Egypt Under Ottoman Rule
Egypt Under Ottoman Rule: As soon as the Ottomans took over Egypt in 1517, they were in the middle of trade lines from Africa to India and the Mediterranean. Sulayman Pasha, who was viceroy of Egypt, sent the Ottoman ships from Suez to Aden in 1538 to govern trade in the Indian Ocean.
But the Portuguese beat the Ottoman fleet in the Indian Ocean. After that, the Ottomans’ position in the Red Sea was mostly important for trade with Yemen and Africa. The Ottomans could do business with the African state of Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) via the port of Massawa on the Red Sea. When the Ottomans took over Nubia after 1538, they set up a border with Funj on the Nile.
Through Funj and Darfur, trade with Africa was by far the most important. In the early 1600s, the leading families of these states converted to Islam, most likely so they could trade more with Ottoman Egypt. The Forty Days’ Road, also known as Darb al-Arba’in, was the main trade road from Sudan to Egypt. It went around the troubled areas of Nubia. This is the path that wagons from Darfur took from Qubayh to Asyut in Upper Egypt.
Funj caravans took different ways from Qarri or Shandi to Ibrim. They met up and formed a single caravan, which continued to Isna in Upper Egypt. This line, which crosses the Nile at al-Damir, could also link to the Darb al-Arba’in at Salima. At Asyut and Isna, the Egyptian government imposed taxes on the caravans and sold some of their goods. The merchants proceeded to Cairo, where they once again taxed and sold the remaining goods in the markets.
The wagon traders stayed in Cairo for six to eight months, buying goods to send to Sudanese Africa. The next group of Sudanese caravans completed the circle. In Libya, Cyrenaica was another way to get to Egypt. Caravans coming from Darfur also used this path. Additionally, there were lines that stretched from the east to the west. The lines extended from Funj’s Shandi to Suakin on the Red Sea, and from Shandi and Sennar to Darfur in the west.
The success of the caravan trade required a high level of organization among the participants. The Darfur caravan had at least 5,000 people and animals. As a result, the Darfur parade is established each year as a state-run enterprise. This allowed the sultans to collect taxes, buy slaves for their troops, and give luxury goods to those who followed them as a reward.
The government appears to have exerted less control over the Sennar caravans, as various caravans established themselves independently. But the Funj sultans also relied on customs duties to make money, as well as slaves for their armies. Traders acted as go-betweens for the sultans of Sudan and the viceroys of Egypt. Along with the Darfur caravan, there were 500 traders known as jallaba. They were a mixed-race group whose main members were from the Upper Nile Valley.
There were a lot of people who came from Arab and Nubian families, like the Ja’ali, the Juhayna, and the Abdallabi. The jallaba paid for the caravans and the customs fees that the government wanted them to pay. Sennar, Funj’s capital, and many other Sudanese cities served as commercial hubs, trading goods and collecting customs. Smaller towns, such as Qarri and Shandi, allowed business.
The sultans lived in al-Fashir, which was the capital of Darfur. The jallaba, on the other hand, probably built a city that was successful at business. This was Qubayh, a town just north of the capital. The nomads in the Sahara and Nile Valley, who controlled the desert routes, also had to work with the trans-Saharan caravans. The nomads wanted customs duty because they protected the caravans, drove camels, and acted as guides.
The ‘Ababda watched over the Funj caravans that went to Upper Egypt. Each slave was worth three gold pieces, and each camel was worth one and a half. This happened in 1798. People believed that caravans traversing nomadic lands deserved protection. As a result, anyone could steal from a caravan that lacked the supervision of its designated guardians. Trade with Africa necessitated collaboration between merchants, state representatives in the north and south, and people on its edges.
Without a doubt, the slave trade was the most important. It’s possible that as many as 6,000 slaves passed through Darfur every year, and Funj delivered about 550 of them. It was okay to trade slaves. Capturing non-Muslim Africans, which is legal in Islam, provided the nomadic pastoralists with a valuable commodity to trade, enabling them to access markets. Slaves were typically non-Muslims who lived on Sudan’s southern borders. The Bar al-Ghazal area, the Nuba mountains, and the Shilluk and Dinka people were home to Darfur’s slaves.
In Funj, Abyssinia provided a large number of slaves. The Abyssinian slaves were mainly women. They sold for as much as sixty gold pieces in 1798. On average, slaves sold for thirty-five gold pieces in the Cairo markets in 1798, although eunuchs, aged between eight and ten years, sold for double or triple that amount. In the Darfur caravan, nearly four-fifths of the slaves sold were women.
Cairo merchants and slave merchants in Istanbul purchased slaves, but the mamluk households of Cairo purchased many of them. In Isna and Asyut, the Egyptian rulers imposed a tax of four gold pieces on each imported slave. In Cairo, there were further taxes amounting to one and a half gold pieces. As with Darfur and Funj, the slave trade was a major source of income for Ottoman Egypt.
Besides slaves, the caravans provided camels, gold, senna or cassia, tamarinds, gum, natron, alum, ebony, ostrich plumes, elephant tusks, tiger skins, and hippopotamus whips (kurbaj). As European demand grew in the eighteenth century, ivory and ostrich plumes became increasingly profitable. In 1798, the Egyptian authorities’ standard tax on a camel load was two gold pieces, but for camels carrying ostrich plumes, the rate was five and a half gold pieces.
In exchange, the southbound caravans carried Indian muslins, Syrian and Egyptian silks and cottons, and, in later times, inexpensive European cottons. European guns and swords, lead, gunpowder, and copper were all considered to be luxury goods. So were rice, sugar, perfumes, spices, horses, glass, silk, writing paper, coffee, and more. Cairo was the primary hub for selling African goods.
As tax farms, the Janissaries ran the Cairo customs houses in Old Cairo and Bulaq, which let them keep two-thirds of the money for themselves. Alexandria was the way that goods from Africa and Egypt got to Europe. Rosseta and Damietta sent ships to Asia Minor and Syria. The janissaries ran all of these establishments and kept most of the incoming money.
Europe sold ivory, ostrich feathers, gum, tamarind, senna, and gold. Istanbul received shipments of animal skins, gum, tamarinds, senna, and African slaves. Conversely, North Africa primarily traded slaves, making them the most valuable commodity. The Hijaz, an Ottoman region in the Arabian Peninsula, served as another marketplace for African goods.
In this case, the yearly journey correlated with the trade. Every year, the African sultans send a payment to Mecca. The Darfur-based payment caravan met up with the main Egyptian convoy in Cairo. As the Sudanic Sultanates grew, so did the number of visitors. The pilgrims, like people from the Maghrib and West Africa, traded with others along the way.
Travelers followed the caravans to Egypt, but Suakin also provided a different way for travelers from Sudan and West Africa to get there. So, Ottoman trade with Africa followed a trend set during the Islamic conquest of Africa, when trade with Africa helped to convert African societies to Islam.
Also Read: The Great Mamluk Dynasty in Egypt (1250-1300)
