Mehmed Ali motivated his soldiers through religion, not nationalism

Evidence

None of the battles that these men were about to fight in were ever portrayed to them as national battles, i.e. battles in which the word “Egypt” as meaning a nation-state was referred to. Instead, to incite them to fight or to encourage them to excel in training, reference was made either to religion or to their superior training and better organization. When the earliest conscripts were being trained in Aswan, Mehmed Ali wrote to Mehmed Bey, head of the military school there, telling him that soldiers had to recite the Fātiḥa (the first chapter of the Quran) every day before training. When the soldiers misbehaved and when examples of undisciplined behavior were reported to the Pasha, he would write to them an order reminding them that Jihad was a religious duty and quoting extensively from the Quran verses stressing the importance of discipline and obeying orders. Furthermore, the official name by which the new army was known in Egypt was Cihadiye-i Mɩsɩriyye, i.e. the Jihadiyya of Egypt, a name that had more religious than nationalistic connotations. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 1337

Categorization

• XREF: Directly contradicts the later Egyptian nationalist historiography of Mehmed Ali; connects to discussion of anticolonial/national army narratives.
• QUESTION: When did national identity begin replacing religious framing in the Egyptian army? A useful timeline question for the reader’s study of army origins.