Black Hand (Egypt)

Historians have not inferred the time of the founding of the Black Hand Society, as there are no historical documents proving this because it worked in secret. Some sources indicate that the name of the society “Black Hand” was inspired by a secret organization bearing the same name that was founded in 1911 in Serbia by secret officers. Those who killed King Alexander I and his wife in Belgrade in 1903, and it is the same association to which the Bosnian Serb student Gavrilo Princip belonged, whose assassination of Austrian Crown Prince Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife during their visit to Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, caused the outbreak of World War I.^[1]

This association was headed by lawyer Abdel Halim al-Bili, Abu Shadi Bey, Sheikh Mustafa al-Qayati, Sheikh Mahmoud Abu al-Oyoun, and a number of students. This association sent threatening letters to reactionary politicians, such as Youssef Wahba Pasha, the Prime Minister of Egypt from November 19, 1919, until May 20, 1920, to whom the association sent a threatening letter written in bright red ink bearing the sign of a black hand, a cannon, and the word Fedayeen.^[1][3]

According to the book Heroes of the Secret Service of the 1919 Revolution by the writer Sabri Abu al-Majd, there was a student called Sayyid Pasha who studied at the teachers' school and joined a revolutionary group with his colleagues after the arrest of Saad Zaghloul, and that he was the founder of the Black Hand group. he struck friendships with a number of railway workers in order to gain access to railway workshops and factories to manufacture completely primitive bombs, which could work by placing chemicals that would cause an explosion.^[1]

The group was working to supply bombs and weapons for many of the operations of the secret apparatus of the revolution. It was a pistol and then it developed into 4 pistols and 4 bombs, but that was not enough to confront the enormous English development at that time.^[1]

Sayyid's mission was not limited to supply, but he was able to manufacture the first weapon in the revolution, to fill the gap of resistance to the British, as he formed a committee accompanied by Ahmad Abdel Hay Kira, and they thought about increasing weapons by chemically manufacturing bombs, so they brought a book in the English language, and they devoted themselves to studying it. They translated it, then brought the materials needed to manufacture the first bomb in the 1919 revolution.^[1]

In historian Ahmad Qasim's writings of Ali al-Haddad, one of the organization's members, he said that he was close to two people, al-Nuqrashi and Ahmad Maher, the latter of whom was an assistant to Abdel Rahman Fahmy, founder and director of the Secret Service, and one of Ahmad Maher's roles was to recruit young men and join the Black Hand, which increased its activity by planning political assassinations following the military court's ruling death sentences imposed on 51 Egyptians in Minya and Asyut, and the sentence was executed for 34 of them, including the Bakbashi Mahammad Kamel, the sheriff who led the Asyut Revolution, in addition to the execution of 3 Egyptians who led the al-Wasti Revolution in Faiyum.^[2]

Mustafa Amin said:

"There is nothing in Saad Zaghloul’s correspondence with Abdel Rahman Fahmy that indicates that Saad was the one who instructed these assassinations, but at the same time we do not find in Saad Zaghloul’s secret instructions a single word about that he does not approve of these assassinations. Rather, the wording of the secret letters that Abdel Rahman Fahmy was sending it indicating that he was carrying good news to the leader of the 1919 revolution, and that he was calling the one who tried to assassinate the Prime Minister as having a nationalist spirit."^[2]

The Black Hand group was sending threatening letters to politicians whom the revolution considered loyal to the English, and the Black Hand financed its activities by collecting money. The association had an organized system against the British, and members of the Black Hand formed internal committees. The first committee vowed and threatened employees and merchants with death if they did not participate in the strike by closing down their stores.^[2]

The Black Hand group had relationships with several committees, namely:

• National Defense Committee: Most of the members of that committee were members of the Black Hand. The purpose of that committee was to incite public opinion against the government, and to incite the people to practice violence against authority.^[1][3]
• Urgent Committee: The purpose of this committee was to arouse public opinion, and it received financial assistance from Abdel Rahman Fahmy Bey. It was headed by Hassan Nafi and Ibrahim Abdel Hadi.^[1][3]
• The Free Egyptian: This association derived its funding from Abdel Rahman Fahmy, and al-Rafi’i mentioned that it published a secret newspaper called al-Masry al-Hur (the free Egyptian) and had its own secret printing press. As the latter mentioned, people were eagerly receiving its bulletins and taking turns to look at them. The English General Belvin issued martial law, which considered this a crime, and any person in possession of a bulletin or some type of such bulletins was also committing a crime against martial law.^[1][3]
• The Flame (al-Shuala): It was headed by Morcos Hanna Bey and Naguib Ghali Pasha.^[1][3]
• Higher schools: Most of its members were students. A paper was seized in which the law of this association was written, which includes a commitment to secret work, and that the members are busy issuing leaflets and urging a strike, and that the association will continue until the last English soldier leaves Egypt. Among its tasks are seeking to discover government secrets and threatening traitors. The Higher Schools Association was writing down a list of the names of English merchants with the intention of boycotting them.^[1][3]
• Revenge Association: This association was formed following the return of the Milner Committee from Egypt on January 17, 1920. It was divided into three sections: The first section was concerned with distributing leaflets. This section wrote letters to Lord Milner, Sir Valentine Chirol, and the ministers, and the leaflets were printed in a printing press. It was called Abi al-Azaim Press; The second section was the Pistols Department, and it had American-made pistols and pistols of a type called “Black Mountain.” As for the third section, it was the bombs section, and it was headed by Hosni al-Shentanawy, along with Helmi al-Jayar and others. The bombs were made in an Izba near Giza.^[1][3]
• Council of Ten Association.^[1][3]
• Association of the fifty.^[1][3]

The group became famous for the joining of many well-known figures or who became known later, the most prominent of whom were the group's leader, Abdel Rahman Fahmy, Ahmad Maher, al-Nuqrashi and Ibrahim Abdel Hadi, who later became prime ministers in Egypt. Journalists also joined, including Abbas Mahmoud al-Aqqad. There are also members of the group who achieved a distinguished position. Some of them are famous: Ahmad Abdel Hay Kira, Dawlat Fahmy, and Abdel Qader Shehata, whose names have appeared in books and works of art.