Khedivate of Egypt
The Khedivate of Egypt was an autonomous tributary state of the Ottoman Empire established and ruled by the Muhammad Ali Dynasty following the defeat and expulsion of Napoleon Bonaparte's forces, ending the short-lived French occupation of Lower Egypt. The Khedivate of Egypt had also expanded to control present-day Sudan, South Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti, northwestern Somalia, northeastern Ethiopia, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Syria, Greece, Cyprus, southern and central Turkey, in addition to parts from Libya, Chad, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Uganda, as well as northwestern Saudi Arabia, parts of Yemen and the Kingdom of Hejaz.
The United Kingdom invaded and took control in 1882. In 1914, the Ottoman Empire connection was ended and Britain established a protectorate called the Sultanate of Egypt.
History
Rise of Muhammad Ali
Upon the conquest of the Mamluk Sultanate by the Ottoman Empire in 1517, Egypt was governed as an Ottoman province. The Ottoman Porte was content to permit local rule to remain in the hands of the Mamluks, the Egyptian military led by Circassian-Turkic leaders who had held power in Egypt since the 13th century. Save for military expeditions to crush Mamluk uprisings seeking to reestablish the independent Egyptian sultanate, the Ottomans largely ignored Egyptian affairs until the French campaign in Egypt and Syria in 1798.Between 1799 and 1801, the Porte, working at times with France's main enemy, Great Britain, undertook various campaigns to restore Ottoman rule in Egypt. By August 1801, the remaining French forces of General Jacques-François Menou withdrew from Egypt.
The period between 1801 and 1805 was, effectively, a three-way civil war in Egypt between the Egyptian Mamluks, the Ottoman Turks, and Albanian troops the Ottoman Porte dispatched from Rumelia, under the command of Muhammad Ali Pasha, to restore the Empire's authority.
Following the defeat of the French, the Porte assigned Koca Hüsrev Mehmed Pasha as the new Wāli of Egypt, tasking him to kill or imprison the surviving Egyptian Mamluk beys. Many of these were freed by or fled with the British, while others held Minya between Upper and Lower Egypt.
Amid these disturbances, Koca Hüsrev Mehmed Pasha attempted to disband his Albanian bashi-bazouks without pay. This led to rioting that drove Koca Hüsrev Mehmed Pasha from Cairo. During the ensuing turmoil, the Porte sent Muhammad Ali Pasha to Egypt.
However, Muhammad Ali seized control of Egypt, declared himself ruler and quickly consolidated an independent local power base. After repeated failed attempts to remove and kill him, in 1805 the Porte officially recognised Muhammad Ali as Wāli of Egypt. Demonstrating his grander ambitions, Muhammad Ali Pasha claimed for himself the higher title of Khedive, ruling the self-proclaimed Khedivate of Egypt. He murdered the remaining Mamluk beys in 1811, solidifying his control of Egypt. He is regarded as the founder of modern Egypt because of the dramatic reforms he instituted in the military, agricultural, economic and cultural spheres.
Reforms
During Muhammad Ali's absence in Arabia, his representative at Cairo had completed the confiscation, begun in 1808, of almost all the lands belonging to private individuals, who were forced to accept instead inadequate pensions. By this revolutionary method of land nationalization Muhammad Ali became proprietor of nearly all the soil of Egypt, an iniquitous measure against which the Egyptians had no remedy.The pasha also attempted to reorganize his troops on European lines, but this led to a formidable mutiny in Cairo. Muhammad Ali's life was endangered, and he sought refuge by night in the citadel, while the soldiery committed many acts of plunder. The revolt was reduced by gifts to the chiefs of the insurgents, and Muhammad Ali ordered compensation from the treasury for those who had suffered in the disturbances. The Nizam-i Cedid project was, in consequence of this mutiny, abandoned for a time.
While Ibrahim was engaged in the second Arabian campaign the pasha turned his attention to strengthening the Egyptian economy. He created state monopolies over the chief products of the country. He set up factories and began digging in 1819 a new canal to Alexandria called the Mahmudiyya after the sultan. The old canal had long fallen into decay and the necessity of a safe channel between Alexandria and the Nile was much felt. The conclusion in 1838 of a commercial treaty with Turkey, negotiated by Henry Bulwer, struck a death blow to the system of monopolies, though the application of the treaty to Egypt was delayed for some years.
Another notable fact in the economic progress of the country was the development of the cultivation of cotton in the Delta in 1822 and onwards. The cotton grown had been brought from the Turco-Egyptian Sudan by Maho Bey and the organization of the new industry from which in a few years Muhammad Ali was enabled to extract considerable revenues.
Efforts were made to promote education and the study of medicine. To European merchants, on whom he was dependent for the sale of his exports, Muhammad Ali showed much favor and under his influence, the port of Alexandria again rose into importance. It was also under Muhammad Ali's encouragement that the overland transit of goods from Europe to India via Egypt was resumed.
Invasion of Libya and Sudan
In 1820, Muhammad Ali gave orders to commence the conquest of Ottoman Tripolitania. He first sent an expedition westward in February, which conquered and annexed the Siwa Oasis. Ali's intentions for Sudan were to extend his rule southward, capture the valuable caravan trade bound for the Red Sea, and secure the rich gold mines which he believed to exist in Sennar. He also saw in the campaign a means of getting rid of his disaffected troops, and of obtaining a sufficient number of captives to form the nucleus of the new army.The forces destined for this service were led by Ismail, the youngest son of Muhammad Ali. They consisted of between 4000 and 5000 men, being Albanians, Turks and Egyptians. They left Cairo in July 1820. The Funj Sultanate of Nubia submitted without a fight; the Shaigiya Confederation immediately beyond the province of Dongola were defeated; the remnant of the Mamluks dispersed; and Sennar was reduced without a battle.
Muhammad Bey, the defterdar, with another force of about the same strength, was then sent by Muhammad Ali against Kordofan with like result, but not without a hard-fought engagement. In October 1822, Ismaʿil, with his retinue, was burnt to death by Nimr, the makk of Shendi. The defterdar, a man infamous for his cruelty, assumed the command of those provinces and exacted terrible retribution from the inhabitants. Khartoum was founded at this time, and in the following years, Egyptian rule was greatly extended and control of the Red Sea ports of Suakin and Massawa obtained.
Greek campaign
Muhammad Ali understood that the empire he had so laboriously built up might at any time have to be defended by force of arms against his master Sultan Mahmud II, whose whole policy had been directed to curbing the power of too-ambitious vassals, and who was under the influence of the personal enemies of the pasha of Egypt, notably Koca Hüsrev Mehmed Pasha, the grand vizier, who had never forgiven his humiliation in Egypt in 1803.Mahmud also was already planning reforms borrowed from the West, and Muhammad Ali, who had had plenty of opportunity of observing the superiority of European methods of warfare, was determined to anticipate the sultan in the creation of a fleet and an army on European lines, partly as a precaution, partly as an instrument for the realization of yet wider schemes of ambition. Before the outbreak of the War of Greek Independence in 1821, he had already expended much time and energy in organizing a fleet and in training, under the supervision of French instructors, native officers and artificers; though it was not till 1829 that the opening of a dockyard and arsenal at Alexandria enabled him to build and equip his own vessels.
His foresight was rewarded by the invitation of the sultan to help him in the task of subduing the Greek insurgents, offering as reward the pashaliks of the Morea and of Syria. Muhammad Ali had already, in 1821, been appointed by him governor of Crete, which he had occupied with a small Egyptian force. In the autumn of 1824, a fleet of 60 Egyptian warships carrying a large force of 17,000 disciplined troops concentrated in Suda Bay, and, in the following March, with Ibrahin as commander-in-chief landed in the Morea.
His naval superiority wrested from the Greeks the command of a great deal of the sea, on which the fate of the insurrection ultimately depended, while on land the Greek irregular bands, having largely soundly beaten the Porte's troops, had finally met a worthy foe in Ibrahim's disciplined troops. The history of the events that led up to the battle of Navarino and the liberation of Greece is told elsewhere; the withdrawal of the Egyptians from the Morea was ultimately due to the action of Admiral Sir Edward Codrington, who early in August 1828 appeared before Alexandria and induced the pasha, by no means sorry to have a reasonable excuse, by a threat of bombardment, to sign a convention undertaking to recall Ibrahim and his army. But for the action of European powers, it is suspected by many that the Ottoman Empire might have defeated the Greeks.
Wars against the Ottoman Empire
Although Muhammad Ali had only been granted the title of wali, he proclaimed himself khedive, or hereditary viceroy, early on during his rule. The Ottoman government, although irritated, did nothing until Muhammad Ali invaded Ottoman-ruled Syria in 1831. The governorship of Syria had been promised to him by the sultan, Mahmud II, for his assistance during the Greek War of Independence, but the title was not granted to him after the war. This caused the Ottomans, allied with the British, to counter-attack in 1839.In 1840, the British bombarded Beirut and an Anglo-Ottoman force landed and seized Acre. The Egyptian army was forced to retreat back home, and Syria again became an Ottoman province. As a result of the Convention of London, Muhammad Ali gave up all conquered lands with the exception of the Sudan and was, in turn, granted the hereditary governorship of the Sudan.