Cairo – In January 2019, the Sheikh of Al-Azhar, Dr. Ahmed Al-Tayeb, received French President Emmanuel Macron during his visit to Cairo, bringing to mind painful memories when the French desecrated Al-Azhar Mosque with their horses, killed its sheikhs, tried its students and then closed it completely, on these days more than two centuries ago The exact time is June 20, 1800.
The beginning of the French campaign
“The people of Egypt will be told that I have come to destroy your religion: I do not think so! And my answer to this is I have come to restore your rights and punish the usurpers, the Mamluks. I respect God, His Messenger and the Qur’an… Aren’t we the ones who throughout the centuries have been friends of the Sultan?”
With
Napoleon established a bureau of Al-Azhar sheikhs assigned to administer Cairo’s affairs, and then tried to reach a fatwa from Al-Azhar’s imams that would allow loyalty to Napoleon according to Islamic law, but these attempts were unsuccessful.
The horses entered Al-Azhar
Soon, the situation in Cairo flared up under the leadership of the sheikhs of mosques, as the first Cairo revolution began in October 1798, when the call to prayer in Cairo sounded from thousands of mosques, then the call rang out after each call to prayer “live on jihad” so that the French realized that Cairo is not the easy hunt that They thought it.
The revolutionaries gathered in the Al-Azhar Mosque, at a time when the members of the Al-Azhar Sheikh’s Court resorted to Napoleon, asking him to stop striking Cairo with his cannons.
No one imagined that the French would think of desecrating Al-Azhar Mosque, but the anger blinded the leaders of the occupation, so orders were issued to strike Al-Azhar with the cannons installed in the citadel and Mokattam “and let the cannons be in the most suitable location so that the beatings would be more effective, and to seize the entrances to Al-Azhar and the houses leading to it, and storming the mosque with soldiers under the protection of cannons, killing those who challenge them, and burning houses from which stones are thrown.”
Thus, Fatimid Cairo ignited and bombs rained down on the Al-Azhar Mosque, and in the surrounding areas in Al-Ghouriya and Al-Fahamin. Soldiers’ battalions stormed the streets leading to Al-Azhar, and the revolutionaries became surrounded by soldiers’ fire and artillery strikes.
The historian al-Jabarti says, describing what happened that day in the most important mosques in Cairo, “They entered the Al-Azhar Mosque, riding horses, among them pedestrians, like walruses. And the bowls, the deposits, and the caches with wheels and cupboards, and they showered books and the Qur’an, and on the ground they threw them, and with their feet and sandals they trampled on them, and they broke his utensils and threw them on his plate and his sides, and everyone they came across with him stripped him, and from his clothes they took him out…”
Osama Al-Azhari, a professor at the Faculty of Theology at Al-Azhar University, says in the documentary film “Al-Azhar” produced by Al Jazeera Documentary that Al-Azhar played a role in dislocating the French, confronting them and declaring civil disobedience.
In turn, Mohamed Afifi, professor of modern history at Cairo University, says that this incident will remain in the memory and collective mind of the Egyptians, such as the storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque, when a religious symbol is occupied by those who oppose you.
Kleber succeeds Bonaparte
From Bonaparte to the army, the news from Europe prompted me to decide to leave for France, leaving the command of the army to General Kleber. I am proud to leave the soldiers with my association with them, but it is a temporary situation, and know that the general I succeeded in enjoys the confidence of the government and my confidence.
Thus, Napoleon decided to leave Egypt, giving up the dream of establishing his empire in the East, to secretly flee from Egypt to France, and Kleber became the leader of the occupation campaign in Egypt, or to lead the “Army of the East” campaign, as described by the French documents.
Kleber eliminated the second Cairo uprising, imposed fines on the Egyptians, made an alliance with Murad Bey, the leader of the Ottomans, and made things easier for him to rule Egypt for years to come.
Clipper’s assassination
On June 14, 1800, the Syrian young man Suleiman Al-Halabi – who studied at Al-Azhar – approached Clipper in the garden of his palace in Cairo.
The French decided to prosecute Al-Halabi and those who knew about his plan in the most violent and cruel way possible, with the aim of breaking the morale of the Al-Azhar students, so they decided to cut off the heads of the Azharites who knew his plan, then his right hand was burned with fire while he was alive, then he was impaled.
Assuming leadership, Meno, succeeding Kleber, wanted revenge for the actions of the Azhari student, so he decided to close the Al-Azhar Mosque on June 20, 1800, to remain closed until the arrival of Ottoman and British aid in August 1801.
In 1996, director Hossam El-Din Mustafa presented the epic of the struggle of Al-Azhar sheikhs and his students against the French campaign in a television series entitled “Al-Abtal”, in which the singer Ali El-Haggar sings in its beginning tartar: