To invade Egypt, Napoleon said he wanted to be Muslim; it didn't work

By: CARL HARTMAN - Associated Press | Saturday, January 12, 2008 7:15 PM PST ∞

Napoleon Bonaparte had an idea for winning the hearts and minds of the Muslim people he invaded: He told the Egyptians that he and his army wanted to be Muslims, too.

It wasn't true, but that didn't bother Napoleon. What might have bothered him was that the idea didn't work.

He delayed revealing that he had targeted Egypt until hundreds of troop carriers were plowing through the Mediterranean, vainly hunted by Britain's navy. Some in France already knew what he wanted. He thought Egypt could be the start of an empire rivaling the one Alexander the Great conquered 2,000 years earlier.

As Nina Burleigh's "Mirage ---- Napoleon's Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt" (Harper, $25.95) describes it, the 28-year-old general lacked intercultural savvy. It may not have occurred to him ---- or it may not have mattered ---- that people dislike being invaded, especially when they get shot at, even if the invaders come from a country with democratic institutions.

In Cairo, Muslims told Napoleon that conversion required circumcision and renouncing alcohol. Frank McLynn, a British biographer, wrote that their view began a long negotiation at Al-Azhar University, still today a center of Muslim faith. It ended in compromise, ratified in Mecca: The French were allies of Islam, and they could keep both wine and foreskins.

McLynn calls the compromise "a great and underrated propaganda victory for Napoleon." But it didn't prevent Turkey, the nominal ruler of Egypt, from declaring war on France or the Sultan from decreeing it holy war.

Rebellion erupted at Al-Azhar, lasting two days and two nights, killing 200 French soldiers before the French command got a grip. French bombardment continued after the rebels ceased fire, killing 2,000 Egyptians. The book says "a few dozen" executions followed. Some French complained that there should have been more.

"In fact the insurgency was never really extinguished, and a larger, longer and more dangerous insurrection lay ahead," Burleigh writes.

With an easy style and an eye for striking detail, Burleigh concentrates on 151 French scientists, scholars and students who joined the expedition, tempted by hero worship of Napoleon and the prospect of scientific adventure. The campaign killed 31 of them. Survivors reached home in small groups and produced a 24-volume "Description of Egypt."

McLynn records that the French expedition supervised building important public works ---- hospitals, sewers, street lighting, irrigation schemes and so on.

They also founded Egyptology. An army engineer, busy strengthening the defense of a medieval castle, uncovered the Rosetta stone. Named for the nearby Egyptian seaside town, the stone carried the same proclamation written in ancient Greek, well known to scholars, and in Egyptian hieroglyphics, then still a great mystery. More than 20 years later, another Frenchman, Jean-Francois Champollion, used the Greek to complete deciphering the hieroglyphs.

Napoleon's scientists admired the ruins and copied the inscriptions. Unable to read the language, they had little idea of the stories told. But the illustrated Egyptian designs inspired a style among Western artists that remained popular through the 1800s and later.

Bubonic plague combined with British ships, Turkish troops and hostile Egyptians to defeat the French army. After a year, the invasion was doomed, and Napoleon returned to France amid unstable politics.

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