This disappointment would not perhaps in itself have sufficed to stir Mohammed Ali to revolt ; but it was ominous of perils to come, which he thought it wise to forestall. In the spring of 1831 two pashas, Hussein of Bosnia and Mustafa of Scutari, had succumbed to the sultan's arms; and, since he was surrounded and counselled by the personal enemies of the pasha of Egypt, it was likely that, so soon as he should feel himself strong enough, he would deal in like manner with Mohammed Ali. It was to an ticipate this peril that Mohammed Ali determined himself to open the struggle. On Nov. 1, 1831, his troops crossed into Syria.
Wild rumours went abroad as to his intentions. He was master of the holy cities, and the official Moniteur Ottoman denounced his supposed plan of aiming at the caliphate in collusion with the sherif of Mecca. As for the pasha himself, he loudly disclaimed any such disloyal pretensions ; his aim was to chastise Abdulla, pasha of Acre, who had harboured refugees from his "reforms"; to overthrow Khusrev, who had encouraged him in his refusal to surrender them ; to secure the fulfilment of the sultan's promise with regard to Syria and Damascus. Mahmud, on the other hand, was torn between hatred of the pasha and hatred of the Christian Powers which had forced him to make concessions to the Greeks. Voices urged him to come to terms with Mohammed Ali. secure peace in Islam, and turn a united face of defiance against Europe; and for a while he harboured the idea. In the end, however, his pride prevailed; in April 1832 the Turkish commander-in-chief Hussein Pasha left Constantinople for the front; and in May the ban of outlawry was launched against Mohammed Ali.
The events which followed during the next ten years, and their effect on the international situation belong to the history of the Eastern Question (q.v.). So far as Mohammed Ali's own fortunes were concerned, the Convention of Kutayah (April 8, 1833), which closed his first successful war with the Porte, gave him the objects of his immediate ambition; and, though still nominally only the sultan's representative, he ruled an empire stretching from Khartum to the borders of Anatolia. Had he been as wise as a ruler as he was astute as a diplomatist, he might have con solidated his power. But the peoples who had welcomed him as a deliverer soon found his yoke more intolerable than that of the Turk; the Syrians broke into revolt in 1834, and four years later it was an insurrection of the Arabs of the Hauran which served as the pretext for the war which Sultan Mahmud opened against him. Again the Egyptian arms were victorious, but the intervention of the Powers robbed Mohammed Ali not only of the spoils of his most recent victories, but also of those secured in 1833, and in the end he had to be content with the hereditary pashalik of Egypt and the government of Nubia, Darfur, Kordo fan, and Sennaar, conferred upon him by firmans of the sultan in 1841. With this Mohammed Ali passes from the stage of his tory. He was an old man ; his mind was soon to give way; and for some time before his death on Aug. 2, 1849, the reins of power were held by his son and successor Ibrahim. See Cambridge Modern History, vol. x., ch. xvii.