Egyptian officials felt deep ambivalence about defeating the Ottoman Sultan’s army.

Evidence

The tension apparent in this act of defacing and disfiguring an official text was not only caused by two competing scribes with different systems of inscription, though. Like the case of the incomplete training manual mentioned above this tension that is already manifest in the text is symptomatic of deeper tensions in society. For Mehmed Munib could have asked for the Ottoman scribe’s words to be simply replaced by his; rather, he kept the Ottoman scribe’s words and crossed them out and then wrote his words above. This, arguably, is a reflection of the ambivalence that the scribes in Mehmed Ali’s service and especially those in the army felt when referring to the defeats inflicted on the Ottoman army, the army of the “Defender of the Faith,” the “Protector of the Two Holy Shrines,” as the Ottoman Sultan was known. We have already seen Mehmed Ali being ambivalent himself regarding his act of rebellion against his master in Istanbul. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 961

Categorization

• QUESTION: Why did Munib keep the crossed-out words visible rather than simply replace them — and how much of that hesitation stemmed from religious loyalty to the Caliph vs. bureaucratic habit?