Muhammad Ali's campaign on Syria

A campaign led by Ibrahim Pasha, son of Muhammad Ali Pasha, against Syria between 1831 and 1840 CE. In al-Salabi's account it was a dispute between the governor of Egypt and the Ottoman state. ²

Al-Salabi says that Muhammad Ali protested that the governor of Acre, Abd Allah Pasha, had sheltered six thousand Egyptians who had fled conscription during 1831, and had refused to return them. He sent his armies under Ibrahim Pasha to Syria. The Grand Vizier's reply was that disputes between neighbouring pashas are not settled by the sword but by the intervention of the Sublime Porte. ²

Al-Salabi says that the Maronites stood with Muhammad Ali's army, and that the French supplied them with weapons. He says that Ibrahim Pasha lifted the restrictions on Christians and Jews in the lands he ruled, opened the way for missionaries, and that the press of the American mission was moved from Malta to Beirut in 1834. ²

Ibrahim defeated the Ottoman army and completed his control of Syria. After the Ottoman defeat in Anatolia, Sultan Mahmud II sought help from Russia, and the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi was made in 1833 after the truce of Kutahya. Then Britain and France confronted Muhammad Ali, and the London Convention of 1840 restricted the Egyptian presence in Syria to his lifetime. ²