Mehmed Ali’s four battlefield victories over the Ottomans yielded no legal independence

Evidence

Four years after withdrawing his troops from Morea his son marched on to Syria at the head of a mighty military machine and started a ten-year period of occupation of the Syrian provinces; during this time his forces clashed with those of the Ottomans four times, and in all of them he snatched spectacular victories. These military victories, however, were not translated into new legal realities. The peace of Kütahia reached at after the cessation of hostilities did not grant Mehmed Ali the independence he was supposedly fighting for. As has been shown above, the inconclusive nature of this verbal agreement was not due to British or European hostilities to Mehmed Ali’s schemes or to their interference in Istanbul to prevent him from pressing his demands. Rather, it was a reflection of the Pasha’s own confused and ambivalent feelings regarding his position within the Ottoman Empire and his inability to come to terms with the legal implications of his rebellious moves, viz, to be declared a rebel by the Ottoman Sultan and to have Ottoman legitimacy withdrawn from him. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 266

Categorization

• XREF: Ties into the reader’s parallel interest in Ottoman Pashas and European powers — the resolution of Kütahia without British interference contradicts common causal stories about European checkmating of Mehmed Ali.