A personal vendetta against Husrev Pasha shaped Mehmed Ali’s Ottoman struggle

Evidence

This dynastic rivalry was not directed at the Sultan himself, for after all Mehmed Ali’s lineage was not so illustrious as to enable him to compete successfully with the House of Osman. Rather, it was at Husrev Pasha that his rivalry was directed. While to reduce all the Pasha’s military activities in the second half of his reign to an attempt to frustrate and baffle his old rival would be to stress the point too forcefully, it remains true that Mehmed Ali’s struggle against the Ottomans was shaped in no small degree by the age-old hatred of these two old, grumpy men. The irony of course is that the Pasha turned out to have been fighting the wrong man, and the one person who contributed more than any other to his alleged “undoing” was not Husrev but Mustafa Rasid, the man who would later play the reform game, the Tanzimat, much more adeptly. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 1588

Categorization

• QUESTION: Narrative hook worth chasing: the Pasha’s enmity aimed at the wrong man, with the real antagonist being Tanzimat-era Mustafa Rasid.