TIRANA, March 11- Balkan Insight (BIRN) investigative news outlet and its Albanian branch Reporter have published an article by Jack Davies on Muhammad Ali who casted the foundations of the modern Egyptian state. Ali was allegedly of Albanian heritage, but that statement among many other are still under a question mark.
From all the biographies of historical persons who became a somebody from being a nobody, Davies claims that only a few of them can be called as more extraordinary than Muhammad Ali’s story. Ali was an unknown Albanian who planned his path from the darkness to becoming the “father of modern Egypt,” with his successors running the country until 1952. He passed away in 1849, and on March 4 was his 250th birthday.
Ali was one of the unique cases who made it without anybody’s help, however, his story is quite mythologized. There are a few questions that Davies raises. Was March 4 his real birthday? Or did he choose this date to enforce his brand as Napoleon Bonaparte of Ottoman Empire (Bonaparte also celebrates his 250th birthday this 2019)? Was he really Albanian, or was this a pushed fact to attract Albanian soldiers under his command?
No one knows and truth is that there is no way to determine these minimal facts. Professor Khaled Fahmy writes that “he [Ali] didn’t come from a renowned family, so his parents had no reason to write down his birthdate.”
Whenever his birthdate or who his ancestors might have been, it is accepted that he was born in Kavala, 150 kilometers east to Thessaloniki. Just as with many history protagonists, his father died when Ali was young and left him under the care of the local governor. Napoleon Bonaparte was his hero. If it wasn’t for Bonaparte’s invasion of Egypt in 1798 then history perhaps wouldn’t have heard of Muhammad Ali.
Egypt was an important territory for the Ottoman Empire and when the French Emperor invaded it, Fahmy writes that the Sultan panicked. His first reaction was to send an army through Syria. He also later sent a smaller fraction of 4000 Albanian soldiers to join the war through maritime, which took a new smaller contingent with it from Kavala.
“Muhammad Ali is part of this force, and the earliest sign of him comes from entries to his connection to this Albanian contingent,” writes Fahmy.
Halfway through the Mediterranean, the Albanian contingent leader died and the second commandant suddenly disappeared once the ship sailed. This made that Ali to take things to his hands. It is assumed that this is the moment that Ali wins his Albanian identity, or the identity that catapults him to greatness. Academic Ali Afaf Lutfi Sayyid-Marsot from University of California wrote in 1984 that he had no doubts on Ali’s Albanian origin.
“Due to the kinship character of the Albanian bodies and their loss of high commanders, these soldiers would only be led by another Albanian. This together with his qualities and charizma helped Ali towards his rapid growth,” wrote Sayyid-Marsot.
An anonymous writer for the 1841 edition of the Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine also wrote in conviction of Ali’s Albanian heritage. He describes him as an Albanian, opposing the general reportings of him as a beggar, slave, or porter. This writer admitted that priot the death of Ali’s father, he was a military officer patrolling on Kavala’s streets.
Fahmy on the other hand believes that the Ali’s Albanian heritage are part of his mythology, together with allegations of sharing the same birth year as Bonaparte. This comes when the leadership of the Albanian forces turn to Ali, and he becomes thus connected to them. Fehmy writes that he exploited this because after the leaving of the French army and the backing out of the Ottoman forces, Albanians are the only ones left. And they were quite scary, he notes.
“Thus, he connects after them because he thinks that there is something on the move, and he deeply connects to them, and this is where the relationship starts,” wrote Fehmy.
Fahmy said that the key to Ali’s character are the anxiety and miracle he felt when he arrived in Egypt in 1801. After Ali saw the treasure in Egypt, he couldn’t imagine returning to Kavala, thus he settled there. Knowing that the Ottoman Empire was falling, Ali didn’t link his ambition with it.
“I am very much aware that the Empire is daily moving towards its crumbling. Over its ruins, I will built a great kingdom,” wrote Ali on his memoirs.
And this is exactly what he did. His achievements were so successful that his successors would reign over Egypt until the monarchy fell in 1952. According to renowned albanologue Robert Elsie, one of these kings, King Fuad I, even traveled towards Europe in failing attempts to get support in acquiring the Albanian throne after the country had already declared its independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1912.
However, prior to his grandchildren being kings, Ali had to build a kingdom first. Fahmy explains that in order to do that he needed a modern army, yet, an army cannot be established under a vacuum. The setting up of an army requires schools, which on their behalf need publishing houses. To have fierce soldiers, the country needs a healthcare system which requires doctors, who require trainings. So a country needs a medical school which needs books that need translating, which need another sort of expertize. Thus, Fehmy explains, step by step within 40 years Egypt starts being modernized.
Either by accident or plan, Ali managed to bring Egypt in the 19th century and changed the structure of the Ottoman Empire more than any other factor in 500 years. Political scientist Jasmin Mujanovic explained that Ali was pretty unique in the ways he used to ensure his power and success. Mujanovic wrote that Ali understood that the Ottoman Empire was not in the same state it used to be, thus he started to show himself more progressive by imposing many social and political reforms in providing a stable heritage.
Ali is part of a “strategy book” upon which Balkan leaders act, especially one of the most important points paid attention to was when the empire fell in crisis. Mujanovic explained that Ali tried to create alternative local resources to help his citizens to survive on periods of crisis. Mujanovic points Montenegrin prime minister Milo Djukanovic and Bosnian prime minister Bakir Izetbegovic as part of this school of thought, by acting as strongmen against one another in the region’s advantage.
“The Ottoman Empire has been declining longer than most empires exist, so there is a very long period of learning until the Austro-Hungarian Empire comes to the Balkans and there is another falling. So get this institutional reminder of how to make political judo, by pushing your opponent in the direction you want him to go,” wrote Mujanovic.
The political scientist said that even though Djukanovic certainly doesn’t Ali’s biography, but there exists a certain wide political methodology that these rules traditionally had because they were exposed to similar political conditions and this a political knowledge inherited through generations. He notes that there are more similarities than differences on how Balkan and Middle East elites have behaved comparing to contemporary ones.
What differentiates Ali from many other contemporary leaders and Ottoman rebels was his total lack of nationalistic ideology. He chose neither his origin Albania or birthplace Greece as the place to build his kingdom. In 1827 he interfered to the Greek independence war against Ottomans, for which Ali lost his fleet. Nevertheless, he would turn against the Ottoman Empire and almost assume it.
Beginning 1830 Ali’s son Ibrahim Pasha, led Egypt’s modernized army alone only a few days away from Constantinople. French diplomat and adventurer Baron de Bois-le-Comte reached the army while its advances and went to Ibrahim’s tent for an interview. According to de Bois-le-Comte’s later published book it was stated that Ibrahim alleged that his grandfather (Ali’s father) was from Anadole and arrived from Kavala after leaving due to a family fight, whereas his grandmother was from Drama, a small town located in the north from Kavala.
Ali marching towards Constantinople was stopped by Russia, which forced it towards the negotiations table. However, for Russia these negotiations weren’t very fruitful as it left Ali a his successors with a considerable empire which would last for more than a century.
Even if Ali was an Albanian or not, a significant part of his heritage was. After the first and last monarch of Albania King Zog, left after communism emerged to power, Ali descendant King Farouk invited Zog to settle in Egypt, where he stayed for more than a decade. In a more humane level, behind the La Grotta bar in the de-facto capital of Ramallah in Palestine, the Albanian flag hangs. When bar owner Shadi Zaqtan was asked in 2017 why the flag was hanging there, he explained that his ancestors were among the 4000 soldiers that crossed the sea with Ali in early 19th century.Regardless that Zaqtan doesn’t speak a word in Albanian, he still keeps a necklace on his neck with a two-headed black eagle on a red medallion.
Apart from the heartwarming relationships among the royal families and the unknown family trees, the real heritage of Ali is modern Egypt. Without his unique attempts to survive and flourish in the midst of the Ottoman Empire’s wrecking, the modern national state of Egypt as we know it might have never existed.
“His survival until the end is an evidence to his political genius,” noted Mujanovic.
