It argued that not only was Egypt technically and legally an Ottoman province, but that Mehmed Ali and his officials were also "Ottomans": they originated from different parts of the Ottoman Empire, spoke Turkish, were familiar with the history of the Empire and of the dangers that confronted it, and thought of themselves in Ottoman terms, their eyes set on horizons that were essentially those of the Ottoman world. Seen in this light the career of Mehmed Ali appears not as that of a national leader who fought hard to deliver Egypt from the heavy burden of foreign oppression, but as a problematic reformer of the Ottoman Empire who, through the numerous changes he managed to effect in the Egyptian economy and society, showed the administrators in Istanbul an example of how to introduce much-needed reforms in the central lands of the Empire. In so doing, Mehmed Ali was not moved by any desire to improve the lot of the Egyptians, let alone to deliver them from "foreign oppression," but by his constant, pressing desire to make more secure his precarious position as governor of Egypt.

XREF: Builds on earlier claims at loc 106 and 1671 that Egypt's elite belonged to the Ottoman world and that Mehmed Ali sought reform rather than freedom. Builds on: "Ottoman-era Egypt was a vibrant society embedded in empire."

Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed…, loc. 1687