A Khedive was roughly a Viceroy, and as far as I can tell, it was only used once within the Ottoman Empire, and that was in regards to the Muhammad Ali dynasty and their rather unique position in Egypt in the 19th century. Did the term exist any earlier than that? Especially in the 18th century where the Ottoman Empire seemed to slip into a decentralized structure and local Beyliks often wielded significant authority, I'm curious if perhaps any of them aimed for a larger position, especially in Egypt, which being far from the center of the empire was often let to it's own devices: even after 1517, the Mamluks remained the elite of the country and continued to dominate social and economic life in Egypt.
I know they were the Beylerbeys, which were roughly Governor-General, but when you go back into Ottoman History, say into the 16th and 17th centuries, was there any need or use for the term Khedive? Would it even of been given out, given that the empire was much more centralized? If the Turks did enter a decline a little sooner, and things got restless in Egypt, might some Mamluk strong man seize Egypt and govern it at his whims and later force Constantinople to recognize him as Beylerbey or Khedive? Or would he maybe just take the whole step (especially if we're talking in the 16th century and the Mamluk Sultunate is a memory, albeit distant) and declare himself as Sultan of Egypt?
Pardon the disjoined question. Just doing some writing for Prince of Peace, and things get messy for the Ottomans at the end of the 16th century due to the line going extinct. There's no collapse, as the empire does eventually pull back together, but the Mamluks get particularly restive, and I wonder what they would do. Would they be content to push out the Sultan's beylerbey and name one of their own as such, push for autonomy, (and perhaps as a stretch, push for provinces to be restored to them that belonged to the Mamluks pre-1517: Syria, ect)? Or might a strong Mamluk warlord with his own support and Bashibazouks attempt to set him up in the citadel as Sultan of Egypt?