Egyptian Public Works
The Egyptian Department of Public Works was established in the early Nineteenth Century, and concentrates mainly on public works relating to irrigation and hydraulic engineering. These irrigation projects have constituted the bulk of work performed by this entity in Egypt. During its almost 200-year history, the Egyptian Department of Public Works employed many notable engineers and constructed massive public works projects throughout the country. It became the most respected engineering entity and was regarded as the ‘best school’ for civil engineers in modern Egypt. Its history can be broken into three periods:
- The Classic Period (1818-1882).
- The Occupation Period (1882-1952).
- The Modern Period (1952 to present).
The Classic Period (1818-1882)
This period was characterized by the strong influence of French engineers and/or French educated Egyptian engineers. Numerous public works projects were constructed in both Upper and Lower Egypt during this period, but the most notable of these were the construction of the three major irrigation canals (Mahmoudiyah, Ismailia, and Ibrahimiya) and the Delta Barrages.
Early Beginnings under Muhammad Ali
After his rise to power in 1805, Muhammad Ali Pasha embarked on consolidating his power and building an empire. His way of achieving that was to modernize Egypt and to build a European style strong army and a modern system of government. His desire for modernization fueled many new establishments such as the first modern military school, educational institutions, hospitals, roads and canals, factories to turn out uniforms and munitions, and a shipbuilding foundry at Alexandria. He established the school of Engineering (Mohandes Khana) in 1820 to provide the engineers and scientists he would need to carry out all the great projects he had planned. Impressed by the scientific and cultural aspects of the French Expedition (1798-1801), Muhammad Ali relied on French scientists and craftsmen to help him modernize Egypt. French engineer Pascal Coste was the first engineer hired by Muhammad Ali in 1817 to help him construct his ambitious projects. Coste worked on some small projects first, then came his biggest when he was appointed by Muhammad Ali as the Chief Engineer for Lower Egypt. This was the highest engineering post in Egypt at the time since most of Muhammad Ali's work to improve irrigation was concentrated in this region of the Nile Delta. Under his new position, Coste started working on constructing the Mahmoudiyah canal, the first of a long list of great irrigation projects that were to be constructed in that era.
The Mahmoudiyah Canal
Around 1818, Muhammad Ali conceived the idea of digging a canal that would allow the barges bringing cargoes from Upper, Middle and Lower Egypt to reach Alexandria without passing Rosetta and the mouth of the river, a point where many ships sank due to the turbulence of the waters. He chose a Turkish engineer, Shakir Effendi, to be in charge of the design and execution of the work. The canal would begin in the village of Atfa, below Fuwwa; would be a little over 80 kilometer (50 mile) long. Shakir Effendi seems to have bungled his assignment, and was replaced by the French engineer Pascal Coste (1787-1879) who completed the canal in a record time of few months in 1820. This canal, which linked the Nile with the city’s western harbor, gave Alexandria access to the Egyptian heartland and put Egypt face to face with the sea. It also provided Alexandria with Nile’s fresh water for the first time in history.[1]
It should be mentiined here however that the entire canal was constructed using the hated corvée system, which Muhammad Ali and his successors used extensively and which was finally abolished under Khedive Ismail during the digging of the Suez Canal.Corvée of more than 300,000 men were drafted from every part of Egypt to dig the Mahmoudiya canal, which was of very little importance to cultivation, and which was especially designed for the benefit of the city of Alexandria.
The Delta Barrages
With the great expansion of commercial cotton and sugarcane cultivation, river banks were raised and strengthened to protect summer crops from flood water. Nile Delta old canals were deepened and small dams built across them to raise the water level. But this was an enormous labor, and as these canals were badly laid out and graded they became full of mud during the flood and required to be continuously dug out afresh. Muhammad Ali Pasha was then advised to raise the water surface by erecting a dam (or, as the French called it, a barrage) across the apex of the Nile Delta, twelve miles (19 km) north of Cairo.
In 1833 the foundations were laid of the two great barrages over the Rosetta and Damietta branches of the Nile at the point where they divide north of Cairo. The project engineer was the French engineer Mougel Bey, whose objective was to regulate the entire hydraulic system of the Nile Delta. The two barrages would ultimately permitt conversion of over 754,000 acres (3,050 km2) of the Nile Delta from basin irrigation to perennial irrigation, lengthening the growing season and dramatically increasing agricultural output. But this massive work proved to be very costly and imposing. Construction took long years (it was started in 1833 and was not completed until 1862). It also consumed untold wealth to complete.
By the time the barrages were finally completed in 1862, during the early reign of Viceroy Ismail Pasha's (not yet upgraded to khedive of Egypt), L.E 3,000,000 (three million) pounds had been spent already. The Rosetta section was 465 meters in length with 61 arches of 4.8 meters in length each. The Damietta section was 545 meters long and had a similar number of arches and locks. When it was time to operate the dam, the foundations had been so poorly laid that the whole purpose for which it had been built in the first place was abandoned. Poorly constructed, the barrages would have to be rebuilt during the British occupation.[2]
Establishment of the Department
Up until construction of the Nile Barrages, no formal single entity was responsible for the execution of all public works that were being constructed in many parts of the Nile valley and the Nile Delta. Muhammad Ali had invented a new position in 1818:Chief Engineer for Lower Egypt (Pascal Coste was the first ever to be chosen for this position). A similar title for Upper Egypt was created in 1831 after Muhammad Ali started to consider building irrigation improvements in Upper Egypt. Linant de Bellefonds (another French engineer) was appointed the first chief engineer for Upper Egypt. Pascal Cost quit his position and returend to France in 1829 and was replaced by his fellow countryman Mugel Bey. As the volume of public works increased, Muhammad Ali Pasha decided to establish one entity to handle all the projects. In 1836 the Department of Public Works was established and was presided over by Linant de Bellefonds (later known as Linant Pasha). His position would associate him in a long and fruitful career with most of the great works of modernizing Egypt's irrigation system. But this also meant trouble for Mougel Bey as he and Linant had always been opposed to each other. Each had his own design for the Nile Barrages, and Mougel's had been preferred. Linant left sufficiently on record his jealousy of his rival, and seems to have come easily to the conclusion that his rival's Barrage was a costly failure, of no more use than those useless old Pyramids a few miles off.[3]
Under Abbas Hilmi I
Muhammad Ali Pasha died in 1848 without seeing the Delta dams completed. He was succeeded by his grandson Abbas Hilmi I, (1848-1854) whose known contempt towards his grandfather caused him to halt or entirely abandon most of Muhammad Ali Pasha’s massive projects, including the Delta Barrages. Abbas Pasha had no faith in the project and wished to abandon the construction of the dams. He dismissed Mougel Bey in April, 1853, and placed Mazhar Bey in charge of the work. Sensing his master’s lack of enthusiasm for the project, Mazhar Bey, a Turkish engineer, did not do much to finish the work which would only be completed later during the time of Egypt’s next Wali from Muhammad Ali Dynasty, Sa'id Pasha.
Under Sa'id Pasha
Under Sa'id Pasha’s rule (1854-1863) there were several reforms as he tried to portray himself as the new great reformer. Some modernization of Egyptian and Sudanese infrastructure occurred using western loans. During this period, the Nizarah (or Ministry) of Public Works was established in 1857. It actually comprised many departments like the departments of Railroads, Telegraphs, Surveying, Building Construction, Agriculture, Alexandria Harbor, Antiquity, the Opera House, the Zoological Garden, the Aquarium Garden, Sewage, and Irrigation. Linant continued in charge of public works, as director general beginning with 1862, and as Minister of Public Works in 1869. He retired from this post in the same year (1869) and in 1873 was given the title Pasha by Khedieve Ismail Pasha.
The Suez Canal
In 1854 the first act of concession of land for the Suez Canal was granted, to a French businessman Ferdinand de Lesseps. Actual construction of the maritime canal lasted for 11 years (1858-1869). From its early start, design and construction work of this international waterway were kept out of the Department of Public Works and was totally handled by the Suez Canal Company, which would become a state within the state and would later have its strong impact on the Anglo-Egyptian relations.
The Ismailia Canal
The first major project the department under Linant (now under his new title as director general) constructed was the Ismailia canal. It was constructed between 1861 and 1863, in virtue of agreements between the Egyptian Government and the Suez Canal Company, for the purpose of creating a navigable waterway between the Nile and the planned Suez maritime canal; to furnish water for irrigating some lands conceded to the company, and finally to provide for the needs of the maritime canal and the towns and stations established along its course a daily supply of 70,000 cubic meters of fresh water. It was designed by Linant who also managed its construction.
The Ismailia canal has its inlet at Cairo upstream of the Delta Barrages. It actually used to have two inlets, one called the Kasr-el-Nil, in the heart of Cairo. This was the oldest, but it was abandoned later after the area got very urbanized. The other inlet, called Shobra, is situated 7 kilometers below in the now bustling Shobra district in northern Cairo. After leaving its inlet, the canal follows the edge of the desert until it reaches the little valley of the Ouadi, which it crosses and follows the north side, trending direct to the east as far as the town of Ismailia, where it discharges into Lake Timsah. A branch, which begins a little before Ismailia, stretches toward the south across the desert, following a line parallel to the maritime Suez canal and empties into the channel of the port of Suez.
The line of the Ismailia canal conforms at many points to the direction followed by the ancient canal, which, according to historians, put the Nile in communication with Lake Timsah, or with the Red Sea itself, and of which traces have been found on the surface. The length of the canal between the Nile and Lake Timseh is 136 kilometers, and the length of the Suez branch is 89 kilometers.[4]
Under Ismail Pasha
During the reign of Ismail Pasha (1863-1879), many great public works projects were constructed. Over 8,000 miles (13,000 km) of new canals (the longest of which was the Ibraheimiyah Canal) were dug; the cultivated area increased from 3,050,000 feddans in 1813 to 4,743,000 in 1877. Ismail's khedivate is also closely connected to the construction of the Suez Canal. He agreed to, and oversaw, the Egyptian portion of its construction. Although Ismail was the greatest modernizer of Egypt since Muhammad Ali Pasha, his wars of expansion into Africa and the many infrastructure projects he carried, including the costly Suez Canal, put the country heavily in debt. In 1879 he was forced out of power by Great Britain and France who replaced him with his much less capable son Tawfiq.
The Ibrahimiya Canal
The Ibrahimiya Canal was the most important public work executed under the newly established Ministry of Public Works. It was built during the reign of Ismail Pasha when he was Khedive of Egypt. It was built in 1873 by Bahgat Pasha, minister of public works, who designed it primarily to provide perennial irrigation to the Khedivial sugar estates in Middle Egypt. It supplied perennial irrigation to 580,000 acres (2,300 km2) and flood irrigation to another 420,000 acres (1,700 km2). The discharge of the canal varied between 30 and 80 cubic meters per second in summer and between 500 and 900 cubic metres per second in flood. Having its head on the left bank of the Nile, opposite Assiut, it runs northwards for 60 kilometers and then divides in Dirout into two main branches; one branch is the Bahr Yousef Canal, while the other is the Ibrahimiya Canal proper.[5]
Troubled Years
Between 1849 and 1879, was the time of the great expansion and development of a centralized Egyptian bureaucracy, and important structural changes occurred in the Egyptian system of government. A trend of discontinuity of entities within the Egyptian government became apparent during these years. Departments of the government (Public Works included) were continuously being combined and recombined, abolished and reformed, or otherwise modified. The Department of Public Works was headed by Nubar Pasha, the influential Armenian official, from 1864 to 1866. During that time, it had assumed jurisdiction over railways and was also given supervision of the Delta Barrages. After the removal of Nubar in 1866, railways administration was separated from the Department of Public works which was reduced into an office (qalam) within the Department of Interior. Public Works was subsequently reconstituted as a department and with combined with Education into a single administration under Ali Mubarak, yet by 1869 it seems to have resumed an independent existence under its own director Linant Bey. After his resignation in 1870, public works was joined to Education and Charitable Endowments and was headed by Ali Mubarak for a second time. In November 1871 it was converted into an office of engineering and was placed under Interior again. By 1872, it had been reestablished as a department one more time, but in August of the same year it was joined again to Education and Charitable Endowments. Twelve months later, owing to the transfer of its director to Interior, it was returned to Interior. Two months later, it was joined to the War Department. In 1875, Public Works was reattached to Interior.[6]
The British Occupation Period (1882-1952)
British engineers took control of the Department during this period. Some of the greatest civil engineers of the Nineteenth Century worked in the department in this era, including Sir Colin Scott Moncrieff, Sir Hanbury Brown, Sir Benjamin Baker and Sir William Willcocks, who had all been trained in India. All the major dams controlling the Nile (the old Aswan Dam and Esna, Nag Hammadi, Assiut, Edfeina and Zifta barrages) were constructed during this period.
The Modern Period (1952 to present)
Egyptian engineers operated the Department after Egypt was liberated from the British rule. The biggest and most complicated of all public works in Egyptian history (Aswan High Dam) was constructed during this period. This period experienced influence of Soviet engineers in the 1950s and the 1960s. This was replaced by some influence of American engineers in the 1980s and the 1990s.
References
- ^ Al-Ahram Weekly, Issue No.536, 31 May - 6 June 2001
- ^ Lockyer, Norman. Nature, London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1905
- ^ Knowles, James, The Nineteenth Century, London, 1885
- ^ J. Barois, Irrigation in Egypt, Paris, 1887
- ^ Willcocks, William, Sir. Egyptian Irrigation, Third Edition, London: E & F. N. Spon. Ltd., 1913
- ^ Robert Hunter, Egypt Under the Khedives (1805-1879), The American University in Cairo, 1999
External links
- [1] Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation, Egypt