A History of Islamic Societies

The history of Egypt in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries resembles that of Turkey. Egypt also developed from an Ottoman and Islamic to a national and secular form of society. Its evolution also began with a period of state-managed reform, but its development was diverted by British occupation from 1882 to 1952. British rule cut off the consolidation of an Egyptian military and administrative elite, making a secondary elite of landowners, officials, merchants, and intelligentsia the spokespeople for national independence. These elites, still hampered by British occupation, came to power in 1922 and ruled until 1952. Unable to surmount the dilemmas of governing under foreign rule, divided by nationalist and Islamist political orientations, the liberal elites were removed from power and replaced in 1952 by Arab nationalist military officers who instituted the regime that governed Egypt until the popular revolution in the Spring of 2011.

The nineteenth-century reforming state

Though part of the Ottoman Empire, Egypt retained a separate political and cultural identity. Under Ottoman suzerainty, Egypt was ruled by local Mamluk military factions. Like the rest of the Ottoman Empire, Egypt had a strong religious scholarly (ʿulamaʾ) establishment and Sufi brotherhoods. In the course of the eighteenth century, as Ottoman control weakened, fighting among the Mamluk factions led to the decline of irrigation, excessive taxation, and increasing tribal autonomy and pastoralism. Ottoman weakness exposed Egypt to invasion by Napoleon in 1798, to British counter-intervention, and finally to the appointment of Muhammad ʿAli as governor (1805–48).