Ibrahim Pasha (1789-10 November 1849) was the Ottoman Wali of Egypt and Sudanfrom 2 March to 10 November 1848, succeeding Muhammad Ali and preceding Abbas Helmy I. Ibrahim Pasha commanded his father Muhammad Ali's armies during the Ottoman-Saudi War, the Greek War of Independence, the First Egyptian-Ottoman War, and the Second Egyptian-Ottoman War, and he is still celebrated in Egypt for his battlefield victories.
Biography[]
A statue of Ibrahim Pasha
Ibrahim Pasha was born in Nusratli, Rumelia, Ottoman Empire (now Nikiforos, Greek Macedonia) in 1789, the son of Muhammad Ali Pasha. He served as a hostage at the Ottoman court amid his father's seizure of power in Egypt in 1805, and he returned to Egypt after his father was recognized as Wali of Egypt Eyalet by the Ottoman sultan. Ibrahim Pasha suppressed the remaining Mamluks in Upper Egypt in 1813 before taking command of Egyptian forces in Arabia in 1816. He oversaw the destruction of the House of Saud in 1818 amid the Ottoman-Saudi War, and he made a triumphal entry into Cairo on 11 December 1819. During the Greek War of Independence, Ibrahim Pasha was sent to the Peloponnese with 17,000 troops, defeating the Greeks at the costly Third Siege of Missolonghi before his army was harassed by Greek guerrilla bands, trapped after the European powers' victory at the 1827 naval Battle of Navarino, and forced to evacuate Greece after the French Morea expedition of 1828. His ravaging of the Greek countryside and enslavement of thousands of Greeks played a key factor in Britain, France, and Russia deciding to intervene on the Greek side. On his return to the Middle East, Ibrahim Pasha fought in his father's wars with the Ottomans in the 1830s, while also crushing a Palestinian peasant revolt in 1834. In 1841, a general revolt in Damascus drove Ibrahim Pasha out of the city, and the Arab rebels destroyed most of his force by the time it reached Gaza. Ibrahim Pasha spent the rest of his life in peace, and he served as his father's regent from July to November 1848, when he died.