The province of Egypt had always been an anomaly in the vast Ottoman Empire. Ever since Selim the Grim had conquered it in the 16th century, the rich African province had never seen itself as a part of the Empire, but rather a state-within-a-state. The Mamluks, who had ruled the land since the 13th century retained all their power and influence, and the great Mamluk houses still played power politics, except the Caliph was further away and cared little for their intrigues. For three centuries, the Turks paid little attention to their southern province, and it gradually moved away from them of its own accord. What could be said of the Ottoman hegemony in Egypt was that it had brought peace; there were no more civil wars, no more brutal political battles, no more mass executions of dissidents. This, however, would change in 1798. Napoleon Bonarparte came and then left France like an avenging spirit, smashing the old orders and leaving chaos in his wake; meanwhile, in his trail came hundreds of Savants, learned men who brought the European enlightenment with them to the crumbling world of the Nile. The battle in Egypt raged back and forth for nearly three years; Napoleon abandoned his men in August 1799, fleeing Egypt and escaping the Royal Navy blockade which had prevented him from getting reinforcements from France. He escaped on the Frigate Muiron with a handful of followers, leaving General Kleber in command of the expeditionary force.
Kleber was left with an army of discontented men, hundreds of miles away from home. They were stationed in Alexandria and Cairo, where street protests were picking up pace; radical clerics and intellectuals were turning the mob against the French, and on the 24th August a crowd was dispersed in Alexandria with 200 Egyptians killed by French gunfire. Kleber decided to withdraw French forces from city centres, manning Cairo citadel with only a detachment of artillery and cavalry to keep it guarded. The bulk of the army was kept in fortified camps away from the city where there was less trouble. Kleber moved his headquarters to Rosetta on the coast, where he could better communicate with the British. He opened negotiations with British commander Sydney Smith, hoping to withdraw his soldiers from Egypt altogether, and return them home. Little did he know, however, that the British command was as divided as the French. For Admiral Keith of the Royal Navy, in collusion with Mamluks and the Ottomans, supported an invasion force of 30,000 men, mostly dispossessed Mamluks, into Egypt via Sinai. Kleber, who knew that if he was to have any leg to stand on in negotiations would have to hold Egypt, moved quickly to counter the invasion, and they met at Pelusium in March 1800, at the same site that Pharaoh Ptolemy was defeated by Antiochus in 173 BC. History was not on the defenders' side. However, the Mamluks general was no Antiochus. Kleber destroyed the army with only light casualties, killing 9,000 and taking 7,000 prisoners, who were held captive by the French. Kleber then sent word to Smith that his demand was free passage for all Frenchmen in Egypt back to France or a French-allied port. Smith, however, was under pressure from the Sultan and from hard-liners like Keith, who wanted to defeat Kleber and capture the French expeditionary force; not only would this strengthen the Turks, Britain's ally against the French (and a buffer against the Russians) but it would also be a huge blow to French morale.
Therefore, another force was arranged. This force contained 5,000 Turkish soldiers, 20,000 Albanians and 10,000 Syrians, as well as 15,000 Mamluks and a detachment of 1,000 British infantry and artillery, who would support them. Serving with the Albanians was Muhammad Ali who was second-in-command to his cousin who commanded a volunteer regiment. The army landed at Abukir and met with the French almost immediately. It was more successful than the initial invasion, yet after two weeks, Kleber had drawn up all his forces and had almost encircled the amphibious force. It was then that the Albanians attempted a break-out, and the French line broke in the east, allowing 12,000 men to escape. The rest of the army was trapped, and Kleber tightened his grip, until the allied forces were trapped on the beach. Kleber used his superior artillery to bombard the allies. Life on the beach was truly hellish; not one hour passed where the sky wasn't lit up by the glow of explosives or quicklime shells, which the French were using to demoralise the allies. Finally, after nearly a week of bombardment, the Royal Navy managed to rescue 35,000 men. Three thousand men, however, were left on the beach. These were mostly Syrians or Mamluks, who were captured by the French. The Mamluks were summarily executed while the Syrians were used as forced labour to build defences for the French. Kleber's astounding victory was short-lived, however, as he had to deal with the Albanians who had escaped his trap. The 12,000 men who escaped were led by Sarechesme Halil Agha, who was the most respected soldier in the force from Albania. He planned to encourage insurrection among the Egyptians and then force the French from the country through a popular uprising. His cousin, Muhammad Ali, however, had other plans. He secretly contacted the French, and by mid 1801 he was in regular correspondence with Kleber himself. He offered the beleaguered general his support if he could secure a withdrawal for all French forces from Egypt. In return, he wanted Kleber to turna blind eye to his depredations. Kleber himself was little concerned by the insurrection; the crops burnt were not his, and his army was already using requisitioning to provision itself. He wanted to use the Albanians as a fifth column against his internal enemies (hoping that Muhammad Ali would liquidate the Mamluks who continued to cause him problems) as well as a counter-weight to the British, whom he saw as a far greater threat.
In July 1801 Muhammad Ali proposed to his cousin to move the Albanian contingent from its base in the Nile Delta to Dumyat on the coast. The port faced east, towards British-controlled Acre. He hoped that if they could link up with the Royal Navy he could reprovision and also get in contact with the British command. Halil Agha acceded to this; he hoped to receive reinforcements and make another attempt on Alexandria. Once they arrived at Dumyat, and took the city with little effort from the local Mamluk warlord (who was executed on the spot with his supporters to the cheers of onlookers), they waited for four days for a Royal Navy squadron to arrive. The squadron was led by Captain Nathaniel Bilges, who met with Halil Agha and Muhammad Ali, his second-in-command, in private. He promised reinforcements to Halil, yet to Muhammad Ali he paid especial attention. In private conversation, Muhammad Ali told Bilges that if he were to gain ascendency in Egypt, he would lead the country in a manner which Britain would find agreeable; he promised to reverse the Ottoman trade tariffs, and encourage trade, especially with India. Bilges reported all of this to Smith, who decided to back Muhammad Ali. Bilges informed Halil Agha in September 1801 that from then on all correspondence between Smith and himself would be between Muhammad Ali. It seemed that a coup was afoot.
The coup, however, would never be. Halil Agha was assassinated by the son of a murdered Mamluk. With this, Muhammad Ali moved quickly to gain the support of his Albanians, being proclaimed their leader. He then met with Captain Bilges, and was recognised by the British as the commander of allied forces in Egypt. Even today, some revisionist historians have tried to blame Halil Agha's murder on Muhammad Ali Pasha, yet there is no evidence for this. The truth is that by the end of 1801, Muhammad Ali was in command of 12,000 Albanians in Egypt, and was in regular correspondence with both the French and the British. Throughout the winter between 1801 and 1802 Muhammad Ali expanded his power base; he sent soldiers through the Nile Delta, yet he ordered them not to raid or pillage. He garrisoned towns and villages, and helped farmers. By January 1802 he had secured an annual subsidy of £2,000 from the British. He spent most of this on equipment and bribes, yet some of it on rural development; he used prisoners of war to repair drainage ditches and flood defences, and he made roads and canals safe once more after two years of disruption.
While Muhammad Ali was building his own power base, Kleber was fast losing his own. By January 1802 there were ominous rumbles of mutiny in the French army. Kleber was desperately negotiating with Smith for an honourable withdrawal, yet Smith thought that with Muhammad Ali in Dumyat he could press for a harsher deal. He demanded that the French hand over their weapons, and that the Savants who had accompanied them turn over all their papers and equipment. Kleber refused; he had yet to be defeated in battle, and he still controlled Alexandria and Cairo. He wrote to Muhammad Ali asking him to tell Smith that the Albanians would not march on French positions. In return, he offered to return all Egyptian artefacts to Muhammad Ali. This encouraged the young Albanian, who told Smith that Kleber sought to surrender to him. By distorting Kleber's words, he made Smith worried; Smith's career depended on securing Kleber's surrender. His next message to Kleber was therefore more conciliatory; he offered free passage to all French soldiers under arms, but he demanded that all Egyptian artefacts be abandoned, and the Savants (and their papers) be handed over to the Royal Navy. Muhammad Ali was informed of this by both Kleber and Smith, and he then made his own offer to Kleber: that Kleber accept Smith's offer, yet the Savants' documents would go to France and the Savants themselves be allowed to decide where to go. Kleber was willing to accept this, and presented it to Smith. Commander Smith, who was under pressure from hard-liners like Keith, accepted.
On the 15th March 1802 General Kleber, 25,000 soldiers and nearly all of Napoleon's Savants boarded Royal Navy ships and were sent to Naples. Here they disembarked, and marched north to Italy, which was occupied by France. Napoleon was apparently pleased to see Kleber and his men, and they were very pleased to arrive just in time for the Treaty of Amiens, which brought respite to Europe, which had been at war since 1792. In Egypt, however, the future was still very much in the balance. Almost all the Savants had returned home, except for a handful who stayed in Egypt. One was Henri de la Penne, a engineer and architect who had become enamoured by the pyramids and by the temples of Luxor and Thebes. Muhammad Ali had the backing of the British, and he entered Cairo on foot on the 16th March 1802. He was flanked by ranks of Albanians armed with British muskets. He announced to the people of Cairo that the days of foreign occupation were at and end, and that he would create a new system free of tyranny and in-fighting. When news of this reached Constantinople, Selim III was worried; he already felt betrayed by the British for supporting this upstart Albanian; he did not want to lose one of his richest provinces a second time.
Muhammad Ali's consolidation of power began with securing Egypt; most opposition was crushed, yet there were a few pockets of Mamluk resistance. These were easily put down, and few were sad to see the slave-soldiers go. Muhammad Ali thus had almost complete control of the country down to Aswan by mid-1803. He then sought recognition of his status from Constantinople. The Ottoman state was beginning to crumble; Greece had risen in revolt, as had Armenia and Serbia, and the Russians were making worrying noises in the north. They relied heavily on British subsidies to maintain their armies in the field, which were themselves more of a liability than an asset, as Selim would find. In September 1803 Selim therefore gave Muhammad Ali the title of Pasha-Governor-of Egypt, yet made it conditional of him paying extra taxes to Constantinople. In return, he had almost complete autonomy; he maintained his own armed forces, was responsible for his own economic policy, and could maintain his own foreign relations.
Muhammad Ali's economic reforms began in earnest in 1804. He needed to secure a revenue stream for Egypt, and so on the 4th March he announced that all land in Egypt belonged to the state, and that all leases of land were no longer to be paid to landlords, but to the state itself. The landlords who already existed would be employed as overseers and inspectors as well as tax collectors, and would get a regular salary from the government. This massive change to Egyptian agriculture caused huge unrest; there were riots in the Fayuum and this caused bread prices to rise; there were demonstrations in Cairo and Alexandria, and Muhammad Ali was forced to sell grain below market rates. However, by the end of 1806 this policy was beginning to work. In December 1804 he created the Council of Agriculture, which sat in Alexandria. It contained prominent landlords, bureaucrats and other landowners, who administered Egypt's arable land. The country was split into eight districts for agricultural policy; North Delta, South Delta, Fayuum and then equal segments of the Nile Valley down to Aswan. Each had its own Council of landowners and tenants who would oversee tax collection and maintain local agricultural infrastructure. This allowed greater management of agriculture, and this framework was instrumental to the introduction of cotton to Egypt, which happened in 1808. Cotton was introduced by Muhammad Ali as a precursor to building up Egypt's industry, and it was most widely adopted in the Nile Delta and the Fayuum. Thousands of acres were given over to producing this cash crop, which was at first sold raw to Britain, yet was later refined and turned into cloth by Egypt's first factories.
Muhammad Ali's economic reforms would not have been manageable had he not created a bureaucracy with which to enforce them. In 1805 he founded an Academy in Cairo for higher education; students here learnt geometry, accounting, basic economics (what was known of it) and French. This was the counter-part to the Military Academy, which was opened two months later, which Muhammad Ali hoped would train officers as effective as French ones, who had proven themselves numerous times as superior commanders. These two institutions guaranteed the future of Egypt and Muhammad Ali's reforms. The Egyptian bureaucracy would be the main means of social advancement for many young men in the 19th century; it accepted anyone without regard to their background so long as they possessed an education and were of suitable moral character. Muhammad Ali did much to expand education, usually through Madrassas and other religious establishments.
Egypt's economic position improved greatly after Muhammad Ali's coup mostly due to his programme of forced industrialisation. He focused Egyptian industry on two areas: armaments and cotton. The former was to do with his expansion of the army; from 1804 to 1810 he added 60,000 men to his armies, and he aimed to equip all of them with Egyptian-made armaments. He trusted the British, especially their drive for profit which made them trade with him, yet he knew that their priorities would change soon. He ordered shipyards and munitions factories to be thrown up in Alexandria, Cairo and Dumyat which turned out military equipment and, for the first time in Egyptian history, modern ships which Muhammad Ali hoped would make Egypt the foremost power in the eastern Mediterranean. All of this caused some trepidation among British naval planners, yet war was raging once more in Europe, and the Royal Navy was withdrawn to the western Mediterranean. While they were fighting France, Muhammad Ali built 15 gunboats and 4 40-gun ships. In 1809, with war raging with France on the one hand, and the Turks and Russians on the other, Egypt remained neutral. Muhammad Ali managed to stay out of the war between his liege lord and Russia, even when Selim III was assassinated and replaced by Murad IV in 1808. On the 2nd May 1809 he received a British ambassador, who informed him that the latest Russo-Turkish war was of great concern to his government; the British did not want Russia to dominate the Balkans or the Dardenelles, yet they did not want to alienate the Tsar and drive him into Napoleon's camp. They therefore saw it in the best interests of Europe and Egypt if Muhammad Ali were to throw his weight behind his protectors and make war on the Russians. Muhammad Ali drove a hard bargain, and demanded that in return for sending forces to the Balkans and the Black Sea, he should be rewarded with Palestine and Lebanon. The British were willing to give him Palestine, yet not Lebanon, and Muhammad Ali left it at that. They considered a deal done, and left contented.
The Ottomans were outraged to hear that the British had, in effect, signed away their sovereignty in agreeing to Muhammad Ali's territorial demands. However, they were all but powerless to stop the Egyptian Governor from claiming his pound of flesh. The small Egyptian navy left Alexandria with 4,000 Egyptian and Albanian soldiers who were landed at Thessalonika and then marched north to the Danube, where there was fighting between the Ottomans and their rebellious Russophile vassals in Wallachia. This struggle was but a sideshow for Muhammad Ali; he cared little if Wallachia was held or not, what he cared about was his opportunity to take Palestine. He marched 10,000 men into the territory and occupied it in a matter of weeks. He attempted to press further north, yet he was prevented from doing so by British protests.
In July 1809 Muhammad Ali came down with a fever while living in his palace in Cairo. His physician blamed the bad humours of the city. He advised the Governor to live in the countryside for a few months and to spend as little time in the city as possible. Muhammad Ali did this, and he quickly recovered. He also stopped taking the silver nitrate solutions that his physician had prescribed him. Those around him noted an improvement in his temperament, and his mind turned to the city which he ruled from. In 1803 he had met Henri de la Penne, a French Savant and architect, who had come to France with Napoleon. In 1809 the two men met once again, and la Penne made a startling proposition to Muhammad Ali. He unfurled a huge piece of paper on which was printed in meticulous detail the plans for a new Alexandria. La Penne was a great believer in the theory of miasma, and so a key part of his design was a system of sewers and drains which would carry effluent away and into the Nile. The plans also included a large military harbour, a trade port and a widened canal linking Alexandria to the River Nile. Muhammad Ali looked at the plans and was besotted. Alas, he did not have the funds. Yet.
Kleber was left with an army of discontented men, hundreds of miles away from home. They were stationed in Alexandria and Cairo, where street protests were picking up pace; radical clerics and intellectuals were turning the mob against the French, and on the 24th August a crowd was dispersed in Alexandria with 200 Egyptians killed by French gunfire. Kleber decided to withdraw French forces from city centres, manning Cairo citadel with only a detachment of artillery and cavalry to keep it guarded. The bulk of the army was kept in fortified camps away from the city where there was less trouble. Kleber moved his headquarters to Rosetta on the coast, where he could better communicate with the British. He opened negotiations with British commander Sydney Smith, hoping to withdraw his soldiers from Egypt altogether, and return them home. Little did he know, however, that the British command was as divided as the French. For Admiral Keith of the Royal Navy, in collusion with Mamluks and the Ottomans, supported an invasion force of 30,000 men, mostly dispossessed Mamluks, into Egypt via Sinai. Kleber, who knew that if he was to have any leg to stand on in negotiations would have to hold Egypt, moved quickly to counter the invasion, and they met at Pelusium in March 1800, at the same site that Pharaoh Ptolemy was defeated by Antiochus in 173 BC. History was not on the defenders' side. However, the Mamluks general was no Antiochus. Kleber destroyed the army with only light casualties, killing 9,000 and taking 7,000 prisoners, who were held captive by the French. Kleber then sent word to Smith that his demand was free passage for all Frenchmen in Egypt back to France or a French-allied port. Smith, however, was under pressure from the Sultan and from hard-liners like Keith, who wanted to defeat Kleber and capture the French expeditionary force; not only would this strengthen the Turks, Britain's ally against the French (and a buffer against the Russians) but it would also be a huge blow to French morale.
Therefore, another force was arranged. This force contained 5,000 Turkish soldiers, 20,000 Albanians and 10,000 Syrians, as well as 15,000 Mamluks and a detachment of 1,000 British infantry and artillery, who would support them. Serving with the Albanians was Muhammad Ali who was second-in-command to his cousin who commanded a volunteer regiment. The army landed at Abukir and met with the French almost immediately. It was more successful than the initial invasion, yet after two weeks, Kleber had drawn up all his forces and had almost encircled the amphibious force. It was then that the Albanians attempted a break-out, and the French line broke in the east, allowing 12,000 men to escape. The rest of the army was trapped, and Kleber tightened his grip, until the allied forces were trapped on the beach. Kleber used his superior artillery to bombard the allies. Life on the beach was truly hellish; not one hour passed where the sky wasn't lit up by the glow of explosives or quicklime shells, which the French were using to demoralise the allies. Finally, after nearly a week of bombardment, the Royal Navy managed to rescue 35,000 men. Three thousand men, however, were left on the beach. These were mostly Syrians or Mamluks, who were captured by the French. The Mamluks were summarily executed while the Syrians were used as forced labour to build defences for the French. Kleber's astounding victory was short-lived, however, as he had to deal with the Albanians who had escaped his trap. The 12,000 men who escaped were led by Sarechesme Halil Agha, who was the most respected soldier in the force from Albania. He planned to encourage insurrection among the Egyptians and then force the French from the country through a popular uprising. His cousin, Muhammad Ali, however, had other plans. He secretly contacted the French, and by mid 1801 he was in regular correspondence with Kleber himself. He offered the beleaguered general his support if he could secure a withdrawal for all French forces from Egypt. In return, he wanted Kleber to turna blind eye to his depredations. Kleber himself was little concerned by the insurrection; the crops burnt were not his, and his army was already using requisitioning to provision itself. He wanted to use the Albanians as a fifth column against his internal enemies (hoping that Muhammad Ali would liquidate the Mamluks who continued to cause him problems) as well as a counter-weight to the British, whom he saw as a far greater threat.
In July 1801 Muhammad Ali proposed to his cousin to move the Albanian contingent from its base in the Nile Delta to Dumyat on the coast. The port faced east, towards British-controlled Acre. He hoped that if they could link up with the Royal Navy he could reprovision and also get in contact with the British command. Halil Agha acceded to this; he hoped to receive reinforcements and make another attempt on Alexandria. Once they arrived at Dumyat, and took the city with little effort from the local Mamluk warlord (who was executed on the spot with his supporters to the cheers of onlookers), they waited for four days for a Royal Navy squadron to arrive. The squadron was led by Captain Nathaniel Bilges, who met with Halil Agha and Muhammad Ali, his second-in-command, in private. He promised reinforcements to Halil, yet to Muhammad Ali he paid especial attention. In private conversation, Muhammad Ali told Bilges that if he were to gain ascendency in Egypt, he would lead the country in a manner which Britain would find agreeable; he promised to reverse the Ottoman trade tariffs, and encourage trade, especially with India. Bilges reported all of this to Smith, who decided to back Muhammad Ali. Bilges informed Halil Agha in September 1801 that from then on all correspondence between Smith and himself would be between Muhammad Ali. It seemed that a coup was afoot.
The coup, however, would never be. Halil Agha was assassinated by the son of a murdered Mamluk. With this, Muhammad Ali moved quickly to gain the support of his Albanians, being proclaimed their leader. He then met with Captain Bilges, and was recognised by the British as the commander of allied forces in Egypt. Even today, some revisionist historians have tried to blame Halil Agha's murder on Muhammad Ali Pasha, yet there is no evidence for this. The truth is that by the end of 1801, Muhammad Ali was in command of 12,000 Albanians in Egypt, and was in regular correspondence with both the French and the British. Throughout the winter between 1801 and 1802 Muhammad Ali expanded his power base; he sent soldiers through the Nile Delta, yet he ordered them not to raid or pillage. He garrisoned towns and villages, and helped farmers. By January 1802 he had secured an annual subsidy of £2,000 from the British. He spent most of this on equipment and bribes, yet some of it on rural development; he used prisoners of war to repair drainage ditches and flood defences, and he made roads and canals safe once more after two years of disruption.
While Muhammad Ali was building his own power base, Kleber was fast losing his own. By January 1802 there were ominous rumbles of mutiny in the French army. Kleber was desperately negotiating with Smith for an honourable withdrawal, yet Smith thought that with Muhammad Ali in Dumyat he could press for a harsher deal. He demanded that the French hand over their weapons, and that the Savants who had accompanied them turn over all their papers and equipment. Kleber refused; he had yet to be defeated in battle, and he still controlled Alexandria and Cairo. He wrote to Muhammad Ali asking him to tell Smith that the Albanians would not march on French positions. In return, he offered to return all Egyptian artefacts to Muhammad Ali. This encouraged the young Albanian, who told Smith that Kleber sought to surrender to him. By distorting Kleber's words, he made Smith worried; Smith's career depended on securing Kleber's surrender. His next message to Kleber was therefore more conciliatory; he offered free passage to all French soldiers under arms, but he demanded that all Egyptian artefacts be abandoned, and the Savants (and their papers) be handed over to the Royal Navy. Muhammad Ali was informed of this by both Kleber and Smith, and he then made his own offer to Kleber: that Kleber accept Smith's offer, yet the Savants' documents would go to France and the Savants themselves be allowed to decide where to go. Kleber was willing to accept this, and presented it to Smith. Commander Smith, who was under pressure from hard-liners like Keith, accepted.
On the 15th March 1802 General Kleber, 25,000 soldiers and nearly all of Napoleon's Savants boarded Royal Navy ships and were sent to Naples. Here they disembarked, and marched north to Italy, which was occupied by France. Napoleon was apparently pleased to see Kleber and his men, and they were very pleased to arrive just in time for the Treaty of Amiens, which brought respite to Europe, which had been at war since 1792. In Egypt, however, the future was still very much in the balance. Almost all the Savants had returned home, except for a handful who stayed in Egypt. One was Henri de la Penne, a engineer and architect who had become enamoured by the pyramids and by the temples of Luxor and Thebes. Muhammad Ali had the backing of the British, and he entered Cairo on foot on the 16th March 1802. He was flanked by ranks of Albanians armed with British muskets. He announced to the people of Cairo that the days of foreign occupation were at and end, and that he would create a new system free of tyranny and in-fighting. When news of this reached Constantinople, Selim III was worried; he already felt betrayed by the British for supporting this upstart Albanian; he did not want to lose one of his richest provinces a second time.
Muhammad Ali's consolidation of power began with securing Egypt; most opposition was crushed, yet there were a few pockets of Mamluk resistance. These were easily put down, and few were sad to see the slave-soldiers go. Muhammad Ali thus had almost complete control of the country down to Aswan by mid-1803. He then sought recognition of his status from Constantinople. The Ottoman state was beginning to crumble; Greece had risen in revolt, as had Armenia and Serbia, and the Russians were making worrying noises in the north. They relied heavily on British subsidies to maintain their armies in the field, which were themselves more of a liability than an asset, as Selim would find. In September 1803 Selim therefore gave Muhammad Ali the title of Pasha-Governor-of Egypt, yet made it conditional of him paying extra taxes to Constantinople. In return, he had almost complete autonomy; he maintained his own armed forces, was responsible for his own economic policy, and could maintain his own foreign relations.
Muhammad Ali's economic reforms began in earnest in 1804. He needed to secure a revenue stream for Egypt, and so on the 4th March he announced that all land in Egypt belonged to the state, and that all leases of land were no longer to be paid to landlords, but to the state itself. The landlords who already existed would be employed as overseers and inspectors as well as tax collectors, and would get a regular salary from the government. This massive change to Egyptian agriculture caused huge unrest; there were riots in the Fayuum and this caused bread prices to rise; there were demonstrations in Cairo and Alexandria, and Muhammad Ali was forced to sell grain below market rates. However, by the end of 1806 this policy was beginning to work. In December 1804 he created the Council of Agriculture, which sat in Alexandria. It contained prominent landlords, bureaucrats and other landowners, who administered Egypt's arable land. The country was split into eight districts for agricultural policy; North Delta, South Delta, Fayuum and then equal segments of the Nile Valley down to Aswan. Each had its own Council of landowners and tenants who would oversee tax collection and maintain local agricultural infrastructure. This allowed greater management of agriculture, and this framework was instrumental to the introduction of cotton to Egypt, which happened in 1808. Cotton was introduced by Muhammad Ali as a precursor to building up Egypt's industry, and it was most widely adopted in the Nile Delta and the Fayuum. Thousands of acres were given over to producing this cash crop, which was at first sold raw to Britain, yet was later refined and turned into cloth by Egypt's first factories.
Muhammad Ali's economic reforms would not have been manageable had he not created a bureaucracy with which to enforce them. In 1805 he founded an Academy in Cairo for higher education; students here learnt geometry, accounting, basic economics (what was known of it) and French. This was the counter-part to the Military Academy, which was opened two months later, which Muhammad Ali hoped would train officers as effective as French ones, who had proven themselves numerous times as superior commanders. These two institutions guaranteed the future of Egypt and Muhammad Ali's reforms. The Egyptian bureaucracy would be the main means of social advancement for many young men in the 19th century; it accepted anyone without regard to their background so long as they possessed an education and were of suitable moral character. Muhammad Ali did much to expand education, usually through Madrassas and other religious establishments.
Egypt's economic position improved greatly after Muhammad Ali's coup mostly due to his programme of forced industrialisation. He focused Egyptian industry on two areas: armaments and cotton. The former was to do with his expansion of the army; from 1804 to 1810 he added 60,000 men to his armies, and he aimed to equip all of them with Egyptian-made armaments. He trusted the British, especially their drive for profit which made them trade with him, yet he knew that their priorities would change soon. He ordered shipyards and munitions factories to be thrown up in Alexandria, Cairo and Dumyat which turned out military equipment and, for the first time in Egyptian history, modern ships which Muhammad Ali hoped would make Egypt the foremost power in the eastern Mediterranean. All of this caused some trepidation among British naval planners, yet war was raging once more in Europe, and the Royal Navy was withdrawn to the western Mediterranean. While they were fighting France, Muhammad Ali built 15 gunboats and 4 40-gun ships. In 1809, with war raging with France on the one hand, and the Turks and Russians on the other, Egypt remained neutral. Muhammad Ali managed to stay out of the war between his liege lord and Russia, even when Selim III was assassinated and replaced by Murad IV in 1808. On the 2nd May 1809 he received a British ambassador, who informed him that the latest Russo-Turkish war was of great concern to his government; the British did not want Russia to dominate the Balkans or the Dardenelles, yet they did not want to alienate the Tsar and drive him into Napoleon's camp. They therefore saw it in the best interests of Europe and Egypt if Muhammad Ali were to throw his weight behind his protectors and make war on the Russians. Muhammad Ali drove a hard bargain, and demanded that in return for sending forces to the Balkans and the Black Sea, he should be rewarded with Palestine and Lebanon. The British were willing to give him Palestine, yet not Lebanon, and Muhammad Ali left it at that. They considered a deal done, and left contented.
The Ottomans were outraged to hear that the British had, in effect, signed away their sovereignty in agreeing to Muhammad Ali's territorial demands. However, they were all but powerless to stop the Egyptian Governor from claiming his pound of flesh. The small Egyptian navy left Alexandria with 4,000 Egyptian and Albanian soldiers who were landed at Thessalonika and then marched north to the Danube, where there was fighting between the Ottomans and their rebellious Russophile vassals in Wallachia. This struggle was but a sideshow for Muhammad Ali; he cared little if Wallachia was held or not, what he cared about was his opportunity to take Palestine. He marched 10,000 men into the territory and occupied it in a matter of weeks. He attempted to press further north, yet he was prevented from doing so by British protests.
In July 1809 Muhammad Ali came down with a fever while living in his palace in Cairo. His physician blamed the bad humours of the city. He advised the Governor to live in the countryside for a few months and to spend as little time in the city as possible. Muhammad Ali did this, and he quickly recovered. He also stopped taking the silver nitrate solutions that his physician had prescribed him. Those around him noted an improvement in his temperament, and his mind turned to the city which he ruled from. In 1803 he had met Henri de la Penne, a French Savant and architect, who had come to France with Napoleon. In 1809 the two men met once again, and la Penne made a startling proposition to Muhammad Ali. He unfurled a huge piece of paper on which was printed in meticulous detail the plans for a new Alexandria. La Penne was a great believer in the theory of miasma, and so a key part of his design was a system of sewers and drains which would carry effluent away and into the Nile. The plans also included a large military harbour, a trade port and a widened canal linking Alexandria to the River Nile. Muhammad Ali looked at the plans and was besotted. Alas, he did not have the funds. Yet.
