European travelers recycled each other’s accounts of Mehmed Ali
Evidence
At first sight, these stories woven around the person and gaze of Mehmed Ali appear anecdotal and marginal in the writings of contemporary European travelers, intending to add flavour to their accounts of what was already an exotic, unfamiliar and fascinating oriental tour. On the other hand, one can already detect some common themes and even expressions in this rich repertoire of stories concerning the great Pasha, suggesting perhaps that these European travelers were aware of each others’ writings and that they had come to Egypt having read each others’ work. The “I-was-born-in-a-village-in-Albania” story, for example, besides being told twice by Barker in his dispatches to London, was reproduced in St. John’s published book. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 58
Categorization
Category: Connection Points
Related
- Mehmed Ali staged interviews with European visitors to shape his foreign image (similarity 0.81)
- Mehmed Ali deliberately performed a mysterious, all-powerful persona for European visitors (similarity 0.79)
- Historians inherited Mehmed Ali’s self-selected archival framing of Egyptian history. (similarity 0.79)
- British historians saw Mehmed Ali as echoing their own viceroys in India (similarity 0.79)
- European tourists traveled to Egypt partly to visit Mehmed Ali by the 1820s (similarity 0.78)
- Archival sources were selected early on to make histories mirror Mehmed Ali’s own account (similarity 0.78)