It is fairly certain that Mehmed Ali did not learn to read and write until he was aged about fifty; accordingly his letters were dictated to scribes and written down on the spot (a fact that explains the very spontaneous and immediate nature of many of them), and the books with which he was familiar and to which he often referred had been read to him.

QUESTION: How much did scribal mediation distort the documentary record biographers rely on to reconstruct Mehmed Ali's intentions?

Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed…, loc. 493