Mehmed Ali exterminated roughly 2,000 Mamluks through a Citadel massacre and follow-up pogroms

Evidence

After years of attempting to pacify them the Pasha finally decided to get rid of their influence by expediently killing their leaders. On 1 March, 1811a festive ceremony was held in the Citadel to celebrate the appointment of his son, Tusun Pasha, to fight the Wahhabi rebels in Arabia. Mehmed Ali saw this as a golden opportunity to execute his deadly plan. He invited the heads of all the Mamluk households to attend the festive celebration and once they were on their way up a narrow alleyway leading to his court in the Citadel, he ordered his Albanian soldiers to open fire on them. Over four hundred and fifty of the Mamluk emirs were killed in that incident. This was followed by a ferocious pogrom against any Mamluk leaders who had succeeded in escaping the massacre in the Citadel. The Pasha’s Albanian troops were allowed to enter the Mamluks’ houses in Cairo plundering their property and raping their women. In the event around 1,000 Mamluk emirs and soldiers died in the city of Cairo alone during the few days that followed the massacre in the Citadel. This was followed a year later by a military expedition led by Ibrahim Pasha to Upper Egypt to pursue those Mamluks who had succeeded in evading the massacre in Cairo, and another 1,000 were said to have been killed. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 431

Categorization

• SEED: The ritual framing of mass murder as a festive appointment ceremony is a striking angles — ceremony as cover for liquidation, paralleling other historical occasions.