Still with the Ottoman Empire, and "Muhammad Ali Pasha", whom Sultan "Abdulmejid I" issued a firman deposing, in the year 1841.

England, Austria, Russia and Prussia endorse "Abdulmejid" in his firman.. and all agree on deposing "Muhammad Ali", with the exception of France.. France takes a very sharp position on this story.. and its delegate declares to the English delegate that he had monopolised the imbecile Ottoman Sultan, and that England wanted to run matters in the Middle East to its own taste and on its own account.. with no account for France or the rest of the states.

Austria and Prussia, after reflection, adopt the French point of view.. while England insists and Russia joins it on the opposing point of view.. and they resolve on deposing "Muhammad Ali".. Russia in particular had always had problems with the Ottomans.. and could not believe its luck in getting its hands on them.. and it was also an enemy of France after the Napoleonic Wars, and opposed it across the board.

And the atmosphere becomes electric, and threatens a world war.. so England yields, and Russia follows it, and England orders the Ottoman Sultan, so he issues a new firman, making the rule of Egypt hereditary for "Muhammad Ali" and his family, and confirming him in the rule of Sudan on condition that he pay the Sultan the annual tribute that the governors pay.. and that the number of the Egyptian army's troops not exceed 18 thousand soldiers.. while the army had reached, in "Muhammad Ali's" era, nearly 250 thousand soldiers.

And "Muhammad Ali" had been struck by an unknown condition that no one could diagnose.. though it was closest to poisoning with lead, and he felt he was on the verge of death, so he accepted the offer, and returned the Ottoman fleet that we had seized in Alexandria to Istanbul.. and asked "Ibrahim Pasha" to return to Cairo.

The year 1843 comes.. and matters have calmed down, and "Muhammad Ali" tries to rebuild the army.. and during that.. he sends his son "Ibrahim" to the Sublime Porte on a mission.. and "Ibrahim" Pasha returns from the visit also afflicted with lead poisoning.. and it settles in his joints and he becomes unable to move as he once did.. and in the year 1844, when he goes to the Sublime Porte on a second visit.. he returns coughing blood, with no understandable cause.. and his condition is diagnosed as a mysterious acute deterioration of the immune system that led to his being afflicted with pulmonary tuberculosis.

"Muhammad Ali" realizes that "Ibrahim" will not survive.. and "Ibrahim's" illness was in truth the crushing blow for "Muhammad Ali".. and he realized that if "Ibrahim" died.. then Egypt was lost.. he was afraid for Egypt from "Abbas Hilmi" and his brothers, the sons he had fathered from his concubines.. and he said plainly that:

"My son is a frail old man, and Abbas is slack and lazy, who else can rule Egypt now but the boys, and how can these preserve it?"

And the truth is that this "Abbas" was completely mentally backward.. he once went and secretly freed a group of Wahhabis from the Egyptian prisons and smuggled them out.. and the only time "Ibrahim" took him to the battlefield, he sent him back afterwards to his father because he was "of no use and his harm was greater than his benefit".. and at the time when "Ibrahim" was liberating East and West.. "Abbas" was out sightseeing in Europe.

"Ibrahim" returns from Italy and is surprised in the year 1848, that "Abbas" exploited his grandfather's illness and went off acting as he pleased.. and that he was the de facto ruler of Egypt.. so he restricts "Abbas's" residence.. and takes over the rule of the country himself.

And "Muhammad Ali" was residing in Alexandria under the care of his favourite daughter "Ruqiya Hanim".. and "Ibrahim" was running the affairs of the country from there, from Ras El-Tin next to his father.. and visiting him in his sickroom every night.. since he was the only one he remembered.. and he would try to remind him of what they had done and tell him that they would repeat the feat.. and that Egypt would regain its glory once again.. until the night of 9 November, in the year 1848.. and that was the last visit from "Ibrahim Pasha" to "Muhammad Ali".

"Ibrahim" dies after that on the following day.. and they bury him in Cairo as he had instructed.. in that he be buried in a small grave, of 3 storeys, inscribed with "Glory be to Him in whose hand is the dominion of all things, and to Him you will be returned" and "And the agony of death comes with the truth; that is what you were trying to avoid" and "Everyone upon the earth will perish, and there will remain the Face of your Lord, Owner of Majesty and Honour" And they carried out his order and buried him as he wished, and inscribed on his grave what he had instructed.

And a few months after "Ibrahim's" death, "Muhammad Ali" follows him, in the same year; 1848.. and "Abbas" takes hold of the country, and he was a disgrace, grovelling before the Ottoman Empire.. to the point that he went to the Sultan and gifted him the possessions of his father and grandfather.. and Egypt consequently went back to wallowing in the darkness of the Ottomans.. after it had been lighting up the world in the era of "Muhammad Ali".

"Muhammad Ali" departs leaving behind him, after forty years of rule, what the Ottomans had not done in more than two centuries.. thousands of schools and farms and factories and waterwheels and roads and lighthouses.. and hundreds of thousands of mulberry trees.. that were in the fields and schools and streets.. and he placed Egypt at the top of the world in silk production.. and dozens of sites and battles and wars.. in none of which his son Ibrahim was ever defeated.

As for "Abdulmejid", he had ended up in Europe's lap in a flagrant way, so they ordered him to introduce European reforms into the state, so he made something called the "Khatt-i Gulhane" (the Rose Chamber Decree).

And the word "khatt" when you hear it in the era of the Ottomans, after it is a word.. it means a decree, written by the Ottoman Sultan in his own hand, not dictated to the scribe of the divan.. and he wrote it in isolation from his own men, because a foreign consul was dictating it to him.

And under the "Khatt-i Gulhane" decree.. the Ottoman Sultan for the first time grants the citizens of the Ottoman Empire security for their lives, their property, and their honour; and a guarantee of personal freedom; and the prohibition of confiscation and forced labour...!!

Can you imagine that all of that in the era of the Ottoman Empire.. was not applied to its own citizens? No security for life and honour.. no sanctity for wealth.. no personal freedom.. and forced labour without pay?

Imagine then what used to happen to those who were not citizens.. and to the subjects of the countries under occupation like the Levant and Egypt and Libya and Algeria and so on?

After the "Khatt-i Gulhane", Europe pushed him, so in 18 February 1856.. out came something called the "Hatt-i Humayun".

And the Hatt-i Humayun is a decree under which, for the first time, non-Muslims, meaning the Christians, receive what the Sultan called "the traditional advantages".

Their ordinary rights, that is!

To worship and pray and perform pilgrimage and be equal in rights and duties with the Muslims. The decree also prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex.. because "women" and non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire were most of the time not considered human beings.. as if they were a vile, contemptible "thing".. so the decree said: "There shall be erased and abolished for ever, from official documents, all expressions and words containing the belittling of one sex before another in language or nationality or doctrine... and the use of every description or definition that touches honour or entails shame among people is prohibited by law".

This, by the way, was for the citizens of the Ottoman Empire as well.. they were being insulted in official papers!

By the way, following the death of "Muhammad Ali" in 1849, "Abbas" dismissed Christians from public offices, and sought to expel them from Egypt.. and the one who stood up to him at the time and threatened him with a revolution was "Sheikh El-Bajouri", the Sheikh of Al-Azhar.

"Abdulmejid" went and signed a treaty called the "London Straits Convention".. this convention stipulated freedom of navigation in the Dardanelles for all commercial ships of all states, and the prohibition of any military ships.

Of course that was a breach of the "Treaty of Hünkâr İskelesi".. which his father had signed with Russia, when he went crying to the Tsar saying "Help me, Ibrahim Pasha is coming to hang me from the chandelier".. this treaty allowed the Russian fleet to pass through Ottoman waters whenever it wished, alone, without any other state.

And then "Abdulmejid" went, under the Hatt-i Humayun, and granted France the right to administer the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the holy places in Jerusalem.. and that annoyed Russia.. especially since the Tsar of Russia was a hardline, fanatical Christian like the Salafists among us.. and he saw that he was more entitled to administer the holy places.. so he sent his ambassador to "Abdulmejid" to demand of the Ottoman Sultan the removal of the French Catholic monks.. and the granting to him of privileges for the Orthodox subjects in the Ottoman Empire, and the granting to the Orthodox monks of the right to administer the holy places.. and he demanded the conclusion of an agreement declaring clearly that all Christians in the Holy Land were under Russian protection, and he also demanded the removal of the Ottoman Foreign Minister "Fuad Effendi" from his post because of his close ties with France.

England understands that the Tsar of Russia wants to extend Russian influence at its expense.. so it orders the Ottoman Sultan to agree to Russia's participation in the administration of the holy places in order to deprive it of this pretext for interfering in Ottoman affairs.. but the Tsar of Russia, as soon as his request was implemented.. demanded of "Abdulmejid" that he declare the independence of "Montenegro".

And Montenegro was a state in southern Europe. And it was one of the two states that made up the union of Serbia and Montenegro.

Of course here England refused.. and consequently "Abdulmejid" refused.. and with his refusal, Russia withdrew its ambassador from Istanbul, in preparation for a new phase in the history of the Ottoman Empire.

The Crimean War.

And the story of the Crimean War would take long to talk about, so we will continue talking about it at another time.

And the talk will have a remainder, God willing.

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Previous posts in the first comment.

The picture is of the grave of Ibrahim Pasha in Cairo.

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