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THE EPHEMERAL REPUBLIC OF KOM-OMBO
by Samir Raafat
Egyptian Mail, February, 03, 1996
(S 93) I the undersigned in my capacity as Mufatish of Kom-Ombo hereby guarantee to honor this note and the payment of five Egyptian Pounds upon demand. 21 March 1919
On Thursday, 6 October 1994, it was announced in London that Spink's in association with Christie's of St. James will hold The W. Benson Collection and other Banknote Auction at Christie's Ryder Street Rooms between 10:00 and 14:00. Nine hundred and eighty lots covering some of the world's oldest and rarest currencies were expected to be sold to the highest international bidders.
Although its banknote were not half as elegant or colorful as the rest, lot No. 567 was earmarked at 5,500 to 6,500 pounds sterling making it THE most expensive of the entire collection. More perplexing is that the banknote didn't resemble any customary legal tender. What, then, was the reason behind the exorbitant price? Spink's numismatic auction catalogue describes item No. 567 in the following terms:
a series of Banknote from Wadi Kom-Ombo [a town in Upper Egypt] printed for use during April and May 1919 in the event of Kom-Ombo being cut off from the outside world by political unrest in the area.
"This set comprising 5-, 10- and 50- piasters and 1-, 5-, and 10- Livres believed to be the only set extant, the balance being recalled and replaced, except one set retained by the Wadi Kom-Ombo Company. All the notes are plain script on card with semi-circular handstamp, SOCIETE ANONYME DE WADI KOM-OMBO. Script reads 'I am the inspector who signed at Kom-Ombo, pay to the bearer on demand'."
What is not mentioned in the photo or anywhere else in Spinks' catalogue (and understandably so), is that the notes described in lot No. 567 were signed by my maternal grandfather Ahmed Moustafa Bey (d.1940), the veteran Mufatish and senator from the district of Kom-Ombo in Upper Egypt.
KOM-OMBO AND THE SUGAR INDUSTRY
With the completion in 1902 of the Aswan Reservoir and its subsequent heightening in 1909, several hundred thousand feddans were brought under cultivation for the first time. The abundance of water during the dry season allowed for perennial irrigation so that a second crop was planted each year. These important developments led to a doubling of land value, the allocation of the new acreage to sugar cane and the burgeoning of sugar factories all over Upper Egypt. Sugar production would become the single largest industrial employer and sugar cane cultivation the nation's second largest cash crop.
This was a reversal from when Egypt's sugar industry had fallen on hard times, once during the reign of Mohammed Ali and again following the 28 August 1905 suicide of French sugar king Ernest Cronier. It had been Cronier, together with Henri Says & Cie of Pairs and banker Raphael Suares of Cairo, who re-launched Egypt's sugar industry in 1892. Thirteen years later Cronier's failed speculation on the Paris Bourse led to his hastened demise and the inslovency of Egypt's sugar consortium.
With the heightening of the Aswan Reservoir a second generation of sugar factories expanded across Upper Egypt including an important one in Kom-Ombo, a village north of Aswan. Now, with the availability of year-round water, Kom-Ombo, heretofore known for its Ancient Egyptian temples, quickly turned into a thriving company town where its able bodied men, women and children worked for or became connected to the sugar industry.
Under a regime of laisser-faire and with the blessings of company chairman Youssef Cattaui Pasha a future minister of finance, and deputy chairman Talaat Harb Pasha who would later found Banque Misr, Egypt's sugar affairs were left entirely in the hands of Henri Naus Bey. From his smart office on Cairo's Sheik Abou al-Sebaa Street, the diminutive Belgian ran the Societe Generale des Sucreries et de la Raffinerie d'Egypte almost single-handedly from 1902 or thereabouts until he died in 1938.
It was no coincidence that the owners of the Sugar Company were also the principal shareholders of the agricultural concerns that operated and managed Upper Egypt's vast sugar plantations. One of these mammoth concerns was the Wadi Kom-Ombo Company the brainchild in 1904 of Sir Ernest Cassel of London, the same man who, in 1898, had heavily invested in the construction of the Aswan Reservoir.
Cassel's associates in Egypt included Raphael Suares, Sir Elwin Palmer of the National Bank of Egypt, Sir Victor Harari Pasha, Victor Mosseri Bey, Youssef Cattaui Pasha and banker Robert Rolo (later Sir Rolo). Retained to run the day-to-day business of the Wadi Kom-Ombo Company was Ahmed Moustafa Bey, otherwise known as the Mufatish or inspector.
A self-made agronomist, the Mufatish started out as the nazir--superintendent of his grandfather's (Hassan Sharkass Pasha) estates. Brimming with hands-on experience, under his management the Wadi Kom-Ombo Company exploited several thousand feddans, much of it allocated to a new sugar cane variety. Thanks to Henri Naus and Albert Ceyssens of Belgium the old Jamaican cane imported in the days of Viceroy Ibrahim Pasha (r. 1948) was replaced with the superior Javanese POJ 105 variety.
Having become a virtual company town with Ahmed Moustafa Bey representing the Kom-Ombo Company's Agricultural Division, Kom-Ombo's Mufatish was regarded by the fellahin (peasants) as their de facto employer and paymaster. And as if his already heavy charge were not enough, each year, during cane sowing and harvesting seasons, Moustafa's manpower would quadruple in size. This also meant wages had to be renegotiated and special cash payments handled.
But sowing season of 1919 would different from all those which preceded it. It was also the year in which the Mufatish was confronted with much more than he had ever bargained for.
Despite all the trappings of statehood --ceremonial head of state, council of ministers, flag, customs and postal administration-- Egypt in 1919 remained a virtual British colony or Protectorate. All civil servants, the sultan down to the smallest army officer, were ultimately accountable to Lord Allenby, the British High Commissioner. If the Mufatish was considered Kom-Ombo's paymaster, Allenby was regarded by most as the paymaster of Egypt.
Yet even during the British Protectorate, Egypt had retained its own national currency. Why then did the Mufatish of Kom-Ombo resort to printing his own tender in 1919? Surely it wasn't so that it could be sold at exorbitant prices at a London auction seventy years later!
The reply to this question lies the British Foreign Office archives in the UK. An clue, however, can also be found in al-Ahram's 14 September 1994, issue where an article applauds Kom-Ombo's Mufatish for his daring and initiative. "Qualities" the article says, "which are altogether lacking in our contemporary civil servants, for here was a man who, against all odds, was unafraid to take crucial decisions in times of crisis, and who in the heyday of British occupation, was not prepared to procrastinate or wait for orders from the consul, the sultan, the king or the president."
"Why is it that 80 years later" bemoans the frustrated writer, "our senior civil service officials are afraid or unable to take the simplest and most minor resolution?"
The "crucial" crisis the article alludes to are the events of the 1919 national upheaval which ultimately brought Egypt a measure of independence. Egyptians had discovered Saad Zaghloul, an honest patriotic man who stood up to British oppression and publicly opposed its policies. Behind him rallied an entire population. But instead of hearing out the nationalists and negotiating a settlement, the British High Commissioner, on March 8, 1919, deported Zaghloul Pasha and his senior backers, Ismail Sidky Pasha and Mohammed Mahmoud Pasha (all three future prime ministers of Egypt), to Malta. Lord Allenby was not tolerating any independist talk.
Within days, Egypt flared up in an unprecedented revolt resulting in a total breakdown of vital transport and communication system with a near crippling effect on the nation's economy. Railway lines were torn up, stations burned, telephone and telegraph wires cut. This was followed with a general strike by Egyptian officials and the resignation of the Egyptian government. The paralysis was complete. Cairo was isolated from the rest of the country. For the first time British high-handedness had not paid off. Zaghloul was released on 7 April 7 1919.
As far as the British High Commissioner and his advisors were concerned, the time had come to re-assess the damage, to pick up the pieces and to restore a new modus vivendi. But first, there were some accounts to be settled. One of them was in Kom-Ombo.
Summer comes earlier in Upper Egypt than it does in Lower Egypt. It is not unusual therefore, that a crop is attended to in the south several weeks before it is sowed or harvested in the Delta. Likewise, a delay of a few days could jeopardize an entire crop, which is why the outbreak of the March 1919 events, coinciding with sowing time in Kom-Ombo, placed the entire harvest and as a result, the Mufatish, in dire straits. Having been cut off from the company's head office, liquidity had dried up over night and hoarding begun in the Kom-ombo and its dependencies. For the same reasons, the small local bank which served Kom-Ombo was out of funds. New cash shipments were improbable as no trains arrived from Cairo.
If the Mufatish did not pay his inflated labor force there would be no crop. If there was no crop, the sugar factories would come to a grinding halt and a whole year's sugar production would perish. The man of the hour had to come up with a solution. Fast.
Barter was out of question. Even Kom-Ombo had subscribed to 20th century practices and was not about to revert to bartering tribal beads for kilos of grains. The only feasible alternative for the Mufatish was to print his own money. A daring move since no comparable precedent existed in Egypt's modern history. Even Mohammed Ali Pasha had abstained from such a move fearing the reaction of his sovereign in Constantinople.
Ahmed Moustafa Bey's money was a rudimentary affair. No coins, just plain cut paper bearing a simple handwritten inscription promising to pay the bearer the shown amount upon demand. It was signed by the Mufatish. The five, ten, fifty piastre denominations as well as the one, five and ten pound notes were neither backed by gold or silver, nor were they convertible into any known legal tender. The only cover Ahmed Moustafa Bey's integrity and the standing he enjoyed in Kom-Ombo. The fellahin, the migrant laborers, the tradesmen and the civil servants agreed to go along.
Once the new money was circulated, the sugar cane crop was as good as saved and the sugar factories were ensured their quota of raw material. The Mufatish represented law and order for the entire area. Kom-Ombo had become an autonomous mini republic.
The implication of Ahmed Moustafa Bey's resolve was not lost on the British. Here was an independent spirit capable of pragmatic solutions. Translated into colonial jargon, a dangerous subversive mind which coped with complex situations, qualities the foreign occupier could not appreciate in others but himself. The revolutionary Mufatish had to be taught a lesson for his ingenuity.
Even before alleged accusations started to pour in, Ahmed Moustafa Bey was arrested. Charges ranged from his ordering the interruption of the railway service in his area, to his harboring subversive elements. Under the prevailing marital law, the Mufatish was guilty of high treason deserving capital punishment.
Ahmed Moustafa Bey remained imperturbable, confidant that a harsh sentence would trigger spontaneous uprising from Kom-Ombo to Aswan. Moreover, the company's powerful shareholders, brought considerable pressure on London so that the Mufatish's death sentence be commuted. They were only too keen to have the man who had proved his metal in times of crisis reinstated. It came as no surprise therefore, when, three years later, the Mufatish was designated the first senator for the district of Kom-Ombo at the inauguration of Egypt's first constitutional parliament of 1923.
But what became of the inspector's celebrated banknote?
These were gradually retired from the market in exchange for National Bank of Egypt legal tender. The few specimens that survived are coveted collectors' items appearing from time to time at Christie's of London or Sotheby's in New York. For the non-numismatics, they represent an important milestone in Egypt's modern history. And for al-Ahram's dispirited contributor and the thousands who agree with him, Senator Ahmed Moustafa Bey's banknotes and his ephemeral republic of Kom-Ombo are documented testimonials that in days gone by, public administrators had the guts to take decisions.
Reader Comments
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 13:57:23 +0200
From: Viatcheslav Gavrilov
We came across your great article "THE EPHEMERAL REPUBLIC OF KOM-OMBO" on the
web. Can you grant us permission to present it also on our site
http://www.collectornetwork.com for many world paper money collectors? It would be a
great gift for them.
Best regards,
Viatcheslav Gavrilov
General Manager
CollectorNetwork.com
www.collectornetwork.com
Subject: El Mufattish
Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2000 14:24:04
From: Aziz Moustafa, Sydney, Australia
This is a story my dad told me years ago yet I will never forget it as long as I live. Grandpa Ahmed Moustafa was the first Egyptian general manager of Wadi Kom-Ombo Co. During the aftermath of the 1919 uprising against the British occupation, my dad and his brother Mahmoud were staying with him at the Company's mansion. Because of his political activity and enmity to the British, there was, as mentioned in your article, a price on Grandpa's head dead or alive. A staunch Wafdist, Grandpa wanted desperately to send vital information to Saad Pacha Zagloul's partisans in Cairo. But since all roads and communications were cut between Upper and Lower Egypt, it was dad who volunteered to be the messenger. Wearing a galabieh and takieh with a tanned face, he hid the documentation in a secure belt around his waist. Pretending to be a deck hand he hitched a ride from Kom-ombo to Cairo aboard a feluka. Having finally made it to Cairo after numerous security stops he found Saad Pacha's house surrounded by British troops. This time around dad was obliged to disguise himself as a kitchen hand!
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