Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt

Ibrahim Pasha ( Ibrāhīm Bāshā; ; 1789 – 10 November 1848) was an Ottoman general in the Egyptian army and the eldest son of Muhammad Ali, the Wāli and unrecognised Khedive of Egypt and Sudan. He served as a general in the Egyptian army that his father established during his reign, taking his first command of Egyptian forces when he was merely a teenager. In the final year of his life, he succeeded his still-living father as ruler of Egypt and Sudan, owing to the latter's ill health. His rule also extended over the other dominions that his father had brought under Egyptian rule, namely Syria, Hejaz, Morea, Thasos, and Crete. Ibrahim pre-deceased his father, dying 10 November 1848, only four months after acceding to the throne. Upon his father's death the following year, the Egyptian throne passed to Ibrahim's nephew (son of Muhammad Ali's second oldest son), Abbas. Ibrahim remains one of the most celebrated members of the Muhammad Ali dynasty, particularly for his impressive military victories, including several crushing defeats of the Ottoman Empire. Among Egyptian historians, Ibrahim, his father Muhammad Ali, and his son Isma'il the Magnificent are held in far higher esteem than other rulers from the dynasty, who were largely viewed as indolent and corrupt; this is largely the result of efforts by his grandson Fuad I of Egypt to ensure the positive portrayal of his paternal ancestors in the Royal Archives that he created, which were the primary source for Egyptian history from the 1920s until the 1970s. Today, a statue of Ibrahim occupies a prominent position in Egypt's capital, Cairo. Background His mother was Emine, born at Nusratli in 1770 and died in Cairo 1824. She was the widow of Ottoman official Serezli Ali Bey, and a daughter of the Ottoman Major Ali Aga of Nusratli. Ibrahim was her first-born son with Muhammad Ali of Egypt (her first born was Princess Tawhida). It is further known that he was born in the village of Nusratli (today Nikiforos), near the town of Drama, the Ottoman province of Rumelia, in what is now the eastern parts of Macedonian region in Greece. In 1805, during his father's struggle to establish himself as ruler of Egypt, the adolescent Ibrahim, at 16, was sent as a hostage to the Ottoman Kapudan Pasha. However, Ibrahim was allowed to return to Egypt once his father was recognised as Wāli of Egypt by the Ottoman Sultan, and had defeated the British military expedition of Major General Alexander Mackenzie Fraser.