This book offers a critique of this particular reading of Egyptian history. While not concentrating on the person of Mehmed Ali Pasha, it investigates his career closely to see how it is read in a manner that makes the three centuries preceding it appear as tyrannical and foreign. More fundamentally, it deals with Mehmed Ali's long career as a way of explaining how "Egypt" came to be seen as a nation with a purposeful, clear identity. Rather than taking "Egypt" as referring to a nation with an unadulterated identity inhabiting a territory with distinct borders that sharply distinguish it from other nations, this book argues that "Egypt" came to refer to a nation so defined only in the nineteenth century and mostly as a result of Mehmed Ali's policies.

DEFINE: Clarifies that 'Egypt' the coherent nation is a nineteenth-century construct, not an eternal identity. XREF: Connects to the earlier claim that Muhammad Ali's army forged the modern Egyptian nation, showing the nation-formation thesis extends to its very definition. Builds on: "Muhammad Ali's army forged the modern Egyptian nation through novel control practices."

Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed…, loc. 41