AL Gezira Sporting Club in Ciro, Egypt

What is the name of this Organization/Club?

AL Gezira Sporting Club

In what city is your organization based?

Ciro

Describe your group.

ABOUT US

Like the high ranking officers corps, the British civilian members were also taken in by the club's races. One of the first recorded races took place in 1885. The Starter was the Commanding Officer of the Egyptian Army otherwise known as the sirdar, who at the time was General Frances Wallace Grenfell (1841-1925; afterwards 1st Baron of Kilvey). Grenfell had been present at the battle of Tel al-Kebir, which ended with the defeat of Orabi Pasha on September 13, 1882, and the start of the 72-year British military occupation of Egypt.

Another veteran Anglo-Egyptian was the Club's first steward General Charles Coles Pasha (1853-1926). It was Coles who remarked that "Egypt's climate made it possible to follow the races without recourse to binoculars, " and that the colors of the different jockeys were discernible even at a distance. Coles was however dissatisfied with the horses. "The European breeds, unlike the smaller Arabians, could not negotiate the course's sharp corners with comparable agility." It appears this problem was the focus of considerable debate during the club's early years.

While jockeys were imported without impediment from England, Arabian ponies had to be smuggled from Syria via al-Arish and Kantarah, Sinai, circumventing Turkish restrictions on their export into Egypt. The regular winner in these events was Hadeed, an Arabian pony belonging to the club's senior trainer, Mr. Langdon Rees. The runner up was another pony called Sir Hugh. Tired at being shown up again and again by the Arabian favorite, the Anglo-Egyptians clamored for the English mare Skittles, a competitor in the same weight and league. But first, Skittles had to be sent for from Malta. When the eventful day arrived, the mare won the day to the jubilation of the Britons whose pride had been piqued for some time now. It was a mournful native crowd that made its way to the Cairo mainland across the narrow Kasr al-Nil bridge.

By now the Cairo Derby had been firmly established. The club's more popular races included the Khedivial Steeplechase, the Newmarket Stakes, the Jubilee Stakes, the Eclipse Stakes and the Koubbeh Handicap. Betting at these races was based on an Indian lottery system introduced into Egypt by Coles Pasha just before he moved to Alexandria in 1899 where he assumed the position of Chief of Police and where he also founded the Alexandria Sporting Club. Cole Pasha's system meant that the horse owner took one ticket and then claimed half. For other gamblers it was less favorable, for the prizes did not always compensate for blanks, and only a small percentage of the gains made it to the club's coffers.

Cole Pasha's unpopular lottery system was replaced by the pari-mutuel with all the profit going to the club. Although Egypt's racecourses were off limits to bookies, this did not stop the stakes and profits reaching stratospheric heights during WW1, a fact mostly attributed to the arrival of the Australian soldiers who proved to be fanatic gamblers.

The Winter Race Meetings which started in January was interrupted in March by the Gymkhana. Taking part in this annual sport and play event were the upper crust members of the British community arriving in their boaters and straw hats, of all shapes and sizes, armed with their eternal companion, the fly-swish. Edging between Cairo's lofty society of mutual admirers and as if serving as an astute reminder this was still Africa, were the turbaned Nubian sofragis balancing their silver platters of game pie, roast beef, ham chops and cucumber sandwiches. The dried-out, red-faced, sweaty English sire had his choice of sparkling champagne, pimms or campbells. Also present at these events, were the senior army officers, their horses and their wives (in that order), hence the Regimental Races, the Lloyd Lindsay, the Polo Race, the Green Howard Sweepstakes and the Horseback Musical Chairs.

Polo matches, of which ten or twelve were held in the course of the year, were the second most important social events after the races. In 1908-9 a "Challenge Cup" was added to the polo trophies courtesy of Seifallah Youssri Pasha whose name would be linked to the Gezira Club for the next forty years. He was one of the club's first Egyptian members and everyone will tell you he played polo on its fields with the Prince of Wales in June 1922. A club devotee, Youssri Pasha was nominated its first Egyptian Vice-President. When he died on its golf course on December 26, 1949, the sportsman-pasha had turned 80.

But lest anyone believe the club was a Shangri-La for whisky-drinking, polo-playing horse lovers, one must also mention its other popular amenities. In 1914, the Khedivial Sporting Club boasted a tea pavilion, four polo grounds, two racecourses, a 12-hole golf course, six squash racket courts, thirteen tennis grounds, and eight croquet lawns. The club's 750 British members were enjoying their finest colonial hours and lording it at the top of this all-knowing community, was the British Consul-General who by tradition was also the club's President.

Before he left Egypt for the last time on June 18, 1914, Consul-General Field-Marshal Lord Herbert Horatio Kitchener made two recommendations concerning the Khedivial Sporting Club, both of which with wasteful consequences. Firstly, Egyptian members -- and they were few at the very most -- were to be barred from membership. No more natives. Secondly, that the Khedive should be removed from the club's honorary patronage. What Kitchener actually meant by his latter recommendation was that Abbas Hilmi II should be removed from Egypt's throne altogether. Kitchener's disdain for his former employer had been public knowledge prompting his recurrent recommendations that the pro-Germanic Khedive be replaced by someone more agreeable to British interests.

Shortly after Kitchener became his country's War Minister in 1914, a volunteer reserve unit was formed from amongst Gezira Club's able-bodied members including the 50 year old Bimbashi (officer) Joseph McPherson, author of that now-famous book The Man Who Liked Egypt (BBC Ariel Books, 1983). It would be thanks to Kitchener's recommendation that the unit, which called itself Pharaoh's Foot, had an all-British character, for by now there were no more "foreigners" or "Gyppies" left in the club. Kitchener's other recommendation was realized on December 20, 1914 when the complying Khedive's uncle was forcibly placed on the throne of Egypt with the new title of Sultan. With the last of the Khedive's gone, it was time to find a new name for that great swathe of parkland heretofore known as the Khedivial Sporting Club.

From a semi-autonomous Ottoman viceroyalty, Egypt had become a British Protectorate so that the club's Anglo-Egyptian squatters were now the country's real masters. Had he foretold Egypt's fate, Lord Cromer, in his capacity as the club's president in 1902, would have dispensed with his efforts to establish freehold ownership of the club by virtue of 20 years' occupation (some form of squatter's right). The proconsul's claim in that direction had been contested by the usually compliant Egyptian Government. In a conciliatory gesture to al-Lord, the land was instead leased to the club at a nominal rent for a period of 66 years ending in 1966.

JUST BEFORE 1952

Between the two World Wars, Cairo, Alexandria, the Canal towns of Port Said, Ismailia and Suez, were cosmopolitan havens with large, influential communities living side by side carrying on as though the world were their own United Nations. There were the Greeks, the Italians, the Jews, the Syrians (includes Lebanese and Jerusalemites), the Armenians, and in much smaller numbers the British and the French whose cultural and social clout extended across all the other communities. Each had its places of worship, its hospitals and old people's homes, its elected president and board and its social and sports clubs. Cross-over mixing between communities occurred only at the very top where education and worldly culture were unifying factors. One of the most popular meeting places for those polished ladies and gentlemen of Egypt's cosmo-monde was the Gezira Sporting Club.

The Gezira Sporting Club's apartheid (Britons Only!) membership crisis was resolved when a trickle of Egyptians were allowed back in Gezira Sporting Club after WW1. The were either related to the reigning sultanic (later royal) family or members of the Western-educated gentry. To discourage the other Egyptian wanabees, the trickle was subjected to a convoluted quota and vetting system. Even star polo player, Victor Mansour Semeika, the son of Wassef Semeika Pasha, Egypt's former Coptic Minister of Communication, waited several years before he was invited to join in 1933. Other Egyptians visited as guests of British members. A classic example is how Kadria Foda, the daughter of a Cairene notable (now Grande dame of Egyptian society), made it inside the Gezira Club courtesy of Miss King her British governess. And whenever Kadria and her sisters ran into one or the other Egyptian families on the club grounds, the first furtive query was, "How did you make it in, have you become members?!"

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CLUB HISTORY

http://196.219.237.70/gsc/gsc/history.aspx

Various published testimonials best summarize the socio-political setting surrounding the creation of the Gezira Sporting Club in the 1880s by a unique group of empire builders referred to locally as "Anglo-Egyptians." With the imminent Hong Kong Handover in 1997, these people, whose likes could be found in the British Raj, in East Africa and now extinct colonial caste.

1880s - 1914

in South East Asia, were members of a "Cairo has several clubs, but only two are patronized by the best English people, for the luxurious Khedivial is essentially a club for foreigners and Gyppies. I refer to the Turf Club and the Khedivial Sporting Club. With the latter no fault can be found. Its subscription is low and it gives members all kinds of advantages and attractions. It would be charming even if it had no sports, for its wealth of flowers, its broad stretches of turf, its southern trees and beauty". Douglas Sladen wrote this account in Egypt And The English (London, 1908). His use of the term 'foreigners' meant anyone not British with the exception of the indigenous population. The term 'Gyppies' was one of the terms Sladen and his British contemporaries denoted native Egyptians.

Percy F. Martin's Egypt - Old And New (London, 1923), relates how: "The Gezirah Sporting Club of which Captain Hope-Johnson has been, for some years, the very popular and enterprising secretary, is reached in about ten minutes by carriage from either the Continental or Shepheard's Hotel in Cairo. Whilst its hospitable doors have always been opened to visitors non-resident in the capital, the sole requisite for entrance having been a personal introduction from a member, exception has been taken not without some reason to the policy which tends to bring about the exclusion of the Egyptians from any active participation in the management of the sports; neither have they been encouraged to become members of the Club, except in certain cases. None the less, the institution was primarily established partly with their assistance and certainly with the aid of their monetary contributions."

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"Want of consideration for the want of the native population particularly of the better classes, permanently inhabiting the countries in which British men and women but temporarily reside, has frequently provided one of the greatest drawbacks to the gaining of popularity and friendship, even where other of our national virtues are generously recognized. It was once said by George Elliot that British selfishness is so robust and many-clutching that, well encouraged, it easily devours all sustenance away from our poor little scruples." "No actual rule as to the exclusion of the Egyptians from the Sporting Club exists; but the natives are not welcomed, and doubtless find themselves ordinarily de trop."

W. Basil Worsfold, an observant literary barrister who visited Egypt in the winter of 1898-9, remarked in The Redemption Of Egypt that "The English resident have no more to do with the picturesque ruins and mud-heaps of Medieval Cairo than the average West End Londoner has to do with the Mile End Road and Tower Hamlets. Except when they wanted to show a visitor the tombs of the Khalifs or the Pyramids they only left their villas in the European quarter to drive to their offices or the Gezira Club."

In The British In Egypt, Peter Mansfield writes of Lord Kitchener: "In another respect he went a long way towards reversing Gorst's policies. Whereas Gorst had shifted executive responsibilities on to Egyptians wherever possible, under Kitchener the number of British in the higher positions now rapidly increased again. But Kitchener was not in favor of British social exclusiveness. In India he had deplored it and blamed it on the club system, in Cairo he pursued Gorst's habit of inviting as many Egyptians as possible to the agency [embassy] with the difference that he does not appear to have been criticized by the British and other Europeans communities as a consequence. He did take fairly ruthless action to force the Egyptians members to resign from the famous Gezira Club, but this was not out of any belief in social 'apartheid' but because complaints that members of the Khedive's circles were using the club to express anti-British opinions. With Kitchener's approval another club was opened with mixed membership."

In Sir Ronald Storr's Orientations we find the following: "The Turf Club, situated in the Sharia al-Maghrabi [now Adly] next to the self-respecting but architecturally painful Sephardi Synagogue, was the fenced city of refuge of the higher British community, many of whom spent anything between one and five hours daily within its walls. The Sporting Club at Gezira, on an admirable site presented in the eighties by the Khedive Tewfik and improved since then almost out of recognition, was the other British headquarters. It was difficult for foreigners to be elected and not easy for Egyptians even to make use of either Club; as I discovered by the glances cast in my direction when I came in with one of the few Egyptian members to play tennis."

Storrs was with the British Consulate when it was upgraded to a 'Residency' in 1915 when Egypt was declared a British Protectorate. As Oriental Secretary (No. 2 man) under Cromer, he learned first hand about British high handedness. It would have been difficult not to, considering he served under two of the greatest imperialists: Cromer and Kitchener. The Egyptian tennis player he mentions eventually in his Gezira passage became prime minister. Who could have blamed this Egyptian statesman if he carried the tiniest of grudges towards the Inglizi! And who could have blamed the hospitality-minded Egyptians if they regarded the Gezira and Turf clubs as grotesque imperialist institutions. By virtue of its definition, a club means bringing together birds of a feather who share common interests while keeping everybody else out through a system of quotas and membership ceilings. Yet, try explaining that to the ahlan-wa-sahlan type Egyptians or Indians who found it hard to accept that anyone would want to keep them out.

How often does your group meet?

Daily ...

Is there a membership fee?

Membership Information Office working hours ended 9 o'clock until 3 p.m. Thursday, the weekly holiday

Approximately how many members does this organization have?

70000

Is this organization specific to nationality? If yes, which nationality/ies. If no, what nationalities are represented in the membership?

For All Nationalities all over the world...

What language(s) do member speak?

English, Arabic, French ....etc

What is the age range of the people in your group?

All

What is the name of the person new members should contact?

http://196.219.237.70/gsc/gsc/MembershipInfo.aspx

Telephone Number:

+2 (02) 2735 6000 - +2(02) 27360319

Street Address:

15 saraya Al Gezira st. - El zamalk - Cairo - Egypt

City:

El zamalk - Cairo - Egypt

State/Province:

El zamalk

Zip/Postal Code:

11568

Web site address (please include http://):

http://196.219.237.70/gsc/gsc/MembershipInfo.aspx