Egypt: Round Up All the Usual Candidates

Even in the days of Husni Mubarak, there were opposition Presidential candidates. They never won, of course, or stood a chance, but the pretense of a competitive system was at least honored.

It would appear that President Sisi, about to run for a second term, is not eager for any such competition. When former Air Force Commander and 2013 Presidential candidate Ahmad Shafiq returned from exile in the UAE to run for President, he soon announced he had been away too long and wasn't running.

Then Anwar El Sadat, nephew and namesake of the late President, who had planned to run, announced he was pulling out.

Then former Chief of Staff Sami Anan announced he was running. Not only is he a senior military man, but he made his announcement a few hours after Sisi's own, and named as his Vice Presidential candidate Hisham Geneina, formerly head of the Administrative Control Authority, who had been fired for pointing out corruption.

Anan was promptly arrested for "forgery" and "violating Army regulations."

Next human rights lawyer Khaled Ali announced he would not run as there was no hope of a competitive vote.

Then on Saturday, Geneina, Anan's designated Vice President, was attacked by three men and beaten, though official statements referred to an automobile accident.

Finally, yesterday, a little-known political figure named Moussa Mustafa Moussa of the Al-Ghad (tomorrow) Party, which has no seats in Parliament, announced he was running, though no one knows much about him. He has not, as of this writing, quit the race.

It's looking like Sisi will win without any real competition.

"A Pub Crawl in Ottoman Cairo"

In an attempt to resume my past efforts to highlight the occasionally offbeat, here's a link to "A Pub Crawl in Ottoman Cairo," which uses a 1904 ultra-detailed insurance map of Cairo to highlight the numerous drinking establishments in and around the Ezbekiyya Gardens.

 While the choice of "Ottoman Cairo" is arguable (though technically correct) since 1904 was the later years of Lord Cromer's ascendancy and Ottoman suzerainty was merely theoretical, I won't quibble. The formal Ezbekiyya gardens had emerged in the 19th century around an earlier lake, and had become a center for elite European hotels (including the original Shepheard's and the Grand Continental) and polite society. (Ironically, Cairo's most notorious red light district lay just a few blocks to the north, where the modern European quarters blended with and abutted the more "traditional" quarters.)

As the detailed map, which can be found online via the Harvard library, shows, there was no shortage of places to drink. (At least a small number of these survived into the 1970s, when highway flyovers and a tunnel pretty thoroughly transformed the neighborhood.)

If you like Cairo, or old maps, or bars,or if, like me, all three, take a look.

It's Edward William Lane's Birthday Again

On September 17, 1801, in Hereford, England, Edward William Lane was born. 146 years later, I was born. I believe I have noted this annually since 2009, when this blog began. If I must share my birthday, I could do far worse.

Generations of English-speaking Arabists have used Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon, an immense dictionary of the classical language based on the classical Arabic Qamus. He died while working on the letter qaf (someone I knew once joked he might have been working on the word qadr: only the Arabic-speakers will get it), and his nephew finished the eight-volume work, but it's much weaker after the qafs. At one time his translation of the Arabian Nights was widely read; it is more readable than Sir Richard Burton's, but Burton's has generally superseded it in popularity. (Burton, unlike Lane, kept the dirty parts in, but he wrote in a style that at times verges on the unreadably pretentious, and, being a late Victorian, made up his own dirty words to translate the Arabic ones, since the standard English ones couldn't be printed. Off the top of my head, I remember "futter" if you want an example. It helps if you know French.) Lane's Nights notes are a fantastic treasure of Arab daily life, while Burton's notes have a whole lot of detail on less savory aspects of the culture. Read both. Or read both their notes, and a modern translation of the text.

But Lane's first work is the one that will always endear him to me, and I think, to anyone who loves Egypt, umm al-dunya. This is The Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians.
Lane was an "orientalist" before Edward Said taught us that that was a bad word, but he was also one of the earliest, and one of the best and most scrupulous in his scholarship.

Manners and Customs is a great book: dated to be sure, after a century and three quarters; quaint at times in its attitudes and curious in its transliterations of Arabic, but still a gem of description of another culture by a man who managed to learn a great deal by living within it. It was first published in 1836, after years of gestation. I still have, and often refer to, the Everyman's Library edition I picked up in Beirut in 1972; the paper dust cover is even still intact. An earlier version of the Everyman's edition is available in full text on Google Books, as are some other editions, so you don't need to rely on a paper copy as I did. (Though if you want a paper copy, it's still in print.)
It is one of those books that cannot be excerpted with any utility: it's the small joys that make it so interesting, and it may be a complete wash for those who've never been in Egypt. It's the flashes of recognition of continuities and the clear evidence of change and evolution that make it interesting. I have favorite sections and passages, but can't find one that would represent the whole. But there are few, if any, other works of the period by Western orientalists that so neatly encapsulate a country and its culture. There are, certainly, plenty of descriptions of Damascus and Istanbul and other cities by diplomats and historians and linguists, but Lane was more of an anthropologist than anything else, although I don't think the word had been coined then, except perhaps for physical anthropology: this is cultural anthropology before the words existed. He captured Egypt in the later years of Muhammad ‘Ali's reign, but also provided descriptions of practices and habits that long predated his era, and many of which survive today. But he also captured a great deal that does not survive today, and that is part of the book's charm and importance. Most Arabic authors of the time were recording the events and institutions of the ruling classes; Lane was out there with the folks in the coffeehouses and local gathering places and mosques. He captured Egypt at the human level better than any Arabic author of the 19th century that I know of: probably better than any author prior to Naguib Mahfouz, who finally gave an Egyptian voice to ordinary Egyptians.
Lane also was part of a dynasty of sorts. His sister, Sophia Lane Poole, wrote a work on women in Egypt (some at least of which was provided by her brother, apparently), and his nephew, Stanley Lane-Poole (he added a hyphen apparently), an Arabic scholar in his own right, finished the Arabic-English Lexicon and wrote many popular historical and cultural works on the Middle East, some of which still have value, but none of which equal his uncle's contribution.
So happy 216th birthday, Edward William Lane, and thanks for Manners and Customs, and the indispensable Lexicon of course, and your version of the Nights. But it's Manners and Customs that makes me happiest to share your birthday.

120 Years of Egypt's Stella Beer

I have returned from vacation, and while as I explained previously, my posts will continue to be less frequent until my cataract surgery later this month, I expect it to be much more regular after that. Meanwhile, here's a site memorializing 120 years of Egypt's Stella beer. There are several photo collections (labels, breweries, history, etc) which deserve your attention, whether you know Stella from the state-owned (no quality control) years or the much improved post-privatization product.

May 1967: The Soviet Warning; Egypt Orders UNEF Out of Sinai

Part III of my posts on the origins of the ‘Aqaba campaign will appear soon, but along with the 100th anniversary of that campaign coincide with the 50th anniversary of an even more decisive moment in Middle Eastern history.

On May 13, 1967, Egyptian diplomats in the then Soviet Union communicated to Cairo stating that Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Semenov was warning Egypt (still officially known as the UAR), that the Soviets had detected a major Israeli buildup on the Syrian border, and that they expected Israel to launch a ground and air attack on Syria between May 17 and 21. While urging Egypt and Syria not to provoke Israel, there was one problem: there was no such buildup. Soon after the May 13 warning, Anwar Sadat (then Speaker of Parliament) visited Moscow with a Parliamentary delegation and received the same warning. Between May 15 and 19 Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko briefed all the Arab Ambassadors in Moscow with the same warning.

The question of what Moscow's motives were remains controversial, and I'll return to the question later. But what made the warning particularly incendiary was that it came at a particularly explosive moment.

And 50 years ago late on May 16, Gamal Abdel Nasser, sensitive to Syrian charges that he was "hiding" behind the United Nations Emergency Force in Sinai (UNEF), sent word to the UNEF Commander via the Egyptian Chief of Staff demanding that UNEF withdraw from Sinai and the Gaza Strip. The UNEF Commander referred the issue to Secretary General U Thant. Even before Thant could respond, Egyptian forces began moving into Sinai.

As with many wars in history, the seeds of the 1967 War lay in the settlement of the previous war, the Suez Conflict. To facilitate the withdrawal of British, French, and Israeli forces from Sinai and Gaza, UNEF was created. Intended to deploy on both sides of the 1949 ceasefire line (roughly today's international border). Israel refused to have UN peacekeepers on their side of the border. As a result, UNEF deployed only on the Egyptian side, and when withdrawn in 1967, there was no force to separate the two sides.

While UNEF provided security on the Egyptian and Gaza fronts, Israel continued to engage on the Syrian and Jordanian fronts (Jordan was still in control of the West Bank). Each side engaged in provocation of the other. Israel periodically tested its rights in the small demilitarized zones on the Syrian border, sending armored but unarmed tractors into the zone, where they were frequently met with shelling from Syrian artillery on the Golan Heights.

The Soviets began accusing Israel of plotting an attack in the Fall of 1966. On November 8, 1966, Egypt and Syria signed a joint defense pact. Five days later, in response to a land mine attack that killed three Israeli soldiers, Israel staged a border raid against the West Bank town of al-Samu, demolishing many houses there. This in turn led to riots against King Hussein, who in turn taunted Nasser for sheltering behind his UNEF protectors. Disputes over the waters of the Yarmuk and Upper Jordan were also intensifying.

On April 7, 1967, Israel began to cultivate three plots of land in the southern Demilitarized Zone near Kibbutz Ha'on. Israel had mobilized ground troops and alerted its Air Force, expecting to provoke a response. When two tractors began plowing and the Syrians predictably responded with artillery fire, IDF Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin was authorized to launch air strikes. The strike aircraft broke off their attack when Syrian MiGs came up to meet them and were replaced with Israeli fighters. As the day wore on the largest air dogfight since Suez ensued; at the end at least six MiGs had been shot down.

In the wake of the dogfight, both Syria and Jordan escalated their criticisms of Egypt; Nasser, the self-proclaimed prophet of Arab unity, was vulnerable on this issue.

Israeli PM Levi Eshkol issued a stern warning to Syria against further provocations.

May 15 marked Israel's 19th independence day under the Western calendar, and a military parade was scheduled in the western (Israeli) side of Jerusalem. Since no country recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital, that itself elicited outrage in the Arab world, Israel sought to defuse the situation (slightly) by not parading tanks or other heavy equipment.

And it was at this exact point that the Soviet warning threw a lit match into the explosive situation, provoking Nasser to order the UNEF withdrawal.

We'll look more closely at Soviet motives in a post coming soon.

April 17-19, 1917: The Second Battle of Gaza, First Use of Tanks and Poison Gas in Middle East

Of eight Mark I tanks at 2nd Gaza, Turkish fire destroyed three

The past three days mark the 100th anniversary of the Second Battle of Gaza, part of the Palestine Campaign in World War I. In an ironic echo of the present, it also marked the first use of poison gas in the Middle East campaign, as well as the first use of tanks.

As we saw in discussing the First Battle of Gaza in March (Part I and Part II), the British command in effect snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by ordering a retreat, despite the fact that ANZAC Mounted troops were already in the midst of Gaza town. They feared the arrival of Turkish reinforcements and the fall of darkness.

The overall commanders, Egyptian Expeditionary Force commander General Sir Archibald Murray, and Eastern Force Commander General Sir Charles Dobell began preparing for another attempt. Both minimized the first loss in their reports and predicted a successful second attack. Both men in effect were putting their reputations on the line.

After the first battle, the Ottoman forces had be reinforced. There were now three regiments defending Gaza proper, with additional regiments at Hareira (now Tel Haror in Israel)nd others at other points along the road between Gaza and Beersheba. The Ottomans and their German allies had fortified a series of trenches interspersed with strong defensive redoubts and enfilading fire. New German aircraft had arrived, making the air war component more equal. Both sides had discovered the advantages of aircraft in open desert reconnaissance.

Meanwhile, the British had been reinforced with two weapons already in use on the Western Front: a supply of poison gas shells, in this case containing a 50/50 blend of phosgene and chlorine gas; and eight Mark I tanks. The Mark I was the British first generation tank introduced in 1915. Though history would prove desert to be excellent tank country in future wars, the gullies and arroyos around Gaza and the Turkish trenches made it hard to pass; and the Mark I had a maximum speed of only six kilometers per hour and a tendency to break down. Of the eight tanks, two were knocked out in the opening attack and a third later. And though the Turks had no gas masks, the gas attack, when launched, reportedly dissipated in the desert air without significant effect.

Dobell favored a direct frontal attack, accompanied by a swing to the right around the main Gaza lines by the Desert Column. Desert Column Commander Sir Philip Chetwode and ANZAC Commander Harry Chauvel expressed doubts, favoring an attack on the coastal flank of the Turkish lines.

On April 17 and 18, the advance began with the British infantry advancing from the Wadi Ghuzze to engage the forward Turkish outposts. Turkish resistance was fierce and after two days of fighting, they were at their desired position but had captured only outlying outposts.

 

The fighting on the 19th was complex and need not be described in tactical detail. Resistance was fierce and casualties mounted. British and Empire forces succeeded in penetrating the Ottoman lines in several places, but each time they were met with counterattack which drove them back. The next morning, British positions were bombed by German aircraft, and Turkish cavalry was massing near Hareira. It was decided to withdraw. Losses were high, and the defeat more decisive than in the first battle.

Aftermath


With its manpower depleted, the EEF campaign to take Jerusalem was put on hold. Murray decided to make the Canadian Dobell the scapegoat. He was relieved of command and packed off to India. Chetwode, a better and more experienced general, replaced him ans head of Eastern Force; and Harry Chauvel, the ANZAC Light Horseman, took over the Desert Column. In August it would be renamed the Desert Mounted Force, and Chauvel, one of the last great cavalry commanders, would lead it in a series of charges at Beersheba, Megiddo, and into Jerusalem, Damascus, and Aleppo. The Light Horse would win fame for Australian arms, and Chauvel would become Australia's first full General.

Murray (Seven Pillars)

But not under Murray's command. Murray has been a patron of the Arab revolt, a sponsor of T.E. Lawrence (the David Lean film does him an injustice), and a victor over the Senussi (Sanusi) and in the Sinai. But the two defeats at Gaza in two months, after his confident predictions, was too much and he was recalled and given command of the Army training center at Aldershot. He continued to recive promotions, but held no more field commands.

Though the military high command continued to believe that victory would be won on the hemorrhaging Western Front, the man who had become Prime Minister the previous December, David Lloyd George, was an enthusiast for the Eastern Front, and particularly for taking Jerusalem. The Bible-quoting Lloyd George favored naming a "dashing" sort of commander for the Palestine Front.

Allenby (Seven Pillars)

The search for a new commander was not smooth.  General Jan Smuts, Commander of the South African Army and a member of the Imperial War Council, refused the assignment. In June, a former cavalry commander and Boer War veteran (though in that war he was the opposite side from Smuts), but who had been enjoying a rapid rise on the Western Front until suffering a setback. Still a believer that the West was the real war, he first considered it a joke, but accepted. His name: Edmund Allenby.

What Economic Crisis? Egypt Now Has an Indoor Ski Slope

When I first lived in Egypt 45 years ago, there was still at least a pretense of being an "Arab socialist" society, the legacy of the Nasser era.

That was then.  This month, though Egypt's per capita GDP hovers around $3000, Egypt became the first country in Africa to have an indoor ski slope.

It is also only the second indoor ski slope in the Middle East, after (where else?) Dubai. Of course there are real ski slopes in Lebanon and Morocco, but they aren't inside mega-malls.

The just opened Mall of Egypt, built and owned by a Dubai (surprised?) development group, is unlikely to attract ordinary, non-elite Egyptians. It is in 6 October City. a "satellite city" in the Western Desert edge of Greater Cairo, accessible mostly by private car.

See the website here.

If It's Saint Patrick's Day, It's Time for My Annual Post on the Links between Coptic Egypt and Early Irish Christianity

Coptic Wheel Cross

Every year since 2009, I have reposted or linked to my original 2009 post on the faint but apparently real links between the Coptic Church of Egypt, where monasticism was invented, and the early Irish church.

Celtic Wheel Cross

It's the sort of thing you do when you're a specialist on Egyptian history also named Michael Collins Dunn, but it's also been a popular post. Herewith, with some added illustrations, corrections and updates,  the original text:

Happy Saint Patrick's Day everyone, an appropriate wish here since the Irish Church Patrick founded seems to have been the religious and monastic daughter of the Church of Egypt (the Coptic Church).

Coptic Ankh Cross

Ah, you're thinking: he's really reaching this time, trying to find a way to work Saint Patrick's Day into a blog on the Middle East. My name is, after all, Michael Collins Dunn, and I'm therefore rarely assumed to have Greek or Japanese ancestry, but actually it's not a reach to find a reason for a Saint Patrick's Day post on the Middle East, since Irish Christianity has ancient, if somewhat hard to document, links to Egypt, and Saint Patrick himself may have studied alongside Egyptian monks. They say everyone's Irish on Saint Patrick's Day, but I'm going to explore how Egypt and Ireland have links dating back to the earliest days of Christianity in the West. And while some of the evidence is a bit hazy, none of this is crackpot theory. I warned you that I started out as a medievalist, and still have flashbacks sometimes. Forgive me if I can't footnote every statement here.

Irish Standing Wheel Cross

Anyone who has ever seen one of the standing crosses that are a familiar feature of medieval and post-classical Irish Christian sites will know what the Celtic Cross or "wheel cross" looks like; anyone who has ever set foot in a Coptic Church will know what a Coptic Cross looks like; unfortunately the illustrations at Wikipedia's Coptic Cross site don't include a precise example, but the wheel cross is common among Egyptian Copts as well, and can be seen on many churches in Egypt today. [Illustrations added after original post.] The wheel cross is not an obvious derivation of the Christian cross, and many think it is an adaptation of the ancient Egyptian Ankh symbol, so what is it doing on those Irish standing cross towers?

Sure, iconography can repeat itself: both Indians in India and Native Americans used the swastika long before Hitler did, and so on. But the Celtic Cross/Coptic Cross similarity is not the only link. There is pretty decent evidence that Christianity in Ireland, if not immediately derived from Egypt, was closely linked to the Egyptian Church. An ancient litany in the Book of Leinster prays for "the seven holy Egyptian monks, who lie in Desert Ulaidh." The place mentioned is somewhere in Ulster, with many placing it in Antrim: perhaps suggestively, "desert" or "disert" in Irish place names meant a place where monks lived apart from the world as anchorites, modeled on the Desert Fathers of Egypt and Syria. "Ulaidh" just means Ulster.Who these seven holy Egyptian monks were is unclear, but they died in Ulster and were sufficiently venerated to be remembered in a litany.

See also my post on "The Faddan More Psalter: More Evidence of the Coptic Links to Early Irish Christianity," posted about an Irish psalmbook with a cover stiffened with Egyptian papyrus.

St. Mena ampulla, the Louvre

It is often said (I haven't got a firm cite though) that holy water (or holy oil for anointing)  bottles found in Ireland carry the twin-camel emblem associated with the Shrine of Saint Menas (Mina) west of Alexandria. (Menas was one of the major patron saints of Egypt, his shrine a major pilgrimage center, and his cult extended far beyond Egypt.) If so, I don't think the Irish were using local camels as models. While I can't find the specifics on the Irish find, these ampullae of terracotta marked with the emblem of St. Menas have been found throughout Europe and the Mediterranean. The photo shows one in the Louvre.

 There are also said to be tombstones in old Irish ogham writing that refer to the burial of so-and-so "the Egyptian." The earliest Irish forms of monasticism included anchorite communities who withdrew from the world and venerated the tradition of Saint Anthony of Egypt; the early Irish church used an Eastern rather than a Western date for Easter; some aspects of ancient Celtic liturgy resemble eastern liturgies, and there are archaeological evidences (mostly probable Egyptian pottery in Ireland and British — Cornish? — tin in Egypt) of trade between Egypt and the British Isles. "Double" monasteries — where a monastery for monks and a convent for nuns were adjacent — first appeared in Egypt, and were common in Ireland. The evidence may be circumstantial, but there's a lot of it.

In the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin there is a pilgrimage guide to the Desert of Scetis, the Egyptian desert region of Coptic monasteries today known as the Wadi Natrun. That, along with the Saint Menas holy water bottles, suggests Irish monks made pilgrimages all the way to Egypt. And obviously those seven holy Egyptian monks in Ulster made the trip the other way.

But do these connections between Egypt and Ireland, tenuous as they may seem, really connect in any way with Saint Patrick, justifying this as a Saint Patrick's Day post? I'm glad you asked.

Saint Patrick's life has been much encrusted with mythology (the snakes, the Shamrock, etc.) and all we can really say for certain is what he himself told us in his autobiographical Confession: he was born somewhere on the western coast of Roman Britain (so the Apostle of Ireland was British, but before there was such a thing as an Englishman since the Angles and Saxons were not yet present: he probably spoke old British, an ancestor of Welsh), was kidnapped and enslaved in Ireland, later escaped and joined the church, and returned as the apostle of Ireland. But very ancient biographies (though not his own autobiographical account, one of the few vernacular Latin works to survive from the period) say that he studied for the priesthood at the Abbey of Lérins off the south coast of France. This was a Mediterranean island abbey much influenced by the church of Egypt and the rule of Saint Anthony of Egypt, and according to some accounts, many Coptic monks were present there. There's no certainty that Patrick ever studied there, but then, he studied somewhere, and this is the only place claimed by the early accounts. So Patrick himself may have had direct links to the Egyptian church. (And remember that until the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD — by which time Patrick was already a bishop in Ireland, himself dying in 461 by most accounts — the Coptic Church and the rest of Christendom were still in full communion.)

There may be even more to it than this. A few linguists believe that the Celtic languages, though Indo-European in their basic structure, have a "substratum" of some previous linguistic element that is not found in other Indo-European languages, only in Celtic, but some aspects of which are also found in Afro-Asiatic languages, particularly Berber and Egyptian (of which Coptic, of course, is the late form). I'm certainly not qualified to judge such linguistically abstruse theories, and know neither Irish nor Coptic, and they seem to have little to do with the question of Egyptian-Irish Christian influences. But it helps remind us that the ancient world was more united by the sea than divided by it, and that the Roman Empire stretched from the British Isles to Mesopotamia.

While the links are tenuous, they appear to be real. Irish historians accept some level of Egyptian influence in the Christianization of Ireland, and Coptic historians love to dwell on the subject, since it lets them claim a link to the earliest high Christian art and culture of Western Europe. If Irish monasticism preserved the heritage of the ancient world and rebuilt the West after the barbarian invasions, and if the Irish church is a daughter of the Egyptian church, then the West owes more to Egypt than most would imagine.

I first heard a discussion of this in a presentation by the Coptic Church's bishop in charge of ecumenical outreach, Bishop Samweel, back in the early 1970s. I later ran across several references to it in British orientalist literature (Stanley Lane-Poole seems to have been particularly fond of it, and I think he places Desert Ulaidh near Carrickfergus), and continue to find it intriguing, if never quite clear enough to nail down precisely.

Bishop Samweel, mentioned above, met an unfortunate end by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, by the way. When Anwar Sadat deposed Coptic Pope Shenouda III in 1981, Sadat named Samweel — considered one of the Coptic church's leading figures after Shenouda — head of a council of bishops to run the church while the Patriarch was in exile. Due to this appointment, Bishop Samweel was seated on the reviewing stand behind Sadat on October 6, 1981, and died in the volley of fire which killed the President.

Like much of the earliest history of any culture or country, the links between Irish and Egyptian Christianity are fairly well-delineated but their precise origins are untraceable, but tantalizing. Since this is little known to most Westerners or even to Egyptians who aren't Copts, it seemed appropriate to mention it on Saint Patrick's Day.

Erin go bragh. Misr Umm al-Dunya

Ursula Lindsey on Egypt's "New Capital"

 I think I've been fairly clear (see here and here) that I'm pretty dubious, if not downright cynical, about Egypt's "new administrative capital," the waterless, public-transportless city supposed to sprout in the desert east of Cairo, where greenery and high rises will allow the government to function in splendid isolation without poverty, congestion, or poor people. In the two years since this new Xanadu was announced, its original Emirati patrons have bailed out, as has one of its two Chinese corporate rescuers.

I've quoted other doubters before, such as urban planner David Sims, and now we have a detailed, sustained indictment of this money pit/mirage from Ursula Lindsey, who lived in Cairo for years, including the revolutionary years, and is now living in Morocco. Her article, "The Anti-Cairo," the subtitle of which is "Egypt’s military regime is building a new capital city in the desert, where the “People’s Piazza” will be a pale shadow of Tahrir Square."

As Tiran Issue Persists, a Historical Sidelight: Was Tiran Ancient Iotabe?

On January 16, Egypt's Supreme Administrative Court ruled that the Egyptian government's effort to transfer the islands of Tiran and Sanafir to Saudi sovereignty was unconstitutional and that the islands were an integral part of Egypt. A great many Egyptians were outraged by the perception that rightfully Egyptian territory had been "sold " to Saudi Arabia in exchange for an aid package. As in most territorial disputes, the Saudis do have a claim, but the Egyptian courts keep backing Egyptian sovereignty.

Despite the ruling, the issue is still in play. The Supreme Constitutional Court will hold a hearing February 12 on whether the State Council, which led the push against transferring the islands, had the proper standing. And the issue is also still before Parliament. While virtually all state institutions are strong supporters of President Sisi, the islands issue has clearly divided institutions.

I will leave it to the courts and Egyptian-Saudi negotiations to determine the fate of the islands. Instead, I want to discuss a sidelight of the history of the islands. Not the 20th Century history, which most Middle East hands will be familiar with given the islands' position allowing Egypt to close the Strait of Tiran, but rather its possible role in late antiquity.

Tiran and Sanafir control the entrance to the Gulf of ‘Aqaba (Gulf of Eilat in Israeli usage) and shipping from the main basin of the Red Sea toward points inside the Gulf must pass through the Strait between Tiran and Sinai. Today the islands have no permanent inhabitants, except Egyptian military and members of the Multinational Force and Observers; they are part of an Egyptian national park and are visited by tour boats from the Sinai resorts and scuba divers.

Arabia and Vicinity 565 AD (Wikipedia)

 

In late antiquity, Egypt and Syria-Palestine were both under the rule of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, then facing its historic rival in Sassanian Iran. Byzantium was in a loose alliance with Christian Ethiopia; the Himyarite Kingdom in what is now Yemen shifted alliances, at various times coming under Jewish, Persian, and Ethiopian rule. I've dealt with this period before, here. During this period, the great powers had their satellite allies or client states in Arabia: the Ghassanids for the Byzantines (a Monophysite Christian Kingdom of Arab origin with its capital at Jabiya in the Golan), and the Sassanians had the Lakhmids, Nestorian Christian Arabs with their capital at Hira in Iraq.

During this period, the ancient incense trade from Himyar north to Syria passed by caravan through the Hejaz, or by sea to the Byzantine port of Ayla near modern ‘Aqaba (the adjacent Israeli port of Eilat is a modification of Aila, the Biblical Elath).

In the fifth and sixth centuries AD we encounter a number of references to a port, usually also described as an island used as a trading station and toll station on the route from the Red Sea to Aila, known as Iotabe (Ἰωτάβη). It is mentioned in a variety of historical and ecclesiastical texts between 451 AD, when a bishop named Macarius attended the Council of Chalcedon, and 536 AD, when it was represented in a Synod at Jerusalem by a Bishop named Anastasius. In 473 it was captured by an Arab who is recorded as Amorkesos (possibly ‘Amr ibn Qays or perhaps Imru'l-Qays, but not the king of Kinda of that name or his more famous son the poet). After a quarter century the Byzantines took it back and gave autonomy to the local population, who are believed to have been Jewish, in return for customs duties. (During Israel's occupation of Tiran after I967, Israel sometimes cited this Jewish heritage, and renamed the island Yotvat.)  In 534 AD the Byzantines took it back again.

But in the 85 years during which Iotabe can be documented, while it is clear it is somewhere in or near the Gulf of ‘Aqaba, only one author gives us a specific description of its location. This is Procopius of Caesarea, the great sixth century historian of the age of Justinian. Procopius accompanied General Belisarius on his campaigns against Persia in the early 530s. In this context, Procopius in his The Persian Wars, Volume I, Book XIX, says the following;

At that time the idea occurred to the Emperor Justinian to ally with himself the Aethiopians and the Homeritae [Himyarites], in order to injure the Persians. I shall now first explain what part of the earth these nations occupy, and then I shall point out in what manner the emperor hoped that they would be of help to the Romans. The boundaries of Palestine extend toward the east to the sea which is called the Red Sea. Now this sea, beginning at India, comes to an end at this point in the Roman domain. And there is a city called Aelas [Aila] on its shore, where the sea comes to an end, as I have said, and becomes a very narrow gulf. And as one sails into the sea from there, the Egyptian mountains lie on the right, extending toward the south; on the other side a country deserted by men extends northward to an indefinite distance; and the land on both sides is visible as one sails in as far as the island called Iotabe, not less than one thousand stades distant from the city of Aelas. On this island Hebrews had lived from of old in autonomy, but in the reign of this Justinian they have become subject to the Romans. From there on there comes a great open sea. And those who sail into this part of it no longer see the land on the right, but they always anchor along the left coast when night comes on. For it is impossible to navigate in the darkness on this sea, since it is everywhere full of shoals. But there are harbours there and great numbers of them, not made by the hand of man, but by the natural contour of the land, and for this reason it is not difficult for mariners to find anchorage wherever they happen to be.

Now Procopius neither says nor implies that he has been to Iotabe himself, but the description clearly seems to come from someone who has. It is where the Gulf (of ‘Aqaba) widens out into the broader Red Sea, after which the Egyptian (Sinai) mountains are no longer on thr right, but with the Saudi coast continuing on the left. If the description were not clear enough, he says that Iotabe lies 1,000 stades from Aila. The Greek stadion could vary in length depending on the period but a common value was around 185 meters; 1000 stades would be 185 kilometers.

Google maps gives the air distance from Aqaba to Tiran as 183 kilometers.

So it seems clear that Procopius is describing an island exactly matching the location of Tiran.

The majority of Classical and Byzantine historians accept the identity of Tiran and Iotabe, but not unanimously. Procopius seems unimpeachable, but...

Tiran (and the smaller Sanafir) today are waterless, without any watercourses. Though Tiran has never been explored archaeologically, there are no surface indications of substantial occupation, no foundations, ruins, or pottery scattered on the surface. How could Tiran have supported a permanent population worthy of a bishopric? Or sustained a customs station? Absent excavation on the island, there is no clear answer.

But the suggested alternatives are weak. One argument advocates Jazirat Fir‘awn (Pharaoh's island), which lies just off the Sinai resort of Taba. It has plenty of evidence of past occupation, but is essentially in sight of Eilat and ‘Aqaba, and at the head of the Gulf, not its mouth. Other suggestions point to some island off the Saudi coast or port on the mainland. But none of these appear to fit with Procopius' description. Until archaeology proves otherwise, Tiran seems to be the likeliest site for Iotabe.

January 25, 2011: The View Six Years Later

How the world has changed in six years. On this day in 2011, what became the Egyptian Revolution began, fresh on the heels of the successful revolution in Tunisia. How remote those heady days seem. The military that claimed to intervene in support of the revolution today rules the country. Syria is destroyed, Libya and Yemen profoundly divided, and only Tunisia has successfully experienced a peaceful transfer of power after elections.  It is easy to assume "Arab Spring" was a failure, but that assumes that it has run its course. I am not so sure. Demand for change may have abated, but it has not ended. Many voices for democratic change have been silenced by arrest or exile, and many ordinary citizens have been persuaded that change is destabilizing, but the seeds once planted may yet spring to life again. Egypt and Bahrain in particular may be "stable," but Egypt's economy is severely challenged, dependent on foreign cash.

History takes place over the long run. The first flowering of Arab Spring failed, except for Tunisia. A second flowering may be long delayed, and new models of democratic reform less dervative of Western models may emerge. Or, of course, I could be just an incurable optimist.

The Wilder Shores of Machine Translation: "the Field of Youth Creationism Doritos Taha"

I never use Facebook's built-in translation function unless friends are posting in a language I don't know, but sometimes it seems to translate automatically, not always with the best results:
The second part almost approaches comprehensibility, but "Joey scene appears in the field of youth creationism doritos taha masjid yusuf aga time" is a sublime victory for computer translation running off the rails.

The photo accompanying it is this:

Now let's look at what the caption really says: "Cairo: aerial view of Bab al-Khalq Square; in the midst of it is the Mosque of Yusuf Agha, the Governorate Building, and the Dar al-Kutub (National Library), and the Islamic Museum. At the top of the picture appears Abdeen Palace and the area surrounding it . . . Picture from the thirties of the last century."

It leaps the rails at the beginning, when "aerial view" becomes "Joey scene," though the word for aerial (jawiyy) has clearly been read as "Joey." The square in question, Bab al-Khalq, can be translated as "Gate of the People," or the "Masses," but Khalq can also mean "creation," so I guess that explains "creationism." I don't know where "youth" came from. Any ideas? But the real genius was turning one word in Arabic, يتوسطه, into two, "doritos taha." If you ignore the actual voweling, you might come up with "itostaha," quite wrongly, but the "do-" is nowhere to be found.

January 4, 1917: Russian Battleship Peresvet is Sunk Off Port Said

Imperial Russian Navy Bttleship Persevet in 1901

This year I will continue my practice of recounting major events in World War I on the centenary of the event. Since 1917 was a key turning point in the Middle East, with major developments in the Palestine and Mesopotamian campaigns and the Arab Revolt, and, before he year was out, the emergence of General Allenby, the end of the Senussi campaign, and, before the year's end, the Balfour Declaration and the publication of Sykes-Picot by the Bolsheviks. In this month of January alone, there were the Battle Of Rafah in Sinai, the recapture of Kut in Mesopotamia by the British, the taking of the port of Wejh in Arabia by the Arab Revolt, and the promotion of Reginald Wingate from Sirdar to Governor-General in Egypt. And that's just January.

My post today is not as important as any of those things. Only four days into the New Year, the Imperial Russian Navy Battleship Peresvet (also transliterated Peresvyet, Peresv'et: Пересвет) was sunk by a mine several miles off Egypt's Port Said.

Now, several Russian warships were in the Mediterranean when the Turks closed the Straits late in 1914, and they joined with the British and French Mediterranean Squadrons, but Peresvet was not one of them. In fact, what it was doing off Port Said is a rather bizarre tale in its own right. She was headed to the Russian White Sea Fleet in the far north, from Asian waters.

Sagami (rear) in Japanese service

Launched in 1898, Peresvet saw action in the Russo-Japanese War. She fought at Port Arthur and in the Battle of the Yellow Sea, as well as the Siege of Port Arthur. When the Russians surrendered at Port Arthur, they scuttled her. Subsequently the Japanese raised her, rearmed her, renamed her Sagami, and used her as a coastal defense ship.

In World War I, Japan and Russia suddenly found themselves on the same side in the war, and in 1916, Japan sold her (back) to Russia. In April 1916, in Vladivostok, she resumed her previous name and was reclassified as an armored cruiser. She then ran aground and had to be refloated. She was assigned to Russia's White Sea Fleet,  She reached Port Said, and put in for repairs. Ten nautical miles off Port Said on January 4, 1917, she hit two mines and sank, with total losses somewhere between 116 and 167. The mines had been laid by the German submarine U-73.

Rerun for Eastern Christmas: The Coptic Legends of the Holy Family on the Flight into Egypt

Those Eastern Christians who follow the Julian Calendar will celebrate Christmas this Saturday, January 7.

Since 2009, I have annually noted the rich Coptic traditions of the Holy Family's flight into Egypt, which expands the couple of verses in the Gospel of Matthew, by offering a detailed story of a three-year sojourn and visits up and down the Nile. More recently I've added a map and some pictures, and fixed a few errors. As always, despite the obvious apocryphal nature of these tales, I intend to respect the charm of the stories while noting some of the improbabilities. My revised and illustrated version:

Since we're in between Western Christmas and Eastern Christmas, I thought it might be a useful time to call to your attention the extremely detailed traditions Egypt's Copts maintain about the Holy Family and the Flight into Egypt. There is hardly a Christian church in Egypt — and there are some mosques, too, since Jesus and Mary are highly venerated in Islam — that doesn't claim that Jesus, Mary and Joseph dropped by for a while. They must have been constantly on the move to have covered so much ground, but you can't build up a good pilgrimage trade if you don't stop frequently.

Now, the Flight into Egypt gets only a couple of verses in the Bible and is only mentioned in one Gospel, Matthew, (Matthew 2, 13-14 and 19) so the extremely detailed accounts of the Coptic stories have more to do with pious elaboration — or pilgrimage tourism — than history, but the stories can be quite charming. Some are based on an apocryphal Armenian infancy gospel, some on local traditions, etc. The Coptic traditions hold that the Holy Family spent three years in Egypt.

I am shamelessly cribbing this from Chapter XXXI of the late Otto Meinardus' Christian Egypt Ancient and Modern, (Cairo: AUC Press, 1965; Revised Edition 1977). Meinardus was a major figure in Coptic studies; German-born, he wrote mostly in English or French, taught at the American University in Cairo, and was an ordained Lutheran pastor. (Judge for yourself what Martin Luther would have thought of some of these stories.) He died in 2005. But I have to condense all the details considerably; his chapter runs over 40 pages. There's also a detailed online site, with pictures (text approved personally by Coptic Pope Shenouda, they say), for those interested. And tours are available;this site also offers a travelogue.

It seems the Holy Family traveled with a midwife named Salome who isn't mentioned in the Gospel but plays a role in the Coptic stories. Instead of heading straight to Egypt to escape the wrath of Herod, they seem to have zigzagged to the Plain of Jericho, then Ashkelon, then Hebron (at least according to the various churches and monasteries situated in those places), then proceeded to enter Egypt via the Land of Goshen, en route to the town of Bilbays. Along the way they had an encounter with a dragon in a cave, and were approached by wild lions, but of course they all bowed down to the Baby Jesus. At Bilbays they rested under a large tree, which was venerated in the Middle Ages by both Muslims and Christians as the Virgin's Tree, which stood until 1850. Then they headed to Samannud, where there is a church on the site of a well blessed by Jesus. (Early Christian apocryphal infancy Gospels, as well as the Qur'an, have Jesus talking while still in the cradle.) Then they detoured northward to the Mediterranean coast at Burollos, stopping there according to the monks of the place. Then, perhaps at Basus or Sakha in Gharbiyya (Meinardus speculates on the place), Jesus left his footprint on a stone.

Needless to say, they could not ignore the Wadi Natrun, the Coptic version of Mount Athos, where the four great monasteries of the Desert Fathers still stand (but of course didn't then as Christianity hadn't been founded yet), though why they were wandering in the desert instead of the delta in those days isn't explained. Passing by from a distance, Jesus said to his mother, "Know O my Mother, that in this desert there shall live many monks, ascetes and spiritual fighters, and they shall serve God like angels." (Apparently Mary would have known what a "monk" was, though it's hard to know why.) Anyway, you can ask the monks if you doubt any of this.

Even though Cairo wasn't there yet, you know Cairo isn't going to let all these other towns have a claim and not find some of its own, don't you? First they went to On, the ancient Heliopolis, not on the site of the modern suburb of that name but on the site of Matariyya. There Jesus took Joseph's staff, dug a well, and planted the staff, which grew into a tree which became a goal of pilgrimage and was venerated by Muslims as well as Christians. (The Qur'an has a story of Mary resting under a palm tree, and this and the Matariyya tree became conflated in later folklore. The Matariyya tree is a sycamore.) The present tree, still venerated,  is alleged to be grown from the shoot of an older tree:

The Virgin's Tree, Matariyya

Harat Zuwaila Church of the Virgin

From there, the Holy Family went to a site where, centuries later, the Harat Zuwaila quarter of Cairo would rise; the Church of the Virgin there is one of the oldest in Cairo proper, and the convent has a well blessed by Jesus.

(If you're wondering why I haven't mentioned their stop in the Fortress of Babylon, in a church many tourists visit today, it's because they stopped there only after their tour of Upper Egypt. Trust me, it's coming.)

Next they went to Ma‘adi, today an elite southern suburb of Cairo, and attended a synagogue. Joseph got to know some Nile boatmen, who offered to take them to Upper Egypt. (You're wondering how an exiled carpenter and family fleeing from King Herod can afford all this Grand Tour? Don't be so cynical: the legend has it covered: using the gold, frankincense and myrrh brought by the Magi.)

I'm going to condense a bit here since every Church of St. Mary up the Nile seems to mark a site where the boat stopped and they visited a well or a palm tree. But since Upper Egypt remains one of the more Christian parts of the country, they couldn't skip such Christian centers as Sammalout, Asyut, al-‘Ashnmunein, or the great monastery known as Deir al-Muharraq.

One of the legendary sub-stories here deserves telling, though. Up near al-‘Ashmunein, two brigands who had been pursuing the Holy Family since Matariyya (must be the gold, frankincense and myrrh again) tried to rob them. They grabbed Jesus and Mary cried, and one of the robbers repented, and they left them. And — as any folklorist should have figured out by now — these were the same two thieves, including the same Good Thief, who would be crucified alongside Jesus! How could it be otherwise?

Deir al-Muharraq Today

The constant travels were finally relieved when the Holy Family were taken in by a devout Jew and lived for six months (and ten days: I told you the stories are detailed) at the site of the Monastery of Deir al-Muharraq, south of al-Qusiya. The monks of the monastery say it was the first monastery in Egypt, built just after the arrival of Saint Mark as the Apostle of Egypt. If you doubt that, take it up with the monks, not me. Or with the monks at St. Anthony's in the Eastern Desert, which is usually seen as the earliest.)

Abu Sarga Church Crypt

Then the angel came to Joseph and told him it was safe to go back to Palestine. (That part actually is in the Gospel of Matthew, unlike everything else in this post.) They stopped at pretty much every Coptic village that would ever have a Church of the Virgin on their way back down the Nile, and feeling they had not yet done enough for future Cairo tourism, they stopped inside the Roman fortress known as Babylon and, perhaps having run out of gold and frankincense, stayed in a cave that is today the crypt of the church of Saint Sergius (Abu Sarga), conveniently adjacent to the Coptic Museum and included on many Cairo tours.

I hope I don't sound too cynical here: the stories are charming and are clearly a pious attempt to elaborate on a brief reference in the Gospel in order to make the Christian link to Egypt more tangible to believers. On the other hand, the sense that every Church of Saint Mary in Egypt actually sheltered the Virgin and Child seems a bit credulous.

I hope my Coptic friends recognize that I am helping spread knowledge of your tradition, even if I may not accept every detail as historically attested. I'd really like to know more about that dragon.

Dedication of the Butrusiyya Church

Following up on my earlier post on the history of the Butrussiya Church that was bombed Sunday, and courtesy of Prof. Paul Sedra, here's a souvenir of the 1912 dedication:

Note that the dedication was on the second anniversary of Boutros Ghali's assassination.

Nasser Died 46 Years Ago Today

On September 28, 1970, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser had just concluded a high tension Arab Summit in Cairo aimed at resolving the "Black September" conflict between Jordan and the PLO. On September 27, Jordan and the PLO signed an accord which essentially treated them as equal parties to the dispute. Nasser spent the morning of the 28th seeing his Arab VIP guests off at Cairo airport. Soon after leaving, he suffered a massive heart attack. He was taken ro his home, where he died later that afternoon.

Though only 52, Nasser was a heavy chain smoker and a diabetic with a family history of heart disease, and the stress of Black September and the Cairo Summit had taken their toll.

The juxtaposition of Nasser's death and the September crisis (which had included threats of US, and Israeli intervention in Jordan and Soviet intervention in Syria) led to shock throughout the region   and an outpouring of grief in Egypt. Five million people attended the funeral.

The Battle of Romani, August 4-5, 1916: Part II

In yesterday's Part I, we discussed the forces engaged and the initial deployments before the Battle of Romani in the Sinai a century ago. The advancing Ottoman and German force had been closely tracked by the British in their trek across Sinai, thanks to the new tool of aerial reconnaissance. the  The Turkish force had an extended logistical line, while the British fortifications were at the railhead of the line they were building across Sinai, and could be quickly rushed reinforcements from Qantara on the Canal. They had had the time to fortify the defensive position at Romani. While the Turco-German force slightly outnumbered the British Imperial forces (mostly ANZACs), they faced the challenges of being on the offense and far from potential reinforcements. Both the head of the German Military Mission, Liman von Sanders, and the local German commander on the scene, Kress von Kressenstein, complained about the decision to advance against the well-entrenched British forces.

As the British lines were anchored on the left by the sea, the Turkish attack was aimed at turning the right of the lines, in the desert. The hope was to drive in the flank and attack the rail line.

This was exactly what Harry Chauvel expected. Initially his main force consisted of the 1st Australian Light Horse Brigade; the 2nd Brigade was scattered in outposts and on patrol.

At around midnight on August 3/4. the Turkish advance force suddenly encountered the Light Horse on the right of the line. Fire was exchanged, and the Turks fell back to regroup. They began an organized attack around 1 AM. Through the night the Turks advanced, and the 1st Light Horse was forced to steadily fall back to a sand ridge they called Wellington Ridge. Various dunes and sandhills had been given names (Mount Meredith, Mount Royston) which appear in the battle narratives.

With first light around 4:00, it became clear that the 1st Light Horse was in a tenuous position, with its right being outflanked. At 4:30 Chauvel ordered two regiments of the 2nd Light Horse into the line to the right of the 1st, extending the flank. He also moved troops from the left of the line to extend his right, replacing them with troops of the 52nd (Lowland) Division, a British Territorial (or Yeomanry) unit intended got home defense. The Ottoman 32nd and 39th Regiments continued to try to outflank the Australian right, while the 31st Infantry pushed forward against the Territorials. As the morning wore on, the Light Horse were forced to fall back until they threatened to reach the ANZAC camps. But the horse artillery of the Light Horse stopped their advance. The Australians were reinforced by the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade and the 5th Mounted Yeomanry, with the 42nd (Lancashire) Division of Territorial troops arriving by train.

As the day wore on and the Anglo-ANZAC line was reinforced, the Turkish and Germans, who had no reinforcements available or convenient railroad, and ho had marched all night and fought all day in August in the Sinai with little water, found their advance blocked and many began to surrender. By evening, the reinforced ANZACs and British counterattacked against enemy positions on the sandhill they had named Mount Royston.

As darkness fell, the battle had clearly shifted to the British side, By the next day, the reinforced British and ANZAC force would swell to some 50,000, vastly outnumbering their adversaries.

Tomorrow: Pursuit.

The Battle of Romani, August 4-5, 1916, Part I

On July 19 we discussed the Turkish advance into Sinai a century ago. This week marks the centenary of the Battle of Romani, a small but key turning point in the Middle Eastern campaign in World War I: Britain's first victory against the Ottomans after the retreat from Gallipoli and the surrender at Kut. It has also conventionally been seen as the transition between the Defense of the Suez Canal and the beginning of the Palestine Campaign.

Kress von Kressensten

The July post described the beginning of the Turkish advance, largely tracked by aircraft. The advancing column of Turkish and allied forces consisted of the Ottoman 3rd Infantry Division (31st, 32nd and 39th Regiments), veterans of Gallipoli, plus the German "Pasha" Force, including a German aircraft detachment, German light and heavy artillery and mortar, and one Austrian artillery unit. The German Forces were under the command of Freiherr Friederich Kress von Kressenstein, the German Chief of Staff to Jemal Pasha's Fourth Army. As they had advanced toward the British lines, they had established a series of defensive lines in case of falling back.

The British were under the overall command of Egyptian Expeditionary Force Commander General Sir Archibald Murray, at Cairo, and under him the commander of the northern (Number 3) Sector of Canal Defenses, General Herbert A. Lawrence, headquartered at Qantara.

But the man at the front, in the forward defense lines, was Maj. Gen. Harry Chauvel, an Australian commanding the ANZAC Mounted Division, consisting of the 1st and 2nd Brigades of Australian Light Horse with the British Territorial 52nd (Lowland) Division, and soon reinforced by the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade and other units.

A Young Harry Chauvel

Any readers from Down Under will need no introduction to the Light Horsemen, or to Harry Chauvel. Already bloodied at Gallipoli, where they had fought without their mounts, the Light Horse would ride into fame in the Palestine Campaign, from Beersheba to the victory at Megiddo and the capture of Damascus.

Chauvel After the War

Harry Chauvel would go on to become the first Australian to command a Corps and was later Chief of General Staff.

Kress von Kressenstein might be the Prussian professional soldier,  with a name to match, but a horse soldier from New South Wales was going to be master of the coming battle.

The British front line was at Romani, to which the British had built a rail line, and which lay near the ruins of ancient Pelusium.

By the battle, British and ANZAC forces would number some 14,000, Ottoman/German/Austrian some 17,000.

The British were entrenched with their left on the Mediterranean and the Bardawil lagoon, the main force on a ridge they called Wellington Ridge, and built a line of fortifications along sand hills to a large dune called Katib Gannit.

The action would begin the night of August 3, and develop on August 4 and 5. We'll pick up the story tomorrow.

Light Horse Encampment at Romani

64 Years Ago Today

July 23, 1952 (second clip in Arabic):

What Time is It? In Egypt, it's Complicated.

Egypt was supposed to begin Daylight Savings (Summer) Time this week, but on Monday, just days before it was due to begin, the Cabinet voted to abolish it. The result is some confusion, and EgyptAir is warning there is likely to be much confusion in coordinating airline connections and could face losses of $2 million.

The recent history is just as confusing. In the wake of the Revolution of 2011, the summer time change was abolished. In 2014 it was restored, but suspended during Ramadan. In 2015, President Sisi temporarily suspended it.This year it was announced by the Cabinet that it would begin after Ramadan. The Parliament, however, voted to abolish it, though the Cabinet said it would begin as scheduled. Then, on Monday, the Cabinet reversed itself. So Standard Time remains in effect.