biography
| name: |
Mohammed Ali or Mehemet Ali
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (c.1769–1849)
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| biography:
| Governor and later viceroy of Egypt (1805–49), born in Macedonia, the founder of the Egyptian royal family which reigned until the 1952 revolution. He was sent to Egypt in 1801 to join an Albanian force which was trying to expel the French. After the latters' departure he skilfully manoeuvred himself into supreme power. As viceroy he massacred the Mamluks (1811), and formed a regular army. In 1816 he reduced part of Arabia through the generalship of his eldest son Ibrahim Pasha (1789–1848), in 1820 he annexed Nubia, and his troops occupied Morea and Crete against the Greeks (1821–8). In 1831 Ibrahim began the conquest of Syria, and the victory at Nezib (1839) might have elevated his father to the throne of Constantinople. However, the intervention of four European powers (1840) in Constantinople demanding withdrawal, and a British naval landing in Acre, forced Ibrahim to return to Cairo and compelled Mohammad Ali to limit his ambitions to Egypt. |
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