Introduction

Of the span of Egypt’s history since the arrival of Islam, no comparably brief period has received more scholarly and popular attention than the years 1798–1801, when the country was conquered and occupied by a French military expedition commanded by Napoleon Bonaparte. Publication – for political, propagandistic, and scholarly motives – of materials pertaining to the expedition began early. Before the end of 1798 London publishers were selling collections of French despatches and correspondence intercepted in transit from Egypt to France. At least one account of the military aspects of the expedition was in print before the French evacuated Egypt in 1801. The first major intellectual product of the civilian intellectuals who accompanied the French army – Denon’s Voyage dans la basse et haute Egypte – was in print in 1802, with English editions appearing the following year in London and New York. The first edition of the vast Description de l’Egypte began to appear in 1810.

Discourse in Arabic on the expedition also began early. ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti composed his first narrative of events some seven months after the invasion, and a second account, dedicated to the Ottoman commander Yusuf Pasha, in December 1801; the latter had been translated into Turkish by 1810. Another account in Arabic was written by Niqula al-Turk, who had been sent to Cairo by the Lebanese amir Bashir Shihab to report on the events of occupied Egypt.