Ibrahim Pasha rejected a Turkish identity and embraced Arab-Egyptian identity.

Evidence

As Mehmed Ali’s son and Commander-in-Chief of his army, the sentiments of Ibrahim Pasha toward the Turks and the Ottoman Empire have been the subject of a lot of speculation. It is claimed that unlike his father, Ibrahim could not see himself as a Turk or an Ottoman; he “identified with Arabs, spoke Arabic and admired the Arabs where he despised the Ottomans and Turks.” He used to say that his Turkish officers were good for nothing, “smoke[d] all day and [had] people to wash their hands.” When he was heard expressing similar views, one of his Arab soldiers asked him how he could say such things given the fact that he was a Turk himself. “I am not a Turk,” he replied. “I came as a mere child to Egypt, and since then the Egyptian sun has changed my blood and made me wholly Arab.” It has been claimed that this feeling of “outright animosity and contempt for [the Ottomans], their government and their military character” might have had its origins in a year he spent when a teenager as a hostage in Istanbul. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 1316

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the wider literature on Ottoman provincial elites’ identity and the emergence of Egyptian national consciousness during the Mehmed Ali era.
• QUESTION: Was Ibrahim’s Arab identification genuine sentiment or a politically convenient stance toward an Arab-officer army? The hostage-year origin story is worth probing.