In immense terror, and dreadful panic.. the Ottoman Sultan searches for every European state to rescue him from Muhammad Ali and the advance of his son Ibrahim Pasha.. who is separated from entering Constantinople and cutting off his head by only about 200 kilometres.
And because the great powers are occupied with the Belgian question.. the Sultan Mahmud Khan II ibn Abdul Hamid I finds none but his implacable enemy.. Russia.. so he rushes to its emperor Alexander I.. and requests his protection against the Egyptian army led by Ibrahim Pasha.
And Alexander I agrees to support the Ottoman Sultan on one condition.. that he sign with him a special treaty.. which history has preserved for us under the name "Treaty of Hünkâr İskelesi".. and it stipulates the exchange of assistance between the two parties.. if one of them is attacked by any other party.. and in it Alexander exempts the Ottoman Sultan from sending forces, but he stipulates that Turkey, at the time of any war against Russia.. close the Dardanelles Strait to any ships other than Russian ships.
The Sultan agrees and signs the treaty in eager haste and panic.. and then Alexander decides to squeeze the Sultan for two piastres.. and Mahmud II signs for him a promissory note for a colossal sum by the standards of that time in gold coin.. and accordingly.. the Russian fleet moves to the Bosphorus.. and carries out a successful land landing and secures Constantinople.. or.. Istanbul.. the seat of the Sultanate and the capital of the caliphate.
And Ibrahim Pasha observes the situation.. and sends to his father asking his permission to advance at the head of his brave men, against the Sultan's guard and the Russian forces together.
But Muhammad Ali asks Ibrahim to hold back.. and that is because as soon as the European powers spotted the Russian fleet in the Bosphorus and the Russian forces in Constantinople.. they sensed the danger.. and realised that if Ibrahim could not enter Constantinople, that would be a great pretext for controlling the straits.. and if he could.. then Russia would fight him there forever.. and that is a great opportunity for Russian expansion.. and accordingly England, Austria, France, Holland, Portugal and Spain rush to the Ottoman Sultan and offer him help in repelling the Egyptian army, on one single condition.. that he abandon Russian assistance.
The Sultan indeed accepts their offer.. but Alexander I waves the treaty concluded between them in his face.. and pleads it as a pretext.. and refuses to withdraw unless the Egyptian army's forces leave Anatolia.
And here.. the European states we mentioned rush to Muhammad Ali.. and begin an active diplomatic mediation between him and the Ottoman Sultan.. in order to withdraw the Egyptian army from the borders of Constantinople.
And with extreme calm.. Muhammad Ali Pasha refuses to withdraw the Egyptian forces except on two conditions.. the annexation of the Levant and the province of Adana to the Egyptian state, and making the dividing line between him and the Ottoman state the Taurus Mountains.. while Muhammad Ali and his descendants after him retain; rule over Egypt with its new borders forever.
And Russia and Europe reject these conditions.. and the Ottoman Sultan rejects them.. so Muhammad Ali orders his son Ibrahim Pasha to advance with the Egyptian army.. and drive back the Russian and Ottoman forces together.
And when Ibrahim begins to break up his camp and gather his forces.. the Ottoman state realises that Muhammad Ali is not threatening.. and that he is indeed capable of driving back their forces and the Russian forces with them in Constantinople..so the Sultan Mahmud accepts Muhammad Ali's conditions.. and they sign the "Convention of Kütahya".. on 4 May of the year 1833.. and under it.. the Sublime Porte cedes to the Egyptian state the whole of the Levant, and affirms the governorship of Muhammad Ali over Egypt and Crete and the whole of Syria, including Lebanon, Palestine and Adana, and the governorship of his son Ibrahim over Jeddah, and withdraws and cancels the decree of "treason" that it had issued against Muhammad Ali and Ibrahim.. and Ibrahim retains the title of Emir of Mecca.. and Muhammad Ali gives up the condition of hereditary succession...
And under the convention.. the borders of the Egyptian state end at the Cilician Gates in the Taurus Mountains.. just as Muhammad Ali wanted.
And as soon as the convention is signed, the Sultan issues a special decree affirming its contents on 6 May 1833, so the Egyptian army withdraws from Anatolia.. and it appears that the crisis is over.. and matters calm down relatively.
But the truth is that what happened had extremely dangerous repercussions.. the European states realised that Muhammad Ali is not a scrap of paper like the Sultan of the Muslims sitting in Constantinople.. and that he carries out what is in his head and does not respond to pressure and threats easily.. and accordingly these states gather and decide that it is not acceptable for the strong Muhammad Ali Pasha.. to bring down the Ottoman state and replace it as he wants.
Whatever the price.
And at the same time.. the Convention of Kütahya was humiliating for the Ottoman state.. and the Sultan Mahmud II swallowed the insult and the bitterness of humiliation and defeat with extreme difficulty.. and as soon as the convention was signed and the Egyptian army withdrew from Turkey.. he begins to gather every soldier he can.. from every state subject to Ottoman control.. and from every corner of the earth.. and he begins to form a colossal army.
And over the course of 3 years.. the Sultan Mahmud gathers whatever occurred to him to gather.. and thousands graduate from his military schools.. and he brings in thousands of other soldiers from Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary.. and he buys commanders and soldiers from Austria, England, Spain, Prussia and Portugal.
And the strange thing is that the Sultan ships in some of the people of Greece, and announces to them that Muhammad Ali fought them and suppressed their revolution before.. although that was at the request of the Ottoman state itself.. and he obtains from them a few thousand soldiers to fight against Muhammad Ali....!
And at the same time.. the Sultan sends his spies and scribes and orators.. to infiltrate among the people of the Levant and incite them against Muhammad Ali.. and the people of Palestine were bored and enraged by the law of compulsory conscription that Ibrahim Pasha had enacted.. so they revolt against him several times.
And during that.. and for another 3 years.. the Ottoman army engages in intensive training.. and arduous field manoeuvres.. of the utmost difficulty and complexity.. until the year 1839.. intensive military preparations are under way in Turkey.. and the Sultan waits with exhausted patience.. until his commanders inform him that the army is ready.
And the Ottoman Sultan waits until a new revolution breaks out in Palestine.. against the system of compulsory conscription.. in March of the year 1839, and the Ottoman Sultan moves with a terrifying, colossal army the like of which no one had ever seen.. to the point that some historians said of it:
"The Ottoman Sultanate never, since Europe thrust its head into the East, enjoyed an army stronger, nor better, nor better trained, nor better equipped than that army."
There are estimates saying that it exceeds 230,000 soldiers.. 40,000 of them Ottomans.. and equipment that never runs out and colossal forces of artillery.. and at the head of all that.. the Ottoman Sultan's guard itself.. and it is a force of extreme ferocity that knows no mercy.. the Ottoman army advances to destroy the Egyptian army, and to invade the Levant once again.. on the understanding that its final stop will be Cairo.
And the fearsome army moves from Constantinople.. and news of it reaches Ibrahim Pasha, who was at the time in Aleppo.. so he asks his father's permission to fight.. and he refuses.. and asks him to wait until the Ottoman army comes closer.. so that the Egyptian state does not appear in any way.. in the guise of the aggressor.
And when the Ottoman army crosses the borders of Ankara.. Ibrahim Pasha begins to move towards it from Aleppo.. resolved to cross the border once again towards Turkish territory.. in order to meet nearly a quarter of a million well-equipped fighters.. with forty thousand soldiers only.
And at Gaziantep the Ottoman army camps and fortifies itself and digs its trenches.. and Muhammad Ali orders his son to wait.. until the Sultan Mahmud II declares war, so Muhammad Ali issues the order to Ibrahim Pasha to attack the Ottoman army.
But the fortifications of the Ottoman army were extremely impregnable.. moreover it had camped at Gaziantep for a whole month.. and dug its trenches and arranged its affairs and its soldiers rested and caught their breath.. unlike the Egyptian army, which had moved, marching on foot, an immense distance under the hot summer sun.
And despite that, Ibrahim Pasha studies the army's fortifications.. and discovers that the right flank is weaker than the rest.. and in implementation of Muhammad Ali's orders.. he attacks at once the right flank of the Ottoman army.
And for the first time Ibrahim and the men of the exhausted Egyptian army.. encounter modern European techniques in fighting.. because the weakness of the Ottoman army's right flank was nothing but a trick.. and it was protected by large forces of artillery.. covered with camouflage netting resembling the surrounding environment.. and as soon as Ibrahim turns towards the right flank.. the artillery opens upon him a colossal concentrated fire.. so he falls with his horse and dozens of fragments of shells and stones strike him.. and with his fall the forces are struck with tension and their formations break up.. and Ibrahim almost loses his life, so Suleiman Pasha the Frenchman catches up with him.. and covers him.. until they withdraw several kilometres to the edge of the Turkish city of Nusaybin.
One of the Ottoman commanders thinks of pursuing the Egyptian commander.. but the German commanders refuse that absolutely.. because when they listened to the testimony of the witnesses whom Ibrahim Pasha had defeated before.. he was skilled at staging a fake withdrawal with which he led his enemies into tight ambushes.. and accordingly.. they camp for the rest of the day.. and advance towards Ibrahim Pasha the next day.. and that was fortunate for Ibrahim.. who bandaged his superficial wounds and reordered his ranks anew.
And on 24 June of the year 1839.. the terrifying Ottoman army meets the exhausted Egyptian army, at whose head is the wounded Ibrahim Muhammad Ali Pasha, in the city of Nizip face to face.
And this time the colossal Ottoman army is not defeated, nor does half of it withdraw and retreat and advance as in all the previous wars with Ibrahim Pasha.
It is crushed, crushed by the Egyptian army, and it suffers a horrifying, catastrophic defeat, and a true disaster, as the Egyptian army almost annihilated the Ottoman army root and branch down to the last soldier.. and of all the Ottoman forces only 20 thousand soldiers remain alive.. Ibrahim Pasha takes 12 thousand of them prisoner.. and the rest flee to Constantinople.
And history stops and records and writes down and preserves for us this great battle under the name "the Battle of Nizip".. of which some historians said.. that there was not a single house in Constantinople without a funeral, a mourning gathering and a burial because of this battle.
And the Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II was awaiting news of the battle with bated breath.. and had issued orders that it be reported to him from hour to hour.. and since the departure of his army from Constantinople he had filled and lit and smoked his pipe hundreds of times out of sheer tension.. until he was stricken with pneumonia.. so when the black news of the catastrophic loss reaches him.. he is seized with rage.. and is unable to breathe.. and suffers a heart attack and.. and dies.
And for the second time in six years.. the road opens before the Egyptian army to Constantinople.. which has become without an army or any forces to protect it.
And at the same time, the Ottoman fleet moves to Alexandria.. so the Qaitbay Citadel and the Ras El-Tin garrison train their artillery on it.. but its commander, the commander of the Ottoman fleet, lowers his weapons and announces that he has not come to fight.. and that he has come to talk with Muhammad Ali.. and when the commander of the Ottoman fleet meets Muhammad Ali.. he bows before him.. and offers him allegiance as the new Sultan of the Muslims.. and places the fleet under his command.
And here Europe takes a decision of extreme danger.. and before it Muhammad Ali takes an even more dangerous decision.
And these decisions we will talk about later, God willing...
And there remains to the conversation at that time.. a conclusion.
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