MOHAMMED ALI (1769-1849), founder of the present royal house of Egypt, born at Kavala, a small seaport on the frontier of Thrace and Macedonia. His father, an Albanian, was an aga, a small yeoman farmer, and he himself began life as a petty official and trader in tobacco. In 1798 he became second in command of a regiment of bashi-bazouks, or volunteers, re cruited to serve against Napoleon in Egypt. He took part in the battle of Aboukir (July 25, 1799), was driven into the sea with the Turks, and was saved from drowning by the gig of the British admiral. In 1801 he returned to Egypt, in command of his regi ment, and on May 9 distinguished himself at the battle of Rah manieh. In the years that followed, Mohammed Ali, leader of a compact body of Albanian clansmen, was in the best position to profit by the struggle for power between the Mamelukes and the representatives of the Porte. In 1803 he cast in his lot with the former; in 2804 he turned against them and proclaimed his loyalty to the sultan; in 1805, the sheiks of Cairo, in the hope of putting a stop to the intolerable anarchy, elected him pasha, and a year later an imperial firman confirmed their choice. The dis astrous British expedition of 1807 followed; and while at Con stantinople the prestige of the sultan was being undermined by the series of revolutions which in 1808 brought Mahmud II. to the throne, that of Mohammed Ali was enhanced by the exhibition at Cairo of British prisoners and an avenue of stakes decorated with the heads of British slain.
In spite of his chance victories, however, he was too shrewd not to see the superiority of European methods of warfare; and as the first step towards the empire of which he dreamed he de termined to create an army and a fleet on the European model. In 1808 the creation of the navy was begun with the aid of French officers and engineers. In 1811 the massacre of the Mamelukes left Mohammed Ali without a rival in Egypt, while the foundations of his empire beyond were laid by the war against the Wahhabis and the conquest of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. The
Wahhabi War indeed dragged on till 1818, when Ibrahim (q.v.), the pasha's son, who in 1816 had driven the remnant of the Mamelukes into Nubia, brought it to an end. This done, the pasha turned his attention southward to the vast country watered by the Upper Nile. In 182o the oasis of Siwa was subdued by his arms ; in 1823 he laid the foundations of Khartum.
By this time Mohammed Ali was the possessor of a powerful fleet and of an army of veterans disciplined by European officers. To obtain these money had been necessary ; and in order to raise money the pasha instituted internal "ref orms"—a bizarre sys tem of state monopolies and showy experiments in new native industries (see EGYPT: History). The viciousness of these ex pedients was, however, only gradually revealed, and Mohammed Ali seemed at once the most enlightened and the most powerful of the sultan's valis. To Mahmud II., whose whole policy was directed to strengthening the central power, this fact would have sufficed to make him distrust the pasha and desire his overthrow; and it was sorely against his will that in 1822, the ill-success of his arms against the insurgent Greeks forced him to summon Mohammed Ali to his aid. The immediate price was the pashalik of Crete ; in the event of the victory of the Egyptian arms the pashaliks of Syria and Damascus were to fall to Mohammed Ali, that of the Morea to his son Ibrahim. The part played by Mo hammed Ali in the Greek War is described elsewhere (see EASTERN QUESTION, TURKEY : History ; GREECE : History ; GREEK INDE PENDENCE, WAR OF; IBRAHIM). The intervention of the Powers, culminating in the shattering of the Egyptian fleet at Navarino (q.v.), robbed him of his reward so far as Greece was concerned; the failure of his arms in spite of this intervention gave Sultan Mahmud the excuse he desired for withholding the rest of the stipulated price of his assistance.