A Tale of Two Factions: Myth, Memory, and Identity in Ottoman Egypt and Yemen

Conclusion

Conclusion How the Factions Formed I started this project with the aim of solving the mystery of the origins of the Faqari and Qasimi factions. I think I have done this; at least I have proposed a solution that I think is more plausible than any previously put forward. The Qasimi faction, indeed, originated with the influential early seventeenth-century grandee Qasim Bey. His mamluk Qansuh Bey, who on being appointed governor of Yemen in 1629 became Qansuh Pasha, built on his patron’s foundations by amassing an entourage of slaves, presumably mamluks of various kinds, who accompanied him to Yemen. Nonetheless, the later Qasimi faction stemmed largely from the household of Ridvan Bey Abu’l-Shawarib. The Faqari faction, in contrast, took its name not from an eponymous founder but from the Ottoman Dhu’l-Faqar banner, which was carried by ˜Ali Bey, governor of Jirja during the 1630s and 1640s, who therefore presumed to compare himself to ˜Ali b. Abi Talib, owner of the pictured sword. The future of this faction, however, seems to have lain with ˜Ali’s comrade, (the other) Ridvan Bey. The two factions seem to have come to the fore as a result of the conflict in the 1640s between a second Qansuh Bey, also a mamluk of Qasim Bey, and his ally Memi Bey, on the one hand, and ˜Ali Bey and his ally Ridvan Bey, on the other. This conflict revolved around what were then the two most lucrative and politically influential administrative offices that beys could attain in Egypt: those of pilgrimage commander and governor of Jirja. Later, the factional rivalry would come to center on the offices of pilgrimage commander and defterdar, or financial director, as the governorship of Jirja took a back seat to Cairene posts. One version of the myth of the factions’ origins probably coalesced during this later period, in the late seventeenth or early 185 186 A Tale of Two Factions eighteenth century, and thus featured an eponymous Dhu’l-Faqar Bey the pilgrimage commander and Qasim Bey the defterdar. The other origin myths, featuring Sultan Selim as catalyst to the enmity between the brothers Qasim and Dhu’l-Faqar, and the binary opposition between Faqari/Sa˜d and Qasimi/Haram, do not seem to have crystallized until the early eighteenth century, although their antecedents are arguably visible in the late seventeenth century. As for Sa˜d and Haram, they were two conglomerations of bedouin tribes that probably originated in Yemen but that were present in Egypt as early as the fifteenth century. The Haram seem to have had a more sustained presence in Egypt through the pre-Ottoman period. The association of Sa˜d and Haram with the Faqari and Qasimi factions , respectively, appears to date from the factions’ emergence in the early seventeenth century. The Haram apparently included elements associated with the Ottoman campaigns in Yemen, which acted as catalysts to the formation of the Qasimi faction. In Egypt, in any event, the rivalry of the two bedouin blocs constituted a rural counterpart to the Faqari-Qasimi rivalry; meanwhile, grandees from the Faqari and Qasimi factions arguably provided a measure of unity to the disparate tribes that made up each bedouin faction. Both the Faqaris and Qasimis and their bedouin counterparts seem to have tapped into preexisting traditions and motifs of factional rivalry, notably the red-white color dichotomy of the Qaysi and Yemeni Arab factions, to which the Sa˜d and Haram may have had direct, if distant, links. The Function of Factional Origin Myths Obviously, the various myths of the factions’ origins have obscured the historical realities of the factions’ development from the eyes of inquisitive historians. Here, I have tried to get at both the historical reality—which, as is so often the case with historical realities, is far more mundane, random, and gradual than mythic—and the myths themselves. This has meant approaching the myths on their own terms and wrestling with the numerous symbols, tropes, and allusions that adorn them. Why bother doing this? Because the myths are as important as the reality, although for a different reason. The myths provided a framework within which a factional identity could be constructed. They served to fix and to legitimize the factions by linking them to an heroic past, whether fictive (Kisa) or, more commonly, fictionalized (Baybars, Jabala b. al-Ayham, the Hilalis, the Shahname, even some of the legends of the Prophet’s companions). The characters and tropes [3.144...