Cairo — Following the success of the Emirati-made TV series "Kingdoms of Fire,” many Egyptian authors, producers and directors search a new subject that would counter the popular Turkish TV series that highlights the glories of the Ottoman era. The solution may lie on brushing off the dust from a project from 2007 — the life and times of Muhammad Ali Pasha, the Ottoman viceroy who turned against the Sublime Port in his quest of establishing his own dynasty and making Egypt independent from the sultanate.

Muhammad Ali (1769-1849) was appointed as the Ottoman viceroy, or governor, to Egypt in 1805, where he started a process of administrative, economic and military reform. His policies aimed at establishing himself and his successors in Egypt as its hereditary rulers. He is accredited as the founder of Egypt’s modernization — a move that hardly made him popular in the Ottoman Empire, particularly after he defeated twice the sultan’s forces, first in 1833, then in 1839.

An Egyptian film or a scenario on Muhammad Ali Pasha is expected to picture the Ottomans as the “occupiers of Egypt” — just as "Kingdoms of Fire,” directed by Peter Webber and released in November 2019, has done. The series, broadcast on the Saudi channel, tells the story of the resistance of Tuman Bay, the last sultan of the Mamluk era in Egypt between 1250 and 1517, against the Ottoman invasion of Egypt. Though the season ends with the death of Tuman Bay, he is the protagonist, against the expansionist Selim I, the Ottoman sultan known as “The Grim.”

Yet some Egyptians questioned whether the Emirati series had gone overboard in its glorification of the Mamluk ruler. “Why did the series consider Tuman Bay as a symbol? What did he do? Was he victorious for Egypt? Did he defeat the Ottomans? No, he did none of these,” wrote Mohamed Makhlouf, writer at Egyptian Al-Wasela News, in an article on Dec. 23, 2019.