He was appointed as the Ottoman Sultan’s Viceroy, Egypt’s Governor on May 17, 1805; ruled Egypt till September 1848; died in Alexandria on August 2nd 1849 and was buried in his mosque in the Citadel.

Mohammad Ali was born in 1769 in Kavala, a small Macedonian seaport on the coast of the Aegean Sea in what is known now by Greece.

As a young man he got involved in the military service and married a rich divorced woman who gave birth to Ibrahim, Tosson and Ismail.  Mohammad Ali then became fully involved in tobacco trading from which he made good money.

When the Sublime Porte mobilized its armies to fight the French invaders, under Napoleon Bonaparte, Mohammad Ali rejoined the military and went to Egypt as part of an expeditionary force to oppose the French.

Mohammad Ali arrived to Egypt in 1801 as an adjutant to the head battalion.  Being competent, he was promoted to higher ranks, and when the French left Egypt, he was already well connected with Egypt’s new ruler, Khurasan Pasha.  

Supported by the Egyptian people, Mohammad Ali became the Ottoman Sultan’s Viceroy in May 1805.  In July of the same year he was officially appointed by the Sublime Porte as Egypt’s Governor.

Mohammad Ali exterminated the Mamluks, the former ruling oligarchy, in the famous Citadel massacre of 1811.

Mohammad Ali sent his army to the Hijaz and took it over.   He also took over Nubia, the Crete Island, Palestine and the Levant.  These military victories caused the Ottoman Empire along with other European countries with interests in the region to stand against him.  They met in London in July 1840 and signed a treaty according to which Mohammad Ali’s powers were undermined and limited only to ruling Egypt and Sudan. According to this agreement Mohammad Ali and his family were granted the hereditary right to rule Egypt and Sudan with the rule of succession to the eldest male in the family given that Egypt remains a part of the Ottoman Empire and that it pays an annual  tribute (jizya) to the Ottoman Sultan. In addition, the size of the Egyptian army was limited to 18,000 soldiers, and Egypt was not allowed to rebuild its maritime arsenal.

In 1848, Mohammad Ali became sick and a decree was issued assigning his son Ibrahim Pasha to rule Egypt.  He died in 1849.