ABSTRACT
Lithgow concludes his account of Cairo and the Nile with a potted history of Egypt from biblical and Pharaonic times to those of the Ayyubids, Mamluks and Ottomans, going up to 1622, and with a geographical, administrative and À scal survey of the Ottoman province of Egypt. He noted that ‘through tyrannical government, and discontinuance of trafÀ cke through the red sea’, the revenue of Egypt had diminished until it was no more than three millions (that is, of the indigenous ashrafĩ dinars minted from the time of Sultan al-Ashraf BarsbĆy, 1422-38, or of the ifrantĩ Italian gold coins?207) per year, one-third of which was forwarded to Istanbul and two-thirds retained in Egypt for the support of the governor and the garrison of 12,000 Janissaries plus several thousand timariots,208 required to ward off predatory Bedouins from the settled land.209
