ʿAlī Bey al-Kabīr - Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
[Article]
Crecelius, Daniel
Leiden
Brill
(1,520 words)
ʿAlī Bey al-Kabīr (c. 1140-87/1728-73), an Egyptian mamlūk of Georgian origin, rose to become one of the most powerful political figures of Egypt. According to his contemporary biographer Sauveur Lusignan, he was born in Abkhazia, then a small province in northwestern Georgia. Supposedly the son of David, a Greek Orthodox priest, he was sold into slavery in 1154/1741, around the age of thirteen, taken to Egypt, bought by two Jewish customs agents, and offered as a gift to the Georgian Ibrāhīm Katkhudā, who at the