Born in Kavala in the Rumelia Eyalet, Ali was a military commander in an Albanian Ottoman force sent to recover Egypt from French occupation following Napoleon's withdrawal.

Faced with another European intervention, he accepted a brokered peace in 1842 and withdrew from the Levant; in return, he and his descendants were granted hereditary rule over Egypt and Sudan.

After Muhammad's promising success in collecting taxes, he earned the rank of Second Commander under his cousin Sarechesme Halil Agha in the Kavala Volunteer Contingent of Albanian mercenaries that was sent to re-occupy Egypt following General Napoleon Bonaparte's withdrawal.

[14] In 1805, a group of prominent Egyptians led by the ulama (scholars, savants) demanded the replacement of Wāli (governor) Ahmad Khurshid Pasha by Muhammad Ali, and the Ottomans yielded.

Muhammad Ali invited the Mamluk leaders to a celebration at the Cairo Citadel in honour of his son, Tusun Pasha, who was to lead a military expedition into Arabia.

He summed up his vision for Egypt as follows: I am well aware that the (Ottoman) Empire is heading by the day toward destruction... On its ruins I will build a vast kingdom... up to the Euphrates and the Tigris.

A number of them maimed themselves so as to be unsuitable for combat: common ways of self-maiming were blinding an eye with rat poison and cutting off a finger of the right hand, so as to be unable to fire a rifle.

French women adherents of the Saint-Simonian social reform movement were living in Egypt during 1833–36 and studied or provided medical care under Clot Bey's direction.

The following four included training in: obstetrics, pre- and post-natal care, dressing wounds, cauterization, vaccination, scarification, cupping, application of leeches, identification/preparation of common medicines.

They began housing soldiers in barracks, leadership enforced a strict regime of surveillance, roll call was done several times a day, and corporal punishment used to ensure the new fighting force grew to become a strong disciplined military.

[37] A large part of Ali's goal of a European-style military was through the creation of new labelling and organizational systems to identify soldiers, distinguish officers from enlisted men, structure units, and properly distribute salaries.

[44] Muhammad Ali next turned his attention to military campaigns independent of the Porte, beginning with the Sudan which he viewed as a valuable additional resource of territory, gold, and slaves.

The Sudan at the time had no real central authority, as since the 18th century many petty kingdoms and tribal sheikhdoms had seceded from the declining Sultanate of Sennar, fighting each other with Medieval weaponry.

In 1820 Muhammad Ali dispatched an army of 5,000 troops commanded by his third son, Ismail, and Abidin Bey, south into Sudan with the intent of conquering the territory and subjugating it to his authority.

His administration captured slaves from the Nuba Mountains, and west and south Sudan, all incorporated into a foot regiment known as the Gihadiya (pronounced Jihadiya in non-Egyptian Arabic) which were composed of the recently defeated Shaigiya who now took service under the invaders in exchange for keeping their domains.

With his own army proving ineffective, Sultan Mahmud II offered Muhammad Ali the island of Crete in exchange for his support in putting down the revolt.

[53] The terms of the peace were that Ali would withdraw his forces from Anatolia and receive the territories of Crete (then known as Candia) and the Hijaz as compensation, and Ibrahim Pasha would be appointed Wāli of Syria.

[54] Sensing that Muhammad Ali was not content with his gains, the sultan attempted to pre-empt further action against the Ottoman Empire by offering him hereditary rule in Egypt and Arabia if he withdrew from Syria and Crete and renounced any desire for full independence.

On 15 July 1840, the British government, which had negotiated with Austria, Prussia, and Russia to sign the Convention of London, offered Muhammad Ali hereditary rule of Egypt as part of the Ottoman Empire if he withdrew from the Syrian hinterland and the coastal regions of Mount Lebanon.

France eventually backed down as King Louis-Philippe did not want his country to find itself involved and isolated in a war against the other powers, especially at a time when he also had to deal with the Rhine crisis.

After the British and Austrian navies established a naval blockade over the Nile delta coastline and launched an attack on Egyptian controlled Acre, Muhammad Ali agreed to the terms of the Convention on 27 November 1840.

These terms included renouncing his claims over Crete, and Hijaz, downsizing his navy, and reducing his standing army to 18,000 men, provided that he and his descendants would enjoy hereditary rule over Egypt and Sudan: an unheard-of status for an Ottoman governor.

[58] After 1843, fast on the heels of the Syrian debacle, and the Treaty of Balta Liman, which forced the Egyptian government to tear down its import barriers and to give up its monopolies, Muhammad Ali's mind became increasingly clouded and tended towards paranoia.

[59] In 1844 the tax receipts were in, and Sherif Pasha, the head of the diwan al-maliyya (financial ministry), was too fearful for his life to tell Ali the news that Egyptian debt now stood at 80 million francs (£2,400,000).

There he approached the Sultan, expressed his fears, and made his peace, explaining: "[My son] Ibrahim is old and sick, [my grandson] Abbas is indolent (happa), and then children will rule Egypt.

It soon came to the point where his son and heir, the mortally ailing Ibrahim, had no choice but to travel to Constantinople and request that the Sultan recognize him ruler of Egypt and Sudan even though his father was still alive.

Lingering a few months more, Muhammad Ali died at Ras el-Tin Palace in Alexandria on 2 August 1849, and ultimately was buried in the imposing mosque he had commissioned in the Cairo Citadel.

Eyewitness British consul John Murray wrote: ... the ceremonial of the funeral was a most meagre, miserable affair; the [diplomatic] Consular was not invited to attend, and neither the shops nor the Public offices were closed – in short, a general impression prevails that Abbas Pasha has shown a culpable lack of respect for the memory of his illustrious grandfather, in allowing his obsequies to be conducted in so paltry a manner, and in neglecting to attend them in person.

In the process of building an army to defend and expand his realm, he built a central bureaucracy, an educational system that allowed social mobility, and an economic base that included an agricultural cash crop, cotton, and military-based manufacturing.

As his biographer tells us, Mehmed Ali was a man who had mastered 'the art of staging spectacles and of influencing audiences'.The French consul believed that '[the] Albanian has more character and would probably be less sensitive to the advice and the means of seduction of our enemies'.