With Respect
To Egypt, I Hold This To Be Indisputably The Secret Cause.
The
commercial towns of Cairo, Alexandria,
[P.417] and Damietta, are crowded with foreign merchants, and other
strangers from all quarters of the East are established there: according
to the law, the property of all persons who have no near heirs to claim
it, falls to the Beit el Mal; a treasury, formerly destined for purposes
beneficial to the subjects, but now entirely at the private disposal of
the governors. The increased mortality thus causes great sums to fall
into their hands. The prefect of every quarter of the town must, under
the heaviest penalties, inform the government of any stranger or
individual without heirs who dies within his district; and not only is
the property of such people seized, but even that of those persons whose
heirs, although known, are absent in foreign countries, and to whom no
other privilege is granted, in return, than that of addressing their
unavailing claims to the same governor, who converts the income of the
Beit el Mal to his own use. The most flagrant injustice is committed
with respect to the property of deceased persons, as well during the
plague as at other times; and the Kadhy, with a whole train of olemas,
officers, and people in inferior employments, share in the illegal
spoil. In the same manner the property of military officers, and of many
soldiers, is sequestrated at their death. Upon a moderate calculation,
the plague this year in Egypt, which carried off in the city of Cairo
alone from thirty to forty thousand, added twenty thousand purses, or
ten millions of piastres, to the coffers of the Pasha, a sum large
enough to stifle any feelings of humanity in the breast of a Turk.
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