With striking parallels to recent confrontations in Iraq, this is the story of the first Western international coalition to suppress an aggressive Middle Eastern ruler. The challenger was Mehemet Ali Pasha, called the founder of modern Egypt. Convinced that the Europeans would never be able to unite against him, he sought, with charm, brilliance and bravado, to create a powerful Muslim counterweight to the encroaching West.

Drawing on research on three continents, this timely book takes the reader into the heart of a crisis as France, Great Britain, the Ottoman government and the Pasha of Egypt maneuver to defend their interests in the Eastern Mediterranean. Here are the passionate debates among French and British politicians as they struggle to control the Pasha without provoking a European war. Here are the battlefields--from the Euphrates to Beirut--on which Mehemet Ali's modernizing forces created the facts that fed the crisis. Here are the Sultan's ministers at Istanbul, buffeted by the threats of European ambassadors. And here, in confrontation, is the fascinating Mehemet Ali Pasha, in constant conversation with those seeking to deflect him from his dangerous ambition. As France began the fortification of Paris, as Prussia contemplated the French threat of a war on the Rhine and as British warships flooded the Mediterranean, Mehemet Ali sat cross-legged on his sumptuous divan, looking from his palace out over his beautiful fleet at anchor in the bay of Alexandria, and challenged the western world.