some killed, some made prisoners; among the last was Osman Bey al-Bardīsī, who was severely wounded. General Hutchinson, British, Turks and Mamelukes. informed of this treachery, immediately assumed threatening measures against the Turks, and in consequence the killed, wounded and prisoners were given up to him. At the same time Yūsuf Pasha arrested all the beys in Cairo, but was shortly compelled by the British to release them. Such was the beginning of the disastrous struggle between the Mamelukes and the Turks.
Mahommed Khosrev was the first Turkish governor of Egypt after the expulsion of the French. The form of government, however, was not the same as that before the French invasion, for the Mamelukes were not reinstated. The pasha, and through him the sultan, endeavoured on several occasions either to ensnare them or to beguile them into submission; but these efforts failing, Mahommed Khosrev took the field, and a Turkish detachment 7000 strong was despatched against them to Damanhur, whither they had descended from Upper Egypt, and was defeated by a small force under al-Alfī; or, as Mengin says, by 800 men commanded by al-Bardīsī, when al-Alfī had left the field. Their ammunition and guns fell into the hands of the Mamelukes.
In March 1803 the British evacuated Alexandria, and Mahommed Bey al-Alfī accompanied them to England to consult respecting the means to be adopted for restoring the former power of the Mamelukes, who meanwhile took Minia and interrupted communication between Upper and Lower Egypt. About six weeks after, the Arnaut (or Albanian) soldiers in the service of Khosrev tumultuously demanded their pay, and surrounded the house of the defterdār (or finance minister), who in vain appealed to the pasha to satisfy their claims. The latter opened fire from the artillery of his palace on the insurgent soldiery in the house of the defterdār, across the Ezbekia. The citizens of Cairo, accustomed to such occurrences, immediately closed their shops, and every man who possessed any weapon armed himself. The tumult continued all the day, and the next morning a body of troops sent out by the pasha failed to quell it. Tāhir, the commander of the Albanians, then repaired to the citadel, gained admittance through an embrasure, and, having obtained possession of it, began to cannonade the pasha over the roofs of the intervening houses, and then descended with guns to the Ezbekia and laid close siege to the palace. On the following day Mahommed Khosrev made good his escape, with his women and servants and his regular troops, and fled to Damietta by the river. This revolt marks the beginning in Egypt of the breach between the Albanians and Turks, which ultimately led to the expulsion of the latter, and of the rise to power of the Albanian Mehemet Ali (q.v.), who was destined to rule the country for nearly forty years and be the cause of serious European complications.
Tāhir Pasha assumed the government, but in twenty-three days he met with his death from exactly the same cause as that of the overthrow of his predecessor. He refused the pay of certain of the Turkish troops, and was immediately First appearance of Mehemet Ali. assassinated. A desperate conflict ensued between the Albanians and Turks; and the palace was set on fire and plundered. The masters of Egypt were now split into these two factions, animated with the fiercest animosity against each other. Mehemet Ali, then in command of an Albanian regiment, became the head of the former, but his party was the weaker, and he therefore entered into an alliance with the Mameluke leaders Ibrahim Bey and ’Osmān Bey al-Bardīsī. A certain Ahmed Pasha, who was about to proceed to a province in Arabia, of which he had been appointed governor, was raised to the important post of pasha of Egypt, through the influence of the Turks and the favour of the sheiks; but Mehemet Ali, who with his Albanians held the citadel, refused to assent to their choice; the Mamelukes moved over from El-Giza, whither they had been invited by Tāhir Pasha, and Ahmed Pasha betook himself to the mosque of al-Ẓāhir, which the French had converted into a fortress. He was compelled to surrender by the Albanians; the two chiefs of the Turks who killed Tāhir Pasha were taken with him and put to death, and he himself was detained a prisoner. In consequence of the alliance between Mehemet Ali and al-Bardīsī, the Albanians gave the citadel over to the Mamelukes; and soon after, these allies marched against Khosrev Pasha, who having been joined by a considerable body of Turks, and being in possession of Damietta, was enabled to offer an obstinate resistance. After much loss on both sides, he was taken prisoner and brought to Cairo; but he was treated with respect. The victorious soldiery sacked the town of Damietta, and were guilty of the barbarities usual with them on such occasions.
A few days later, Ali Pasha Jazāirli landed at Alexandria with an imperial firmān constituting him pasha of Egypt, and threatened the beys, who now were virtual masters of Upper Egypt, as well as of the capital and nearly the whole of Lower Egypt. Mehemet Ali and al-Bardīsī therefore descended to Rosetta, which had fallen into the hands of a brother of Ali Pasha, and having captured the town and its commander, al-Bardīsī purposed to proceed against Alexandria; but the troops demanded arrears of pay which it was not in his power to give, and the pasha had cut the dyke between the lakes of Aboukir and Mareotis, thus rendering the approach to Alexandria more difficult. Al-Bardīsī and Mehemet Ali therefore returned to Cairo. The troubles of Egypt were now increased by an insufficient inundation, and great scarcity prevailed, aggravated by the taxation to which the beys were compelled to resort in order to pay the troops; while murder and rapine prevailed in the capital, the riotous soldiery being under little or no control. Meanwhile, Ali Pasha, who had been behaving with violence towards the Franks in Alexandria, received a hatt-i-sherif from the sultan, which he sent by his secretary to Cairo. It announced that the beys should live peaceably in Egypt, with an annual pension each of fifteen purses (a “purse” = 500 piastres) and other privileges, but that the government should be in the hands of the pasha. To this the beys assented, but with considerable misgivings; for they had intercepted letters from Ali to the Albanians, endeavouring to alienate them from their side to his own. Deceptive answers were returned The Mamelukes and Ali Pasha. to these, and Ali was induced by them to advance towards Cairo at the head of 3000 men. The forces of the beys, with the Albanians, encamped near him at Shalakān, and he fell back on a place called Zufeyta. They next seized his boats conveying soldiers, servants, and his ammunition and baggage; and, following him, they demanded wherefore he brought with him so numerous a body of men, in opposition to usage and to their previous warning. Finding they would not allow his troops to advance, forbidden himself to retreat with them to Alexandria, and being surrounded by the enemy, he would have hazarded a battle, but his men refused to fight. He therefore went to the camp of the beys, and his army was compelled to retire to Syria. In the hands of the beys Ali Pasha again attempted treachery. A horseman was seen to leave his tent one night at full gallop; he was the bearer of a letter to Osmān Bey Hasan, the governor of Kine. This offered a fair pretext to the Mamelukes to rid themselves of a man proved to be a perfidious tyrant. He was sent under a guard of forty-five men towards the Syrian frontier; and about a week after, news was received that in a skirmish with some of his own soldiers he had fallen mortally wounded.
The death of Ali Pasha produced only temporary tranquillity; in a few days (February 12, 1804) the return of Mahommed Bey al-Alfī (called the Great) from England was the signal for fresh disturbances, which, by splitting the Mamelukes into two parties, accelerated their final overthrow. An ancient jealousy existed between al-Alfī and the other most powerful bey, al-Bardīsī. The latter was now supreme among the Mamelukes, and this fact considerably heightened their old enmity. While the guns of the citadel, those at Old Cairo, and even those of the palace of al-Bardīsī, were thrice fired in honour of al-Alfī, preparations were immediately begun to oppose him. His partisans were collected opposite Cairo, and al-Alfī the Less held Giza; but treachery was among them; Husain Bey (a relative of al-Alfī)
