Every senior post in Mehmed Ali’s army went to kin or freed slaves

Evidence

The men who formed the senior echelons of the officer corps were composed of three main groups. At the heart of the officer corps and occupying the most senior military posts were the Pasha’s blood relatives, his in-laws or his personal freed slaves. Even a cursory look at the composition of the top positions in the army at any moment in time will reveal this aspect of Mehmed Ali’s army, namely that this was a “household army.” During the Morean war, for example, the head of the Egyptian navy was Müharrem Bey, the Pasha’s son-in-law. Later on Mehmed Said Pasha, his fourth son, was appointed as head of the navy. The army that invaded Syria was headed by his son, Ibrahim Pasha; the head of the infantry force was Ibrahim Pasha Yeğen, his nephew (who had earlier been governor of Yemen); the head of the cavalry forces was Abbas Pasha, his grandson. After capturing Syria, Mahmud Şerif Pasha, another nephew of the Pasha, was appointed as its governor. Fourteen months after the outbreak of the Syrian war Mehmed Ali decided to replace his Director of the War Department. The new nāīr was to be Ahmed Pasha Yeğen, who had been military commander of the Hijaz but whose most important credentials for the job was the fact that he was yet another nephew of the Pasha. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 925

Categorization

• XREF: Directly serves the reader’s question on the structure of the Egyptian army; a ‘household army’ parallels how other patrimonial states (Ottoman, Mamluk) staffed commands.