The
Grand Square or Place Muhammad `Ali Pasha
is named after (many spelling variations,
including Turkish Mehmet Ali (Kavalali
Mehmet Ali Pasa), are encountered) (c.
1769 - August 2, 1849), a viceroy of Egypt,
and is often cited as the founder of modern
Egypt. Muhammad Ali was an Albanian Ottoman
Turk born in the village of Kavala, in
what is now part of Greece. After working
for a time in his youth as a tobacco merchant,
Muhammad Ali took a commission in the
Ottoman army. In 1798, Napoleon invaded
the Ottoman province of Egypt and destroyed
the Mamluk rulers' army at the Battle
of the Pyramids, but soon thereafter withdrew
from the country in order to pursue other
military ventures, leaving behind a portion
of his occupation forces who would withdraw
from Egypt several years later. The Ottoman
Sultan sent a military expedition to re-conquer
Egypt, but the ethnic and political divisions
within the ranks prevented them from operating
effectively for very long.
When
the troops' salaries were delayed, some
of them mutinied, and many turned to banditry,
which the scattered Mamluks were unable
to control. With the Mamluks out of power,
the French army decamped to other lands,
the Ottoman troops despoiling the countryside,
and no local authorities assuming control
of matters, Egypt was thrown into a power
vaccuum. Muhammad Ali, a young officer
who had come to Egypt with the Albanian
contingent of the expeditionary forces,
stepped in to fill this vaccuum by establishing
a local power base of village leaders,
clerics, and wealthy merchants in Cairo,
and by killing or expelling three successive
governors sent from Istanbul. With no
one else able to hold the office in safety,
he was appointed Ottoman viceroy of Egypt
in 1805. Muhammad Ali spent the first
years of his rule fighting off attempts
to unseat him, and extending his personal
authority over the whole of the province
of Egypt.
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