Muhammad Ali (4 March 1769 – 2 August 1849) was the Ottoman viceroy and governor of Albanian origin, who became the de facto ruler of Egypt from 1805 to 1848, widely considered the founder of modern Egypt. At the height of his rule in 1840, he controlled Egypt, Sudan, Hejaz, the Levant, Cyprus, Crete and parts of Greece and transformed Cairo from a mere Ottoman provincial capital to the center of an expansive empire.
Born in a village in Albania, when he was young he moved with his family to Kavala in the Rumelia Eyalet, where his father, an Albanian tobacco and shipping merchant, served as an Ottoman commander of a small unit in the city. Ali was a military commander in an Albanian Ottoman force sent to recover Egypt from French occupation following Napoleon's withdrawal. He rose to power through a series of political maneuvers, and in 1805 he was named Wāli (governor) of Egypt and gained the rank of Pasha. As Wāli, Ali attempted to modernize Egypt by instituting dramatic reforms in the military, economic and cultural spheres. He also initiated a violent purge of the Mamluks, consolidating his rule and permanently ending the Mamluk hold over Egypt.
Militarily, Ali recaptured the Arabian territories for the sultan, and conquered Sudan of his own accord. His attempt at suppressing the Greek rebellion failed decisively, however, following an intervention by the European powers at Navarino. In 1831, Ali waged war against the sultan, capturing Syria, crossing into Anatolia and directly threatening Constantinople, but the European powers forced him to retreat. After a failed Ottoman invasion of Syria in 1839, he launched another invasion of the Ottoman Empire in 1840; he defeated the Ottomans again and opened the way towards a capture of Constantinople. Faced with another European intervention, he accepted a brokered peace in 1842 and withdrew from the Levant; in return, he and his descendants were granted hereditary rule over Egypt and Sudan. His dynasty would rule Egypt for over a century, until the revolution of 1952 when King Farouk was overthrown by the Free Officers Movement led by Mohamed Naguib and Gamal Abdel Nasser, establishing the Republic of Egypt.
Muhammad Ali was born in a village in Albania in the Ottoman Empire, to ethnic Albanian parents from the Korça region. When he was young he moved with his family to the Sanjak of Kavala (modern-day Kavala), in the Rumelia Eyalet. He was the second son of a Bektashi Albanian tobacco and shipping merchant named Ibrahim Agha, who also served as an Ottoman commander of a small unit in Kavala. His mother was Zaynab Hanim, the daughter of Çorbaci Husain Agha, another Muslim Albanian notable in Kavala. When his father died at a young age, Muhammad was taken and raised by his uncle Husain Agha with his cousins. As a reward for Muhammad Ali's hard work, his uncle gave him the rank of "Bolukbashi" for the collection of taxes in the town of Kavala. Muhammad Ali later married his cousin Amina Hanim, a wealthy widow. She was the daughter of Nusretli Ali Agha, the governor of Kavala, and Kadriye (Zaynab's sister).
After Muhammad's promising success in collecting taxes, he earned the rank of Second Commander (Binbashi) under his cousin Sarechesme Halil Agha in the Kavala Volunteer Contingent of Albanian mercenaries that was sent to re-occupy Egypt following General Napoleon Bonaparte's withdrawal. In 1801, his unit was sent, as part of a much larger Ottoman force, to re-occupy Egypt following a brief French occupation that upended Mamluk dominance in Egypt. The expedition, aboard xebecs, landed at Aboukir in the spring of 1801. One of his trusted army commanders was Miralay Mustafa Bey, who had married Muhammad's sister Zubayda and was the ancestor of the Yeghen family. He was the brother of Muhammad’s first wife, Amina Hanim.
The French withdrawal left a power vacuum in Egypt. Mamluk power had been weakened, but not destroyed, and Ottoman forces clashed with the Mamluks for power. During this period of turmoil, Muhammad Ali used his loyal Albanian troops to work with both sides, gaining power and prestige for himself. As the conflict drew on, the local populace grew weary of the power struggle. In 1801, he allied with the Egyptian leader Umar Makram and Egypt's Grand Imam of al-Azhar. During the infighting between the Ottomans and Mamluks between 1801 and 1805, Muhammad Ali carefully acted to gain the support of the general public.
In 1805, a group of prominent Egyptians led by the ulama (scholars, savants) demanded the replacement of Wāli (governor) Hurshid Pasha by Muhammad Ali, and the Ottomans yielded. In 1809, though, Ali exiled Makram to Damietta. According to Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti, Makram had discovered Muhammad Ali's intentions to seize power for himself.
Sultan Selim III could not oppose Muhammad Ali's ascension. By appearing as the champion of the people, Muhammad Ali was able to forestall popular opposition until he had consolidated his power.
The Mamluks still posed the greatest threat to Muhammad Ali. They controlled Egypt for more than 600 years, and over that time they extended their rule systematically south along the Nile River to Upper Egypt. Muhammad Ali's approach was to eliminate the Mamluk leadership, then move against the rank and file. Muhammad Ali invited the Mamluk leaders to a celebration at the Cairo Citadel in honour of his son, Tusun Pasha, who was to lead a military expedition into Arabia. The event was held on 1 March 1811. When the Mamluks had gathered at the Citadel, they were surrounded and killed by Muhammad Ali's troops. After the leaders were killed, Muhammad Ali dispatched his army throughout Egypt to rout the remainder of the Mamluk forces.
Muhammad Ali transformed Egypt into a regional power which he saw as the natural successor to the decaying Ottoman Empire. He summed up his vision for Egypt as follows:
I am well aware that the (Ottoman) Empire is heading by the day toward destruction... On its ruins I will build a vast kingdom... up to the Euphrates and the Tigris.
Sultan Selim III (reigned 1789–1807) had recognized the need to reform and modernize the Ottoman military, along European lines, to ensure that his state could compete. Selim III, however, faced stiff local opposition from an entrenched clergy and military apparatus, especially from the Janissaries. Consequently, he was deposed and ultimately killed in 1808.
Muhammad Ali shared some traits with common warlords seeking to gain the upper hand at the expense of the weakened imperial power, but scholars have noted that Muhammad Ali's rule was the first significant program of Europeanization of the military and its supporting institutions. Unlike Selim, he had dispatched his chief rivals, giving him a free hand to attempt reforms similar to those first begun by Selim III.
Muhammad Ali's goal was for Egypt to leave the Ottoman Empire and be ruled by his own hereditary dynasty. To do that, he had to reorganize Egyptian society, streamline the economy, train a professional bureaucracy, and build a modern military.
His first task was to secure a revenue stream for Egypt. To accomplish this, Muhammad Ali 'nationalized' all the iltizam lands of Egypt, thereby officially owning all the production of the land. He accomplished the state annexation of property by raising taxes on the 'tax-farmers' who had previously owned the land throughout Egypt. The new taxes were intentionally high and when the tax-farmers could not extract the demanded payments from the peasants who worked the land, Muhammad Ali confiscated their properties. The other major source of revenue Muhammad Ali created was a new tax on waqf endowments, which were previously tax-free. Through these endowments, personal income could be set aside for schools or other charitable purposes. As well as raising revenue to fund his new military, this tax took revenue away from the local elite, Mamluks and the ulama, weakening opposition to Muhammad Ali's reforms.
In practice, Muhammad Ali's land reform amounted to a monopoly on trade in Egypt. He required all producers to sell their goods to the state. The state in turn resold Egyptian goods, within Egypt and to foreign markets, and retained the surplus. The practice proved very profitable for Egypt with the cultivation of long staple cotton, a new cash crop. To help improve production, he expanded the land used for agriculture and overhauled the irrigation system, largely completed by the corvée, or forced peasant labor. The new-found profits also extended down to the individual farmers, as the average wage increased fourfold.