muhammad ali pasha

8/2/2019 Muhammad Ali Pasha

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/muhammad-ali-pasha 1/15

Muhammad Ali Pasha

by Jimmy Dunn and Zahraa Adel Awed

Muhammad Ali Pasha and his family ruled Egypt for more than 147 years, and today they

remain very much a part of modern Alexandria and its culture. Their names appear everywhere,

on streets, buildings and other architectural sites. Muhammad Ali Pasha is considered by many

to be the founder of modern Egypt. Though he came to Egypt as a Turkish army officer in 1800,

he rose to rule Egypt, and his decedents continued to do so until the last king of Egypt, Ahmed

Fouad II, abdicated his rule in 1952 by royal decree No. 65-1952.

The former king then boarded his yacht, el Mahroussa, and on July 26th, 1952, left Egypt for

France. Allegedly, his father, King Farouk was once reported to have said, "There will soon be

only five kings left: The kings of England, Diamonds, Hearts, Spades and Clubs".



Mohammad Ali Pasha, the first and most famous of this line of Egyptian kings was actually

born in Kavala, a small Macedonian seaport on the coast of the Aegean, what is now known as

Greece, in 1769. At that time, Kavala was a part of the Ottoman Empire. The son of the local police chief, his father, Ibrahim Agha, when Mohammad Ali was still quite young, and so the

boy was taken in to service by the governor of the city, where much of his early training took

place.

He was Turkish by origin and Turkish speaking, yet trained in a European province of the

Ottoman Empire, so he brought with him political skills honed in the century-long conflict

between the three great empires that disputed control of the Balkans. Commonly called Mehmet

Ali, as a young man he worked for a while as a tobacco merchant, before taking a commission

in the Ottoman Army.



Muhammad Ali's family was large, with a number of wives and mistresses. The wives that we

know of include Amina Nosrati, his first and apparently a divorced woman, by whom he would

father five children, including his successor Ibrahim, along with two other sons and two

daughters, Ayn al Hayat, from whom he would fathered only one child, Mohammed Saiid,

Namchaz, from whom he fathered only one child, Ziba Khadiga, from whom he fathered one

child. However, there were many other wives and mistresses, and many other children. Indeed,

his family is well beyond the scope of this article.

It is noteworthy that Napoleon Bonaparte was born in the same year as Mohammad Ali, for it

was he would actually set the stage for Mohammad Ali's rise to power in Egypt. In 1798, Egypt

was an Ottoman province ruled by the Mamluks. However, in that year, Napoleon invaded

Egypt and conquered the Mumluk army at the Battle of the Pyramids. This short occupation of

Egypt by the French had a very lasting effect on the country and for that matter, on Egyptology,

but after a sea battle with the English off Egypt's Mediterranean coast, Napoleon was forced to

withdraw back to France. Some of his military forces remained to occupy the country, but they

too were soon withdrawn, leaving behind a power vacuum in Egypt.

http://www.touregypt.net/hmameluk.htm


http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/egyptology.htm





Afterwards, the Ottoman Sultan sent a military expedition to Egypt in order to reoccupy the

land, but there was considerable ethnic and political division within their ranks, which

prevented them from operating effectively for very long. Then, when the troops' salaries weredelayed, many of them mutinied, turning to raids on the local countryside which the scattered

remains of the Mamluks were unable to control.

It was Muhammad Ali, at the time a young officer in the Albanian contingent of the

expeditionary forces, who managed to step in and take command of this dire situation.

Muhammad Ali was a member of the Ottoman forces left behind in charge of the city of Cairo.

However, on his way to the top, Muhammad Ali changed sides several times, sometimes

supporting the Mamluks against the Ottomans, and sometimes the Ottomans against theMamluks. Yet, he knew that if he wanted to rule Egypt, which he did, he would have to contend

with the Mamluks who were still the feudal owners of the land. The land had remained the real

source of power and wealth in Egypt. Napoleon had changed much, but he hadn't changed that.

http://www.touregypt.net/cairo/





By building up a power base amongst village leaders, clerics and the wealthy merchants in

Cairo, and by killing or expelling three successive governors sent from Istanbul, he managed to

have himself appointed as the Ottoman viceroy of Egypt in 1805. This was the year that he

began his real assault on the Mamluks. In one of their attempts to defend themselves, the

Mamluks had forced their way into the city to fight Muhammad Ali, but his Albanians killed or

captured most of them. This was the first serious blow to the Mamluks. However, in the course

of this clash, the Ottoman forces had also pillaged Cairo, and it got so bad that the populace

rose in revolt against the Ottoman governor. Despite his involvement with the Albanians, who

had participated in the pillaging, Muhammad Ali was the only apparent enemy of both the

Ottomans and the Mamluks, so he was "elected" pasha almost by public assent, and from there,

became viceroy, though he actually began to look upon the country as his own. He would

continue to rule Egypt until his death in 1849.





Nevertheless, his battle to hold on to power in Egypt continued for some time afterwards. He

spent the first years fending off attempts to depose him, while at the same time extending his

authority over the whole of Egypt. Indeed, at one point early on in 1807, the British, who were

still in favor of Mamluk leadership in Egypt, attacked him, but he was very clever, and his five

thousand Albanians, who were far better soldiers than the Turkish Ottomans, cut the British to

pieces. This placed him for the most part in an impregnable position, and by 1808, he wasstrong enough to seize all of Egypt



However, much of his early troubles arose from the remnants of the Mamluk regime, who were

a ruthless lot that had ruled Egypt for many years. Their cause had now been further weakened

in the aftermath of the British attack. In one of the most infamous, as well as ingenious episodesof his reign, Muhammad Ali once and forever broke the power of the Mamluks over Egypt by

massacring their leaders. Having already worn down their forces after years of raids and

skirmishes, in 1811 he invited five hundred of their amirs and leaders to a feast celebrating the

appointment of his son, Tusun Pasha, as leader of the army being sent against the Wahhabi

rebellion in Arabia. high walls, attacking them from above. The Mamluks, trapped below, were

so packed in that they had no escape from the merciless fusillade which poured down on them.



On March 1, the Mamluks led by Shahin Bey marched in the military procession of Muhammad

Ali's celebration as one of the rearguard elements. As they rode out of the Citadel down the

narrow little hill to the gate of Azab, which opened out into Roumaliya Square, the huge doors

of the gate were suddenly slammed shut in front of them, so that they were trapped in a narrow

file with high walls on either side and a detachment of Albanian soldiers behind them. The

moment the gates closed, Muhammad Ali's soldiers mounted the

It was a brutal end to what was really a brutal regime, and afterwards, Muhammad Ali was free

to pursue a more advantageous agenda. It was Mohammad Ali who established the long-staple

cotton as a cash crop in Egypt that is today famous throughout the world. It was perhaps, more

than for any other reason, what allowed him to bring Egypt into the modern era, though many

years later, the collapse of the cotton market would also spell the downfall of his descendants.

Indeed, Muhammad Ali ordered the majority of Egyptian peasants to cultivate cotton rather

than any other crops.

http://www.touregypt.net/citadel.htm




Mohammad Ali would then buy all of the cotton from these farmers, mark it up, and in turn sell

it to the textile manufacturers. Thus, for many years, cotton production became a major sponsor

of the state economy, and of the royal treasury in particular.

Modernization frequently arrives on the heals of military spending, as it has in more modern

times and as it did during the reign of Mohammad Ali. He recognized that the sort of military

forces he had been a part of at one time, expeditionary recruits assigned to units based on shared

ethnic or regional loyalty, was not a reliable military force in the long term. He had personal

experience fighting the French in 1799, and was able to observe their superior style of combat

in the field. The Ottoman forces had been no match for the close-order, well-drilled musketry

combined with artillery and cavalry support that had easily defeated the less disciplined, more

individual Mamluk forces in Egypt.

Furthermore, he was very well aware of the inherent problems of a military caste system such as

the Mamluks or the Janissaries, who tended to accumulate enough power to challenge the

authority of their lords, and the European military model seemed to offer a viable alternative.

He may have also been inspired by an earlier, though short lived attempt at military

modernization by Sultan Selim III, who had created a European style force of disciplined

troops, trained by a German officer.



They had performed well, but in that instance the Janissaries, who the troops were meant to

replace, realized the implications of this new style and responded by overthrowing Selim in

1823. However, Mohammad Ali, having disposed of the Mamluk, had no such threat to his

plans.

He began his military modernization by conscripting Upper Egyptian peasants to train in the

Napoleonic fighting style under a French officer named Colonel Seve (Suleyman Pasha). These

new troops were called nizam jadid, which may simply be translated as "new system". After their training, they performed well by putting down various insurrections in Egypt, including

one in the vicinity of their home districts, which was very encouraging and probably would

have never been successful using the old methods. Prior to this modernization, the troops would

have almost certainly revolted in favor of the local rulers.

In 1827, Muhammad Ali Pasha's new fighting force was given it's first major test. At the

request of Sultan Mahmud II, he sent his nizami troops against the Greeks in the Greek War of

Independence. They were commanded by his able son, Ibrahim Pasha. Unfortunately, for

reasons outside of his new military system, this venture did not turn out well for Muhammad

Ali, and it ended with a falling out between him and Sultan Mahmud II. Muhammad Ali had

also raised a navy, at great cost, as most of the ships had to be purchased abroad. Great Britain,France and Russia had all taken the side of the Greek rebels, and had positioned a huge



combined naval force at Navarino Bay, in order to challenge the Ottoman navy. Muhammad Ali

understood the threat that this posed, and he pleaded with the Sultan to mediate a negotiated

peace, thus allowing Greek independence. However, the Sultan would have none of this, and

therefore Muhammad Ali reluctantly sent his navy against the European fleet. Thus ensued the

Battle of Navarino on October 20th, 1827, ending in disaster for the Ottoman navy, as most of

their ships were destroyed in a few hours of fighting. Afterwards, Muhammad Ali would never again mount a major military engagement on behalf of the Sultan.

Nevertheless, in the aftermath of the Greek War of Independence, Muhammad Ali was able to

asses the strengths and weaknesses of his troops in a major military engagement. Indeed, his

ground troops had performed well, though the Ottoman commanders of these forces proved to

be inept in the field. Furthermore, he also recognized the need for a more broad modernization

of forces. While his ground forces were becoming well trained in European military combat, his

naval forces mostly remained antiquated.

Muhammad Ali systematically addressed these problems. He founded a staff college and hired

French officers to train his Ottoman leaders in the most modern military sciences. He also

disposed of his older forces all together, conscripting more peasants to fill the ranks of a much

larger nizam jadid.

By 1831, Muhammad Ali had built up a sizable and well trained nizami army. Like many of the

the kings of Egypt before him, dating far back into the pharaonic era, he too had a desire to

control Greater Syria for its strategic value as well as for its rich natural resources. He would,

once again, attempt to control the region that Tuthmosis III had conquered, but that in the long

term would always remain elusive to Egyptian rulers.

(it should be noted that Muhammad Ali also gained control of much of the Sudan) In that year,

he ordered Ibrahim Pasha to invade Syria on the pretext of repatriating about 6,000 peasants

who had fled Egypt in order to avoid conscription into the military. These forces indeed overran

Syria, capturing Acre after a six month siege, and then marched north into Anatolia. There,

Ibrahim Pasha devastated the ottoman army of the Grand Vizier at the Battle of Konya, which

left no military obstacle between the Egyptian forces and Istanbul itself.

http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/tuthmosis3.htm

http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/tuthmosis3.htm



Now, it was clear that Muhammad Ali, as viceroy of Egypt, was evidently intent on seizing

control of the whole Ottoman Empire, a situation that so alarmed Mahmud II that he accepted

Russia's offer of military aid (much to the consternation of the British and French

Governments). This resulted in the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, which allowed Muhammad Ali toretain the territories of Crete (then known as Candia) and the Hijaz, in return for his withdrawal

from Anatolia. Ibrahim Pasha would also be appointed wali of Syria.

However, Muhammad Ali remained unhappy with the terms of the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi,

and so in 1839, once again went to war against the Sultan's forces. Ibrahim Pasha met the

Sultan's forces on the Syrian frontier and as before, soundly defeated them at the Battle of

Nezib near Urfa. To make matters worse, Mahmud II died almost immediately after the battle,

leaving his sixteen year old son, Abd-ul-Mejid in control of the Ottoman Empire.

Unfortunately for Muhammad Ali, he and his commander Ibrahim Pasha, began to argue over

their plans. While Ibrahim sought an outright win against Istanbul in order to demand the

imperial seat, Muhammad Ali was more cautious, seeking only to consolidate his holdings with

numerous concessions of territory and political autonomy for himself and his family. But as

often is the case when a military campaign stalls, this interlude allowed the new Sultan and his

advisors a chance to seek support, which was rewarded by a multilateral European intervention

which included a British Naval blockade of the Nile Delta. Then after the British landed in

Syria and defeated Ibrahim's forces at Beirut, Muhammad Ali was forced to give up all of his

holdings in Syria. Indeed, in the Treaty of London, Muhammad Ali was forced to limit the size

of his army to 18,000 troops, and give up his navy entirely. In return, he did receive one great

concession. He and his descendants would enjoy hereditary rule over the province of Egypt, and

unheard of status for an Ottoman viceroy.

The final eradication of Mamluk power and influence did open the way for a long series of

reforms, which had the dual purpose of re-establishing central authority and swelling the

treasury. While Muhammad Ali clearly had military ambitions, his modernization of the

military was perhaps the fuel of other modernization projects. Certainly some efforts, such as

modernization of uniform and munitions factories, along with a shipbuilding foundry in

Alexandria were directly related to his military ambitions. One might also argue that his road



and canal projects, and even a new teaching hospital could have been justified for military

reasons.

Yet, it would also seem as though he did indeed have some real interest in brining all of Egyptinto the modern era, though much like any land owner might seek to improve his own property.

Indeed, soon Muhammad Ali had personal control of most, if not all of the land in Egypt, and

he set about reforming the fiscal structure of the country. Local government was reformed by

two edicts, of 1826 and 1833, which divided the country into a much tighter network of

administrative units than before. The central authority, at the same time, was set up into

specialized bureaus to handle its various administrative functions, many of which later became

ministries. By 1830, the introduction of a number of new departments for schools, factories,

public buildings, city police and so on, created an institutional state structure that remained

mostly unchanged until the end of the 19th century.



Much of this had the effect of transforming the rural economy and at the same time allowing

Cairo to capitalize on its position as the national capital. Basically, the city benefited from an

increased yield in the countryside, where civil order at long last prevailed. Some would say that

the face of Cairo actually changed very little under the rule of Muhammad Ali, but in fact, it

was the reforms that brought Egypt into the modern era, and perhaps slowly, along with many

other influences, the look of the major Egyptian cities changed as well.

On important influence was the mania Muhammad Ali had for foreigners, and under his rule,

the Europeans began to pour into the city. It became a golden age for tourism, as these travelers

turned into tourists, but they also brought with them considerable European influences, and this

is another reason that Egypt was transformed into a member of the modern world during his

reign.

Indeed, Muhammad Ali took very little interest in urban planning, and his reign was marked by

few great initiatives in this regard. Nevertheless, Cairo, for example, did begin to take on a newlook, at least later in his reign, as his new style of government and the many Europeans began to

shape its future.








All of this European traffic also had a profound effect on antiquities as well, though not always

a good one. Of course, the science had to really develop much at this early stage, and most of

those many of those who came to Egypt that were interested in antiquities were really more

interested in the profit that could me made. Nevertheless, this was a rich period of discoveries

and the real beginning of Egyptology.

After he secured hereditary rule for his family, Muhammad Ali ruled quietly until 1848, when

he was deposed on account of senility. He was succeeded by Ibrahim Pasha, but Ibrahim

himself was very ill, and died only a few months later. Muhammad Ali briefly succeeded his

own son, until his grandson, 'Abbas, assumed the office. Muhammad Ali died insane in August

2, 1849, and was buried in the imposing mosque he had commissioned, the Muhammad Ali

Mosque, in the Citadel of Cairo.

See also:

• Muhammad Ali in Alexandria




http://www.touregypt.net/alabastermosque.htm




http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/alialexandria.htm






http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/alialexandria.htm

muhammad ali pasha

Documents