In the era of the Ottoman Empire, a man named "Ibrahim Katkhuda" reached the position of Sheikh al-Balad.. That position was extremely dangerous.. and many aspired to it.. It was the second-highest position after the Ottoman governor in Cairo.. "Katkhuda" had a Mamluk he treated as an adopted son, named "Ali".. Later we will know him as "Ali Bey al-Kabir"...
"Ali" was one of the best Mamluks of "Ibrahim Katkhuda", and the strongest, most chivalrous and most courageous of them.. So "Ibrahim" manumitted him when he was 20 years old.. and granted him some administrative powers and authorities.. So "Ali" used to roam the roads and strike the hands of the bullying, bribed Turkish night watchmen.. and that made him a beloved, accepted figure among the ordinary Egyptians.. And after two years.. "Ali" was promoted to the rank of "amir".
At the same time, in Upper Egypt there was a man emerging on the scene for the first time, after his father "Yusuf" had grown old.. and his movement had become limited.. So he took charge of affairs.. and gathered the tribes and families.. and formed a small army of 5,000 Upper Egyptians.. and he sat waiting.. until he was reassured that his men were of one heart.. and then he took permission from his father and his elder, "Yusuf bin Seba".. and went to the Ottoman divan in "Abu Tig" in southern Asyut with his men.. and they beat everyone in it over the head with their clubs.
Two years passed.. and the year 1751 came.. and the Ottoman Empire suddenly noticed.. that no tax or tribute was arriving from Upper Egypt.. So the Ottoman governor in Cairo sent a delegate of his to look into the situation.. But the delegate never returned at all.. so he sent another delegate.. who disappeared like his predecessor.. So the matter was reported to the Ottoman Empire in Istanbul.. and it ordered him to send a military battalion from the Ottoman garrison stationed in Cairo.. to inspect the situation in Upper Egypt.
The Ottoman ship moved along the course of Egypt's great Nile.. and advanced without problems.. and stopped several times on its journey.. inspecting the Ottoman divans along its way.. and then it reached "Qarman Island" in Sohag.. and they anchored opposite it.
And on 29 November.. of the year 1751.. the Ottoman soldiers were on the banks of the Nile lighting fires to warm themselves.. and exchanging jokes along with tobacco smoke.. when they were surprised by "Hammam", and behind him thousands of Upper Egyptians.. attacking the camp with clubs and swords.
But the Ottoman forces, despite that, gathered themselves and organized quickly.. and formed their formations to confront "Hammam's" army.
A small army of Upper Egyptians, armed with primitive weapons.. nothing beyond clubs, swords and single-shot hunting rifles.
But the Ottoman battalion commander overlooked a point of the utmost importance.. that this was "Hammam's" own land.. and therefore he knew every inch of it.. and that he knew how to move better under the cover of darkness.. and that he held the initiative in the attack.. meaning he was well prepared.
And the small army of Upper Egypt, led by "Hammam bin Yusuf", engaged the Ottoman battalion.. in a short battle.. that ended with the Ottomans' heads either smashed by clubs.. or severed by swords.. and the silt on the banks of the Nile slowly drank their blood... And the battalion disappeared with the very ship that had carried it, completely without a trace, that night.
And this time the Ottoman Empire sent a military brigade from Istanbul.. of ten thousand soldiers.. to look into the matter.. and control the situation.. after it became certain that there was some kind of rebellion.
And this time the Ottoman army reached "Abu Tasht" on the borders of the city of "Farshut".. and there the aged "Yusuf bin Seba" came out to it, leaning on his staff with one hand and on the shoulder of his son "Hammam" with the other.. and behind them their men.. and he met the commander of the Ottoman army.. and informed him of the new situation.. which was, in short, that "come on, son, you and he get out of here.. no Ottoman state, no governor, no nothing.. no tribute, no state, no nonsense of any kind.. there is a state of Upper Egypt from here on".
"Alright, good people, you are just a few Upper Egyptians, no match for the mighty Ottoman army that defeated Austria.. and we will slaughter you one by one".. So "Yusuf's" reply was that "never mind, later.. come on, get out of here.. and take these barefoot Ottoman soldiers with you".
And the commander of the Ottoman army found no alternative but to fight "Hammam".. so he gathered his men.. and attacked "Farshut" that very night.. and he was astonished that the edge of the city was calm and empty.. so his soldiers prepared with sniper rifles.. and advanced weapons.. to turn Farshut into a pile of ash.. and to enjoy its women.. and to capture Sheikh "Yusuf" and his son "Hammam".. and their men who fought with primitive cold weapons, and ship them to Istanbul bound in chains.
And while the Ottomans were advancing toward the heart of Farshut.. "Hammam" and his men attacked without any warning.. and the Ottoman commander noticed a terrifying point he had completely overlooked.. which is that "Hammam" had seized the weapons of the previous battalion.. .. The battalion that had come to Upper Egypt before.. meaning he now had advanced Ottoman weapons in his possession.. and this was a point he had not taken into account, and he paid a very dear price for it.. because he was defeated at "Hammam's" hands in an overwhelming, terrifying defeat.. and seven thousand of the Ottomans died.. and 500 were taken prisoner.. and the rest fled north.. while a thousand of "Hammam's" men were martyred.
And this time, with the Ottomans fleeing.. "Hammam" chased them.. and kept after them as far as "Sahil Salim" in Asyut.. and there he stopped.. and let whoever of them fled, flee.. and he declared the independence of this land.. from "Sahil Salim".. to the border of Sudan.. from the Ottoman Empire.
And the remnants of the Ottoman army returned to Cairo with the black news to the governor.. and the news spread like wildfire.. and a new popular leadership began in Egypt, called "Sheikh of the Arabs Hammam"...
And in the lands that "Hammam" entered up to "Sahil Salim".. he seized all the weapons he found in the Ottoman armory.. and seized the divans.. and ran them for his own account.. and lifted from people's shoulders the Ottoman taxes and tribute and the marriage and divorce tax.. and began to found his state.. the state of "Hammam" in Upper Egypt.. which became independent of the Ottoman Empire for the first time.. after more than two hundred years since the Battle of Ridaniya.
And with the spread of "Hammam's" fame.. men migrated to him from the far north in Alexandria, to the far south in Nubia.. and joined his army.. and mothers pushed forward their children who had reached the age of ten or more.. to fight in "Hammam's" ranks.
And at the same time.. Russia attacked the Ottoman Empire once again and occupied the whole of Ukraine.. so the Ottoman Sultan "Mahmud I" was torn between the great problem in Egypt.. and the Russians.. and his army was very strong at this stage.. but he did not want to fight on two fronts.. so "Mahmud I" went to England to ask for help against the Russians.. but England refused because its army was exhausted and would not be able to help him.
And the English army was exhausted.. because before this time Europe was emerging from a terrifying meat grinder.. called the "War of the Austrian Succession".. and this happened because of the death of the Austrian Emperor "Charles VI".. because he bequeathed the throne to his daughter "Maria Theresa".. so she became queen of Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia, archduchess of Austria and duchess of Parma.. and canon law prevented women from holding rule or inheriting the throne.. so many princes and kings rejected "Maria's" succession.. and the war began with an attack by the King of Prussia "Frederick II" on Austria.. and the "Holy Alliance" fell apart.. and France and Spain joined "Frederick".. while England and Holland joined the side of "Maria Theresa".
At this time.. France went to the strongest army in the region after the reforms of the "Koprulu" family that had set it back on its feet.. the Ottoman army.. asking for support.. come fight with us.. But England went to it as well.. and told it to stay neutral and you have a guarantee that Austria will not again touch your lands.. and you will have as much Austrian and English weaponry as you wish after the war.. So the Ottoman Empire leaned toward the English offer.. and stood watching.. and after the war ended.. England did indeed send it advanced rifles and artillery.. and Holland flooded it with tobacco.
When England refused to help "Mahmud", he went to France.. and it of course refused because he had accepted the English offer in the War of the Austrian Succession.. so he decided to postpone "Hammam's" problem a little.. until he saw his crisis with the Russians.. but he fortified Cairo fiercely.. for fear that it would fall into "Hammam's" hands.
In the year 1754 "Mahmud I" died and they brought out from one of the "Safavid cages" his brother "Osman III".. and he had been transformed in the cage into an almost mad dervish.. so he sat doing nothing at all.. neither fighting Russia.. nor fighting "Hammam".. and he spent his term with his mind wandering entirely in the kingdom of kunafa.. He was the first caliph and Ottoman sultan and commander of the faithful.. distinguished by being as good as nothing at all.
His only achievement is that he issued a new coin.. bearing the name "Islambol".. by which the capital was called.. meaning "the country in which Islam spreads".. This name would later be distorted into Istanbul.. and he died in October, of the year 1757 AD.. of lung cancer from excessive smoking.. and had history not preserved for us the cause of his death.. I would have imagined he died of boredom from sheer emptiness...
"Mustafa III" came in his place.. who found that during the reign of "Osman III", that wise reign which was as if it never happened.. Russia had already crept into the lands of the Ottoman Empire.. so he decided to devote himself a little to the Russian danger.. and appointed "Ragheb Pasha" as grand vizier for it.. and began fighting them.
And because neither England nor France would help him.. he went and brought a French expert named "Francois Baron de Tott".. appointed him military adviser.. and the latter began trying to restore relations with France gradually.
Mind you, they always tell you "the Ottomans were against the Crusader foreigners, you lot".. in fact no one in history allied with those Crusaders and bought weapons from them and made treaties with them.. as much as the Ottoman Empire did.
And at the same time.. "de Tott" went to develop the cannon foundries.. and arm the army and make it stronger and better.. and he established special schools.. to graduate artillery officers, general staff officers and naval officers acquainted with the methods of modern warfare.. and he made a school especially for the navy.. whose first class graduated.. after one year.. with sufficient knowledge and outstanding ability.. that enabled the Ottomans to defeat the Russian fleet.. and recover half of Ukraine.. and retake the island of "Lemnos", which the Russians had occupied.. in order to besiege Istanbul through it.
And "Hammam" in Upper Egypt.. had founded an almost real state.. with an army, security men, divans, schools, a treasury and a budget...
The Ottoman Empire did not intend to stay silent.. this was a terrifying insult.. it shook its prestige across the whole world and made the Russians insolent toward it.. so "Mustafa III" sent "Hammam" another army.. of 20,000 soldiers.. "Hammam" lured them into the rugged, terrifying mountains of "Abu Diyab" in Qena governorate.. and buried them beneath its rocks.. in the year 1761.
And here the warships armed with artillery moved against "Hammam" from Istanbul.. cleaving the course of the Nile.. and headed toward him to pound Upper Egypt down on his head.. and this was a weapon "Hammam" lacked and had none of. And the Ottoman ships were reinforced with units from the Ottoman fleet for supply, including troop carriers.. to transport nearly fifty thousand soldiers.. half of them from the terrifying Janissary forces.. in the year 1762.
And at the same time.. "Ibrahim Katkhuda's" position as Sheikh al-Balad was vacant.. after he had met his Lord a while earlier.. and his men had gathered around "Ali Bey al-Kabir".. who gathered more men around him.. and built a not insignificant military force.. and then rose to the position of "Sheikh al-Balad" in Cairo.. in the year 1763.
And in the south.. the Ottoman naval troop carriers advanced across the Nile for the third time, supported by artillery ships.. and carried out a successful land landing of fifty thousand Ottoman soldiers in Upper Egypt.. they advanced across the land without any resistance at all.. and besieged Farshut from the south.. and were almost setting up their camp.. had "Hammam" not fallen upon them himself.. and the army of Upper Egypt met, with ten thousand men, the Ottoman army coming from Istanbul, numbering 50,000 soldiers.. and the Ottomans discovered once again an unpleasant point.. which is that "Hammam" had allowed them to advance all that way.. and had lured them very far from the range of the Ottoman ships' artillery.. and had completely stripped them of artillery cover and its firepower.. The war was now man to man.
And in the man-to-man war between an Ottoman and an Upper Egyptian.. the result is decided and does not need an expert of the caliber of "Napoleon Bonaparte" to predict it.. The Upper Egyptians annihilated the Ottoman army completely, root and branch.. and "Hammam" deliberately left of it.. a few hundred soldiers.. and sent them back to the Ottoman artillery ships on foot without horses.. and because the artillery ships were unable to engage from that distance.. they began to withdraw.
But "Hammam" and his men had beaten those ships overland.. to Qarman Island in Sohag once again.. and waited for them there.. And this time.. he challenged the artillery with another primitive weapon.. but from this close distance it had destructive power.. the mangonel.
At Qarman Island the Upper Egyptians launched hundreds of blazing fireballs, from simple hand mangonels.. at the Ottoman artillery ships.. and set them on fire.. and sank them completely.. and dragged them ashore.. and dismantled whatever remained of them.. and made of it new barricades and defenses.. and turned the Sohag island into a fortress.. and the Ottoman soldiers who jumped from the ships into the Nile and survived.. "Hammam" sent them back to Cairo on foot.
And "Sheikh of the Arabs Hammam" became a legend.. and in Istanbul night turned into day.. and sleep fled the eyes of the men of state and the sultan.. because of one man, from the far reaches of Upper Egypt.
And in Cairo.. the deputy Ottoman governor refused that "Ali Bey al-Kabir" take the position of Sheikh al-Balad.. so he attacked him.. and a violent street war took place between them.. which ended with the defeat of "Ali Bey al-Kabir.. and his withdrawal with his men outside Cairo.. and from there he fled to Syria.
And in Syria the Ottoman forces chased him as well.. so he fled to the Hejaz.. and settled there with his men for a period.. And at the same time.. Sheikh "Yusuf", Hammam's father, met his Lord.. in the year 1767 AD.. and "Hammam" became the official ruler of Upper Egypt.. at the age of about sixty.
And in late 1767.. his state had become from Minya to the border of Sudan.. and Sheikh of the Arabs "Hammam" was surprised by a small army.. coming to join him.. and asking for his help.. in fighting the Ottomans.. and this army was coming from the Hejaz, headed by a fugitive Mamluk.. "Ali Bey al-Kabir" himself.
But this story would take long to tell.. so we will continue our talk later...
And the talk has more to come.
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