Egypt’s 1831 Syria invasion deployed a 30,000-man combined army and fleet

Evidence

Finally on 2 November 1831 the crucial hour arrived and two expeditions were given orders to move with Syria as their destination, one by land and the other by sea. (The troops were supposed to leave in the summer but their departure was delayed until autumn owing to the outbreak of cholera in Cairo which took a heavy toll on the army.) Four infantry regiments109 and a similar number of cavalry regiments110 left by land from Ṣālḥiyya in the north of Cairo via al-‘Arīsh and finally to Jaffa. In Jaffa they were met by Ibrahim Pasha who had arrived by sea on 9 November, and entered the city three days later. Ibrahim Pasha was heading a formidable fleet composed of sixteen ships of war and seventeen transport vessels which carried on board his staff officers114 as well as forty small cannons and a number of siege cannons in addition to food, ammunition, fodder and medical supplies for the combined sea and land forces that numbered 30,000 men. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 242

Categorization

• XREF: Complements the reader’s interest in the birth of the modern Egyptian army and its expeditionary capacity, echoing earlier chapters on military reforms.