Excursions to Cairo, Jerusalem, Damascus, and Balbec From the United States Ship Delaware, During Her Recent Cruise: With an Attempt to Discriminate Between Truth and Error in Regard to the Sacred Places of the Holy City — John Shaqi
Excursions to Cairo, Jerusalem, Damascus, and Balbec From the United States Ship Delaware, During Her Recent Cruise: With an Attempt to Discriminate Between Truth and Error in Regard to the Sacred Places of the Holy CityJones, George
History
Excursions to Cairo, Jerusalem, Damascus, and Balbec From the United States Ship Delaware, During Her Recent Cruise: With an Attempt to Discriminate Between Truth and Error in Regard to the Sacred Places of the Holy City
Jones, George
Middle East -- Description and travel
The annual revenue of the Pasha from all these sources amounts in
ordinary seasons to twenty-five, and in very fruitful years to thirty
millions of dollars. In his own personal expenses he may be considered
very moderate; and nearly the whole of this immense income is expended
in public improvements, and in the pay and equipment of his army
and navy. The former consists of 80,000 men, well disciplined, and
efficient, and strongly attached to their duties and to the Pasha;
the navy at present consists of 11 one hundred gun ships and as many
frigates, afloat, and is to be increased to 40 vessels, chiefly of the
largest class. The public improvements throughout the country evince
an enlargement of mind and an energy of character that in an eastern
sovereign is wonderful, especially when we consider that in most of his
operations the Pasha has no one to second him, but devises and executes
by the force of his own individual energy; and very often has to give a
personal superintendence to his operations. With regard to the abject
state of his subjects, he says it is a necessary one, and is lamented
by himself as much as by any other person. His power is unstable; he
has lately gained a kind of slippery independence, is closely watched
by his former master, the Sultan, and, without a large army and navy,
his throne would soon slide from under him. His improvements, too, he
says, must be carried on with untiring assiduity, or they will result
in little good. His own life will probably not be continued much
longer, and if they are not well advanced towards completion before his
death, they will all be an abortion, and the country will retrograde
to its late state of inferiority, and be again behind the character
of the age. And in this he is correct; for his step-son, Ibrahim
Pasha, who will doubtless be his successor, is altogether devoted to
military affairs, and cares little for manufactories, unless they be
of arms and munitions of war. “Therefore,” argues the Pasha, (or thus
at least argued the governor of Cairo for him at our first interview,)
“therefore I must drive matters with the utmost speed, and to do this I
must have a large revenue, and to obtain this I must lay heavy burdens
on my subjects.” He says, however, that as soon as the cause of these
exactions is removed, and his power secured, and his improvements
sufficiently advanced to fear no relapse, he will make his people
comfortable; and that in the interval, by means of schools and his
own example, he is endeavoring to inform them, and to stimulate them
to higher views of things than they have hitherto had, and greatly to
increase the resources of the country. Thus speaks the new monarch of
Egypt, and I have thought it best to give the reader at once an insight
into his views, in order that he may be able the better to judge of
them as we proceed through the country.
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