to the city of Memphis, “in one hour,” and everyone would prepare to face the enemy.

Arab sources mention that the building of this great wall took only six months! Thus, thanks to this wall and the bell system, Daluka protected Egypt from its enemies, thwarted the schemes of the covetous, and Egypt remained immune from the enemy throughout her lifetime.

Arab historians say that the trace of this wall remained until their own days, known as the “Wall of the Old Woman,” and many of its remains survived in Upper Egypt. But Daluka’s story does not stop at this point of military brilliance; it extends into a more mysterious and exciting world—the world of magic, the barabi and images. Daluka was not an ordinary queen, but a great sorceress, or at least she used great magic to protect Egypt.

Sources mention that Daluka adopted “the barabi and images” in Egypt and perfected the instruments of magic. The "barabi" are the temples or strange buildings she built in the city of Memphis, with four doors in its four directions, and she decorated their walls with strange and wondrous images. In them she drew images of men, horses, mules, donkeys, ships, and boats; she depicted whoever came from every direction and their mounts, whether camels or horses; and she also depicted whoever came by sea in boats from the sea of the Maghreb and Syria.

The strange thing is that these images were not merely decorative carvings, but effective magical tools. Daluka gathered in these "barabi" “the secrets of nature and the properties of stones, plants, and animals, and placed that at times of celestial movements and their connection to heavenly influences.” This means that she linked the earthly world with the heavenly world, and the properties of materials with the properties of the planets, to create a magical defensive system no less complex than the bell system.

Arab sources describe the mechanism of these magical images, saying that “if an army came to them from…” a certain direction, the images in that direction would move, as if warning them of the place of danger. More wondrous still, what they did to these images—tearing or destroying them—would strike the invading army itself in reality. If they cut off the head of an image, the head of the enemy commander would be cut off; if they gouged out its eye, the eye of the invading army would be gouged out; and if they slit open its belly, the bellies of the soldiers would be slit open.

These "barabi" were stronger than any army and deadlier than any weapon, and no king of the earth was able to defeat Egypt throughout Daluka’s reign because of them. Sources mention that Daluka enlisted in building these "barabi" a great sorceress named “Tadura” or “Tadhura,” whom the sorcerers revered and gave precedence in magic. She came to them and made for them this stone house in the middle of the city of Memphis.

It is said that when Daluka built these "barabi", she stipulated to the sorceress that she make for her magic that would prevent enemies. The sorceress agreed, but on the condition that women marry their slaves and hired laborers, and that they not cut off offspring, so that Egypt would not become extinct and be emptied of men forever.

The Egyptian woman would free her slave and marry him, and another would marry her hired laborer. But the ladies of Egypt stipulated upon these “second-class” husbands that they not undertake any matter except with their permission, nor make any decision except after returning to them—otherwise, woe, ruin, and great calamities upon the men.

Ibn Abd al-Hakim says that the Copts remained like that until his day—that is, until his era in the third century After Hijrah. —following those who had passed before them. None of them would sell or buy without saying: “I shall consult my wife” (meaning that Egyptian society at that time was a purely matriarchal society!).

Queen Daluka did not stop at that; she also built the Lighthouse of Alexandria and made it a lookout for any enemy coming toward their land.

Yaqut al-Hamawi says in "Mu‘jam al-Buldan" (Lexicon of Countries): “It was said that the first to build the lighthouse was a woman called Daluka bint Rayya.” Al-Mas‘udi mentions "that most Egyptians and Alexandrians believe that Alexander son of Philip the Macedonian was the one who built it, “and some of them held that Queen Daluka built it and made it a lookout for any enemy coming into their land.”

For Alexander, as al-Mas‘udi observes, “no enemy ever attacked him in this sea, nor did he fear a king who might come to him in his land… so that he would be the one who made it a lookout,” whereas Daluka, who ruled Egypt after it had been emptied of men, was in dire need of a lookout to guard her from enemies. Logic, then, stands on Daluka’s side, even if written history stands on Alexander’s side!

Imam Al-Suyuti says in "Husn al-Muhadara" (the Agreeable Discussion) that its height was a thousand cubits, “and at its top were brass statues, among them a statue that pointed with the index finger of its right hand toward the sun wherever it was in the heavens, turning with it wherever it turned.”

Al-Mas‘udi relates that the Byzantine emperor "Justinian II", in the era of the Umayyad caliph "al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik", sent a cunning servant, who came seeking safe conduct from al-Walid and told him that beneath the Lighthouse of Alexandria were wealth and treasures. He enticed the caliph with this, until he ordered the lighthouse to be demolished and the treasure to be sought !

But how long did this old queen rule? Here the Arab sources differ greatly. Some sources mention that she ruled for twenty years, which is the period mentioned by Ibn Abd al-Hakim, where he says that Daluka “ruled them for twenty years, managing their affairs in Egypt, until a boy from the sons of their grandees and nobles, called "Darkun ibn Balutus", reached maturity, and they made him king over them.” This means that her rule was temporary, merely a transitional period until one of the sons of the nobles who had drowned with Pharaoh grew up, so that rule would return to men once again.

Other sources mention that she ruled for thirty years, which is what Ibn Taghribirdi mentions in his book "al-Nujum al-Zahira" (The Shining Stars). There are sources that go far beyond that, saying that “Daluka remained over the kingship of Egypt for about one hundred and thirty years, and Egypt continued immune from the enemy throughout her lifetime.” Some sources say that when she perished, there assumed rule over Egypt after her a person from the children of the Copts called Darkun ibn Baltus, or Darkun ibn Nakutus, and they made him king over them, and Egypt returned to the rule of men.

It must be noted that Daluka is not entirely unknown in ancient Egyptian history. There is a striking similarity between her and a real historical queen, Queen “Nitocris,” who ruled Egypt at the end of the Sixth Dynasty, in the twenty-second century BCE.

Greek sources, especially Herodotus, mention that Nitocris was an Egyptian queen, that she built a great dam or wall, and that she avenged the murder of her brother and husband by killing his killers, then committed suicide or disappeared.

It seems that the Arabic story of Daluka became mixed with the Greek story of Nitocris, and perhaps Daluka is the Arabic translation or alteration of the name Nitocris. Some go even further, considering that Daluka is Nitocris herself, and that the name changed through translation and oral transmission between Arabs and Greeks over the centuries.

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The End ..

I hope you liked this post, My sincere regards from Egypt ..

The story begins, as Arab historians tell it, from the moment when the Nile or the Red Sea swallowed the Pharaoh of Egypt, who was one of the Amalekites (and some Arab historians believe that the Amalekites are the Hyksos, or are descended from the Hyksos!). That tyrannical king who acted arrogantly on earth and claimed divinity, and whom the Egyptians called "Talma ibn Qumus". Arab historians said his name was "Al-Walid ibn Mus‘ab" (and this is an Arabic name, because Arab historians believe that the peoples of Amalek are among the Bedouins who inhabit the Arabian and Levant deserts and roam through them!).

After the ten plagues (though according to Arab historians they are not ten, and the tenth plague of the firstborn is not among them), he set out after the Prophet Moses and the Prophet Aaron, with the Children of Israel with them. Then the sea closed over him, and there drowned with him the nobles of Egypt, its grandees, the prominent men of its people, its magicians, and its soldiers, until no men remained on the land of Egypt except slaves and hired laborers, and of women only those who had not taken part in that accursed pursuit.

Ibn Abd al-Hakim describes this scene in his book "Futuh Misr wa al-Maghrib" (The Conquest of Egypt and the Maghreb), saying that after their drowning there remained in Egypt “not one of the nobles of its people; there remained in it only slaves, hired laborers, and women.” Egypt had emptied of men.

It had become a land without protectors, a kingdom without an army, women without husbands, and a throne without a king. This power vacuum was an easy prey for the covetous kings of the earth, from Syria and the Maghreb, who, as soon as they learned that Egypt was empty of its men, began to cast their eyes toward it and plot to invade it.

In the midst of this despair and resounding void, the noblewomen remaining in Egypt—the greatest of those left of its people—gathered, and they resolved upon a grave matter. Finding no man worthy to assume rule, they decided to appoint one of their women, a woman in whom intellect, knowledge, and experience had come together, and who held a high standing among them. Their choice fell upon “Daluka bint Zaba.”

Daluka was not a young girl, nor a woman in the prime of her youth, but an aged woman who had reached the age of one hundred and sixty years, as most sources mention. Her long life was evidence of her experience, wisdom, and deep trials, and perhaps it was a symbol of the continuity of Egypt itself, which, despite all that had befallen it, was still capable of birth and giving. So the women of Egypt made Daluka queen over them, and she became queen of the country. Women occupied all the other positions surrounding the queen, and matters remained so for a period of time.

But fear continued to dominate the hearts of the “women of rule”—fear that the kings of the earth might discover the secret of Egypt’s weakness and rush upon it as invaders and occupiers. For Egypt, without men, without an army, and without magicians, was an easy morsel for any covetous power. Here appears the genius of Daluka—or rather her legendary trick—which would protect Egypt from the greed of invaders. After gathering the noblewomen, she delivered an eloquent sermon, warning that our country “no one used to covet, nor cast an eye toward it, but our grandees and nobles have perished, and the magicians by whom we were strong have gone.” Then she proposed to them a solution both radical and practical: to build a great fortress enclosing all the land of Egypt, with guard posts placed upon it from every side, because they “did not feel safe that people would covet them.”

And so, by order of the old queen, work began on one of the greatest defensive projects in the history of ancient Egypt, if not the greatest of them all. Arab sources say that she built “a wall with which she enclosed all the land of Egypt—farms, cities, and villages—and before it she made a canal through which water flowed, and she erected bridges and canals.” This wall, later known as the “Wall of the Old Woman,” extended from Aswan in the south to al-Arish in the north, enclosing all Egypt—a wall surrounding all its land and country.

She placed guard posts and garrisons every three miles, and between them small guard posts every mile. She placed men in every guard post, assigned them provisions, and ordered them to guard their land by night and day.

The greatest part of this defensive system was the communication and early-warning system that Daluka invented. She ordered the men of the guard posts to use bells. If one of them saw an enemy creeping toward Egypt, or sensed approaching danger, they would strike their bells, and the news would pass from post to post, from tower to tower, through a connected chain of sounds, until news of the invasion reached the heart of Egypt, to the city of Memphis, “in one hour,” and everyone would prepare to face the enemy.

Arab sources mention that the building of this great wall took only six months! Thus, thanks to this wall and the bell system, Daluka protected Egypt from its enemies, thwarted the schemes of the covetous, and Egypt remained immune from the enemy throughout her lifetime.

Arab historians say that the trace of this wall remained until their own days, known as the “Wall of the Old Woman,” and many of its remains survived in Upper Egypt. But Daluka’s story does not stop at this point of military brilliance; it extends into a more mysterious and exciting world—the world of magic, the barabi and images. Daluka was not an ordinary queen, but a great sorceress, or at least she used great magic to protect Egypt.

Sources mention that Daluka adopted “the barabi and images” in Egypt and perfected the instruments of magic. The "barabi" are the temples or strange buildings she built in the city of Memphis, with four doors in its four directions, and she decorated their walls with strange and wondrous images. In them she drew images of men, horses, mules, donkeys, ships, and boats; she depicted whoever came from every direction and their mounts, whether camels or horses; and she also depicted whoever came by sea in boats from the sea of the Maghreb and Syria.

The strange thing is that these images were not merely decorative carvings, but effective magical tools. Daluka gathered in these "barabi" “the secrets of nature and the properties of stones, plants, and animals, and placed that at times of celestial movements and their connection to heavenly influences.” This means that she linked the earthly world with the heavenly world, and the properties of materials with the properties of the planets, to create a magical defensive system no less complex than the bell system.

Arab sources describe the mechanism of these magical images, saying that “if an army came to them from…” a certain direction, the images in that direction would move, as if warning them of the place of danger. More wondrous still, what they did to these images—tearing or destroying them—would strike the invading army itself in reality. If they cut off the head of an image, the head of the enemy commander would be cut off; if they gouged out its eye, the eye of the invading army would be gouged out; and if they slit open its belly, the bellies of the soldiers would be slit open.

These "barabi" were stronger than any army and deadlier than any weapon, and no king of the earth was able to defeat Egypt throughout Daluka’s reign because of them. Sources mention that Daluka enlisted in building these "barabi" a great sorceress named “Tadura” or “Tadhura,” whom the sorcerers revered and gave precedence in magic. She came to them and made for them this stone house in the middle of the city of Memphis.

It is said that when Daluka built these "barabi", she stipulated to the sorceress that she make for her magic that would prevent enemies. The sorceress agreed, but on the condition that women marry their slaves and hired laborers, and that they not cut off offspring, so that Egypt would not become extinct and be emptied of men forever.

The Egyptian woman would free her slave and marry him, and another would marry her hired laborer. But the ladies of Egypt stipulated upon these “second-class” husbands that they not undertake any matter except with their permission, nor make any decision except after returning to them—otherwise, woe, ruin, and great calamities upon the men.

Ibn Abd al-Hakim says that the Copts remained like that until his day—that is, until his era in the third century After Hijrah. —following those who had passed before them. None of them would sell or buy without saying: “I shall consult my wife” (meaning that Egyptian society at that time was a purely matriarchal society!).

Queen Daluka did not stop at that; she also built the Lighthouse of Alexandria and made it a lookout for any enemy coming toward their land.

Yaqut al-Hamawi says in "Mu‘jam al-Buldan" (Lexicon of Countries): “It was said that the first to build the lighthouse was a woman called Daluka bint Rayya.” Al-Mas‘udi mentions "that most Egyptians and Alexandrians believe that Alexander son of Philip the Macedonian was the one who built it, “and some of them held that Queen Daluka built it and made it a lookout for any enemy coming into their land.”

For Alexander, as al-Mas‘udi observes, “no enemy ever attacked him in this sea, nor did he fear a king who might come to him in his land… so that he would be the one who made it a lookout,” whereas Daluka, who ruled Egypt after it had been emptied of men, was in dire need of a lookout to guard her from enemies. Logic, then, stands on Daluka’s side, even if written history stands on Alexander’s side!

Imam Al-Suyuti says in "Husn al-Muhadara" (the Agreeable Discussion) that its height was a thousand cubits, “and at its top were brass statues, among them a statue that pointed with the index finger of its right hand toward the sun wherever it was in the heavens, turning with it wherever it turned.”

Al-Mas‘udi relates that the Byzantine emperor "Justinian II", in the era of the Umayyad caliph "al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik", sent a cunning servant, who came seeking safe conduct from al-Walid and told him that beneath the Lighthouse of Alexandria were wealth and treasures. He enticed the caliph with this, until he ordered the lighthouse to be demolished and the treasure to be sought !

But how long did this old queen rule? Here the Arab sources differ greatly. Some sources mention that she ruled for twenty years, which is the period mentioned by Ibn Abd al-Hakim, where he says that Daluka “ruled them for twenty years, managing their affairs in Egypt, until a boy from the sons of their grandees and nobles, called "Darkun ibn Balutus", reached maturity, and they made him king over them.” This means that her rule was temporary, merely a transitional period until one of the sons of the nobles who had drowned with Pharaoh grew up, so that rule would return to men once again.

Other sources mention that she ruled for thirty years, which is what Ibn Taghribirdi mentions in his book "al-Nujum al-Zahira" (The Shining Stars). There are sources that go far beyond that, saying that “Daluka remained over the kingship of Egypt for about one hundred and thirty years, and Egypt continued immune from the enemy throughout her lifetime.” Some sources say that when she perished, there assumed rule over Egypt after her a person from the children of the Copts called Darkun ibn Baltus, or Darkun ibn Nakutus, and they made him king over them, and Egypt returned to the rule of men.

It must be noted that Daluka is not entirely unknown in ancient Egyptian history. There is a striking similarity between her and a real historical queen, Queen “Nitocris,” who ruled Egypt at the end of the Sixth Dynasty, in the twenty-second century BCE.

Greek sources, especially Herodotus, mention that Nitocris was an Egyptian queen, that she built a great dam or wall, and that she avenged the murder of her brother and husband by killing his killers, then committed suicide or disappeared.

It seems that the Arabic story of Daluka became mixed with the Greek story of Nitocris, and perhaps Daluka is the Arabic translation or alteration of the name Nitocris. Some go even further, considering that Daluka is Nitocris herself, and that the name changed through translation and oral transmission between Arabs and Greeks over the centuries.

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The End ..

I hope you liked this post, My sincere regards from Egypt ..