ABSTRACT
In 1798 Napoleon landed in Egypt, ostensibly to protect French merchants there from local misrule, but more especially as a base of operations against the British in India. e Egyptian Mamluk troops were helpless against him, having maintained even less than other Ottoman troops an awareness of modern military developments. e population generally was likewise relatively parochial in outlook. e French set up as much as they could of the apparatus of the Enlightenment on Egyptian soil: modern hospitals, impersonal administration, scientifi c laboratories (they set about, among other things, recording in scientifi c detail the non-technologically based ways still prevailing, which were presumed about to vanish before modern French civilization); they invited the astonished local savants to inspect the show and acknowledge the moral superiority of the Revolution-claimed to be true Islam.
