An Albanian tax collector's rise made him the founder of modern Egypt
Muhammad Ali arrived in Egypt in 1801 as a junior officer in an Albanian unit sent to reclaim the country after the French left. Four decades later he ruled an empire stretching across Sudan, Arabia, the Levant, Crete and Cyprus, and had won his family a hereditary claim to Egypt that lasted until 1952.
He was born in 1769 in an Albanian village and grew up in Kavala, in what is now Greece, the second son of a tobacco and shipping merchant who also commanded a small Ottoman unit. Raised by an uncle after his father died, he proved so good at collecting taxes that he was made second commander of the volunteer contingent sent to Egypt, landing at Aboukir in spring 1801. Even his name divides historians: those stressing his Egyptian role write Muhammad, while those stressing his Ottoman roots prefer Mehmed.
The French withdrawal left Ottoman troops and the weakened Mamluks, who had held Egypt for more than 600 years, fighting for control. Muhammad Ali played both sides with his loyal Albanians, courted public support, and in 1805 leading scholars demanded that the sultan make him governor, which the Ottomans accepted. In 1809 he exiled his former ally Umar Makram. On 1 March 1811 he invited the Mamluk leaders to the Cairo Citadel for a ceremony honouring his son and had them killed there, then sent troops to break the remaining Mamluk forces.
With rivals gone, he rebuilt the state. He took over the old tax-farm lands, taxed previously exempt religious endowments and made the government the sole buyer and seller of produce, profiting heavily from a new cash crop, long-staple cotton. Irrigation was expanded with forced peasant labour, even as average wages rose fourfold. Cairo factories made muskets and cannon, and an Alexandria shipyard produced nine 100-gun warships by the late 1830s. Students went to Europe to learn French and translate military manuals, and returned to help found schools and hospitals.
His armies retook Arabia for the sultan and conquered Sudan, though European intervention at Navarino wrecked his campaign against the Greek revolt. Twice he turned on the sultan himself, in 1831 and 1840, only for European powers to force him back. The settlement of 1842 made rule over Egypt and Sudan hereditary for his descendants.
Source: Muhammad Ali of Egypt
