| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article examines cosmopolitanism during the reign of Muhammad Ali whose architectural patronage was intertwined with his political aspirations for independence and reform. The Alabaster Mosque and shubra palace were prominent in the image of the nascent state and they serve as potent examples of the Pasha's openness to diverse ideas (which was highly controlled) and his cultivation of multiple loyalties in the effort to consolidate power. Connecting Muhhamad Ali's "enframing of modernity" posited by Timothy Mitchell in Colonising Egypt (1988), With Ulrich Beck's articulation of "unintentional cosmopolitanism," in effort to materialize both national and imperial aspirations. This cosmopolitan lens provides a timely insight in to the complex culture encounters that have shaped Egyptian history, given the recent protest against regimes and imperialist forces of global capitalism; forces which, similarly, thwarted 'Ali's endeavors in the nineteenth century.
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