Compelled mostly to always be researching, I have come across some material that is relevant to you [@Letter Bee] and how you might be perceiving Egypt.

[url=https://imera.hypotheses.org/5878]Legacy Of The Development Policy of Muhammad Ali[/url]

tl;dr - Muhammad Ali's centralization policies had a dire effect on the Egyptian economy. While it aided in the industrialization of the Egyptian economy it was predominately centered on a mono-culture of cotton only which devastated agriculture on the long term, as well as provided the basis for an unstable development cycle where the state rose and fell depending on the global market. Egypt did well when the cotton economy was at a high and supplies elsewhere were generally low, and The State could charge European merchants higher prices according to the whims of market forces; but did not bring in that much money.

Likewise as I have told you before; all lands in Egyptian being owned by The State and Muhammad Ali by decree, as well as the rates to tax collection and Islamic charity to weaken the base of his opposition made everyone in effect an employee of the state. Where as before the Egyptian peasant merely paid tax to a local noble at a certain rate of agricultural produce per season, he now owed substantially more of it to the central state because Muhammad Ali's tax policy also meant many communities paid ten to a hundred times more in taxes than before. He also demanding mass corvee levies on the regular of his people meant that a lot of work in the field went missing to go work on a canal project somewhere which regularly killed thousands, if not tens of thousands. As the article goes on, this proved to be even worse for the development of the peasants as a monied class because even the forced break up of the state monopoly meant that all those functions just went to a few hands within the Muhammad Ali expanded dynasty, and also a mass of displaced peasants that ran away or mangled themselves to avoid any conscription what's so ever.

Combined of course in this RP of there being a much wider Egypt, and cotton prices probably being at a low because there's no real major crisis affecting the market means in all likelihood the Egyptian state should not be doing good. And I say this in urging of you to consider sparking off some rebellions for the long term. Combined with the impulse of the Mercantilist State to always be expanding to seek out new places from which to extract more wealth for use by the state. But the use of that wealth for development will be of course hindered, because it needs to maintain an army in a state of permanent mobilization to police its extensive frontiers and wastelands. There will be no end in sight either, no doubt; because Muhammad and Ibrahim were both very invested in this state and even accelerated under Ibrahim.

Which is to say: there must be war with the Arabs and there must be war with the Libyans for tithes must be paid in wealth or slaves and there must be revolt in Egypt. These are my missions to you, and they must be developed and launched.