Egypt

Kingdom of Egypt المملكة المصرية
Flag
Capital and largest city	Cairo
Official languages	Arabic
Minority languages	Coptic Greek English Turkish Nubian
Legislature	Parliament of Egypt
Establishment
• Unification of Upper and Lower Egypt	c. 3150 BC
• Restoration of Mamluk rule	1776–1885
• British occupation	1885–1905
• Ottoman occupation	1935–1937

The Kingdom of Egypt (Arabic: المملكة المصرية, Al-Mamlaka Al-Miṣreía) is a country located in northeastern Africa with the exception of the Sinai Peninsula, which located in western Asia. It borders Jerusalem to the north, the Hejaz to the east, Tripolitania and Todaga to the west, and Nubia and Gimbala to the south. It is the most populous Arabic-speaking country in the world and is one of the most urbanized states in Africa. Cairo, the capital and the twentieth largest city in the world, is the seat of government and the ruling El Menjur dynasty. The country is a member of the Organization of Democratic Nations and the Eastern Joint Development Organization.

History

During the mid-to-late 17th century, Egypt, under Ottoman control, was known for the political rivalry between the Faqaría and Qasimía factions. Dominated by immigrant Turks, Bosnians, and Caucasians, the salaried Egyptian bureaucracy was relatively free of Constantinople's intervention compared to other parts of the empire. From 1656 to 1724, they oversaw an economic decline and the gradual breakdown of law and order; the wide availability of firearms allowed for rebels, vagabonds, and rural bedouins to control swathes of territory.

Al-Azhar University, an ancient Islamic college located in Cairo, became the pre-eminent global institution of Islamic learning during the late seventeenth century. With such importance came several bouts of conflict; the Halveti Order, a Sufi society, clashed with the adherents of the paladine and revivalist Kadizadeli movement.

With political factionalism eventually waning, the 18th-century Egyptian economy grew larger, subsequently developing closer socioeconomic links with Europe, particularly during the Great Silesian War. Merchants from Morocco and Syria migrated in droves to Cairo and the Red Sea coast to avail of new commercial opportunities. Efforts by the Ottoman government to reassert central authority briefly succeeded during the 1692–1711 period, only to be displaced by coordinated Mamluk defiance a few years later.

Distracted by the rise of Dareshuri Persia to the east and skirmishes with Russia and Austria to the north, Nisandschi Silahdar Bei, a bureaucrat and soldier of Georgian descent, successfully initiated an anti-Ottoman revolt. The efforts of the Mamluk establishment in alliance with merchants, Palestinian warlords, and European agents, eventually granted the country near-complete sovereignty in 1776. Egypt, a society transformed from what it was a century ago, forced the new rulers to alter their style of governance. Provincial Arabic-speaking notables were hesitantly melded into the national bureaucracy, lumber and irrigation received investment, and formal organizations were created for local Sufi orders, particularly the infamous and longstanding Halveti.

The nineteenth century opened with Ottoman victory in the Augustine Wars and the defeat of Venice and France, both of whom were Egyptian allies. Of Qasimía origin, the Anatolian Gedik family joined the Nisandschis as the most powerful political dynasties in post-1776 Egypt. In 1837, the Treaty of Adrianople ensured British access to the newly constructed Suez Canal. In the 1880s, the Ottomans engaged in devastating wars with Britain and Russia, leaving the weakened and divided Egyptian state vulnerable to foreign invasion; surely enough, in 1885, the British formally occupied Egypt and rapidly deposed of the ruling Mamluk families, replacing them with the El Menjur family, who were a wealthy Cairene family of distant Moroccan origin.

British occupation of Egypt ended soon after in 1905. The Great War saw Egypt occupied by the Ottomans from 1935 to 1937, eventually ending with military support from the Venetian Republic and the United Kingdom.