ABSTRACT
The French also began demolishing the houses of some of the princes, taking away the rubble and marble to use it for their own buildings. They took out the works of astronomers, people of mathematical knowledge, as well as engineering, astronomy, engraving, painting, writing, accounting, and composition and moved them to al-Nasiriya, where the new pathway was being built. The French arranged the court proceedings according to their system of retributive law. As a member of the ʾulama‘, the scholarly religious class, al-Jabarti was in a unique position to observe his contemporaries exercising their influence alongside the elites of the Mamluk military and Ottoman governors. As the different representatives effectively ruled Egypt by making decisions based on resolutions of confrontation, they were reliant on translators before and after the Napoleonic invasion of 1798 for security and trade between different political/religious communities and specialized traders to function.
