Al-Jabarti's Invasion Of Egypt

During the end of the 18th century, change was prevalent throughout the world, the French revolution occurred, the U.S. began to take shape as its own nation, and Napoleon Bonaparte came into power after the revolution. One of Napoleon’s first conquests was that of Egypt, he fought them for a while, but to no avail. Egypt, as he learned, was far too difficult to conquer by force. It was clear that Napoleon needed to use another tactic, but what the plan would be was a more difficult problem. A contemporary Egyptian author, Al-Jabarti, chronicles what happens as Napoleon attempted to conquer Egypt. There are a couple of questions that Al-Jabarti may help answer, the first is what was Napoleon’s tactic and if he had success, and secondly, does the usage of a single primary source give the full picture, or is it often too clouted by the author’s opinions to be used by itself? According to Al-Jabarti, the first tactic Napoleon used to be the aforementioned win by sheer force, which was not as successful as Napoleon would have hoped (Al-Jabarti 36). With this in mind,

These issues start with understanding that no person is ever completely objective, this is further exacerbated by the fact that Al-Jabarti’s life will most likely change under the rule of Napoleon. This becomes reading almost like a newspaper of the time, it gives an honest look at what a piece of the population is thinking and believing, but it does not give the full story. Even if a modern writer were to write a secondary source based upon Al-Jabarti’s chronicles and a second contemporary chronicler of the same event, we will still miss out on the whole story, since the act of picking the two different pieces is subjective in its own right, leading to one’s preferred outcome in their