The Pasha responded and was not aware that these sultan orders aimed to limit his forces and drain his money and forces. It is true that the Ottomans sent recruits to him and provided him with weapons, but as usual they took all the credit.

Following the temporary occupation of parts of the Arabian Peninsula by the Ottomans through their governor, Muhammad Ali Pasha, the Pasha’s ambition headed south, seeking to occupy Sudan and add it to his kingdom. After things were settled for him, the Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II, who was busy with his pleasures, found that a major revolution was about to topple the state of Greece, so he marched his already collapsed forces, and after the failure of his army, he asked his governor in Egypt for help and intervention, and the Pasha’s plan was a quick response to prove his importance, and he had what sought for, he almost made won had it not been for the intervention of the European countries represented by the Russians, the English and the French, and the subsequent losses almost ravaged the rule of the Pasha, who found that it was time to separate his policies from the Ottoman Sultan, and to declare his retreat and return to Egypt.

In that war, the governor of Egypt lost about thirty thousand of his soldiers, and lost most of his naval fleet, after the fatal blow inflicted by the European coalition on the Egyptian and Ottoman fleets in the naval battle of Nafarin in (1827), so Muhammad Ali Pasha refrained from continuing to confront the Europeans, and the remnants of his destroyed fleet returned. to Alexandria.

Muhammad Ali Pasha expected that the Ottomans would appreciate his great services in his war on the Arabian Peninsula, after the victories of the Saudis that humiliated the Ottomans, especially after the Saudis recovered the Two Holy Mosques from the Turkish Ottoman occupation, and in Greece, where the Sultanate’s army was humiliated, but Istanbul’s sense of the danger of Muhammad Ali Pasha pushed it to marginalize and diminish his role, to the extent that the Sultan granted the Pasha only the Greek island of Crete, which the Pasha found an insult, after he expected to obtain major territories such as the Levant.

Due to its nature and geography, the Levant was a natural barrier between the Turks of Anatolia and the Arab world, its importance escalated and became an arena of bloody conflict since the occupation of the Arab world by the Ottomans. Therefore, Muhammad Ali Pasha planned to add the Levant to his state, against the will of his Ottoman sultan, in order to gain its economic resources and the craftsmanship of its people. The weakness of the Ottoman state after its defeat in the Greek war then the Russian war in (1829) and the occurrence of many revolutions and strikes within the Sultanate, helped Muhammed Ali to achieve that, as confirmed by historical resources, not to mentioned that Muhammed Ali managed to have Bashir Shihabi, the chief prince of Lebanon, to his side.

The forces of the governor of Egypt were able to achieve unprecedented victories in the Levant, so they took control over Gaza, Jaffa, Haifa, Tyre, Sidon, Beirut and Tripoli. The Ottoman Empire’s attempts to stop the advance of their governor failed, so the Ottomans mobilized twenty thousand fighters and marched to face him. The two armies met in the plain of agriculture near Homs in April (1832), and defeated his sultanate in the fortified Acre, Damascus, and Homs. This battle is one of the most significant battles of Muhammad’s army. Ali Pasha as it was the first battle in which his army fought against the Turks face to face, and demonstrated the superiority of his modern army.

After this battle, the army of Muhammad Ali advanced and occupied Hama and Aleppo, defeated the Ottomans in the battle of Bilan, crossed the northern borders of Syria, and Ibrahim Pasha managed to enter with his forces the state of Adana in Anatolia.

The state of Adana was the key to Anatolia. Sultan Mahmud II was facing defeats. He prepared a new army of 53 thousand fighters, led by the Grand Vizier “Muhammad Rashid Pasha.” A ferocious battle took place between the two sides, in which the governor, Muhammad Ali Pasha was victories, the most important of which was the Konya battle on December 21 (1832), which opened the path before him to Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, as it became so close to be controlled by the Pasha.