Witness to the era of tyranny.. Egypt in the era of Muhammad Ali with Armenian eyes

Whoever hears about the Armenians and the Armenian issue in eastern Anatolia, the southern Caucasus and the Middle East will think that the life of this minority was persecution and oppression, especially under the Ottoman Empire and its states and guardians. About him - for this region from 18 to 22 Hijri, which is the same period during which Muslim armies were conquering Egypt until Nubia, foretells of the Islamic State’s care for this Christian minority that rejected the Council of Chalcedon, which said that the nature of Christ, the son of Mary - peace be upon him, was polymorphous. It has its own independent church, although the Armenians were divided into Orthodox and Catholics.

However, the most important chapter in the relationship between the Armenians and the Islamic state began after the conquest of Anatolia under the leadership of the Seljuk Sultan Alp Arslan in the aftermath of the Battle of Manzikert in 463 AH / 1071 AD, where a large group of Armenians who cooperated with the Byzantine state against the Seljuks were forced to flee east towards the Mediterranean until they settled The place is in the regions of Tartous, Adana and the Gulf of Alexandretta, and there they established a semi-independent kingdom after the forced separation from the Byzantines, even if after thirty years in the year 491 AH/1088 AD the Crusaders knocked on the gates of the Levant, they decided to cooperate with them, then again they preferred to ally with the Mongols when they occupied Anatolia in 643 AH and the country Levant in the year 657 AH in the face of the Muslims, and the matter remained in this state until the Mamluks destroyed their independent state, which was known as the “Little Armenian Kingdom” in the Cilicia region, by destroying their capital, “Sis” in the Adana governorate in southern Turkey today.

Despite this, large numbers of Armenians continued to live in peace and security in their homeland, which was known in Islamic geographic sources as “paths and kingdoms” or “dictionaries of countries” as “Greater Armenian” in eastern Anatolia, which includes their current state the Republic of Armenia and areas of northwestern Iran and southern Georgia. and Azerbaijan, but all the Islamic countries that came since the Seljuks, then the Ilkhan Mongols, then the Turkmen tribes of the Black Shah “Qara Koenlu”, then the Safavid state and the Ottoman Empire, which ruled this region, all subjected the Armenians to their sovereignty, taking advantage of their weakness and division against themselves.

What concerns us is that the Armenians who were subject to the influence of the Ottoman Empire, the Ottomans treated them with great esteem since Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror, as the Conqueror ordered the establishment of their own archdiocese in Istanbul, and granted their Great Patriarch known as the “Catholic” large lands, exempted him from taxes, and the Armenian minority in Astana over time To trade, banking and the work of jewelers (jewelers), so they became famous and wealthy, and they reached the point of lending to the people and senior men of the Ottoman state. In fact, the Armenian Douzian family remained for more than a hundred years, from 1775 to 1880 AD, monopolistically responsible for the Ottoman mint, with a pure Ottoman will. (1).

The biggest problem was the Armenian issue - like other Christian minorities in the Ottoman Empire - that it was exploited by imperialist powers such as the French, English and Russians to interfere in the affairs of the Ottomans, and this was the most prominent reason for the coup of harmony between the Armenians and the Ottoman Empire, which remained for nearly From the four centuries since the era of Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror, the Turks rose to defend their money, themselves and their lands against the systematic Russian-Armenian occupation of eastern Anatolia, which eventually led to the conclusion of agreements to demarcate the borders between the two sides.

Before reaching that critical historical stage between the two sides in the First World War and its aftermath, the movement of Armenians between the states of the Ottoman Empire was smooth and unobtrusive, until we saw in Egypt, which was ruled by Muhammad Ali Pasha since the beginning of the nineteenth century AD, the presence of large numbers of Armenians, some of whom amounted to The highest positions in the state of Muhammad Ali and his sons, and among them was Youssef Hakkian, that articulate Armenian who left us very important papers and diaries in which he wrote his notes and memoirs about Muhammad Ali and his sons, so who is Hakkian?

And how was Egypt in his time and his sons after him?

Armenians in Egypt

Given that the Armenian environment politically and geographically throughout history has been expelling the population due to political fluctuations and its subordination to greater powers, the Armenians migrated groups to different places and countries, including Egypt, which was also subject to the rule of the Byzantine state and then the Islamic state with its various branches and families, and the history of Islamic Egypt has provided us With the names of many governors and senior statesmen of Armenian origin, led by Badr al-Jamali al-Armani, who was the first powerful minister to rule the Fatimid state during the fifth century AH, and then came a series of Armenian ministers, and despite Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi’s ruling on the state The Fatimids, a number of Armenians reached high positions under the Ayyubid state, including Lulu’ al-Hajib, the commander of Salah al-Din’s fleet.The Mamluks allowed them to establish their own church, and then they worked throughout the Ottoman era in Egypt in commercial jobs, as well as in translation and other jobs (2).

But the golden age of the Armenians in Egypt dawned with the advent of Muhammad Ali Pasha (1805-1849 AD), who had commercial and humanitarian relations with some Armenians before taking over Egypt.

In his youth, Muhammad Ali worked in the tobacco trade for an Armenian merchant named Qara Qahya Ayramian, and he found a patriarchal treatment from him. He had borrowed a large sum of money from him prior to his departure to Egypt at the head of the Albanian group in the year 1801 AD (3).

When Muhammad Ali began a series of economic and financial reforms, he preferred to rely on elements characterized by loyalty to his person to support him in achieving his goals, and the Armenians were at the forefront of these, and the historian of Egyptian homes at the time, Sheikh Abdul Rahman Al-Jabarti noted this fact in the early period of Muhammad Ali’s rule, stressing that The help of these Armenians to Muhammad Ali was only at the expense of the interests of the Egyptians. They are, as Al-Jabarti says: “His partners in all kinds of shops, and they are the people of opinion and advice.

Al-Jabarti gave an example of that in their intervention in the pricing of meat by abolishing all slaughterhouses and civil massacres and keeping the governor’s governmental slaughterhouse outside Cairo, and thus prices increased, and meat decreased due to the high tax prices they imposed with the approval of Muhammad Ali, so traders lost, and “the presence of meat was scarce, And the butchers’ shops were closed, and they lost” (5).

When Muhammad Ali became sure of the loyalty of the Armenian elite supporting him in the state bureaucracy, even at the expense of the Egyptians, he decided to lean on them and build on them.

Muhammad Ali has repeatedly emphasized in his administrative orders the necessity of employing Armenian employees “because they manage their jobs with great honesty, great dhimma, great diligence, and great vigilance” (6), and for this reason he began to rely on them and open doors for them in all his financial, agricultural, economic and bureaucratic projects, and some of them reached The most prestigious positions were headed by Boghos Bey Yousefian (1775-1844 AD), who was the first Christian to attain the rank of Bey, and the chief translator of Muhammad Ali, who eventually decided to appoint him for a long time to the position of the first overseer (Minister) of Foreign Affairs and Trade in modern Egypt.

Youssef Hakkian in the service of the governor's government

If we look at the Armenian commission that worked under the management of Boghos Bey in the Egyptian government, we will find among them the Armenian Hekkiyan Effendi who came from Istanbul and worked in the translation corps in the government of Muhammad Ali Pasha.

Hakkian took advantage of the opportunity that Muhammad Ali Pasha sent his children and a large number of his employees to Paris in 1817 AD to receive their education, so he asked the governor to send his son, who was still residing in Istanbul, to England to learn there, and Muhammad Ali responded to this request, and his son Yusuf Hakkian was not He is still ten years old (7).

Youssef Hakkian spent seven years in Britain learning the principles of science as well as English, French and Latin languages, and in 1824 instructions came from Boghos Bey Youssefian, Minister of Trade and Foreign Affairs in Egypt, that Hakkian devote his attention to the study of spinning and weaving machines from both the theoretical and practical sides, as well as Seeing how to build roads, bridges, canals and river sidewalks, and he began to learn these sciences since then until he returned to Egypt in the fall of 1831 AD after 14 years in Britain.

When Hakkian returned to Egypt, he was appointed as a general observer for the cotton factories in Al-Hadud Al-Marsoud, Al-Kharnafash, Bulaq and Al-Mubaida. The School of Engineers in Al-Qanater Al-Khairia, and Youssef Hakkian was appointed as its director.

And between the years 1844-1850, Hakkian headed three missions that were searching for coal in the various deserts and mountains of Egypt, then his exploratory missions extended from 1854 to 1861 AD, and included, above all, his geological studies, visits and archaeological surveys. His drawings were published in English in 1863 AD with the support of the Khedive Said Pasha government. As for his personal memoirs, diaries, correspondences, notes, drawings, and other things that extend between 1829-1874 AD, his son Tito Hakkian gave them to the British Museum (8).

Witness the era of tyranny

The great historian in the modern history of Egypt, Ahmed Abdel Rahim Mustafa, provided us in his book “The Age of Hakkian” with an important definition of the character of Hakkian and his memoirs in which he wrote his diaries in England prior to his return to Egypt, then his stories in Egypt, who worked in the wheel of the Egyptian bureaucracy in the era of Muhammad Ali and his son Ibrahim and his grandsons Abbas I and Said Pasha.

Hakkian believed that “education and freedom of commerce would make people satisfy the motives of reason and govern themselves.” For this reason, we see him as a believer in Western liberalism and not in the eastern orientation in government and politics.

This was evident in Hakkian's diaries and notes, in some of which he says: "The usurpers in the East rarely own their lands in a hereditary manner."

With this confession, he denounces the manifestations of tyranny that were not rooted in the upper classes represented by Muhammad Ali Pasha and his sons only, but also in the middle and lower classes. (9).

He also criticized the tyranny of the governor Abbas I bin Toson bin Muhammad Ali Pasha (1848-1854 AD), who saw him as lazy and cruel to the poor, who "assigns them hard work in the deserts and hardly pays them with little wages."

He also stated that many of his compatriots die daily while working in the Pasha's palaces, saying: "It was the duty of His Highness to spend the money in improving the conditions of Egypt instead of building in the desert. Helping the only son they were willing to ransom with a thousand piastres, so that they would not lose their assistant in the agricultural work” (10).

Yusef Hakkian did not hesitate to admit that he and the majority of Armenians who worked in the government of Muhammad Ali Pasha and his sons were working under tyranny and tyranny and in his service. Boghos Bey was an excellent man in his private life, and no one surpassed him in his ability to perform official duties, if we take into account that he was a subordinate of a tyrant, and he may be considered the greatest of the eastern ministers, because he remained throughout all these years enjoying the approval of a tyrant and a court characterized by tyranny, The secret of his policy was not to act on the inspiration of his own desire, and thus he did not risk anything, so he did not give his head to the Pasha in a personal capacity, and he did not object to his views publicly in any way”(11).

With this brief presentation on the relations of the Armenians with the Ottoman Empire, and then their presence as an elite and bureaucratic community in Egyptian society, we find that the papers of Yusef Hakkian the Armenian, who introduced himself as "Youssef Hakkian Al-Istanbuli, an employee in the Egyptian government" supports what was stated in the testimony of Allama al-Jabarti about repressive methods and tyranny in Muhammad Ali and his sons ruled, using minorities, including the Armenian elite, in commerce, the economy, and the government bureaucracy at the expense of the Egyptians.

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