Yesterday I received some interesting stuff about Circassians in Egypt:
It puzzles me that Circassians living in Egypt lost all contact with their homeland, forgot their language and their traditions, while those living in Jordan still remember these things, even though Circassians have a long history in Egypt (ok, with some good and some bad, really bad, memories). But still why did Egyptian-Circassians forget about all of their past? Where they that assimilated into the Egyptian society that they forgot everything.
I won’t talk about the Circassian Mamluks periods. It is a very long history, and it makes sense that the Bahareya Mamluks would mingle easier than their precedents because they lived in El Roda and not in the Citadel , and because they were born and raised in Egypt, not bought as young slaves from Caucasia, and because the relation between them and their masters differed by time. I can imagine this. What I can’t imagine is those of the relatively modern era. Those who fled the Russian massacres and came to Egypt. There are lots of ambiguity.
For example, Mohamed Aly killed ALL OF THE CIRCASSIAN LEADERS IN ONE NIGHT (except for one who jumped with his horse over the walls, or so they say), if he feared them to that extent, why would he accept new immigrants and not kill them at the gates of the city? I know that the Citadel massacre was targeting imposing his political will on the various factions that were going to threaten his throne, it was evident that most likely the Circassian would miss their old days before the Othman rule and may re-start their bloody contest of power. But why would he still trust Circassians again and use them in the army and the state? The circassians at that time enjoyed a good position in the society, perhaps better than the Egyptians themselves (!!!) (Walahi the Egyptians are either stupid or powerless, they were treated as second citizens in their own country in comparison to some newcomers, and they were ruled by an Albanian who considered their land as his personal belonging! But that’s another story)
Well, i probably never commented on your posts before
but i like your blog.
You’ve been tagged
By: charafantah on 31 March, 2008
at 11:41 am
It is a challenge to attempt to try and analyze a historical period through the lens of modern experience. The challenge really, is to try and see how they saw themselves at that time. The Circassians,. Mamluks, and Mohamed Aly are a case in point.
In the above commentary it is assumed that in 1800, there were in the Moslem world ethnically based nation-states, as we understand the term today. Is this accurate? Not really.
There were not even some large European entities that were nation states in 1800, let alone those in the Middle East. Germany in 1800 consisted of almost 100 different sovereign nations, it was Bismarck who united them, and it was in 1871 that the German Nation was proclaimed. Italy needed Garibaldi to unite an agglomeration of geographic regions with sovereignty called Savoy, the Kingdom of Naples (Sicily), the Duchy of Parma, the Papal States, etc. to create modern Italy.
Egypt was a wilaya of the Ottoman State, Mohamed Aly was waly of Egypt. Did this mean he was the governor of an imperial province for a Turkish Empire? Analogous to the British Raj in India, not really. He was the Viceroy of the Ottoman Caliphate, his status was no different to Ahmad Ibn Tulun, (868 AD) who was the appointed Viceroy of Egypt by the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad.
Mohamed Aly was probably more a legitimate Viceroy of Egypt than was Ibn Tulun. Mohamed Aly became Viceroy by popular acclamation of the ulema of Cairo, headed by Sheikh Omar Makram, his appointment was petitioned by Omar Makram to the Bab-el Aali, the Bab-el Aali confirmed this acclamation and recalled their appointee; Khusrew Pasha. Popular acclamation taking precedence. Not quite analogous to the behavior of the British Raj in India. The Bab-el Aali was the term used to refer to the administrative authority of the Ottoman Sultan/Caliph.
The Mamluks by 1800 were a military faction whose power and authority had been broken by Napoleon and the French invasion, they were for their entire history a non-hereditary military oligarchy. That means that from the outset of the Mamluk dynasty in Egypt be it ‘Bahreya’ or ‘Burgii’ or under Ottoman rule their children could not be members of the Mamluk military establishment. In order to be members of the ahl el seif oligarchy they had to be born outside of the region. Their children were married into the urban bourgeoisie, and were known as ‘awlad el nas’ individually ‘ibn nas.’ Therefore if for 540 years (1280-1811) of which 440 years under a Circassian military oligarchy in which there had been intermarriage between the awlad el nas and the Cairene bourgeoisie who themselves were of part ibn nas descent. I think that I could safely say that a large proportion of Cairo’s original urban population has some sort of Circassian background somewhere.
The reason they had to be born outside the region has a lot to do with the original purpose of the Ghulam/Mamluk system. Originating in Abbasid Baghdad in the 9th century they were part of the plan to create an institutional military corps, loyal to the central authority of the office of the Caliphate, without the inconvenience of local, tribal impediment, and sources of conflicts of interest. The Abbasid revolution against the Ummayad Empire had partly been the result of the constant inter-tribal conflict of ancient feuds between the various Arab tribes now satraps of the great cities of the near East. This conflict had torn the original Arab community apart. Another reason for this revolt was the outright prejudice that the Arab ascendancy imposed on the ‘conquered’ peoples whether they had become Muslim or not. The Abbasid were a non-Arab Muslim dynasty, their revolt ushered in the end of an Arab ethnic Empire, to transpose into a multi-ethnic Muslim civilization. A civilization which spoke Arabic, were on the whole Muslim, but were of diverse ethnic origin, a situation where ethnicity became irrelevant. The ahl el seif was the military wing of this society from about 800 AD onwards. Ahmad Ibn Tulun was a product of the Ghulam/Mamluk school system in Baghdad, and was trained from an early age in the use of weapons, and educated in administration and statecraft, ethnically he was a Kipchak Turk.
Emad el din Zengi was a Viceroy of Syria (Sultan) who was one of the first leaders to fight the Crusades (1085-1146) and he established a faction, he was also a product of the Ghulam/Mamluk system of the Caliphate. His second son Sultan Nur el Din was the man who sent Asad el din Shirkuh, Salah el din’s uncle to Egypt to overthrow Fatimid Shia rule. Shirkuh was ethnically a Kurd, but was a retainer of Sultan Nur el din. Whether he was a product of the Mamluk system of the Caliphate is a subject of current academic research.
These people spoke several languages, Arabic, Turkish, Kurdish and often Persian, their battle language was usually Turkish. If they had been asked what their ‘nationality’ was their response would be that they were Muslim, which is quite accurate, the last thing they would think of would have been their ethnic origin. Yet these are the people who broke the power of the Crusades, for in reality the Crusades were defeated not by the Arabs but by the Muslims.
Beibars the first Mamluk Sultan refined and institutionalized this Ghulam/Mamluk political/military system in Egypt. Institutionally there is little difference between the Burgii and Bahry periods. What is true is the incredible challenges they faced and overcame. Despite your jab ‘..ok, with some good and some bad, really bad, memories..’ a comment which I would attribute to the usual post 1952 historical revisionism. These are the people who expunged the Crusader State of Outremer, who defeated the Mongols in the Mamluk-Ilkhanid war (1260-1281) in which the Battle of Ain Jallut was the first encounter. The people who kept the Timurids out of the region through a combination of warfare and diplomacy and are also the people who made of Egypt the super-power of the Middle Ages, probably the strongest, wealthiest power not just of the Middle East, but of the whole western world for a period of 250 years. The Crusades, the Mongols and the Timurids were existencial threats to the entire region, had any one of them succeeded in defeating the Mamluk State, Egypt and Syria would have been treated in the same way that the Mongols treated all their conquests, almost total anhialation. Or had the Crusades been victorious they would have treated the Muslim cities of the region in the same way that Jerusalem was treated at its fall in 1099. Where the entire population was put to the sword, some 70,000 men women and children over a period of three days of slaughter. The Timurids though Muslim were drunk with blood and were just as bad as the Mongols. Therefore I would not be so quick to condem the Mamluks.
The Ottomans are the last of the line of Caliph’s of the Abbasid ideal, first the Abbasids in Baghdad, then the Cairene Abbasid Caliphate, and then its transference by the Ottomans to Istanbul. They also kept up this ahl el seif military system. Their elite infantry the intisharia or Janissaries, were christian children from the Balkans inducted at childhood, became Muslim and served in the military and the administration. Later serving as high military commanders, ministers and on occasion the Sadr el Azam (Grand Vizier) The ethnic composition of the Ottoman military commanders through most of the last 300 years of Ottoman rule was either Kurdish, Albanian, Circassian or later Bosnian as well as Turkish not all that different from the armies of Salah el din and the later Mamluks. There were also Turks, but on the whole depending on the wazifa it was not a Turkish empire, but rather a multi-ethnic uni-culture united by an Islamicate civilization, that now, no longer spoke Arabic but Ottoman. The ruling society was made up of the ahl el seif outlined above, the ahl el qalam, (administration) usually either of Janissary or often Albanian and also Turkish elements. The ahl el kitab (religion/justice/jurisprudence) the ulema were more often than not Arabs, many having been educated at the Azhar. These three elements are the actual people who made the decisions and made up the council controlling the Bab el Aali of the Ottoman state.
I realize this is a long post, but really unless there is some solid understanding of the period, anything I may say without some deep background would only add to the incomprehension.
The reason that Mohamed Aly used Circassians in his military and in his administration was because he was aware they were an ethnicity that traditionally served in the ahl el seif and in any case in the Ottoman state itself there were many Circassians in high military and administrative positions. The Mamluks at that time were not all Circassian, many were Caucasian, the Abkhaz/Abzach/Abaza constituted about a third of them, there were Georgian Mamluks (possibly a terminology that addressed the Abkhaz) a few Daghestani’s some Chechens (Shishani) there were also some Europeans, (records indicate a few English and one Scot) there was even about 300 French deserters from Napoleon’s army, the rest probably just under half were Circassian.
As for the Circassians (and many Caucasians) who came to Egypt as a result of the wars with Russia, well, they did not consider themselves foreigners, for them they went to the region with which they had a traditional historic connection. In any case they also considered themselves part of the umma, therefore residence in any Muslim country was home. Today if an American from Texas decided to move to Oregon, would he be considered a foreigner by the ‘natives’ of Oregon? No, he would be considered an American and the analogy is the same. Case in point; at the time of the declaration of independence by Chechnya in 1996, the Chechens first declared that they would change their script from a Latin alphabet to an Arabic one, and secondly they declared their intention of rejoining the umma. They were about 80 years too late, the umma collapsed with the end of the Ottoman Caliphate in about 1922.
The Egyptians as second class citizens? First which Egyptians, the urban or the rural? The urban population is multi-ethnic, Cairo and Egypts important cities were inhabited by peoples from all over the Middle East and Moslem world. The rural? from which province? Sharkieh is a province that was settled by 17 Arab tribes, and until the mid-19th century 10% of Egypt’s population was nomadic Bedu. Giza? Well all of the settled area adjacent to the desert is inhabited by members of Lybian Arab tribes the awlad Aly el ahmar who settled in the 18th-19th century. Fayyoum? Favorite retirement area for Ayyubid soldiers and administrators who came with Salah el din al Ayyubi. The Christian Coptic population of Egypt is probably the most ethnically Egyptian population in the country, but they are about 10-15% of the population, what about the rest? What we can say today about Egypt is that everyone belongs to an Egyptian culture, because ethnicity is not the distinction.
By: M.Rauf on 4 April, 2008
at 1:52 am
it always great to read new things on circassinas
hoope that thire will be more studies on the circassins in egypt
By: acircassian on 17 January, 2009
at 1:21 am
Hi Nousha (nickname?) I can’t beleive you are real. I was in the middle of writing a report in order to meet a delayed deadline as usual when suddenly, I searched for “circassians in Egypt”. Certainly, this was exactly the wrong time for the right thing!
Just to make a long story short right now; Chapeau for for your pioneering initiative and please keep it up as you are indeed one of a kind…I wish I had the time tonight to go through all the blogs and share with you a bit of my ‘circassianism’!
I’m also wondering if you are aware of any circassian families living in Maadi since the 1930s? Demerdesh for instance? please let me know if you have the faintest clue. My mom and I are trying to keep track of our diasporic family.
Looking forward to your reply. Stay in touch,
By: Mischa on 19 January, 2009
at 11:44 pm
anyone knows a circassian community in egypt
By: mess tabb on 7 March, 2009
at 1:38 am
Hi Nousha; thnx a lot for your interest and contribution, and I hope you get the chance to visit Nalchik soon! I’m a circassian form Jordan and have been always interested to know more about the circassian-egyptian history, n always felt pity that we lost connection with you ppl…
As you said, the circassians in Jordan still maintain their traditions and language, the same applies for Syria, I wish you all the best sis and you are most welcome in Jordan anytime
Wupsow sishop5 (Thnk you my sis in Kabardian:) )
By: Jomart on 29 June, 2009
at 10:33 am
Thanks Jomart for your sweet comment
I hope I’ll visit jordan soon and meet my family
By: nousha on 29 June, 2009
at 10:38 am