history of Egypt

major treatment

• TITLE: Egypt
  SECTION: History
  This section presents the history of Egypt from the Islamic conquests of the 7th century ad until the present day.

ancient (prehistory to AD 639)

• InEgypt, ancient

Camp David Accords

• TITLE: Camp David Accords (Egyptian-Israeli history)
  agreements between Israel and Egypt signed on September 17, 1978, that led in the following year to a peace treaty between those two countries, the first such treaty between Israel and any of its Arab neighbours. Brokered by U.S. Pres. Jimmy Carter between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian Pres. Anwar el-Sādāt and officially titled the “Framework for Peace in...

Gaza Strip

• TITLE: Gaza Strip (territory, Middle East)
  SECTION: History
  ...under which the town of Gaza and an area of surrounding territory were to be allotted to the Arabs. The British mandate ended on May 15, 1948, and on that same day the first Arab-Israeli war began. Egyptian forces soon entered the town of Gaza, which became the headquarters of the Egyptian expeditionary force in Palestine. As a result of heavy fighting in autumn 1948, the area around the town...

Israel

• TITLE: Ariel Sharon (prime minister of Israel)
  SECTION: Early life and military career
  ...led another raid, this time directed at the Egyptian forces that were occupying the Gaza Strip. The incident, in which 38 Egyptians and 8 Israelis were killed, heightened tensions between Israel and Egypt. In late October 1956 the crisis culminated in the invasion of Egypt by Israel, in secret alliance with Britain and France (see Suez Crisis). In the ensuing campaign, Sharon commanded...
• TITLE: Israel
  SECTION: The Suez War
  The Israeli raids humiliated Egypt’s nationalist government headed by Gamal Abdel Nasser, a veteran of the 1948 war and leader of the group that had overthrown King Farouk in 1952. Nasser sought to lead the Arabs in expelling British and French imperial influence and regarded Israel as a symbol of foreign aggression. After he failed to obtain American arms to repel the Israeli attacks, Nasser...

Six-Day War

• TITLE: 20th-century international relations (politics)
  SECTION: The Six-Day War
  ...post-Suez peak. The Syrian Baʿth Party, though socialist, resented Nasser’s assumption of Arab leadership and in 1961 took the country out of the United Arab Republic, which it had formed with Egypt in 1958. Likewise, the presence of 50,000 Egyptian troops in Yemen failed to overcome the forces supporting the Yemeni imam, who was backed in turn by Saudi Arabia. On the other hand, the Cairo...
• TITLE: Six-Day War (Middle East [1967])
  Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser had previously come under sharp criticism for his failure to aid Syria and Jordan against Israel; he had also been accused of hiding behind the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) stationed at Egypt’s border with Israel in the Sinai. Now, however, he moved to unambiguously demonstrate support for Syria: on May 14, 1967, Nasser mobilized Egyptian forces in...
• TITLE: 20th-century international relations (politics)
  SECTION: Palestinian terrorism and diplomacy
  The sweeping Israeli victory in the Six-Day War of 1967 had forced every Arab state to rethink its own foreign policy and the extent of its commitment to the cause of Arab unity. Egypt, having lost the Sinai, faced Israelis entrenched in the Bar-Lev line directly across the Suez Canal. Jordan, having lost the West Bank, faced Israeli troops directly across the Jordan River. Syria, having lost...

Suez Crisis

• TITLE: aggression (international law)
  ...and its neighbours in 1947, between the Netherlands and Indonesia in 1947, between India and Pakistan in 1948, between Israel and its neighbours in 1949, between Israel, Great Britain, France, and Egypt in 1956, and between Israel, Jordan, and Egypt in 1970. None of these states was at the time declared an aggressor. On the other hand, Japan was found to be an aggressor in Manchuria in 1933,...
• TITLE: Suez Crisis (Middle East [1956])
  The Suez Crisis was provoked by an American and British decision not to finance Egypt’s construction of the Aswan High Dam, as they had promised, in response to Egypt’s growing ties with communist Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. Nasser reacted to the American and British decision by declaring martial law in the canal zone and seizing control of the Suez Canal Company, predicting that the...
• TITLE: 20th-century international relations (politics)
  SECTION: The Suez Crisis
  The Arab states, after their defeat in 1948, passed through a period of political unrest. The most critical change occurred in Egypt, where in 1952 a cabal of young army officers backed by the Muslim Brotherhood forced the dissolute King Farouk into exile. In 1954 Nasser emerged to assume control. Nasser envisioned a pan-Arab movement led by Egypt that would expel the British from the Middle...

War of Attrition

• TITLE: War of Attrition (Egyptian-Israeli history)
  inconclusive war (1969–70) chiefly between Egypt and Israel. The conflict, launched by Egypt, was meant to wear down Israel by means of a long engagement and so provide Egypt with the opportunity to dislodge Israeli forces from the Sinai Peninsula, which Israel had seized from Egypt in the Six-Day (June) War of 1967.

Yom Kippur War

• TITLE: 20th-century international relations (politics)
  SECTION: Palestinian terrorism and diplomacy
  The Egyptian army moved across the Suez Canal in force and engaged the Bar-Lev line. For the first time it made substantial progress and inflicted a level of casualties especially damaging for the outnumbered Israelis. Syrian forces also stormed the Golan Heights. The United States and the Soviet Union reacted with subtle attempts to fine-tune the outcome by alternately withholding or providing...
• TITLE: Yom Kippur War (Middle East [1973])
  ...the Six-Day War (1967), was followed by years of sporadic fighting, which developed into a full-scale war in 1973. On the afternoon of October 6, Israel was attacked simultaneously on two fronts by Egypt and Syria. With the element of surprise to their advantage, Egyptian forces successfully crossed the Suez Canal with greater ease than expected, suffering only a fraction of the anticipated...

Arabia

• TITLE: history of Arabia
  SECTION: Resistance to the Ottomans
  ...Mecca, which they definitively conquered in 1806. The Ottomans became so alarmed at the Saʿūdī-Wahhābī peril that they urged Muḥammad ʿAlī, viceroy of Egypt, to drive the Wahhābīs from the Holy Cities. Egyptian troops invaded Arabia, and after a bitter seven-year struggle the viceroy’s forces recaptured Mecca and Medina. The...

Byzantine Empire

• TITLE: Byzantine Empire (historical empire, Eurasia)
  SECTION: Religious controversy
  ...single divine nature of Christ, the result of the Incarnation. Their belief in Monophysitism, or the one nature of Christ as God the Son, became extraordinarily popular throughout the provinces of Egypt and Syria. Rome, in the person of Pope Leo I, declared in contrast for Dyophysitism, a creed teaching that two natures, perfect and perfectly distinct, existed in the single person of Christ....
• TITLE: Byzantine Empire (historical empire, Eurasia)
  SECTION: Michael VIII
  ...and their emirs were beginning to carve out small principalities. Michael VIII’s network of diplomacy covered the Mongols of Iran and the Golden Horde in Russia, as well as the Mamlūks of Egypt. But diplomacy was ineffective against Muslim Ghazis (warriors inspired by the ideal of holy war); by the time the threat from Italy was removed in 1282, it was almost too late to save...

conquest by ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ

• TITLE: ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ (Arab general)
  ...in the battles of Ajnādayn (634) and the Yarmūk River (636) and was responsible for the Muslim conquest of southwestern Palestine. He achieved lasting fame, however, for his conquest of Egypt—a campaign that, according to some sources, he undertook on his own initiative. After defeating large Byzantine forces at Heliopolis (now a suburb of Cairo) in 640 and Babylon (a...

control of Kordofan

• TITLE: Kordofan (historical region, Sudan)
  ...was perhaps under the control of the Christian Tungur dynasty from 900 to 1200 ce, and later it formed part of the African trading empire of Kanem-Bornu. By the 14th century nomadic Arabs from Egypt had spread southward all over Kordofan, amalgamating with some of the indigenous inhabitants and driving the remnants into the hills. In the 17th century the Musabaʾat sultanate was...

Egypt Uprising of 2011

• TITLE: Arab Spring (pro-democracy protests)
  Massive protests broke out in Egypt in late January 2011, only days after Ben Ali’s ouster in Tunisia. The Egyptian government also tried and failed to control protests by offering concessions while cracking down violently against protesters. After several days of massive demonstrations and clashes between protesters and security forces in Cairo and around the country, a turning point came at...

Eritrea

• TITLE: Eritrea
  SECTION: Contesting for the coastlands and beyond
  Off the plateau, the pastoralist peoples in the west and north knew no foreign master until the early 19th century, when the Egyptians invaded the Sudan and raided deep into the Eritrean lowlands. The Red Sea coast, having its strategic and commercial importance, was contested by many powers. In the 16th century the Ottoman Turks occupied the Dahlak Archipelago and then Massawa, where they...

Allenby’s rule

• TITLE: Edmund Henry Hynman Allenby, 1st Viscount Allenby (British field marshal)
  ...power in Syria. Allenby’s success in these campaigns was attributable partly to his skillful and innovative use of cavalry and other mobile forces in positional warfare. As high commissioner for Egypt (1919–25) Allenby steered that country firmly but impartially through political disturbances and saw it recognized as a sovereign state in 1922.

Amiens Treaty

• TITLE: Treaty of Amiens (France [1802])
  ...(taken from Spain) and Ceylon (taken from the Dutch). France recognized the Republic of the Seven Ionian Islands and agreed to evacuate Naples and the Papal States. The British were to restore Egypt (evacuated by the French) to the Ottoman Empire and Malta to the Knights of St. John within three months. The rights and territories of the Ottoman Empire and of Portugal were to be respected,...

Anglo-Egyptian treaty

• TITLE: Anglo-Egyptian Treaty (British-Egyptian history [1936])
  (Aug. 26, 1936), treaty signed at Montreux, Switz., in May 1937 that officially brought to an end 54 years of British occupation in Egypt. Nevertheless, Egyptian sovereignty remained circumscribed by the terms of the treaty, which established a 20-year military alliance that allowed Great Britain to impose martial law and censorship in Egypt in the event of international emergency; provided for...

Battle of the Pyramids

• TITLE: Battle of the Pyramids (Egyptian history)
  Bonaparte, then a general and key military adviser for the French Revolutionary government (Directory), had proposed the invasion of Egypt in early 1798. Control of Egypt would provide France with a new source of income while simultaneously blocking the Red Sea, a major route of English access to India, thus disrupting a significant source of revenue for France’s main European opponent. The...

British Empire

• TITLE: 20th-century international relations (politics)
  SECTION: The New Imperialism
  Why, then, was the flag planted in the first place? Sometimes it was to protect economic interests, as when the British occupied Egypt in 1882, but more often it was for strategic reasons or in pursuit of national prestige. One necessary condition for the New Imperialism, often overlooked, is technological. Prior to the 1870s Europeans could overawe native peoples along the coasts of Africa and...
• TITLE: United Kingdom
  SECTION: Gladstone and Chamberlain
  ...attempt to hold the Transvaal, there was considerable public criticism. And in the same year, when he agreed to the bombardment of Alexandria in a successful effort to break a nationalist revolt in Egypt, he lost the support of the aged radical John Bright. In 1882 Egypt was occupied, thereby adding, against Gladstone’s own inclinations, to British imperial commitments. A rebellion in the Sudan...

Dinshaway Incident

• TITLE: Dinshaway Incident (Egyptian history)
  confrontation in 1906 between residents of the Egyptian village of Dinshaway (Dinshawāy) and British officers during the occupation of Egypt by Great Britain (1882–1952). Harsh exemplary punishments dealt to a number of villagers in the wake of the incident sparked an outcry among many Egyptians and helped galvanize Egyptian nationalist sentiment against British occupation.

Entente Cordiale

• TITLE: Entente Cordiale (European history)
  The most important feature of the agreement was that it granted freedom of action to Great Britain in Egypt and to France in Morocco (with the proviso that France’s eventual dispositions for Morocco include reasonable allowance for Spain’s interests there). At the same time, Great Britain ceded the Los Islands (off French Guinea) to France, defined the frontier of Nigeria in France’s favour,...

French Revolution

• TITLE: French Revolution (1787-99)
  SECTION: The Directory and revolutionary expansion
  ...republics. Great Britain, however, remained at war with France. Unable to effect a landing in England, the Directory, on Bonaparte’s request, decided to threaten the British in India by occupying Egypt. An expeditionary corps under Bonaparte easily occupied Malta and Egypt, but the squadron that had convoyed it was destroyed by Horatio Nelson’s fleet at the Battle of the Nile on 14 Thermidor,...

Napoleonic Wars

• TITLE: French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars (European history)
  SECTION: The rise of Napoleon
  Napoleon’s next campaign was a major failure. He sailed an army to Egypt in May 1798 with the idea of conquering the Ottoman Empire. The defeat of a French naval squadron by Admiral Horatio Nelson in the Battle of the Nile (August 1, 1798) left him without sufficient naval support, however, and, after failing to take Acre in 1799, Napoleon withdrew to France. His army continued to occupy Egypt...

post-World War I rebellion

• TITLE: 20th-century international relations (politics)
  SECTION: The reorganization of the Middle East
  ...of British troops. The Anglo-Persian Oil Company already controlled the oil-rich Persian Gulf. In June 1920, however, nationalist agitation resumed, forcing the shah to suspend the treaty. In Egypt, under British occupation since 1882 and a protectorate since 1914, the nationalist Wafd Party under Saʿd Zaghlūl Pasha, agitated for full independence on Wilsonian principles. Their...

expulsion from Arab League

• TITLE: Arab League
  ...(1972–79), political activity increased. The league, however, was weakened by internal dissension on political issues, especially those concerning Israel and the Palestinians. After Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel on March 26, 1979, the other members of the Arab League voted to suspend Egypt’s membership and to transfer the league’s headquarters from Cairo to Tunis....

Ethiopia

• TITLE: Werner Munzinger (Swiss linguist and explorer)
  As governor of Mitsiwa he annexed to Egypt two provinces of northern Abyssinia, and in 1872 he was made pasha and governor-general of the eastern Sudan. It is believed that it was on his advice that Ismail sanctioned the Abyssinian enterprise, but in 1875 the command of the Egyptian troops in northern Abyssinia was taken from Munzinger, who was selected to command a small expedition intended to...
• TITLE: Ethiopia
  SECTION: Yohannes IV (1872–89)
  ...period of conflict that saw the brief and self-proclaimed rule of Tekle Giorgis (1868–72), the Tigrayan Kassa took the imperial crown as Yohannes IV on Jan. 21, 1872. After having ejected two Egyptian armies from the highlands of Eritrea in 1875–76, Yohannes moved south, forcing Shewa’s king Sahle Miriam to submit and to renounce imperial ambitions. Yohannes thus became the first...

Iraq

• TITLE: Iraq
  SECTION: Iraqi foreign policy, 1958–68
  ...of a greater share of the proceeds) and steps by the government that limited oil company activities in Iraq, Qāsim carefully refrained from nationalizing Iraq’s oil industry. Also, fearing Egyptian domination, as had happened in the Syrian province of the U.A.R., Qāsim rejected the courtship of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser and refused a merger with Egypt. This led the...

Israel

• TITLE: 20th-century international relations (politics)
  SECTION: The Middle East
  In fact, the situation had hardened in the late 1980s for a variety of reasons. First, the Arabs themselves were seriously divided. Egypt, the most populous Arab state, had no desire to disturb its peace with Israel dating from the Camp David Accords. Saudi Arabia and the other wealthy oil states were preoccupied with the Persian Gulf crisis and nervous about the presence in their countries of...
• TITLE: Israel
  SECTION: The war of 1948
  ...the Zionist dream of an internationally approved Jewish state. Neither the UN nor the world leaders, however, could spare Israel from immediate invasion by the armies of five Arab states—Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Transjordan (now Jordan)—and within a few days, the state’s survival appeared to be at stake.
• TITLE: United States
  SECTION: Foreign affairs
  ...Menachem Begin at a two-week negotiating session at Camp David, Maryland, and on September 17 Carter announced that two accords had been signed establishing the terms for a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. Further torturous negotiations followed before the peace treaty was signed in Washington, D.C., on March 26, 1979.

Jordan

• TITLE: Jordan
  SECTION: Securing the throne, 1953 to c. 1960
  ...was uneasy but tolerable, though bloody raids and acts of terrorism carried out by both sides added to the tension. Jordan’s involvement in the Palestinian question led as much to a contest with Egypt over Jordan’s future as it did to a struggle with Israel. In particular, it repeatedly forced Jordan to balance relations with and between various Arab nations, the Palestinians, and the West...

Lebanon

• TITLE: Beirut (national capital)
  SECTION: Ottoman rule
  ...of the Western world began to invade the markets of Ottoman Syria, and Beirut, starting virtually from nought, stood only to profit from the modern industrial world. The occupation of Syria by the Egyptians (1832–40) under Muḥammad ʿAlī Pasha provided the needed stimulus for the town to enter on its new period of commercial growth. A brief setback came with the end of...
• TITLE: Lebanon
  SECTION: Chamoun regime and the 1958 crisis
  The presidency of Chamoun coincided with the rise of Arab nationalist leader Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt. During the Suez War (October–December 1956), Chamoun earned Nasser’s enmity by refusing to break off diplomatic relations with Britain and France, which had joined Israel in attacking Egypt. Chamoun was accused of seeking to align Lebanon with the Western-sponsored Central Treaty...

Libya

• TITLE: Libya
  SECTION: The Qaddafi regime
  Equally assertive in plans for Arab unity, Libya obtained at least the formal beginnings of unity with Egypt, Sudan, and Tunisia, but these and other such plans failed as differences arose between the governments concerned. Qaddafi’s Libya supported the Palestinian cause and intervened to support it, as well as other guerrilla and revolutionary organizations in Africa and the Middle East. Such...

Ottoman Empire

• TITLE: Ottoman Empire (historical empire, Asia)
  SECTION: Restoration of the Ottoman Empire, 1402–81
  ...In 1473 he routed Uzun Ḥasan, who acknowledged Ottoman rule in all of Anatolia and returned to Iran. This brought the Ottomans into conflict with the Mamlūk empire of Syria and Egypt, which sought to expand into southeastern Anatolia. Mehmed neutralized Mamlūk forces, though he could not defeat them. He then turned to Venice, initiating several naval raids along the...
• TITLE: Ottoman Empire (historical empire, Asia)
  SECTION: Allied war aims and the proposed peace settlement
  ...1915) Russia was promised Istanbul and the Straits; France was to receive a sphere of influence in Syria and Cilicia. Britain had already annexed Cyprus and declared a protectorate over Egypt. By the Anglo-French Sykes-Picot Agreement (January 3, 1916) the French sphere was confirmed and extended eastward to Mosul in Iraq. A British sphere of influence in Mesopotamia extended as far...

Palestine

• TITLE: Palestine
  SECTION: Ottoman rule
  This period came to an end with Napoleon’s abortive attempt (1798–1801) to carve for himself a Middle Eastern empire. Egypt, always a determining factor in the fortunes of Palestine, was placed, after the French withdrawal, under the rule of the viceroy Muḥammad (Meḥmet) ʿAlī, who soon embarked on a program of expansion at the expense of his Ottoman overlord. In...
• TITLE: Palestine
  SECTION: PLO declaration of independence
  ...of Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. ʿArafāt proclaimed the state (without defining its borders) on November 15. Within days more than 25 countries (including the Soviet Union and Egypt but excluding the United States and Israel) had extended recognition to the government-in-exile.

Saudi Arabia

• TITLE: Saudi Arabia
  SECTION: Foreign relations, 1932–53
  ...the Saudis were generally victorious. Hostilities were terminated by the Treaty of Al-Ṭāʾif, by which the Saudis gained the disputed district. Diplomatic relations with Egypt, severed in 1926 because of an incident on the Meccan pilgrimage, were not renewed until after the death of King Fuʾād of Egypt in 1936.
• TITLE: Saudi Arabia
  SECTION: Foreign affairs
  As a result of the rise to power of Egypt’s Pan-Arab nationalist president Gamal Abdel Nasser, Saudi relations with Egypt were often strained. Egyptian propaganda made frequent attacks on the Saudi system of royal government. When Egyptian troops were sent to North Yemen in 1962, tension between Saudi Arabia and Egypt became more acute. The Saudis helped the Yemeni royalists against the...

Somalia

• TITLE: Somalia
  SECTION: Competition between the European powers and Ethiopia
  About the middle of the 19th century, the Somali peninsula became a theatre of competition between Great Britain, Italy, and France. On the African continent itself Egypt also was involved, and later Ethiopia, expanding and consolidating its realm under the guiding leadership of the emperors Tewodros II, Yohannes IV, and Menilek II. Britain’s interest in the northern Somali coast followed the...

South Sudan

• TITLE: South Sudan
  SECTION: Colonial administration
  In 1899 the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium was declared, providing for the Sudan to be administered jointly by Egypt and Great Britain, with a governor-general appointed by the khedive of Egypt but nominated by the British government. In reality, however, there was no equal partnership between Britain and Egypt in the Sudan, as the British dominated the condominium from the beginning. Their first...

Sudan, The

• TITLE: Sudan (region, Africa)
  On the eastern side of the continent, ancient Egypt’s links with the Sudan region were generally strong, notably with Nubia. After the Nubian empire had been overrun by Muslims, it was replaced by kingdoms such as those of Dongola, Darfur, and Sennar. Later there was invasion from Egypt and, in 1899, the establishment of the Anglo-Egyptian condominium. The independent Republic of the Sudan was...
• TITLE: al-Mahdiyyah (Sudanese religious movement)
  ...established by Muḥammad Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Mahdī with the aim to reform Islam. The movement, which succeeded in overcoming the unpopular ruling Turco-Egyptian regime in the Sudan, resulted in the establishment of a Mahdist state (1885). After Muḥammad Aḥmad’s death shortly thereafter, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad...
• TITLE: Sudan
  SECTION: Medieval Christian kingdoms
  After the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 ce, the Arabs erupted from the desert steppes of Arabia and overran the lands to the east and west. Egypt was invaded in 639, and small groups of Arab raiders penetrated up the Nile and pillaged along the frontier of the kingdom of Maqurrah, which by the 7th century had absorbed the state of Nobatia. Raid and counterraid between the Arabs and the...

Syria

• TITLE: Syria
  SECTION: The union with Egypt, 1958–61
  The years that followed the overthrow of Shishakli in Syria saw the rise of Pres. Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt to leadership of the Pan-Arab unity movement. The coalition regime in Syria turned more and more to Egypt for support and also established the first friendly contacts with the communist countries. In February 1958 Syria, under the leadership of the Baʿth Party, gave up its...
• TITLE: Damascus (national capital)
  SECTION: Modern city
  ...which followed almost immediately. A series of coups from 1949 to 1970 brought a varied array of leadership to power and the rumble of tanks to the streets. During Syria’s short-lived union with Egypt as the United Arab Republic (1958–61), Damascus lost its title of capital to Cairo. In 1963 the Baʿth Party came to power through a coup and embarked on an experiment of socialist...

United States

• TITLE: United States
  SECTION: Eisenhower’s second term
  ...of the Suez Canal and, perhaps, to destroy Egypt’s president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, who had nationalized the canal in July. Eisenhower handled both crises deftly, forcing the invaders to withdraw from Egypt and preventing events in Hungary from triggering a confrontation between the superpowers. Owing in part to these crises, Eisenhower carried all but seven states in the election. It was a purely...
• TITLE: United States
  SECTION: Foreign affairs
  Carter’s most noted achievement was to sponsor a great step toward peace in the Middle East. In September 1978 he met with Egyptian Pres. Anwar el-Sādāt and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin at a two-week negotiating session at Camp David, Maryland, and on September 17 Carter announced that two accords had been signed establishing the terms for a peace treaty between Egypt and...
• TITLE: United States
  SECTION: The Barack Obama administration
  Developments in Egypt and Syria in 2013 continued to provide major challenges for U.S. foreign policy. When protests against the Egyptian military’s removal of Mohammed Morsi from the presidency in July led to the killing of hundreds of his supporters in July and August, some American politicians called for the suspension of U.S. financial aid to Egypt (more than $1 billion per year), citing...
• TITLE: Barack Obama (president of United States)
  SECTION: Spring scandals and summer challenges
  The Obama administration’s foreign policy in the region was also being tested by events in Egypt, where the military had removed Pres. Mohammed Morsi from power in July. Because the U.S. government was legally prohibited from providing financial aid (which amounted to more that $1 billion annually for Egypt) to countries whose leadership changed as the result of a coup, the administration...

Yemen

• TITLE: Yemen
  SECTION: Two Yemeni states
  ...(North Yemen). The young imam escaped from his battered palace, fled into the northern highlands, and began the traditional process of rallying the tribes to his cause. The new republic called upon Egypt for assistance, and Egyptian troops and equipment arrived almost immediately to defend the new regime of ʿAbd Allāh al-Sallāl, the nominal leader of the 1962 revolution and the...

Hünkâr Iskelesi Treaty

• TITLE: Treaty of Hünkâr İskelesi (Ottoman Empire-Russia [1833])
  Facing defeat by the insurgent Muḥammad ʿAlī Pasha of Egypt, the Ottoman sultan Mahmud II, after his requests for assistance had been rejected by Austria, Great Britain, and France, accepted Russian military aid early in 1833. In return he concluded, at the village of Hünkâr İskelesi, near Istanbul (Constantinople), an eight-year treaty that proclaimed peace...

infitāḥ

• TITLE: infitāḥ (Egyptian history)
  program of economic liberalization in Egypt initiated by Pres. Anwar el-Sādāt in the early 1970s.

Islamic revival and reform efforts

• TITLE: Islamic world
  SECTION: Postcolonial states and Islam
  In Egypt, which became a constitutional monarchy after 1922 (though it was under colonial control until 1952), the question of the relation between state and Islam generated fierce political controversies between secularists and those who interpreted Islam as a system of government. Among the latter, the Muslim Brotherhood grew from a grassroots organization into a mass movement that provided...
• TITLE: Islamic world
  SECTION: Islamist movements from the 1960s
  ...under the influence of the Soviet Union since the mid-1950s, withdrew from military and other treaties with the Soviets in the 1970s under Pres. Anwar el-Sādāt. A new alliance between Egypt and Saudi Arabia, fostered by economic assistance to Egypt from Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing Persian Gulf states, altered the geopolitical map of Islam and led to new religious...
• TITLE: Islamic world
  SECTION: Islamist movements from the 1960s
  ...ummah under the sole sovereignty of Allāh and his revealed word needed to be constituted, because secular nation-states—exemplified by Nasserist Egypt—had led only to barbarity. Quṭb’s ideology was also influenced by Abū al-Aʿlā al-Mawdūdī (1903–79), founder in British India in 1941 of the...
• TITLE: Islamic world
  SECTION: Islamist movements from the 1960s
  ...instances conflicts with government authorities led to bloody civil wars, as in Algeria between 1992 and 2002, or to protracted armed struggles between military forces and Islamist groups, as in Egypt from the 1970s to the mid-1990s. This repression resulted in the exile of many Islamist activists to Europe and the Americas and led many others to join such military fronts as the Afghan...
• TITLE: Islamic world
  SECTION: Dimensions of the Islamic revival
  ...their speeches and sermons on audiocassettes. In the 1990s such new media as satellite television and the Internet began to offer faster means of access to ideas about Islam. In the late 1990s the Egyptian ʿAmr Khālid became one of many popular preachers who reached a global audience. Through his Web site he disseminated advice on understanding and living Islam as a general ethics...

land reform

• TITLE: land reform (agricultural economics)
  SECTION: Egypt
  The Egyptian reform of 1952 followed the revolution that overthrew the monarchy and brought young middle-class leaders to the helm. Though affecting only about 12 percent of the arable land, it was applied thoroughly and touched all aspects of rural life. Egypt had two main forms of tenure: private ownership and waqf, or land held in trust and dedicated to charitable or educational...

Mamlūks

• TITLE: Mamlūk (Islamic dynasty)
  ...of slaves that won political control of several Muslim states during the Middle Ages. Under the Ayyūbid sultanate, Mamlūk generals used their power to establish a dynasty that ruled Egypt and Syria from 1250 to 1517. The name is derived from an Arabic word for slave.

Muslim Brotherhood

• TITLE: Muslim Brotherhood
  religio-political organization founded in 1928 at Ismailia, Egypt, by Ḥasan al-Bannāʾ. It advocated a return to the Qurʾān and the Hadith as guidelines for a healthy modern Islamic society. The Brotherhood spread rapidly throughout Egypt, Sudan, Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, and North Africa. Although figures of Brotherhood membership are variable, it is estimated...

Persian Gulf War

• TITLE: Persian Gulf War (1990-1991)
  ...then posed to Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil producer and exporter, prompted the United States and its western European NATO allies to rush troops to Saudi Arabia to deter a possible attack. Egypt and several other Arab nations joined the anti-Iraq coalition and contributed forces to the military buildup, known as Operation Desert Shield. Iraq meanwhile built up its occupying army in...

Cromer

• TITLE: Evelyn Baring, 1st earl of Cromer (British diplomat)
  SECTION: Service in India.
  Baring first went to Egypt in 1877, when he served as representative of the British holders of Egyptian bonds on the recently created Egyptian Public Debt Commission. The commission was designed to help the Egyptian viceroy, the khedive Ismāʿīl Pasha, out of his financial difficulties, and also to safeguard the interest of the bondholders. Egyptian finances, however, were in a...

Kleber

• TITLE: Jean-Baptiste Kléber (French general)
  In April 1798 Kléber was made commander of a division in the forces assembled by Napoleon Bonaparte for the invasion of Egypt. After the French landed at Alexandria on July 1–2, Kléber was wounded in the ensuing battle. He remained in Alexandria as governor for several months, but on April 16, 1799, he defeated the Turks at Mount Tabor. On Napoleon’s departure for France in...

Napoleon

• TITLE: Napoleon I (emperor of France)
  SECTION: The Directory
  ...1798, he announced that the operation could not be undertaken until France had command of the sea. Instead, he suggested that France strike at the sources of Great Britain’s wealth by occupying Egypt and threatening the route to India. This proposal, seconded by Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, the foreign minister, was accepted by the directors, who were glad to get rid of their ambitious...

Nūr al-Dīn

• TITLE: Nūr al-Dīn (Muslim ruler)
  ...an attempt to expel them from Syria and Palestine. His forces recaptured Edessa shortly after his accession, invaded the important military district of Antakiya in 1149, and took Damascus in 1154. Egypt was annexed by stages in 1169–71.

Wolseley

• TITLE: Garnet Wolseley, 1st Viscount Wolseley (British field marshal)
  Returning to the War Office, first as quartermaster general (1880) and then as adjutant general (1882), he devoted himself to reform until interrupted by a nationalist uprising in Egypt under ʿUrabī Pasha. In his most brilliant campaign, Wolseley swiftly seized the Suez Canal and, after a night march, surprised and defeated ʿUrabī at Tall al-Kabīr (Sept. 13, 1882)....

United Arab Republic

• TITLE: United Arab Republic (U.A.R.) (historical republic, Egypt-Syria)
  political union of Egypt and Syria proclaimed on Feb. 1, 1958, and ratified in nationwide plebiscites. It ended on Sept. 28, 1961, when Syria, following a military coup, declared itself independent of Egypt. Despite the dissolution of the union, Egypt retained the name United Arab Republic until Sept. 2, 1971, when it took the name Arab Republic of Egypt.

ship design

• TITLE: ship
  SECTION: Early rowed vessels
  The earliest historical evidence of boats is found in Egypt during the 4th millennium bce. A culture nearly completely riparian, Egypt was narrowly aligned along the Nile, totally supported by it, and served by transport on its uninterruptedly navigable surface below the First Cataract (at modern-day Aswān). There are representations of Egyptian boats used to carry obelisks on the Nile...

War of Greek Independence

• TITLE: War of Greek Independence
  ...in December 1822. After a second civil war (1824), Kountouriótis was firmly established as leader, but his government and the entire revolution were gravely threatened by the arrival of Egyptian forces, led by Ibrāhīm Pasha, which had been sent to aid the Turks (1825). With the support of Egyptian sea power, the Ottoman forces successfully invaded the Peloponnese; they...

World War I

• TITLE: World War I (1914–18)
  SECTION: The Egyptian frontiers, 1915–July 1917
  Even after the evacuation from Gallipoli, the British maintained 250,000 troops in Egypt. A major source of worry to the British was the danger of a Turkish threat from Palestine across the Sinai Desert to the Suez Canal. That danger waned, however, when the initially unpromising rebellion of the Hāshimite amir Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī against the Turks in the Hejaz was developed...

World War II

• TITLE: World War II (1939–45)
  SECTION: Egypt and Cyrenaica, 1940–summer 1941
  The contemporary course of events in the Balkans, described above, nullified the first great victory won by British land forces in World War II, which took place in North Africa. When Italy declared war against Great Britain in June 1940, it had nearly 300,000 men under Marshal Rodolfo Graziani in Cyrenaica (present-day Libya), to confront the 36,000 troops whom the British commander in chief...
• TITLE: World War II (1939–45)
  SECTION: Libya and Egypt, autumn 1941–summer 1942
  In the Western Desert, a major offensive against Rommel’s front was undertaken on November 18, 1941, by the British 8th Army, commanded by Cunningham under the command in chief of Wavell’s successor in the Middle East, General Sir Claude Auchinleck. The offensive was routed. General Neil Methuen Ritchie took Cunningham’s place on November 25, still more tanks were brought up, and a fortnight’s...