1798   Napoleon invaded Egypt.  Many historians of the Middle East date the beginning of modern Middle East history with this event.  The Ottoman Empire, of which Egypt was a part, had been watching events in revolutionary France with mounting concern, especially disturbed by the shrinking authority of religion.  The Ottoman "Porte" (foreign ministry) issued a proclamation following Napoleon's arrival that began with these words:

...In the name of God, the merciful and the compassionate.  O you who believe in the oneness of God, community of Muslims, know that the French nation (may God devastate their dwellings and abase their banners) are rebellious infidels and dissident evildoers.  They do not believe in the oneness of the Lord of Heaven and Earth, nor in the mission of the intercessor on the Day of Judgment, but have abandoned all religions and denied the afterworld and its penalties.  They do not believe in the Day of Resurrection and pretend that only the passage of time destroys us and that beyond this there is no resurrection and no reckoning, no examination and no retribution, no question and no answer.

For his part, Napoleon had made efforts to woo local Egyptian Muslim officials and expressed his personal respect for Islam.

Also in 1798, the British fleet under the command of Horatio Nelson destroyed the French fleet in the harbor of Aboukir, east of Alexandria, cutting off Bonaparte's supply lines.

1799 Napoleon's coup d'état in France. Muhammad Ali, at the head of an Ottoman expeditionary force of Albanian troops, tried unsuccessfully to drive Napoleon out of Egypt.  He succeeded, with British help, two years later.

A joint British and Ottoman campaign in Alexandria followed by a general European treaty brought an end to the French occupation of Egypt.

1805 Muhammad Ali (died 1848), an Albanian by birth and an Ottoman military officer by trade, was appointed "pasha" in Egypt and established a dynasty there which successfully challenged Ottoman authority. This dynasty lasted until the abdication of Egypt's last king, Farouk, in 1952.  (see also, and also)

Muhammad Ali's rise to power owed much to the unusually abundant popular support native Egyptians were willing to lend this non-Arabic speaking foreign usurper with his blonde hair and gray-hazel eyes. Egyptians were weary of the effects of declining trade, extortion by their former rulers, the Mamluk beys, and the failure of these same beys to stave off the invasion of Napoleon. Muhammad Ali won over both the ulema (Muslim clerical and scholarly leadership) and the tujjar (tradesmen).

His dream was to create an independent empire, free of all formal ties to the Ottomans. To this end he moved to weaken the power of the Ottomans within Egypt (whom he rightly suspected would eventually seek his downfall) and sought alliances with Great Britain and France.

His land reform program inside Egypt created a new class of petty landowners from which he molded a new administrative class, for the first time in hundreds of years made up of native Egyptians. This laid the foundations for the eventual creation of the independent state of Egypt.

1811 On March 1, Muhammad Ali, having grown weary of sharing power with the Mamluks, employed a variation of the old "banquet trick" to dispose of them (recalling the hapless end of Odoacer in 493.

1820 -1823 Muhammad Ali conquered the Sudan. Printing presses began rolling in Egypt.

1832   Ibrahim, son of Muhammad Ali, invaded Syria, challenging Ottoman authority in that region. The Egyptians founded the city of Khartoum in the Sudan. By this time, Ibrahim and Muhammad Ali were presiding over an empire which rivaling that of the Ottomans in size.

1838   Muhammad Ali had not calculated carefully enough the extent to which his ambitions might eventually conflict with the interests of the British, especially pertaining to commerce and military links with the Far East. So, when he announced his intention to declare Egypt and Syria independent of Ottoman rule (he was willing to pay the Porte three million pounds in exchange for independence), it was the British who intervened. Lord Palmerston, the British Foreign Secretary, warned him that Great Britain would side with the Ottomans as it was in the interest of his country to prevent the breakup of the Ottoman Empire.

Palmerston, whose real aim was to weaken both Ottoman and Egyptian trading interests to the advantage of Great Britain, proposed to the Ottomans a new system of tariffs and trade which, he argued, would break up Muhammad Ali's monopolies and favor those of the Ottomans. In fact, these measures were to hurt the Ottoman empire as a whole even more. This agreement was known as the Treaty of Balta Liman and it was signed in the summer of 1838. After 1840, Europeans gained a virtual free hand in the Egyptian market. Cheap British goods flooded into Egyptian markets and local indusThe upshot is that while Muhammad Ali left Egypt richer and better governed than it had been before his time, Egypt failed in its efforts to industrialize because now the British controlled the economy.

Islamic revivalist and reformer Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani was born in 1838.

1839 Ibrahim defeated the Ottomans whose fleet retreated to Alexandria. Palmerston's warnings to Muhammad Ali after this began to take a more bellicose tone.

tries quickly began to go belly-up.

1840  On August 16, Britain's Lord Palmerston sent Muhammad Ali an ultimatum demanding the withdrawal of Egyptian forces from Syria. The Pasha refused to comply. The British fleet began bombarding Beirut on September 11, and an Anglo-Turkish force went ashore.

Next, the British fleet appeared in the harbor at Alexandria within view of the Pasha's bedroom window. He knew by then the game was up.

1841  Muhammad Ali's peace treaty with the British and the Ottomans stripped him of his empire save Egypt itself and the Sudan. Henceforth, Egypt's economy became an export market for agricultural goods: raw materials were exported to Europe for manufacture into finished products that were then sold back to Egypt.

1848   Death of Muhammad Ali.

1849   Muhammad Abduh, the great Egyptian Muslim reformer, was born.  The British captured Punjab.

1852   Egypt's first railway went into operation.

1855   Permission to build the Suez Canal was given to Ferdinand de Lesseps, a French diplomat and promoter. The Canal was completed and opened in 1869.

1863 -1879   Reign of the Khedive ("sovereign") Ismail in Egypt.

1869 In Egypt, the Suez Canal was opened (construction had begun in 1855).

1875   Faced with bankruptcy, Egypt's Khedive Ismail sold Egypt's shares in the Suez Canal to Britain. British Prime Minister Disraeli bought the shares in the Suez Canal Company to ensure British control of the sea routes to India.                                                                                                                                                            

1879   An uprising of Egyptian officers undermined control of the Suez Canal by the British and the French. They pressed the Sultan Abdulhamid II (1876-1909) to replace Ismail with his son, Tewfik. Ismail's extravagance had run up a debt of 100 million pounds. Ismail abdicated and died in Istanbul in 1895. Tewfik, by 1881, had brought the financial crisis created by his father under control.

1881 The French occupied Tunisia. This event along with increasing French and British involvement in Egyptian affairs sparked a nationalist revolt against the increasing European influence in Egypt led by an army colonel, Urabi Bey, under the slogan, "Egypt for the Egyptians!"  This led to the landing of a British and French occupation force the following year.

Pogroms in Russia in 1881 sparked the first wave of Jewish immigration into Palestine. Roots of the Arab-Israeli Conflict

Between 1881and 1885, Muhammad Ahmed al-Mahdi led a successful revolt against Egypt in the Sudan. British General Gordon was killed in Khartoum in 1885. The British defeated the rebels in 1898 and set up a protectorate over the Sudan.

1882   British and French forces landed at Alexandria to occupy the city and protect Europeans. Urabi was exiled to Ceylon. Egypt remained under a British protectorate until 1922.

1883 -1907   The British consul in Egypt, Lord Evelyn Baring Cromer, who had begun overseeing Egypt's finances (1877-1880) before becoming Finance Minister of India (1880-1883), returned to Egypt in the wake of the Urabi uprising and the onset of the British Protectorate to rule Egypt virtually single-handed until 1907 when he retired for health reasons.  He reformed Egyptian finances and irrigation practices and consolidated Britain's control over Egyptian affairs.

1885    In January, British General Charles George Gordon was killed during fighting in the Sudan (Khartoum) with Mahdist forces.

The Berlin conference: European nations divided up Africa. Systematic European colonialism of Africa and the Middle East began.

1906  The "Danishway Incident" occurred in Egypt.

In Egypt, the British committed an atrocity that came to be known as the "Danishway Incident." A party of British officers was shooting pigeons in fields near the western delta town of Danishway (Dinshawi) in spite of official warnings not to. Villagers implored them to go away, but the officers ignored them. A fight broke out and several villagers were injured. One of the officers was sent to fetch help, but collapsed and died of heat stroke on the way. A farmer who had gone to assist the stricken officer was beaten to death by soldiers. At the trial (the judges were mostly British) four villagers were sentenced to death and others were sentenced to life in prison or flogging. The floggings and hangings were carried out within sight of the village. Although the imprisoned men were released within two years, the incident helped turn the tide against the British and became a rallying cry for Egyptian nationalism.

1919 On March 9, 1919, what many called "the first revolution" broke out in Egypt (making 1952 the second).  Protest demonstrations erupted in Cairo and quickly spread throughout the country. Egyptians were infuriated at the British expulsion of Wafd Party nationalist leader Saad Zaglul and three others who were exiled to Malta for their part in stirring up Egyptian aspirations for independence (Zaghlul's Wafdists had expressed outrage when they heard that Syria would be permitted to send a delegation to the Paris Peace Conference while they would not be).

The toll after three weeks of rioting was 800 Egyptians killed. The British finally backed down and Saad was freed on April 7. On April 11, the Wafd delegation finally reached Paris to plead its case for independence at the Allies Peace Conference. They were bitterly disappointed by the United States which replied to him that it backed the British Protectorate.

Meanwhile in July, 1919, a Syrian national congress met to demand independence for Syria. It was strongly opposed by the French. Ten weeks later, Britain ceded complete authority over the region to the French, and Gen. Henri Gouraud was appointed High Commissioner. By December, there was fighting between Faisal's forces and the French. (A second congress was held a year later.)

1921   In February, the report of a mission sent by Britain to Egypt following the riots of 1919 was published. The report recommended that the Protectorate of Egypt be terminated. A struggle erupted between the Wafd, led by Saad Zaglul, and the Egyptian government over which side would negotiate the independence treaty with the British.

1922  The British protectorate, which had begun in Egypt in 1882, ended, subject to four "reserved points:"

1. Security of imperial communications within Egypt;

2. Defense of Egypt against foreign attack;

3. Protection of foreign interests and personnel;

4. Britain continues to rule the Sudan.

Egypt became officially independent under the rule of King Fuad I. Unofficially, the British continued to meddle in Egyptian affairs until the revolution of 1952, a practice that inspired Hasan al-Banna to found the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928.

1924  First Egyptian parliament.

1925  Egypt's al-Azhar University condemned the theory of the separation of religion

and state as alien to the Islamic tradition. This decree was prompted in part by the publication this year of a new book by Ali Abd al-Raziq, Islam wa usul al-hukm (Islam and the Fundamentals of Government) in which he argued that the Prophet Muhammad had not come to establish a form of government but only to establish a new religion.

1928   In March, al-Ikhwan al-Muslimoon ("the Muslim Brotherhood") was founded in Ismailia, Egypt by Hasan al-Banna, a schoolteacher. In the latter half of the twentieth century, a number of extremist movements grew out of the Brotherhood (see Models of Islamic Revivalism). (more on the Brotherhood)

1936  King Fuad died, and was succeeded by his son, King Farouk. A 1936 Anglo-Egyptian treaty limited British control in Egypt even further.

1940  Italian offensive in Egypt.

1941  Rommel's Afrikacorps, victorious in North Africa, advanced on Egypt. The Italians were expelled from Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia.

1942  The Germans were defeated at the Battle of al-Alamein in Egypt.  Egypt's Princess Munira Hamdy created street theater out of this event.

1945 the Arab League was formed. Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen joined together in a confederation that proclaimed its intent to defend Palestine.

1948 On May 14, Israel proclaimed itself a sovereign state.  The First Arab-Israeli War began one day later. Egyptian troops (including a young army officer named Gamal Abd al-Nasser) were sent to fight in Palestine with faulty ammunition, a factor in the revolution of 1952 that toppled King Farouk.

The Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwaan al-Muslimoon ) by 1949 had grown to an estimated 2,000 branches with almost half a million members. On February 12, the movement's founder, Hasan al-Banna, was gunned down in the streets of Cairo. The assailants, some alleged, were security agents of King Farouk's government which had become worried about the growing strength of the Brotherhood. The king's government had outlawed the Brotherhood in December, 1948, and the Brotherhood had responded by assassinating Prime Minister Mahmud Fahmi al-Nuqrashi the following month (jan 1951)

1951    Iranian Prime Minister Mossadegh nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. In nationalizing the petroleum resources of his country and in being one of the first Middle Eastern leaders along with Saudi Arabia's Ibn Saud to recognize and exploit the power of radio to shape public opinion, Mossadegh established practices that leaders of other Third World countries (notably Egypt's Nasser) would put to use with equal success. The British responded to the nationalization of the AIOC by boycotting Iranian oil (they had considered invading Iran, but backed off when Truman said he wouldn't support the plan). Iran plunged into an economic crisis, and this set the stage for the CIA backed coup that restored the Shah to power in 1953.

1951 Egypt renounced its 1936 treaty with Great Britain.

1952 Revolution in Egypt (1952):   A rebellious group of army officers in Egypt, motivated by hatred of British meddling and by King Farouk's corruption and incompetence (see) seized power on July 23. King Farouk abdicated on July 26 and went into exile. On September 9, Egypt's ruling "Free Officers" instituted the first of a series of land reforms aimed at redressing what was seen as an imbalance in land ownership (70% of the arable land had been in the hands of 1% of the population).  (By 1970, land ownership had increased to 10% of the population.)

1954April 17, a republic was proclaimed with Gamal Abd al-Nasser as prime minister. General Neguib retained the office of President but without power.  In November he was deposed altogether and placed under arrest.

          On October 19, an Anglo-Egyptian Agreement was concluded: British troops were to withdraw from the canal zone within 20 months. The last British troops departed June 13, 1955.

          On October 26, an assassination attempt against Nasser failed. In December six members of the Muslim Brotherhood were hanged for their alleged roles in the plot. The Brothers fell under an official ban. Many were arrested, including radical polemicist Sayyid Qutb.

          On October 31,  the Algerian war of independence against French colonial rule broke out.  It lasted until 1962 and claimed over one million Algerian lives.  One of the bloodiest episodes was the six month long "battle of Algiers" in 1957. Nasser's support of the Algerians angered the French and contributed to their decision to participate in the war against Nasser in 1956.

1955 In September, Egypt's Nasser purchased $200 million worth of Soviet made arms from Czechoslovakia after being turned down by the West (which feared the weapons would be used against Israel).

         In December, the United States, Great Britain, and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development reached an agreement with Egypt that included loans to build the Aswan Dam.

1956 - 1970    Presidency of Gamal Abd al-Nasser in Egypt.

1956  In July,  U.S. Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, angry because Nasser had purchased arms from Czechoslovakia, suddenly withdrew the Aswan Dam loan offer in an attempt to punish him.

Nasser responded by nationalizing the Suez Canal on July 26, 1956, hoping to use its profits to pay for the dam. He delivered his nationalization speech before a huge crowd in Alexandria on the evening of July 26,1956 (the fourth anniversary of King Farouk's abdication).  Speaking from the balcony of the Bourse, Nasser first reviewed the history of the Suez Canal evoking the memory of the French diplomat-promoter who developed the project, Ferdinand de Lesseps.  "De Lesseps" was the prearranged code word, the signal army Colonel Mahmoud Yunis, the officer in charge of seizing the canal, was waiting to hear on his radio in Port Said.  It came two hours into the speech at 10 p.m.  To make sure the signal got through, Nasser repeated the code word fourteen times during the next ten minutes of his speech after which he made the official announcement that the Suez Canal was being nationalized as he spoke. The crowd went wild. Nasser continued to work the crowd up into a frenzy using a blend of classical and colloquial Arabic.  Then came the climax, the moment Nasser stuck it to the United States for pulling out of the Aswan Dam finance deal.  He cried out, "Whenever I hear any talk coming out of Washington, I will say to them, 'Drop dead of your fury

But, it was probably the British and the French, not the Americans, who were dropping dead from their fury:  they were the biggest users of the canal. After this, Nasser saw no alternative but to ask the Soviets to finance the Aswan Dam project.

        On October 29, the second Arab-Israeli War (also referred to as "The Suez War") broke out with Israel, Great Britain, and France arrayed against Egypt and aiming to depose Nasser.

Israel was motivated by three chief factors.  First, it considered the Egyptian-Czech arms deal Nasser had negotiated the year before as a dangerous shift in the balance of power in the region.  Second, Nasser had nationalized the Suez Canal after the U.S. in July reversed itself and withdrew its offer of a loan to build the Aswan Dam.  Third, Nasser had blockaded the Gulf of Aqaba between the Tiran Straits and the Red Sea.  Great Britain, whose influence in the region had been on the wane since the end of World War II, saw the conflict as a way to regain lost ground.  The French were angry with Nasser for his support of the insurrection in Algeria, France's colony.  Britain's Prime Minister Eden and French Premier Mollet regarded Nasser as a dangerous demagogue.  France, Britain, and Israel hit upon a plan (The Sèvres Protocol, Oct. 24, 1956) whereby Israel would seize the canal.  Britain and France would then demand that both Israel and Egypt withdraw from the canal zone.  When Egypt refused, as expected, Britain and France would intervene and force the Egyptians out.

Israel initiated hostilities on October 29 by invading Gaza and the Sinai and then moved into the Suez Canal zone on October 30. The United States, furious with Israel, Britain, and France and motivated even more by fears that the Soviet Union would be drawn into the fray, sponsored a U.N. resolution condemning the attack, which was passed on November 2.  Meanwhile, British and French troops, the ultimatum to Israel and Egypt having been ignored as expected, were busy trying to take control of the canal zone. Hostilities ended on November 6 after a ceasefire took effect.  In December, a U.N. emergency force was dispatched to the area. The Suez was returned to Egypt.  (See Kirsten Schulze, The Arab-Israeli Conflict (London:  Longman, 1999), 22ff.).

While Nasser was the loser militarily, he was the big winner politically.  His stature in the Arab world rose sharply, quickly dwarfing other leaders like Jordan's King Hussein and Iraq's Nuri al-Said who were perceived to be too beholden to Western interests.  Finally, this war marked the end of British and French influence in the region.

1957 In March, Israel pulled back its troops from the Sinai and a special UN force was s tationed in Gaza to act as a buffer between Israel and Egypt

1958   On February 1, 1958, Nasser's pan-Arabic nationalist dream resulted in the union of Egypt and Syria. Arab unity was the rallying call of both Nasser and Syria's Ba'ath ("Renaissance") Party.  The new entity called itself "The United Arab Republic" (UAR). It lasted until 1961 when Syria broke it off.  Jordan and Iraq, feeling threatened by the new UAR, agreed to a union as well on May 12, 1958 calling themselves the "Arab Union," but the coup of July 14 in Iraq brought it to a swift end. Nevertheless, Iraq and Jordan remained closely linked through strong cultural and economic ties.  Jordan's population strongly supported Saddam Hussein's side in the 1990-1991 Gulf War putting King Hussein in the embarrassing and dangerous position of formally sitting on the fence during the conflict.

1961 September, a coup by right wing military officers reestablished Syrian independence from Egypt (Syria had resented being treated like a subordinate by Nasser rather than a full partner since unification in 1958).

Nasser nationalized al-Azhar. The Muslim world's oldest center of learning became an arm of the Egyptian government under the leadership of its pro-government rector, Mahmud Shaltut.

1962   In September, a Yemeni army coup deposed the imam (N. Yemen). Civil war broke out. Nasser sent in Egyptian troops to support the rebel military officers in San'a who proclaimed a republic. Saudi Arabia supported the monarchists, which led to Egyptian bombardments of royalist bases inside Saudi Arabia and included the use of poison gas, the first time in the history of Arab warfare (Oren, 15). Egypt remained bogged down in Yemen for five years. When Nasser pulled out, the republican regime he had backed fell from power.

Also in 1962, the Muslim World League was founded in Saudi Arabia to fill the leadership void in the Muslim world left by Nasser's nationalization of al-Azhar the year before and for the purpose of exporting Wahhabi teachings throughout the world. By the mid sixties, Wahhabi influence in the organization was supplemented by members of the Muslim Brotherhood who had fled Egypt in the wake of Nasser's persecution of them. They included Muhammad Qutb, the brother of Sayyid Qutb whom Nasser hanged in 1966. Muhammad Qutb arrived in 1972 after his release from prison in Egypt. Other Muslim Brothers who found their way to the Saudi kingdom during this period included the Palestinian Abdullah Azzam, who became Osama bin Laden's teacher. Some of these thinkers influenced the sahwa ("awakening") movement that gained prominence in the 1980s with its blend of radical Wahhabi ideas and the thought of Sayyid Qutb.

In 1962, Egyptian agents failed in a bid to assassinate Jordan's King Hussein (they had tried and failed in 1960, too).

1964 In November, Israel and Syria fought a mini-war over water and cultivation rights along their common borders. The same month, rioters in Cairo attacked the U.S. embassy and Egyptian forces accidentally shot down a plane owned by American businessman John Mecom. When the American ambassador, John Battle, suggested to Nasser that he improve his behavior in order to maintain the flow of American wheat shipments, Nasser replied, "'The American ambassador says that our behavior is not acceptable.  Well, let us tell them that those who do not accept our behavior can go and drink from the sea...We will cut the tongues of anybody who talks badly about us...We are not going to accept gangsterism by cowboys.'"  (in Michael B. Oren, 21)  Nasser had been ridiculed by other Arab leaders for his dependence on American largesse. It was time for him to start looking tough and reclaiming lost prestige.

1965 The Nasser regime in Egypt, claiming that a new conspiracy against the President led by the Muslim Brotherhood (see 1954) had been uncovered, on August 30, 1965 arrested Islamist writer Sayyid Qutb, author of Milestones (Ma'alim fi-l Tariq ) which called for an end to secular government and the establishment of an Islamic state.  Qutb was hanged the following year.

1967   The Third Arab-Israeli War broke out on June 5. It lasted only six days, and came, therefore, to be known familiarly as the "Six Day War." At the end, Israel had begun its occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, areas claimed by Palestinians but which had been controlled since the end of the 1948 war by Jordan and Egypt respectively. The hardest pill for Muslims to swallow, though, was Israeli control over all of Jerusalem including the third holiest site of pilgrimage in the Muslim world: the Mosque of al-Aqsa and the adjacent Dome of the Rock.Israeli 

Troops occupied the eastern bamk of suez canal in Sainai for 6 years till president Sadat won the war of 1973.

Elsewhere in 1967, Egypt's Nasser withdrew from (North) Yemen (where Egypt had become embroiled in a futile effort to prop up a revolutionary regime since 1962). British troops left Aden (in South Yemen) and South Arabia. The British had long tried to combine Aden colony and the southern Arabian peninsula (which had been known as the "Aden protectorate"). When they at last gave up and pulled British troops out of the area, fighting broke out between two rival nationalist groups. The victorious faction proclaimed the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (South Yemen).

1969 In March, Nasser started a "War of Attrition" with Israel, which would last until the summer of 1970.  The two countries exchanged fire and engaged in commando raids across the canal zone. Nasser had actually begun the hostilities in September, 1968, but announced the formal policy as a means of drawing in the super powers who, so he  hoped, would work to resolve the conflict.  (This plan would indeed work, but not as soon as Nasser had hoped. It would be left to Egypt's Sadat and Syria's Asad to carry the plan through.  It was they who launched the 1973 war.)

1970On September 28, Nasser was stricken with a heart attack on returning from the airport where he had just seen off a party of visiting Kuwaitis. He died that evening. Anwar Sadat succeeded him. Four million people marched in Nasser’s funeral procession making it one of the largest funerals in history.

There was a massive Soviet arms buildup in Egypt in 1970.

1971  In February, 1971, U.N. Ambassador Gunnar Jarring tried unsuccessfully to broker a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel on the basis of U.N. 242. Egypt quickly accepted the terms (Israeli withdrawal to pre-1967 war borders including return of the Sinai to Egypt, Israeli rights of navigation in the Suez Canal, Egyptian recognition of Israel's independence and right to exist within secure borders, cessation of Egyptian belligerency against Israel). Israel rejected the offer. (see Charles D. Smith, 225f.)  The two countries tried again in 1978 and that time they succeeded.

1972 In Egypt, Sadat expelled 17,000 Soviet military advisors.

1973 In June of 1973, United States President Nixon and Soviet Chairman Brezhnev held talks and issued a communiqué which made no mention at all of the Middle East.  Arabs were outraged. They concluded that there was no way to get the Middle East back on the front burner of superpower attentions except through war.

So, Egypt and Syria started what was planned to be a limited war against Israel. Egypt and Syria wanted a short war with a quick ceasefire, the aim being to break the political stalemate.

Henry Kissinger, U.S. Secretary of State, had secretly urged Israel not to launch a preemptive attack because it would have been too embarrassing for the U.S. Besides, Sadat had moved his troops around before and no attack had come. On two of these occasions, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir had mobilized Israel's armed forces at great expense. She did not want to do it again unnecessarily. Besides, both Israel and the U.S. doubted Egypt could launch a successful attack anyhow. So, this time around the Israelis did nothing.  Thus, it can be said that when Egypt finally did attack, they achieved at least an element of the "total surprise" that Sadat later boasted about in his memoirs.

At 2:00 p.m., October 6, 1973, Egypt attacked Israel moving 10,000 troops across the Suez Canal digging in on the east bank along the "Bar Lev" line. Meanwhile, Syria attacked Israel from the Golan heights. The Arab armies were better trained and more aggressive than had been the case in the previous wars: Israel suffered heavy casualties in the early days of the fighting. Along the canal, the Israelis responded with a tank attack in which practically every tank was lost. Egyptian soldiers, demonstrating tremendous courage while standing fully exposed, fired wire-guided missiles at each tank as it approached. Initial attacks by the Israeli air force failed miserably as well.

Within twenty four hours, three Egyptian armies had established themselves on the east bank of the canal inside Israeli territory. Nevertheless, Israel, bolstered by a fresh supply of arms from the U.S., pushed into Syrian territory, and encircled the Egyptians by crossing the canal and taking its west bank.

Back in Egypt, what happened next was something military historians continued to wrangle over for some time afterward. After digging in, the three Egyptian armies just sat there and did nothing for the entire week that followed. They could have advanced, and they could have taken much Israeli territory in the Sinai. But, they did not make a move. This was fatal, because it gave the Israelis time to dig in and plan their own attack.

Egypt's allies, the Syrians, were thoroughly bewildered. President Asad sat in a bunker in Damascus waiting hour after hour for the Egyptians to move unaware that Sadat had been in constant secret contact with Henry Kissinger and had promised Kissinger that Egypt intended to advance no further (Seale, 208). By the time Asad angrily realized he had been set up by Sadat it was too late. The Israelis had themselves figured out what was happening and knew they were free to redeploy forces to the north to deal with the Syrians.  Therefore, Israel temporarily abandoned efforts on the western front and concentrated on containing and repelling the Syrian attack from the northeast. The Syrian threat was perceived as the greater of the two anyway, with the Golan Heights and the Galilee at stake. The Syrians were soon driven back behind the 1967 armistice line. At the end of hostilities, the Syrians had lost 6,000 men and 800 tanks.

The problem with the Egyptians was that they were as surprised as anyone at their success up to that point and had not drawn up a battle plan beyond taking the Bar Lev line. After the war, Army Chief of Staff General Shazli and Sadat traded accusations over this. The important point is that it was not at all certain that Sadat himself ever expected to get across the canal, and after he did, it may well have been a "total surprise" for him.  It was also a stunning political victory for him and indeed for all Egypt. Subsequently, the event was remembered with great pride by Egyptians and October 6 became one of the biggest national holidays.

Other reasons have been advanced for the curious failure of the Egyptian armies to push further. One is that the Egyptians were afraid that advancing beyond the range of their Soviet-equipped protective missile system would render them vulnerable to Israeli air attack. Another is that the commander of the second army had a heart attack as his troops were digging in, apparently throwing the field command structure into disarray. A related and more general point had to do with the overall character of Egypt's military. Egyptian officers and troops had been trained by the Soviets. The Soviet command structure did not highly regard independent decision making among junior officers. The preferred modus operandi was to establish a centralized command network that issued orders for limited tactical missions. After carrying out their orders, field commanders typically sat and waited for further instructions. Under this scenario, the Egyptian troops crossed the canal, dug in, then simply waited for their next set of orders which never came.

One week after the Egyptians crossed the canal, when they finally did decide to push their attack further, 600 of their tanks were wiped out almost immediately as the Israelis had by then dug in and were waiting for them. At the same time, an Israeli tank division, commanded by General Ariel Sharon, who had a bad reputation among Israeli military figures as a political opportunist and a poor tactical commander, nevertheless successfully drove through the ten kilometer gap separating the second and third Egyptian armies and crossed over to the western side of the canal initially escaping the attention of the Egyptians, who, as indicated above, were just sitting there in their trenches. Sharon ordered his tanks to fan out from north to south to create the illusion of a vast Israeli presence inside Egyptian territory with a knife at the backs of Egypt's army. It worked. The Egyptians thought there were far more Israelis surrounding them than in fact was the case. Sharon concentrated on cutting off the Egyptian third army. This was all that was needed for Sadat to capitulate and accept the ceasefire.

On October 22, 1973,  the UN Security Council issued Resolution 338 (Text at Yale's Avalon Project) calling for a ceasefire and the start of negotiations aimed at implementation of Resolution 242.  Fighting had ended on all fronts by October 26.

Followingr the ceasefire in November and the peace agreement on January 18th, US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger began what was quickly dubbed his "shuttle diplomacy" to try to find a settlement favorable to US interests.

Israel, for its part, had in one sense indeed been taken by surprise since the attack came on Yom Kippur, "the Day of Atonement," a high and solemn religious holiday in Israel. However, it was also the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Israel was not expecting an Arab attack during a time when Muslims traditionally were fasting. To that extent, the attack was a surprise. However, the U.S. had been feeding Israel satellite reconnaissance pictures of Egyptian troop movements for some time prior to the attack. So, the Israelis knew something was up.

One of the many interesting things about the '73 war is that Egypt considered it a victory. The nation continued to celebrate the occasion annually on October 6; this in spite of the fact that once the Israelis had neutralized the Syrian threat on the northeastern front, they were able to turn their full attention toward taking care of the Egyptian penetration from the West.

In spite of the Israeli military victory, the war was very bad for Israeli morale. The 1973 war was the first Arab-Israeli war in which Israel suffered a high number of casualties (3,000 dead).  The myth of the invincibility of Israel was shattered. The war spawned reactions from both the Left (the Israeli peace movement) and the Right, especially the "religious Right." With respect to the Right, such groups as Gush Emunim, "army of the faithful," whose aim was to consolidate Jewish sovereignty over all the ancient lands of Judea and Samaria, gained ground -- more on religious Zionism (see also).  Israeli settlement activity increased markedly after this point, and a new rightist political party - Likud - quickly rose up to support it.   (see Kirsten Schulze, The Arab-Israeli Conflict (Essex, U.K.:  Addison-Wesley-Longman, Ltd., 1999), 50).  The war served to strengthen even further American support for Israel, which had taken a big leap forward in the aftermath of "Black September" (1970). In the wake of the '73 war, U.S. aid quadrupled from $500 million annually to $2.1 billion in loans and grants.

1974 On January 18, Egypt and Israel, in the aftermath of the 1973 War, signed the first of two "Disengagement of Forces Agreements."  "Sinai I" called for Israeli troops to withdraw from the west bank of the Suez Canal.

Also in 1974, a group called the Islamic Liberation Organization attempted a coup d'état in Egypt attacking the Military Technical Academy in Cairo (Heliopolis) and killing a dozen people. Two leaders of the coup were executed and thirty more imprisoned.

1975  The Suez Canal was reopened in 1975, and the second disengagement agreement between Egypt and Israel in the Sinai went into effect.

On September 1, 1975, the "Sinai II" Accord was signed.  Israel ceded more of the Sinai back to Egypt, and returned control of the oilfields to Egypt.

1976  July, al-Da'wa ("The Mission"), an Islamist magazine of the Muslim Brotherhood, was allowed to resume publication. It had been founded in the 1940s, but publication had been sporadic, especially during the Nasser period. Its editor in chief is 'Umar Talmasani. It was shut down again in September, 1981, just a few weeks before Sadat's assassination. The journal became known for its attacks on Jews, some of which were modeled after the virulently anti-Semitic The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, published by the Tsarist secret police in nineteenth century Russia.

1977   On January 18, 1977, Egypt, in an effort to reduce the cost of subsidies, increased prices on a number of commodities by as much as 31%. The worst riots since 1952 broke out. President Sadat's government rescinded the price increases and, as a further appeasement, left in place wage increases that had been intended to help soften the blow of the price increases. The memory of this riot tempered all future economic reform attempts.

On November 19 and 20, 1977, Egypt's President Anwar Sadat and Israel's Prime Minister Menachem Begin met in Jerusalem. Sadat had taken an enormous risk by going to Israel, ignoring intense Arab opposition both at home and abroad. His risk was all the greater in view of much unrest back home provoked by sharp increases in the prices of many basic goods. Meeting Begin in Jerusalem was seen as the catalyst for Sadat's assassination in 1981, but it also laid the groundwork for the Camp David talks, which began the following year and culminated in the agreement of 1979.

Also is 1977, members of the Islamist separatist group Takfir wa-l-Hijra ("Condemnation and Migration"), also known as the "Society of Muslims," attacked night clubs in Cairo during a more general series of food riots that broke out. A few months after this, Takfir  kidnapped a moderate Islamic preacher, Sheikh Muhammad al-Dhahabi, and subsequently murdered him. The group's leader, Shukry Mustafa and four hundred other members were arrested. Mustafa was tried for the crime, found guilty, and executed.

1979 In February, Egypt's President Anwar Sadat, echoing the call of Ali Abd al-Raziq in 1925, provoked strong criticism when he called for the separation of religion and politics, a position deemed un-Islamic by many Muslims, especially the fundamentalists who called for the establishment of an Islamic state and the application of Islamic (sharia) law.

On March 26, 1979, Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty, the culmination of the U.S. sponsored "Camp David" talks (Text at Yale's Avalon Project). The talks had begun the previous September.  The groundwork for the talks that led to this pact was laid with Egyptian President Sadat's visit to Jerusalem in 1977.  Part of the package was a planned five year transition period leading to Palestinian "autonomy" in the West Bank and Gaza. But, "autonomy" was left undefined (and Israeli leader Menachem Begin made it quickly clear afterward that he had no intention of yielding control over the West Bank, only allowing limited "self rule.").  The Palestinians, on the other hand, thought the treaty meant statehood.

Camp David crowned a process toward normalization that began when Egyptian President Anwar Sadat traveled to Jerusalem to meet with the Israelis. Arab reaction was swift and hostile.  Arab countries broke off diplomatic relations with Egypt and imposed an economic boycott.  The Arab League moved its headquarters from Cairo to Tunis. The rift was healed in 1987, and two years later, the Arab League moved back to Cairo. Meanwhile, Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt in 1982.

1981 On October 6, during the annual holiday parade (see 1973 War) Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was assassinated by radical Muslim fundamentalist army regulars led by army First Lieutenant Khalid Islambouli. Sadat was succeeded by Vice President Hosni Mubarak, an Air Force pilot. The new regime enacted emergency laws that effectively stifled all opposition and remained in force throughout the rest of the century.  After 2000, though, strong calls for reform had begun to stir.

In the subsequent trial that took place in Egypt in December, 1981, it was revealed that the conspirators, members of a militant group called Jama'at al-Jihad, ("Organization for Jihad") had obtained a fatwa (religious legal opinion) from a blind sheikh at Asyut university, Dr. Umar abd-al-Rahman, to the effect that killing Christians and stealing gold from Christian jewelry shops to finance jihad were permissible since a technical state of war existed between Muslims and non-Muslims rendering the property "spoils of war" rather than stolen goods.

Two days later, fifty men attacked the police station in Asyut, 250 miles south of Cairo. The death toll from the subsequent gun battle was 87, sixty six of whom were police.

1982 On April 25, Israel completed its withdrawal from the Sinai under the terms of the Camp David accords.  This included the forced evacuation and demolition of the Jewish settlement of Yamit by order of Israeli General Ariel Sharon.