Within ten years of his coming to power, Muhammad `Aliy succeeded in virtually nationalizing land in Egypt by destroying the agrarian position of the privileged classes he found in the country (1).Having destroyed the old 'iltizam system, Muhammad `Aliy distributed land to the peasants and the village headmen. While allotting small tracts of land to peasants (3-5 feddans) for cultivation, and permitting them to dispose freely of the produce, the Pasha did not give them legal ownership. However, during the next twenty years, economic and other conditions tended to erode Muhammad `Aliy's, or the State's, monopoly over land ownership in favor of private ownership. The latter development was especially rapid in the case of an emergent class of big landowners. In 1829-30, Muhammad `Aliy began to make free grants of large tracts of uncultivated land to high officials of the State and to others. In doing so, he exempted them from taxes on the condition that the recipients cultivated these lands and increased the country's agricultural production.  At first, these land grants, known as `ibadiyyah (3), did not confer ownership of the land upon the recipient; they merely gave him the right to use the land.  In 1836, however, such land grants became inheritable by the eldest sons of the grantees, and by 1842 the latter acquired complete rights of ownership.  A decree in 1846 made the transfer, mortgage and sale of such land property legal. Besides these land grants to high officials and notables, Muhammad `Aliy adopted the `Uthmanliy  ciftliyk system of granting large tracts of land, buildings and other property to his family and relatives. This practice led to the concentration in the hands of members of the ruling family of vast agricultural holdings which by the beginning of the twentieth century represented about one-sixth of the country's cultivated land.

Military campaigns, especially in the 1830s, caused the partial depopulation of several villages. Conscription was heavy and continuous to meet the demands of the army. The burden of taxation, on the other hand, led to the accumulation of tax arrears in many villages. With the failure of his foreign ventures at the hands of Foreign Powers and Turkey, He instituted the system of `uhdah lands by which high officials, army officers, provincial governors, and notables would receive control over lands covering whole villages in return for their assumption of the tax liability on this land. `uhdah differed from the old 'iltizaam in that the `uhdah holder was expected to pay the tax rate decreed by the Pasha and could not levy any further tax upon the cultivators. He did, however, acquire a parcel of land for each `uhdah that was tax free. On this parcel of land, moreover, he was entitled to unpaid labor by the farmers.

Muhammad `Aliy's treasury was constantly in urgent need of replenishment. By 1822 the Pasha began to transform the whole basis of the Egyptian economy: His monopoly over agricultural high marketable cash crop production and whatever native small industry existed was virtually complete. He introduced cotton into Egypt. But what was desperately needed by the cotton mills of Europe was a superior quality of cotton which could stand ginning and milling and emerge strong enough, and with a staple fine enough, to be woven into high quality cloth.

In 1818-1819 a Frenchman named Jumel, who had been in America and knew something about cotton, tried to persuade Muhammad `Aliy that a brand of Ethiopian cotton called Maho (4), after a Turkish bey who grew it in his garden, could revolutionize the whole agricultural output of Egypt.   Muhammad `Aliy wasn't convinced, so Jumel and a merchant took a plot of land near Mattariyah and planted the Maho cotton.  By  they had shipped three bales of it to Trieste, which convinced  Muhammad `Aliy to put Jumel in charge of his own cotton plantations. In  some Americans arrived in Cairo to show  Muhammad `Aliy a "Whitney saw-gin" cotton gin, but he didn’t buy it.  He bought a roller gin instead, but it failed too because in fact, according to him, the fallahiyn's hands and feet were cheaper!

Cotton, was the article most attractive to European capitalists, and as the area of the crop began to increase in Egypt,  Muhammad `Aliy began to sell the whole crop each year at a fixed price. "Capital flowed into Egypt," and  Muhammad `Aliy i's credit "was really extraordinary."  What this gradual concentration on a single crop eventually did to Egypt's economy can hardly be measured even today. It not only transformed Egypt into a single-crop colonial country, tied as a source of raw material to the apron strings of manufacturing Europe, it also brought capital to Egypt from Europe.  However the money was always concentrated in the hands of the few individual merchants who handled the cotton and who eventually began to deal directly with the big European bankers.  But it was Muhammad `Aliy himself who sat on the top of this pyramid of cash from Europe.
 

Cotton also brought the credit system to Cairo, but the wrong way. Credit became Europe's enticement to  Muhammad `Aliy and his successors to go on borrowing and borrowing at the exorbitant rates of interest that eventually gave Britain and France the excuse to foreclose on the entire Egyptian economy and control all Egyptian life, as if that were the fair price to pay for the pasha's debts and  industrial pet projects.  It was Muhammad `Aliy, for instance, who built the first barrages across the Nile north of Cairo, because a dam was vital to irrigation and cotton growing in his plantations.

Work began in 1834, but stopped the next year because of an epidemic of the plague.  Two years later the work was resumed.  In 1842, Bellefonds was replaced by another French engineer, Dieudonne-Eugene Mougel (1808-90) who suggested constructing the barrage on the river bed at the most southerly tip of the Delta. The instability of the substratum on the Rashiyd branch of the Nile hindered progress. By 1853 a total of 47 million francs had been poured into the project!

Construction  lasted for almost twenty years, through three khedivial reigns. The barrage was completed in 1863 but was so badly designed that it had to be constantly repaired.  Exasperated, the khedive `Abbas called upon Muhammad Mazhar an Egyptian architect (1810-73) to help with the project.

In 1883,  The Delta Barrage, due to its many flaws in design, was nearly abandoned.  However, a group of British engineers, led by Sir Colin Scott-Moncrieff, came to the rescue, which is a matter of some historical interest since, at the time, the Delta barrage was the largest hydraulic construction in the world and cost the Egyptian Government a great deal of money.

Meanwhile, the British government had already sent John Bowring to report on the state of Egypt's finances, and his Blue Book (1840) gave the British government enough material to realize that it was only a matter of waiting for the plum to ripen a little more before it was finally ready to be plucked.
I
 

(To be continued)