Muhammad Ali: Egypt builds a new state
An Albanian officer becomes pasha of Egypt, destroys the Mamluks, sets up an army, factories and schools on the European model and founds a dynasty.
After the departure of Napoleon’s French, Ottoman governors and Mamluks fight for power in Egypt; in 1805 the ulama and townsmen of Cairo get the sultan to appoint as pasha Muhammad Ali, commander of an Albanian contingent. In 1811 he invites the Mamluk beys to the citadel for a celebration and has them cut down at the gates—five centuries of Mamluk power are over. Then comes a state on the European pattern: a conscript army of fellah peasants, a fleet, cotton for export, textile and arms factories, schools of medicine and engineering, students in Paris, the first Arabic newspaper. His troops take Arabia from the Wahhabis, Sudan, and in 1831–1840 Syria and the Land of Israel: in those years the Jews of Jerusalem are allowed, for the first time in centuries, to repair their synagogues. In 1840 the European powers force him to return Syria to the sultan but recognise his hereditary rule over Egypt; the dynasty reigns until 1952.
Sources
Documents of the period
- Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti, chronicle of Egypt — the rise to power in 1805 and the massacre of the Mamluks
Scholarship
- history of modern Egypt — the dating to 1805–1848, the reforms and the settlement of 1840
Basis: documents and evidence.