Two capital cities witnessed the onset of modernity: Istanbul and Cairo. Modernity applied to the creation of organized military forces, to the extent that all those employed in educational and administrative institutions had either undergone military training or enlisted in the armed forces and undertaken combat missions – transforming the military into the main institution supplementing other institutions of the state. The onset of modernity led to the creation of institutions: first military, then administrative, legal, and educational. The modernizing ideas of the men of the Tanzimat in Istanbul and the Nahda in Egypt thus revolved around the creation of an organized army, a hierarchical judicial system, and an education system along modern lines, leading up to the writing of a constitution, which is to say a political system based on representation, elections, and the separation of legislative and executive powers. However, increased contact with Europe and its political history opened the way for abstract ideas with no connection to institutions; ideas like freedom, equality and nationalism which were disseminated by figures independent from the institutions created in the framework of the Tanzimat or the Nahda, but which nonetheless found an echo within the military establishment. The Urabi Revolution of 1881 was an early expression of this. Cells of the Committee of Union and Progress, founded by civilian proponents of reform, spread within the ranks of army officers who launched the Young Turks Revolt in 1908 with the slogans of freedom and equality.