Yeeeah I don't think Egyptians should really take too much pride in Muhammad Ali. For one he was Albanian and did not consider himself Egyptian, for two his army was composed of all Ottoman ethnicities including Turks fighting another Ottoman army to depose the sultan and seize power for himself. It was essentially a civil war despite later Egyptian nationalist literature attempting to claim that he was trying to build some kind of Egyptian empire.
He and his descendants don't even speak albanian and even arabic (elementary level maybe). Their native tongue was Turkish and his Albanian origin is not clear. A classical Ottoman elite. Old European historians had a tendancy to find fictive origins for Ottomans. They are not reliable at all. We do not have enough historical facts about the origins of devhirmes and their families. Only rumours found in the letters of Italian embassies (Venice, Genoa). Mehmet Ali Pasha was not a devshirme. Devshirme system ended completely towards 1630s. His family is said to have Albanian devshirme origins. So he is a Turk, no matter if one of his grand grand father 200 years ago is albanian or serbian slave. He may have albanian, ethiopian, greek, serbian, ukranian, armenian etc blood. Like most of us in Türkiye.
The same thing for Memlouks, they have been collected by slave traders till 16th century. Mostly turkic to some extend slavic, circassian an georgian boys. But all of them know Kipchak Turkish (and even İstanbul Turkish). Even sultans who are said to be circassian, have their poems written in Turkish (bot Kipchak and Ottoman). It is so clear but for Europeans they are circassian...
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