WI: No Intervention Against Muhammad Ali of Egypt

What if the European powers didn't intervene in favor of the Ottoman Empire in the Oriental Crisis? Imagine there's some sort of other conflict going on that takes up their attention and they just leave the Middle East to sort itself out. What could Muhammad Ali have achieved?

Muhammad Ali would probably make it to Constantinople, and become the new Sultan of the whole enchilada. Once he's taken the capital and wiped out the last Ottoman forces defending it, he'll probably get the loyalty of the Ottoman governors in the Balkans.

He tries out his dynamic and ambitious leadership style as the new Sultan of the Alid, Muhammadin or Ottoman empire (not sure what they'd call it), with uncertain results for the 19th century.

Alid Empire would be the name for it. But given Muhammad Ali's penchant for Westernization when he ruled Egypt...yup, I can imagine a much stronger Empire at least for the short-term, that is, for much of the mid-19th century.

This is always one of those things I've wondered about. Being conquered by Muhammad Ali would seem an excellent opportunity for the Empire (whatever it gets called) to be reformed since the Janissaries and the students are likely to be two of the groups to suffer most from an Egyptian take-over.

Of course, this was one of the reasons why the European powers piled in to support the Ottomans. No-one wanted a dynamic new sultan in charge.

fasquardon

this is definitely worthy of being explored -

In OTL the European attitudes were the French being pro-Muhammad Ali and the British, Russians and others (who were less relevant like Prussia and Austria) being anti-Muhammad Ali.

What would it take to mess with all this? Perhaps if France take a pro-Constantinople stand the Quadruple Alliance powers cut a deal with Muhammad Ali out of reflexive suspicion of France?

Or what if somehow Britain had decided stopping any Russian intrigues head-on was more important than stopping French. Only a decade or so after the Oriental Crisis, that is the direction the British went, and that led to the Crimean War. Wonder what it might take to poison the British against the Russians about 15 years earlier? Could Russia achieve some greater, earlier success in Central Asia, Persia or China that would give Britain the willies?