Mehmed Ali's army was instrumental in founding the modern Egyptian nation not by enlightening its soldiers as to their true and hidden identity. It was not by fighting their supposedly foreign enemies that Egyptians came to call Egypt their own. Rather, by relying on thousands of Egyptians to man his army, and at the same time by making sure that none of these evlad-ɩ Arab was to be promoted to senior ranks, the Pasha inadvertently helped to homogenize the experience of these thousands of Egyptians in a manner that was crucial in the founding of their "imagined community." The deeply felt sentiments of injustice, frustration and animosity that the Arabic-speaking soldiers and their junior officers had towards the Turkish-speaking military elite was a powerful ingredient in forging the rising national consciousness and was made even more potent by being echoed in the civilian society at large.

XREF: Connects to earlier claims at loc 93 ('Army discipline manufactured Egyptians' national identity rather than revealing it') and loc 1371 ('The army's operations unwittingly forged Egyptian nationalism through anti-Ottoman resentment'). This highlight specifies the mechanism — shared resentment against the Turkish elite. Builds on: "The army's operations unwittingly forged Egyptian nationalism through anti-Ottoman resentment"

Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed…, loc. 1693