The First Cairo Uprising of 1798: a popular spontaneity or the result of a conspiracy?
Tchoudinov Alexander
Since the First Cairo Uprising was a kind of turning point during the Egyptian expedition of the Army of Orient, it was somehow affected by almost every historian who wrote about Bonaparte's Middle East adventure. However, despite the seemingly detailed coverage of this event in historiography, some, even key, aspects of it are still interpreted by researchers in different ways. For example, the question of the origin of the movement itself: was it the result of someone's intention or was it spontaneous? The answers to it were sometimes given by various authors in exactly the opposite way. This gave the author of the article a reason to turn to the analysis of this event and, to understand its origins, analyze it basing on archival and published sources. The study showed that the uprising was deliberately provoked by part of the Cairo clergy and from the very beginning had a pronounced anti-French orientation. The assassination of General Dupuy, which Napoleon, and then some historians, considered a turning point in the development of the uprising, considering that it was only after it that the movement allegedly acquired a violent character, was not the first. It was done simultaneously with the murders of other Frenchmen that took place all over Cairo and was even preceded by them. At the same time, the version sometimes presented in the historical literature that the uprising unfolded according to some plan developed in advance by the participants of the "conspiracy" of the sheikhs was not confirmed. Though the rebellion was deliberately provoked, it quickly got out of control of the initiators, who managed to retain the role of only its spiritual leaders. The rebels' lack of real military leadership and a well-thought-out plan of action became the main weakness of the movement, which led to its rapid suppression.
The study is realized in the State Academic University for the Humanities within the framework of the state task of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation (project FZNF–2023–0003 Traditions and values of society: mechanisms of formation and transformation in the context of global history).
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