Muhammad Ali (4 March 1769-2 August 1849), also called Mehmet Ali, was Khedive of Egypt from 17 May 1805 to 2 March 1848, succeeding Ahmad Khurshid Pasha and preceding Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt. He was formerly a general of the Ottoman Empire, but he went on to crush the Mamelukes and create the independent Khedivate of Egypt.
Biography[]
Mehmet Ali was an ethnic Albanian who volunteered for the Nizam-I-Cedit army that was sent from Greece to Egypt in 1800 to relieve the province from occupation by Napoleon's French army during the French Revolutionary Wars. After the French left in 1801, a power vacuum opened in which the Mamelukes who ruled Egypt clashed with the Ottoman Empire overlords of the region. Mehmet Ali fought for both sides before forming his own country in 1805 after stamping the Mamelukes out. He conquered Sudan from the Shaigiya tribe of Africans during the 1820s and defeated the Ottomans at the Battle of Nezib in 1839, expanding Egyptian territories in the Levant. Muhammad Ali died in 1849, and his power base lasted until 1914.