kavalalimehmetalipasa

Discover Our Cultural Treasures

Our Mission

This website is committed to disseminating objective, rigorously researched historical scholarship on Kavalalı Mehmet Ali Pasha and his enduring legacy. It seeks to curate and present peer-reviewed studies by distinguished historians, examining the multifaceted dimensions of social, cultural, and political life in Egypt and Türkiye during Mehmet Ali’s era. Our mission is to provide impartial, non-commercial academic resources in diverse formats, fostering mutual respect and a deeper understanding of our shared regional history among scholars, students, and enthusiasts.This website is committed to disseminating objective, rigorously researched historical scholarship on Kavalalı Mehmet Ali Pasha and his enduring legacy. It seeks to curate and present peer-reviewed studies by distinguished historians, examining the multifaceted dimensions of social, cultural, and political life in Egypt and Türkiye during Mehmet Ali’s era. Our mission is to provide impartial, non-commercial academic resources in diverse formats, fostering mutual respect and a deeper understanding of our shared regional history among scholars, students, and enthusiasts.

Muhammad Ali The Great

By: Muhammad Shafik Ghorbal

Introduction

It has become common among us, adopting a foreign convention, to restrict the use of the word "Islamic." Just as European scholars do not utilize the descriptor "Christian" in their historical studies except for eras preceding modern and contemporary times — or apply it solely to matters of doctrine — we too have adopted from them the practice of delineating an "Islamic" phase within the developmental stages of Islamic nations. This foreign usage has its justification among them; it is the result of the separation between what they termed "Politics" and what they termed "Religion." But for us, what is the justification? And what is the standard of "Islamic-ness"?

Is it merely the occurrence of an event in an era prior to the thirteenth or fourteenth Hijri century, for example? Or is it that a specific influence in the lives of Muslims had a contemporary European source?

We all know that historical Islamic civilization was a blend of disparate elements, both Eastern and Western. There is no reasonable cause to strip the description "Islamic" from the intellectual life of Muslims during the period of their influence by the philosophy of Descartes or Spencer, while we do not strip it during the period of their influence by the philosophy of Plato or Aristotle. The same applies to Islamic governance; the fact that it was influenced by Sassanid or Roman systems does not prevent us from retaining its Islamic character, whereas we strip it of this character when the influence — as is our current state — stems from the French Revolution or British parliamentarianism.

In reality, we cannot under any circumstances consider Islamic civilization as something time has folded away completely, as it did the civilization of the Pharaohs, nor can we consider that Islamic evolution halted at a certain limit. On the contrary, we view it as continuous and with connected phases. On this basis, we are justified in attempting to write the biography of Muhammad Ali, despite the fact that he lived in the thirteenth Hijri century, and despite the fact that he turned his face toward European civilization; considering him a luminary of Islam.

Muhammad Ali The Great

Chapter One

It was on the European soil of the Ottoman World that Muhammad Ali was born and raised.

The Turks transported Islam to Southeastern Europe just as the Arabs and Berbers had transported it to Southwestern Europe, Sicily, and Southern Italy. Islam spread in the Balkans among some of the indigenous peoples, including Albanians, Serbs, Bulgarians, and Greeks. Furthermore, groups of Turks settled in the Balkans in military fiefs and various cities as soldiers and rulers. Indeed, the Muslims of the Balkans and the Muslims of Anatolia were the subjects of the Sultan who contributed most to the state’s government and its wars.

The religious life in the Balkan and Anatolian peninsulas was marked by specific characteristics that distinguished it from religious life in the Arab Ottoman world, both in spirit and in its manifestations. The Balkan Muslims shared in strengthening Islam with their swords and blood. Many of them were fine examples of personal piety and tranquil adherence to the commands and prohibitions of the religion; all of this was quiet and simple, untouched by intellectual analysis nor agitated by Sufi passion. It tended towards moderation and balance, rejecting impulsiveness and slippage on the part of individuals and groups, viewing matters with the eye of a responsible ruler who fears that enthusiasm or eccentricity might incite animosity or "scratch the minds" (disturb the public peace), in the terminology of the Ottoman public security administration.

Balkan Muslims differed among themselves according to their environments. Among them were the Albanians: men of war and bands organized by their tribes and led by their chiefs, either in the service of the State or in the service of themselves. Among them were landowners and peasants in certain Bulgarian, Serbian, Macedonian, and Greek lands. And among them were the inhabitants of various cities: soldiers, rulers, craftsmen, and merchants.

In one of the Islamic Balkan cities, the city of Kavala (Qawala)—a small, walled maritime city—Muhammad Ali was born. The commonly accepted date of his birth is the year 1183 AH / 1769 AD. He was an Ottoman Muslim Turk, related neither to the Albanians nor to the Slavs of Macedonia and its Greeks by lineage or kinship. It is established that his father, "Ibrahim Agha," was at the head of a battalion of guards in the city, and that he died while his son was still young, whereupon the city’s governor took charge of Muhammad Ali after his father's death.

Muhammad Ali grew up with a purely practical upbringing: he learned the fundamentals of his religion, horsemanship, and the use of weapons. When he matured, he participated in the expeditions dispatched by the city government to pursue highwaymen or to collect state taxes. He assumed command of some of these expeditions, demonstrating an understanding of the art of surprise, a grasp of the qualities of leadership, a stout heart, and a physical endurance that commanded attention.

When he reached the age of eighteen, he married a woman from the relatives of the governor, and God blessed him through her with five sons and daughters. It is said that after his marriage, he worked in the tobacco trade (the land around Kavala produces the best types of Turkish tobacco). These are some of the facts of Muhammad Ali’s life in Kavala. It was a life of mirth, activity, adventure, and happiness. Muhammad Ali—the great monarch—often yearned for the years of his childhood and youth, frequently alluding in his conversations to certain events of those days; days of freedom, simplicity, and adventure. As we know, he visited the landmarks of his boyhood in Kavala as the end approached, lavishing gifts upon its people, establishing charitable institutions, and endowing wealth upon it.

Fate willed that Muhammad Ali should depart from his first home in Kavala to an arena worthy of heroes: to Egypt. And that he should enter it at an hour that was also worthy of heroism

Chapter Two

The harbinger of that departure was the landing of a French army led by General Bonaparte on the soil of Egypt in the summer of 1798, and the Ottoman State’s determination to expel them from it.

That invasion was not the first French incursion upon Egypt; they had attempted to possess it in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and the elite of their knights had met Egypt’s Mamluks in more than one battle. But what a difference between the Egypt of Baybars and the Egypt of Murad and Ibrahim, and what a difference between the French of the Saint King Louis and the French of the French Revolution and Bonaparte.

The Egypt of Baybars was the pivot of that Arab world which had acquired its constituents and distinguished its personality following the collapse of the Abbasid Caliphate. It was a society composed of sects and groups, each with its own personality, law, custom, and function: from the men of the sword to the men of the pen, from the people of agriculture to the guilds (craftsmen), from the masters of Sufi orders to the teaching faculties, and so on. That boisterous society acquired its vitality from the groups governing themselves by themselves, just as it acquired a hue of coordination and harmony from the personality of the Sultan, who pushed people against one another and attempted to subject passions and interests to general efforts in realizing high ideals that concerned all people.

However, the blight of that society was the extravagance and waste that accompanied it, which, over time, placed burdens on the productive classes of farmers, craftsmen, and merchants that exhausted their physical and moral strength. Its other blight—from the very beginning—was the people’s diversion towards their own private affairs within their persons and groups, and their detachment from public affairs, regarding them as "high politics"—as we say now—which should be looked into by the Sultan and the Emirs, not by the subjects. They found in the teachings of their Imams justification for preferring safety.

Here is the Proof of Islam himself, Imam al-Ghazali, saying in his renowned refutation of the Batiniyya: "We do not advance except him whom God Almighty has advanced; for the Imamate, in our view, is convened by power (al-shawka), and power is established by allegiance (al-mubaya'a), and allegiance is not achieved except by God Almighty turning the hearts by force towards obedience and loyalty; and this is something no human can do. Indications of this are that if a multitude of people beyond count were to agree to turn the face of creation away from loyalty to the Abbasid Imamate in general and from support for the Mustazhirite State—may God support it forever—in particular, they would waste their lives in ruses, means, and the preparation of causes and connections, and would not obtain in the end anything but failure and deprivation."

And here he is in another place in the same epistle describing the Imam's view on the Turks’ usurpation of the authority of the Caliphate, saying: "God has subjected the men of the world and their heroes to loyalty and obedience to this Presence, until they scattered in the regions of the world—as we witness and see." The price of liberty—as the English say—is toil, persistence, and vigilance; and since they hated fatigue more than they loved liberty, they lived while every man of resolve and determination tyrannized their affairs.

While the Arab world was in this state, the shift of major trade to maritime routes occurred, as did the division of the Iranian world against itself and the Ottoman State’s seizure of Egypt, Syria, the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq, and the Maghreb. Both matters had the worst effects on the Arab countries and their inhabitants. The first led to a decrease in resources, and worse than that: it led to a narrowing of horizons—which is worse than poverty—to isolation from others, and to stagnation. As for the second: the people of Egypt and the rest of the Arabs did not find in the Ottoman rule compensation for what they had lost: the independent Sultan and participation in general economic life. This rule did not open a door for them to anything new to offset the burdens the Ottoman conquest added to their previous burdens. The misery of the people of the Arab countries after that conquest was not due to the Sultans and Emirs of the State lacking a sincere desire to establish right, do good, and consolidate justice.

Here is the historian of Ottoman systems in Egypt, Hussein Effendi—a man of the Ruzname (Treasury) who wrote during the French occupation of Egypt—saying when asked about the Sultan’s benefit from the possession of Egypt: "This entire kingdom is his property, and he does not look to profit from it; rather, he arranged its expenditure according to its revenue, and decided that whatever overflowed from the revenue should remain to be spent on its development and on what he bestows upon the people." The wretched state was due rather to stagnation and the lack of incentives, both of which were necessitated by the nature of Ottoman rule. This is in addition to what the loosening of the Sultanic government’s grip brought about: the growth of various partisanships (asabiyyat) in Egypt. These partisanships wrought havoc in the land, increased the poverty of the inhabitants, and descended with cultural, artistic, and moral standards to the weakest Egypt had known in its long history.

Those partisanships were not what Sultan Selim intended to create after he conquered Egypt, as some imagine when they claim that Sultan Selim established a body called the Mamluk body to balance the Ottoman Pasha of Egypt on one hand and the Ottoman garrison on the other. Perhaps those who claim this have confused the Sultan’s pardon and his sparing of the remnants of the Egyptian Sultanate’s Mamluks, thinking that Sultan Selim thereby laid the foundation of the Mamluk body.

In reality, Ottoman systems knew nothing of this. Rather, they knew that the disorder of the Ottoman soldiery allowed anyone who possessed money to gather around him a band of men of war. They were not always Mamluks bought with his money; indeed, perhaps most of them were mercenaries from the Berbers of the Maghreb, or the Bedouins of the desert, or the Sudanese, or the Greeks, or the Bosnians, and so forth. Furthermore, "Mamluk-ism" was not exclusive to the Emirs and their bands; it also applied to the men of military and administrative positions whom the Sultanate reserved the right to send from Constantinople itself. This type of partisanship resembles the Arab tribal partisanships that arose in Upper Egypt and the Delta.

Professor Sheikh Muhammad Abduh labored under a misapprehension in an unjust article about Muhammad Ali published by the Sheikh in Al-Manar magazine in 1902—a purely political article that every admirer wishes he had not penned. The Professor imagined that the partisanships prevailing in Egypt at the French occupation corresponded exactly to the lords of European fiefs, and that the Egyptian Emirs were compelled to take supporters from the locals, and that this naturally produced dignity in souls and strength in resolves, giving physical and moral powers a real life, however despised its type. "Thus all elements were ready to form a single living body that would preserve its existence and make the world know its status, were it not for Muhammad Ali!"

All of this has no basis, neither in Europe nor in Egypt. The Professor overlooked an important truth: that the deeds of those bands, their corruption in the land, and their lack of resourcefulness in serious war were what tempted the French to invade Egypt in 1798. And that what drove the French out of Egypt were not the bands, but the English fleet and the English army. And that the one who created a living body out of Egypt was Muhammad Ali. And that the Egypt of Muhammad Ali—not the Egypt of Abu al-Dhahab, Murad, Ibrahim, Sheikh Hammam, and Sheikh Suwailem ibn Habib—is the one where European thinking ceased to contemplate possessing it, or even exploiting it in the shadow of peace.

The Emirs of Egypt clashed in the summer of 1798 with Westerners different from the Westerners the Sultans had known in the days of the Crusades. In the five centuries following those wars, the knight of the Middle Ages—as known by Saint Louis and Baybars—had transformed into the Western man known by Murad, al-Alfi, and al-Bardisi in 1798. Five centuries in which the feudal system vanished, along with the methods of governance, war, and relations between classes of the nation that ensued from it. Five centuries that saw the rupture of the West’s religious and political unity and the emergence of modern scientific methods and new modes of political and economic organization. The people of Egypt received only the faintest news of the West’s upheavals. But the Emirs soon saw that there was no basis for their claim that "if all the Franks came, they would not stand against them, and they would trample them with their horses." The French were able to occupy Egypt.

The French ruled Egypt for a period exceeding three years slightly. This period was interspersed with an attempt on their part to conquer the Syrian provinces, and they were constrained during it by an English naval blockade. The Egyptians rose against them whenever they found a way to do so, and the plague and other epidemic diseases annihilated a not insignificant number of them. Murad and his Mamluks, and those Arabs of Egypt and the Peninsula who joined him, remained for many months disputing the dominion of Upper Egypt with them inch by inch. Maritime trade began to cease, and the arrival of caravans from Darfur, Sennar, Fezzan, Cyrenaica, and other lands of the West decreased.

Residing in Egypt did not please the French; they found it less than they expected, and the distance from their homeland weighed heavily on them, especially after news reached them of the European powers rallying again against France and forcing it to relinquish its conquests in Italy and elsewhere. Even Egypt itself, they knew for certain that the Sultan had resolved not to abandon it, and had sent towards it from the directions of the sea and the Levant multitudes of his soldiers whose military value might not be heeded by Westerners, but which—inevitably—would have an effect over time.

One must remember these circumstances when judging the French occupation. One must distinguish between two completely different things: French rule as it was, and French rule as it could have been had it been free of the circumstances of war and sedition and had time allowed it to proceed upon the principles of modern colonialism.

There can be no doubt that had the rule of Egypt been secured for the French, they would have governed it as one would expect from a republican government based on the principles of the French Revolution, afforded the opportunity—in an era when the great economic upheaval began—to rule a fertile agricultural country with a unique geographical position like the Nile Valley and an Arab Islamic nation with a history full of the lessons of time like the Egyptian nation. Had the rule of Egypt been secured for them, they would have exerted great effort in developing resources by organizing irrigation and controlling the Nile. Bonaparte wrote a magnificent chapter in his memoirs about controlling the Nile by constructing barrages on its two branches at the head of the Delta. Had their tenure lasted, they would have done all they could to benefit from Egypt’s geographical position, and would have connected the Red and Mediterranean Seas.

The colonization of Egypt would inevitably have led to the expansion of French influence to the coasts of the Red Sea and to what lies beyond Sinai in the direction of Palestine and the Levant, and would also have led to an advance towards the sources of the Nile, making Egypt the entrance and exit for those vast African regions and solving the ancient geographical riddle: Where does the Nile rise? History has recorded the realization of much of this at the hands of Muhammad Ali and his successors, indicating that many government plans are merely what geographical reality dictates and history repeats in its varying phases.

Had the French occupation lasted, it would have adopted a course towards the Egyptians that would have resulted in the improvement of many of their conditions, then proceeded after this improvement to stifle growth, or to stifle it in some aspects and direct it in the direction it desired. The French would have been compelled to care for this truncated improvement by virtue of common humanity and by virtue of their own interest: combating epidemics by establishing hospitals and the necessary medical schools and quarantines; to preserve the workforce active in agricultural production which feeds the public treasury and supplies trade, and to prevent the transmission of disease to the French. It would reform the governmental apparatus and diversify administrations to maintain security and control public funds.

This entails reforming the tax and collection system, followed by the abolition of the Iltizam (tax farming) and the stabilization of the farmer’s ownership of the land. It opens doors for French capital and Western systems of trade and transactions, leading to the organization of the judiciary on Western bases and the introduction of Western laws, and it attends to preparing a group of the country’s sons to fill the administrative need for junior employees.

Had the French occupation lasted, it would have relied to some extent for the defense of the country on a national army of its sons.

Had the French occupation lasted, it would have taken the utmost precaution in everything related to religion, social issues, and subjects of scientific research. The Western ruler likes the rules of material production to be purely Western because these rules increase production and increase is what matters to him. But he dislikes social upheaval and free scientific inquiry among his Eastern subjects, for reasons including his concern not to appear to the common people as a destroyer of customs encouraging liberation from the rules of religion, and his suspicion that such upheavals must eventually lead to a desire for independence, and his inclination to preserve Eastern appearances by way of retaining curiosities and antiques.

As for the system of government, it is expected of the French occupation—had its days lasted—that it would keep village governance as Egypt knew it in its various eras in the hands of Omdas and Sheikhs, and entrust the administration of the provinces to Frenchmen, and that strict centralization would prevail. The French would maintain the Diwans which Bonaparte actually established, not intending by them to create a parliamentary system—as some imagined, for Bonaparte was not one to admire it or approve it for France, let alone Egypt—but intending by them to create means enabling him to contact Egyptian notables, understand what was in their souls, and make them understand the truth of his projects and intentions so that no room remained for plotting intrigues and misunderstanding.

This is some of what we imagine about the evolution of French rule in Egypt had the matter been straightened out for the French. This imagination is not without a basis in reality; most of it is derived from what Bonaparte and others wrote about their intentions, from what they actually began to realize, and from what we have seen of French methods of rule in Islamic countries other than Egypt. This imagination is not devoid of historical utility; for it is truly useful to place in the scales of comparison the French ruler’s handling of Egypt’s internal and external affairs against the handling of the same affairs by the Muslim Ottoman ruler, Muhammad Ali.

But time did not allow the French to realize what they hoped. The three commanders who succeeded one another in ruling Egypt—Bonaparte, Kleber, and Menou—found themselves compelled to direct all their effort to overcoming the internal and external dangers surrounding their army and rule. The administrative experiments undertaken by the first of them, Bonaparte, and the third, Menou, were not the true apparatus for governing the country. Nor did the methods of collection, taxes, or workers change in all their days; rather, they remained as they were before their arrival.

Therefore, the three years the French spent ruling Egypt were not a happy era for its inhabitants. True, the Egyptians were accustomed—before their arrival—to coups and turmoil; the people of the countryside in some regions and the people of the cities were used to it. The people of Cairo, in particular, knew it well. The coups they knew were accompanied by much disturbance of security and varieties of violence and arbitrariness and the renewed demand upon them for taxes and fines they had already paid.

However, all these coups were of one pattern; none brought anything new nor clashed with what was familiar to them. For example, Ali Bey the Great overcomes his adversaries and rules the country as his adversaries ruled it; then Abu al-Dhahab overcomes him and rules as Ali ruled, and so on. The Egyptians had no share in these coups except for the financial administration workers among the Copts, the heads of Arab bands, and the Sheikhs among the Ulama.

The first group—by virtue of all Emirs’ necessity to employ it—works for the victors as it worked for the vanquished. The heads of the Arabs, due to their military strength, might tip the scales for a faction of Emirs over the scales of its adversaries. The Sheikhs and Ulama—by virtue of their leadership and influence among the people and the adornment of some of them with qualities of virtue and moderation—people resort to them for mediation to lift injustice if they grow weary of it. Disputing Emirs might seek their judgment. The intervention of the Sheikhs was customarily to lift grievances and replace discord with concord or to alleviate the violence of the coups.

As for French rule, it was a coup of a type the Egyptians had not known. When the rule of Murad and Ibrahim vanished, Bonaparte took their place, and he was neither a Muslim nor an Ottoman. Likewise, the Ottoman Pasha left Egypt upon the arrival of the French, and with his absence, the appearance of subordination to the Sultan, the Caliph of the Muslims, vanished. The Egyptians heard of their country’s subordination to a Western Frankish state, whose political system was named to them by various names whose meanings their experiences did not indicate... "A proclamation spread to them from the French built on the basis of liberty and equality," and events were dated for them by Western months of a year beginning with "the spread of the French Republic."

The French had their ways of mixing with women, and these were ways the elite hated intensely. The spread of soldiers throughout the cities and provinces, the scattering of the Emirs’ families, and the release of their bondmaids following their abandonment of Cairo led to unfamiliar varieties of corruption and vice. During the days of the French occupation, non-Muslims, both patriots and foreigners, liberated themselves from various restrictions that Muslims—at that time—considered conditions for the survival of Islam. This liberation was necessitated by a Western republican rule whose motto was equality and religious liberty, in addition to the French occupation’s need for non-Muslims for their money, their knowledge of the country’s conditions, systems, and people’s customs, and the possibility of trusting them by virtue of the agreement of interests.

French rule, in its short duration and amidst the circumstances of war and sedition accompanying it, did not possess merits that would induce the elite and commoners of Egypt to overlook the social upheaval that accompanied it. It was a severe, violent military rule. The reform the French thought of, the Diwans and other things they introduced, and the scientific research whose foundations they began to lay were not things to attract the governed to them except after a long time. This is because the governmental systems the Egyptians and others were accustomed to at that time aimed at three basic purposes: collecting imposed monies, securing the workforce necessary to maintain public works, and establishing security. Apart from these three matters, the government did not intervene in the conditions of the subjects; rather, it left everything related to these conditions—other than its purposes—to be organized by groups or left unorganized as customs dictated.

If we wish to summarize the description of the system of government existing before the French occupation, we would say: It is characterized by little governmental intervention—as we understand it now—and by violence and arbitrariness. We must not let the tendency of rulers towards this violence and arbitrariness lead us to imagine systems of government other than how we have depicted them: leaving the subjects to their own devices in everything related to the government’s basic purposes.

We must also not let what we hear of injustice lead us to think that the governed did not have various means to avoid or alleviate it. The confusion of administration resulting from successive coups, the poor conscience of workers, the chaos of registers, and so forth, opened doors for the subjects to escape impositions, legally and illegally.

We should not expect, then, that the Egyptians in the year 1798 would welcome governmental intervention and the precise systems accompanying it, nor count them—as we count them now—a guarantee of their rights. They hated the auditing of books and considered it an excess in demand, and saw in the means the government adopted to prevent diseases nothing but unbearable tyranny and incomprehensible curiosity.

The Egyptians hated French rule and resisted it; the people of Cairo revolted in two violent revolutions, and the peasants in the countryside rose whenever an opportunity was afforded them. We have mentioned enough causes to explain this hatred without resorting to justifying it by adopting expressions from our current usage. Authentic history finds in the popular seditions in Cairo and the provinces only one positive motive: the return to what people were accustomed to. Egypt is too noble to its sons for them to seek a support for its rights in "old registers."

The people of Egypt rejoiced when the Ottomans and the English drove the French armies from their country. Al-Jabarti titled his book on the events of the French occupation and what preceded it: Mazhar al-Taqdis bi-Zahab Dawlat al-Faransis (The Manifestation of Sanctity in the Departure of the French State). Indeed, he recorded his belief: "If the wise man contemplates this issue, he sees in it the greatest lessons and dignity for the religion of Islam, where He subjected the sect who are enemies of this creed to repel that sect, and to help the Muslims against them, and that is a confirmation of the noble Hadith and his saying, peace be upon him: 'Verily, God supports this religion with the libertine man,' so glory be to the Capable Doer."

But the eyes of "the libertine man" opened wide towards Egypt and what was happening in Egypt. Thus, the matter after 1798 would not be what it was before it.

Chapter Three

Egypt was handed over from the French to the representatives of the State: the Grand Vizier Yusuf Ziya and the Kapudan Pasha Hussein. The Sultan of the time—to use the expression of the age—was Selim III, the Sultan who initiated the reform plan followed by his successors, the Sultans of the nineteenth century: Mahmud, Abdulmejid, Abdulaziz, and Abdulhamid. The pivot of reform for them was the creation of a regular land and naval military force trained on the pattern of European armies. They utilized this force for two purposes: to repel external aggression and to recover the Sultan's rights from usurpers; that is, to establish absolute central government.

And here was Egypt, which Divine Providence willed to return to its owner after the French had performed a useful deed: they dislodged the Emirs, scattered them, wrested what was in their hands, and lethally struck many of them. Was it conceivable after that, that the two Ottoman ministers would not complete what Bonaparte had begun by excluding the prominent Emirs from Egypt? Thereby, the dominion of Egypt would belong purely to the Sultan, and its story thereafter would be the story of other provinces whose dominion belonged purely to the Sultan in the nineteenth century, until the promised day came—the day of the dissolution of the Ottoman dominion.

The execution of that plan was nearly completed were it not for the intervention of the British military authorities—for the British army had not yet left Egypt. Those authorities intervened and compelled the Sultan’s representative to release the Emirs. Their intervention was due to several reasons. One was disgust at the elements of intrigue and treachery upon which the arrest of the Emirs was based. The second was the firm belief that the Ottoman military forces, whether coming from the Asian provinces or the European ones, were good for nothing; indeed, their absence was better than their presence, for they were merely bands of barbaric plunderers, and the defense of Egypt, should Bonaparte attempt to return to it, required restoring the Emirs—whose appearance and horsemanship the English commanders admired—to their former state.

The third reason was a promise the British commander had previously given to the Emirs during the military operations against the French army, that their joining the two allies, England and the State, would not harm them in the least; on the contrary, it would guarantee their rights after the war ended. The English imagined—at that time—that the system of Emirs and their private forces was an original element in the Egyptian government. They did not know that it was not of its essence in any way, and that cutting off the trade in white slaves was quite sufficient to uproot it. The entire problem of the Emirs in Egypt was not the search for adopting them as a basis for an Egyptian governmental system—as the English imagined—but was confined to managing the affairs of specific individuals for the duration of their natural lives.

This management required no more than providing a comfortable living for those Emirs who desired it—and most of them sought power and gathered followers only for that—and opening the functions of soldiery and administration to those of their followers who desired them, while striking down the hands of those who refused to settle.

Had the matter been left to Muhammad Ali in the early years of his rule, the problem would have been solved in this manner. But everything proceeded completely to the contrary. While the statesmen realized the truth of the Emirs' position and worked to prevent the sending of boys to the slave markets in Cairo, we see them at the same time rushing to solve the problem all at once by arresting the Emirs to exclude them from Egypt. When they failed in that, due to the intervention of the British authorities, the remaining Ottoman military forces in Egypt were unable to subdue them. Thus were the events paving the way for Muhammad Ali's attainment of the Pashalik of Egypt.

Muhammad Ali came to Egypt with the Ottoman force gathered in European Turkey, which by convention was termed the Albanian force, because most of its men were from among them. Muhammad Ali served in that European Ottoman force and rose quickly in its military ranks, but he was neither of it nor in it for more than that; he was neither Albanian nor was there a close bond between him and them. Rather, the close bond—before Muhammad Ali's investiture and after it, until the Albanian force's influence vanished completely—was between the Albanians and their natural leaders from the men of the Albanian clans and the heads of bands in their country, such as Tahir Pasha, Hasan Pasha, Salih Qawj, and their likes. Muhammad Ali was unique and solitary in his time; no Emir, Vizier, or even Sultan manufactured him; no ambassador or consul presented him, nor even an emperor; he was not the creation of a party or the tool of a group:

A self-made soul that gave mastery to Essam And taught him attack and boldness, And made him a gallant king.

He did not engineer the events of his ascent, nor did he arrange their chapters as an author arranges theatrical pieces. He did not flatter, nor did he pretend to be what was not in his soul or nature. But it was they who turned towards him; they who saw in him the man of the hour. Yet, if their souls whispered to them to make him a means to ends within themselves, the truth was soon revealed to them: that what their souls whispered regarding the use of his talents for their purposes was a delusion. For Muhammad Ali accepted the people's consensus, or quasi-consensus, upon him and assumed the command of the Pashalik with its hardships and privileges. He tasted the sweetness of power and its bitterness, but on the condition that he proceed in it according to a path he himself set, that he bear all its responsibilities, and that no human power should displace him from it: "Here my foot has been planted, and here I shall remain!"

The first governor of Egypt after the French evacuation was Muhammad Khusraw Pasha. His origin was from the Mamluks of the Kapudan Pasha, and this was his first experience with office. He had not yet attained the fame he acquired in the service of the State, nor did he yet understand of the art of military organization more than gathering "individuals" from the mixtures of people and putting their bodies in "swaddled" clothes in imitation of the French army, nor of the art of administration more than cutting off heads and similar rules of "politica."

Khusraw was not strong enough to reorganize the affairs of financial administration after the turmoil, disruption, and wars. Nor was he strong enough to subdue the Emirs, who had laid their hands on Upper Egypt after the English released them. His excuse for that inability was that the Ottoman forces under his command—Asian or European—did not possess cavalry capable of meeting the Emirs as peers. The Emirs possessed Upper Egypt and their influence penetrated to the Delta; this led to a significant decrease in Khusraw's financial resources, just as it led to the disruption of provisioning the people of Cairo. The consequence was that the payment of soldiers' salaries faltered; they rioted and brought Khusraw down from his chair. However, he managed to flee and settle in Damietta, awaiting an opportunity to return. Tahir Pasha, the chief of the Albanians, assumed the "Kaymakam-ship" (deputyship) of Egypt pending the State's decision.

This Tahir originated from the highwaymen in his country. Al-Jabarti described him as dark-skinned, thin-bodied, black-bearded, speaking little Turkish let alone Arabic, with the Albanian language dominating him. He had a mania and distraction, and an inclination towards the distracted, the attracted (majadhib), and the dervishes. His term did not last more than twenty-six days; two Janissaries leaped upon him and cut off his head in revenge for what happened to Khusraw and in protest against his favoring his own countrymen in the matter of paying arrears. Yet this Tahir realized in his short term—despite his mania and distraction—that the Albanians must have allies if they wanted to retain the fruit of their revolution against Khusraw. He corresponded with the Emirs in Upper Egypt and announced his readiness to open the gates of the capital to them and share with them the spoils of rule. The Emirs accepted the alliance and entered Cairo before Khusraw's men could restore the Pashalik to him or to another Ottoman of his type.

During the period of this alliance between the Emirs and the Albanians, the latter contented themselves with collecting all they could usurp of public and private monies, leaving the former the pomp of authority and its misery. Its intoxication went to the head of their chief, Osman al-Bardisi, who imagined the return of the Golden Age and the clarity of days. He moved against Khusraw in Damietta, besieged it, and returned with him as a prisoner to the Citadel. Then, when the State appointed a new Wali for Egypt, Ali Pasha al-Jaza'irli or al-Tarabulsi—a man of ugly conduct, from the men of the Ottoman Maghreb, and an old friend of the Emirs—al-Bardisi lured him towards Cairo and killed him on the way.

Then came the return of al-Alfi—his colleague and rival in leadership—from England. He had traveled there upon the departure of the English army, hoping for the mediation of the British government with the State to pardon the Emirs. Instead of uniting with him, al-Bardisi decided to betray his brother. Al-Alfi escaped the ambush al-Bardisi laid for him with great difficulty. Added to all this was the severe pressure on the people of Cairo, poor and rich alike, for money. When no friend remained to him, the Albanians moved against him and drove the Emirs and their men out of Cairo in a heinous expulsion.

We have noted that when we say "the Albanians," this does not invoke "Muhammad Ali" at all. They—as we presented—had their entity and their own leadership. In reality, in all these events, he stood alone, not the stance of a spectator or the unconcerned; on the contrary, he had his status and his opinions. We mean that he was separated from everyone outwardly and inwardly; he did not move a group, nor did a group move him. His opinion upon the expulsion of the Emirs from Cairo was the restoration of the legitimate Wali, Khusraw, and returning matters to their proper course. But the Albanians refused that, and finally, they set up the governor of Alexandria appointed by the Sublime Porte, Khurshid, as Kaymakam until the State's government should decide on the matter.

Khurshid's difficulties were exactly the difficulties of his predecessors, and his solutions were exactly the solutions of his predecessors: his difficulties were the Emirs sweeping through Upper Egypt, his men's inability to subdue them, the decrease of resources due to the Emirs' seizure of Upper Egypt, and the soldiers' frivolity, rebellion, and assault on lives and property. As for his solutions: absurd expeditions, malicious negotiations, intrigue, pressuring the subjects for money, and seeking the help of wretches from the Kurds of upper Syria called "Dulah" or "Dalatiyya," who were the worst the people of Egypt had seen; and if we say that, we can imagine their reality.

Khurshid sensed the rise of Muhammad Ali's status and the turning of eyes towards him, so he obtained for him from the Sublime Porte the governorship of Jeddah. Muhammad Ali accepted the command, proceeding as he had done, but the successive disasters drove the people of Cairo beyond the limit of endurance. They rallied around their Sheikhs and notables, especially the Naqib of the Ashraf, Sayyid Omar Makram, and joined groups of the soldiers, demanding an end to the wretched state.

The leaders ended up demanding the Pasha resign his position. When he refused, they besieged him in the Citadel, and the two sides exchanged bombardments. Sayyid Omar Makram and his companions considered the Pasha deposed by the will of the leaders of opinion.

On Monday, the 13th of Safar, 1220 AH / May 13, 1805 AD, the crowds proceeded and went to Muhammad Ali and said to him: "We do not want this Pasha as a ruler over us, and he must be deposed from the Wilaya." He said: "And whom do you want to be Wali?" They said to him: "We will accept none but you, and you shall be Wali over us on our conditions, for what we discern in you of justice and goodness." He refused at first, then consented. They brought him a robe (Kurk) and a Kaftan; Sayyid Omar and Sheikh al-Sharqawi stood and dressed him in it. This was at the time of Asr (afternoon), and they proclaimed this that night in the city. This happened despite the opposition of a faction of Albanians who were prejudiced in favor of "Ismail Agha Qawj and Omar Agha."

In Rabi' al-Thani 1220 / July 1805, the State's decree arrived. Its content was addressed to Muhammad Ali Pasha, formerly Wali of Jeddah and currently Wali of Egypt starting from the twentieth of Rabi' al-Awwal, since the Ulama and the subjects were pleased with that, and that Ahmad Pasha Khurshid was deposed from Egypt and should proceed to Alexandria with honor and respect until the order came to him to proceed to some other province.

Thus Muhammad Ali attained the Pashalik of Egypt. There is nothing new in this story; its premises and events were almost annual in the history of Egypt since the Ottoman conquest. What was completely new was that the one who assumed the Pashalik was Muhammad Ali and no other. This alone is the facet of importance in the whole matter.

For Muhammad Ali realized from his first days in Egypt that he had not assumed the command of an ordinary Ottoman Pashalik, but had sat upon the throne of a mighty kingdom where everything around him bore witness to what its kings and sultans had possessed, and that God's providence had handed him the rule of a single nation whose Nile and land yielded abundant overflow, and that the arena was worthy of heroes.

He also realized, with the piercing intellect God had granted him, that the rule of Egypt required pursuing new methods, and that the ways of Pashas and Emirs—spending a lifetime collecting money and scattering it, and consolidating their feet by slitting ears, piercing noses, and cutting off heads—led only to comprehensive ruin. His talents guided him to a policy of another type, by which he would realize the people's hope in him; safeguarding their lives, honor, and property, and ascending with them degrees to what they had not known.

The hour was also worthy of heroism: events had opened the eyes of European politics to Egypt and other Islamic lands. Did not the landing of the French in Egypt precede his investiture? Was not their evacuation from it achieved only with great difficulty and thanks to the assistance of another European power? Did not the Islamic power in India crumble towards final collapse? Did not every Ottoman sense the pressure of European powers on the Ottoman Sultanate and the Russian penetration towards Persia and the Asian Islamic emirates? The matter, therefore, brooked no postponement, and the strengthening of Egypt and Islam required swift action, comprehensive reform, and the force that preserves dignity: the force of iron, money, and knowledge.

Chapter Four

These meanings and their likes raged in Muhammad Ali's chest from the very beginning. He cast his gaze over the arena around him and found it filled with the debris of the past. Thus, he had to carve his path between and around it before he could clear the debris and pave the ground for construction.

Muhammad Ali inherited, among other things from the near and distant past, the fact that Egypt was an object of desire for some powers to possess, and an object of concern for others to prevent such possession. This painful situation, wounding to dignity, was obscured in the years between the French evacuation of Egypt and Muhammad Ali's assumption of its command (i.e., between 1801 and 1805). In those years, the events of the struggle were between France—with General Bonaparte holding the reins of its rule—and a strong European coalition aiming to undo what Bonaparte had established inside and outside France. Bonaparte's entire effort was directed at spoiling his enemies' plan and consolidating his new system.

He succeeded in that greatly; crowning his internal work by declaring the Empire, and defeating Austria and Russia with shattering defeats, linking French conquests to his person through his relatives. However, the success was not complete and the settlement was not final; England had not yet been overcome (and as long as England remained standing, no one held sovereignty over Europe), and his military blows to his enemies on the continent were shattering but not fatal. It had not yet appeared that ties of kinship between rulers were stronger in binding conquests to France than the agreement of interests and sentiments among the governed. The preoccupation of both France and its enemies—as we have described—resulted in an almost total lack of European influence in the events that took place in Egypt between 1801 and 1805, which ended—as we have seen—with Muhammad Ali attaining the command.

There is no truth to what they fabricated about the French Consul searching for a man worthy of the French government's sympathy, finding Muhammad Ali, writing to his government with this nomination, and France supporting this with the Sublime Porte. Nothing of this happened absolutely. The French Consul's concern did not go beyond protecting himself and his compatriots amidst the prevailing turmoil in Cairo. French influence in Constantinople weakened in those years to the degree that the government of the Sublime Porte refused to recognize Napoleon as Emperor of the French, under Russian dictation. The French ambassador withdrew, and relations between the two states were severed for a time. But Napoleon's victory at Austerlitz near the end of 1805, and his tearing apart of the European coalition by forcing Austria out of the war, changed the position of the Ottoman State and Egypt significantly, and Muhammad Ali faced the results of that change after 1805.

Starting from 1806, Napoleon made the vast Ottoman arena an important element in his political and military plans. He worked on what he called "reviving the military and political importance of the Sultan's territories," and sought to instill a spirit of enthusiasm in the Sultan and his government against Russia, and to persuade the Sultan to link his destiny with the French Empire to revive the State's glory. The State accepted to be enthusiastic, but with a measure and calculation: the measure that would repel Russian pressure without binding it to the Napoleonic European organization tightly or finally.

The British government saw—in response to that—that it too should pressure the Ottoman State to help it rid itself of French influence and remain within the sphere of Russian influence. England chose to stage a naval demonstration before the capital, followed by a military occupation of the port of Alexandria if the demonstration failed to induce the State to expel the French ambassador and sever its relations with France. The British argument was that refusing to sever relations meant Ottoman submission to France, and England would then be free to seize what concerned it of the Sultan's land to prevent the whole from falling into French hands.

The demonstration failed, and an English force occupied the port of Alexandria; its Ottoman governor, independent of Muhammad Ali, surrendered it to the English without a fight. Although the British government's instructions to its commander in Alexandria dictated that he should not attempt to penetrate beyond it, and that he should not intervene in what was happening between the various parties in Egypt, the British Consul—who wished the occupation of Alexandria to pave the way for England's permanent settlement in the Egyptian coastal regions—persuaded the commander that provisioning Alexandria with the necessary water and food required occupying Rosetta and establishing protected communications between the two ports. The commander attempted that twice and suffered two ugly defeats at the hands of the Albanians of Rosetta and its people, then at the hands of the forces Muhammad Ali sent from Cairo.

The commander settled in Alexandria until his government ordered him to withdraw from it after the motives that called for its occupation vanished due to the complete change in the situation in Europe. Russia exited the war against France, and not content with that, a treaty of alliance was established between Napoleon and Alexander: the famous Treaty of Tilsit. There were no longer reasons compelling the English to pressure the Ottoman State to please Russia, so England sought to settle its relations with the Ottoman State and decided to work on preserving its entity.

However, if what was rumored about the Emperor and the Czar agreeing to partition the Ottoman State came true, then England in that case would support the legitimate Ottoman government wherever it might be established if it were forced to leave the capital, and would establish, on the other hand, relations of support and assistance with Ottoman governors in Albania and Egypt, for example, to repel the French or Russians from their provinces. The British government proceeded to some extent on this plan in the years following the conclusion of the Treaty of Tilsit, so its direct contact with Muhammad Ali increased, especially in matters of trade relations and the application of maritime war laws and so forth. But it was careful not to exceed that; because the basic condition for adopting the policy of recognizing a special entity for Ottoman units had not been realized. The Treaty of Tilsit was not followed by the partition of the Ottoman State; on the contrary, it was followed by a kind of balance that enabled the Ottoman State to hold together and pass through the period of Napoleonic turmoil safely.

This is because the Russo-French alliance was not, in the view of Alexander and Napoleon, a prelude to vague political projects such as dividing the world between the two giants and so forth, but was on the contrary a means to realize truly great, but perfectly defined, goals. For Napoleon: depriving England of its major European ally, closing the access through which the English penetrated the continent, and setting Russia as a watchdog over Austria, so that he could be free to complete the subjugation and organization of Western and Central Europe. And the price of these Russian services? He naturally wished the price to be as cheap as possible, and to be "words" more than facts. But he had to pay something, and the most he did was to leave the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia to the Russians and to advise the Ottoman State—gently, which it understood perfectly—to concede their possession to Russia.

For Alexander: putting an end to Napoleon's projects in Poland and the Ottoman world. The price of these services was temporarily contenting himself with the possession of the two Danubian provinces and conceding to France a sphere of influence and bases in the Greek islands and on the Albanian coast. The two allies watched each other until the time came to lower the curtain on this interesting chapter of the history of the two men, and Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812, which was the beginning of the end.

All this afforded a kind of balance—as we presented—and provided Muhammad Ali with his first tests of high politics. He knew it in a specific phase of European history that did not represent its natural or normal life most truthfully. It was as if he saw it with the eye of a man seeing machines in a factory rotating madly with workers panting to maintain the speed of rotation as it was, or as if he saw it with a microscope magnifying its parts and revealing its finest features. Muhammad Ali was influenced by that first look all his life; he benefited from it and he lost.

He benefited from it because he understood the secret of movement and that it can change everything. This map of Europe: it seems Napoleon can do with it as he pleases; these are old thrones vanishing as if they did not exist yesterday; and this Napoleonic Empire itself vanished after a while. He also benefited because within that narrow span of years, a great deal of the basic rules in shaping major political relations gathered: British naval superiority, Russia's location and resources, the harnessing and organizing of productive forces to serve moral ends. The movement dazzled him completely, and that coincided with a desire in an aspiring, ambitious soul.

And he lost because he did not see that stillness is also necessary for that major political life, that it is also an effective factor, and that in major political life there is that which pushes towards preventing change and towards holding accountable him who causes it.

Whatever the case, Muhammad Ali's means in the early years did not afford more than opportunities to look out from his Egyptian window. True, the view penetrates from the Egyptian window to very distant horizons, but the means at that time did not allow more than exploring them. It was inevitable at first that he gather those means in his hand at least, and that he build the structure of the new government on a new foundation.

His idea of what the government of Egypt should be was perfectly clear to him: that Egypt must be administered by a single public authority. The fragmentation of authority and its dispersal prevailing before his days had led to the almost total non-existence of the idea of government. This resulted in the formation of private armed bands, resulted in workers neglecting public utilities disastrously, and resulted in everyone who could lay his hand on public funds doing so without hesitation. Indeed, it resulted in a type of thinking that considered government to be nothing but a partnership and sharing in "livelihoods"—or if you will, say: plunder. Explaining this is not difficult.

Our reference in describing this dispersal and fragmentation is the treatise of Hussein Effendi on the Arrangement of the Egyptian Territories, and our reference in describing the mentality of partnership and sharing is al-Jabarti.

The First Example: "Hussein Effendi was asked: From where were the Pasha's revenue and dues? The aforementioned answered: His Highness Sultan Selim arranged for the Pasha a known revenue and dues on the types of spices... and dues on the Emirs and Sanjaks at the time of their investiture, and on the Kashifs (district governors) of the provinces at the time of their appointment, and on customs... and he assigned to him the Halwan(sweetener/succession tax) of the 'villages of the dead' (villages whose tax-farmers died)... And added to this that the Pasha pays a Miri (tax) in return for his dues... etc."

We chose this example because it represents the idea of government and its system in a matter that is ordinary and perfectly familiar to us today: the matter of a salary. For us, the matter is simple: the employee has a fixed salary he receives at fixed times, and the matter ends there. But for them, the matter was complicated in every way. Here—in our present example—is the Pasha of Egypt, the Sultan's deputy and head of the entire administration. His salary has multiple sources: dues on coffee, dues on Emirs upon their investiture, likewise on Kashifs, on customs, on the mint... and when one of the Multazims (tax-farmers) dies and his commitment becomes a "village of the dead," the Pasha of Egypt collects for himself a special fee for transferring the commitment to the heirs of the deceased; this is the Halwan. Then comes the strangest matter: that the Pasha does not only take, but pays on his part to the Treasury a Miri or—as they call it—Kushufiyya, paying money in return for enjoying the aforementioned dues.

This means that the Pasha of Egypt, instead of devoting himself to managing the affairs of Egypt, spends his time collecting for himself, bargaining, accounting, deceiving, tricking, and plundering with the other "beneficiaries" in coffee, scrap, Halwans, and so forth. Furthermore, the Pasha's revenue increases and decreases due to circumstances, some beyond his capacity and some he can create. Take the Halwan of the villages of the dead, for example; an epidemic might spread, death increases among the Multazims, villages of the dead increase, and the Halwan increases. Or nothing of the sort happens, their lives lengthen, and the luckless Pasha's income shrinks. Likewise the matter of dues on appointing Kashifs; does this not imply that the Pasha would not hate—at least—vacating the posts of Kashifs and filling them at intervals that are not too long?! And so on.

The Second Example: We intend by it to clarify another aspect of dispersal. We know that the general rule with us today is that the government does not tie a specific face of expenditure to a specific face of revenue. But for them, the opposite was prevailing—as you see in the following: Hussein Effendi was asked about the Kurkji money... he answered: "The Kurkji money was collected from the villages outside the Miri, and spent on the hire of boats and other things to transport dust from Cairo and throw it in the salty sea... Then after that, laxity and laziness occurred... so they began to eat that amount every year and did not spend it... so the Sultan ordered adding that amount to his treasury..." The explanation is that the Kurkji money (from the Turkish word Kurk, meaning shovel) was a tax imposed on Multazims dedicated to spending on removing dust and so forth from Cairo. Over time, spending this money on what it was allocated for ceased, and it was added to the Sultan's treasury. They kept collecting the Kurkji money from people even though spending it for its intended purpose had ceased. This is the secret of the accumulation and formation of the mounds (kiman) that surrounded Cairo, whose dust and stench harmed the city's inhabitants until Muhammad Ali's government removed them.

The Third Example: We intend by it to clarify another aspect of dispersal and mixing. The rule with us is that the soldiers' task is soldiery. But for them, soldiery was perhaps the least of what occupied the soldiers of the Ottoman Ojaqs (corps). Let us choose the description of two of them: Hussein Effendi was asked about the Cavushan Ojaq... he answered: "They are among the masters of the General Diwan... their service is to attend every Diwan to collect Amiri monies... and the Kethuda(lieutenant) of the Cavushan has dues on the governors of provinces... and the Muhtasib(market inspector) has dues on the causators who did not adjust the scale..." From this we understand that the most important thing occupying the Cavushan corps was collecting Amiri monies in kind and cash, and that the Hisba(market inspection) of Cairo was also their jurisdiction.

Muhammad Ali's first action to gather the elements of authority and its particles to one another, and to establish the public authority which must have all resources in its hand so it can perform the duties of public authority, had to be marked by the appearance of aggression against acquired rights, by the appearance of greed for what was in people's hands, by the appearance of the "destroyer" of prosperous houses, the cutter of people's livelihoods. The work had to be marked by these appearances at its beginning, but in its reality it was otherwise; it was the means of exiting from chaos, poverty, and weakness to order, ease, and power.

If we wish to summarize the description of the stages of establishing public authority using the language of that era, we would say: The first stages were stages of control, detection, verification, and liquidation, especially in matters of Iltizams (tax farms) and canceling those that did not rest on a legal basis or had turned into the benefit of persons or bodies. In those first stages, some Iltizams were re-granted with conditions more favorable to the ruler. As for the second stages, they involved the transition from Iltizam to sequestration (Hajz), then came the dazzling role, the role of turning sequestration into a powerful means for new production, for the Egyptian economic revolution. We confine ourselves in our present place to describing the first stages, postponing the role of production and creation to another place more fitting for it.

The role of control, detection, and verification was violent, arduous, and painful. It was a harsh measure, but inevitable. It was harsh because it struck "the people of houses and the veiled ones (masters of dignity)," but it was inevitable because the old corruption had led to the poverty of everyone, rulers and ruled, and to the existence of a type of government possessing no money enabling it to create an obedient, useful military force, or clean a canal, or maintain a bridge.

Take for example the Rizq (provision lands), originally lands allocated for charity, mosques, fountains, schools, and good deeds, paying very little tax. What did Muhammad Ali find upon examination? He found that the area of those Rizq had increased to a degree that weakened the Treasury's revenues significantly, while he found that spending their yield on what they were allocated for had almost ceased completely. Indeed, people had laid their hands on them and exploited them entirely for their own benefit. Let us quote al-Jabarti on this; for he is the one most pained by the plan of cutting off people's livelihoods. He said: "Those laying hands on them do not pay to their destinations nor to their beneficiaries except what was arranged and decided from the first ancient time, which is a small thing... and the one who has under his hand some of the lands of these Endowments (Awqaf) and whose offspring inherited it after him, cultivated it and shared it believing in its ownership... and they do not see any right in it for anyone but themselves..."

Let us leave this and move to the corruptions of the Multazims of the land, the village Sheikhs, the collectors, and the Copts. We quote on this also from al-Jabarti, who was resentful of Muhammad Ali's method: "The peasants with the Multazims were more humiliated than a bought slave... It was among their curious ways that if the time of harvest and greening came, the Multazim or his Kaymakam requested the peasants, and whoever stayed behind for an excuse, the guard or the Mashad brought him and dragged him by his mustache and satiated him with insults, curses, and beating... This is other than the humiliation and control they meet from their Sheikhs and the witness and the Christian Sarraf (cashier)... especially upon collecting money, he cheats them and denies them..."

Muhammad Ali intensified the plan of control, detection, and verification as much as his severe need for financial resources dictated; to face the continuous, increasing demands of the Albanian soldiery, to buy the support of the statesmen for him and keep him in his position, and to execute his plan to solve the problem of the Emirs, which was based in sum on settling them in Cairo and Giza in a comfortable life. Among his means to increase resources were some industrial monopolies and undertaking commercial operations on a wide scale.

The industrial monopolies were at first purely financial, not differing from monopolies Egypt had known in almost all phases of its history. But they would transform at Muhammad Ali's hand into something else Egypt had not known before him—they would transform into a basis for a completely new industrial and political-economic renaissance. As for the commercial operations, they were due to the years 1809, 1810, and 1811 being years of famine in the Mediterranean countries. Since the English had armies in the Iberian Peninsula, Malta, Sicily, and the Greek islands, they turned towards Egypt to provision the armies and the people of those countries. They found that Muhammad Ali possessed large quantities of grain (since Upper Egypt's taxes were collected in crops), and that he alone could gather large quantities by purchase from producers and was ready to sell them at a suitable price. Deals were concluded.

The facet of importance in this subject is what appeared to Muhammad Ali of the benefits of expanding the scope of foreign trade after its status in the Egyptian economy had diminished greatly, so he decided to take this as another base for his economic policy.

These resources enabled him to face his difficult position, but they increased his loneliness and isolation. He looked around him in those days and found no one he could involve with him in his hopes and projects. The virtuous Ulama had long inclined to distance themselves from public life matters... Al-Jabarti represents this most truthfully; an honest man of precise understanding and fairness... but sad and resentful... "Had God granted him [Muhammad Ali] something of justice... he would have been the wonder of his time and the unique one of his era." Something of justice in his view was not touching acquired rights based on usurpation and waste.

Muhammad Ali overcame the holders of acquired rights, but complete victory over the Albanian clans and their leaders was not feasible without a regular military force under his command. Such a force cannot be created overnight. He used to curb the Albanians and their leaders all he was given of the magic of personality and the ability to push some Aghas against others, and all the financial resources in his hand. He succeeded in that only a limited success; the Albanians continued their looting, rebellion, fighting, and seditions.

Worse than that, their leaders were the ones who plotted the treachery against the Egyptian Emirs, staining his hands—he, the man who detested massacres and deplored savagery and force in all their manifestations—with their blood in the Massacre of the Citadel in the year 1811. Since Muhammad Ali was too great to burden others with the responsibility of an act completed with his approval, he committed himself to silence and did not refer to the origin of the treachery and its reality. That treachery was the basic condition for the Albanian leaders' acceptance to travel to fight the Wahhabis in the lands of the Arabs. They were in their old dread of the Emirs, and could not distance themselves from Cairo... leaving their loot and harems at the mercy of the Emirs. Since they were incapable of fighting the Emirs in the field, they saw treachery and intrigue—two basic elements in their type of warfare—and bound Muhammad Ali to agree. We say: had Muhammad Ali's share in this event been the share of the organizing commander, the execution would not have been completed with the precision it was.

The non-disclosure of the secret of the plot alone—despite the participation of a large number in the planning—indicates that the organizers were executing their own plan, and that Muhammad Ali's share was only acquiescence to what his nature refused and what contradicted his course until 1811 in solving the problem of the Emirs.

With this bloody chapter ended the first years of Muhammad Ali's government. They were years of struggle, violence, destruction, substitution, and modification. They were years he did not love, and in some of their events, we do not love for him.

When Prince Pückler-Muskau visited him later and remarked that the events of his early history were not perfectly known, Muhammad Ali said to him: "I do not love that period of my life. My true history began when I broke my chains and started to awaken this nation from the slumber of ages."

Chapter Five

The problems faced by the luminaries of Islam—whether men of thought or men of action—varied according to their eras and environments, and according to their times and places. These problems also differed in their gravity or complexity, and in whether they were generally Islamic or specifically Islamic. The problem Muhammad Ali faced was among the greatest faced by any of these luminaries; it required him to decide on grave matters: Upon which rules should he establish his society? Upon the old traditional rules, or upon the rules which the progress and power of Western society pointed towards adopting?

And by what standard should he measure when choosing between the two? By mere pure utility? Or by observing the proximity or distance from new or old Islamic thought? We know that "the Halal is clear and the Haram is clear" is a good practical rule, but it does not solve every problem of distinguishing between types of Halal. The problem also required him to decide on determining his plan regarding the place of the Ahl al-Dhimma(non-Muslim subjects) in this society of his, and in determining his relationship with those under treaty.

Finally, he had to arrive at a decision on another matter: What place does he occupy in the Ottoman World?

Let us begin our inquiry from the last point we reached, and let us state what we see in it without ambiguity: Muhammad Ali began, lived, and ended as an Ottoman Muslim, and his mission—as he defined it from the very beginning to the end—was the revival of Ottoman power in a new garb. In this stance, he is similar in every way to Saladin and his likes among the luminaries who attempted to revive a section or a world of the sections or worlds that comprise Dar al-Islam. However, he differs from him and from them in an important matter; they undertook revival or attempted it for a purpose other than his: their purpose was to continue the Jihad against Dar al-Harb(the Abode of War). As for him, the idea of Dar al-Harb had faded; he aimed to find a place for his living Ottoman world in the new world created by the economic revolution, to connect its parts and make it a true unity despite national rivalries.

Muhammad Ali’s relations with the central government in the Ottoman world passed through disparate phases. We are not concerned now with explaining those phases, but it concerns us to say: the disparity of their phases does not weaken anything of what we have posited regarding his continuous striving to revive Ottoman power with his own hands. He did not care, in any phase of his life, about what his official position ought to be: Should he be the Sultan of the State, or a regent, or a guardian, or a deputy? No. He cared only about one thing: Can he perform his work or can he not? And he demanded only one thing: to be enabled to realize his purpose without concern for titles and appearances.

An Egyptian might ask: And what is the worth of Egypt in his thinking and goals? The answer to that is: Its worth in his eyes is as great as the greatness of the entire project. It is the heart of the living body he desires to see, and its sons are his aides in the great construction. It received the greater share of his love, as they received the greater share of his love. He continued working night and day to understand its needs and answer the call of its history and the requirements of its location. But he refused to make of it a small, narrow world with limited horizons and weak hopes, just as he refused to be the pickaxe of destruction in the Ottoman world, even if the destruction was named "independence" and the motive driving it was named "national partisanship."

He was the best one to know that the rupture of Ottoman unity meant the scattering of its power and parts, and the falling of the parts, piece by piece, under the rule of Western states. Fanaticism in all its forms was the most hateful thing to him.

Muhammad Ali limited his field of action to the Ottoman world and did not cast a glance at what lay beyond that world of Dar al-Islam except within the limits of emotion and what the location of the Two Holy Sanctuaries within the scope of his rule required in terms of facilitating the performance of the Pilgrimage and bestowing charity upon the poor Muslims. His matter in this is like the matter of all the luminaries of Islam since approximately the first century; they accepted reality and worked within its limits. Who knows what would have happened had time been extended for Muhammad Ali to realize the revival of the Ottoman world in the manner he envisioned?

We can be certain, at least, that that keen intellect and that soul which refused anything but dignity would have inevitably devised means to serve Islam and Muslims in the East and West of the earth, not on the basis of unity of dominion—for that had become impossible—but on the basis which Professor Sheikh Muhammad Abduh excelled in summarizing: "That their Sultan, all of them, be the Quran, and the direction of their unity be the Religion; and every possessor of dominion over his dominion strives with his effort to preserve the other as much as he can; for his life is by his life and his survival by his survival." This is the truthful statement regarding what was rumored about projects to revive the Caliphate and what relates to it; we summarize it now to return to it in detail in the place of detail.

As for the discussion of the means of reviving the Ottoman world, it is in another sphere; the sphere of the embodied, the prominent, the clear-featured. We summarized the depiction of these means when we said: they are the forging of the power of Iron, Knowledge, and Money. He adopts from them what establishes a "base of operations"—as we hear in these days—in Egypt and the complementary or necessary regions connected to it or the neighboring regions. From this base, influence is exerted on the territories of the Ottoman world not under his hand, as well as influence on the plans of the central Sultanic government towards reform, progress towards glory and independence, and towards contribution and participation in world events and movements through taking, giving, and exchange. He thereby affords the nations of the Ottoman world a basis for their union, and makes of that world a society in which the Arab, the Turk, the Greek, and the Slav can live a life of work and dignity, and in which the Muslim and the non-Muslim find a scope where difference of religion does not prevent work and cooperation for the benefit of all.

And after all this, what drove the man towards those goals for which he wore out his body and mind in winning? And for which he was bereaved of two sons in the prime of youth and many who were like sons to him?

Rifa'a [al-Tahtawi], the "philosopher" of the Muhammadan Alawid Renaissance, said: "Muhammad Ali was sound of heart, truthful of tongue, trustworthy in his conduct, wise in his actions, generous to the extreme, keen on the prosperity of the land, loyal in his association, keen on the affection of his clan, soldiers, and subjects, endearing himself to them. Although he was quick to anger in some situations, he was quick to be pleased, an ally of forbearance, forgiving of the offender, bold in storming terrors, patient in adversities, intensely keen on the honor of his name (namus), strong in acumen, quick in perception. His thought roamed in distant matters, insightful in mental arithmetic, wondrous in intuition, strange in deliberation. He learned reading and writing in the shortest time when he was forty-five years old; to make up for what he missed in the time of youth and to rectify what would increase his glory in the time of old age. He desired to peruse histories, especially the histories of conquerors like the history of Alexander, Peter, and Napoleon, while persisting in reviewing the Frankish Gazettes(newspapers).

"He was a possessor of physiognomy; if someone spoke before him in a foreign language, he understood his intent from looking at his movement and gesture. He consulted the wise and the learned in most of his affairs. He was active, loving movement and hating laziness and idleness, sleeping little and waking quickly, waking mostly at dawn to hear for himself the petitions presented to him daily in the morning and giving an answer to them, then going to inspect the Amiri constructions of which he was fond.

"He was religious to the point of moderation, without nervous zeal or strictness. He forgave the people of other sects and nations in his country their adherence to their beliefs and customs which the purified Sharia permitted. He was the first to give Christians entering Amiri services for their necessary benefits the privileges of civil ranks. He preferred action to speech, meaning that if he wanted to arrange a regulation containing a benefit for the nation, he commenced it with the intent of experimentation and conducted it little by little by way of reform and refinement. If it proceeded among the subjects and became capable of accepting the factors of effectiveness, he clothed it in the garment of arrangement and order and brought it from potentiality to actuality within the law of principles and rulings; because it used to be said: The best speech is that which is verified by good action.

"He was fond of building structures, planting saplings, paving roads, reclaiming farms, and perfecting crafts and works. He desired to expand the circle of commerce and win over the minds of the locals to attract them to what contains the gain of skill and proficiency... like one picking up an orphan separated from his parents to save him from perdition... And the subjugation and facilitation he obtained in seizing Egypt indicates good intention and purity of conscience, as if the confirmation of the Hadith guided him to this station: 'Work, for everyone is facilitated for what he was created for.' His habit in caring for the affairs of advancing Egypt was sincerity and good intention, so his works were built upon that. His intention was sincere, so the breezes of acceptance blew towards him, and he achieved—through nobility of soul, high ambition, sincerity of work, and realization of the hoped-for—what he achieved."

Let us extract from Rifa'a's words these principles. Perhaps the basis of all his qualities was what Rifa'a expressed by saying: "intense keenness on the honor of his name (namus)." It is the quality that refused him anything but glory and rising above base things and dedicating himself to great matters. It made him loyal, forgiving, truthful of tongue, trustworthy. It also made him bold, patient, loving movement, hating laziness and idleness. As for his most prominent mental qualities, they are what he expressed in saying: "strength of acumen and speed of perception."

Muhammad Ali hated extravagance, waste, and negligence with a hatred that reached the point where he considered them tantamount to disbelief (Kufr) in God's blessing.

He said in one of his decrees—those enjoyable decrees in which he expresses all that roams in his soul—: "Our attainment of a peerless homeland like this is among the immense blessings, and failure to undertake striving and diligence in its development would be the very essence of ingratitude for the blessing, and this is what the traits of my nature do not accept, and my soul refuses that I be a partner to you in that." Perhaps you have noticed the application of the description "charitable" (Khayri) to many of his establishments; he intended by it "good" (Khayr) in a broader sense than usage dictates. Building a bridge or maintaining a dike almost rises in his view from "public works" or "labors" to the rank of worship and acknowledgment of the blessings of the Creator, Mighty and Majestic. We understand by this the secret of what Rifa'a observed: that "Egypt's public benefits took firm hold in the Muhammadan Alawid Self, and reigned over his heart and possessed the depths of his mind," and that he acted exactly according to what was narrated from the Prophet (peace be upon him): "He who does not carry the concern of the Muslims is not one of them."

The Sultans of the Ottoman State in that era—Selim, Mahmud, and Abdulmejid—cared for their state, but on what basis? Was it on the Muhammadan Alawid basis: forging the power of Iron, Money, and Knowledge? They attempted only to forge the power of Iron: creating a military force trained on the European pattern and establishing absolute rule by crushing factors of separation. As for developing resources, its path was the plan of granting foreign financiers this concession or that by exploiting a mine or managing a port or a railway or post; and these are shackles with which Sultans fettered their hands and the hands of their subjects.

In sum, the Sultans did not find a solution to their state's basic problem, which is—as we presented—transforming it into a society in which nations combine to realize common goals and cooperate—freely, voluntarily, willingly—in adversity and prosperity. This explains the Sultans' stance towards Muhammad Ali's plan: exploiting the man as much as possible, plotting against him as much as possible, then the explicit attempt to crush him. They did not succeed in crushing him, but they succeeded in spoiling his project. The State proceeded towards what Muhammad Ali had predicted for it: total dissolution. And the word of this Ottoman world scattered into what we see today.

In the Arabian Peninsula—in that era—and in other isolated parts of Dar al-Islam, there were other Islamic movements of significance and danger, such as Wahhabism and the streams that flowed from it into old and new regions of Dar al-Islam.

Their great goal was reviving the Salafist life. The goal has its value, and no society worthy of the name can dispense with what pushes it towards the Salaf(ancestors), just as it cannot survive if it considers itself in a permanent war against its present and against its future. Muhammad Ali respected, and indeed used, the religious groups that began to form and become active at the time of the Wahhabi resurrection in spreading Islam and refining and elevating the life of the people in the Sudanese regions.

But Wahhabism and its plans in his era were intolerable. The looting of Shia shrines in Iraq and the Prophetic Garden (Rawda) in Medina, and the aggression against the peaceful in the Peninsula, Iraq, the Levant, and the Arab seas, were things that could not be overlooked; so war was inevitable. If you want an example clarifying that "distress" which could not be borne—especially if it carries a sword—you find it in what Sheikh Muhammad Rashid Rida stated in Al-Manar, denouncing the celebration of Muhammad Ali's centenary in mosques, elucidating Muhammad Ali's misdeeds, the greatest of which was his fighting the Wahhabis and his eliminating "that reform."

Europe also cared about Islam and Muslims in general, and the Ottoman world in particular. It cared about it and them due to the entanglement of material and moral interests which sometimes dictated a policy of acquisition and sometimes a policy of distancing. The manifestations of European interest are not something that can be summarized in a single formula; rather, they become clearer when studied in conjunction with events in the place of detail. However, it is correct for us to pause in our present place at an important issue regarding it, which is the following: Did European thought in that era expand to search for foundations upon which true cooperation worthy of the name could stand between Dar al-Islam and Europe? There were Muslims at that time who took this step and saw it as a possible, necessary matter. Did anyone in Europe take it at that time?

We do not include in the elements of the issue the striving of some European scholars and non-scholars to understand Islam and Muslims to facilitate the task of the European ruler in an Islamic country, or to supply foreign ministries with impartial facts and so forth. Nor do we include in it the striving of proponents of social doctrines based on European social evolution who desire to find in Dar al-Islam a field for their propagation. Indeed, we do not even include what bears a tinge of lack of connection to a purely European interest or European idea, such as the engagement of some Europeans with issues of the Caliphate, or creating units within the scope of Dar al-Islam based on rules of unity of language, neighborhood, or culture, or the like, or reviving traditional Islamic arts or customs.

We exclude these movements from our definition of the issue, not because we do not see the good intention in them, nor because we do not value their importance, nor because we do not believe that in some of them lies what creates a face for cooperation between Muslims and non-Muslims; we exclude them for one reason: because they all fall under the heading of European benefit in its comprehensive sense. We have postponed the discussion of European benefits of all types and results to the place of detail. Our issue is based on the recognition of Islam for itself and as it is, and accepting it as it is in a global organization. Our answer to that is: Europe in the era of Muhammad Ali was not ready for that.

Its view and plans towards Islam and Muslims were all based on the rule of various European interests. This is due to two reasons: First, the belief of Europeans at that time that the mission of Islam had ended, and that there was no hope for Muslims except by adopting from European society the idea of "Movement" and abandoning the idea of "Stillness," as it also returns secondly: because the idea of global organization had not yet moved at that time into the realm of practical political inquiries.

Chapter Six

Muhammad Ali accepted the adoption of the idea of "Movement," not on the premise that the mission of Islam had ended, but in realization of an ancient law of the evolution of the Islamic nation: the necessity of an incentive—be it a call or a partisanship—that drives the nation from a state of stillness to a state of movement. The source of the incentive may be internal or external, but its effect is always akin to the effect of leaven in dough; imparting to it a secret of the secrets of movement.

He expressed his adoption of the idea of movement, and the fact that it is accomplished at the hands of the elite of the people who lead and are not led, who know their destination and head towards it, in the best of expressions. He said in a speech in his final days: "What I mention of the conditions of the world must be known to you in general; namely, that the people of nations described as possessing power and ability were not originally owners of the capability and affluence they are upon now. Rather, each of them was proceeding upon an old pattern, then there appeared among them afterwards individuals of the 'People of Attention' (Ashab al-Intibah) who began to urge them with means until, due to the fruits of their striving and diligence in their right, they knew the value of the love of homeland, and that was the cause of its progress".

Accordingly, the work undertaken to forge the power of Iron, Knowledge, and Money to establish what we termed the "base of operations" in the Ottoman world had conditions. The first was the readiness to accept what suited the interest from the methods of others. This is achieved by "Mixing" (Mukhalaṭa) in some manner, and the readiness—within limits, of course—to pay the price of that mixing, for "the Other" does not serve merely for the love of one's eyes. The second condition: working to create the "Elite" through various means of upbringing and formation. The third: devising "Tools of Stabilization," or adopting all possible measures to make the innovations an integral part of the society’s entity, aiding the action of time.

"Mixing" was a fundamental condition for transferring from others. Rifa'a [al-Tahtawi], the "philosopher of the Renaissance," counted it among the greatest things Muhammad Ali undertook. He said: "Had the late Muhammad Ali no other virtue but renewing Egyptian mixings with foreign nations after the Egyptian nation had weakened by its severance for long periods and numerous years, that would have sufficed him. He removed from it the malady of loneliness and isolation and familiarized it with the connection to the sons of other kingdoms and lands to spread scientific benefits and gain precedence in the field of 'progressiveness'".

This mixing gave a new status to foreign communities which Egypt inherited among the things it inherited from the era of Muhammad Ali. Europeans lived in Egypt before Muhammad Ali’s era for limited purposes and under specific regulations. Their trading houses were primarily agents for various European companies and bodies solely licensed by the Great Powers to export to and import from Egypt. Their residence was subject to two sets of regulations: the bylaws of the monopolistic companies, and the Capitulations issued by the Sultan. Both sets underwent essential modification in the days of Muhammad Ali.

The French Revolution and the great economic upheaval demolished the first set; the monopolistic companies like the Levant Company were abolished, and trade became free for individuals. Consequently, the consuls of the Great Powers acquired the character of official representatives of their governments, and engaging in trade was forbidden to them. Thus, the doors were opened for encouraging immigration to Egypt, settling in it, earning a livelihood, and investing capital there. Foreign communities came to have a significance in the life of Egypt and its people completely new.

As for the second set of regulations (the Capitulations), they remained textually unchanged but were applied in circumstances completely different from those for which they were drafted. They were applied in times that knew the immigration of thousands of foreigners to Egypt, permanent settlement, and the pursuit of livelihood in all aspects. They applied to the coming of the engineer, doctor, journalist, and teacher for free work or government service; to the owner of the small shop or large factory; to banks and major "businesses"; and to the spread of foreigners in the Egyptian countryside and cities.

Muhammad Ali realized the benefit of this mixing for his plans to forge Iron, Money, and Knowledge. Indeed, he realized it was absolutely necessary. He believed that his personal authority sufficed instead of establishing new international agreements, and that it protected his nation from the damages of applying sixteenth-century treaties in nineteenth-century conditions. And we praise Muhammad Ali that he did not think of restricting the freedom of individuals of his people in benefiting or not benefiting from that European mixing, abstaining in his magnanimity from that detested color of despotism which refuses but to pour the nation’s spiritual life into the mold the State desires for it.

He loved for his people what he loved for himself: that they be "learners." He desired his people in general, and the "Elite" he worked to form in particular, to be so.

That "Elite" is the "Turkish-speaking Aristocracy" of holders of military, administrative, and technical positions. It was Muhammad Ali's creation. He formed it from diverse elements: Mamluks, free men from the Ottoman world, from Egypt and its Sudanese provinces, or from the captives of Morea. He sponsored them from their tender youth, raised them, educated them in his schools in Egypt, and sent some of them to Europe. There were also those who joined this aristocracy as adults; they became attached to him and he to them, and he entrusted them with the dearest thing he possessed: leading his nation on the right path.

Thus, that elite was not Turkish in flesh and blood, but its tongue was Turkish, either by nature or acquisition. Its members were stamped, despite their diverse origins, with the Ottoman stamp in etiquette, household organization, and ways of living. The men of the elite were not all Muslims; some were Copts or Christian Syrians and Armenians. However, they all agreed on one thing: that Muhammad Ali was for all of them the "Wali al-Ni'am" (The Benefactor / Lord of Bounties). He undertook their education, invested them with state offices, bestowed upon them generous livelihoods of money and land, honored them, and even chose wives for them from the palace daughters and bondmaids.

The French politician Boislecomte once inquired of the famous Boghos Bey the Armenian about his health, and he answered: "I am well because the Wali al-Ni'am is well." But Muhammad Ali placed his relationship with them not on the basis of master and mastered, but on another basis: the relationship of a father to his sons. He expressed this beautifully in a speech he gave in 1263 AH (towards the end of his rule), which can be considered his "Political Testament": "Know that I have approached the age of eighty, and I do not wish anything for myself... my abandonment of sleep and rest... is only for the sake of your happiness and reforming your condition. Since I raised you all from your young age, taught you reading and writing... and brought you to the degrees you are in, and accepted you as my children and became a father to you in truth; it is incumbent that you do not refrain from accepting me as a father to you..." .

He hopes for them and from them all that a father hopes for and from his sons. He treats them with leniency at times and with severity at others. When one of them did well, he rejoiced with the joy of a father at his son's beneficence, not just a chief at a subordinate's. And when one fell short, it pained him with the sorrow of a father for his son's falling short of his hope.

Muhammad Ali began with the formation of this aristocracy a new phase in the organization of Islamic government. The Ottoman State had developed a precise system for creating the instrument the Sultan used to rule his subjects—or more correctly, to lead the flock. Professor Arnold Toynbee likened it to dogs which the shepherd scrutinizes in selecting and breeding to be the "right hand" in leading the flock and protecting it from predators. The Ottomans knew how the "dogs" eventually turned against their shepherd. Muhammad Ali adopted from the Ottoman systems the necessity of creating the effective Elite and binding it to the ruler, but the resemblance stops there. The Muhammadan Alawid elite was formed only to a limited extent from Mamluks and slaves, and only in his early era. Later, Muhammad Ali proceeded on the method of selection—or "screening" as termed at the time—from among the students of his educational institutes.

Since the affairs of the state included purely technical matters, there was no meaning in making Islam a condition for those who undertook them. Muhammad Ali’s employment of non-Muslims differed completely from their employment by many ancient Muslim rulers. For those ancient rulers, the motives were often corruption or fear of their own people. The matter was the opposite in Muhammad Ali’s state; strict technical competence was the criterion. He was too rational to be influenced by fanaticism of one race against another. He knew that the Governor of Alexandria had failed in his duty to celebrate the funeral of Boghos Bey, the faithful Director of Foreign and Commercial Affairs, so he wrote to him rebuking him: "I do not know the motive for that... The meritorious services Boghos Bey performed in some 41 years are not hidden from you..." .

And how could it be reasonable for his plans to be influenced by fanaticism for one race over another? He was too prudent to give weight to what was not in reality a merit, such as one's birth in a certain homeland. Such fanaticism leads to depriving work of those suitable for it. Therefore, there was no fanaticism against Egyptians and no preference for others over them. The doors of the "Aristocracy" were open to them. What was rumored about their deprivation from leadership positions in the army and navy due to their Egyptian-ness is a matter that needs dispelling. No army in the world at that time—even the armies of the French Revolution—knew the prevalence of the plan of promotion from the ranks to leadership ranks. The officers of European armies belonged to the middle class or the nobility. In Egypt at that time, the wealthy or middle class had not yet accepted the military profession for their sons. This aversion is what caused the vacancy of leadership posts in the Egyptian army from Egyptians, not a ban by Muhammad Ali .

Muhammad Ali grieved to see Egyptian minds go to waste, so he resolved to save for Egypt that mental wealth. Hussein Chalabi, a man from Rosetta, invented a rice-hulling machine. He presented a model to the Pasha, who was pleased with it and rewarded him. Al-Jabarti says: "When the Pasha saw this ingenuity from Hussein Chalabi, he said: 'There is nobility and capability for knowledge in the children of Egypt.' So he ordered the construction of a school in the courtyard of the Palace and arranged in it a number of the children of the country..." Thus, the establishment of schools began because Muhammad Ali saw the nobility of Egyptians and their capability for knowledge .

Some scholars of that time feared contact with Western science, adopting a passive plan which European scholars termed the "Wahhabi Plan". But Muhammad Ali faced the problem of culture in general and education in particular with a spirit of moderation, prioritizing utility over theories. He avoided dictating to people, just as he avoided separating systems. He did not make "the certificate" the sole key to entering an institute, nor did he know anything but an Arab Islamic culture everywhere, to which he added technical preparation in specific places .

Muhammad Ali proved a fundamental matter: that education is an affair of the State, which it guarantees whatever the cost. Yet, he left individuals and communities a great measure of freedom, which is the most precious thing he bequeathed in his educational policy.

Money—in its broadest sense—is obtained by developing resources for production. We have seen how Muhammad Ali raised the development of resources to the rank of gratitude for God's blessing. He develops resources because he cannot bear to see ruin, and because he wants to teach, to build armies and fleets, to revive a stagnant world. He asks for nothing for himself; his taste is that of elegant simplicity.

Professor Massignon defined the Islamic ideal in economic matters as standing midway between capitalism and communism. The Islamic position resembles capitalism in not having the State undertake economic projects, leaving limited freedom. Muhammad Ali smashed the old agricultural system which was a "system of duties, not a system of rights". He abolished the Iltizam, but maintained the State's hegemony over agriculture because it was the source of sustenance and the financier of the new foreign trade . He initiated the policy of perennial irrigation.

The matter of industrial monopolies resembles the matter of agricultural policy: starting for the sake of revenue, then transforming into a bold plan to introduce large-scale industry to Egypt. He did this at a time when the "Manchester School" in England advocated free trade and specialization. Visitors like Cobden criticized him, but he realized that national safety and the formation of skilled workers required industry regardless of profit and loss calculations .

He planned to add industrial production to agricultural production to grow the material of Egyptian foreign trade. He realized with wondrous perception that his country's location was unique. He said in a document: "Regarding its geographical position, it is a region and a harbor for the people of the inhabited world, amounting to some 600 million souls". He personally supervised foreign trade to direct imports towards basic needs and to finance his projects (Iron and Knowledge). He understood the political elements in the growth of commercial relations; realizing they are a way for the East to recover its self-respect and confidence.

Force, in his view, was only a means, not an end. He solved the problem of creating a military force by adopting the French solution: general conscription. Since the scope of his policy was the entire Ottoman world, the importance of naval power appeared to him clearly. He built a fleet, and when it was destroyed at Navarino, he immediately decided to build a new one in the Arsenal of Alexandria.

The Saint-Simonians praised the man who combined the Sword and the Machine in one hand. Their leader Enfantin said: "In Egypt, the ruler controls agriculture, industry, trade, sciences, arts, the army, and the navy... curbing the forces of stagnation and unleashing the productive forces" . But Muhammad Ali's own expression was simpler and truer: "I laid my hand on everything, but only to make everything fruitful... I had to lead this country with the leadership of children" .

It was noted that Muhammad Ali managed to do all he did without falling into debt. The secret was that he deprived himself and his subjects of most of their profits, reinvesting them. We mention this to remember Muhammad Ali and the generation of Egyptian peasants of Muhammad Ali's time with gratitude; for they toiled that we might be happy, and labored that we might enjoy .

Chapter Seven

That generation of Egyptian fellahin also bore the burdens of executing the grave project: the project of reviving the Ottoman World. Muhammad Ali had sketched it out since the early days and proceeded in its execution with steady, deliberate steps. His design was present in his mind, even if it remained hidden from his contemporaries and historians, and his striving to realize it was continuous, even if it appeared at times—in the language of speech or the language of action—to deviate towards another goal. That apparent deviation was but the method of the skillful politician adjusting the appearance to gain the substance, or the skilled commander turning his face in another direction in a flanking maneuver to reach his original objective.

The secret behind the obscurity of the project to Muhammad Ali's European contemporaries and his modern historians lies in the fact that the base which Muhammad Ali took as a foundation for his work—namely Egypt—is great in itself. It is perfectly valid for it to be a dominion standing by itself and for itself, entitled to possess, but for itself and in accordance with its needs. It was—at that time—a part of a whole, but a part capable and entitled to be the Whole. This positioning of the entire issue is the contemporary European positioning for Muhammad Ali, adopted by modern historians—however much this may astonish them.

The difference lies entirely in the formulation and in attributing the rights of conquest and domination to the Egyptian "Whole." This is a relative matter; contemporary Europe wanted the conquest and domination of the Egyptian "Whole" to be in the African wilds, or—when it was generous—in some Eastern and Western Ottoman Pashaliks for a time, preferring in any case that "the Pasha" devote himself to making his miserable subjects happy. His historians, meanwhile, want the Egyptian "Whole" to have everything it can stretch its hand to, yet they all agree that Egypt is a world standing by itself.

Contemporary Europe could not make Muhammad Ali as it wished, nor can we make him as we wish. The man was as he was—not a collector of Pashaliks, but a genius man who grew up in a world with a unique location, whose ambition soared to restore vitality, status, and biography to that world, reconciling its past and present, harmonizing its needs with the needs of humanity at large. Contemporary Europe saw that its interests dictated keeping that world in its current state, so it rallied to spoil the project and ensure its failure .

Muhammad Ali belongs to a phase of human thought that knows only one basis for organizing political life: the Unity of Civilization, or what we might call: the Unity of Historical Adherence. This unity does not contradict the separation of homelands, nor does it conflict with people's attachment to their particular homelands. It conditions only that the Whole should not vanish into the Parts; thus, the growth of a part to revive the Whole does not harm it. This type of political organization does not necessarily require unity of government; it sometimes suffices with general systems other than government, which may be religious, cultural, legal, and so on .

Under the shadow of this type of political organization, the methods of its leaders vary according to the circumstances of their times. Some attempt to prevent the establishment of political unity, keen on the independence of their part. Others attempt to strengthen the part to influence or steer the general political authority through it when it exists. Still others may destroy that general authority or transfer it to themselves. This concerns internal relations within the Unity. As for external relations, the leaders' point of view also varies by virtue of circumstances; some are influenced by the idea of preserving the type of civilization, so their work turns to Jihad; others are influenced by the idea of extending the dominion of civilization through colonization; while others attempt—in the shades of peace—to develop economic and cultural relations, and so forth .

This is the example of the world in which Muhammad Ali and other luminaries of Islam grew. We chose Saladin from among them to approximate our idea of Muhammad Ali, noting then that he took Egypt as a base to revive Dar al-Islam for war, and we distinguished between him and Muhammad Ali for that reason. Now we present another example, chosen from another world: the Greek world after the death of Alexander. The luminary we shall study agrees with Muhammad Ali in that the base from which he worked was Egypt.

The historian of Ptolemaic Roman Egypt, Professor Pierre Jouguet, said in his analysis of Ptolemy I's policy: "To create from Egypt a rich, strong kingdom, Ptolemy worked to annex to it its natural complements: Cyrenaica in its west and Syria—especially its southern parts—in its east; because Egypt imported from Syria what it needed of timber and metals. He also worked to dominate the trade routes that ended at Alexandria or the Red Sea harbors... Consequently, he sought to link his kingdom with the nearby islands: Crete, Cyprus, Rhodes, and the islands of the Archipelago... as well as attempting to extend his influence to the cities of the Phoenician and Anatolian coasts..." .

It is clear from all this that this policy is incompatible with the survival of the unity of the Macedonian Empire politically, and works always to prevent the return of that unity by fighting anyone seeking to establish Alexander's state anew. The Ptolemies preferred a unity of another kind: a Unity of Culture, hence the University of Alexandria (Musaeum).

In both cases, Muhammad Ali's position differs from Ptolemy's. It differs firstly in that Muhammad Ali and his subjects belong to one world. It differs secondly in that the Ottoman world is connected to Europe on one side and to the other regions of Dar al-Islam on other sides; thus, safety lay in unity, not in fragmentation, and power and welfare lay in the administration of a diverse dominion—possessing the shortest routes between East and West—by a single mind .

With this conception of the Muhammadan Alawid plan, we overcome all difficulties encountering us in understanding his actions and dispense with "inventing" interpretations for them. We do not need, when speaking of his campaign in Arabia or his suppression of the Greek Revolution or his conquests in Sudan, to say: "He could not disobey the Sultan's order at that time," or "He wanted to get rid of this group of soldiers," or "He wanted to find gold." All of this—and its likes—belongs in the history of "Deys, Beys, Pashaliks, and leaderships," not the history of Muhammad Ali.

He crushes rebels or revolutionaries because he is working to revive the Ottoman world, and because the revival is his plan and the work is his work.

In the period of the balance of power following the Treaty of Tilsit, and on the coasts and lands of the Arabian seas which formed the vague borders of the Ottoman world, Muhammad Ali's first actions to revive Ottoman power took place. Since the State became unable to oust the Portuguese and subsequent European seamen and merchants from the Arabian seas, and since it abandoned the coasts of Yemen in the mid-seventeenth century, it had left the affairs of the Arabian seas to their people and to European colonialism. Various types of Arab authority grew in the regions of the Persian Gulf, the southern coasts of Arabia, and the coasts of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean in Africa and Asia. These sheikhdoms, emirates, and sultanates became isolated from general Ottoman political and economic life .

The Sultanate’s government had a vague type of sovereignty rights, exercising them from several bases. The first base: the Vilayet of Jeddah... The second base: the Pashalik of Egypt... The third base: the Pashalik of Damascus... The fourth base: the Pashalik of Baghdad... . From these four bases, the Ottoman government worked to ensure that those Arabian seas would not be an artery of commercial movement, but stagnant "pools," as weak governments always fear the policy of movement.

But then came the Wahhabi explosion; the Sultanate’s government could not close its eyes to that movement and its effects as it used to do with tribal movements. The Wahhabi call, Wahhabi raids in all directions on land and sea, and Wahhabi domination of the Two Holy Sanctuaries were all new things that could not be left to run their course. The State issued orders to the holders of bases in Damascus, Baghdad, and Cairo to undertake the task. The holders of Baghdad and Damascus refrained or were incapable, and the holder of Cairo undertook it starting from 1811.

The holder of Cairo did not refrain nor was he incapable. A vast arena opened before him, worthy of exerting ambition, piercing vision, and broad hope. The Arabian seas and their coasts were fundamental parts of the Ottoman world, shamefully neglected by the Sultans. They are the arteries of life between East and West; they had hardened, and blood must flow in them anew. Behind those coasts in Africa were scattered, lifeless parts of Dar al-Islamthat must be connected to each other and to the Ottoman world. These horizons opened before Muhammad Ali from his first years in Egypt.

But the first duty was securing the Hijaz and driving the Wahhabi power back to its original home. He entrusted his son Tusun with the command of an expedition... Tusun and his men experienced what we might expect for a youth with no military experience at the head of bands of Albanians... Muhammad Ali was forced to travel to the Hijaz himself. He spent a long time there in which the recovery of the Two Sanctuaries was completed. These months he spent in the lands of the Arabs gave him firm knowledge of various Arab affairs... and Mecca the Honored was an excellent center for study and reconnaissance .

After his return... he moved to the second stage of his Arab plan, the mission of which was removing the political and military authority of Wahhabism by seizing Nejd. His eldest son Ibrahim undertook this mission... and entered Diriyah, the base of the Wahhabi Sultan .

Years of stability and preparation followed... The advance towards the East to the Persian Gulf and towards the South to Yemen was halted by two things: first, waiting for the formation of regular military forces... and second, using his irregular forces in other conquests inspired—as we presented—by the Red Sea policy. He intended conquest in the regions extending behind what we knew as the Vilayet of Habesh (Abyssinia), or what moderns know as the Conquest of Sudan .

Moderns know it by this name because they view it in the light of more than a hundred years of Egyptian-Sudanese evolution. As for us, we attempt to view it with the eye of that era. We cannot ignore the orientation of those Arab emirates in Sudan at that time towards the Red Sea and the Arabian Peninsula in general, and Mecca in particular: the source of their spiritual life and their market for material needs. Connecting the Conquest of Sudan with the growth of the Muhammadan Alawid plan in the Arabian Peninsula and its seas is historically more precise and accurate than connecting it—as moderns do—with the purely Nilotic idea.

We cannot claim that the Muhammadan Alawid rule in Sudan moved a people from darkness to light, but it led to something no less important than that: it created from scattered emirates and tribes a new Islamic homeland. It prepared for this new homeland a future and an existence between the regions of the Abyssinians and primitive tribes and the regions of European encroachment which had begun to approach the heart of the continent from the coastal fringes. Then, it linked this new homeland to the greater Ottoman world and to present human life. Egypt was the link in that connection. This is what Muhammad Ali offered and this is what Egypt offered .

Then the Greeks staged their revolution. The Sultanate’s armies and fleets moved, as did Muhammad Ali’s armies and fleets, to suppress that revolution. With this, a new chapter in Muhammad Ali’s policy began; a chapter enabling him to discern two fundamental matters: First, the extent of possible cooperation between him and the Sultanate’s government in reviving Ottoman power. Second, the stance of European powers towards him and the Sultanate .

Muhammad Ali subdued the island of Crete... then directed the grand campaign under the command of his son Ibrahim: his new Egyptian army and his first fleet. The first objective of the campaign... was clearing the islands and cleaning out the pockets and dens spread within them to secure maritime communications, then attempting to land in the Morea (Peloponnese)... He finally seized the opportunity of the Greek sailors' mutiny against their government... and transported his armies to the Morea... Ibrahim marched from one victory to another until he completed the sweeping of the Morea and moved from it to other Greek regions north of it .

When it appeared to Europeans that the flame of Greek liberty would be extinguished in a sea of blood, the Powers moved to positive action... Russia, England, and France agreed in the Treaty of London (July 1827) to impose an armistice... The Sultan refused European intervention completely... The crushing of the revolution had passed from the Sultan's hand to Muhammad Ali's hand... so the endeavor turned towards him.

Finally, when the wait grew long, he ordered the departure. The fleet sailed on August 6... The Allies forced the Egyptian and Turkish fleets to remain inside the Bay of Navarino, then seized the opportunity of a clash between sailors to destroy those fleets... Russia declared war on the Ottoman State... and France landed an expedition on the coast of Morea, so no reason remained for Muhammad Ali to stay, and he ordered Ibrahim to withdraw and return .

The Greek Revolution passed with its lessons. It became clear to Muhammad Ali that the Sultanate’s government understood working with him only in terms of exploiting him to the utmost limits. It also became clear to him that Europe, despite differing passions, might unite. And it became clear to him thirdly that to bargain, he must have in his hands that with which and upon which to bargain... and finally, that England... its motto was: "Let every day suffice its own evil" .

He formed fundamental considerations during the ten years we have presented... His trust in the possibility of establishing a joint policy between Cairo and Constantinople diminished. His belief increased that Mahmud and his men were marching straight towards the abyss... He saw that France had begun expanding the circle of conquest in Algeria... and saw Russia consolidating its influence and dictating its will to the Sublime Porte... In this state of affairs, what should Muhammad Ali do? .

The English and French advise him not to be the initiator of Eastern crises... and to be content in his home... But he did not have everything he needed for the safety of his country and the salvation of his work. Regret filled him and his heart was torn with sorrow whenever he advanced in age and the specter of demise flashed before his eyes. Demise of what? Demise of the arsenal, the fleets, the factories, the schools, the institutes... inevitable demise if this heritage passed to a Pasha of the Sultanate's Pashas who would squander and ruin it. There must be guarantees against demise. There must be Movement .

These guarantees are material and moral... Spreading his direct authority in other regions of the Ottoman world protects their dominion from the evil of the Sultanate's government... What are those regions? The four Levantine (Shami) provinces: Aleppo, Tripoli, Damascus, and Sidon, and some coastal regions in Arabia... In sum, what would be—in Muhammad Ali's expression—Arabistan... .

The Egyptian army entered the territory of the Vilayet of Sidon... in 1831. The army and fleet advanced towards Acre and besieged it... Ibrahim stormed the walls... seized Damascus... defeated the Ottoman army at Homs... occupied Aleppo... then defeated a second Ottoman army at Belen. Two plans lay before Muhammad Ali: either advancing to threaten the Sultan in the base of his dominion... or waiting for a settlement approved by European powers .

Ibrahim advised the first plan and separation... His father replied that he had attained what he attained through moderation... and reminded his son that there were powers stronger than the Sultanate... The second plan's harm was that it gave the Sultanate a chance to recover... Muhammad Ali knew that, but he also knew he could overcome those armies again, and this is what happened .

European policy began to move... The Sultan mobilized... and what Muhammad Ali expected happened: Ibrahim defeated the Grand Vizier Reshid Mehmed with a crushing defeat at Konya in December 1832. The road to Constantinople opened... but when he reached Kütahya, his father ordered him to stop. The cause was Russia's intervention... The Czar offered the Sultanate assistance... The Sultan yielded in the end... ceding the rule of the Levant provinces to Muhammad Ali .

The Sultan yielded, but he breathed poison into the agreement... He concluded the Treaty of Hünkâr İskelesi with the Czar (July 1833)... England hated it, and hated Muhammad Ali with it... It decided to oppose Muhammad Ali everywhere... It stood against him in Yemen, then seized Aden, and threatened him not to approach the Euphrates or the Persian Gulf... .

Muhammad Ali met the vulgarity with disregard... and met petty hostilities by rising above them. In the worst times... he protected the interests of their subjects with the utmost precision... In 1842, British merchants struck a gold medal engraved with his image and recorded on it his noble protection of English interests .

Muhammad Ali proceeded in the years following the 1833 settlement on the path of seriousness. He attempted to do in the Levantine provinces what he had done in Egypt: to establish a single public authority whose motto was tolerance... But the matter was not left clear for him; Consuls opposed him... and behind everyone was the British Embassy in Constantinople and the Mabeyn (Palace)... The Sultan's eye did not sleep... so he began mobilizing armies... And Muhammad Ali had to be ready too .

Finally, the Ottoman army crossed the Euphrates in April 1839... Ibrahim attacked the camp of Hafiz Pasha at Nezib and destroyed the Ottoman army (June 1839). Shortly after, the Sultan died and the Ottoman fleet surrendered to Muhammad Ali... But the five Powers presented a joint note... Lord Palmerston struck his blow: he concluded the famous Quadruple Alliance of England, Russia, Austria, and Prussia (July 15, 1840) .

The treaty stipulated granting Muhammad Ali the hereditary Pashalik of Egypt and southern Syria for his life... then graduated in reducing the grants to the point of reclaiming everything by force of arms if he did not submit... France met the treaty with a storm of protest... Thiers advised Muhammad Ali not to submit but not to attack... It was a wretched advice... .

Politicians realized it was time to put an end to the use of brute force... They welcomed the agreement concluded by Commodore Napier with Muhammad Ali in November 1840... By it, Muhammad Ali pledged to evacuate Syria and return the Ottoman fleet in exchange for being granted the government of Egypt on a hereditary basis. On the basis of this agreement, the Imperial Firmans of 1841 were issued, defining the status of Egypt .

With those Firmans, the era of the Egyptian Khedivate began... Although Muhammad Ali failed to realize his grand project: the revival of Ottoman power; he succeeded in laying the foundations of the Egyptian State on a firm basis .

Chapter Eight

Muhammad Ali put an end to the dispersal and fragmentation of authority and established the New State, to which all submit, and which guarantees the duties of the State in the modern era. Its motto—indeed, its spirit—was Tolerance. This was not because it stripped itself of religious character, nor because it limited its circle of action to the boundary of worldly interests, nor because it was established upon a type of separation between Religion and Politics. Rather, this was due to his consideration that social life in the modern era had evolved in a way that practically allowed the acceptance of the idea of cooperation to realize political and social purposes among people who differed in religion but were bound by ties that were Islamic in their reality. The values counted upon in shaping the behavior of individuals and the work of the government remained Islamic values .

Muhammad Ali put an end to the idea of partnership and sharing in public funds and plundering them, and established in its place the work of reviving dead lands (Ihya al-Mawat). Ruin halted at a limit, then retreated before the advance of development (Umran). This required, at its beginning, the restriction of individual liberty; for Muhammad Ali rejected the idea that man can do as he pleases with what his right hand possesses. He emphasized the duty of the Ruler to direct individual efforts towards social ends. In this, he departed from the limit drawn by some thinkers of his age who restricted the duty of government to the task of observation and protection only when necessary. We have known that the prevailing practical considerations justified his stance completely, and we have realized that his plans—despite the precautions taken—would eventually lead to the loosening of shackles and the removal of obstacles from the path of free exchange and free individual efforts .

The restriction of individual liberty for the interest of the community was confined to the economic sphere and did not exceed it to the sphere of spiritual life in any of its aspects. The Ruler left it free of all shackles; there was no authority in it except for Conscience and Religion. Is this not the most precious type of liberty? Indeed, is it not Liberty itself? .

He put an end to armed bands and established the National Army in their place. His idea was that an individual should not bear arms except by the permission of the Sultan and for the purposes of the Sultan. The community was thereby rid of turmoil, sedition, and internal war, and became a nation possessing the instrument of a dignified life.

As for the Sultan's tools, they are the known major and minor government administrations. As for his Basic Law, it is an unwritten constitution, composed of old principles and new principles, deriving its unity from the will of Muhammad Ali. This will flows through the workers, great and small, at the hands of the Elite of men he worked to create and perfect throughout his days.

But what would be the state after his death? He acquired for his sons the right of inheritance of his dominion—true, this was less than he hoped, but he retained for them that upon which they could build in more favorable circumstances. His hope was that his sons would proceed upon the path he paved, assisted by the Elite he created. This is his Political Testament; let us put it in his own words. He said, addressing the men of government: "You will receive from my family—as you received from me in terms of attention and raising of ranks—as long as life lasts. Whenever they see your manners and conditions proceeding according to the manners previously explained, they will know your value time after time, and they will start saying: 'They served in the time of our fathers and grandfathers thus, and trod the path of truth and rectitude, such that if they saw an inappropriate matter, they opposed them in its procedures out of regard for the principles of truth.' This is a bright proof of their service in our days in this form... and they will know your degree and value and increase your honor naturally, as the duty of the necessary to the necessitated" .

Does Muhammad Ali assume in this testament of his that his successors will weave upon his loom, and that they will find in their Elite what he found in his Elite of gratitude, trust, and compatibility of inclinations and goals? Is this something that can be built upon?

Before we answer this question, we must not miss stating a truth: that written basic laws are not sufficient for their survival nor for their vitality—and vitality is better than mere survival—just because they are written. They may survive or not, and they may be alive or not. The important thing is that they lean upon moral and material forces. Upon what did Muhammad Ali's unwritten law lean? It leaned upon the spread of his developmental ideas in minds, and upon the fact that those ideas had transformed from the program of one man into a national program. It also leaned upon the fact that the meanings of Glory, Dignity, and Honor had expanded to signify the Glory of the Homeland, the Dignity of the Homeland, and the Honor of the Homeland. Those are the moral and material forces; they have become realities, and they are the best foundation for any constitution .

That is Muhammad Ali, and the work of Muhammad Ali.

He once said to his friend, the Englishman Dr. Bowring: "Do not wonder if you see me at times hasty and lacking patience. I have been in all my life successful and fortunate; I must have been born while the ascendant was happy and the star was smiling, and the happiness of the ascendant and the smile of the star have not left me since." He was a radiant personality—radiant in states of pleasure and anger, in work, in major interests, and in the affairs of every day. He was a human personality who did not affect what was not in his nature; delicate of feeling, sensitive, manifesting in major feats and in minor courtesies.

He wrote to his son Sa'id to emulate his teacher Faris Effendi and to adopt his morals, due to their goodness. Then he alerted his son not to eat with him, because Faris Effendi disapproved of the innovation of using a fork and knife, so the son should avoid what might pain the teacher's feelings. Do you see the delicacy of courtesy? .

When age advanced upon Habib Effendi, the Director of the Khedivial Diwan, Muhammad Ali was forced to relieve him of service and assigned his work to his grandson Abbas. He wrote to Prince Abbas: "Since the aforementioned Effendi is among my dearest beloved friends, one should not go to the Diwan and remove him from it and send him to his home in front of the world. Rather, the necessary thing is to send the order inside an envelope to his home at night or to communicate with him." And he wrote to Habib Effendi himself the following: "You are aware of my gratitude towards you regarding the services you performed with all truth and rectitude in this long period... However, due to suffering hardships in striving... lethargy and emaciation have befallen your body. Therefore... matters contrary to the affairs of their functions befell the officers of the Diwan... So to compose these men to proceed with goodness... I appointed my grandson Abbas Pasha... And as a reward to you, your retirement shall be with your full salary, retaining your decoration, and attending my presence in the days of ceremonies as you were." Do you see, again, the delicacy of courtesy? .

He wrote to a high government official that he learned his grandson Abbas had killed a baker, noting that his grandfather had previously emphasized to him not to betray the people. He stated he was moved by this, "because it is known that the aforementioned is his grandson and the heir to his dominion after him; so if these are his actions in the state of his youth, how can he judge with justice when he assumes the seat of government? He emphasizes to this High Official to awaken him... out of mercy for his old age, otherwise let them be certain of their erasure and removal." Souls were not cheap in his view .

And he wrote to his son Sa'id: "It is incumbent upon you to harmonize with those who have knowledge of the new principles... and to care about learning those principles from them; so that it is not said that Muhammad Ali is of bad character" .

Muhammad Ali said in his final days: "I did not hope nor expect to reach the positions we have reached today. My hopes are now beginning to increase; therefore, it is easy for me to sacrifice one of my ruling family for the three million souls for the sake of the development and reform of the Homeland, which is my utmost desire" .

Let us end our speech at this; at the Hope that always increases, and the Work that does not stop at the limit of Sacrifice.

"And say: Work; so God will see your work and His Messenger and the believers, and you will be returned to the Knower of the unseen and the witnessed, so He will inform you of what you used to do." .

Explore Our Cultural Heritage

Explore Our Cultural Heritage

Discover Our Cultural Treasures

Our Mission

Explore our vibrant cultural heritage through images

Muhammad Ali The Great

Muhammad Ali The Great

Downloads

Contact Us

Drop us a line!

We appreciate your contact, let us hear from you

kavalalimehmetalipasa

Explore Our Cultural Heritage

Explore Our Cultural Heritage

Discover Our Cultural Treasures

Our Mission

Explore our vibrant cultural heritage through images

Muhammad Ali The Great

Muhammad Ali The Great

Downloads

Contact Us

Drop us a line!

We appreciate your contact, let us hear from you

kavalalimehmetalipasa

This website uses cookies.