Mehmed Ali’s personal power fused Egypt’s entire governance into his own person.

Evidence

In the light of the power he wielded and given how his contemporaries understood and literally perceived him, and more significantly how his “presence” was felt by his officials and his subjects, it becomes easier to understand how a breach of any of his laws were considered an attack on his person. Mehmed Ali’s wish was almost literally law. “So completely have [Egypt’s] interests been identified with those of its ruler that to speak of the government, commerce, policy, etc. of Egypt is to speak of the character of Mohammed Ali, who may justly apply to himself the noted words of an equally despotic potentate: ‘L’Egypte, c’est moi.’” — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 684

Categorization

• XREF: Comparable to the absolutist identification of ruler and state in Louis XIV’s France, suggesting a pattern across despotic regimes worth tracking against the Pasha’s modernizers like the Ottoman sultans.