Muhammad ‘Ali (1769-1849) was the Ottoman vicegerent of Egypt following the French occupation of Egypt from 1798-1801 who seized control of Egypt from the weakening Empire and declared himself Egypt’s leader, or khedive. He was a reformist who rapidly modernized Egypt’s military by cultivating a skilled Egyptian elite educated in European academic institutions. Among Egyptian nationalists he is remembered and revered as the “Father of Modern Egypt” comparable to Turkey’s Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Some of his sweeping reforms include land appropriation, the introduction of cotton and integration of Egypt into European (especially British) markets at the expense of the Ottoman Empire, the creation of a modern Egyptian army and navy, and the establishment of numerous European-style educational institutions. He also sent dozens of Egyptian students to French universities, who again reoriented Egyptian intellectual life away from Ottoman culture to French culture.
Among his greatest legacies was the introduction of a central bureaucracy and coercive state in which the government regulated the lives of its people in a radically new way, including census-taking, conscription in the army, forced labor, vaccinations for children, and increased taxation. These changes set the tone for the modern Egyptian state (as much as military and other reforms), in which Egyptians would find themselves at odds with often coercive, regulatory state authority up until today.
Sources:
Khaled Fahmy, “The era of Muhammad ‘Ali Pasha, 1805-1848,” The Cambridge History of Egypt, Volume 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 139-179.
Image Credits:
"Mehemet Ali Viceroy of Egypt," Auguste Couder (1790–1873), Bibliotheca Alexandrina, from Wikimedia Commons.
