Commander of the Faithful

The tornado of violence that bloodied the Christian quarter for five days left thousands dead. Estimates of how many died vary widely. Some as few as five hundred, others as many as ten thousand.28 Lanusse reported to his ministry that there were nineteen thousand Christians living in Damascus at the time of the outbreak, including five thousand refugees who had fled from Lebanon in the spring. Most of them would have been living in villages outside the walls of the old city. Space was limited and rents high in the inner city Christian quarter that was home to eight or ten thousand, mostly Greek Christians. How many lives did the emir save? No one was keeping count. How many others were inspired by his example? Abd el-Kader’s friend, Lanusse, credits him with saving the lives of eleven thousand people, virtually every Christian in the inner city, and then some.

The horrifying news first hit the French public on July eighteenth. From an earlier dispatch sent by the French naval commander in the Levant, Le Moniteur reported that “the attack on Christians began in Damascus on the afternoon of the ninth. By that evening large numbers of men had been killed and women carried off to harems….While the Turkish authorities were inexplicably lethargic in the face of immanent danger, the emir had actively tried to warn the ulema and notables of the threat to Christians …Throughout the crisis, the emir’s behavior was admirable. Day and night, he looked after the general safety of the population, giving clear proof of his devotion to humanity and self-sacrifice.”

More articles appeared in August, all unanimous in their praise of the emir’s conduct. Le Gazette de France was positively dithyrambic. “The emir Abd el-Kader has immortalized himself by the courageous protection he has given the Syrian Christians. One of the most beautiful pages of the history of the 19th century will be devoted to him.” Le Pays, Journal de l’Empire quoted the Lazaristes: “When the carnage was at its worst, the emir appeared in the streets, as if sent by God.” And so it went from the French press. By October 20 enough information had worked its way back to the United States for the New York Times to add its own accolade.

“Twenty years ago the Arab Emir was an enemy of Christendom, hunted through the ranges of his native hills…Today, the Christian world unites to honor the dethroned Prince of Islam, the most unselfish of knightly warriors, risking limb and life to rescue his ancient foes, his conquerors and the conquerors of his race and religion, from outrage and from death...For Abd-el-Kader²⁹ this is indeed a chapter of glory, and of the truest glory. It is no light thing for history to record that the most uncompromising soldier of Mohammedan independence became the most intrepid guardian of Christian lives and Christian honor in the days of his political downfall and in the decline of his people. The defeats which surrendered Algiers to the Frank have been strangely and nobly avenged.”

But why did he do it? Many wondered. Some people were amazed that this former head of the resistance hadn’t used the situation to avenge the suffering inflicted by France on him and his country. Some Muslims saw his behavior as pandering to France, that in fact he had become more French than Arab. The emir’s own explanation reported by Le Pays in October gave two simple reasons: he was doing God’s will in saving innocents and his humanity demanded it. “These motives amounted to a sacred duty,” the emir concluded. “I was simply an instrument. Sing your praises to Him who directed me — to your Sultan, as well as mine.”

Others thought that the emir’s intervention was a cri du coeur on behalf of his own religion. Hadn’t Bullad reported that the emir often lamented that Islam was dying for “lack of real Muslims.” Perhaps, by example, he could show Muslims what it meant to be a true Muslim. His reply to a letter of gratitude from Bishop Louis-Antoine Pavy, Dupuch’s successor in Algiers, said as much between the lines. The emir often revealed his truest self when writing to other ministers of the Lord.

“…That which we did for the Christians, we did to be faithful to Islamic law and out of respect for human rights. All creatures are part of God’s family and those most loved by God are those who do the most good for his family. All the religions of the book rest on two principles — to praise God and to have compassion for his creatures…The law of Mohammed places the greatest importance on compassion and mercy, and on all that which preserves social cohesion and protects us from division. But those who belong to the religion of Mohammed have corrupted it, which is why they are now like lost sheep. Thank you for your prayers and good will toward me…”

An avalanche of honors descended on the emir after the press reports appeared. The French government awarded him the Legion of Honor and diverse distinctions came from Russia, Spain, Sardinia, Prussia, Great Britain, the Papacy, the Turkish sultan and President Lincoln. Lincoln, on the eve of his own national disaster, sent the emir a quintessentially American form of recognition: a pair of finely engraved custom made colt pistols, delivered in a box of bird’s eye maple bearing the inscription: “From the President of the United States, to his Excellency, Lord Abdelkader, 1860.”

However, the most valued of all the accolades Abd el-Kader received was a letter from fellow Muslim freedom fighter, Mohammed Shamil, the Islamic hero of Chechnya. He too was exiled, but in Moscow, after years of struggle against Russian imperialism.

“May God be praised who clothed His servant with power and faith… Abd el-Kader the Just. Greetings. May the laurels of distinction and honor always bear fruit for you.” Shamil’s themes: chagrin and shame toward fellow Muslims who had behaved so detestably toward Christians, and dishonored their faith. “I was stupefied by the blindness of the functionaries who committed these excesses, forgetting the words of the Prophet: Whoever is unjust toward a protégé, whoever commits a wrong against him, or takes something from him without his consent — let him know I will be his accuser on the day of judgment…You have put into practice the words of the Prophet…and set yourself apart from those who reject his example…May God protect us from those who transgress his laws.” The emir recognized in Shamil a fellow Muslim cut from the same cloth. His response repeated what he wrote to Bishop Pavy and had said often to George Bullad.

“…What I did was merely obedience to our sacred law and to the precepts of humanity,” he wrote Shamil. “…Vice is condemned in all the religions, for to be led by vice is to swallow a poison that contaminates your body…When we think about how rare are the real champions of truth, and when one sees ignorant people who imagine that Islamism is about severity, hardness, excess and barbarism — it is time to repeat these words: patience is godliness, trust in God.”

The massacres had provided France the opportunity to press its case that the Ottoman Christians needed European protection. A French force of 6,000 was on its way to Beirut, estimated to arrive in mid August.

A week after the killing had subsided, on July 25, the outraged European powers agreed to have a Franco-European expeditionary force sent to Lebanon, capable of marching inland to Damascus. Under the command of another old adversary of the emir from the Algerian struggle, General Beaufort Hautpoul’s mission was to satisfy “humanistic imperatives.” Before the French could arrive, Fouad Pasha, the Ottoman minister of foreign affairs, a strong proponent of reform and a favorite of Great Britain, was ordered immediately to Damascus from Lebanon with 3,000 troops to identify and punish the malefactors, and deprive the French of a pretext to penetrate into the interior.

Fouad Pasha consulted with his military officers, with Abd el-Kader, the European consuls and met with the local notables, before creating an Extraordinary Tribunal. The tribunal asked the surviving Christians to draw up a list of perpetrators, when in fact, most of the Christians had no idea who had attacked them. The living knew the faces of only those who had saved them. Fouad Pasha then told the precinct officers in the Muslim quarters to present lists of inhabitants they had seen armed during the mayhem.

On August 3, the governing council of Damascus, together with other Muslim leaders, met with Fouad Pasha to review the names in order to confirm or reject the candidates for punishment. The gates of the city were closed throughout the precedings, except for deliveries of food and other necessities. The tribunal arrested 350 people from 4,600 names that had been presented. Many of those on the list had fled; others were exculpated or simply released for lack of witnesses. Of the 350, all but twelve were found guilty of “instigation, murder, arson or pillage.” Of the 338 men found guilty, 181 were shot or hung and 157 were exiled. Among those shot was the governor, Ahmed Pasha. Six of Mechaga’s attackers were hung, as well as the precinct officer of his quarter.

Eighty-two of the condemned were from Turkish paramilitary groups. Sixty-four were identified as recent arrivals in Damascus. One hundred and twenty-three were identified by occupation, including shopkeepers, craftsmen, peasants and members of elite families. But whose hand was really behind the whole affair? Fingers were pointed in every direction.

The French consul pointed at the British, noting that theirs was the only European embassy not looted and burned (later, it too had been protected by the emir’s Algerians). And then there was the curious story about the murderer of the English Reverend Graham who pleaded to his accusers that he had made a mistake. Others suspected a French hand in the matter. France was known to be looking for an excuse to occupy Syria and to install its own silk producers to eliminate the local middlemen. In his correspondence with his ambassador in Istanbul, the British consul in Damascus accused Abd el-Kader of collusion with the vice-consul Lanusse, rekindling a tradition of paranoia about French designs going back to 1840, when the British consul in Damascus, Richard Wood, had suspected France of intrigue with Egypt. Such were a few of the “greedy foreign hand” theories.

The actual facts, such as they are, make Churchill’s explanation the obvious one: the desire to “correct” the arrogant Christians produced a plot born of resentment and anger stoked by antireform Muslims. Mechaga takes Churchill a step further, asserting that the plot was hatched in Istanbul. The Christians were in bad odor for their disrespectful arrogance and disobedience of the law, but so too were the Muslims of Damascus, most of whom were restless Arabs and Kurds. Their past behavior also needed correcting for such offenses as failing to pay back taxes and assassinating imperial viziers. Disrespect was everywhere. “Therefore,” wrote the worldly-wise Mechaga, “the empire strove to incite the Muslims against the Christians and so have its revenge on both of them.”

What is known is that mobs entered through the Thomas Gate to attack first the Russian Embassy and then the rest of the European embassies in the Christian quarter of Khamarieh. The Jewish quarter was untouched. Mechaga reported that some Jews were seen providing sugarcane-flavored ice to the Turkish militia men and bought loot from the pillagers at bargain-basement prices. Interestingly, the mixed Christian-Muslim quarter of Maydan was not touched by violence. The Maydan quarter of Damascus had few silk weavers and was known for its large number of grain merchants. The minority Christians in Maydan had taken pains to maintain good relations with their Muslim neighbors over the years. They were polite, deferential to the local authorities and had not arrogantly gloated over their new rights.

The murdering and pillaging was confined to the exclusively Christian Khamarieh quarter, which happened to be where the more technologically efficient Christian silk weavers worked. Added to the competitive inferiority of Muslim silk weavers who didn’t have access to the modern Jacquard looms, were other gnawing grievances. Many Muslims were in debt to Europeans and the working class was suffering from high food prices caused by a severe grain shortage that summer. Mix these elements of discontent with a generalized resentment over the reforms instigated by the Europeans, and all the tinder was at hand to ignite a collective impulse to “correct” impudent, disobedient infidels.

Yet, collective mass impulses usually produce messy results. The blast of fury unleashed on July 9 was surprisingly concentrated — limited to the small, one-third-of-a-mile square, Christian neighborhood of Khamarieh. The large number of militiamen and outsiders punished in the aftermath would indicate a provocation executed by hired help with no personal ties to the victims, but who were encouraged by angry locals until a little pillaging erupted into a raging massacre. It would make sense for the conspirators to direct the outsiders to a place where attacking Christians could be done easily, without confusing them with Muslims.

In the mixed neighborhoods of Maydan and Shughar, Muslims were praised by the investigators for restraining violence and protecting their Christian neighbors. Abd el-Kader’s conduct was exemplary, though the praise he would receive eventually overshadowed the heroism of many other Muslims who, like the emir, risked the wrath of the mob for harboring their Christian neighbors. In his colorful memoir Murder, Mayhem, Pillage and Plunder Mechaga calls out other outstanding Muslims of Damascus who followed their religious law to protect Christians: Sheikh Salim Attar, a well-respected member of the ulema, and in the mixed Maydan quarter, Salih Agha al-Mahayini, Said Agha al-Nuri, Umar Agha al-Abid and others. The emir may have been the boldest and most dramatic savior of Christians, but not the only one.

And what was Abd el-Kader’s view of the events when asked by the investigating commission? Ever discrete, he would only say that the Christian quarter could have been spared “if the governor had wanted it.” He refused to elaborate. A year later, a famous French archeologist and Orientalist, the Comte de Vogüe, called on Abd el-Kader, whose address had become an obligatory visit for European travelers. During the meeting, the Frenchman wrested from the emir his view of the Damascenes’ behavior. Abd el-Kader’s answer surprised his visitors. “They were wrong to use their right as they did, but their right to punish the Christians was unquestionable. The Christians had refused to pay the exemption tax.” The emir might have added, but did not, that as former leader of an embattled Arab federation, he knew all too well the importance of raising taxes and the need to enforce their collection.

The law was perfectly clear to Abd el-Kader. The Christians were protected people, yet they still were obliged to respect the law. The Christians were in the wrong for disobeying the law. They were in rebellion and deserved punishment. The Muslims were in the wrong for the indiscriminately savage manner in which “correction” was applied.

The emir was certainly au courant. The reforms pressed on the Porte by the Europeans had eliminated officially their djimmi status. The djimmi poll tax lifted, it had been replaced by a universal exemption tax that both Muslims and Christians had to pay to stay out of military service. The Christians and Turks were now equal. The Christians were required to do military service, though it was generally understood that they detested the very notion of serving the Ottoman Empire. Nor did the Turks want Christians to serve. But, whereas the Christians only had to pay fifty liras per head, the Muslims had to pay 100 liras. The Christians still refused to pay, thinking that if they offered themselves to serve, the Turks would reject them and they would escape having to pay the tax.

The French visitors were surprised by the emir’s stern orthodoxy and, most likely, unaware of the new complexities brought on by the reforms. In France, Abd el-Kader had been transformed by his many admirers into a “liberal”; however, had Comte de Vogüe spoken with the emir’s Protestant friend and victim of the rioting, Michael Mechaga, he would have heard the same.

Mechaga was known locally as the “Luther of the Orient” for a good reason. Luther’s revolutionary doctrine of the “priesthood of all believers” had contributed to the chaos in the German lands of the Holy Roman Empire: let every man, no matter how untutored, be his own priest; no intermediaries are required between man and God. Horrified at how his doctrines were being misused, Luther became a staunch defender of secular authority. Better a bad ruler than anarchy was the lesson he drew, and found support for, in the writings of Saint Paul to the Romans.

Like Luther 300 years earlier, Mechaga witnessed personally a torrent of bloodshed unleashed by rebellious spirits — Christian and Muslim. His extended memoir warned those who denied the necessity of obeying the constituted authorities. “My sole intention was to illustrate the results of disobedience to orders of one’s overlords and to explain the causes…for we have never seen yet a state wreak vengeance on obedient subjects.” Mechaga, like Luther, referred often to Romans 13: Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God.…Rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil…therefore you must pay taxes, for rulers are God’s ministers tending to this very thing. Render, therefore, to all their due… Owe no one anything except to love one another…

A sixteen-page brochure was circulating in Paris in the fall of 1860 under the title Abd el-Kader, empereur d’Arabie. The brochure spoke of the need of the Arabs to have a true leader of quality, and championed Abd el-Kader for the throne of the Arab orient — Greater Syria. He would teach the West and the Muslims, it said, “the true interpretations of the maxims of the Koran and how a true believer ought to interpret them.” Its anonymous authorship suggested some kind of straw in the wind.

But did it come from French or from Arab sources? French diplomats in Istanbul had suspected that local notables were in league with Ahmed Pasha. Proto-nationalist intrigue had been in the air. Had the Arab notables of Damascus, tired of the oppressive Turk, but as fellow Muslims flying the flag of “correction,” conspired with Ahmed Pasha to instigate disorder with the intent of liberating Syria from all foreign control. Yes, Ahmed Pasha had been told in clear terms by Lanusse that mistreatment of Christians would bring French intervention, the expulsion of the Ottomans and unification of Syria with Egypt under French influence. Yet the notables also knew that the British would not permit French or Egyptian control over Syria.

Nevertheless, notables often conspired to improve their own positions in local power struggles by exploiting factional divisions and popular discontent. When accounts were settled in the fall of 1860, the representation on the city council of two powerful families — the Maydanis and Azms — had been radically altered. The Maydani faction had considerably increased its influence while all but two members of the Azm faction were exiled to waste away their days in the Magusa fortress in Cyprus.

Alternatively, Louis-Napoleon had controversial ideas of creating a quasi-independent Arab Kingdom in Algeria that would respect and protect the indigenous culture from French greed and “civilization.” The bellowing protests of the colonists at the very hint of such an absurd notion scotched its further incubation. Not only was the name Abd el-Kader anathema to the Europeans in Algeria, Abd el-Kader had also given his word never to return to Algeria. But Syria was a different matter.

After the July events, the emir’s prestige had reached new heights within the “civilized world” and his candidacy to lead a movement to win Syrian independence might be acceptable to both the British and the French who were striving for harmonious competition. Certain of their representatives had exchanged such thoughts even before the horrors of 1860.

Bullad’s regular taking of the emir’s political temperature following the sultan’s unpopular Hatti Humayun reform edicts had been reassuring. He confirmed in his reports to the French embassy that the emir was a devoted loyalist toward France and to Emperor Louis-Napoleon, yet Bullad also was apprehensive. In 1857 he had written to his minister that Abd el-Kader might harbor ambitions to regenerate the Arabs by doing in the Middle East what he had failed to accomplish in Algeria. “His name still has great prestige in the Orient especially in fanatical circles who hate the Turks. We must not forget that the son of Muhi al-Din has always dreamed of an Arab nationality. The emir no longer considers the Ottoman empire viable, despite Europe’s efforts to keep it alive.” After warning his minister not to take the emir’s benevolence toward France as a reason for complacency, Bullad also suggested that it could be advantageous for France to have a man such as Abd el-Kader as an ally or as a “weight in the balance that would determine the fate of the Ottoman Empire.”

The bloody events of July left France and Britain with the question of what to do next. Though competitors in the Middle East, the two nations had a common interest in arrangements that would yield no clear advantage to the other. Practically, this meant supporting the integrity of the Ottoman Empire, while trying to reorganize Syria to assure adequate protection of the Christian minorities. The British candidate for the new governor of the pashalik was their reform-friendly foreign minister, Fouad Pasha, who had so efficiently and swiftly laid the ax to a large number of presumed conspirators and scattered others into exile, thus precluding a French occupation of Damascus. Certain Frenchmen had Abd el-Kader on their mind as a future governor, even though the British had made it clear that they considered him unacceptable to the Turks, and therefore they would be opposed.

In September, the Minister of War, Marshal Randon, another former adversary of the emir, asked General Hautpol’s opinion of the emir’s suitability as a candidate to govern Syria. Hautpol, still commanding the expeditionary force sent to Lebanon in the summer, did not think the European powers would agree to the emir governing all Syria, though possibly Damascus, the territory of Acre, and Judea as well. Eventually, the emir’s government might stretch from Baghdad west to the Litani River in south Lebanon. Lebanon itself would never tolerate a Muslim ruler, even of the stature of Abd el-Kader, Hautpol concluded.

On October 23, Hautpol was stood up by the emir. Abd el-Kader never appeared at a meeting intended to explore with the general the different political schemes circulating.

“I was told he was afraid of compromising himself at a time when the Turks were silently hostile toward him and the Muslims in Damascus hated him,” Hautpol wrote his minister afterward. “Nevertheless, it would be good to push for an autonomous Lebanon and to obtain for Abd el-Kader some kind of political power.”

There was one big problem with all these speculations. No one had bothered to ask the emir’s permission to put his name in play. In December of 1860, a French journalist visiting Damascus finally asked him the question.

“Your name has been mentioned in French newspapers as a possible governor of Syria. Have you heard?”

“Yes, and that, if I am not mistaken, is one of the main reasons the Turks are angry with me. But Turkey can rest assured. My career in politics is over. I have no ambition for worldly glory. From now on, I want only the sweet pleasures of family, prayer and peace.”

One of those pleasures was to take his aged mother in his arms every day, and carry her up the steps to the rooftop terrace to breathe fresh air and watch the sun set on the Djebel Kaysun. Lalla Zohra was approaching 100 years and rarely left her bed. The emir’s font of wisdom and compassion would die during the following year.

While General Hautpol was fancifully planning the emir’s future, in Paris a committee of the French Masonic Lodge, “Henry IV”, was carefully editing a letter to the emir and selecting a piece of jewelry with an appropriate inscription. On November 16, after a month of editing, a letter was finally put in the mail to “the most illustrious emir” Abd el-Kader, accompanied by a green-enameled medallion covered with Masonic symbolism. A circle surrounded a double square, forming an octagon that emanated rays of light, in the center of which was inscribed a square rule with Pythagorean formulas streaming from it like bird shot.

The Lodge introduced itself to the emir, explaining the qualities that made one suitable to become a Free Mason. “Wherever tolerance and humanity have been protected and glorified, masons seek to recognize those who, at great sacrifice, do God’s work on earth and lend a disinterested hand to the oppressed and needy.” The authors then compared Abd el-Kader to other great Muslim personalities, and finally in a crescendo of acclaim: “Free Masonry, which believes in the existence of a moral God, the immortality of the soul…the practice of tolerance and universal brotherly love, cannot observe without emotion the great example you have given the world. It recognizes and claims as one of its own a man who practiced so well its noble motto, ‘One for All.’” The letter’s grand finale was an invitation to become a mason, for “there are hearts that beat in unison with yours, brothers who love you already as one of them and who would be proud if closer bonds would permit them to count you as one of the adepts of our institution.”

Free Masonry in the mid-nineteenth century was an international brotherhood of distinguished and accomplished minds dedicated to building solidarity and harmony with their fellow man. Its roots were in the medieval guild system, when guilds educated initiates according to various rites, rules and trade-knowledge. But professional knowledge was always presumed to be both a divine gift and a divine obligation — to serve God by serving others. Their world, like the emir’s, admitted no separation between secular and divine knowledge. For most guilds, the rights of members to organize and protect their craft was restricted to a specific locality and entailed the payment of a tax. The free masons were exempted from these restrictions.

More than any other, their guild was religious in its bones. Monks and clerics were themselves often masons. Masons were obligated to be men of faith, a faith they expressed in stone. Their first obligation was to be faithful to God and to the church and “to flee from heresy and error.” They were obligated to undertake charitable works and assure the good moral education of its members. Nor was their craft education a matter of simply learning construction techniques in stone and wood. A mason’s education was designed to enable him to express universal truths. He needed to be an architect, mason, carpenter and sculptor. His instruction required learning geometry, theology, art and philosophy. The medieval mason’s education differed little from Abd el-Kader’s. God’s presence was seamless.

The church needed the masons for glorifying God, building its churches, cathedrals and monasteries. The church also had enough moral authority to liberate masons from the local restrictions that bound other guilds. Under the church’s writ, masons paid no taxes and could travel freely, providing them a unique possibility to fraternize with like spirits and to create associations where knowledge and ideas could be exchanged — within the intellectual boundaries defined by their rule.

By 1815, the order had evolved from being strictly Christian to being Deist. A member no longer had to accept Christian dogmas, but rather acknowledge a Creator and a moral law. “A mason is required to obey the moral law…among men he should best understand that God sees differently than man, because man sees the exterior of things, but God sees the heart. Whatever a man’s religion or his manner of worshipping God, he will not be excluded so long as he believes in the glorious Architect of heaven and earth and practices his moral obligations towards his fellow man.”

The evolution of the masons had followed a path of tolerance not much different from the reasoning of the emir himself, though Abd el-Kader’s acceptance of even paganism, as divine epiphany, might have been more than most masons could have digested in 1860.

In 1864, the emir was named honorary grand master of the Syrian Masonic Lodge in Damascus. A year later, during a visit to France, Abd el-Kader was inducted into the French Lodge, “Henry IV,” joining Benjamin Franklin, Laplace, Lafayette, Voltaire, Soult, Monge, Talleyrand, Proudhon and other distinguished minds for whom nature, reason and moral law were compatible manifestations of one Divine Architect. ³⁰