At a glance
Era 11- Dates
- 1769-1849 CE; governor of Egypt 1805-1848 CE
- Who
- Ottoman officer who built a modern army and state in Egypt and founded a dynasty
- Era
- Colonialism & Renewal
ProfileMuhammad Ali Pasha
Muhammad Ali was born in 1769 to an Albanian family and grew up in the port of Kavala, in what is now northern Greece. He came to Egypt in 1801 as an officer in the Ottoman force sent to drive out the French. In the disorder that followed their departure he won over the Albanian troops and the scholars and merchants of Cairo, and in 1805 the sultan was obliged to recognise him as governor.
He meant to make Egypt strong. In 1811 he invited the Mamluk beys, the old masters of the country, to a ceremony at the Citadel of Cairo and had them killed. He took control of the land and its harvests and made cotton the great export. With the income he built an army of Egyptian conscripts trained by French officers, along with factories, shipyards, schools of medicine and engineering, and a printing press at Bulaq. He sent students to Paris, among them Rifa'a al-Tahtawi. The peasants paid the price, in forced labour and conscription.
At first his army served the sultan. It ended the first Saudi state in Arabia, conquered the Sudan, and fought the Greek revolt until its fleet was destroyed at Navarino in 1827. Then he turned on his master. In 1831 his son Ibrahim invaded Syria and went on to beat the Ottoman armies deep in Anatolia. The European powers forced him out of Syria in 1840, but in return his family was made hereditary rulers of Egypt.
Old age left him unable to rule in 1848, and he died in Alexandria in 1849. He is buried in the great mosque he built in the Citadel, and his descendants ruled Egypt until 1952.
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