The Mahmudiyya Canal text is among the rare inscriptions in Lower Egypt, written by the military judge (qadi al-ʿaskar) Yesarizade Mustafa Izzet (1849). It is a model of the Ottoman Taʿliq — the Persian script in the Ottoman-Turkish manner.
It is a panel bearing a poem in Ottoman Turkish that praises and glorifies Sultan Mahmud Khan, in nineteen full lines set within vertical cartouches.
Dr. Uğur Derman told me that this text has no surviving “originals” (tracings) among the legacy of Mustafa Izzet preserved in Turkey, which makes the inscription exceedingly rare and distinctive. This text had a twin like it in the number of lines — with a different text — that stood at the mouth of the canal, by the “History Bridge” in Alexandria.
But it was removed during the renovations of the 1960s!!
— even though the diameter of the marble exceeds 35–40 cm.
The texts of the source and the mouth form a magnificent calligraphic school. Despite my own study of the Persian Taʿliq in the Persian school, and my love of that manner, seeing the text and contemplating its letters draws you into a distinctive aesthetic experience.
Besides being an important document recording the relationship between Egypt and the Ottoman state in the era of Muhammad Ali — at the time the digging of that canal began in 1807, which became the principal artery of fresh water and opened the way for Alexandria to become a capital and a cosmopolitan city. The number of those who died during the digging of that canal was around twelve thousand Egyptians, struck by the plague; so the governor Muhammad Ali ordered that they be buried where they were, lest the epidemic spread to others.
The Egyptians who dug it departed, as usual, without mention …
And Muhammad Ali, Sultan Mahmud, and Mustafa Izzet departed …
And I too shall depart to them one day …
And the inscription will remain …
