1830s–1840s: (Muhammad Ali Brought to Heel — Expansion into the Levant Causing Anxiety in Istanbul, British and European Allies Forcing Withdrawal, the Army …

1830s–1840s: (Muhammad Ali Brought to Heel — Expansion into the Levant Causing Anxiety in Istanbul, British and European Allies Forcing Withdrawal, the Army Reduced from 200,000 to 18,000, Monopolies Ended, and Egypt’s Industrial Ambitions Crushed as the Economy Became Largely Agricultural and Exposed to European Management): It was the commercial and strategic importance of the Red Sea to the British that would be the undoing of the independent Egypt created by Muhammad Ali — he consistently opposed the building of a canal linking the Red Sea to the Mediterranean. Muhammad Ali’s expansion into the Levant in the early 1830s caused great anxiety in Istanbul — an Ottoman expedition in 1839 to wrest Syria and Palestine from Egyptian control ended in defeat and humiliation. Britain and several European allies stepped in to force Muhammad Ali to withdraw. In the late 1830s and early 1840s, he was forced to reduce his army from close to 200,000 men to some 18,000 and to end the monopolies he had established that excluded Europeans from Egyptian markets. This effectively ended his industrial ambitions — from the 1840s onward, the Egyptian economy became both largely agricultural and exposed to ever greater European influence. The Egypt he had created was only partially modernized, limited by European wariness and prone to European intervention — a pattern repeated across Islamic North Africa that ultimately caused a profound cleavage within Islam itself.