Circassian I believeWas he of Anatolian or Balkan origins?
Ottoman or Mamluk? If the former then I wonder if Egypt has a similar tendency as Saudi Arabia to generally slowly demolish Ottoman heritage sites. The Turks have often made noise over how Saudi Arabia keeps demo-ing Ottoman buildings in places like Makkah to make way for new developments. Carabs still resent Turkish rule on some level.Circassian I believe
OttomanOttoman or Mamluk? If the former then I wonder if Egypt has a similar tendency as Saudi Arabia to generally slowly demolish Ottoman heritage sites. The Turks have often made noise over how Saudi Arabia keeps demo-ing Ottoman buildings in places like Makkah to make way for new developments. Carabs still resent Turkish rule on some level.
Ottoman
Egypt was only nominally an Ottoman province. In reality, it was practically independent. The Mamluks never really left and were still feudal owners of Egypt until Muhammad Ali wiped them out in the early 19th century.
Nominal is not the word until the Khedivite era. More like a satrapy. Unless I'm mistaken they were still paying taxes, there were clear Ottoman garrisons everywhere, their foreign affairs were managed by the Ottomans and they were formally a province. But , as you say, they had some autonomy within that framework. But that's nothing unique or nominal. The Jazeerans were administrated in much the same way. It's better to let them run their own day to day affairs than bring in your own folks who are tone deaf to the local customs, politics, big wigs, numbers and so forth.