ABSTRACT
The potential for military reform in the Middle East was always directly linked to the ability to pay for such innovations. To avoid placing additional financial burdens on the imperial treasury and to allay suspicion among the fraditional armed forces that their positions were being usurped, a large portion of fevenues generated through the tax-farming system were allocated to support these new troops. Tax-farming had been expanded in the Ottoman Empire in the mid-seventeenth century as a way to generate more cash for the central government. The value of the Ottoman treasury became drastically reduced with the sudden influx of New World silver in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Also, new techniques of warfare introduced during the European Military Revolution focused more on guns than horses. The various phases of the French Revolution that ensued after 1789 thus had a substantial impact on all the Middle East, but particularly on Egypt.
