All the Pasha's Men

Mehmed Ali, his Army and the Making of Modern Egypt

Khaled Fahmy

• Publisher: The American University in Cairo Press
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781617972379
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Geschichte des Nahen Ostens

While scholarship has traditionally viewed Mehmed Ali Pasha as the founder of modern Egypt, Khaled Fahmy offers a new interpretation of his role in the rise of Egyptian nationalism, firmly locating him within the Ottoman context as an ambitious, if problematic, Ottoman reformer. Basing his work on previously neglected archival material, the author demonstrates how Mehmed Ali sought to develop the Egyptian economy and to build up the army, not as a means of gaining Egyptian independence from the Ottoman empire, but to further his own ambitions for recognized hereditary rule over the province. By focusing on the army and the soldier's daily experiences, the author constructs a detailed picture of attempts at modernization and reform, how they were planned and implemented by various reformers, and how the public at large understood and accommodated them. In this way, the work contributes to the larger methodological and theoretical debates concerning nation-building and the construction of state power in the particular context of early nineteenth-century Egypt.

1 Between Sultan and vali: Syria and the nature of Mehmed Ali’s military expansion

In 1825 in a frank and candid interview with one of his French military advisors Mehmed Ali is reported to have said

I am now the most important man [l’homme du jour] in the entire Ottoman Empire. I have returned the Holy Cities [of Mecca and Medina] to the true believers; I have carried my victorious armies to places where the power of the Grand Signor [i.e. the Ottoman Sultan] was not known, and to places whose people had still not heard of gunpowder. My right arm, my son Ibrahim, will conquer Morea and the moment his mission is crowned with success, I shall call him back and return these lands to their legitimate master. I will call back my forces, raise [new] conscripts, complete my regiments and then grab the pashalɩks of Damascus and Acre . . . I will organize une grande armée and I shall not stop except at the Tigris and Euphrates.

Startled at the frankness and seriousness of this monolog, the French visitor said that the Pasha, in addition, confided in him his desire to invade Yemen and the Strait of Bāb al-Mandab, occupy the Port of Sawākin on the western coast of the Red Sea, “cover the entire Arabian peninsula with his troops and plant his banners in el-Katif on the Persian Gulf.”¹

Less than ten years later these words would prove to be most prophetic. In 1833, indeed, Mehmed Ali appeared as the most important vali in the Ottoman Empire, his strength and resources favorably competing with those of the Sultan himself. By the mid-1830s the Pasha had carved a small empire for himself at the expense of the Sultan’s own dominions. After firmly entrenching himself in Egypt he extended his control to Syria, the Hijaz, the Sudan, Crete and most of Yemen and Eastern Arabia, that is, most of the Sultan’s Arabic-speaking lands and some of his wealthiest provinces. Having wiped out two huge armies that the Sultan had mustered to confront him with, his forces then penetrated the heartland of the Ottoman Empire, Anatolia, and threatened the capital itself.

Before seeing how these spectacular campaigns were conducted a word is in order as to the reasons behind Mehmed Ali’s undertaking this extensive, unprecedented military expansion. Studies of Mehmed Ali almost invariably proceed in a chronological order following him as he conducts one campaign after the other, starting with his early expedition against the Wahhabis in the Hijaz (1811–18), then tracking him to the Sudan (1820–22), from there to the Morea (1824–27), and ending with his climactic confrontation with the Sultan and the European powers in his most ambitious and significant campaign in Syria (1831–41).² Portrayed in this chronological manner Mehmed Ali’s career immediately seems consistent, purposeful and progressing teleologically towards a climactic, well-thought-out goal, which Egyptian historians have consistently argued to be the seeking of independence from the Ottoman Empire. At the heart of these narrations and occupying central stage (sometimes literally as was shown in the Introduction above) Mehmed Ali appears as a solitary, romantic hero who was ahead of his time, little understood by his own people and betrayed by his allies, but who, through perseverance, persistence and insight was determined to fulfill his civilizing mission of pushing Egypt into the modern age and of lifting her out of what is perceived as centuries of Ottoman stagnation, tyranny and oppression.

Looking at Mehmed Ali in this light most historical accounts that follow his military career chronologically share a number of assumptions which are sometimes explicitly, at other times implicitly, stated. One is that right from the beginning of his career Mehmed Ali was never content with ruling Egypt alone; and that he was set on extending his control over neighboring provinces, taking Egypt as a base for further expansion. In other words, this chronological narration implicitly assumes that Mehmed Ali, in addition to working stoically and persistently towards achieving independence for Egypt from the Ottoman Empire, also had a “master plan” that guided him in his efforts in achieving this goal.

This chapter attempts to check whether Mehmed Ali did in fact have such a “master plan” for expansion, and if he did, whether achieving independence was the motive force behind his incessant activities. It proceeds with a brief review of how Egypt’s military expansion in the first half of the nineteenth century has been explained by various historians. Then it seeks to place this military expansion within a wider Ottoman context. For reasons that are mentioned below, the Syrian campaign is reviewed in some detail to show how Mehmed Ali was responding to, and was influenced by, developments in the Ottoman Empire at large.

Understanding the Pasha’s military expansion

In dealing with the different campaigns that Mehmed Ali engaged in individually rather than as episodes that could fit in a grand strategy most historians acknowledge the fact that every one of these campaigns was dictated by unique historical causes. The Hijaz campaign, for example, besides being a response to the Sultan’s order to subdue the Wahhabi rebellion,³ is seen as serving a number of the Pasha’s own aims. Among these were the desire to get rid of the turbulent and undisciplined mamluk and Albanian troops in his army,⁴ the hope to get Syria as a reward for helping the Sultan in his war against the Wahhabi rebels,⁵ and the desire to win fame and prestige in the Muslim world for capturing the holy cities of Islam from the rebellious Wahhabis who were seen in Istanbul as heretics and whose rising power in Arabia had allegedly caused the annual pilgrimage to cease.⁶

The Sudan campaign is considered to have provided the Pasha with an opportunity to rid himself of even more of the undisciplined and quarrelsome Albanian troops who had survived the Wahhabi wars. The Pasha might also have been lured by the alleged abundance of rich gold mines in Sinnār. More important was the need to conscript the black Sudanese in the army he was contemplating and which he had already undertaken the first steps to create. Finally, Mehmed Ali was also eager to be rid of the remnant of the mamluk forces who had taken refuge in Dongola and whom he considered a constant source of menace.⁷

The Greek campaign, like the Hijaz campaign, is seen as a response to an order by the Sultan to subdue the rebellion that erupted among some of his subject population and to his inability to deal with such a challenge by relying solely on the forces of the central government. Like the previous two campaigns, this one is seen as having its specific reasons as well. The most important of these was the desire on the part of the Pasha to mask his true intentions of invading Syria,⁸ a desire to increase his own influence in the Ottoman capital,⁹ and also to revitalize Egypt’s Aegean trade, disrupted by the Greek revolt.¹⁰

The Syrian campaign, the most important of the Pasha’s wars, is seen to have a number of interrelated causes. On the one hand, Mehmed Ali felt that after all the help he afforded to the Porte in subduing both the Wahhabi and Greek revolts he was entitled to a handsome reward,¹¹ and during the Morean war he had, in fact, asked for the four pashalɩks of Syria to be given to him as that most coveted reward. Once the Morean war was over, however, it became clear that the Sultan (under the influence of Mehmed Ali’s arch-enemy, Husrev Pasha)¹² decided to turn down the Pasha’s request and Mehmed Ali was determined to take by force what, by then, he considered to be rightly his.¹³ Other reasons are cited for this most important of Mehmed Ali’s campaigns. Among them was his desire to create a buffer-area between the heartland of his dominions in the Nile valley and the center of Ottoman power in Anatolia,¹⁴ as well as his realization that the Ottoman Empire was decaying and his wish to fill the gap that would ensue from the decline of its dominion by engaging in a “delicate diplomatic balance between England and France by playing one against the other.”¹⁵ Pretexts abounded, the most important of which was a quarrel with ‘Abdallah Pasha of Acre whom Mehmed Ali had accused of giving refuge to some 6,000 Egyptian fellahin who, in an attempt to evade taxes, had fled across the borders to neighboring Syria.¹⁶

Most historians, therefore, highlight the different causes behind the various campaigns that the Pasha was engaged in. Nevertheless, they are in agreement in arguing that he had always desired to extend his dominions out of Egypt and that he was seizing the various opportunities that he was offered to achieve this goal. The clearest in expressing this idea is Dodwell who argued that “[f]rom the day when the idea of seizing the government of Egypt first occurred to him as a practical measure he had probably always nursed the thought of ruling, not on behalf of another but as an independent sovereign.”¹⁷ In a similar fashion Driault says that the P...