Rising from obscurity to prominence in 1805, Muhammad ‘Ali actively sought to carve out for himself an empire in the eastern Mediterranean. He might have planned to revitalize the Ottoman empire under his leadership, and may even have nursed the idea of replacing the sultan as Universal Caliph of Islam. The Pasha’s stormy expansionism on both sides of the Red Sea – in Arabia and the Sudan – and in Greece, North Africa, and above all in Syria, should be viewed within a grand design of independence and regional hegemony. Since his other campaigns are dealt with elsewhere in this book (see chap. 6), we will concentrate here on the Pasha’s adventures in the Arabian peninsula and his and his successors’ drive into the interior of Africa.

Muhammad ‘Ali’s activities in Arabia

The Muwahidun movement – commonly known as the Wahhabis – originated and developed in the remote plateau of Najd in central Arabia, outside the sphere of effective Ottoman power. Its founder, Shaykh Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab (1703–92), was a puritan and steadfastly fundamentalist muslih (reformer) of Islam. An ‘alim of the strict Hanbali madhhab, the shaykh “rebuked the errors and laxity of the times,” and was in particular opposed to the European cultural invasion of dar al-Islam. He sought to eliminate the consequential bi‘da (objectionable innovations) that had distorted Islam, and he dogmatically interpreted it in his Kitab al-tawhid. He recalled the Muslims to the pure and unadulterated faith and practices of the ideal state of the Prophet and the four Rightly Guided Caliphs of the seventh century.