76 A Short History of the Middle East

what remained of French prestige in the Persian Gulf area. In the
following years France's increasing difficulties in the Russian and
Peninsular campaigns gave her no opportunity for further ad-
ventures in the Middle East; and the fall of Napoleon left Britain as
the dominant and unquestioned authority in that region.

Mohammed AH combined ambition with perspicacity to a
greater degree than any other Oriental ruler of the nineteenth
century. Conscious of the declining powers of the Ottoman
Empire, he was anxious to confirm himself and his heirs in here-
ditary possession of Egypt. He was content to recognize the nomi-
nal suzerainty of the Sultan provided that he enjoyed autonomy in
practical matters. But the impact of the Napoleonic wars had
taught him that, if he was to attain and maintain such a position, he
must have an army and navy equipped and trained on Western
lines; and to Western Europe he consequently turned for arma-
ments and technical experts. He would have preferred to obtain
these from Britain, for whose dominant position as a sea-power he
always had the greatest respect, and of whose friendship he was
always genuinely desirous. He told the Swiss traveller Burckhardt
in 1815, 'The great fish swallow the small . . . England must some-
day take Egypt as her share of the spoil of the Turkish Empire.'
But the main imperial principle of British governments was already
the maintenance of the British position in India, and to this the
preservation of the status quo in the Middle East, i.e. the support of
the Ottoman Empire which had assisted in checking Napoleon's
ambitions in this direction, was a corollary. As Palmerston put it
in 1 83 3 , with reference to the pan- Arab policy of Mohammed AH's
son Ibrahim Pasha in Syria. 'Turkey is as good an occupier of the
road to India as an active Arabian sovereign would be/ When
therefore his overtures to Britain were declined, Mohammed Ali
turned for material help and guidance to France, who, in spite of
the fall of Napoleon, survived through Talleyrand's diplomacy as a
leading European Power. French officers, doctors, and savants
accompanied Mohammed Ali's armies in the successful campaigns
which subdued the wild Wahhabis of Central Arabia

1 The religious teacher Mohammed ibn Abdul Wahhab, a follower of the
school of the ninth-century Ibn Hanbal in his desire to return to the simplicity
of the Qur'an and the Sunna and cleanse Islam of all later excrescences, had