After the elimination of the Mamluks.. the home front is cleared.. and a relative calm prevails.. during which "Muhammad Ali" devotes himself to construction.
And to guarantee that economic construction proceeds smoothly, he had to build in parallel something exceedingly important...
Security.
And "Muhammad Ali" begins to lay out a plan for building the armed forces that had collapsed and disintegrated and lost most of the state in the successive, consecutive wars.
"Muhammad Ali" decides that he will build a modern army on the model of the armies of Europe.. so he builds a military school.. and sends his commanders from among the Albanians to Europe to learn modern military systems.. and because his son "Ismail" had a special Albanian brigade.. "Muhammad Ali" decided that these would be the nucleus and the commanders of the Egyptian army.. along with a group of Circassians and Turks.
He builds a special military school in "Boulaq Dakrour".. whose name in reality is not from the French "beau lac du caire", the beautiful lake of Cairo.. as the silly Facebook posts promote.. the name "Boulaq Dakrour" is mentioned verbatim in the book Description of Egypt of the French expedition.. and the French wrote it "Boulaq Dakrour".. and it exists with the same name in "al-Muqaddimat wal-Salalim".. and that is a Coptic manuscript written in the thirteenth century.
"Muhammad Ali" sends these Albanian and Turkish fellows to the military school.. but he is surprised by what was not taken into account.
As soon as these fellows had learned a few modern military methods, they imagined that with them they had surpassed their peers from among the Egyptians.. they began to rebel and make trouble.. and then they went beyond the obedience of their commander "Ismail ibn Muhammad Ali".
And when "Ismail" could not control the situation with the remainder of his men.. and the Albanian fellows felt their strength.. they rose against "Muhammad Ali" himself.. and in the early part of the year 1815, their armed battalions were heading for the palace of "Muhammad Ali" to attack him, and depose or kill him.. and occupy the state.
And for the first time the Egyptian soldiers, the guard of "Muhammad Ali", clash with his new brigade that wanted to occupy the palace.
And the training of the Albanians and Turks was of higher quality.. and their numbers were nearly twice those of the Egyptian guard.. but in battles victory is not for numbers and equipment alone.. the human element is a vital factor.. the men.
A violent battle unfolds.. in the aftermath of which the guard of "Muhammad Ali" prevails, and they were ordinary Egyptian soldiers, most of them from Aswan and Alexandria and Cairo, and they take the mutinous brigade captive, but the situation had made "Muhammad Ali" take an important decision.. that the army he would build must be composed of Egyptians.
He begins to rework the idea from scratch, with a new school he builds in Aswan which he called "the Military School", to be made up of the people of Aswan themselves.. along with the loyal ones who had remained obedient to him, from his Albanian brigade of "Ismail".
And this time "Muhammad Ali" does not send any of them to learn military systems abroad.. he decides to set a new strategy.. "hunting for talent".
He himself searches for the capable man.. and seeks his help and brings him to where he is.
He brings a heavy-set French colonel named "Joseph Anthelme Seve".. and entrusts the school to him.
And "Joseph" was fascinated by Egypt and its beauty and its simplicity.. but he suffered a constant longing for his mother country France.. and his quiet city "Lyon".. and the longing was tearing him apart and he thought often of returning.
But one morning, while going to the school, he meets a stunning Egyptian woman of Greek origin named "Maria Myriam", who captivates him with her enchanting eyes.. so he decides to marry her.
And because "Maria" was a Muslim.. "Joseph" embraces Islam, and names himself "Sulayman", and marries her.. and decides to remain in Egypt forever.. and from that moment we knew him by the name "Sulayman Pasha the Frenchman".
This marriage bears fruit in three beautiful children.. "Nazli" and "Mahdi" and "Asma".. and the first of them - later on - becomes the grandmother of "Nazli Sabri".. the daughter of "Abdel Rahim Pasha Sabri".. whom we know as "Queen Nazli".. queen of Egypt and wife of King Fuad I.. after his divorce from his first wife Princess Shawikar.
And "Muhammad Ali" in the stage of construction needed money.. he needed a great deal of money. And at the same time.. the remnants of the Mamluks had fled to Sudan.. and began to harass him with raids on Nubia.
And "Muhammad Ali" takes a vital and fateful decision.. that makes him move for the first time from the position of defence to the offensive.
He decides to annex Sudan.
And Sudan at that time was fragmented kingdoms, not a unified state.. and it held riches that the Sudanese were not extracting.. diamond and gold mines.
And along the way "Ismail" annexes a group from the "Ababda" tribe to the Egyptian forces.. and these forces give him important support.. as guides and trackers.. given their excellent knowledge of the region.
And on 20 July in the year 1820, 4,000 Egyptian soldiers move under the command of "Ismail Pasha".. the third of the sons of "Muhammad Ali", on the first batch of vessels of the Egyptian fleet that he had built himself.
And Ismail encounters a problem.
The cataracts of the Nile.. or the rapids of the Nile.
And "Muhammad Ali", in order to avoid these cataracts, had chosen the time of the campaign during the flood.. with the water high and rising.. allowing him to pass the rocky rapids with ease.
And the cataracts of the Nile were six.. Ismail Pasha encounters one of their strongest at "Wadi Halfa".. which is in this picture.. and it becomes clear to him that even with the flood.. the cataract could drive his ships onto the rocks or the banks.. and tear them to shreds.
And Ismail Pasha was about to abandon the campaign or continue it overland.. had an Egyptian engineer named "Hassan", one of those accompanying his campaign, not come forward to him.. and offered him a strange idea.. namely manufacturing special explosives from gunpowder.. with which they would blow up the cataract.
And indeed the forces blow up the rapids and open a waterway through which the ships pass.
And the vessels move along the river from Aswan to Wadi Halfa to Dongola, and there they meet the last remaining battalion of the Mamluks.. and they finish them off simply and without losses.. and then they reach "Korti", and this was one of the cities of the Northern State in Sudan.. and they occupy it without noteworthy losses as well.. while the forces of "Ismail" were trained and used bullets and gunpowder.. whereas the weapons of the kingdoms of Sudan were blades.
In "Korti" the men of "Ismail" rest.. and then the Egyptian army continues the advance, and occupies "Berber" on 10 March in the year 1821.. and then "Shendi" and "Omdurman".
And after that.. "Ismail" founds a special city.. to be a military base for the Egyptian forces.
This city is called today "Khartoum".
"Ismail" encamps and extends his control over the lands he had occupied.. and "Muhammad Ali" sends his son-in-law "Muhammad Bey al-Daftardar" on another campaign with which to annex Kordofan.
And on 4 April in the year 1821, "al-Daftardar" engages in violent fighting with the forces of "Muhammad al-Fadl" the Sultan of "Kordofan".. and he prevails and occupies it.. and he in turn encamps.. and Ismail resumes the advance in his place.. until "Sennar".
But suddenly fever strikes the forces of Ismail... and the disease spreads and kills many of them.. so Ismail is forced to request support from his father "Muhammad Ali".. so he sends him new forces under the command of "Ibrahim" Pasha.. the elder brother of "Ismail".
"Muhammad Ali" annexes many of the sons of Sudan to work in Egyptian internal security.. and these were the beginning of the "camelry" arm in the police.
But the people of Sudan at that time were living by their natural instinct and knew little about the systems of states.. so with the first taxes imposed on them they made a series of revolutions.. which the sons of "Muhammad Ali" put down.. and then Ibrahim heads further south.. in the direction of the sources of the Nile.
But a new revolution suddenly arises in "Shendi".. which enrages "Ismail Pasha" severely.. because it hinders him from advancing.. so he heads there.. and summons the king of "Shendi".. King "Namr", and rebukes him and turns on him in front of his followers, and then imposes on him a crushing fine.. along with a thousand of the sons of "Shendi".. who are seized and shipped as slaves to work in the quarries in the north.
And the situation was humiliating for King "Namr".. who complies with the orders of Ibrahim.. with a calm smile on his face.. but deep inside, where it was boiling, he was harbouring a terrifying plan.. whose price was exceedingly steep.. costing "Ismail Pasha" his life.
And this plan we will talk about later.
And the talk has a remainder.
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Previous posts.
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1 - http://bit.ly/30anGpF
2 - http://bit.ly/2Q7e6zv
3 - http://bit.ly/2VVkcrX
4 - http://bit.ly/2WdncAb
5 - http://bit.ly/2HzZSo7
6 - http://bit.ly/2MeJZHO
7 - http://bit.ly/30Y8tZo
8 - http://bit.ly/2K6yBMd