Muhammad Ali Pasha, an Albanian Muslim, known as Mehmet Ali by Turks and Albanians, was Governor of Egypt, theoretically owing allegiance to the Turkish Sultan, but in fact ruling, and ruthlessly modernising the country as an autocrat. He had treacherously slaughtered the leading Mamluks, the previous rulers, in 1811. David Wilkie was commissioned by Mehmet Ali to paint his portrait, and Lewis also sketched him and members of his family. Lord Elphinstone, Governor of Madras, mentions this portrait in a letter to Lewis’s brother Frederick Christian in Mysore, dated 24 September 1845. “...I had again the pleasure of seeing your elder brother on my way out last winter. He was living in the most Ottoman quarter of Cairo – in a house which might supply materials for half the Oriental Annuals and manuals of Eastern architecture that appear in London & Paris. He showed me a very spirited sketch of Mehemet Ali – the best, & in fact, the only good likeness I have seen, & I saw it within a quarter of an hour of leaving the original. …’