Muhammad Ali (1769-1849)

I

Introduction

Muhammad Ali (1769-1849), also Mehemet Ali, Ottoman pasha (or viceroy) of Egypt (1805-1849), who reformed the country and founded a dynasty that ruled it until the mid-20th century.

II

Early Life

Muhammad Ali was born in Kaválla, a port at the northern end of the Aegean Sea in what is today the Macedonian province of north-eastern Greece, but at that time was a province of the Ottoman Empire. He was born into a Greek-speaking Muslim family, often then referred to as Albanian. Orphaned as a child, he was adopted by the governor of Kaválla. As a young man his tax-collecting abilities so impressed his adoptive father that the governor offered him one of his relatives in marriage and appointed him an officer in the town’s militia.

At this time the Ottoman Empire was in retreat in eastern Europe and had lost all territory north of the Danube by 1792. In 1798 French forces led by Napoleon I invaded Egypt, then part of the Ottoman Empire. In 1799 Britain joined with the Ottomans in a war to expel the French from Egypt. The governor of Kaválla sent a Macedonian regiment to the war zone under the command of his son, with Muhammad Ali as lieutenant. The son soon returned home, leaving Muhammad Ali in command of the regiment. He distinguished himself during the war and earned such rapid promotion that by the time of the French expulsion in 1801, Muhammad Ali was the most powerful Ottoman commander in Egypt.

III

Winning Control of Egypt

In the power-vacuum that followed the French expulsion, Muhammad Ali seized the opportunity to carve himself out a personal dynasty. For most of the previous century the Ottoman pashalic (viceroyalty) of Egypt had been little more than nominal, with real power reverting to the old Mameluke landed aristocracy. Over the next four years Muhammad Ali manipulated the warring Mameluke factions, while appealing to the Egyptian religious establishment, and gradually brought all of Lower Egypt under his military control. The Ottoman Sultan Selim III recognized his de facto power by conferring on him the title Pasha of all Egypt in 1805. Muhammad Ali then asserted control over his former allies, the religious establishment, by subjecting them to taxation, from which they had previously been exempt. In 1807 he astounded the European powers by defeating a British army that had been sent to occupy Alexandria.

IV

Massacre of the Mamelukes

In 1811 Muhammad Ali learned that the Mamelukes, who still remained largely in control of Upper Egypt, were planning a rebellion and were only awaiting his departure on a military expedition to Arabia. He invited the heads of the Mameluke families to Cairo where he had an estimated 470 of them massacred in the narrow entrance to the citadel. Follow-up operations in Upper Egypt wiped out the remaining Mamelukes as a force in Egypt.