Kavala and Mohammed Ali Pasha

To the east of Thessaloniki, on the Macedonian coast, Kavala is an attractive little town. The old town climbs up a hill above the bay, its narrow streets lined with Ottoman-era buildings, with their enclosed balconies reaching out across the road. The roads lead up to the Byzantine fortress, which was extended by the Ottomans. Beyond the hill is an aqueduct, built during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent, in the 16th century. I enjoyed an evening meal at a restaurant owned by Greek migrants from Georgia, some of the many Black Sea Greeks who have moved to Greece since the end of the Soviet Union, the final extinction of a community going back nearly three millennia. Looking through the menu, I spotted khinkali, a kind of big Georgian ravioli, filled with seasoned minced meat, and a delicious broth that has to be slurped out. It is a Georgian dish, explained the waiter, who then told me that he and his family came from Tbilisi. The khinkali were not bad either. Not the best to be had, but not bad, so far away from Georgia.

Kavala was part of the Ottoman Empire from the late 14th century until 1912. One of its main claims to fame is that it was the birthplace of Mohammed Ali Pasha, father of modern Egypt, which he ruled for the first half of the 19th century. He founded a dynasty that reined until Nasser’s revolution in the 1950s. In 1801, Mohammed Ali had gone to Egypt as second-in-command of an Albanian contingent of an Ottoman force sent to restore authority after Napoleon’s brief occupation. By a mixture of military campaigning, cunning and ruthlessness, he managed to seize control of the whole country. At its height, his power eclipsed that of the Sultan, and for a time his rule extended over much of the Near East, almost reaching Istanbul itself.

The Imaret, Kavala

But Mohammed Ali did not lose contact with his roots in Kavala. He commissioned the building of the Imaret, a Muslim theological college. Nowadays it has been renovated as a luxury hotel. From the outside, stretched along a hillside overlooking the sea, it is an impressive sight. It has been described as the best preserved Ottoman-era building in Greece. Unfortunately, it was closed for renovation when I visited, so I was unable to see the interior.

Mohammed Ali Pasha’s home, Kavala

Close by the Imaret is Mohammed Ali’s family home, preserved as a museum. Upstairs, a large living room has been restored in the style of a traditional Ottoman haremluk, surrounded by low divans, covered with cushions, a low round table in the middle, and a conical fireplace on the back wall. I had seen such recreations before, in Albania, but what I had not seen before was a restored privy and washroom. I confess I was fascinated. In concept, it was not much different from the outdoor hole in the ground toilets I have encountered in rural areas in the Caucasus and Central Asia.

In a square next to the house is a statue of Mohammed Ali on a horse, in the act of either drawing or sheathing his sword, a rare example of a Greek town honouring one of its sons who was a Muslim, and who was not Greek. But what was Mohammed Ali? I had understood he was Albanian, like the troops who were the backbone of the army he led to Egypt. When, in 2011, I visited the Alabaster Mosque in Cairo, which was commissioned by Mohammed Ali and which contains his mausoleum, my Egyptian guide too described him as Albanian (see post of 5 January 2012). But the young Greek guide at Mohammed Ali’s house in Kavala told me this was disputed, and that in Turkey he was claimed as a Turk. It was claimed, so he told me, that the notion that Mohammed Ali was Albanian was a misunderstanding caused by the fact that the troops that he led to Egypt were Albanian. The issue could apparently inflame passions. The young man told me of an occasion when parties of Turks and Albanians visiting the house at the same time had a fierce row over the matter.

Mohammed Ali Pasha, Kavala

In the Ottoman period, the question of Mohammed Ali’s nationality would have been of secondary importance. He was an Ottoman Muslim, and that was what counted. Although he ruled over Egypt, he never learned Arabic, and the language of his court was Turkish. Some contemporary diplomatic visitors claimed his native language was Albanian. But indeed, he might in any case have known the language of his soldiers. The young Greek at Mohammed Ali’s house in Kavala told me that at the time of his birth, in 1769, the population of Kavala was almost entirely Turkish, with just a very small Christian population. He thought there would have been very few Albanians there, apart from the soldiers of the garrison. Yet there were Albanians almost everywhere in Greece during the Ottoman period, including nearby Salonika. With the information I had, I could not conclude either way. I had liked the idea that an Albanian, a chancer from one of Europe’s smaller nations, had become ruler of an Empire in Egypt, Sudan, western Arabia and the Levant, and one of the most notable historical figures of his day.

Muhammad Ali: the Albanian who ruled Egypt

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 Alabaster Mosque, Cairo

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.

Muhammad Ali Pasha

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.