Mehemet Ali, who effected the virtual independence of Egypt, subject to the nominal suzerainty of the Sultan, was the most remarkable man that the Mahommedan world had produced in modern times. The son of an Albanian Moslem fisherman and small landowner at Kavala, on the borders of Thrace and Macedonia, he was left a penniless orphan, and was brought up as a dependent in the household of the chief magistrate of the district, who was a distant relative. He never learnt to read or write. He said of himself in later years that the only books he ever read were men’s faces, and that he seldom made a mistake in them. When the French invaded Egypt under General Bonaparte, Mehemet Ali was sent in defence of it with a band of three hundred Albanians, as one of their junior officers, and before long, on the return home of the commanding officer, contrived to step into his place. When the Turkish army was driven into the sea at Aboukir in 1794 by Napoleon, he was saved from drowning by a boat from the British admiral’s ship. Later he was put in command of all the Albanians employed in Egypt, and was attached for a time to the British army. After the departure of the British from Egypt, conflict arose between the Turks and the Mamelukes for the control of the government. Mehemet at first sided with the Mamelukes, but later he threw them over in favour of the Albanians in the service of the Turks. When the British Government sent its futile expedition to Egypt in 1808, Mehemet was chiefly concerned in opposing it. He was in command at Rosetta when a great number of British soldiers were slain, and a few days later he entered Cairo in triumph through an avenue of British heads stuck on pikes. Thenceforth he rapidly rose in influence and position, and at the age of thirty-five was the most powerful man in Egypt, and was able to instal himself as Pasha. He was harassed and opposed by the Mamelukes. He determined to get rid of them. He invited about five hundred of their leading men to a friendly conference at the citadel of Cairo. After entertaining them at a sumptuous repast, he ordered the gates to be shut, and had them all shot down in the narrow street of the citadel. A single man only of them survived by leaping his horse from the wall of the citadel, a height of 30 feet. This was followed by a slaughter of nearly all the Mamelukes in the country. Mehemet in this set the example which was followed a few years later by Sultan Mahmoud in suppressing the Janissaries.