60 A Short History of the Middle East
senior officials were Turks, Syrian and Palestinian townsmen
gained by their innate keenness of intellect an appreciable number
of senior posts; the sturdy and vigorous Kurds found openings in
the military and administrative career; but Iraqis were mainly con-
fined to the lower grades; and before 1850 the native Egyptian was
treated, like the fellahin everywhere in the empire, as a beast of
burden. The Turks left considerable local authority to non-Turk-
ish ruling-groups, especially in the less accessible districts: examples
are the Kurds in their mountain-valleys; the Shi'i Arab tribal chiefs
of Lower Iraq; the Druze1 amirs who then dominated the
Lebanese mountains. Even the defeated Mamluks remained more
numerous than the Turkish officials and soldiery in Egypt, They
were indispensable for the administration of that country; their
amirs remained governors of the sanjaqs (sub-provinces); and they
continued through the centuries to maintain their numbers by im-
porting fresh slaves, especially from the Caucasus. By 1600 no
distinction could be made between the Mamluks and the Ottoman
Turks in Egypt. Both were called 'Turks' to differentiate them
from the native Egyptians; Turkish blood and speech had pre-
ponderated among the Mamluks from the beginning. To sum up,
it has been well said that at its best Turkish rule was marked by Ła
skilful, vigorous opportunism, well informed of conditions, well
executed within limits, gaining limited and immediate ends, rather
cunning than wise. It lacked ideals, save the vaguest that Islam and
humanity could prompt; it lacked knowledge and theory; it
abounded in follies, abuses, injustices; yet it met each immediate
problem with a suitable expedient, and gained the applause of the
moment without thought for the larger morrow/2
The absence of a constructive long-term policy of administration
was greatly aggravated by the shortness of tenure of the pashas, or
provincial governors. They were often changed annually; in 280
1 The Druze sect, numbering to-day some 150,000 persons in the Jebel Druze
(Southern Syria), Lebanon and North Palestine, originated in the eccentric
Fatimid caliph al-Hakim, the fanatical destroyer of the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre in Jerusalem, who in 1017 declared himself the incarnation of God on
earth, and shortly afterwards mysteriously disappeared. His followers declared
that he was not dead, but merely in hiding till his return as Mahdi. Persecuted
by his successors on the Fatimid throne, they found a refuge in Syria under the
leadership of one Darazi, after whom the Druze are named. Practising their cult
in secret to avoid persecution through the centuries, they have always been
considered by Muslims of all sects to be so extreme in heresy as to constitute a
distinct religion.
8 Longrigg, op. cjt., 169,