Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XXIV, May 1852, Vol. IV

"I will take some savage woman, she shall rear my dusky race."

But as the day draws forward, and you see the same forms and the same life that Abraham saw, and know that Joseph leading Mary into Egypt might pass you to-day, nor be aware of more than a single sunset since he passed before, then you feel that this germ, changeless at home, is only developed elsewhere – that the boundless desert freedom is only a resultless romance.

The sun sets and the camp is pitched. The shadows are grateful to your eye, as the dry air to your lungs. But as you sit quietly in the tent-door, watching the Armenian camp and the camels, your cheeks pales suddenly as you remember Abraham, and that "he sat in the tent-door in the heat of the day." Saving yourself, what of the scene is changed since then? The desert, the camels, the tents, the turbaned Arabs, they were what Abraham saw when "he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, lo! three men stood by him."

You are contemporary with the eldest history. Your companions are the dusky figures of vaguest tradition. The "long result of Time," is not for you. In that moment you have lost your birthright. You are Ishmael's brother. You have your morning's wish. A child of the desert, not for you are Art, and Poetry, and Science, and the glowing roll of History shrivels away.

The dream passes as the day dies, and to the same stars which heard your morning shout of desert praise, you whisper as you close the tent-door at evening,

"Better fifty years of Europe, than a cycle of Cathay."

MOHAMMAD ALEE

I do not wonder that Mohammad Alee burned to be master of Syria, and struck so bravely for it.

His career was necessarily but a brilliant bubble, and his success purely personal. That career was passed before the West fairly understood it. It was easier for the Jews to believe good from Nazareth than for us to credit genius in Egypt, and we should as soon have dreamed of old mummied Cheops throned upon the great pyramid and ruling the Pharaohs' realm anew, as of a modern king there, of kingliness unsurpassed in the century, except by Napoleon, working at every disadvantage, yet achieving incredible results.

He was the son of a fisherman – made his way by military skill – recognized the inherent instability of the Mameluke government then absolute in Egypt, and which was only a witless tyranny, sure to fall before ambitious sense and skill. He propitiated the Sublime Porte, whose Viceroy in Egypt was only a puppet of state, practically imprisoned by the Mamelukes in the citadel – and he gained brilliant victories in the Hedjaz, over the Wahabys, infidel and schismatic Muslim.

In 1811, he accomplished the famous massacre of the Mamelukes in the court of the citadel, of which Horace Vernet has painted so characteristic a picture, and for which Mohammad Alee has been much execrated.

But in Turkish politics, humanity is only a question of degree. With Mohammad Alee and the Mamelukes it was diamond cut diamond. They were a congregation of pestilent vapors, a nest of hoary-headed tyrants, whom it was a satisfaction to Humanity and Decency to smoke out and suffocate in any way. Mohammad Alee had doubtless little enough rose-water in his policy to satisfy the grimmest Carlyle. The leader of sanguinary Albanians and imbruted Egyptians against wild Arab hordes is not likely to be of a delicate stomach.

But he was clear-eyed and large-minded. He had the genius of a statesman rather than the shrewdness of a general, although as a soldier he was singularly brave and successful. Of all his acts the massacre of the Mamelukes was perhaps the least bloody, because, by crushing the few heads he had won the victory. A sudden and well-advised bloodshed is often sure to issue in a peace which saves greater misery. It was Cromwell's rule and it was Napoleon's – it was also Mohammad Alee's, and the results usually proved its wisdom.

Moreover, in the matter of this massacre, the balance of sympathy is restored by the fact that only a short time previous to the Mamelukes' Banquet of Death in the citadel, they had arranged Mohammad Alee's assassination upon his leaving Suez. By superior cunning he ascertained the details of this pleasant plan, and publicly ordered his departure for the following morning, but privately departed upon a swift-trotting dromedary in the evening. There was great consequent frustration of plan and confusion of soul among the Mamelukes, who had thought, in this ingenious manner, to cut the knot of difficulty, and they were only too glad to hurry with smooth faces to the Pacha's festival – too much in a hurry, indeed, to reflect upon his superior cunning and to be afraid of it. They lost the game. They were the diamond cut, and evidently deserve no melodious tear.

Mohammad Alee thus sat as securely in his seat as a Turkish Pacha can ever hope to sit. He assisted the Porte in the Greek troubles, perpetrating other massacres there; and afterward, when Abdallah, Pacha of Acre, rebelled against "the Shadow," Mohammad Alee was sent to subdue him. He did so, and then interceded with the Porte for Abdallah's safety.

Meanwhile, Mohammad Alee had ascertained his force, and was already sure of the genius to direct it. He had turned the streams of French and English skill into the agriculture, manufactures, and military discipline of Egypt. His great aim for years had been to make Egypt independent – to revive the ancient richness of the Nile valley, and to take a place for Egypt among the markets of the world. He accomplished this so far, that, restoring to the plain of Thebes the indigo which was once famous there, he poured into the European market so much and so good indigo that the market was sensibly affected. His internal policy was wrong, but we can not here consider it.

Watching and waiting, in the midst of this internal prosperity and foreign success and amazement, while Egyptian youth were thronging to the Parisian Universities, and the Parisian youth looked to Egypt as the career of fame and fortune – as the young Spaniards of a certain period looked to the diamond-dusted Americas – in the midst of all the web Mohammad Alee sat nursing his ambition and biding his time.

Across the intervening desert, Syria wooed him to take her for his slave. Who was there to make him afraid? Leaning on Lebanon, and laving her beautiful feet in the sea, she fascinated him with love. He should taste boundless sway. Eastward lay Bagdad and Persia, thrones of Caliphs who once sat in his seat – why should not he sit in theirs? Then with softer whispers she pointed to the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus, and looked what she dared not speak.

I do not wonder that he was enchanted. I do not wonder that he burned to be master of the superb slave that lay so lovely and fair in the sun, dreaming, as now we see her dream, under the vines and olives. His peer, Napoleon Bonaparte, against whom, in Egypt, his maiden sword was fleshed, whom he loved to name and to hear that they were born in the same year, had thus seen from Elba the gorgeous Fata-Morgana of European empire. How could Mohammad Alee reflect that sallying forth to grasp it, that peer had bitten the dust? That fate deterred the Pacha, as the experience of others always deters ourselves – as a blade of grass stays the wind. Shall not you and I, my reader, swim to our Heros, though a thousand Leanders never came to shore?

It was this Syria through which we plod, this brilliant morning, that seduced Mohammad Alee.

A land of glorious resources and without a population. Here grow wheat, rye, barley, beans and the cotton plant. Oats are rare; but Palestine produces sesame and dourra, a kind of pulse like lentils. Baalbec grows maize. Sugar and rice are not unknown at Beyrout. Lebanon is wreathed with vines. Indigo flourishes without cultivation on the banks of the Jordan. The Druses cultivate the white mulberry. Gaza has dates like those of Mecca, and pomegranates as fine as those of Algiers. Figs and bananas make the gardens of Antioch tropical. From Aleppo come pistachio-nuts. The almond, the olive and the orange thrive in the kindly air; and Damascus revels in twenty kinds of apricot, with all the best fruits of France.

Many of the inhabitants pass us, and we can see what they are. They are repulsive in appearance, the dregs of refuse races. They look mean and treacherous, and would offer small resistance to determination and skill. Mohammad Alee had little fear of the Syrians.

He could not resist the song of the Siren; and suddenly "the Eastern Question" agitated political Europe, and the diplomatic genius of the three greatest states – England, France and Russia – was abruptly challenged by the alarming aspect of the Syrian war, which threatened, with a leader despising the political stagnation and military imbecility of the vast realm of "the Shadow of God on Earth," to issue in a new empire.

Mohammad Alee having subdued Abdallah, Pacha of Acre, and saved his life and throne by intercession with the Porte, was surprised that Abdallah harbored all fugitives from Egypt. He observed that, following his own example, Abdallah was introducing the European discipline into his army, and was enticing into his service many young officers who had been Europeanly instructed at his own expense. He expostulated with Abdallah, and appealed to the Porte. The Sublime Porte, like other political Sublimities, hesitated, meditated —

"Then idly twirled his golden chain,

And smiling, put the question by."

Mohammad Alee, with expectant eyes fixed upon Syria, sat silent, his hand trembling with eagerness and ready to grasp the splendid prize. "The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces" of a new oriental empire rose, possible in the light of hope.

His army was carefully disciplined. The fame of its tried officers had been won upon the battle-fields of the Empire. He had a fleet and all the resources of the latest military and marine science. Over all, he had his son Ibrahim, already proved in Arabia and Greece, of a military genius peculiarly Oriental, swift and stern, rude in thought, but irresistible in action – the slave of his father's ambition, the iron right-hand of his will. Internal prosperity and external prestige sealed Mohammad Alee's hope and determination.

Against him was arrayed the worldly magnificence of the Ottoman Porte. But the bannered Muslim lance that had thundered at the gates of Constantinople, and entering, had planted itself upon the earliest Christian church, and flapped barbaric defiance at civilization, was rusty and worm-eaten. Its crimson drapery fluttering, rent, upon an idle wind, would be inevitably shivered by the first rough blow of modern steel.

And the great Powers? —

Their action was, of course, doubtful. There was a chance of opposition, a probability of interference. But the grandeur of the stroke was its safety. From the universal chaos what new combinations might not be educed!

No sooner, therefore, had the Porte "put the question by," than Mohammad Alee proceeded to answer it. The Egyptian army, headed by Ibrahim Pacha, advanced into Syria, and sat down before Acre. Cherishing the old grudge against Abdallah, the Porte, now that a decided part had been taken, smiled faintly in approval. But the conduct of the war betrayed resources of ability and means which kindled terrible suspicions. The firman came from Stamboul, commanding the Pacha of Egypt to withdraw into his own province. He declined, and was declared a rebel.

The bridge thus fell behind him, and only victory or death lay before.

For six months Ibrahim Pacha lay before Acre, and on the 27th May, 1832, he entered by bloody assault the city which Richard Cœur de Lion and Philip Augustus had conquered before him, and from which Napoleon Bonaparte had retired foiled. The Syrian war began.

The victorious army advanced, triumphing. The Syrian cities fell before it. The stream of conquest swept northward, overflowing Damascus as it passed. The war was no longer a quarrel of two Pachas, it was a question of life or death for the Turkish Empire. Vainly the Sultan's choicest generals struggled to stem the torrent. The proud walls along the Golden Horn trembled, lest their pride should be for the third time humbled, and this time, as the last, from the Asian shore.

Northern and Western Europe stared amazed at the wonderful spectacle, listening across the hushed Mediterranean to the clang of arms resounding in the effete East, as the appalled Romans heard the gusty roar of the battle of the Huns high over them, and invisible in the air.

Surely it was only the interference of the three Powers that saved the Sultan's throne. That alone deprived us of the pageant of another oriental military romance, so rapid in inception, so entire in execution, that we should have better comprehended those sudden, barbaric descents of the middle ages, which changed in a moment the political aspect of the invaded land: – in a moment, because the mighty appearance of life and power was but a mummy, which a blow would pulverize.

One man, however strong and skillful, could not withstand the force of Europe, and Mohammad Alee retired, baffled, before the leaders of the political Trinity that a few years before had dethroned Napoleon.

The crisis of his life was passed, and unfavorably for his hopes and aims. At the age of sixty-five he relinquished the struggle with Fate, and still one of the great men of a century, rich in great men, with no hope before him, and none behind – for since kingly genius is not hereditary, your divine right is a disastrous fiction – he sank slowly away into dotage.

Before the end, however, both he and his son Ibrahim showed themselves to the Europeans who had watched with such astonished interest the culmination and decay of their power. Ibrahim Pacha, with his fangs removed, shook his harmless rattle, for the last time in the world's hearing, at a dinner given him by young Englishmen, at the Reform Club in Pall Mall, and the wreck of Mohammad Alee, driveling and dozing, took a hand at whist with young Americans in a hotel at Naples.

Father and son returned to Egypt and died there. A vast mosque of alabaster, commenced by Mohammad Alee, and now finished, crowns Cairo, "the delight of the imagination." He wished to be 'buried there; but he lies without the city walls, in that suburb of tombs, upon the cracked sides of one of which a Persian poet has written – "Each crevice of this ancient edifice is a half-opened mouth, that laughs at the fleeting pomp of royal abodes."

All the winds that blow upon Cairo, laugh that mocking laughter, and in any thoughtful mood, as you listen to them and look over the city, you will mark the two alabaster minarets of Mohammad Alee's mosque, shafts of snow in the rich blue air, if you will, but yet pointing upward.

Leaning on Lebanon, and laving her beautiful feet in the sea, the superb slave he burned to possess, still dreams in the sun. We look from the tent door and see her sleeping, and the remembrance of this last, momentary interest which disturbed the slumber, reminds us that it will one day be broken. So fair is the prize, that, knowing all others desire her as ardently, no single hand feels strong enough to grasp it, and the conflict of many ambitions secures her peace.

Yet it is clear that nerve and skill could do what they have done, and so spare is the population, so imbecile the government, and so rich the soil, that a few thousand determined men could march unresisted through Syria, and possess the fair and fertile land.

BAZAARS

Christians and Saracens agree in reprobating the black hat. But the Damascenes declare open war against it. In 1432, Bertrandon de la Brocquière entered the city with a "broad beaver hat," which was incontinently knocked off his head. Naturally his first movement was "to lift my fist," but wisdom held his hand, and he desisted, content to revenge himself by the questionable inference that it was "a wicked race."

But if it be "wicked" to malign the black hat, who shall be justified?

This was only a gentle illustration of the bitter hatred of Christians and all infidels, cherished by the Damascenes, who are the most orthodox of Muslim. Indeed, it is only within twenty years that an accredited English representative could reside in Damascus, and he maintains an imposing state. At present, some hundred European tourists visit the city yearly, and the devout faithful find reasons for toleration in infidel gold, which they never found in argument.

Here, too, as every where in Syria, Ibrahim Pacha has been our ally. He permitted infidels to ride horses through the streets. "O, Allah!" exclaimed the religious Damascenes, who are termed by the Turks Shami-Shoumi, cursed rascals. "Your Highness suffers Christians to sit as high as the faithful."

"No, my friends," responded Ibrahim, "you shall ride dromedaries, which will put you much above them."