Sitting atop Cairo’s citadel, the hill that had been fortified in the 12th Century by Saladin as a key highpoint dominating the city, is the large Alabaster Mosque. Apart from its commanding position, it stands out due to its architectural style, which differs significantly from the numerous older mosques around it. Commissioned in the first half of the 19th Century, the mosque’s architect was an Ottoman Turk. Its design, with its large central dome, surrounded by smaller domes, and thin, pointed minarets, consciously imitated that of the great mosques of Istanbul. Egypt had been under nominal Ottoman sovereignty since the 16th Century, but its Mamluk rulers had retained considerable autonomy, and continued to build mosques in their own style, quite distinct from that of the Ottomans.
The mosque was commissioned by Muhammad Ali Pasha, ruler of Egypt for most of the first half of the 19th Century, who is feted by some as the father of modern Egypt. And Muhammad Ali was Albanian. Under his rule, the beginnings of a modern state were built, and a modern army. At its height, he extended Egypt’s dominion to include Sudan, western Arabia and Syria, his armies marching even into Anatolia, where they inflicted a crushing defeat on the army of the Sultan in 1832. His power far outreached that of his nominal sovereign, and Istanbul itself lay at his feet before the European powers intervened to prevent the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
How did an Albanian come to wield such power in a foreign land? Muhammad Ali was born in what is today Greek Macedonia. He went to Egypt as second-in-command of an Albanian contingent in the Ottoman army that was sent to restore Ottoman control in the power vacuum that followed the withdrawal of the French, who occupied the country from 1798-1801. By a mixture of military campaigning and deft political intrigue, Muhammad Ali established himself as the new Wali (Governor) of Egypt. Still nominally beholden to the Sultan, he was in practice an independent ruler, who founded a dynasty that reined until 1953, when Gamal Abdel Nasser declared a republic.
Like many great rulers in the Middle East’s history, his strength was also bolstered by a capacity for ruthlessness and cruelty. Notably, early in his rule he eliminated the power of the Mamluks when he invited them to a festive celebration in Cairo, following which they were slaughtered. Standing on the citadel, with its hazy views across Cairo to the pyramids at Giza, you can see the spot where it happened, below the walls, in the narrow road leading down from the hill to the citadel gate. As they processed down to the gate, it was slammed shut by some of Muhammad Ali’s loyal Albanians, who then proceeded to kill them.
I found mixed feelings among the Egyptians I spoke to about Muhammad Ali. Some were prepared to acknowledge his importance for Egypt. For the taxi driver who brought me into the city from the airport, he was just one in a long succession of foreign rulers stretching back more than two millennia, before the takeover by Nasser, in his view the first truly Egyptian ruler since ancient times. Nasser was my driver’s hero. King Farouk, who was overthrown by Nasser’s revolution in 1952, he excoriated as a corrupt foreigner. The recently ousted Hosni Mubarak he considered even worse.
For many, Muhammad Ali was interested more in his personal aggrandisement than that of Egypt. Indeed, he milked Egypt for the funds needed for his reforms, and appropriated nearly all Egyptian land. And his foreignness was evident in more ways than the design of the mosque he commissioned. Throughout his rein, Turkish, not Arabic, was the official language of his court. And contemporaries who met him attested that, while he spoke Turkish competently, the only language he was really fluent in was Albanian. Yet his is a remarkable story. That an Albanian, a man from a small nation in what for many is an obscure corner of the Balkans, came to dominate and rule a large swathe of the Middle East, and laid the foundations of the modern Egyptian state.
