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Locating the sciences in eighteenth-century Egypt

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2010

JANE H. MURPHY
JANE H. MURPHY
Affiliation:
Colorado College, Department of History, 14 E. Cache La Poudre St, Colorado Springs, CO 80903, USA. Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

In the last years of the eighteenth century, Egypt famously witnessed the practice of European sciences as embodied in the members of Bonaparte's Commission des sciences et des arts and the newly founded Institut d'Egypte. Less well known are the activities of local eighteenth-century Cairene religious scholars and military elites who were both patrons and practitioners of scientific expertise and producers of hundreds upon hundreds of manuscripts. Through the writings of the French naturalist Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772–1844) and those of the Cairene scholar and chronicler ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Jabartī (1753–1825), I explore Egypt as a site for the practice of the sciences in the late eighteenth century, the palatial urban houses which the French made home to the Institut d'Egypte and their role before the French invasion, and the conception of the relationship between the sciences and social politics that each man sought. Ultimately, I argue that Geoffroy's struggle to create scientific neutrality in the midst of intensely tumultuous political realities came to a surprising head with his fixation on Paris as the site for the practice of natural history, while al-Jabartī’s embrace of this entanglement of knowledge and power led to a vision of scientific expertise that was specifically located in his Cairene society, but which – as Geoffroy himself demonstrated – could be readily adapted almost anywhere.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 43 , Issue 4: Circulation and Locality in Early Modern Science , December 2010 , pp. 557 - 571
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 2010

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References

1 For a stark assessment see Lewis, Bernard, The Arabs in History, New York: Harper & Row, 1967, pp. 166–167Google Scholar: ‘By the easy victory which they won the French shattered the illusion of the unchallengeable superiority of the Islamic world to the infidel West, thus posing a profound problem of readjustment to a new relationship. The psychological disorders thus engendered have not yet been resolved’ (emphasis added).

2 Gibb, Hamilton and Bowen, Harold, Islamic Society and the West: A Study of the Impact of Western Civilization on Moslem Culture in the Near East, London: Oxford University Press, 1950Google Scholar.

3 E. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Lettres écrites d'Egypte à Cuvier, Jussieu, Lacépède, Monge, Desgenettes, Redouté jeune, Norry, etc., aux professeurs du Muséum, et à sa famille (ed. E.T. Hamy), Paris, 1901. On Geoffroy see Appel, Toby A., The Cuvier–Geoffroy Debate: French Biology in the Decades before Darwin, New York: Oxford University Press, 1987Google Scholar; Guyader, Hervé Le, Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire: A Visionary Naturalist (tr. M. Grene), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004Google Scholar; Goby, Jean-Edouard, ‘Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire en Egypte’, Cahiers d'histoire égyptienne (1953) 5, pp. 139–160Google Scholar.

4 ʿA. al-R. al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib al-āthār fī ‘l-tarājim wa'l-akhbār (Marvelous Remnants of Lives and Events), 1st edn (ed.ʿA.al-R.ʿAbd al-Rahīm), 4 vols., Cairo: Dar al-Kutub Press, 1998; idem, ʿAbd al-Rahmān al-Jabartī’s History of Egypt: ʿAjā’ib al-Āthār fī ‘l-Tarājim wa'l-Akhbār (ed. and tr. T. Philipp and M. Perlmann), Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1994. All references to al-Jabarti's work will give the Arabic pagination first followed by the English edition in parentheses. On al-Jabartī see Ayalon, David, ‘The historian al-Jabartī and his background’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (1920) 23, pp. 247–248Google Scholar; and Gilbert Delanoue, ‘ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Jabartī un historien egyptien entre deux mondes’, in Charles-André Julien et al. (eds.), Les Africains, Paris: Editions Jeune Afrique, 1978.

5 For records from the French invasion see Munier, Henri, Tables de la description de l'Egypte, suivies d'une bibliographie sur l'expédition française de Bonaparte, Cairo, 1943Google Scholar; Goby, Jean-Edouard, ‘Contribution à l'inventaire des sources manuscrites et à l’étude bibliographique de l'histoire de l'expédition française en Egypte’, Bulletin de l'Institut d'Egypte (1952) 33, pp. 305–322Google Scholar; de Meulenaere, Philippe, Bibliographie raisonnée des témoignages oculaires imprimés de l'expédition d'Egypte (1798–1801), Paris: F. & R. Chamonal, 1993Google Scholar.

6 Those held in the Egyptian National Library have been wonderfully catalogued and cross-indexed by David King in an English guide and a two-volume Arabic catalogue with excerpts: A Survey of the Scientific Manuscripts in the Egyptian National Library, Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1986; and Fihris al-makhṭụ a al-’ilmiȳah al-maḥfụ ah bi-Da al-Kutub al-Miṣriȳah, Cairo, 1981. See also Rosenfeld, Boris and İsanoğlu, Ekmeleddin, Mathematicians, Astronomers and Other Scholars of Islamic Civilisation and Their Works (7th–19th c.), Istanbul: IRCICA, 2003Google Scholar, which synthesizes many earlier catalogues.

7 Al-ḥisāb, al-riyāḍīyāt, al-jabr wa'l-muqābala, ilm al-aritimāṭīqī, ʿilm al-ʿadād, ʿilm al-awfāq, al-farāʾiḍ, al-misāḥa, ʿilm al-mīqāt, al-mawāqīt, al-handasa, al-hayʾa, al-falak, al-falakiyāt, ʿilm al-nujūm, al-ṭibb, ʿilm al-ḥurūf, ʿilm al-raml, al-zāʾirja. Consult Al-Jabartī’s History of Egypt: A Guide and the Encyclopedia of Islam for these terms or their English equivalents.

8 On Geoffroy's acquisition of Brazilian specimens from Lisbon see Vicente, Filipa, ‘Travelling objects: the story of two natural history collections in the nineteenth century’, Portuguese Studies (2003) 19, pp. 19–37Google Scholar.

9 For al-Jabartī’s own work in mathematics, astronomy, the orientation of the qibla, and amulets see Ayalon, op. cit. (4); and al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, op. cit. (4), 2:187–188 (2:207–208); 2:338 (2:367); 2:367–369 (2:402–406); 2:393 (2:434).

10 Although the British fleet surprised local residents, apparently Bonaparte and the French were expected as Ottoman officials had warned of their arrival. Laissus, Yves, L'Egypte, une aventure savante: Avec Bonaparte, Kléber, Menou, 1798–1801, Paris: Fayard, 1998, p. 74Google Scholar.

11 Much has been written about the French occupation, especially on the occasion of the two-hundredth anniversary of the invasion. I have been most influenced by Darrell Dykstra, ‘The French occupation of Egypt, 1798–1801’, in M.W. Daly (ed.), The Cambridge History of Egypt, vol. 2: Modern Egypt, from 1517 to the End of the Twentieth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 113–138; Laissus, op. cit. (10), Raymond, André, Egyptiens et Français au Caire, 1798–1801, Cairo: Institut français d'archéologie orientale, 1998Google Scholar; Bret, Patrice, L'Egypte au temps de l'expédition de Bonaparte, 1798–1801, Paris: Hachette, 1998Google Scholar; Solé, Robert, Les Savants de Bonaparte, Paris: Le Seuil, 1998Google Scholar; a more recent contribution is Cole, Juan, Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007Google Scholar.

12 Bourrienne, L.A.F. de, Mémoires de M. de Bourrienne, ministre d’état; sur Napoléon, le directoire, le consulat, l'Empire et la restauration, 10 vols., Paris, 1829–1830, vol. 2, p. 311Google Scholar, my translation.

13 Geoffroy, op. cit. (3), Letter I to Georges Cuvier, 29 April 1798, p. 1. This and all subsequent translations from Geoffroy's letters are my own.

14 Geoffroy, op. cit. (3), Letter I to Georges Cuvier, 29 April 1798, p. 2.

15 Geoffroy, op. cit. (3), Letter VI to Cuvier, 13 May 1798, pp. 29–31.

16 Geoffroy, op. cit. (3), Letter X to Cuvier, 23 May 1798, pp. 37–46.

17 In a letter to another member of the expedition who was still in Alexandria, Geoffroy gave him a sense of Cairo's neighbourhoods and their relative location: the immense palaces and gardens were located in ‘le faubourg Saint-Victor’, while Bonaparte and the rest of the French were housed in ‘le quartier Saint-Honoré’. Geoffroy visited the neighbourhood of the savants frequently for only in Saint-Victor could ‘the real Champs-Élysées’ be found. Geoffroy, op. cit. (3), Letter XVI to Redouté jeune, 24 August 1798, pp. 69–72.

18 Geoffroy, op. cit. (3), Letter XXIII to Cuvier, 20 October 1798, 97; Letter XVII to Cuvier, 23 August 1798, pp. 74–75.

19 Geoffroy, op. cit. (3), Letter XVIII to Cuvier, 28 August 1798, pp. 80–81.

20 The name Geoffroy used for the boy appears to be eponymous, indicating family origin in Tendelti, the capital of Darfur.

21 Geoffroy, op. cit. (3), Letter XXX to Geoffroy père, 23 June 1799, 118–123. To give some context to the price Geoffroy paid for Tendelti, Geoffroy's brother was an officer in Bonaparte's army and received 1,500 francs a month for expenses. Geoffroy, op. cit. (3), Letter XXXI to Geoffroy, père, 15 August 1799, pp. 123–126.

22 Appel dates the turning point somewhat later, describing the first two years in Egypt as ‘a happy and productive period for Geoffroy’ that ‘gave him a welcome feeling of importance’ and noted that Isidore Geoffroy called the first year in Egypt one of the happiest in his father's life. Appel, op. cit. (3), p. 73, and n. 11, reference to I. Saint-Hilaire, Geoffroy, Vie, travaux et doctrine scientifique d'Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Paris: P. Bertrand, 1847, reprint. Brussels: Culture et Civilisation, 1968, p. 81Google Scholar.

23 Geoffroy, op. cit. (3), Letter XXXVIII to Cuvier, 22 December 1799, pp. 152–154.

24 Geoffroy, op. cit. (3), Letter XXXV to Cuvier, 27 November 1799, pp. 144–128.

25 Geoffroy, op. cit. (3), Letter XXVI to Geoffroy père, 25 October 1798, p. 111.

26 Geoffroy, op. cit. (3), Letter XVII to Cuvier, 23 August 1798, pp. 74–75, p. 79.

27 Bonaparte ‘wanted it said that he protected the sciences and arts, and [Kléber] didn't want to be accused of being embarrassed of us by sending us home as soon as he took power. The poor savants of Cairo were thus sent to Egypt so that one may read in the history of Bonaparte one more line of eulogy and they were kept so that one may not read a reproach in that of Kléber’. Geoffroy, op. cit. (3), Letter XXXV to Cuvier, 27 November 1799, pp. 145–146.

28 Geoffroy, op. cit. (3), pp. 144–145.

29 ‘Je vis au centre d'un foyer ardent de lumières.’ Geoffroy, op. cit. (3), Letter XXII to Geoffroy père, 4 October 1798, 92–93; Letter XXXV to Cuvier, 27 November 1799, p. 146.

30 Geoffroy, op. cit. (3), Letter XLVIII to Cuvier, 30 April 1800, pp. 178–181, 181. For more on Banks see the recent work Neil Chambers, Joseph Banks and the British Museum: The World of Collecting, 1770–1830, London: Pickering & Chatto, 2007, and its copious bibliography.

31 Geoffroy, op. cit. (3), Letter LIII to Cuvier, 9 November 1800, 193–196 ; Letter L to professeurs du Muséum, 23 September 1800, p. 187.

32 J.-B.-J. Fourier, Préface historique to the Description de l'Egypte, Paris, 1809–1822, pp. i–xcij, pp. xviij–xix. All translations from this are mine.

33 Fourier, op. cit. (32), p. i.

34 Fourier, op. cit. (32), p. xliij.

35 Geoffroy, op. cit. (3), Letter XXXV to Cuvier, 27 November 1799, p. 147.

36 Geoffroy, op. cit. (3), Letter XXXV to Cuvier, 27 November 1799, p. 147.

37 Geoffroy, op. cit. (3), Letter XVII to Cuvier, 23 August 1798, p. 74

38 Geoffroy, op. cit. (3), Letter XLVIII to Cuvier, 30 April 1800, p. 180. Geoffroy follows up these positive remarks with a note that ‘unfortunately’ he is part of work ‘that advances in Europe’. Ibid.

39 Geoffroy, op. cit. (3), Letter XLIX to Cuvier, 30 April 1800, p. 183.

40 Geoffroy, op. cit. (3), Letter XII to Redouté jeune, 25 July 1798, p. 54.

41 For al-Jabartī’s accounts of the French lodging and his visits to the Institut see al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, op. cit. (4), 3:15 (3:17); 3:57 (3:53); 3:58–60 (3:55–57); 3: 92–93 (3:85–86). In the biography of Ḥasan Kāshif Çerkes, al-Jabartī credits the astronomers, technicians, scientists and engineers who inhabited Ḥasan's palace with saving it from the destruction of residences wrought by the French soldiers – 3:280 (3:269). Once, in referring to an individual's position and not the site directly, al-Jabartī referenced madrasat al-maktab, which has been identified by Cuoq as the Institut d'Egypte. See Ajaib (3:242 n. 136). The Arabic edition offers no gloss of this term, 3:251.

42 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, op. cit. (4), 3:57 (3:53); 3:280 (3:269). These residences are illustrated in the Description de l'Egypt.

43 Bourrienne described Berthollet's chemical marvels presented to an audience of sheikhs sometime between mid-September and mid-October of 1798, shortly before the first major uprising in Cairo: ‘Bonaparte invited the leading shaykhs to attend some chemical experiments which M. Berthollet would carry out. The General expected to take pleasure in their astonishment; however, all the miracles of the transformation of liquids, electrical commotions and galvanism, did not cause the least surprise … When M. Berthollet had finished, Shaykh al-Bekry had the interpreter tell him, “All of this is quite nice, but can they make me be here and in Morocco at the same time?” Berthollet responded with a shrug of his shoulders. – “Well, then,” said the shaykh, “he is not much of a sorcerer.”’ Bourrienne, op. cit. (12), vol. 2, p. 177.

44 Robert Solé, like Bourienne above, wonders that the Egyptians did not respond with greater force to French scientific demonstrations. Solé concludes, ‘Their apparent indifference is without doubt a sort of self-protection, as if this imported science threatened their identity.’ Solé, op. cit. (11), esp. pp. 43–58, 50. Translation mine.

45 Jean Dhombres, ‘Scientific motivation for and mood from the experience of the Egyptian expedition’, in E. Ihsanoglu, A. Djebbar and F. Gunergun (eds.), Science, Technology and Industry in the Ottoman World, Turnhout: Brepols, 2000, pp. 91–99, 94.

46 This phrase, ahl al-majālis al-sāmarīn, comes from a manuscript written by a family acquaintance of al-Jabartī and later rector of al-Azhar Mosque, Aḥmad al-Damanhūrī, Iḥyāʾ al-fuʾād bi-maʿrifat khawaṣṣ al-aʿdād, MS Cairo Riyādiyāt Taymūr 86, microfilm 50732. f.42r. My translation.

47 See M.J.L. Young, ‘Arabic biographical writing’, in M.J.L. Young, J.D. Latham and R.B. Serjeant (eds.), Religion, Learning and Science in the ʿAbbasid Period, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, pp. 171–172. For the modern period, see Marilyn Booth, ‘Exemplary lives, feminist aspirations: Fawwāz, Zaynab and the Arabic biographical tradition’, Journal of Arabic Literature (1995) 26, pp. 120–146Google Scholar.

48 For the absence of location of study and a full description of traditional accounts see Berkey, Jonathan, The Transmission of Knowledge in Medieval Cairo: A Social History of Islamic Education, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Chapter 1.

49 For three such cases, see al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, op. cit. (4): al-Shubrāwī, 2:52–53 (2:54); al-Janājī, 2:187–188 (2:207–208); Ḥasan al-Jabartī, 1:616 (1:657). There are, however, examples from earlier periods of instruction in the uncommon sciences in schools and educational–charitable complexes discussed in Sayılı, Aydin, The Observatory in Islam and Its Place in the General History of the Observatory, Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1960Google Scholar.

50 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, op. cit. (4), 2:367–369 (2:402–406).

51 Geoffroy, op. cit. (3), Letter III to the professeurs du Muséum d'histoire naturelle, 5 May 1798, p. 13–15.

52 Geoffroy, op. cit. (3), Letter XXIV to Jussieu, c.20 October 1798, 98; Letter XXIX to Marc-Antoine Geoffroy, c. March 1799, pp. 117–118; Letter XL to Cuvier, 7 January 1800, pp. 157–158.

53 Geoffroy, op. cit. (3), Letter LIII to Cuvier, 9 November 1800, 193–196; Letter L to professeurs du Muséum, 23 September 1800, p. 187.

54 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, op. cit. (4), 1:139 (1:122); 1:201 (1:187); 1:622 (1:664).

55 Yves Laissus documented the ‘welcome’ of the Institute of France to the Institute of Egypt, but noted that the Parisian meetings record receipt of a single set of proceedings from Egypt and apart from that make no mention of their counterparts in Egypt. Laissus, op. cit. (10), pp. 115–116.

56 Raymond, op. cit. (11), vol. 1, Chapter 3, pp. 81–105.

57 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, op. cit. (4), 1:339 (1:332).

58 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, op. cit. (4), 4:396 (4:359), 4:430 (4:390); 4:493 (4:448). First given as muhandis khāna, a compound formed from a word al-Jabartī used elsewhere for architect or engineer (muhandis) and a word of Persian origin, used in Turkish as well, indicating a special building, originally used to describe waystations along trade routes or khans. In the following passages, al-Jabartī wrote this as a single word, with the definite article in the final case.

59 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, op. cit. (4), 4:401 (4:363). Compare this to Miot's critique of Bonaparte: ‘It is truly impossible not to lament, that a man of this truly magnificent mind had not virtue corresponding with his talents.’ Miot, Jacques, Memoires of My Service in the French Expedition to Egypt and Syria (tr. unknown), Tyne and Wear: Worley Publications with Brigade Library, 1997, pp. 43–44Google Scholar.

60 Al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, op. cit. (4), 4:396 (4:359); 4:406–407 (4:367–369); 4:430 (4:390).

61 On the massacre, see Fahmy, Khaled, All the Pasha's Men: Mehmet Ali, His Army and the Making of Modern Egypt, Cairo and New York: American University in Cairo Press, 1997, pp. 82–84Google Scholar, where he notes others had tried, less successfully, somewhat similar means of eliminating the power of the Mamluk households.

62 That Mehmet ʿAlī wanted to secure hereditary rule for his family rather than independence from the Ottoman Empire is one of the major arguments of Fahmy, op. cit. (61).

63 In addition to the passage quoted above at note 59, see al-Jabartī, ʿAjāʾib, op. cit. (4), 4:248–249 (4:215–216).

64 Vicente, op. cit. (8).

65 On the contested question of al-Jabartī’s genre see Jane Hathaway, ‘Sultans, Pashas, Taqwims, and Muhimmes: a reconsideration of chronicle-writing in eighteenth-century Ottoman Egypt’, in Daniel Crecelius (ed.), Eighteenth Century Egypt: The Arabic Manuscript Sources, Claremont: Regina Books, 1990, pp. 51–78.

66 On the political aspect of Geoffroy's debate with Cuvier, see Appel, op. cit. (3), passim, and esp. pp. 175–201; for a fascinating study of the debate, architecture and social reform see Lee, Paula Young, ‘The social architect and the myopic mason: the spatial politics of the Muséum d'histoire naturelle in nineteenth-century Paris’, Science in Context (2007) 20, pp. 601–625CrossRefGoogle Scholar.