In March 1803, the British evacuated Alexandria leaving a power vacuum in Egypt. Muhammad Bey al-Alfi (aka Alfi Bey) (1751–1807) had accompanied the British to lobby them to help restore the power of the Mamluks. In their attempts to return to power, the Mamluks took Minia and interrupted communication between Upper and Lower Egypt. About six weeks later, Koca Hüsrev Mehmed Pasha, the Ottoman governor of Egypt, was unable to pay all the troops under his command, so he attempted to disband his Albanian (Arnaut) bashi-bazouks without pay in order to be able to pay his regular Turkish soldiers.Inalcık, Halil. Trans. by Gibb, H.A.R. The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Ed., Vol. V, Fascicules 79-80, pp. 35 f. "Khosrew Pasha". E.J. Brill (Leiden), 1979. Accessed 13 September 2011. The Albanians refused to disband and instead surrounded the house of the defterdar (finance minister), who appealed in vain to Hüsrev Pasha to satisfy their claims. Instead, the pasha commenced an artillery bombardment from batteries located in and near his palace on the insurgent soldiers who had taken the house of the defterdar, located in the Azbakeya. The citizens of Cairo, accustomed to such occurrences, immediately closed their shops and armed themselves. The tumult in the city continued all day, and the next morning, troops sent by Hüsrev Pasha failed to quell it.
