Sulayman al-Halabi

Sulayman al-Halabi was a young man from Aleppo who killed Kléber, commander of the French in Egypt, in Cairo on Saturday 21 Muharram 1215 AH, and was executed a few days later on the sentence of a French court. The fullest account of him we have is what al-Jabarti copied from the papers of that court into Aja'ib al-athar. ^{3 4}

In his first interrogation, as al-Jabarti copies it, he said his name was Sulayman, that he was born in Syria, that he was twenty-four, that his trade was "Arabic scribe" and that he lived in Aleppo. He said he had been in Egypt for five months, had come with a caravan whose leader was called Sulayman Burayji, that he was "of the religion of Muhammad", and that he had lived three years in Egypt before and another three in Mecca and Medina. Asked whether he knew the grand vizier, he said he was "a son of the Arabs" and did not know him. ⁵ When arrested he told the French that he slept at al-Azhar. ⁴

He came upon Kléber in the garden of his house at al-Azbakiyya, stabbed him four times and wounded the engineer with him, then hid in the neighbouring garden until he was caught, as told in the killing of Kléber. ^{3 4} The court sentenced him to have his right hand burned and then to be impaled on Tell al-Aqarib, and sentenced to beheading three Gazan Qur'an reciters of al-Azhar whom he had told of his intent; this was carried out on the day of Kléber's funeral. ^{6 7}

The accounts differ on his motive. In the interrogation copied in Aja'ib al-athar he denies knowing the grand vizier. ⁵ In other manuscripts of al-Jabarti's works, as the editor Shmuel Moreh shows, he tells the French that he belonged to a band who had "sworn ourselves to death and agreed to kill your chiefs", and that they had received their blood-money from Yusuf Pasha the vizier and left it with their families. ⁴

Al-Jabarti described him in two different ways in two of his books:

• In Aja'ib al-athar: he calls him "a reckless vagrant" who dared to strike down the French commander treacherously, makes the trial held for him a lesson from a people who "judge by reason", and contrasts it with the later deeds of "the rabble of soldiers who claim to be Muslims". ^{4 8}
• In Mazhar al-taqdis: the editor reports that al-Jabarti writes there, "Then they impaled the martyr Sulayman", and calls the three "the wronged". ⁷

Both descriptions are al-Jabarti's own; the museum does not choose between them.