Bonaparte founded a learned academy there and crushed an insurrection three months later. Cairo shows the Egyptian expedition entire: scientific, colonial and violent.

Historical context

The army entered Cairo on 24 July 1798, three days after Embabeh. Bonaparte settled in the palace of Elfi Bey, on Ezbekiyeh square, and organised a government: a divan of notables and ulama, a tax system, a police force, sanitary regulations. The declared principle was to govern with the local elites against the Mamluks.

On 22 August he founded the Institute of Egypt on the model of the Institut de France. Monge presided; Berthollet, Fourier, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Vivant Denon and the engineer Conté belonged to it. Laboratories, a library and an Arabic-type printing press were installed; two newspapers were published; the Nile, the canals, the fauna and the monuments were studied. A hundred and sixty scholars followed the army.

On 21 October 1798 the city rose. Street fighting lasted two days; General Dupuy was killed. Artillery bombarded the al-Azhar mosque, where the insurgents had entrenched themselves, and troops then rode into it — a sacrilege Cairo would not forget. The repression killed several thousand and executions continued for weeks.

The contradiction was never resolved. Bonaparte multiplied gestures towards Islam, consulted the ulama, had the Nile flood and the Prophet's birthday celebrated; but none of these attentions turned an occupation into an alliance. A second revolt broke out in 1800 under Kléber, deadlier still. The scholarly expedition and the colonial expedition were the same event.