27. Young Egypt

Indissoluble Bond 

Among its many uses, the Salafi movement also served in protecting the British’s growing interest in the Suez Canal, which would later become crucial to the shipment of their oil cargo to Europe and elsewhere. The first period of British rule in Egypt, from 1882—after the failed Urabi Revolt instigated by Afghani and his co-conspirators—lasting to 1914, is often called the “veiled protectorate.” During this time the Khedivate of Egypt, established by Mohammed Ali Pasha remained an autonomous province of the Ottoman Empire, and the British occupation had no legal basis but constituted a de facto protectorate over the country. Egypt was thus not part of the British Empire. This state of affairs lasted until 1914 when the Ottoman Empire joined World War I on the side of the Central Powers and Britain declared a protectorate over Egypt.

In 1854 and 1856, the French engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps had obtained concessions from Said Pasha (1822 – 1863), son of Mohammed Ali Pasha and the viceroy of Egypt, who authorized the creation of a company for the purpose of constructing a maritime canal open to ships of all nations. The canal had a dramatic impact on world trade, playing an important role in increasing European penetration and colonization of Africa. It became, as Bismarck called it, “the spinal column of the British Empire.” In 1875, the mounting debts of Said Pasha’s nephew and successor, Khedive Ismail Pasha, forced him to sell Egypt’s share in the canal to the British. Thus, the British government, then under Benjamin Disraeli, and financed by his friend, Lionel de Rothschild, acquired nearly half the total shares in the Suez Canal Company, giving it a controlling interest. A commission of inquiry into the failing finances of Ismail in 1878, led by Evelyn Baring, 1st Earl of Cromer (1841 – 1917), and others, had compelled the viceroy into ceding his estates to the nation, to remain under British and French supervision, and accepting the position of a constitutional sovereign. The angered Egyptians united around Ahmed Urabi (1841 – 1911), against Ismail’s son and successor Khedive Tewfik (1852 – 1892), a revolt that ultimately provided a pretext for the British to move in and “protect” the Suez Canal.

Afghani and Abduh’s exile from Egypt in 1879 ended their Masonic involvement. After leaving India, Afghani travelled to Paris in 1884—the year in which Blavatsky spent the summer there—where he invited Abduh, and they renewed their membership in Freemasonry.[1] In Paris, which he believed was most suitable to his campaign against the British, Afghani met with Egyptian exiles, and circulated among French political and literary circles, while his views were being published in the European press. Together with Abduh—and financing from the British in Egypt[2]—Afghani published the famous journal al-Urwa al-Wuthqa (“The Indissoluble Bond”), which called upon Muslims to unite under the banner of a single Caliph and to overthrow the British. The journal was financed by ex-Khedive Ismail, exiled in Turin, by Tunisian general Husain Pasha, living in Italy, and from Wilfrid Scawen Blunt.[3] Among the members of Afghani’s Paris circle were Egyptians, Indians, Turks, Syrians, North Africans, Christians and Jews.[4] Although Afghani and Abduh parted ways in 1884, never to meet again, an important correspondence between them has survived, in which it is indicated that Abduh took on the mission to spread the word, that al-Urwa al-Wuthqa was not merely a newspaper but a secret Muslim society under Afghani’s guidance, with branches throughout the Muslim world.[5]

“It is, at any rate, reasonable,” remarked Elie Kedourie, “to presume that having offered his services to the British, Afghani would offer them again to the French.”[6] A report about Afghani was sent from India to the India Office in the summer of 1883, after Afghani had gone to Paris and had begun sending newspapers with anti-British articles to India. Afghani sent a copy of Sanua’s Abu Naddara to his Hyderabad acquaintance, Nawab Syed Hussain Bilgrami (1842 – 1926).[7] Bilgrami was the Private Secretary to Sir Salar Jang, whom Afghani had come to know as well.[8] During his tenure, Bilgrami accompanied Sir Salar Jung on a mission to England where he met with Queen Victoria and other distinguished people such as Disraeli, Gladstone, Lord Salisbury, John Morley and others.[9] At this point, the British Resident in Hyderabad, J.G. Cordery, sent the Government of India a report on Afghani, written by Bilgrami:

 

About three years ago a man came here from Egypt who alleged that he had been turned out of the country by the orders of H. H. the new Khedive Towfik Pasha for preaching doctrines distasteful to the authorities. I gathered from his conversations that he was a freethinker of the French type, and a socialist, and that he had been got rid of by the authorities in Egypt for preaching the doctrine of “liberté, fraternité, egalité” to the students, and the masses in that country.[10]

 

Having learned about Afghani’s arrival in Paris, Bilgrami sent along in his letter with translations of articles from Abu Naddara and additionally informed Cordery:

 

I may add that to my knowledge the man is penniless, and must therefore have some kind of support at Paris. Whether he is or is not countenanced by the French government it is not for me to say, perhaps the strained relations between France and England may account for his existence at Paris.[11]

 

While Afghani was in Paris, he met with Ernest Renan, a French Orientalist and Semitic scholar, leader of the school of critical philosophy in France, and Freemason, who began training for the priesthood, but eventually left the Catholic church after reading Goethe’s Faust. Renan was also a member of the Masonic-like Alliance Française, which included Ferdinand de Lesseps, Louis Pasteur, Jules Verne.[12] Renan was also a friend of Baron d’Eckstein, and in 1855 he proposed him to Max Müller as an arbiter in their disputes.[13] A close friend of Max Müller and de Gobineau, Renan was the chief propagandist of the Aryan myth in France. According to Renan:

 

We salute those sacred summits, where the great races, which carried the future of humanity in their hearts, contemplated infinity for the first time and introduced two categories which changed the face of the world, morality and reason. When the Aryan race, after thousands of years of striving, shall have become masters of the planet which they inhabit, their first duty will be to explore that mysterious region… No place in the world has had a comparable role to that of the nameless mountain or valley where mankind first attained self-consciousness. Let us be proud… of the old patriarchs who, at the foot of Imaus [Himalayan mountain], laid the foundations of what we are and of what we shall become.”[14]

 

According to Renan, it was Afghani, who he described as an Asiatique éclairé (enlightened Asiatic), who inspired him to deliver a lecture after their conversation, tiled “Islamism and science,” in which he blamed the inferiority of Islamic societies on Islam’s failure to encourage science.[15] Renan described Afghani as:

 

Shaikh Jamal al-Din is an Afghan entirely liberated from the prejudices of Islam; he belongs to those active races of upper Iran, on the confines of India, where the Aryan spirit still actively survives under the superficial veneer of official Islam. He is the best proof of the great axiom which we have often proclaimed, namely that the value of a religion is proportionate to the worth of the race which professes it. The freedom of his thought, his noble and loyal character, gave me the impression, while talking to him, that I had in front of me one of my ancient acquaintances, such as Avicenna or Averroes, or some other one of those great unbelievers who, for five centuries, upheld the tradition of the human spirit.[16]

 

Afghani agreed with Renan that Islamic societies were in a state of underdevelopment, but he countered that the problem was not just Islam, but religion itself. “Wherever it has established itself,” Afghani argued, “this religion has tried to stifle science and it has been marvellously served in its aims by despotism.” Astoundingly, Afghani concluded:

 

Religions, by whatever name they are called, resemble one another. No understanding and no re­ conciliation is possible between these religions and philosophy. Religion imposes its faith and its creed on man, while philosophy liberates him from them wholly or in part…

It will always be so. Every time that religion has the upper hand, it will eliminate philosophy; and the contrary takes place when it is philosophy which rules as a sovereign mistress. So long as humanity subsists, the struggle will not cease between dogma and free enquiry, between religion and philosophy, a bitter struggle from which, I fear, free thought will not emerge victorious, because reason does not please the mass and its teachings are understood only by a few choice spirits, and also because science, however beautiful it is, cannot completely satisfy humanity which is athirst for an ideal which it likes to place in obscure and distant regions which philosophers and men of science can neither glimpse nor explore.[17]

 

Elie Kedourie reproduced a letter from Abduh in Beirut to Afghani in Paris, where Abduh reports that he had wanted to arrange for a translation of Afghani’s response by a “man of religion,” so that it could be published in Arabic, but that as soon as he learned of Afghani’s arguments, he was pleased that he was able to cancel the translation in time. Abduh then added:

 

We regulate our conduct according to your sound rule: we do not cut the head of religion except with the sword of religion. Therefore, if you were to see us now, you would see ascetics and worshippers kneeling and genuflecting, never disobeying what God commands and doing all that they are ordered to do. Ah! how constricted life would be without hope![18]

 

The Journal des Débats, which Renan was associated with, and in which Afghani wrote his response, was founded at the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 by Jean-François Gaultier de Biauzat (1739 – 1815), an Enlightenment figure and Freemason.[19] The journal was among the first to announce Afghani’s presence in Paris. Its issue of April 6, 1883, provided extracts from an article which Afghani had written shortly before for the periodical La Justice, edited by Georges Clemenceau (1841 – 1929), attacking the British of a scheme—of which Russia and France were innocent—to convert Muslims the Islamic world to Christianity. These extracts were prefaced by a passage providing details of Afghani's history.[20]

Also working for the Journal des Débats was Khalil Ghanim, who had introduced Renan to Afghani.[21] Afghani’s newspaper al-Urwa al-Wuthqa was printed by the same firm, edited from the same address, and shared the same manager of the newspaper al-Basir, which was directed by Ghanim. Ghanim, a Maronite, had been Dragoman for the Vali of Syria, then for the Grand Vizier in Istanbul, and finally a member of the first Ottoman parliament representing Syria. When Abdul Hamid II disbanded this assembly in 1879, Ghanim went to Paris where he was employed by the French Government. He was given French citizenship and awarded the Légion d'honneur. On January 27, 1883, al-Basir announced the arrival in Paris for an extended stay of “the man of action and science, of the perfect philosopher.”[22] Afghani, the newspaper reported, was born in Kabul “of a princely family” in 1848, had taken part in Afghan politics in support of Afzal Khan, had fled to India and had then gone to Istanbul. He was reportedly there “authorised by the Sultan” to lecture on religious subjects in Hagia Sophia and in the mosque of Sultan Ahmad, and roused the Ulama, “by reason of the liberal doctrines which he taught and which were stamped with that Greek philosophy which, as M. Renan has shown, was so greatly honoured among the Iranians and their neighbours.”[23]

 

Urabi Revolt

Despite his absence from the country, it was Afghani’s Masonic brethren who instigated the Urabi Revolt. It was in 1878, remarked Salim ‘Anhuri, one of Afghani’s biographers, that Afghani assumed public importance because he took part in politics and became the president of the “Arab masonic society.”[24] Afghani’s conspiratorial activities were aided when he became the leader of Egypt’s Masons, having attracted around him about three hundred members, most of whom were scholars and state officials.[25] And, despite their public profession of orthodox Islam, the members of Afghanis inner-circle evinced their adherence to the Gnosticism of the Ismailis. Afghani would refer to his Masonic brethren as ikhwan al saffa wa khullan al wafa, in deliberate reference to the tenth century Ismaili brotherhood by the same name, known as the Brethren of Sincerity.[26] With the help of Ryad Pasha and the British embassy, Afghani reorganized the Scottish Rite and Grand Orient lodges of Freemasonry, and began to organize around him a network of several Muslim countries, particularly Syria, Turkey, and Persia.[27] For the next few years he attracted a following of young writers and activists, among them Afghani’s pupil Mohammed Abduh and Sad Pasha Zaghlul (1857 – 1927), self-professed Freemason, and founder of Wafd, the Egyptian nationalist party.[28] Ryad Pasha served as Prime Minister of Egypt three times during his career, serving his first term was between 1879 and 1881.

Afghani also successfully recruited to his lodge Tewfik Pasha, heir-apparent to Ismail Pasha. Abduh related that in 1879 Afghani and other notables asked Chief Minister Sharif Pasha to “convince Ismail of the need to abdicate,” but Ismail refused.[29] Later, Afghani led a delegation to the French Consul-General advising him that they wanted reform that only Tewfik Pasha was able to accomplish. Afghani inspired some of his followers to help found the Young Egypt society in Alexandria in 1879, which submitted to Tewfik a project for reform.[30] Afghani and his Masonic brethren went so far as to consider assassinating Ismail.[31]

In April 1878, Ryad Pasha and Sir Charles Rivers Wilson (1831 – 1916)were appointed Vice-Presidents of the Lord Cromer’s Commission. According to Cromer:

 

At a time when any show of independent opinion on the part of an Egyptian was accompanied with a good deal of personal risk, Riaz Pasha displayed a high degree of moral courage. His presence on the Commission was of material help to his colleagues, whose confidence he fully deserved and obtained.[32]

 

The Commission reported in August that the estates of the Khedive and his family should be ceded to the State. Ismail Pasha had no alternative but to agree, accepting the position of a constitutional sovereign, with Nubar Pasha (1825 – 1899) as premier, and Wilson his Minister of Finance. On February 18, 1879, Nubar Pasha and Wilson and were assaulted by a mob of officers, believed to have been instigated by Ismail, protesting against arrears in pay.[33] Ismail thereupon declared that he would not be responsible for public order, unless Nubar resigned. With Nubar gone, Ryad became the chief target of Ismail’s animosity. On April 10, the Consul-General reported that Ismail had ordered Ryad to resign as vice-president of the Commission, and that Ryad had appealed to Wilson for protection for himself and his family. Finally, on April 22,  Ryad left for Naples to remain in exile until Ismail was deposed and his son and successor Khedive Tewfik succeeded him.

At the same time, the Urabi Revolt consumed Egypt. The two principle organizations behind the Urabi revolt were created by Afghani: a nationalist organization called National Party (al Hizb al Watani), and the Mazzini-inspired Young Egypt. Both were united in their membership in Afghani’s French Masonic lodges.[34] According to Mohammed Abduh’s disciple, Rashid Rida (1865 – 1935), “Jamaluddin al-Afghani created this association in Alexandria called Young Egypt. It did not have amongst its members a single Egyptian and their great majority were young Jews.”[35] According to Homa Pakdaman, in DJamal-ed-din Assad Abadi dit Afghani:

 

Most of the leaders of the future revolution were part of the masonic lodges. […] Thus the lodge became a place for the gathering of the Egyptian nationalists, and it is this grouping which was the origin of the first political movement in 1879, called the National Party with the motto: Egypt for the Egyptians, which culminated in the revolution of ‘Urabi.[36]

 

The National Party is the name of two successive movements of Egyptian resistance against foreign economic or political control. The first, emerged in 1879, after Khedive Ismail. Although purportedly an Egyptian protest movement against the privileges of Turks and Circassians and against the Anglo-French Dual Financial Control, its initial patron was probably Afghani’s Masonic brother, Prince Halim Pasha. Mohamed Sherif Pasha (1826 – 1887), former Prime Minister of Egypt, a constitutionalist, also claimed to have formed the party.[37] Lady Anne, along with her husband Wilfrid Blunt, became close to the leaders of the National Party and Colonel Urabi, which blunt recorded in Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt (1907). The book is also  an account of the actions of the government officials of Britain and France, the Khedival administration of Egypt, and the Egyptian National Party, as well as British administration in London.

Also an active supporter of the nationalist movement was Afghani’s friend, the Jewish Theosophist James Sanua. As a young boy, Sanua learned the Pentateuch, Talmud, Mishna and Gemara and the Quran.[38] Sanua’s father was employed by Ahmed Medhat Yeghen Pasha (1878 – 1944), a member of the Muhammed Ali Dynasty, who subsequently became Sanua’s patron. The prince sent Sanua, at the age of thirteen, to Italy where he remained from 1852 to 1855. According to Irene L. Gendzier, there is reason to assume that during his time in Livorno Sanua was influenced by Mazzini’s Young Italy. In 1863, back in Egypt, Sanua became professor at the Polytechnic Institute of Cairo, where he taught many of Urabi’s future officers ideas on nationalism and the liberation of Egypt. John Ninet (1815 – 1895), the “Swiss Farmer,” a friend and collaborator, related that “it is… in a great measure due to him that the army later became imbued with those principles of freedom which have puzzled Europe by appearing in so unexpected a quarter.”[39] M.L. Siegfried described two secret societies, Amis de la science and Le Cercle des progressistes, founded in 1872 and presided over by Sanua, as the cradle of the future Egyptian National Party. Sanua received the support of some of the Ulama and some young army officers, and a number of the students of al-Azhar were among its members.[40]

It was at about this time that Sanua joined Afghani’s Masonic network.[41] It was Afghani who advised Sanua to establish a popular theater to advance their political agenda.[42] In 1870, the Khedive Ismail financially supported Sanu’s theatre company and proclaimed him “Molière of Egypt.”[43] In 1876, with the encouragement of both Afghani and Abduh, Sanua launched an Arabic political satire magazine in opposition to Ismail, with the name Abu Naddara—Sanua’s pseudonym—which was the first Arabic publication which employed cartoons to express social and political criticism.[44] The magazine became a growing irritation to the ruling powers, as well as the Europeans, as it favored reform and revolutionary sentiments. Nevertheless, Sanua claimed that his magazine reached a circulation of as many as 10,000, a large number in those days.[45] Blunt, who first met Sanua in 1863, remarked that the magazine had a considerable popularity “among the people of the streets.”[46] The magazine caricatured the rulers of Egypt, including Ismail, as well as Abdul Hamid II, the Ottoman Sultan. The National Party was encouraged to continue its efforts, and the activities of the Young Egypt were publicized in cryptic fashion. As a result, Sanua was forced by Ismail to leave Egypt, and he settled in Paris where he joined the al-Urwa al-Wuthqa and continued to publish the magazine, which was then sent to Egypt in secret.[47]

Objecting to control of the country by European foreigners, many Egyptians united behind a disaffected Colonel Ahmed Urabi. Hoping the Urabi Revolt could relieve him of European control, Ismail did little to oppose Urabi and gave into his demands to dissolve the government. Taking the matter seriously, Britain and France insisted in May 1879 on the reinstatement of the British and French ministers. With the country largely in the hands of Urabi, Ismail could not agree, and had little interest in doing so. As a result, the British and French governments pressured the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II to depose Ismail, which he did on June 26, 1879, replacing him with his more pliable son Tewfik Pasha.

With Tewfik now in power, Afghani believed his opportunity for reform had arrived. However, under pressure from foreign consuls, especially the British, who saw Afghani as a dangerous agitator, Tewfik rejected his proposals. One evening, according to a French journalist at the time, in the Hasan mosque in Cairo, before an audience of four thousand, Afghani denounced Tewfik as an agent of British influence, and called for a “revolution to save the independence of Egypt and establish liberty.”[48] On August 24, 1879, Afghani was seized by the police, transported away to Suez, and was put on a ship bound for India.[49] Afghani was held under surveillance by the British in Calcutta until Urabi was defeated.[50] Under the rule of the Khedive Tewfik, disorder prevailed until November 1879, when the dual control was reestablished by the governments of Britain and France. For over two years Major Evelyn Baring, later Lord Cromer, Auckland Colvin, and Monsieur Ernest de Blignières, practically governed the country.[51]

Although the swiftness of the move to expel Afghani took him and his followers by surprise, he left behind a core of intellectuals and revolutionaries whose activities culminated in the Urabi revolt of 1881-82, which Abduh and Zaghlul had also participated in.[52] Tension built over the summer of 1881, as both the Khedive Tewfik and the Egyptian officers led by Urabi, worked to gain supporters and allies. In September, the Tewfik ordered Urabi’s regiment to leave Cairo. Urabi refused and ordered the creation of an elected government. Unable to oppose the revolt, Tewfik agreed and a new chamber of deputies and government were established, which included a number of Urabi’s allies. The Urabi Revolt against the Khedive Tewfik was ended by the Anglo-Egyptian War in 1882 between Egyptian and Sudanese forces under Urabi and Britain, resulting in takeover of the country, beginning the history of the veiled protectorate over Egypt. It established firm British influence over Egypt at the expense of the Egyptians, the French, and the Ottoman Empire, whose already weak authority became nominal.

 

Neo-Caliphate 

While he had tended to identify with the nationalism of the country where he resided, once in Paris, taking inspiration from the Young Ottoman Namik Kemal, Afghani began to call for the unity of all Muslims behind the Ottoman Sultan as the only means to defend themselves from Western aggression.[53] To that end, Afghani also used the pages of al-Urwa al-Wuthqa to denounce the pro-British Sir Syed Ahmad Khan. In India, Afghani went to Hyderabad, published his longest work, known after its Arabic title as The Refutation of the Materialists, which was directed rather against Syed Ahmad than against materialism, though their  ideas were almost identical, apart from Afghani’s emphasis on Jihad, whereas Sayyed Ahmad favored working with the British.[54] Afghani claimed that, “Ahmad Khan wrote a commentary on the Quran; he interchanged words and falsified what that God had revealed.”[55] Afghani’s main point of contention was that Syed Ahmad Khan’s conciliatory stance towards the British  was opposed to Pan-Islamism, isolating the Muslims of India from the rest of the Ummah, especially from the Turks, and hostile to the conception of a universal Muslim Caliphate.[56] To the contrary, Khan had declared:

 

We are devoted and loyal subjects of the British government… We are not the subjects of Sultan ‘Abdul Hamid II;… He neither has, nor can have any spiritual jurisdiction over us as Khalifa. His title of Khalifa is effective only in his own land and only over the Muslims under his sway.[57]

 

After being held under surveillance by the British in Calcutta until the defeat of Urabi, Afghani left for Paris, stopping briefly in England where he met Wilfrid Scawen Blunt.[58] Blunt had supposedly become a convert to Islam under the influence of Afghani, and shared his hopes of establishing an Arab Caliphate based in Mecca to replace the Ottoman Sultan in Istanbul. Blunt took as his role model the degenerate poet Lord Byron, who was also a member of the Carbonari. Blunt wrote in his unpublished memoirs, “What Byron had done for Greece & so retrieved his soul, that I would do, I thought, for Arabia. This was my dream.”[59] On his return to England in 1879, Blunt became convinced that the Ottoman Turks were responsible for the decadence of Islam, and that a great reformation of the religion could be undertaken only by the Arabs.[60] Blunt cited two individuals who inspired him in this direction:

 

I do not well remember whether it was from this Sabunji or from Malkum Khan that I first came to understand the historical aspect of the caliphal question and its modern aspects, but, opposed as I was to Ottoman rule, it struck me at once as one of high importance to the kind of reform I was beginning to look for.[61]

 

Reverend Louis Sabunji (1838 – 1931) was a Catholic priest of North Mesopotamia, who converted to Islam and became Blunt’s personal secretary. Blunt referred to Sabunji as “a Yildiz Palace spy,” in reference to the Yildiz Palace, a vast complex of former imperial Ottoman palace in Istanbul.[62] From 1877 to 1880, Sabunji published at London the newspaper al-Nahla (“The Bee”), one of the first newspapers in Arabic based in London, a monthly newspaper that contained anti-Ottoman propaganda directed at Muslims and inciting them to renounce the authority of the Ottoman ruler Abdul Hamid II as a legitimate Caliph. Sabunji worked with American missionaries in Beirut and later converted to Islam. He also worked with the Anglican missionary George Percy Badger (1815 – 1888) with whom he compiled an Arabic-English dictionary. In recognition of his various services Badger was, in 1873, created D.C.L. by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Knight of the Crown by King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy—a member of Mazzini’s Carbonari—in the same year.[63]

A third possible influence on Blunt was a series of letters to the London Times written by G.C.M. Birdwood (1832 – 1917), an Anglo-Indian who served as the first Sheriff of Bombay from 1846 to 1858. Birdwood, who knew Sabunji as well, argued as early as 1877 that the Ottoman Caliphate was a “usurpation,” and that the right to the dignity was deserved only by the Sharif of Mecca. Birdwood insisted that “there is not the slightest authority for the claim of the Sultans of Constantinople to the Caliphate; that their assumption of the title is an illegal and heretical usurpation; and that the acceptance of their preposterous pretension to it by Mohamedans is discreditable equally to their orthodoxy, their intelligence, and their good faith.’’[64]

Accordingly, Blunt eventually advocated the transfer of the Caliphate from Istanbul to Mecca, from an Ottoman to an Arab incumbent of the Quraysh. By late 1880, Blunt became convinced of the idea that “the Caliphate was not necessarily vested in the House of Othman,” possibly influenced by Sabunji, and he pressed it upon Prime Minister Gladstone at their first meeting. With an Arab Caliphate, Blunt wrote in a memorandum printed for circulation in the Foreign Office, Istanbul “would cease to be of vital consequence, and the position England might assume of Protectress of the Caliphate would assure to her whatever forces Islam can still command. This is probably the only solution which could assure India permanently to her.’’[65]

In the winter of 1880-81, the Blunts travelled to Jedda, the heartland of the Wahhabis, for the purpose of, as Blunt explained: “I wished to penetrate once more into Arabia, if possible through Hejaz or perhaps Yemen to Nejd. I had an idea that among the Wahhabis I might find a teacher who would give me the Arabian as opposed to the Ottoman view of Islam, and that I might devise with him a movement of reform in which I should suggest the political, he the religious elements.”[66] In Jedda, Blunt did not find his reformers, but did befriend the British consul, James Zohrab (1830 – 1891), appointed in 1878. Since late 1879, Zohrab had been trying to convince his superiors that the religious significance of the Sharif of Mecca in the Muslim world was comparable to that of the Ottoman Sultan. Zohrab went so far as to advocate the separation of the Hijaz from the Ottoman Empire, and its affiliation with Great Britain, from which to influence Muslims in India and elsewhere. By 1880, Zohrab was claiming that the Sharif of Mecca, as a direct descendant of the Prophet, carried more weight in Islam than the Ottoman Caliph. A notion Blunt had already adopted.[67]

But, Zohrab claimed that he had been informed of the existence of a Muslim society, meeting in secrecy, and aiming for the same goals which Blunt advocated. In 1879, Zohrab reported that the Sharif of Mecca informed him through Zohrab’s own dragoman that “the various Mussulman nationalities are in close correspondence with each other and political events are reported to the chiefs of all. The organization seems complete and the union perfect, and restless spirits are ever moving in search of pretexts to raise complications.”[68] By August, Zohrab had more details to report:

 

From a Gentleman who has resided here for some years I hear, that at Mecca there exists a secret society whose object is the removal of all Mohamedans from Christian control. This Society is in communication with every Mussulman community throughout the world, and it has had a good deal to do with the revolt in Algeria….

The Society, which is composed of Mollahs Sheeks and Sheriffs is, I am told, so dissatisfied with the result of the late war with Russia that the question of withdrawing from the Sultan the title of Temporal Head of the Mussulman Faith is being seriously discussed… This opinion, it appears, had its rise in Damascus and that city was at first decided on as the future Seat of the Head of Islam. The Society at Mecca was averse to this, it was argued that Damascus being within easy reach of European influence, it would not be a safe home; whereas Medina, which combined within itself all requirements, that is, remot[e]ness from Europe, difficulty of access, sacredness of the city and purity of the Mussulman character, indicated itself as the natural centre of the faith. Medina has, therefore, it is said, been fixed upon.[69]

 

Decisions of such an importance required secret convening of a congress or conclave, and these Zohrab believed to be regular in occurrence:

 

The Province of Hedjaz is the centre to which the ideas, opinions, sentiments and aspirations of the Mussulman world are brought for discussion. The annual meeting at a fixed time ostensibly for the performance of the Pilgrimage of Representatives from every Mussulman Community affords a means without creating suspicion, to exchange opinions, to discuss plans, to criticise the actions of the European Governments and to form combinations to resist the supremacy of the Christian Powers.[70]

 

When Blunt visited the Algerian leader and Mason Abdul Qadir al Jazairi in 1881, he decided that he was the most promising candidate for “Caliphate,” an opinion shared by Afghani and his disciple, Mohammed Abduh.[71] It was a Fatwa produced by Abdul Qadir al Jazairi’s friend, Sheikh Abder Rahman Illaysh al Kabir, and his father Mohammed Illaysh, grand Mufti of the Malaki Madhhab in Egypt, which led to the Urabi revolt, and for which the two were subsequently imprisoned. Al Kabir was eventually exiled to the island of Rhodes before finally coming back to his role at Al-Azhar. Sheikh Abder Rahman too would later become the head of the Maliki Madhhab at Al-Azhar University. As a Freemason, al Kabir also aimed to demonstrate the relationship between the symbols of Freemasonry and Islam. Years later, in 1912, when the famous occultist René Guénon (1886 – 1951), a disciple of Papus, was initiated into the Shadhili Sufi order, the ceremony was performed by Sheikh Abder Rahman.[72] Guénon’s The Symbolism of the Cross (1931)—the “cross” referring to the swastika—was dedicated to “the venerated memory of Esh-Sheikh Abder-Rahman Elish al Kabir.”

 

Mahdi

In 1884-85, as the British were fighting the “Mahdi” in Sudan, Blunt tried to make use of Afghani and his followers to bring about a peaceful withdrawal of the British.[73] In 1881, Mohammed Ahmad (1843 – 1885 claimed to be the expected Mahdi, and led a war against Egyptian rule in Sudan, which culminated in a victory over them in the Siege of Khartoum, which killed the entire garrison, including Charles George Gordon (1833 – 1885), Governor-General of Sudan. The Mahdi created a vast Islamic state extending from the Red Sea to Central Africa and founding a movement that remained influential in Sudan a century later. Lord Cromer, the British consul-general in Egypt, had been the architect of the British withdrawal after the Mahdist uprising. The Mahdist State, weakened by his successor’s autocratic rule and inability to unify the populace to resist the British blockade and subsequent war, was dissolved following the Anglo-Egyptian conquest of Sudan, in 1899.

However, Afghani published an article entitled “Le Mahdi” over three issues in the French newspaper L’Intransigeant, edited by Henri Rochefort, in December 1883, where he stressed the Mahdi’s role primarily as a military leader against British colonialism. Afghani declares that “all Muslims await the mahdi and consider his coming as an absolute necessity.”[74] In The Adventures of My Life, Rochefort writes of a trip to the Sudan in 1884, demonstrating what influence Afghani was supposedly able to exert on the Mahdi, on behalf of a fellow socialist, Olivier Pain (1845 – 1884):

 

The omnipotence of Djemal-ed-Din over his co-religionists made itself felt when it became a question of surmounting the difficulties Olivier Pain was certain to encounter in reaching the Mahdi’s army. He did not beg the all-powerful master of the Soudan; he simply ordered him to organize a caravan of sham merchants to cross the desert to join Pain on the frontiers of Upper Egypt and take him to the camp. Djemal’s instructions were carried out to the letter. Olivier Pain placed himself under the guidance of the Mahdi’s envoys, and safely reached the Soudanese army, then numerous and victorious.[75]

 

Afghani asserts that the belief in the coming of a Mahdi is rooted in Islamic tradition since the first century of the Hijrah, that it is based on “innumerable and very respected sayings attributed to the great prophet Muhammad,” that all Muslim scholars, “except Ibn Khaldun, and a few others the number of whom is very limited,” have “unanimously” recognized the authenticity of these prophecies. “Does England hope,” he asks, “to stifle the voice of the Mahdi, the most awesome of all voices since its power is even greater than the voice of the Holy War, which issues from all Muslim mouths.”[76] According to Afghani:

 

The Muslims believe in fact that the Caliphate, whether legitimate, i.e. in the hands of a Qurayshi—a member of Muhammad’s tribe—or illegitimate, i.e. in the hands of a conqueror, must disappear at the manifestation of the mahdi, who would himself be the true Caliph of the believers.[77]

 

Ascertaining Blunt’s interests, Afghani claimed to have ties to the Mahdi, though there no documentary evidence for his assertion.[78] In 1885, Blunt, who kept in close contact Afghani, invited him to come to London to discuss with British officials “the terms of a possible accord between England and Islam.”[79] Geoffrey Nash’s recent work From Empire to Orient explores the significance of Blunt’s associations with prominent Eastern political reformers such as Afghani and Abduh, whom Blunt introduced to his close friend Lord Randolph Churchill, then Secretary of State for India, and father of later British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. By the 1880s, in the words of R.F. Foster in Lord Randolph Churchill, Blunt had become “the avatar for anti-imperial causes” and an active force for the “regeneration of Islam” by means of “agitation and negotiation as well as by poetry and horse breeding.”[80] Blunt often used Arabian horse breeding at his fashionable Crabbet Park Estate to disseminate his political views among his social connections in the influential horse trading community, especially in Tory circles, including George Wyndham, the Lytton family, Lord Curzon and Arthur Balfour.[81] Blunt first became connected with the Churchill family after befriending Lord Randolph in 1883, and their relationship would continue to grow during the early 1900s.

In 1885, Blunt even brought Afghani, who had been staying with Blunt in Britain, to see Randolph at the India Office so that “Lord Randolph… might be in closest possible touch with authentic Mohammedan opinion.”[82] The result of these discussions was that Afghani was to accompany Sir Henry Drummond Wolff (1830 – 1908) on a special mission to the Porte in Istanbul, “with a view to his exercising his influence with the Pan-Islamic entourage of Sultan Abdul Hamid II in favor of a settlement which should include the evacuation of Egypt, and an English alliance against Russian with Turkey, Persia and Afghanistan.”[83] Wolff, perhaps tipped off about Afghani’s anti-British activism, refused to accompany him. Alone, Drummond Wolff negotiated an agreement with Abdul Hamid II at the behest of British Foreign Secretary Lord Salisbury, to end Britain’s occupation of Egypt after a three-year period. However, because the agreement would have empowered Britain to reenter Egypt under certain conditions, the French and Russian ambassadors in Istanbul persuaded the Sultan to withdraw his approval. As a consequence, the British occupation of Egypt was greatly prolonged. Years later, Blunt continued to lament that Wolff had made a foolish mistake to refuse Afghani’s assistance, adding that “he would have got his Convention ratified and seceded where he had failed.”[84]

 


[1] Johnson. Initiates of Theosophical Masters, p. 75.

[2] Dreyfuss. Hostage to Khomeini, p. 124.

[3] Homa Pakdamam. Djamal-ed-Din Assad Abadi dit Afghani (Paris, Maisoneuve & Larose, 1969). Cited in Josep Puig Montada. “Al-Afghânî, a Case of Religious Unbelief?” Studia Islamica, 100/101 (2005), p. 208.

[4] Dreyfuss. Hostage to Khomeini, p. 124.

[5] Martin Kramer. Islam Assembled. The Advent of the Muslim Congresses (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 27.

[6] Kedourie. Afghani and ‘Abduh, p. 39.

[7] Ibid.; Keddie. “Religion and Irreligion in Early Iranian Nationalism,” p. 147.

[8] Keddie. “AFGHANI, JAMĀL-AL-DĪN.”

[9] Eminent Mussalmans (Madras: G.A. Natesan & Co., 1926), p. 358.

[10] Keddie. “Religion and Irreligion in Early Iranian Nationalism,” pp. 144–145.

[11] Ibid., p. 203.

[12] Soli Shahvar. The Forgotten Schools: The Baha’is and Modern Education in Iran, 1899–1934 (Tauris Academic Studies), p. 39.

[13] Ibid., p. 206.

[14] Poliakov. The Aryan Myth, p. 208

[15] Elie Kedourie. “Further Light on Afghani.” Middle Eastern Studies, 1: 2 (January, 1965), p. 191.

[16] Ernest Renans. “L’Islamisme et la science.” Discours et Conferences (Paris, 1887), pp. 402-3; cited in Kedourie. “Further Light on Afghani,” p. 191.

[17] Kedourie. Afghani and ‘Abduh, p. 44.

[18] Ibid., p. 45.

[19] “Gaultier de Biauzat Jean-François.” François Wartelle et Albert Soboul (ed.). Dictionnaire historique de la Révolution française (PUF, 2005), p. 493-494.

[20] Kedourie. “Further Light on Afghani,” p. 190.

[21] Kedourie. Afghani and ‘Abduh, p. 40.

[22] Ibid.

[23] Ibid., p. 41.

[24] Ibid., p. 22.

[25] A. Albert Kudsi-Zadeh. “Afghānī and Freemasonry in Egypt.” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 92: 1 (January–March, 1972), p. 30.

[26] Kedourie. Afghani and Abduh, pp. 20-24.

[27] Dreyfuss. Hostage to Khomeini, p. 122.

[28] Karim Wissa. “Freemasonry in Egypt 1798-1921: A Study in Cultural and Political Encounters.” Bulletin, 16:2 (British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, 1989), p. 151.

[29] Keddie. Sayyid Jamal ad-Din “al Afghani”, p. 115.

[30] Ibid., p. 115.

[31] Ibid., p. 100.

[32] Kerourie. Afghani and ‘Abduh, p. 23–24.

[33] A. Albert Kudsi-Zadeh. “Afghānī and Freemasonry in Egypt.” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 92: 1 (January–March, 1972), p. 33.

[34] Homa Pakdaman, DJamal-ed-din Assad Abadi dit Afghani (Paris, 1969), p. 57-8

[35] Rashid Reda. Tarikh al-Ustadh al Imam, Vol. I, p. 75.

[36] Homa Pakdaman, DJamal-ed-din Assad Abadi dit Afghani, (Paris, 1969), p. 57-8

[37] Arthur Goldschmidt. “National Party (Egypt).” Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa. Retrieved from https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/asia-and-africa/middle-eastern-history/national-party

[38] Irene L. Gendzier. “James Sanua and Egyptian Nationalism.” Middle East Journal, 15: 1 (1961), p. 18.

[39] John Ninet. “The Origin of the National Party in Egypt.” Nineteenth Century, XIII (1883), p. 127; cited in Irene L. Gendzier. “James Sanua and Egyptian Nationalism.” Middle East Journal, 15: 1 (1961), p. 19.

[40] Gendzier. “James Sanua and Egyptian Nationalism,” p. 22.

[41] Ibid., p. 22.

[42] Ibid., p. 20.

[43] Matti Moosa. “Ya’qub Sanu’ and the Rise of Arab Drama in Egypt.” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 5: 4 (1974), p. 401–433.

[44] Irene L. Gendzier. “James Sanua and Egyptian Nationalism.” Middle East Journal, 15: 1 (1961), p. 24.

[45] Thomas Mayer. The Changing Past: Egyptian Historiography of the ʻUrabi Revolt, 1882-1983 (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1988).

[46] Wilfrid S. Blunt. Gordon at Khartoum, p. 46; cited in Gendzier. “James Sanua and Egyptian Nationalism,” p. 25.

[47] Ziad Fahmy. Ordinary Egyptians. Creating the Modern Nation through Popular Culture (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), pp. 47–48.

[48] A. Albert Kudsi-Zadeh. “Afghānī and Freemasonry in Egypt.” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 92: 1 (January–March, 1972), p. 33.

[49] Keddie. “Religion and Irreligion in Early Iranian Nationalism,” p. 280.

[50] Keddie. “AFGHANI, JAMĀL-AL-DĪN.”

[51] Hugh Chisholm (ed). “Tewfik Pasha.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 26, 11th ed. (Cambridge University Press, 1911), p. 686.

[52] Kudsi-Zadeh. “Afghānī and Freemasonry in Egypt,” p. 35.

[53] Keddie. “AFGHANI, JAMĀL-AL-DĪN.”

[54] Keddie. “Religion and Irreligion in Early Iranian Nationalism,” p. 280.

[55] Aziz Ahmad. “Sayyid Aḥmad Khān, Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī and Muslim India.” Studia Islamica  13 (1960), p. 56.

[56] Ibid.

[57] Syed Ahmad Khan. Akhuri Mazamin, pp. 32-3; cited in Ahmad. “Sayyid Aḥmad Khān, Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī and Muslim India,” p. 56.

[58] Keddie. “AFGHANI, JAMĀL-AL-DĪN.”

[59] Kramer. Islam Assembled, p. 10.

[60] Ibid., p. 11.

[61] Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt, pp. 66; Kramer. Islam Assembled, p. 11.

[62] Wilfrid Scawen Blunt. My Diaries, 2: 260; cited in Kramer. Islam Assembled, p. 11

[63] Kramer. Islam Assembled, p. 12.

[64] The Times (June 25, 1877); cited in Kramer. Islam Assembled, p. 12–13.

[65] Kramer. Islam Assembled, p. 12.

[66] Blunt. Secret History, 65.

[67] Kramer. Islam Assembled, p. 13.

[68] Ibid., p. 14.

[69] Ibid., p. 14.

[70] Ibid., p. 14.

[71] Johnson. Initiates of Theosophical Masters, p. 81.

[72] “Abder-Rahman Elîsh El-Kebîr,” Wikipedia, French edition, Retrieved from http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abder-Rahman_El%C3%AEsh_El-Keb%C3%AEr

[73] Keddie. “AFGHANI, JAMĀL-AL-DĪN.”

[74] Ibid., p. 197–198.

[75] Henri Rochefort. The Adventures of My Life. English trans. by E.W. Smith and H. Rochefort, Vol. II (London, 1897), pp. 280-281; cited in Keddie. Sayyid Jamal ad-Din “al Afghani”, p. 231.

[76] Kedourie. “Further Light on Afghani,” p. 197.

[77] Ibid., p. 199.

[78] Keddie. “AFGHANI, JAMĀL-AL-DĪN.”

[79] A. Albert Kudsi-Zadeh. “Afghānī and Freemasonry in Egypt.” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 92: 1 (January–March, 1972), p. 35.

[80] R.F. Foster. Lord Randolph Churchill: A Political Life (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), pp. 111, 120.

[81] W. Dockter. “‘A Considerable Effect’: Winston Churchill and Wilfrid S. Blunt’s Legacy. In J. Q. Olmstead (Ed.). Britain in the Islamic World (Britain and the World). (Springer Nature, 2019), p. 128.

[82] Longford. A Pilgrimage of Passion, p. 219.

[83] E.G. Browne. The Persian Revolution of 1905-1909, new impression (London, 1966), p. 403; cited in A. Albert Kudsi-Zadeh. “Afghānī and Freemasonry in Egypt.” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 92: 1 (January–March, 1972), p. 35.

[84] F.O. 60/594, Confidential Dispatch No. 174, dated Cairo, 22 May, 188; cied in A. Albert Kudsi-Zadeh. “Afghānī and Freemasonry in Egypt.” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 92: 1 (January–March, 1972), p. 35.

Divide & Conquer