Ali Bey al-Kabir

Ali Bey al-Kabir (1728–1773) was a mamluk who served as shaykh al-balad of Ottoman Egypt in 1760–1766 and 1767–1772 and became the country's effective strongman, in 1769 practically pursuing independence from the Ottomans — minting coins in his own name, terminating the annual tribute to Istanbul, and launching conquests of the Hejaz and Syria ^{1 2}.

Ali Bey was born in the Principality of Abkhazia in 1728 ^{1 2}. Pleshcheev and Fındıklılı Efendi make him ethnically Abkhazian; the Encyclopaedia of Islam, following his contemporary biographer Sauveur Lusignan, makes him supposedly the son of a certain David, a Greek Orthodox priest, and Mikaberidze makes his father a priest of the Georgian Orthodox Church, while the Arabic article also carries a version making him a Romanian Orthodox priest's son from Amasya ^{1 2}. Kidnapped at about thirteen and brought to Cairo in 1741, he was sold into slavery and in 1743 given to Ibrahim Ketkhuda, himself of Georgian origin ¹.

Ali rose through Ibrahim Ketkhuda's household to become a kashif in 1749, and in 1753 or 1754 led the Hajj caravan as amir al-hajj, earning his Turkish nickname Balut Kapan, 'he who catches clouds', for his daring attacks on the Bedouin of the caravan route; his Arabic nickname Jinn Ali, 'Ali the demon', came from the same ferocity ¹. He first took the shaykh al-balad in 1763, was driven out by rivals, and returned to it in 1767 stronger than before, confiscating his opponents' wealth and killing or exiling them until the country was his ².

Exploiting the Ottoman war with Russia, Ali Bey had the Ottoman governor deposed and took the post of qa'immaqam himself on 11 December 1768, then barred Ottoman governors from Cairo for four years and stopped the annual tribute ². In 1770 his general Abu al-Dahab took the Hejaz for him, and he was proclaimed in the two sanctuaries as Sultan of Egypt; in 1771 Abu al-Dahab invaded Syria and entered Damascus ^{2 1}. Among his instruments were Muhammad Bey Abu al-Dahab and a young enforcer lately come from Bosnia, Ahmad al-Jazzar, whom he had adopted as a protégé ^{2 3}.

Abu al-Dahab turned against his master, withdrew from Syria and made war on him; Ali Bey fled Cairo with his treasure and seven thousand men to his ally Daher al-Umar at Acre, then hurried back against Daher's advice ². At al-Salihiyya on 26 April 1773 Abu al-Dahab's army defeated him; wounded, he was carried to Cairo, where Abu al-Dahab had him cared for, but he died there on 8 May 1773, 25 Safar 1187 ^{2 1}.

No source read names a legal school for the man himself. The biographical tradition makes him a priest's son from the Caucasus; kidnapped and sold in Cairo, he converted to Islam as a mamluk in Ibrahim Ketkhuda's household, and he afterwards ruled as a Muslim strongman, led the Hajj caravan and was proclaimed in the two sanctuaries ^{1 2}. Origin and conversion are background and do not name a school, and Wikidata gives only Islam ⁴. His faith is therefore recorded as unknown.

Wikidata also carries 22 April 1773 for his death, against the 8 May of both articles, and gives Acre beside Cairo as a death place, which neither article supports ⁴. His wife was Nafisa al-Bayda ⁴; she has no museum record, so no spouse edge is written. Abkhazia has no museum place record, so he carries no birth-place edge.