Ottoman Egypt Crisis

1833

Muhammad Ali's son Ibrahim marched his European-trained army through Syria and crushed the Ottomans at Konya, threatening Istanbul itself. Russia, smelling advantage, landed troops on the Bosphorus. Britain and France panicked. The Egyptian Question had replaced the Greek as the great headache of European diplomacy. Palmerston would spend the next seven years engineering Muhammad Ali's containment, preserving the Ottoman state he privately despised.