The Largest Stable Communities

From the end of the nineteenth to the middle of the twentieth century, the three largest and most stable foreign communities in Egypt were the Turks (sometimes referred to as

‘Ottomans’), the Greeks, and the Italians.

I shall give a historical account of the presence of each of the three communities in in modern Egypt in the following paragraphs.

2.2a The Turkish community

The importance of the Turkish community in Egypt is hardly surprising: Egypt was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire after the Ottoman–Mamluk War of 1516–17. After that, Ottomans ruled Egypt—at least formally—until 1914. Even under the rule of Mehmet Ali, who tried to make Egypt as autonomous as possible from the Ottomans, the ruling elite remained always Turkish (İhsanoğlu 2012: 7). Despite being a minority, Turks

“occupied the highest offices and ranks in both military and civilian life, filling, in the

first years of Muhammad ‘Ali’s reign, all administrative positions down to the middle levels” (İhsanoğlu 2012: 24).

The term ‘Turkish’ has often been used as a synonym of ‘Ottoman’ in Egypt, especially during the reign of Mehmet Ali:

When Egypt was under Mamluk rule, before its conquest by Selim I, the Ottomans were more commonly known as ‘the Rum,’ while the Ottoman sultan was similarly referred to as the ‘sultan of the Rum,’ the Mamluks themselves being known as ‘Turks.’ This nomenclature changed entirely during the reign of Muhammad ‘Ali. The adjective ‘Turkish,’ in a usage that extends from that time up to the present, no longer bears an ethnic or racial meaning but is generally used in a cultural or linguistic sense. In this sense, there were ‘ethnic Turks’ who arrived in the country from Anatolia and Rumelia (the Balkans), as well as other elements who entered the country from Anatolia, the Caucasus, and Rumelia, who belonged, in their general cultural make-up, to ‘Ottoman Turkish’ culture irrespective of their various mother tongues and their racial or ethnic affiliations, and who spoke some form of Turkish (for example, Kurds, Albanians, Bosnians, Circassians, and Georgians). All these racially diverse elements and most of those who had learned and spoke Turkish, the official language of the Ottoman Empire and the language of the ruling class in Egypt, were regarded as ‘Turks’ by the Egyptians, as they were by many European writers on Egypt. It follows that ‘Turkish,’ in Egypt, did not refer to racial origin but in most cases to cultural background, and was used as a general definition for the individual (İhsanoğlu 2012: 21).

Unlike for the Italians and the Greeks (vide infra), there were no historical waves of immigration from Turkey to Egypt. Turks came to Egypt in different periods. Some of them remained for a brief period, others settled down for their entire life.

It is extremely difficult to estimate the number of Turkish-speaking foreigners in Egypt: indeed, while they were often referred to as ‘Ottomans’ in the pre-1923 census, many of them acquired nationality and were therefore not counted as foreigners in the census. Indeed, following the first citizenship law of 1899, all the Ottoman subjects who had settled in Egypt for more than 15 years could claim Egyptian citizenship. In addition, in 1926 the new citizenship law granted Egyptian citizenship to Ottoman subjects resident in Egypt since 1914 (İhsanoğlu 2012: 29).

According to İhsanoğlu, who quotes an estimate from John Bowring’s report to the British government, “the number of Turks who settled in Egypt at the time of the Ottoman conquest was nine thousand; if we include their families, this number may be increased

to thirty-five thousand. Numbers had declined to twenty thousand by the nineteenth century” (İhsanoğlu 2012: 22). Most of the Turks lived in Cairo and Alexandria and, unlike European foreigners, they did not live in separate areas, nor did they establish a separated system of education. They only had two burial places that could be described as ‘Turkish cemeteries’, holding the remains of the Ottoman army members who died for their country in World War I (İhsanoğlu 2012: 22).

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Turks also began to establish charitable associations, particularly between 1890 and 1911, the most prominent being el-Cemiyet el-Hayriye el-islāmbuliye [İslambol Benevolence Society], founded in Cairo in 1890, and the Osmanlı Yukselme ve Kardeşlik Cemiyeti [Ottoman association for Uplift and Benevolence], founded in Alexandria in 1908 (İhsanoğlu 2012: 34). A number of clubs were also founded by the Turkish aristocracy in the same period. The first was founded in 1888 by the Khedive Tawfīq, al-Nādī al-Ḫidīwī [The Khedival Club], open to members of Mehmet Ali family, followed in 1894 by Nādī al-A‘ayān [The Notables’ Club], for Turkish aristocrats not belonging to the family of Mehmet Ali (İhsanoğlu 2012: 34-35).

At the beginning of the twentieth century, ordinary Turks also tried to unite and form associations. This included the Ertuǧrul Osmanlı Kulübü [The Ertuǧrul Ottoman Club]

which aimed “to establish a kind of mutual-assistance league among Ottoman subjects who spoke Turkish and lived in Cairo, and that it also foresaw that Ottoman Turks coming there as visitors and Muslim officers of the Ottoman army should become members”

(İhsanoğlu 2012: 35). It was necessary to read and write Turkish and Arabic to be accepted as a member of the club (İhsanoğlu 2012: 35).

Following the announcement of the Ottoman Constitution of 1908, several clubs were opened: one was the Osmanlı Hürriyet Kulübü [Ottoman Freedom Club], founded in Cairo 1908, whose by-laws stated that its objective was “to provide a meeting place for all Ottoman subjects who have emigrated to Egypt without regard to race or religion”

(İhsanoğlu 2012: 35). Another example was the Osmanlı Kulübü [Ottoman Club], founded in Cairo in 1910, whose name was written in Turkish, Arabic, and Armenian, with the aim of supporting “values of unity and brotherhood among the different elements of the Ottoman empire” (İhsanoğlu 2012: 36).

With the declaration of the Turkish Republic in 1923 and the establishment of diplomatic relations between Turkey and Egypt, “a portion of the Turks resident in Egypt obtained the right to become citizens of the Republic of Turkey, while others took Egyptian citizenship based on the law of 1926” (İhsanoğlu 2012: 36). In 1926 the Turkish community founded the Kahire Türk Cemiyet-I Hayriyesi [Charitable Association of Turks in Cairo], which aimed at supporting and assisting Turkish citizens living in Cairo, including “the establishment in Egypt of national institutions of a purely charitable and human nature, such as schools, hospitals, homes for the elderly, first aid, and so forth”

(İhsanoğlu 2012: 36). Yet none of this really happened. Another association, known in Arabic as al-Ǧam‘iyya al-Ḫayriyya li-l-Atrāk al-Miṣriyyīn and in Turkish as Mısır Türkleri’nin Yardım Birliǧi [Charitable Union of Egyptian Turks], was founded in 1934 to support Turks with Egyptian nationality residing in the country and, most interestingly, to teach “the Turkish language to the younger generations of the Turks” (İhsanoğlu 2012:

37).

The influence of the Turks on Egypt was certainly extensive, in particular during the Khedivate. As İhsanoğlu (2012: 41) underlines:

Manifestations of Turkish culture, in terms of music, dress, food, drink, and lifestyle, gradually started to spread in Egypt among the various classes of the Egyptian populace during the era of the Muhammad ‘Ali dynasty, especially in the major cities.

During this period, the Egyptians and the Ottomans, at least as regards the ruling elite, shared a common ‘Ottoman Egyptian culture’, which included four main aspects:

The learning of the Turkish language and the study of Turkish books in the recently established schools […]. The second was the teaching of the Persian language, which was one of the literary languages of high Ottoman culture. The third was the teaching of calligraphy (according to the Ottoman style) to school pupils from an early age. And the fourth was the passion for Turkish music and the efforts undertaken to promote it both within the palace and in the social circles surrounding it (İhsanoğlu 2012:

37–8).

The cultural impact of Turkish would increase even more with the establishment of the Būlāq Press in 1820: during Mehmet Ali’s reign alone, 253 books in the Turkish language were published in Egypt (İhsanoğlu 2012: 178). Similarly, between 1828 and 1947, a total of 64 Turkish newspapers and magazines were published in the country

Turkish into Arabic, although it should be said that the bulk of these are collections of legislation and administrative and legal regulations, as well as military training books that were published in the two languages (İhsanoğlu 2012: 297).

2.2b The Greek community

While there is evidence of Greek presence in Egypt since antiquity, it was only in the late seventeenth century that the Greek community became stable, when a small number of artisans, merchants, and mercenaries settled in the country (Karanasou 1999: 24). By a hundred years later they had already reached the number of 5,000, mostly concentrated in Cairo, Damietta, Rosetta, and Alexandria. The Greeks were considered part of the local Greek Orthodox millet during the Ottoman Empire, which was headed by the local Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria. However, the millet was at the time mostly constituted by Orthodox Arabs of Syria and Palestine and not by Greeks (Karanasou 1999: 24).

Greeks were also attracted to Egypt under the rule of Mehmet Ali. Some of them obtained very important positions. For example, the merchant Michalis Tossitsas, whose brother was a close friend of Mehmet Ali, became one of his closest advisers. Another Greek, Athanasios Casullis, became the director of the Egyptian mint in Cairo (Kitroeff 1983: 8–9). Most of the Greeks who settled in Egypt during this period came from the Greek mercantile centers of Chios, Epirus, Thessaly, and Macedonia (Karanasou 1999:

25), and they dominated mercantile activities. According to an estimate of 1851, the greater part of the commercial capital in this period was in Greek hands (Karanasou 1999:

25). Some merchants were particularly eminent, like Etienne Zizinia, Jean d’Anastassy and, most importantly, the Tossizza Brothers. In fact, Michel Tossizza was the first Greek consul in Alexandria between 1833 and 1854 (Karanasou 1999: 25).

Alexandrian Greek merchants were the most powerful members of the Greek community at that time. In 1843 they set up a committee to run the Greek school and the Greek hospital in Alexandria. This committee would later transform into an organization that carried the name Koinotis [Community], the first of a long series of Greek communities that were founded in Egypt in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Karanasou 1999: 26).

Greeks were mostly small traders and artisans during the first half of the nineteenth century. They were also the only foreign subjects allowed to become members of

Egyptian guilds. Their principal occupations were tailors, furriers, grocers, carpenters, ship repairers, and constructors. Moreover, we know that around 1,000 Greek slaves were brought to Egypt by the Egyptian army in the course of the Greek Independence War (Karanasou 1999: 27).

The community continued to grow during the second half of the nineteenth century;

by 1897 nearly 40,000 Greeks lived in Egypt and they constituted the country’s largest foreign community (Karanasou 1999: 28). In this period, Greek consulates and sub-consulates were opened and Greek newspapers, schools, churches, and a variety of welfare services were established (Karanasou 1999: 28).

During the 1861–65 cotton boom, Greek merchants were able to increase their profits.

They became not only “the wealthiest people in the Greek community but also among the wealthiest in the country. Among their number were Benachi, Salvago, Rodocanachi, Zerudachi, Casulli and Choremi” (Karanasou 1999: 27). Another activity in which Greeks became particularly involved during this period was moneylending; as a result of the cotton boom, many peasants had to switch from other crops to cotton and needed money to do so. Hence, many Greeks, who had more liquidity available, moved to villages to lend money to peasants and run small retail and grocery shops. It was in this period that

“the predominance of Greeks in small trading and moneylending in the Egyptian interior made the Greek grocer or baqqal a social stereotype” (Karanasou 1999: 27).

While small traders and retailers were the largest social group within the Greek community, many also found “employment in the cotton sector as managers and employees of export companies owned by non-Greeks. Others bought land and cultivated cotton themselves and some of these cultivators introduced several new varieties of cotton” (Karanasou 1999: 28). By the end of the century they became also active in other sectors, such as tanning, beverages, and cigarette manufacturing (Karanasou 1999: 28).

At the same time, workers also arrived from Greece to work in particular on the digging of the Suez Canal. After the inauguration of the Canal, they settled in the new cities of Port Said, Ismā‘īliyya, and Suez and worked either for the Suez Canal Company or in hotels and other services that were mushrooming in the area (Karanasou 1999: 28).

By the turn of the twentieth century, the religious identity of the community became

“on the one hand the increasing influence and involvement of the Greek state in the community’s organization and, on the other, the emergence of a Greek commercial bourgeoisie” (Karanasou 1999: 29). The Greek consulates competed with the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate on a number of aspects, and it became appealing to acquire Greek nationality. Even Greeks who came from territories that were still under Ottoman rule did their best to obtain Greek protection. This, along with the growing emigration from Greece and the expansion of the Greek borders, contributed to increase the numbers of Greek nationals who moved to Egypt. Greek nationals soon outnumbered the proportion of the Greek ra‘āya ²⁰ in the country, which represented a major change in the community (Karanasou 1999: 29). Moreover, the Greek State’s nationalist ideology played a role in this change of the community identity, as the Greek State and the prosperous Greek community living in Egypt promoted the notion that being Greek meant supporting the nation-state and its politics, “thus transcending the prevailing mainstay of Greek identity in Egypt and the rest of the Ottoman Empire, namely the Greek Orthodox religion”

(Karanasou 1999: 30).

The founding of the Ellino-Aigyptiaki Koinotis ton en Alexandria Orthodoxon [the Greek-Egyptian Community of Orthodox Alexandria], the pioneer of secular Greek organizations, definitively challenged the authority of the Patriarchate. The rivalry between the two led to the recognition of the independence of the community in 1863, which became the Greek nationals’ main reference point. While at the beginning the Community admitted not only Greeks but also Orthodox Arabs, this would soon change, and it would later be exclusively for Greek citizens. The name was even changed to Elliniki Koinoties Alexandrias [the Greek Community of Alexandria], with no mention of its “orthodox” identity any longer. In Cairo, a community was established in 1856 called Ellino-Orthodoxos Koinotis Kairou [the Greek-Orthodox Community of Cairo].

This Community was originally under the tutelage of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate.

but later became independent and changed its name to be Elliniki Koinotis Kairou [the Greek Community of Cairo]. It was originally open to all Greeks but, later, it would only accept Greeks with Greek nationality (Karanasou 1999: 31).

20 The term refers, in this context, to the Greeks who were not stated as Greek nationals, but were subjects of other governments, mainly the local Egyptian and Ottoman governments.

The Patriarchate’s power gradually diminished, but never completely disappeared.

Matters of personal status remained within its jurisdiction until 1955. Also, the Patriarchate continued to be the official representative of Greeks without Greek nationality (Karanasou 1999: 31).

Of all foreigners’ communities, during British rule “the Greek community […]

enjoyed its heyday” (Karanasou 1999: 33). Between 1897 and 1907 the number of Greeks had risen by 65%, which constituted the highest increase among the European communities. While the foreign communities in general reached their peak just before World War I, “the number of Greeks was at its greatest in the 1920s, with the addition of the Greeks expelled from Turkey in the aftermath of the Asia minor catastrophe, reaching an estimated 99,793 (Karanasou 1999: 34).²¹

Most of Greeks, like other foreigners, lived in big cities, and particularly in Alexandria, which in 1907 hosted 39% of Greek nationals, while Cairo hosted 31% of them (Karanasou 1999: 34). They were also very active in the Egyptian economy: in 1907, for example, in the cotton trade, banking and industry, “the value of Greek investment was the largest after that of the major European powers (Britain, France and Belgium)” (Karanasou 1999: 35). Cotton represented the major source of the community’s wealth: “the Greeks exported around a quarter of the total amount of exported cotton and a similar proportion of Egyptian cotton expert houses were owned by Greeks” (Karanasou 1999: 35). They were also prominent in the cigarette industry and in many other fields. Karanasou (1999: 36) mentions some of the Greek pioneers in Egypt:

the first aerated-water factory (N. Spathis, 1884); the first brewery (M. &

E. Klonaridis, 1897); the first chocolate factory (G. Paraskevopoulos, 1908); the largest distilleries that produced brandy, rum, whisky and even champagne (Bolanachi, 1884 and Zottos, 1918) and the largest manufacturer of alcohol from sugar cane (Cozzika, 1892); the first lithographic studio and largest paper mill in Egypt before 1914 (I.

Lagoudakis, 1877); the first pottery factory (Christodoulou and Marangakis, 1897) and the largest cement-tile factory (N. Syrigos). The Greek-owned Kafr el-Zayat Cotton Co. (I. D. Zerbinis, 1899) introduced soap-manufacturing from cotton-seed oil, cottonseed cakes for cattle food and cooking fats. Other industries where Greeks were involved were construction, hotels and Nile transport. One of the most pioneering Greeks

21 According to the 1927 census, the number of Greeks, whether nationals or subjects of other governments, actually amounted to 100,044.

was undoubtedly Nestor Gianaclis, not only for his successful ‘Egyptian’

cigarette factor, but also for creating the first Egyptian vineyards on desert land, which produced the first Egyptian wine in 1930.

On the other hand, Kitroeff (1983: 10) reveals a peculiarity of the Greek community in Egypt regarding its social structure:

The social stratification in Egypt, at least until 1952, was very much like a pyramid in structure with a broad base formed by the ‘fellah’ or peasant population and urban workers, a middle part formed by the petty bourgeoisie, and an apex formed by landowners and merchants and, after 1930, industrialists. The social structure of the Europeans, including the Greeks, looked more like a diamond with a small proportion of urban workers at the base, a large petite bourgeoisie in the middle, and an apex of wealthy businessmen.

The cotton exporters and factory owners, who were also community leaders, formed the top of the Greek social ladder (Karanasou 1999: 37). The wealth of these merchants was reflected not only in their lifestyles and their richly furnished villas but also in the amount of money they invested in the community, in Egypt as in Greece (Kitroeff 1983:

9). They were usually separated from the rest of the Greek community and constituted part of the cosmopolitan haute bourgeoisie. They married only within the Greek community though (Kitroeff 1983: 9). The Greek petite bourgeoisie was made up of grocers, food-sellers, shopkeepers and, to a lesser degree, office clerks. At the bottom there was no more than the 5% of Greeks in Egypt who were manual workers. They were mainly to be found working on the Suez Canal or in the cigarette industry, construction, or urban transport. Because of their training, they typically received higher wages and had a higher living standard in comparison to native labor force (Karanasou 1999: 38).

The Greeks had a highly developed education system in Egypt: it is enough to say that there were 64 Greek schools in Egypt between 1936 and 1947, which educated the large

The Greeks had a highly developed education system in Egypt: it is enough to say that there were 64 Greek schools in Egypt between 1936 and 1947, which educated the large