Fifth: the events of the revolution

Spread and organisation

• Demonstrations broke out in Cairo, led by students, intellectuals (the Afandias) and workers; transport was paralysed and clashes occurred with the police.
• The revolution spread to the provincial towns and the villages: peasants cut railway, telephone and telegraph lines and attacked police stations.
• Communication between Cairo and the provinces was severed, and the rebels took control of power in some towns such as Zefta.
• Revolutionary committees were formed to organise the struggle against the British.

National unity

• Muslims and Copts took part from the beginning with the aim of full independence from Turkey and Britain.
• They adopted a flag bearing a crescent with a cross in its middle.
• Priests preached on the pulpits of mosques, even at al-Azhar, and Muslim sheikhs spoke before the altars of churches, even at the great Marqusia church.
• Egypt became the only Arab state whose people were not torn apart by religious partisanship.

The participation of women

• Egyptian women took part in a revolution for the first time; women's processions numbered more than three hundred in some cases.
• They joined men in erecting barricades in the streets to obstruct British troops.
• The most prominent participant was Safia Zaghloul.

Methods of resistance

• The Occupier answered with severe violence and reprisal campaigns in Lower and Upper Egypt: bombing towns and villages from aircraft and burning villages.
• When armed force had been suppressed, Egyptians turned to passive resistance: abstaining from work and boycotting British goods.
• Secret societies appeared: the Black Hand, the Free Egyptian, and Vengeance.