Nationalist historiography misreads Mehmed Ali’s pro-Ottoman statements as Egyptian patriotism

Evidence

In this letter the Pasha was contemplating the efforts he had made so far in helping his Sultan and was gloomily thinking of the prospect of fighting a combined European naval force that he would have little chance of defeating. “Here I am at a loss,” he said: “shall I be grieved at the calamity of the Sublime State (devlet-i aliyye) or at my own lost effort?” Instead of translating devlet-i aliyye as “the Sublime State,” the conventional term for the Ottoman Empire, Marsot in her citation of that letter translates it as “my country.” This particularly skewed reading of an important and telling document is partly due to the fact that Marsot seems to have been relying on an Arabic translation rather than the original Turkish text of the document. However, it is mostly due to a particular reading of Egyptian history and specifically of Mehmed Ali’s career, a reading that sees his reign as a chapter in the never-ending saga of Egypt’s struggle to express her true identity. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 103

Categorization

• SEED: A case study in how translation choices encode nationalist assumptions — an essay on how a single mistranslated term (devlet-i aliyye vs ‘my country’) reshapes the reading of an empire’s history.