Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Early Modern: Ottoman Egypt (1517-1867)
Early Modern: Ottoman Egypt (1517-1867)
Napoleon defeated the Mamluk troops in the Battle of the Pyramids, 21 July 1798, painted by Lejeune.
After the French were expelled, power was seized in 1805 by Muhammad Ali Pasha,
an Albanian military commander of the Ottoman army in Egypt. While he carried the title
of viceroy of Egypt, his subordination to the Ottoman porte was merely nominal. [citation
needed]
Muhammad Ali massacred the Mamluks and established a dynasty that was to rule Egypt
until the revolution of 1952.
The introduction in 1820 of long-staple cotton transformed its agriculture into a cash-
crop monoculture before the end of the century, concentrating land ownership and shifting
production towards international markets.[41]
Muhammad Ali annexed Northern Sudan (1820–1824), Syria (1833), and parts
of Arabia and Anatolia; but in 1841 the European powers, fearful lest he topple the Ottoman
Empire itself, forced him to return most of his conquests to the Ottomans. His military ambition
required him to modernise the country: he built industries, a system of canals for irrigation and
transport, and reformed the civil service.[41]
He constructed a military state with around four percent of the populace serving the army to raise
Egypt to a powerful positioning in the Ottoman Empire in a way showing various similarities to
the Soviet strategies (without communism) conducted in the 20th century.[42]
Muhammad Ali Pasha evolved the military from one that convened under the tradition of
the corvée to a great modernised army. He introduced conscription of the male peasantry in 19th
century Egypt, and took a novel approach to create his great army, strengthening it with numbers
and in skill. Education and training of the new soldiers became mandatory; the new concepts
were furthermore enforced by isolation. The men were held in barracks to avoid distraction of
their growth as a military unit to be reckoned with. The resentment for the military way of life
eventually faded from the men and a new ideology took hold, one of nationalism and pride. It was
with the help of this newly reborn martial unit that Muhammad Ali imposed his rule over Egypt. [43]
The policy that Mohammad Ali Pasha followed during his reign explains partly why the numeracy
in Egypt compared to other North-African and Middle-Eastern countries increased only at a
remarkably small rate, as investment in further education only took place in the military and
industrial sector.[44]
Muhammad Ali was succeeded briefly by his son Ibrahim (in September 1848), then by a
grandson Abbas I (in November 1848), then by Said (in 1854), and Isma'il (in 1863) who
encouraged science and agriculture and banned slavery in Egypt. [42]