For US Election Day: Egypt's 1923-24 Elections and Saad Zaghloul

Here in the US, as a few of you may have heard rumored, we're having a Presidential election today. Although  in the past few years the "purple finger" evidence of voting has led to much celebration in (and among outsiders, about) the Middle East as Iraq, Tunisia, Egypt and other countries have begun to hold rather more competitive elections than the old 99.9% for the ruling party kind, it's also worth remembering that these were not the first competitive elections in the region.

Before I go on, a quick aside to my US citizen readers at home or abroad, and to new voters in the Middle East: I'm old enough to remember the line in JFK's inaugural address about this being "not a victory of party, but a celebration of freedom." And I'm still young enough to retain enough idealism to believe it. After two years of rhetoric, excessive campaigning, constant advertising and annoying phone calls, that's now all just noisy wind. The power of democracy isn't in the loudspeakers and the blaring commercials, but in the quiet when hundreds of millions of individuals go behind a curtain and in the quiet privacy of their own thoughts make a choice. My daughter said last night she was so sick of the commercials she wished she could punch the candidates. I told her I understood her frustration but that those of us over 18 get to punch something more long-lasting in its effects. A ballot or a voting machine.

(We now return you to our regular blogpost. I'm Michael Dunn and I approved this message.)

During what has been called "the liberal age" in the Arab world, several countries had mixed political systems with elected parliaments, competitive political parties, and sometimes a moderately free press., Egypt beginning in 1923, Iraq beginning in 1925, Syria during and after the French mandate, all had elected parliaments of a sort. In Egypt and Iraq these had to balance against a strong throne (and the British), and women couldn't vote in any of these systems — but they couldn't yet vote in France, either, and had just won the vote in the US and UK. Flawed and imperfect as they may have been, elections were held and political parties existed during the liberal interlude, which largely coincided with the inter-World Wars period and the immediate post-WWII years.

So today I thought I'd note Egypt first Parliamentary elections after its nominal independence in 1922 and its adoption of the liberal constitution of 1923. As this Al-Ahram English article on the 1923 vote— an article you should read in full — notes,

On Saturday 12 January 1924, the representatives of the Egyptian electorate made their way to the polling stations in order to elect Egypt's first truly popularly elected parliament since the introduction of the parliamentary system 58 years previously.

The description, "truly popularly elected parliament," is appropriate. The Constitution of 1923 was the basis of the electoral law. Article 1 of that law stipulated, "Every Egyptian male has the right to elect the members of the Chamber of Deputies upon fully attaining the age of 21 as reckoned in Christian calendar years and to elect the members of the Senate upon fully attaining the age of 25 as reckoned in Christian calendar years."

Under British rule there had been a financial qualification for the franchise. As previously noted, women could not vote, and the uneducated workers and fellahin were likely to be influenced by their employers or the big landholders, but elections did occur and political parties did emerge.

Though the franchise was general among males, the election was somewhat indirect (just as we Americans are not voting directly for the President today, but for electors by state: it's the electoral vote that counts).  The general population voted  on September 27, 1923 for 38,000 eledssctors who in turn voted in January for the representatives.

Saad Zahgloul Pasha

The impetus for Egyptian independence in 1922 had been the Revolution of 1919 (or, in British terminology, the uprising of that year) and the exile of Saad Zahgloul; (and yes, that makes two Saad Zaghloul posts in less than a week). With independence Zaghloul had returned from exile as the hero of the nation; his "Wafd" (originally his intended Egyptian "delegation" to the Paris Peace Conference) now the most powerful nationalist party in the country. In the elections, unsurprisingly, the Wafd won 188 out of 215 seats, and Zaghloul became Prime Minister.

I can't find any pictures of people voting in the 1923-24 elections, but something I have in fact posted here before, two years ago, there are a couple of rare surviving clips showing Zaghloul's return from exile and the crowds greeting him. There are very few early videos of the Middle East that aren't either of World War I or travelogues of the pyramids or religious sites; these early versions of newsreels are therefore of interest. Though not of the elections proper they give some idea of the enthusiasm for Zahgloul:

An Early Photo of Saad and Safiya Zahgloul

Saad Zaghloul,  the great Egyptian nationalist hero of the 1919 Revolution, and Prime Minister in the 1920s, has been an occasional subject here, and I've even run rare video of him; his wife Safiya was a prominent early women's rights advocate and ally of  Hoda Sha‘arawi.

Zaghloul is a familiar face, with prominent statues of him and his picture in Wafd Party offices and elsewhere, but the familiar face is an elderly one, the man of 1919 and the 1920s, when he was in his 60s.  This site dedicated to old pictures has run a picture of the Zaghlouls I don't think I'd seen before, so for those history buffs who may not have seen it either I reproduce it here. No date given, but they married in 1895 (Saad would have been 36) so it's presumably of or after that date.

Al-Haqq fawq al-Quwwa wa-al-Umma fawq al-Hukuma

The title of this post means, "The right is greater than might, and the Nation is greater than the government." It's a motto of Sa‘d Zaghloul, founder of the Wafd Party.

The Wafd, of course, is but a shadow of its former self. For too long it was the Mubarak "loyal opposition," with more emphasis on the "loyal" than on the opposition. More recently it has been torn by internal divisions. Now, we find a deputy chief of the party expressing holocaust denial, 9/11 conspiracy theories, and the rest.  (Link was missing earlier; fixed now.)

All this from a once-great liberal party that always emphasized the role of Christians as well as Muslims in the Egyptian nation, but today is talking electoral alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood.


On a related note, the old flag of the Egyptian Revolution of 1919, which has been seen again in recent months and is itself associated with the Old Wafd, is now available on mugs and T-shirts at this site.

For International Women's Day after Tahrir Today: A Brief Tribute to Hoda Sha‘arawi

In belated tribute to the brave Egyptian women who were harassed and cursed in their demonstration for International Women's Day in Tahrir Square today, a moment to reflect on the pioneer of Egyptian feminism, Hoda (Huda) Sha‘arawi.

Sha‘arawi (1879-1947) is generally seen as the first real feminist activist within the Egyptian national movement. Though she has a street named for her in central Cairo, I fear that if she were alive today she would be shocked by what she would see as a retrograde direction in women's rights. For background see her Wikipedia page here; a page devoted to her here; and a Facebook fan site here.

Educated, the daughter and wife of prominent men, she was active in the nationalist movement and organized women's demonstrations in the 1919 Revolution. She visited Europe, and attended an international women's suffrage conference in Rome in 1923 (it is worth remembering women were just achieving the vote even in the US and Europe). On her return to Cairo in 1923, the same year as Sa‘d Zaghloul's return, she famously and symbolically removed her veil in public at the railway station. (Though she was more active on political and other rights issues, she is perhaps most remembered for the symbolic removal of the veil.) The same year she founded the Egyptian Feminist Union. She was active in the Wafd Party until it rejected her proposed reforms; at left she is shown (on the left) with Safia Zaghloul, wife of Sa‘d Zaghloul (at right).

Though many of her goals were frustrated, she raised consciousness among elite Egyptian women and was seen as as pioneer of later women activists who achieved the vote and other progress in the Nasser era and since.

Remembering Egypt's Revolution of 1919

A little while ago on CNN Shibley Telhami noted that this uprising in Egypt is much more of a revolution than the so-called "Revolution of 1952," essentially a military coup by the Free Officers. The rioting on "Black Saturday" that year was more revolutionary, and — has anyone noted this? — Black Saturday was on January 26, while the current uprising started January 25!

But that's not my point here. A much better model for what we are seeing now is what Egyptians have always called the "Revolution of 1919" (thawra 1919), though many English histories follow the British colonial usage and call it an uprising. Like 2011, 1919 had no clear leadership and was largely a genuine popular uprising. It had its own flag, with the crescent and the cross to show both Muslims and Copts supported it, a symbol which the Wafd continued to use and which I've seen a variant of in at least one crowd scene in the past few days.

Saad (Sa‘d) Zaghloul, right, whose return to Egypt from exile in 1923 was the subject of my first Weekend Historical Video post, was the indirect cause; when the British exiled him and the Wafd Party leadership to Malta to prevent their participation in the Paris Peace Conference, Egyptians (and Sudanese) rose against British rule. Students, workers, religious figures and others rose in protest, and in the countryside there were bloody attacks against British facilities, troop trains, and individuals.

The British responded to the bloodshed, which lasted for months, by replacing High Commissioner Reginald Wingate with a military hero, Field Marshal Viscount Allenby, and sending an investigating commission under Lord Milner to study the situation. Though British accounts tend to see the rising as having eventually been put down, Egyptians note that the Milner Commission recommended an end to the Protectorate and thus the revolt led directly to the British declaring Egypt independent in 1922.

It was a limited independence; Britain retained troops in the Canal Zone and the right to deploy them elsewhere in wartime (as they did in World War II during the North African campaign). Sudan was made an Anglo-Egyptian condominium. But Zaghloul returned from exile and the Wafd swept to power.

The 1919 Revolution is little remembered today outside of Egypt, but it is probably a much better analog of the current uprising than the military coups of Ahmad ‘Orabi in 1881 or the Free Officers of 1952.

Note too that in both the pictures shown here (other than Zaghloul and the flag), women, though veiled, are highly visible.

A New Feature: Weekend Historical Video: I: The Return of Saad Zaghloul

I used to offer "Weekend Readings" on Fridays, but so many other sites are providing links to new reports from think tanks etc. that I now only link to those I find personally worth noting. Since I don't post on weekends, I've decided to introduce a new feature to give you something to look at over the weekend.

The rich collections of old video on YouTube and old photos on Flickr offer great insight into Middle Eastern history, and I've embedded lots of historical videos on this blog already. I've decided to select old videos (usually: perhaps occasionally stills) on one subject of historical interest and post for your weekend perusal. I may miss some weekends and I may lose interest, but let's try it out.

I decided to start with something very early in the era of video of the modern Middle East, video from 1923. Saad Zaghloul (Sa‘d Zaghlul) Pasha (1857-1927) may not be a household name today, outside of Egypt, but he is one of that country's great national heroes, and his photo is still prominently displayed by the Wafd Party, which he founded. A nationalist follower of Ahmad ‘Orabi, he worked against the British occupation and was jailed periodically. At the end of World War I, taking Woodrow Wilson's 14 Points at face value, he created an Egyptian delegation (Arabic: wafd) to the Paris Peace Conference. This time the British not only arrested him but exiled him to the Seychelles. One result was the Egyptian Reovlution of 1919, which in turn led to a grant of independence (though with a great many limitations on true sovereignty) to Egypt in 1922. In 1923, Zaghloul returned from exile to a hero's welcome, and in early 1924 he was elected Prime Minister in elections swept by his Wafd Party, taking its name from the delegation he sought to take to Paris. In November that year he resigned after less than a year as Prime Minister, and died in 1927. Though he actually led Egypt for less than a year, he is an icon of Egyptian nationalism: his house (Bayt al-Umma, home of the nation)( and his tomb are preserved in central Cairo. He is still venerated by the Wafd and little invoked by the government for that reason, but his statue stands at one end of one of the main bridges, facing the city. He is said to have used the motto in colloquial Egyptian " kulla haga mumkin," : "everything is possible," but his last words were " ma fish fayda" : "It's no use."

The two videos I've chosen to launch the series are of Zaghloul Pasha's 1923 return: one shows him aboard ship and after his return; the second is a video of the crowds welcoming him. Though there are some captions the videos of course were silent in 1923, so you don't need Arabic.