Casting off the Veil

The Life of Huda Shaarawi, Egypt's First Feminist

Sania Sharawi Lanfranchi

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780857737779
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

In 1923, when the pioneer of feminist activism, Huda Shaarawi, removed her veil in Cairo's train station, she created what became a landmark (and much-copied) gesture for feminists throughout Egypt and the Middle East and cemented her status as one of the most important feminists in twentieth-century Egypt. In Casting off the Veil, her granddaughter Sania Sharawi Lanfranchi uses never-before seen letters and photographs to explore the life and thought of Egypt's first feminist, as she campaigned against British occupation, as well as striving to improve conditions for women throughout the country. From her birth into a wealthy and powerful family, her early years spent in a harem, to her iconic status as one of the most influential feminists in Middle Eastern history, this is a fascinating portrait of a determined and ground-breaking woman, a rich and important story which will captivate everyone with an interest in Egyptian, feminist or colonial history.

1

Childhood in a conservative home

Huda Shaarawi was born on 23 June 1879. Her name at birth was Nur al-Huda Sultan. Her father, Muhammad Sultan Pasha, who was 55 when his daughter came into the world, was a man of substantial influence in Egyptian society and political life. An Egyptian from Minya, in Upper Egypt, where he had extensive estates, he was an extremely rich man accustomed to deference. In the way Egyptians have of conferring nicknames on important people, Sultan Pasha was widely referred to as the ‘King’ of Upper Egypt. Wilfrid Blunt, an English resident who knew Egypt well and was a sympathiser with the Egyptian nationalist cause, observed that Sultan Pasha ‘was a proud man of great wealth and importance and used to being given the first place everywhere’.¹ Huda’s mother, Iqbal, by contrast, was of Circassian origin, the daughter of a family from the Shapsigh tribe of Dagestan. Her origins were both obscure and romantic, and she was scarcely 20 when Huda was born. Huda’s brother Umar was born two years later, in 1881.

Iqbal’s own story was a romantic one. She was a proud and reticent woman who had been brought to Egypt as a child, and Huda only gradually pieced together her tale, learning much when she eventually met her mother’s brothers. Iqbal’s father, reputedly a tribal chieftain, had been killed by the Russians during the Russian invasion of the Caucasus, and his widow, Aziza, had fled to Istanbul with her remaining family, including Iqbal. As refugees, the family suffered terrible hardship. One son died, and Iqbal’s baby sister was abducted by her wet nurse. When Iqbal was nine, Aziza decided to send her for safety to Egypt, a country she had never visited, under the protection of an Egyptian friend who was travelling to Cairo. It can only be imagined what an act of blind faith this was, and how much Aziza must have feared for her daughter’s welfare. The intention was to place Iqbal under the care of a man Huda later came to understand from her own uncles’ accounts was her mother’s maternal uncle, Yusuf Sabri Pasha, an officer in the Egyptian army and a member of Egypt’s Turco-Circassian elite. It happened, however, that Yusuf Sabri Pasha was absent on military duty in the Sudan. His wife, described as a freed slave of a member of the royal family, who was no doubt herself of Circassian origin, reacted badly to Iqbal’s arrival, refusing to receive her and declaring that her husband had no family in the Caucasus. Iqbal was therefore taken instead by her escort to the house of his own trusted friend, Ali Bey Raghib. Raghib Bey and his family cared for her. She was brought up with their daughter and learned to speak Arabic as well as Turkish. Yusuf Sabri Pasha evidently remained in contact with her, however, and she grew up to regard him and his family as her kin. Iqbal came to feel a special bond with Yusuf Sabri Pasha’s daughter, Munira Sabri, who was her cousin. When she was of a suitable age, Raghib Bey’s family set about finding a wealthy husband for the Circassian girl for whom they had cared. Iqbal had grown into an extremely beautiful young woman, and it was a stroke of good fortune for her that Sultan Pasha was seeking just such a woman as a consort.² His first wife, Hasiba, had born him a son, Ismail, who had sadly died not long before, and she had evidently lapsed into depression.

Out of compassion for his new young wife, who sometimes brooded sadly and wept when memories of her distant family flooded back to her, Sultan Pasha investigated Iqbal’s family’s whereabouts in Turkey. He discovered that Ahmed Idris and Yusuf Idris, Iqbal’s brothers, were settled in the little Turkish port of Bandirma, on the southern shore of the Sea of Marmara. Aziza, with whom she had lost touch, was also still alive and well. Sultan invited the two brothers and Iqbal’s mother, Huda’s grandmother, to come to Cairo. The brothers now spoke Turkish, even between themselves. They brought with them their memories of the past, and Huda eagerly questioned her uncle Yusuf about the history of her Circassian family. She found his tales captivating, and her imagination was further stimulated by the fact that the stories were about her ancestors. Yusuf told her the history of his father, Sharaluqa Gwattish, who had been the chief from the Shapsigh tribe, whose home was on the Caspian Sea coast. Like the hero of the Caucasus, Hadji Murad, who was immortalised in fiction by Leo Tolstoy, Gwattish had fought against the Russians and had lost his life in a desperate battle against the Russian invaders. The family’s flight to Turkey was part of the chaotic exodus that followed the Russian conquest of the Caucasus.³ Soon after her marriage, Iqbal met a Circassian woman in Cairo named Jazb Ashiq, with whose story her own seemed to have much in common, and with whom she struck up an instinctive friendship. This was unusual for Iqbal, who was somewhat reserved. It was apparently concluded by the two women, who exchanged information about their lives, that this was Iqbal’s long-lost baby sister, abducted in Turkey, so that Huda in due course grew up calling Jazb Ashiq ‘Auntie’. Iqbal took Jazb Ashiq into her household.

Sultan Pasha began his career in government service as a local administrator in the province of Minya. Thanks to his ability and personal wealth, he rose to the position of Director of the Inspectorate for Upper Egypt, which gave him a foothold in national political life. He became widely known, and eventually achieved the position of President of the Consultative Chamber of Delegates (‘Majlis Shura al-Nuwwab’). He was an advocate of constitutional rule in Egypt and, with his associates, had plans for wide-ranging reform.⁴ In addition to his political friends, he was acquainted with Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and with al-Afghani’s disciple, Muhammad Abduh, who had become the Grand Mufti of Egypt under Khedive Tawfiq. Sultan Pasha shared Muhammad Abduh’s enlightened ideas and beliefs, even in relation to banking and insurance. In 1879, the year of Huda’s birth, together with his friend Umar Lutfi Pasha, another powerful official within Khedive Tawfiq’s establishment, Sultan Pasha drew up a plan to create a National Bank in Egypt, based on local rather than foreign capital, a project that paved the way for later similar efforts.⁵

There was nothing in Muhammad Sultan Pasha’s life that pointed to a tragic destiny. In common with the Khedive, however, and the wealthy landed class which ruled the country, he was obliged to accept the financial and political control exercised by Western countries in Egypt, and in particular by Britain, that had arisen as the consequence of the debt contracted by Tawfiq’s predecessor, Khedive Ismail, during the building of the Suez Canal. The creation by the British and French Governments of the Caisse de la Dette to administer Egypt’s repayments, together with the presence of the British and French financial controllers, who together supervised Egypt’s fiscal affairs, had resulted in what was in effect an economic occupation of the country. Most decisions related to financial issues were referred to the two foreign financial controllers, who had the ultimate say. Egypt’s economy had in effect been hijacked by the obligation to service the debt, and its rulers were tricked into a false situation that prevented them from governing effectively. This situation resulted in discontent within the country and the army, so that the effectiveness of the autocratic khedivial style of rule came to be questioned, not least by the local population. In February 1881, Egyptian-born officers of the Egyptian army, led by Colonel Ahmad Urabi, demanded constitutional rule from the Khedive, as well as greater opportunities for their own preferment, distinct from the Turco-Circassian elite which ran Egypt’s army as well as so much else in Egypt. When this happened, Sultan Pasha’s first instinct was to lend them his support. His roots, after all, lay with the Egyptian people, and he believed that Egypt was ready for constitutional or parliamentary rule.

The story of what ensued was recounted to Huda when she was still a child by Qallini Fahmi Pasha, her father’s former secretary, who was also a friend of the family.⁶ Sultan Pasha and other Egyptian political figures initially lent their support to Urabi and his fellow officers, but Sir Edward Malet, the British Consul, and Sir Auckland Colvin, the Khedive’s financial adviser, had repeatedly warned them that a revolution would provoke British wrath, and would certainly result in dire retribution. The implication was that the only way to save the country was to bring about the defeat of Urabi. Britain sent a fleet to Alexandria and threatened mayhem if Urabi and the other Egyptian officers continued with their plan to force Khedive Tawfiq from the throne. Sultan Pasha’s change of heart sprang from his fear that a massacre might take place with the British warships off the Alexandria coast.⁷ He realised that a military intervention in Egypt by the invincible army of the British Empire might lead to the country’s occupation, leading to a passage from Ottoman to British hegemony. In the last resort, he believed his ultimate allegiance was to the Khedive, as Viceroy of the Ottoman Sultan, and therefore to the Ottoman Empire itself. Instinct and political beliefs therefore led him to back the Khedive and conform to the advice that was being issued by the British, and to turn against Urabi and the other officers whom he had previously supported. In May 1882, when matters came to a head, Sultan Pasha took the Khedive’s side against Urabi. In the words of Wilfrid Blunt, who sympathised with the justice of Urabi’s case, Sultan Pasha ‘was partly cajoled, partly frightened by Malet into declaring himself in favour of the British demands, and threw in his lot finally with the Court party against his former associates’.⁸ This caused anger against him, and while Sultan Pasha was in Alexandria, an Urabist mob attacked his property in Cairo. Blunt copied into his diary a statement from the Observer newspaper, according to which ‘Sultan Pasha went… to the Khedive to make terms between him and Arabi…’ Blunt’s comment was,

The papers all say that he and the Chamber have sided against Arabi with the Khedive, but I will not believe that till I hear further. What is likely is that Sultan Pasha has been put out, at the Chamber being invoked without a legal summons, and at an inconvenient time of the year. The army has had too much influence in the Ministry not to have made itself enemies. There is probably jealousy, but I do not believe in more. The whole thing has probably been encouraged by Colvin and Malet and the Circassians have been encouraged by the idea of Turkish intervention. They have ordered ships to Alexandria, which, if I am not mistaken, will have the effect of uniting all once more against the Europeans.⁹

Meanwhile, Sir Edward Malet had promised Sultan Pasha and others that, though the British would never on any terms allow Urabi and his friends to rule the country in the Khedive’s place, they would withdraw their forces immediately after the crisis. However, Malet never provided Sultan Pasha with a written memorandum setting out the British Government’s position, as Sultan Pasha had asked. Nevertheless, Sultan Pasha, in typically oriental fashion, relied on the British Consul’s word of honour and his integrity, not suspecting that he might have been manipulated. His sincere belief was that the British forces would not remain in the country after winning their battle. He was, of course, to be gravely disappointed. After the crisis, Sultan Pasha was never the same man again. It was generally believed in the family and in other circles that Sultan Pasha bitterly blamed himself when he realised that Malet’s promises of immediate evacuation after the Khedive’s victory over Urabi were false, and that the British, who had purported to intervene in Egypt to support the Khedive’s rule, would maintain indefinitely their occupation of the country.

Wilfrid Blunt quotes Abd al-Salam al-Muilhi, a member of Egypt’s Parliament in 1882 and previously a good friend of Sultan Pasha, who gave an account of how Sultan Pasha was viewed by the pro-Urabi partisans after the crisis. Al-Muilhi said of himself that

he had been an intimate friend and partisan of Sultan Pasha’s, and had been one of those who joined Sultan in his quarrel with Urabi, but they were all very sorry now for not having held together; and he did not approve Sultan’s conduct during the war. Sultan had been deceived by Malet, who induced him to act as he did on the basis of a distinct promise that the rights of the Egyptian Parliament would be respected. Malet made this promise verbally, and Sultan asked to have it in writing, but was dissuaded from insisting by the Khedive, who assured him that the English agent’s words were as good as his. The old man, when he found out after the war how much he had been deceived, took it to heart and died expressing a hope that Urabi would forgive him, and that his name would not be handed down to posterity as the betrayer of his country.¹⁰

Soon after the crisis, Sultan Pasha developed an incurable illness. He died two years later, in 1884, aged not quite sixty, during what was intended to have been a recuperative stay in the Austrian city of Graz. He reportedly looked like a man of ninety. The family believed he had died of a broken heart following his political disappointments. The British Government, as a result of its victory over the Urabists, succeeded in securing its hold on the Suez Canal as its own gateway to Asia. In fact, an Anglo–French agreement dividing the suzerain states of the Turkish Empire between themselves had already been signed.

Before his death, Sultan Pasha had nominated Ali Shaarawi, the son of his sister – a major landowner in the Minya region and a very wealthy man in his own right – to be the legal guardian of Huda, Umar and his other children, and the trustee of his estate. The Shaarawi fortune was based on lands acquired by Ali’s father, Hasan Shaarawi, who had been a village ‘umda’ (mayor) near Minya. Ali managed his estates, and was embarking on a career in politics, but after the death of Sultan Pasha he also found time to fulfil his duties as guardian by paying regular visits to the family of his late uncle. Sultan Pasha’s two widows, however, continued to run the house from day to day with the assistance of the body of retainers left by Sultan Pasha, prominent among whom was Said Agha, the principal eunuch. Lala Said, as he was affectionately known, was the family’s senior servant, whose duty was to keep the women safe. At the age of just 25, Iqbal was, in effect, left at the helm of the family mansion, a fine house Sultan Pasha had built for himself in Jami Sharkas Street.¹¹ Having lost her own father and now her husband, she was haunted by the thought of death, and felt vulnerable and frightened, though she strove not to show it. She had been exposed to a hazardous life at a tender age, and had adopted a philosophical and serious attitude to life. In her mid-twenties, she was a beautiful woman, as the family remembered her, tall and slender with skin like porcelain, hazel eyes and fine features. Her Circassian origin was evident, and her straight back and haughty gait proclaimed her breeding. Thanks to her connection with Sultan Pasha, she moved in elevated circles. Huda herself in later life had shadowy memories of being taken as a small child by her mother to the palace to meet the wife of the Khedive Tawfiq.

Huda was therefore to grow up in a home devastated by mourning and ravaged by the echoes of the political conflicts of the era. At the age of five, she lived in a house where the furniture, the chandeliers, and especially the mirrors were covered with black cloth. The adult women in the house wore black. Iqbal, still distraught after her husband’s death, was ordered by the doctor to rest. Sultan Pasha’s first wife, Hasiba, fared even worse. Eight years earlier, before the marriage between Sultan Pasha and Iqbal, despair at the early death of her son Ismail had turned her into an invalid. She had two daughters, Luza and Nissim, but remained unconsoled for her son’s loss. Now, the demise of her husband seemed to sever her last link with the departed boy. As to Huda, she was as a child unaware that the death of Sultan Pasha had been an event of political significance and had left a gap in Egypt’s public life. For her, what she had lost was a father. She missed his presence in the house, and yearned for his familiar smell and touch. At a very young age, she was forced to face up to the realisation that her beloved father, who had never failed to embrace and reassure her when she needed comfort, was gone forever. She felt his absence heavily. She missed going to his room every morning with her little brother Umar, two years younger than she, sickly, and needing particular care. She missed her father’s steady arms, his warm voice, his self-containment and quietness, and the daily tide of visitors who visited the house, which felt too large and too empty in his absence.

Huda was therefore aware at an early age that death took people away, never to be seen again. Though she never met her half-brother Ismail, she loved her stepmother Hasiba, whom she considered her personal friend. She knew how much Hasiba missed Ismail. For hours, Huda would nestle near the bedridden woman in her large bed. She called her ‘Ummi al-Kabira’, which meant ‘my big mother’. She was too young to realise that she was in the exceptional situation of enjoying the care of two mothers, or that these two women, who had been the joint spouses of one man, were miraculously amicable towards one another. Hasiba had lost her son, her health and her husband, but had transferred her affection to Iqbal and her two children as well as caring for her own two daughters. Her rage at her loss had apparently worked itself out, and she seemed now to be waiting patiently in the company of her extended family for the moment when death would remember her. Huda often sought her mother’s permission to spend the night in Hasiba’s bed, which she loved. Hasiba had a pacifying influence over her, and they both loved the fresh air, keeping the windows open all night, especially in summer. This was of course entirely out of the question in the room she shared with her sickly little brother. Hasiba also taught her to drink cold milk with the rich cream that settled on top of it after it was boiled. They would drink the milk and soak their bread in it, while they baked chestnuts on the fire in the hearth. On summer days, they woke up to the song of the birds in the trees outside the window, and Huda felt happy and fulfilled. Iqbal was at the time obsessed by her young son’s fragile health, and was therefore happy more often than not to leave Huda in Hasiba’s affectionate company.¹² When Huda complained that her mother’s favourite was Umar, Hasiba would explain that it was merely because, as a boy, he was destined to maintain the family name. As he was a fragile child he therefore had to be paid special attention.¹³ Though jealous of Umar, Huda nevertheless came to love him dearly.

As the time of mourning came to an end, Huda enjoyed the routine of life in the great house, which stood in what was then the new part of Cairo, an area of boulevards and gardens between the traditional heart of the city and the Nile. The house was a hive of activity, w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• About the Author
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Note on Transliteration
• 1. Childhood in a conservative home
• 2. First steps in social work
• 3. International feminism and the EFU
• 4. Against the occupation
• 5. A Wafdist ministry
• 6. A lesson in diplomacy
• 7. The game of politics
• 8. The question of Greater Syria
• 9. The natural enemies of war
• 10. Turning points
• 11. Peace and justice
• 12. The Second World War
• 13. The UNGA divides Palestine
• Notes
• Select bibliography