When people talk about Slave Reparations how come we never talk about Muhammad Ali?

Lost in CT

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Sun Mar-01-09 01:54 PM
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When people talk about Slave Reparations how come we never talk about Muhammad Ali?

Edited on Sun Mar-01-09 02:26 PM by Lost in CT

Muhammad Ali was a Albanian gent who is considered the father of modern Egypt (His dynasty lasted till 1952)

With the Mamluks out of power and the French occupation over, Egypt was thrown into a power vacuum. Muhammad Ali, a young officer who had been 2nd in command under his uncle's son Sarechesme Halil Agha, was sent by the Sublime Porte to eject the French. Muhammad Ali stepped in to fill the power vacuum by establishing a local power base of village leaders, clerics, and wealthy merchants in Cairo. With no one else able to hold the office in safety, he was recognized by the Porte in 1805 as Wāli of Egypt, owing fealty to the Ottoman Sultan. Ali spent the first years of his rule fighting off attempts to unseat him and extended his personal authority over all of Egypt. In one of the most infamous episodes of his reign, Ali definitively broke the power of the Mamluks by massacring their leaders. Having worn down the Mamluks for years with raids and skirmishes, he invited their emirs in 1811 to a feast to celebrate his son Tusun Pasha's appointment to lead the army being sent against the Wahhabi rebellion in Arabia. The Mamluk emirs were ambushed and killed by the Pasha's gunmen in the Cairo Citadel, where the feast was to be held, in what was known as the Massacre of the Citadel. The corpse of Siam Bey, one of the leading Mamluks, was dragged around Cairo as an example to anyone who posed a threat to the Governor's rule

But alas Muhammad Ali also revitalized a dead slave trade.

Under the new government established in 1821, Egyptian soldiers lived off the land and exacted exorbitant taxes from the population. They also destroyed many ancient Meroitic pyramids searching for hidden gold. Furthermore, slave trading increased, causing many of the inhabitants of the fertile Al Jazirah, heartland of Funj, to flee to escape the slave traders. Within a year of Muhammad Ali's victory, 30,000 Sudanese were conscripted and sent to Egypt for training and induction into the army. However, so many perished from disease and the unfamiliar climate that the survivors could be used only in garrisons in Sudan.

In search of slaves for his army to offset losses of men in Arabia, and in search of gold, Muhammad Ali Pasha, in 1820, sent his army, led by his son, Ismail, southward into the Sudan. Ismail fought the Shakiyya people, a people with horses and a warrior tradition but still with weaponry from the Middle Ages. The Shakiyya were slaughtered, their ears sent to Egypt's capital, Cairo, by the basketful in exchange for bounty payments. Moving farther up the Nile, Ismail, in June 1821, conquered the trading center at Shendi - where slaves had been a major item of commerce.

After Shendi, Ismail conquered Kordofan. But he found only worn out gold mines. The gold and booty that Muhammad had been hoping for would not be forthcoming. Slaves were shipped to Cairo, but only half survived the journey.

Since the scars of Ali's actions are still felt in southern Sudan today. Why is there no cry for reparations from the Egyptians to their colonies on the world stage. (This is in reference to the newly rejected conference on racism)

Not to mention why an African American would name himself after a white slave trader but that is another post. On edit it appears to be a common name so never mind... but Forest Whitaker's parents still have some explaining to do

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Ali_of_Egypt

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Sudan_under_Muhammad_Ali_and_his_successors

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rahman_Mansur_az_Zubayr

http://www.fsmitha.com/h3/h37-af.html