Ahmad Khan - French Revolution

 Ahmad Khan  - French Revolution 

There is limited evidence to suggest that an Ahmad Khan was a prominent thinker directly involved in the French Revolution (1789–1799). However, based on available historical records, one figure, referred to as Ahmed Khan in some sources, emerges as a potential person of interest during this period. This individual, described as an "Indian prince" claiming to be the son of the deposed Nawab of Broach (a city in Gujarat, India), appears in French revolutionary records around 1794. Below are the details and contributions associated with this figure, along with critical analysis, as the information raises questions about his identity and role.

Details of Ahmed Khan

Background and Identity: Ahmed Khan claimed to be the son of the Nawab of Broach, a region seized by the British East India Company in 1772. He arrived in France during the French Revolution, specifically around 1794, at the height of the period known as the "Terror." His journey took him from Istanbul to London via Marseille, but he was stranded in Lyon due to his brother Nawazish Khan’s illness and subsequent death. Ahmed then continued to Paris alone. His identity remains ambiguous, with some historians questioning whether he was genuinely a prince or possibly an impostor navigating the fluid identities of the revolutionary era.

Context of Arrival: Ahmed Khan arrived in France during a time of significant political upheaval, where the revolutionary government, particularly the Committee of Public Safety, was open to engaging with foreign figures who could align with revolutionary ideals. The French authorities did not prioritize verifying his identity but focused on his political allegiance and potential utility.

Support from the Revolutionary Government: In April 1794, the Committee of Public Safety granted Ahmed Khan support, providing him lodgings in Versailles with an interpreter named Pierre Ruffin. This support was likely motivated by the Committee’s belief that Muslims could be receptive to revolutionary ideas, and Ahmed was seen as a potential bridge to the Muslim world.

Contributions to the French Revolution

Ahmed Khan’s contributions, if authentic, are modest but noteworthy within the context of the French Revolution’s global outreach:

Translation of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen: Ahmed Khan collaborated with Pierre Ruffin on a Persian translation of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (1794), a foundational document of the French Revolution. This translation, preserved in a handwritten manuscript in the archives in Versailles, suggests an effort to disseminate revolutionary ideals to the Muslim world. The preface to this translation references a story from Herodotus about a Lydian prince, possibly symbolizing Ahmed’s own "awakening" during the revolutionary period. This work challenges the notion that the Muslim world was entirely disconnected from the revolutionary age.

Symbol of Cross-Cultural Engagement: Ahmed’s presence in France and his interaction with revolutionary authorities highlight the era’s openness to cross-cultural exchanges. The French government’s willingness to support him indicates an interest in leveraging his perceived status to extend revolutionary influence beyond Europe. However, his actual impact on revolutionary thought or policy appears limited.

Critical Analysis

Ambiguity of Identity: The sources raise significant doubts about Ahmed Khan’s true identity. The East India Company’s seizure of Broach in 1772, over 20 years before Ahmed’s appearance in France, casts doubt on his claim to be the Nawab’s son. Historians suggest he might have been an opportunist exploiting the revolutionary era’s fluid identities, similar to other figures who adopted multiple personas during this time (e.g., a woman claiming to be the daughter of Ottoman Sultan Ahmad III). The lack of concrete evidence about his origins or subsequent activities fuels speculation that he could have been a “swindler” or a figure working for undisclosed interests.

Limited Influence as a Thinker: Unlike prominent French Revolutionary thinkers such as Rousseau, Voltaire, or Robespierre, Ahmed Khan does not appear to have contributed to the ideological or philosophical discourse of the Revolution. His role was more practical, centered on translation and symbolic engagement rather than developing revolutionary theory. There is no evidence of him engaging in debates about liberty, equality, or governance, which were central to the period’s intellectual landscape.

Possible Hidden Networks: Some historians speculate that Ahmed Khan’s case might point to undocumented resistance networks across South Asia, potentially opposing British colonial rule. If he was not the prince he claimed to be, his activities could suggest a broader, hidden history of individuals navigating colonial and revolutionary contexts. However, this remains conjectural without further evidence.

Clarification on Other Ahmad Khans

The search query likely refers to figures like Sir Syed Ahmad Khan (1817–1898), an Indian Muslim reformer and educationist, due to the name similarity. However, Sir Syed lived well after the French Revolution and was active in 19th-century British India, not France. His contributions, such as founding the Aligarh Muslim University and the Aligarh Movement, are unrelated to the French Revolution and focus on modernizing Muslim education in India. No evidence connects him or other Ahmad Khans to the French revolutionary context.

Conclusion

Ahmed Khan, the “Indian prince” in revolutionary France, is a minor but intriguing figure. His primary contribution was the Persian translation of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, which reflects a small but symbolically significant effort to connect revolutionary ideals with the Muslim world. However, his ambiguous identity and limited documented impact mean he cannot be classified as a major thinker of the French Revolution. If you were referring to another Ahmad Khan or seeking a deeper exploration of revolutionary thinkers, please provide additional details, and I can refine the response accordingly.

Revolutionary or Impostor . . . Who Was Ahmed Khan?

April 24, 2020| European History, Political Science, Religion

Ian Coller—

O Lydian lord of many nations, foolish Croesus,

Wish not to hear the longed-for voice within your palace,

Even your son’s voice: better for you were it otherwise;

For his first word will he speak on a day of sorrow.

—Herodotus

A Lydian prince, born mute, miraculously acquires the power of speech as his father’s body is thrown onto the funeral pyre. This story from Herodotus appears in the preface to a Persian translation of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen from 1794. Its author, an Indian “prince” called Ahmed Khan, claimed to be the son of the deposed Nawab of Broach, a city in the western coastal region of Gujurat, India. The handwritten manuscript held in the archives in Versailles challenges assumptions that the Muslim world was cut off from the wider revolutionary age. But was Ahmed really what he seemed? Was he some kind of impostor?

In the early modern period, identity was not as we understand it today. Natalie Zemon Davis famously wrote about a sixteenth-century soldier who stole a comrade’s name and settled down for years with his wife. Among those navigating between Europe and the Muslim world, such counterfeits were even more common. New identities could be created by conversion: some people maintained multiple personas and moved between them, like Haji Mustapha, uncle of the famous revolutionary poet, André Chénier. The revolutionary age at the end of the eighteenth century was a hive of possibilities for inventing or reinventing selves, as thousands switched allegiances and crossed borders. One woman claiming to be the daughter of the deposed Ottoman Sultan Ahmad III duped the French royal court into giving her a pension: a well-placed “patriotic gift” in 1790 won her further support from the revolutionary authorities.

Was Ahmed Khan just another of these swindlers? He too benefited from “revolutionary hospitality” in return for political alignment. In April 1794, at the height of the period often called the “Terror,” the members of the notorious Committee of Public Safety signed an order granting him support. On the way from Istanbul to London via Marseille, Ahmed had found himself stranded in Lyon when his brother, Nawazish Khan, fell ill. They had survived the terrible months of siege and reprisal that followed, but ultimately Nawazish Khan succumbed to his illness. Ahmed continued alone to Paris and asked for support from the revolutionary government. His request was granted, but the Committee asked Ahmed to remain in France rather than continuing his journey. He was given lodgings in Versailles with an interpreter named Pierre Ruffin, who would work with him on translating the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. The documents suggest that the Committee believed Muslims were open to the ideas and values of the Revolution and that Ahmed might offer a unique bridge to the Muslim world.

But a lot of things in this story don’t add up. The East India Company seized Broach in 1772: Ahmed arrived in France more than twenty years later. He offered no comment about what he had been doing in the meantime. He claimed his other brothers stayed behind in Istanbul while he and Nawazish left for London to assert their political claims to the illegally occupied state. Yet at almost the same moment another of the Nawab’s sons, Odudeen Khan, travelled to London and successfully claimed a huge pension, then returned to Bombay, where he lived off the Company’s allowance. It’s hard to know why the brothers would have departed at the same time on missions with such different aims—political redress versus self-enrichment—or why they’d waited so long to do so.

In contrast to Odudeen Khan, when Ahmed Khan returned to India in 1796 by way of Istanbul, he was immediately arrested by the East India Company. It appears that something had been hidden in the coffin containing the remains he was ostensibly bringing back to India for burial: possibly communications with the Emir of Muscat, an important French ally in the global war with Britain. An English official denounced Ahmed as a “subject of Tippoo-Saib’s” who had accompanied Tippoo’s ambassadors to France in 1788 “and might be supposed to have outstayed for better reasons than mere personal amusement.” This suggestion that Ahmed had visited France previously appeared nowhere in Ahmed’s communication with the French.

The captain of the ship that carried the embassy of 1788 did report that a mysterious government interpreter from Île-de-France outstayed the ambassadors’ visit. Mohamed-Assad-Oullah, an interpreter between Urdu, Arabic, and Persian, ostensibly discovered on arrival what should have been obvious before departure—that there was no use for him in France. In documents held at the Archives d’Outre-Mer, Assad-Oullah is described as a “Moor” from Arcot in the Deccan, and as “Assad-Zaïb,” a term reserved for those of high rank.

“You will no doubt be surprised,” Pierre Monneron wrote to royal authorities in May 1789, “that the aforementioned Assad-Oullah should not have accompanied the ambassadors on their return to India, but . . . since his services proved unneeded, he took advantage of the rare position in which he found himself, to travel through some parts of Europe.” Assad-Oullah had travelled with Captain Monneron to Spain, Portugal, and England—for what purposes, it is entirely unclear. The French were furious about the unauthorized wanderings of this individual at such a critical moment. They agreed to pay Assad-Oullah’s way back to India but declared him “suspect” and banned him from further employment. If this was the man who accompanied Nawazish Khan, he may have had good reason to conceal his identity.

Was Assad-Oullah masquerading as Ahmed Khan? Did Ahmed Khan disguise himself as Assad-Oullah? Did he have another identity altogether? Does it matter? Neither the French nor the British concerned themselves primarily with who he was: they sought instead to establish his political allegiance. Ahmed Khan’s importance for the revolutionary era is not a question of identity, but rather of itinerary. If he was not in fact the “Indian prince” that he appeared to the French, this makes him all the more fascinating for historians of the revolutionary age.

If Ahmed was misleading both the English and the French, for whose account was he working? Could his case point to some hidden history of resistance networks across South Asia lost in the colonial history that followed? To return to the story of the Lydian prince who found his lost voice in a time of crisis, was this Ahmed Khan’s relation of his own awakening in the midst of the revolutionary age? That would suggest that he connected his political “voice” back to events in India—to the loss and crisis provoked by British aggression. If he was not the son of the Nawab, then his political awakening is all the more significant, since it suggests not a dynastic or familial motivation, nor that of personal enrichment like Odudeen Khan, but rather an emergent sense of patriotic resistance. This is part of the global story of the revolutionary age that remains to be told.

Ian Coller is professor of history at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author of Arab France: Islam and the Making of Modern Europe, 1798–1831.

Arab France: Islam and the Making of Modern Europe, 1798-1831 by Ian Coller (Author)

Many think of Muslims in Europe as a twentieth century phenomenon, but this book brings to life a lost community of Arabs who lived through war, revolution, and empire in early nineteenth century France. Ian Coller uncovers the surprising story of the several hundred men, women, and childrenEgyptians, Syrians, Greeks, and otherswho followed the French army back home after Napoleons occupation of Egypt. Based on research in neglected archives, on the rediscovery of forgotten Franco-Arab authors, and on a diverse collection of visual materials, the book builds a rich picture of the first Arab Franceits birth, rise, and sudden decline in the age of colonial expansion. As he excavates a community that was nearly erased from the historical record, Coller offers a new account of France itself in this pivotal period, one that transcends the binary framework through which we too often view history by revealing the deep roots of exchange between Europe and the Muslim world, and showing how Arab France was in fact integral to the dawn of modernity.

My apologies for the earlier confusion. You initially referenced France and Islam: The Making of Modern Europe, 1798–1852 by David A. Bell, but your follow-up question specifies Arab France: Islam and the Making of Modern Europe, 1798–1831 by Ian Coller. These are distinct books with different focuses. Since your latest question explicitly refers to Coller’s work, I’ll provide a detailed explanation of the key points of Arab France: Islam and the Making of Modern Europe, 1798–1831 based on available information.

Key Points of Arab France: Islam and the Making of Modern Europe, 1798–1831 by Ian Coller

Uncovering a Forgotten Arab Community:

Coller’s book brings to light a largely forgotten community of several hundred Arabs—Egyptians, Syrians, Greeks, and others—who migrated to France following Napoleon’s failed occupation of Egypt (1798–1801). These individuals, including men, women, and children, were not primarily Muslim but a diverse mix of Copts, Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and some Muslims, united by their use of the Arabic language.

This community, often labeled as “Egyptians” by the French state, settled primarily in Marseille and Paris, forming what Coller terms the “first Arab France.” The book challenges the common assumption that Arab or Muslim presence in Europe is a 20th-century phenomenon.

Origins and Migration:

The migration began after the French withdrawal from Egypt in 1801, led by General Menou. A key figure, Yaqub Hanna, led an ephemeral “Coptic Legion” that followed the French army to France, believing in the modernizing and universalist promises of the French Revolution. This group included notables, merchants, scholars, former slaves, and others, creating a diverse but fragile community.

Their arrival coincided with a shift in France from a revolutionary republic to Napoleon’s authoritarian empire, which complicated their integration due to changing political and diplomatic contexts.

Formation of an Arab Identity in France:

Coller explores how this community formed a distinct “Arab France” identity, particularly in specific spaces like the “Egyptian village” in Marseille and parts of Paris. This identity was not solely self-defined or state-imposed but emerged from individual choices within specific historical and social constraints.

The book traces the first and second generations of these migrants. The first generation, arriving post-1801, included diverse figures like General Yaqub and interpreter Pharaon. The second generation, arriving in the 1820s, included more Muslims seeking technical and scientific knowledge to modernize their home countries, contributing to a pan-Arab cultural identity.

Contributions to French and Arab Culture:

These Arab migrants were not just passive residents; they actively participated in France’s cultural and intellectual life. They contributed to Orientalist scholarship through translation and education, bridging European and Arab cultural worlds. For example, Joseph Agoub, a Coptic Egyptian, became a celebrated writer and professor of Arabic in the 1820s, embodying a hybrid Arab-French identity.

Their involvement in Napoleon’s imperial projects and the Restoration’s “Oriental taste” highlights their role in shaping France’s cultural landscape, despite their marginal status.

Challenges and Marginalization:

The community faced significant challenges, including poverty, social exclusion, and state policies that labeled them as “Egyptian refugees.” Many lived in precarious conditions, particularly in Marseille’s “Egyptian quarter” near Cours Gouffé.

Napoleon’s regime used these migrants as symbols of imperial ambition, but his “repressive cosmopolitanism” prioritized imperial display over genuine inclusion. The Restoration period briefly welcomed them, influenced by philhellenism, but growing colonial racialism and shifting perceptions of “foreigners” marginalized them further.

Decline of Arab France:

By the late 1820s and early 1830s, the community’s existence became untenable due to France’s conquest of Algeria (1830) and the redefinition of “foreigners” as outsiders to the French nation. This colonial expansion marked the end of the possibility of a dual Arab-French identity, as the state and society increasingly viewed Arabs as incompatible with French identity.

The community’s dispersal across Paris, Marseille, and Melun, and its lack of cohesive structure, contributed to its fragility and eventual erasure from the historical record.

Reframing European-Arab Relations:

Coller challenges binary frameworks (e.g., Orient vs. Occident) by showing deep historical exchanges between Europe and the Muslim/Arab world. He argues that “Arab France” was integral to the dawn of European modernity, influencing France’s political, cultural, and imperial development.

The book critiques Edward Said’s Orientalism by highlighting actual Arab agency and presence in Europe, rather than just European representations of the “East.”

Methodological Approach:

Coller uses neglected archives (e.g., military pension records), rediscovered Franco-Arab authors, and visual materials like paintings and engravings to reconstruct this community’s history. His approach combines individual stories with broader political transformations, offering a nuanced view of identity formation.

The book is noted for its sensitivity and erudition but criticized by some for heavy theoretical language (e.g., “constitutive practice,” “proto-colonial”) that can obscure the lived experiences of individuals.

Broader Implications:

Coller’s work illuminates the early 19th-century roots of Arab-European interactions, shedding light on the contemporary history of the Arab Middle East and North Africa. It underscores the tensions between cosmopolitan ideals and emerging colonial racial hierarchies.

The book highlights the transient nature of this community, which never fully coalesced but left traces in archives, cemeteries, and early Orientalist works, enriching our understanding of cultural interconnections.

Notes and Limitations

The book focuses on a specific, small community and does not fully address what happened to these individuals post-1831, particularly after Algeria’s colonization, or the impact of the Muslim slave trade on their integration, due to limited sources.

Some reviewers note that the theoretical framework can overshadow personal stories, leaving readers wanting more details about individual lives.

If you’d like me to explore specific chapters, themes, or compare Coller’s work with Bell’s France and Islam, or if you want me to search for additional reviews or related content, please let me know! I can also analyze any uploaded materials related to the book if you have them.