Mehmed Ali refused to help found Mahmud II’s new nizami army in 1826

Evidence

When Mahmud succeeded decisively in getting rid of the power of the Janissaries in June of 1826 he summoned Mehmed Najib Efendi, Mehmed Ali’s agent, and asked him to write to the Pasha in Cairo requesting his help in founding a new nizami army. He explained that it was due to Mehmed Ali, after all, “that we saw the importance of training the troops along modern lines.” Nagib Efendi wrote to the Pasha asking him to dispatch instructors who had been drilled in his army to train the imperial army. Although the Sultan gave Mehmed Ali the credit for initiating such important reforms, the Pasha refused to help his Sultan giving such excuses as the fact that the officers in his army were better paid than Ottoman officers and that this might cause friction and envy between them. The most he did was to send a letter to the Grand Vizier congratulating him on the bold move and expressing his personal delight in it. Privately, however, he harbored different opinions. In an audience he gave to the British Consul-General in Egypt the Pasha made it clear that he had other reasons to refuse to help his sovereign. “The Pasha informed me,” Salt says, “that an application had been made to him for instructors but as the Grand Signor [i.e. the Sultan] had the same means open to him as himself he had evaded complying with the request – but they are too bigoted, he said, to employ Franks.” Having refused to send instructors from Egypt and believing that the Ottomans would not employ Europeans to train their new troops, the Pasha must have hoped that their efforts would be frustrated. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 223