God knows I love freedom. I would die for democracy, and I almost envy, and certainly admire, those who did. But I am looking at what is happening in Egypt and elsewhere with really mixed feelings
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They were broken as a power group, yes. And Mohammed Ali brought in French officers from Napoleon's army to reform his armed forces. But I suspect that if you looked, you would find a great deal of middle-level continuity. One thing I have heard leads me to suspect that: Egyptian law recognizes something like an hereditary aristocracy. A limited and certain number of families are allowed to use the article "El" before their family name, like Mohammed El Baradei. I know that because Mohammed Fayed, the owner of Harrod's store in London, insists on calling himself Mohammed "El" Fayed and it turns out that this is a pretension. So I wonder to what extent this hereditary upper class is contiguous with the Mameluks, who after all ruled Egypt for so long. And another thing: Mohammed Ali did not destroy the army - in fact, he built it up. And the Egyptian army had always been Mameluk
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