1801
{1215/1216 A.H. - MAY 14}
MUSLIM HISTORY
1801 marked the beginning of armed hostilities between the fledgling
In
1801, the Bey of Tripoli , Yusuf Qaramanli,
insisted on an increase of payment of safe conduct money by the United States Tripoli
demanded that the American ships pay more tribute (a lump sum quarter of a
million dollar up front payment and an annual tribute of $20,000) to the
pirates of the Barbary States (Morocco , Algiers ,
Tunis , and Tripoli
On May
14, 1801, Pasha Yusuf Qaramanli enraged at not receiving the extra tribute,
declared war on the United States
by the traditional method of sending a group of soldiers to the American
consulate in Tripoli
In
response, the United States dispatched a squadron of ships under the command of
Commodore Richard Dale to the Mediterranean. The American squadron (consisting
of the USS President, Philadelphia,
Essex, and Enterprise) then
proceeded to establish a blockade of Tripoli on July 17.
On
August 1, near Malta , after
a sharply fought engagement that lasted three hours and cost the Tripolitan
forces 20 killed and 30 wounded, the American schooner Enterprise
captured the 14 gun Barbary corsair Tripoli Enterprise
This
American victory established a long tradition for battleships named Enterprise
From the Halls of Montezuma,
To the shores of Tripoli
We fight our country’s battles
On the land as on the sea.
*****
The Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire
*A treaty was finalized between France and the Ottoman
Empire under which Egypt was
restored to Turkey
*****
Asia
*In Iraq ,
the Wahhabis conquered and destroyed the Shi‘a pilgrimage sites of Najaf and Karbala
The British displaced the French in Egypt
in 1801, ending France ’s
threat to Britain ’s
interests in India . This eliminated Britain ’s
need for an alliance to counter French power in the region, further
marginalizing Arabia in the minds of the
European powers. However, this neglect
left the Saudi-Wahhabi forces unopposed externally in their efforts to
establish regional dominance. With peace
prevailing along the border between the Hijaz and Najd ,
in 1801-1802, Saud, the son of ‘Abd al-Aziz, set out for an attack that would
have large repercussions and, for a time, turn the tide against the
Wahhabis. The objective was the Ottoman
controlled town of Karbala , in what is now southern
Iraq .
The Wahhabi were determined to take their battle for the faith’s purity to the
scene of the genesis of its split. The
exact date of the attack has been disputed, but many scholars believe it
occurred in 1801.
It must be
remembered that Hussein, the son of ‘Ali and the grandson of the Prophet
Muhammad, was killed during an internecine Muslim war, after trying to take
Kufah in the plain of Karbala. Hussein was subsequently buried in Karbala . After erecting a shrine on the site itself,
the followers of ‘Ali – the Shi‘a – built a town named after Imam Hussein. The town of Imam Hussein was devastated by the Caliph
Mutawakkil in the year 851. It was then
rebuilt by the rulers of Persia
after they had introduced the religion of the Shi‘a among their subject
states. Thereafter Shah Isma‘il, the
founder of the Safavid dynasty, ordered a mosque to be built over the tomb of
Imam Hussein, which was later embellished by his successors Shah Abbas and
Nadir Shah. Adorned with gifts from Persia , this tomb
became a place of worship and reverence for the Shi‘a.
The town of Imam Hussein lies east of
Hilla. In the early 1800s, it was a small town of about seven to eight thousand
inhabitants. It was governed by a mutasallem who was sent every year by
the pasha of Baghdad . Soldiers in the latter’s pay and a corps of
Persians made up the garrison which guarded the treasures of the mosque. These
guards, who were almost all Rafdis, as well as the people of Imam Hussein, held
‘Ali in great veneration. Every year
they celebrated the feast of ‘Ali, and made a pilgrimage to his shrine. ‘Abd al-Aziz, the Wahhabi leader, waited
until this feast to storm the town.
On April 20, 1801,
the day of the pilgrimage to the shrine, when the town was nearly deserted,
‘Abd al-Aziz executed his plan. Twelve
thousand Wahhabis mounted on six thousand dromedary camels suddenly appeared
and overcame the token resistance they encountered, although what resistance
there was aroused their wrath sufficiently for them to apply to the letter the
intolerant precepts of their creed. All
the men who were found in the town were slaughtered indiscriminately. Pregnant
women were themselves disemboweled, and their entrails were slaughtered so that
not a single male would survive.
The toll of the
victims was counted at three thousand.
The plunder was immense. The
imam’s shrine was covered with a carpet inlaid with pearls. Some were of an outstanding size. This treasure, as well as all those which had
been brought from Persia, was plundered by the Wahhabis before they destroyed
the mosque itself, pulling down its minarets and stripping the dome, whose
gold-painted copper they had mistaken for gold leaf. Two hundred camels carried the spoils back to
Diriyah. ‘Abd al-Aziz completed this
immensely profitable excursion without losing a single man.
The news of the
sack of Imam Hussein caused consternation in Baghdad
and soon spread to the court of the king of Persia . Fath ‘Ali Shah bitterly reproached Suleiman
Pasha for the feebleness of his actions in the Diriyah expedition and
threatened to send an army against the Wahhabis if he did not immediately act
to destroy them. Suleiman Pasha made
fine promises. Large numbers of troops
were raised in his pashalik, and for
a long time they threatened ‘Abd al-Aziz with a new expedition. Further injunctions from the Ottoman Porte
increased the scale of the preparations, but these proved to be without
effect. The only measures taken
demonstrated Suleiman’s own lack of faith in the efficacy of such threats. Great riches still lay in the mosque of
‘Ali. These were removed and laid upon
the tomb of Mashad Imam Musa in order to protect them from a fresh Wahhabi
attack.
*****
*The Englishman Sir John Malcolm of the British East India Company concluded a treaty that called for an Iranian-British military alliance, and the right of unlimited trade in
*French troops evacuated Egypt
*****
Czar
Alexander I of Russia
announced the annexation of the kingdom
of Georgia and George XIII, Regent of Georgia , recognized the Russian decision instead
of accepting the traditional suzerainty of Persia Black
Seas Indian Ocean . The southwest drive resumed in a more
sustained and systematic manner under Catherine II (r.1762-1796), and Russia Georgia
To
secure a strategic hold on Georgia ,
the Russian high command of the Caucasus extended its control over the
Azerbaijani khanates eastward to the Caspian coast and southward to the Araxes River Iran Russia Russia
most of the Azerbaijan north
of the Araxes River Araxes
River as the boundary that permanently
divides Azerbaijan
*****
Africa
North Africa, Egypt and Sudan
*British and Ottoman troops under William Keith made an amphibious landing at Aboukir in French occupied
*The French were defeated by the British and Turks at Alexandria
*Yusuf Qaramanli declared war on the United States
*****
*The Tripolitan War began between the United States and the Barbary state of Tripoli (modern day Libya )
after Tripoli insulted the United States Tripoli ’s
Barbary pirates.
As the Hafsid rulers of North
Africa attempted to recover from the political, economic, and social crises
that had shaken their domains in the fourteenth century, they found themselves
hemmed in by European military and commercial domination of the central
Mediterranean basin. To counter
widespread attacks on Muslim shipping, the Hafsids encouraged North African
seamen not only to engage enemy warships but also to conduct raids of their own
against European merchant vessels. The
Europeans’ inability to check the undeclared war that ensued during the 1400s
added to the Hafsids’ prestige among their fellow Muslims. It also added to their income, for although
the corsairs … the Barbary pirates … operated independently of the state, the
treasury took a share of the profits from the sale of captured ships and
cargoes and from the ransoms paid to secure the release of prisoners.
Early in the sixteenth century Spain , flushed with its victories over the last
Muslim states in Iberia ,
attempted to carry the Reconquista into Africa and eliminate the Barbary corsairs in the process. These campaigns met with only partial
success. The Spaniards did make some
gains in the Maghrib, imposing a virtual protectorate over the emaciated
Hafsids from 1535 until 1574. However,
they drove several corsairs, including Khair al-Din Barbarossa and Darghut, to
seek help from the Ottoman Empire .
After the Ottoman conquest of North Africa , its new rulers identified themselves even
more closely with the corsairs than had the Hafsids. The pashas, and the deys and beys who
followed them, could hardly have done otherwise. They could not depend on a steady flow of
taxes from the interior and were ill-equipped, as a result of the centuries of
European commercial domination, to foster peaceful maritime trade. Sailors from Ottoman lands in the eastern
Mediterranean, immigrants from Andalusia, and Christian renegades figured
prominently among the leaders of the corsair enterprise during its golden age
in North Africa in this era, the Barbary
“pirates” epitomized greed, cruelty, and terror. However, from a North African point of view,
the corsair raids were not piracy but, as they had been from their inception,
legitimate belligerent acts that provided the only mechanism for Muslims to
acquire a share of the lucrative Mediterranean commerce from which the more
powerful European navies and merchants had excluded them.
Political, economic, and social
upheavals throughout the continent prevented the European states from
forcefully addressing the corsair threat until the latter half of the
seventeenth century. In 1662, England and Holland
mounted a joint naval expedition that imposed on the bey a treaty protecting
their merchant vessels, while France
negotiated commercial treaties with the North African rulers in 1665, 1672, and
1685. The concurrent deterioration of
the Muradid dynasty diminished its capacity to resist such European overtures.
The agreements did not end corsair
activity, but they did pave the way for its gradual subordination to more
customary forms of commerce. The volume
of trans-Mediterranean trade increased in the 1700s but in the continuing
absence of a North African merchant fleet most goods still moved in European
ships. Raids persisted, albeit on a
considerably reduced scale. Vessels from
the smaller European states and after its independence the United States
provided the easiest and most frequently attacked targets.
A general resurgence of corsair
attacks occurred while Europe was preoccupied
with the Napoleonic Wars. At the end fo
those hostilities, the powers took steps to eliminate the corsairs once and for
all. A British fleet bombarded Tunis in 1816 and after a second show of force three
years later the bey acceded to the demands of the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle
and renounced maritime raiding.
Nonetheless, North African corsairs – Barbary
pirates – engaged in a brief spurt of activity during the Greek Revolution of
the 1820s. It was not until the
establishment of a European presence in the Maghrib, with the French occupation
of Algeria in 1830, that the
Barbary corsairs totally vanished from the
Mediterranean scene.
Successor in July 1800 to General
Kleber as governor of Egypt
on behalf of Napoleon Bonaparte, Menou was a Muslim convert who declared Egypt to be a
French colony. His conversion did not
endear him to the French, nor his declaration of Egypt ’s colonial status to the
Egyptians. As an administrator and
general he was unable to restore order fully or to meet the British and Ottoman
challenge. This began in March 1801 and
resulted in the British and Ottoman capture of Rosetta, followed by an advance
on the Delta. Meantime, an Ottoman force
advanced against the French overland from Syria . To meet this two-pronged attack the defense
of Cairo was left in the hands of General
Belliard, while Menou himself advanced with his troops to Alexandria and the coast. Belliard, faced with the spread of plague of
Cairo, local resistance and the prospect of heavy fighting, surrendered. Menou was then left isolated in Alexandria . His own surrender followed, and by October
1801 the French had withdrawn from Egypt .
*****
*The American schooner Enterprise captured the fourteen gun Barbary
corsair Tripoli
After
a sharply fought engagement that lasted three hours and cost the enemy 20
killed and 30 wounded, the American schooner Enterprise captured the
Barbary corsair Tripoli Tripoli Malta
On
May 14, Yusuf Qaramanli declared war on the United
States by the traditional method of sending a group of
soldiers to the American consulate in Tripoli Tripoli
*****
*French troops departed from
*****
*The French surrendered
Napoleon Bonaparte landed in Alexandria in July 1798
at the head of a French Expeditionary Force, accompanied by a group of
scientists and scholars who were to conduct a major study of the country. He justified his invasion as an attempt to
support the Ottomans in Egypt
(without, however, informing the Ottoman Sultan) against the anarchy inflicted
by the Mamelukes, two of whom, Murad and Ibrahim Bey, were in power in Cairo . Napoleon, who obviously envisaged French
control of the country as permanent, established a series of Diwans
(consultative councils on the Ottoman mode) in the cities held by the
French. Egypt was divided into sixteen
military districts with French military governors working through local officials.
The British responded to the
French advance by sending a fleet under Nelson to Abu Qir
in August 1798, which sank the French fleet.
The Ottomans declared war the next month. Napoleon’s attempt to extend his conquest to Syria in 1799 was halted at Acre
by the Ottoman commander Jazzar Pasha, with British assistance. Napoleon also had to confront the active
hostility of the Mamelukes, in bitter exile in Upper Egypt, and a revolt by
Muslims in Cairo ,
which was brutally suppressed. The
French meanwhile were facing administrative and financial difficulties with
their occupation.
Napoleon left Egypt just over
a year after his arrival, turning power over to General Kleber. Faced with an impossible military situation,
Kleber attempted to negotiate a convention with the British in January 1800,
but the rejection of this convention by the British, communicated to him by
Admiral Keith, led Kleber reluctantly to reopen hostilities. He was assassinated in June 1800, whereupon
General Menou was put in charge.
Menou advanced north to meet an
Ottoman army, which was supported by British reinforcements in March 1801,
leaving General Compte Belliard in Cairo . Beset by a widespread outbreak of plague and
local resistance, General Belliard was forced to capitulate, and eventually
Menou, defending Alexandria ,
accepted terms. The French departed from
Egypt
by October.
Despite the brevity and
unpopularity of the French occupation of Egypt (and their nearly continuous
involvement in military challenges to their rule) the French made a strong
impact there. The organization and
equipment of the French troops and their training, artillery, and general level
of performance were noted by the more astute Mameluke and Ottoman officers, one
of whom, the Albanian Muhammad Ali, took power in Egypt four years later,
deeply committed to the modernization of the Egyptian army on European
lines. The cultural impact produced
during this short invasion was also considerable. The scholars accompanying the expedition
staffed the Institut de l’Egypte, giving Egyptian scholars for the first time a
broad exposure to all aspects of European culture while the French collected
information on Egypt . The Institut also set up the first Arabic
language printing press.
The French invasion in every sense
marked the beginning of a period of revolutionary change in Egypt , with the rejoining of Egypt to the
world outside its borders and the awakening of European interest in the
country.
*****
*Murad Bey, one of the Mameluke duumvir ruling
*****
*Between 1801 and 1805, a power struggle ensued between the Mamelukes, the Ottoman governor and the Albanian brigade of Muhammad ‘Ali.
The
Mameluke dynasty was formed by an aristocracy of white slaves. The Mameluke slaves had, by definition,
limited rights to transfer their positions and their wealth to their children,
thus preventing them from creating hereditary dynasties. However, with the establishment of the
Mameluke dynasty of Egypt
The
Mamelukes rose to power from having become the strongest and best organized organization
in Egypt
It
took the Mamelukes only a decade to formalize power, of which the
re-establishment of the caliphate in Cairo Mecca , Medina , and Jerusalem Cairo
Among
the main achievements of the Mameluke period was the development of historical
writing. Nevertheless, the times did not
allow serious deviations from the standard religious science which ultimately
affected Ibn Taimiya and his attempts to cleanse Islam of superstition and
foreign accretions. As Baghdad
had been razed by the Mongols only a few years after the beginning of their
era, Cairo
The
Mamelukes never managed to develop a clear system of who should take over the
sultan throne, when the old sultan died.
The fundamental rule of no transferring of power to children, was broken
numerous times in the Bahri period. In
general, it was power that decided who should become the new sultan, allowing
much destructive friction between Mameluke groups. However, the principle remained that the
sultan always came from the same group, first Bahri, then Burji. Some sultans did, however, succeed in taming
frictions and were able to establish stable state structures. This stability was always in jeopardy when
the sultan died.
The
golden age of the Mameluke period lasted from 1250 until 1350. This was a period of relative good living
standards, good relations with foreign powers and peaceful relations between
peoples inside the state. The next 170
years or so was a period of setbacks, economical problems, military defeats and
loss of territory.
The
Mamelukes did not disappear when their dynasty was replaced by Ottoman
suzerainty in 1517. They stayed on as
the leading class in the Egyptian society, and in the 17th century
they won back actual power in the country, and would keep this for about 200
years. During this period, they were
replenished by purchases made from slave markets.
*****
*Between
1801 and 1805, the United States navy destroyed the navy of the Qaramanli of
Tripolitania (Libya) in retaliation for piracy.
In
1801, the Bey of Tripoli insisted on an increase
of payment of safe conduct money by the United States United
States dispatched a naval squadron to the Mediterranean . As
a consequence, four years of war erupted between the United
States and the Qaramanli – the rulers of Tripolitania .
The Qaramanli were a family of Turkish
origin, several members of whom governed Tripolitania ,
Libya
The
Qaramanli dynasty was a Turkish dynasty founded by the original Qaramanli,
Ahmed Bey, which controlled Ottoman Tripolitania and, intermittently, Cyrenaica
and Fezzan , from 1711 to 1835. Ahmed Bey had
been appointed to a subprovincial administrative position and took advantage of
disorders within the Ottoman military to usurp power. Efforts by Sultan Ahmed III to install a new
governor were rebuffed, and Ahmed won recognition as pasha by 1722.
From
this point to the end of the century, two Qaramanli successors, first Ahmed’s
son Mehmed (r. 1745-1754) and then Mehmed’s son Ali (r. 1754-1793), obtained
recognition of their control over Tripolitania.
They gained even broader authority from their ability to suppress local
uprisings in neighboring Cyrenaica and the Fezzan . Apparently this ability was based on
different sources of military support for the Qaramanlis, including remaining
imperial Janissary units as well as mercenary forces of diverse nationalities.
At the same time, Tripoli
Already
under Ahmed Pasha, efforts had been made to secure trade relations with
European powers. France and England,
specifically, signed several bilateral agreements with Tripoli Tripoli Tripoli Tripoli based piracy,
particularly from neighboring Italian states and, most notably in 1800, the United States
It
was factors such as these that gradually weakened Qaramanli control. In 1790, the assassination of Ali Pasha’s
heir apparent precipitated a succession struggle. Two sons and a total outsider from Algiers Tunis Tripoli France a formal treaty in 1830, soon after the
French occupied the Algiers France ’s advance into Algeria
After
Istanbul failed to obtain Britain Britain
*****
Western Africa
*****
Notable
Births
*Ali ibn Khalifa, the Qa’id of the Naffat, was born.
Ali
ibn Khalifa (1801-1884) was the Qa’id of the Naffat, a tribe from the region between Sfax and Gabes in Tunisia. With beylical rule collapsing in the summer
of 1881, he organized resistance against the invading French forces. Ali’s hopes of Ottoman support did not
materialize, nor was he able to persuade the settled communities of his region
to join the struggle. By the end of the
year, French troops had defeated Ali’s warriors and driven them into Tripolitania .
There he and his followers proved an embarrassment to the Ottoman
provincial authorities. Wishing to avoid
a conflict with France , they
urged Ali and his supporters to accept the pardon offered by the protectorate
government and return to Tunisia
*****
*Amjad Ali Shah, a King of Oudh, is believed to have been born in this year.
Amjad Ali Shah (b. c. 1801 – d. February 13, 1847) was the fourth King of Oudh from May 17, 1842 to February 13, 1847.
Amjad Ali Shah was the son of Muhammad Ali Shah. Muhammad Ali Shah had made every effort to ensure that the heir apparent received an excellent education and, therefore, entrusted Amjad to the company of religious scholars, which instead of making him an intelligent ruler made him a devout Muslim. Thus, he became the most deeply religious, circumspect and abstinent ruler of Oudh.
Amjad Ali Shah began to reign in May 1842. By this time the British Government had become so powerful in Oudh that it was searching for a way to seize it. Amjad Ali Shah was of a helping nature, very polite and well mannered.
Due to Amjad Ali Shah’s abstainism, the system of administration set up by Muhammad Ali Shah became completely disorganized.
Amjad Ali Shah constructed Iron Bridge over the river Gomti and constructed a metal road from Lucknow to Kanpur which still follows the same route.
Amjad Ali Shah also built Hazratganj, the great European style market.
The great Aminabad Bazar and a Serai at Kanpur road were constructed by his minister Amin-ud-Daula.
Amjad Ali Shah also constructed the Shrines of Syedna Muslim and Hani, at Kufa.
Amjad died due to cancer on February 13, 1847 at the age of 47 years. He was buried at Imambara Sibtainabad in the western part of Hazratganj, Lucknow. He was succeeded by his son Wajid Ali Shah.
*****
*İbrahim Sarim Pasha (1801–1853), an Ottoman statesman, was born. He was Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire from April 29, 1848 until August 12, 1848.
*****
*Rifa’a
Rafi Tahtawi, a member of the liberalizing element within the Egyptian ‘ulama’,
was born.
Rifa’a Rafi Tahtawi (1801-1873) was a
member of the liberalizing element within the Egyptian ‘ulama’ (Islamic
religious and legal scholars). Tahtawi studied with Shaykh Hasan al-Attar at
al-Azhar and was influenced by Attar’s description of his experiences with the
French expedition to Egypt Egypt
Tahtawi was appointed Imam (spiritual
counselor or guide) to the new Egyptian army and spent five years in France
*****
Notable Deaths
*Murad Bey, a Mameluke ruler of Egypt, died.
With
Ibrahim Bey, Murad Bey ruled Egypt from the death of their master,
Abu’dh-Dhahab, in 1775. Ibrahim took the
title of ‘Shaykh al-Balad,” which conferred nominal superiority on him within
the Duumvir, but Murad’s character more than balanced this. Murad and Ibrahim’s control of Egypt Cairo Cairo Upper
Egypt .
Murad
and Ibrahim proved unable to defeat the ‘Alawiyya in a series of campaigns, and
in 1781 Murad ceded to them a large area in Upper Egypt . He then turned against Ibrahim and expelled
him from his office and from Cairo Egypt
Murad
was twice defeated by the French during their invasion of Egypt in 1798 and was forced to retreat whilt
Ibrahim fled to Syria Upper Egypt in the
Spring of 1800 and defeated the Ottoman forces under Dervish Pasha. Murad died one year later during a widespread
outbreak of plague.
*****
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