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Social Tensions and the Teaching of European Law in Egypt Before 1900

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Byron D. Cannon
Byron D. Cannon*
Affiliation:
University of Utah, Salt Lake City
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Extract

Historians of the nineteenth-century Muslim Mediterranean often experience difficulties when they attempt to integrate the study of social or administrative institutions within larger political or intellectual topics. An example of this phenomenon can be found in the history of the Khedivial Law School in Cairo, founded in 1873 and eventually attached to Fuad I University after World War I. The presence of a large number of lawyers within the first twentieth-century Egyptian nationalist movement and in the political life of Egypt up to the end of the constitutional monarchy in 1952 is a well-known fact. As a result, many authors have mentioned the Khedivial Law School, and have tended to give it an historical importance which separates—perhaps in an exaggerated fashion—the study of European law from other professions pursued by young educated Egyptians at the turn of the century, such as that of medicine or military science. When certain recent scholars analyse the components of Egyptian nationalist politics after 1907, therefore, they offer an image of the law school which goes beyond the general idea we actually possess of its internal development between the reigns of Khedive Ismail (1863–79) and Khedive Abbas I (1892–1914). Fortunately an examination of the European archives and the Arabic press of the period helps fill the most obvious gaps in the historical record. It also allows us to estimate the degree to which we can realistically suggest a connection between the teaching of European law and the emergence of a particularly Egyptian model of nationalist political expression in the twentieth-century Mediterranean Arab World.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , Fall 1975 , pp. 299 - 315
Copyright
Copyright © 1975 by New York University 

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References

Notes

1. For examples of such tendencies, see Vatikiotis, P. J., The Modern History of Egypt (New York, 1969), pp. 121–122, and 212; and Goldschmidt, Arthur Jr., “The Egyptian Nationalist Party: 1892–1919,” in Political and Social Change in Modern Egypt , ed. Holt, P. M. (London, 1968), pp. 310–12.Google Scholar

2. See Heyworth-Dunne, J., An Introduction to the History of Education in Modern Egypt, 1st edn. (London, 1939), p. 436.Google Scholar

3. At least three later ministers of justice under Khedives Tawfiq and Abbas I studied for law degrees in France in this early period: Husayn Pasha Fakhri, Muhammad Bey Qadri, and Ibrahim Bey Fuad.Google Scholar

4. The capitulatory regime in the Ottoman Turkish Empire generally, and in Egypt specifically, defined by treaty the circumstances under which foreign residents could depend on their consular representatives to settle their own private disputes free from the intervention of local authorities. As the system declined during the 19th century, many consuls usurped a sort of de facto judicial authority over local subjects and even the Egyptian administration when foreign disputants were involved. For the administrative and political implications of the 1875 mixed court reform, see the author's article “A Reassessment of Judicial Reform in Egypt, 1876–1891,” The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1 (1972).Google Scholar

5. “Lettre de M. Vidal à M. de Régny Bey sur l'enseignement du droit en Egypte,” Bulletin de l'Institut d'Egypte, XIII (1875).Google Scholar

6. Ibid.Google Scholar

7. By 1878, apparently only two students in law participated in the Egyptian educational mission in Paris. Their impressions are commented on in a letter to the Cairo daily Al Watan (The Homeland, 21 Dec. 1878).Google Scholar

8. Examples of “mixed bar” lawyers who served as legal experts in the critical Ministry of Finance include the Frenchmen Octave Borelli and François Pietri. Both men contributed insightful articles on Egyptian law and administration over the next twenty years (cf., note 30, below).Google Scholar

9. On the international financial commission and its attitudes toward judicial reform, see Rivers-Wilson, Charles Sir, Chapters from my Official Life (London, 1916); and Al Watan (Cairo), 19 Oct. 1878.Google Scholar

10. Rapport de la commission pour les réformes dans l'organisation de l'instruction publique (Cairo, 30 Nov. 1880), in Recueil de tous les documents officiels égyptiens (hereafter RDO), 1881.Google Scholar

11. Accordingto Al Waqt (The Times , Cairo, 21 July 1880), Islamic Law was one of the subjects taught at the law school. The 1880 commission's report, however, makes no clear statement on this later controversial aspect of the school's curriculum.Google Scholar

12. See Procès-verbaux des séances de la sous-commission de la Réforme Judiciaire du 11 décembre 1880 au 4 février 1881 (Cairo, 1881), Minutes of 15 and 17 December 1880.Google Scholar

13. See Qadri's unique career, which combined traditional training in Islamic law and modern legal studies in Europe, in Haykal, Muhammad Husayn, Tarajim misriyyah wa gharbiyyah (Egyptian and Western Biographies, Cairo, 1929), 109–18.Google Scholar

14. Decree of 17 November 1881, in Moniteur Egyptien (Cairo, 21 Nov. 1881). See also Public Record Offiice, London (hereafter PRO), Foreign Office Correspondence 78/3376: Consul Sir Edward Malet to Lord Granville, 28 November 1881.Google Scholar

15. Qadri's, Muhammad Murshid al hayran illa marifa ahwal al insan (A Guide to the Confused leading to Knowledge of the Condition of Man), an attempt to codify Islamic law for Egypt along the lines of the better known Ottoman Civil Code, or Mecelle, remained in manuscript form only until 1889. By that date, Qadri had left government politics, and offered the work as a scholarly contribution only.Google Scholar

16. See Le Phare d'Alexandrie (Alexandria, 19 and 31 March 1882).Google Scholar

17. Al Mufid (Benefit, Cairo, 2 Jan. 1882).Google Scholar

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19. Al Zaman (The Times), a Cairo daily of the period, ran an entire series of articles in 1884 and 1885 questioning the scruples of certain individuals who pleaded native court cases for Egyptian peasants. It was also the first Arabic newspaper to urge the government to use the Khedivial Law School for serious training of judges and lawyers (26 September 1884).Google Scholar

20. PRO, FO 407/68: Sir Henry Drummond-Wolff to the Earl of Rosebery, 13 March 1886, containing Raymond West's 19 August 1885 judicial report to Nubar Pasha.Google Scholar

21. On Nubar's capitulatory reform scheme for 1886, see the author's “Nubar Pasha, Sir Evelyn Baring, and a Suppressed Article in the Drummond Wolff Convention,” in International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 5, No. 4 (1974).Google Scholar

22. Phare (Alexandria, 18 November 1887). Special conditions offered at Aix included a more rapid rhythm of courses, combined examinations, and facilities for the required stage following the formal academic program.Google Scholar

23. Ibid.Google Scholar

24. On Toma's earlier experiences as a writer for Butrus al Bustani's Al Taqaddum (Progress) in Beirut and as a minor functionary in Egypt between 1875 and 1884, see Zaydan, Jurji, Tarajim mashahir al sharq (Biographies of Famous Men of the East, Cairo, 1920), II, 245–48.Google Scholar

25. Al Ahkam (Legal Principles, Cairo, 1 Oct. 1888).Google Scholar

26. Ibid. A petition presented by Toma and other lawyers who failed the Cairo law exam in 1889 was reviewed and supported by Al Qahirah (The Victorious, Cairo, 6 June 1889).Google Scholar

27. Al Adab (Culture, Cairo, 30 March 1889). The most important areas where the Egyptian codes and Islamic law might be compared included contracts, mortgages, and sales. This idea was later espoused, in theory at least, by the jurists under Dr. Abd al Razzaq al Sanhuri, who drafted a new civil code for independent Egypt between 1936 and 1948.Google Scholar

28. The Egyptian Gazette (Alexandria, 16 Oct. 1889).Google Scholar

29. MAE, Egypte/120: D'Aubigny, to Ribot, , 26 Feb. 1891.Google Scholar

30. Bosphore Egyptien (Cairo, 18 Jan. 1891).Google Scholar

31. MAE, Egypte/121: Ribot, to de Reverseaux, , 9 May 1891; and de Reverseaux, to Ribot, , 9 and 15 May 1891.Google Scholar

32. Al Muayyad (The Supporter, Cairo, 4 Aug. 1891).Google Scholar

33. Al Muayyad (16 Nov. 1891).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34. MAE, Egypte/127: De Reverseaux, to Ribot, , 18 June 1892.Google Scholar

35. Arrêté Ministeriel of 13 June 1892, in RDO (1892).Google Scholar

36. The Egyptian Gazette (23 Feb. 1892).Google Scholar

37. MAE, Egypte/127: De Reverseaux to Ribot, 5 Feb. 1892; and Ribot to de Reverseaux, 17 March 1892. The French consul was instrumental in obtaining the transfer of a large number of copies of French doctoral theses in law to build up the modest libraries of both Cairo law schools.Google Scholar

38. MAE, Egypte/125: Ribot, to de Reverseaux, , 28 Feb. and 2 April 1892.Google Scholar

39. MAE, Egypte/126: Ribot, to de Reverseaux, , 16 March 1892; Egypte/127: Ribot, to de Reverseaux, , 8 June 1892; and de Reverseaux, to Ribot, , 18 June 1892. Abd al Rahman al Rafii, in his Mustafa Kamil (Cairo, 1950), 33–5, notes that it was approximately at this date that the earliest and most famous Egyptian nationalist leader transferred from the Khedivial Law School to the Ecole Libre. By 1894 Kamil had gone on to finish his law studies in France.Google Scholar

40. MAE, Egypte/134: De Reverseaux, to Casimir-Périer, , 10 March 1894.Google Scholar

41. Report on the Finances, Administration, and Condition of Egypt, and The Progress of Reforms, P.P. 1895, Accounts and Papers, CIX, Inclosure 3: “Note by Sir J. Scott on The Native Tribunals,” p. 27.Google Scholar