learned and religious body in the
East. Next to these grandees came the smaller landholders, composing the
second and more numerous class of the Arabs; then the great mass of the
inhabitants, who had sunk into the state of absolute helots. These last
were hired peasants or fellahs who cultivated the land, and lived in
abject poverty. There was also a class of Arabs, namely, the Bedouins
or rovers, who would never attach themselves to the soil, but were the
children of the desert. These wandering Arabs, divided into tribes
on both sides of the valley, numbered nearly one hundred and twenty
thousand, and could furnish from twenty to twenty-five thousand horse.
They were brave, but fit only to harass the enemy, not to fight him. The
third and last race was that of the Turks; but it was not more numerous
than the Kopts, amounting to about two hundred thousand souls at most,
and was divided into Turks and Mamluks. The Turks were nearly all
enrolled in the list of janizaries; but it is well known that they
frequently had their names inscribed in those lists, that they might
enjoy the privileges of janizaries, and that a very small number of them
were really in the service. Very few of them composed the military force
of the pasha. This pasha, sent from Constantinople, was the sultan's
representative in Egypt; but, escorted by only a few janizaries, he
found his authority invalidated by the very precautions which Sultan
Selim had formerly taken to preserve it. That sultan, judging that
Egypt was likely from its remoteness to throw off the dominion of
Constantinople, and that a clever and ambitious pasha might create there
an independent empire, had, as we have seen, devised a plan to frustrate
such a motive, should it exist, by instituting a Mamluk soldiery; but it
was the Mamluks, and not the pasha, who rendered themselves independent
of Constantinople and the masters of Egypt.

Egypt was at this time an absolute feudality, like that of Europe in
the Middle Ages. It exhibited at once a conquered people, a conquering
soldiery in rebellion against its sovereign, and, lastly, an ancient
degenerate class, who served and were in the pay of the strongest.

Two beys, superior to the rest, ruled Egypt: the one, Ibrahim Bey,
wealthy, crafty, and powerful; the other, Murad Bey, intrepid,
valiant, and full of ardour. They had agreed upon a sort of division
of authority, by which Ibrahim Bey had the civil, and Murad Bey the
military, po