Old Ottoman decree to build Suez Canal, donated to Egypt

Turkey has donated to Egypt a copy of a 16th century Ottoman decree ordering preparations for the excavation of what would have been a forerunner to the Suez Canal, a source at Cairo state archives said Tuesday.

The firman, or order, donated by Turkey's state archives, "includes an early Ottoman project to excavate a Suez canal," the source said.. "The (Ottoman) sultan orders in his firman that the governor of Egypt take the necessary engineering and construction studies to build a waterway from the (Gulf of Suez) to the Mediterranean to ease the passage of Ottoman ships," the source said.

The firman dates from 1568, 50 years after the Ottomans conquered Egypt and added it to their vast empire, ruled from Istanbul, extending throughout the Mediterranean, Balkans, and Middle East.

The canal would have allowed the sultan's Mediterranean fleet to defend Islamic holy places in Saudi Arabia from the growing Portuguese naval presence in the Red Sea, the source said.

Three hundred years later, in 1869, Egypt's Khedive Ismail -- successor of an Ottoman viceroy who rebelled against the sultan -- inaugurated a canal cutting through the neck of land separating the Sinai peninsula from the African continent.

The canal since became a vital communications link for the British Empire and a battleground in Arab-Israeli wars, and is today one of Egypt's leading sources of hard currency.