Free Arabs by Eugene Rogan

al-Faqar told his followers. “Let’s
go and depose him.” On their own initiative, without any other authority, the Faqari faction simply wrote to Istanbul to inform the Porte that the Ottoman governor had been deposed and that a deputy governor had been appointed to take his place. The Mamluks then strong-armed the deputy governor they had just installed to provide the funding for their campaign against the Qasami faction, drawn from the customs revenues of the port of Suez. The payment was justified in terms of the defense of Cairo. 32
    The Mamluks used extraordinary violence against their rivals. The Qasami faction knew all too well that the Faqaris were preparing for a major confrontation and took the initiative. In 1730 the Qasamis sent an assassin to kill the head of the rival faction, Zayn al-Faqar himself. The assassin was a turncoat who had fallen out with the Faqari faction and joined forces with the Qasimis. He disguised himself as a policeman and pretended to have arrested one of Zayn al-Faqar’s enemies. “Bring him here,” Zayn al-Faqar ordered, wanting to meet his enemy face to face. “Here he is,” the assassin replied, and discharged his pistol into the Mamluk’s heart, killing him instantly. 33 The assassin and his accomplice then fought their way out of Faqari leader’s house and escaped, killing several men along the way. It was the beginning of a massive blood feud.
    The Faqaris named Muhammad Bey Qatamish as their new leader. Muhammad Bey had risen to the top of the Mamluk hierarchy and held the title of shaykh al-Balad , or “commander of the city.” Muhammad Bey responded to the assassination of Zayn al-Faqar by ordering the extermination of all Mamluks associated with the Qasimi faction. “You have among you Qasimi spies,” Muhammad Bey warned, and pointed to an unfortunate man among his retainers. Before the man had a chance to defend himself, Muhammad Bey’s officers dragged him under a table and cut off his head—the first man to be killed in retaliation for Zayn al-Faqar’s murder. Many more would follow before the bloodletting of 1730 came to an end.
    Muhammad Bey turned to the deputy governor appointed by Zayn al-Faqar and obtained a warrant to execute 373 persons he claimed were involved in the Faqari leader’s assassination. It was his license to wipe out the Qasimi faction. “Muhammad Bey Qatamish annihilated the Qasimi faction entirely, except for those . . . who had escaped to the countryside,” al-Damurdashi reports. “He even took the young Mamluks who hadn’t reached puberty from their houses, sent them to an island in the middle of the Nile where he killed them, then threw their bodies into the river.” Muhammad Bey closed all of the Qasimi households, swearing never to let the faction take hold in Cairo again. 34
    The Qasimi faction proved harder to eliminate than Muhammad Bey had imagined. In 1736 the Qasimis returned to settle scores with the Faqaris. They were assisted by Bakir Pasha, the Ottoman governor. Bakir Pasha’s previous term as governor of Egypt had been cut short by the Faqaris, who had deposed him. He thus proved
a natural ally to the Qasimi faction. Bakir Pasha invited Muhammad Bey and the other leading Mamluks of the Faqari faction to a meeting where a group of Qasimis lay in ambush, armed with pistols and swords. No sooner had Muhammad Bey arrived than the Qasimis emerged, shooting the leader of the Faqari faction in the stomach and butchering his leading commanders. In all, they killed ten of the most powerful men in Cairo and piled their severed heads in one of the main mosques of the city for public viewing. 35 It was by all accounts one of the worst killings in the annals of Ottoman Egypt. 36
    Years of factional fighting left both the Faqaris and the Qasimis too weak to preserve a commanding position in Cairo. The rival factions were overtaken by a single Mamluk household known as the Qazdughlis, who came to dominate Ottoman Egypt for the