Khedive Ismail

Ismail Pasha, khedive of Egypt from 1863 to 1879, was the second son of Ibrahim Pasha and a grandson of Muhammad Ali. ¹ The Encyclopaedia of Islam describes a ruler as ambitious as his grandfather but working without his grandfather's military resources or force of personality, who tried to do too many things too quickly. ¹

He was born in Cairo on 31 December 1830 and was first educated in the private palace school that Muhammad Ali had founded for his family, where he studied Arabic, Persian and Turkish. ¹ He was then sent to Paris with one of the Egyptian educational missions, where he studied French, some modern sciences and parts of engineering, and he returned to Egypt in 1848. ¹

After the accession of 'Abbas I he went for a time to Istanbul with other princes of the family, and Sultan 'Abd al-Majid appointed him to the State Judicial Council. ¹ Under his uncle Said Pasha he returned to Egypt in 1854 and presided over the same council; in 1855 he was sent on a mission to the court of Napoleon III in Paris and headed another to the Vatican, and in 1861 Said made him sirdar, commander in chief of the army. ¹ The article observes that by the time he became viceroy on 18 January 1863 he had wide administrative, diplomatic and military experience and first-hand knowledge of Europe and of the Porte. ¹

The article says his policy had three objectives: greater and in the end complete independence from the Ottoman sultan, the quickening of commercial, military and cultural modernisation, and the winning of an African empire. ¹ It judges that all three required hazardous relations with Britain and France, a risky confrontation with the Ottoman overlord and a very large and in the end ruinous outlay, and that rapid Europeanisation sowed seeds of economic, social and cultural dislocation. ¹

By the firman of 27 May 1866 Ismail purchased a change in the succession to primogeniture in his own line, together with the right to enlarge the army, coin money and confer titles. ¹ A firman of 8 June 1867 granted him the title khedive and autonomy in internal and financial affairs. ¹ Strained relations followed, and a firman of 29 November 1869 largely withdrew the gains of 1867; further firmans of 10 September 1872 and 8 June 1873 restored the right to borrow in Europe and confirmed his position. ¹

Egypt took part in the Paris Exhibition of 1867, and the Suez Canal was opened with a gala two years later. ¹ Ismail reorganised the army, navy and military education, built new schools, allowed Europeans to found their own, subsidised newspapers and expanded the government press at Bulaq. ¹ He founded a national library, later Dar al-Kutub, a geographical society and a museum under the French archaeologist Mariette Pasha, signed a convention against the slave trade and organised the first state postal service. ¹ His division of the country into fourteen provinces became the basis of Egyptian administration for a hundred years. ¹

A separate article on Egyptian education adds that school spending rose tenfold in his time and that the teacher-training college Dar al-Ulum was founded in 1872. ² The telegraph and railway networks were extended, the town of Ismailiyya was built, and the Ibrahimiyya and Ismailiyya canals were dug. ³

The article describes his borrowing in Europe as pushing the public debt to a very large figure, and the Mukabala Law of 1871, which invited landowners to pay six years of land tax in advance for a perpetual halving of the tax, as an attempt to raise money at home. ³ In 1875 he sold his 176,602 shares in the Suez Canal Company to the British government for 4,000,000 pounds. ³ A European control commission over finances, a Caisse de la Dette Publique in 1876 and the Mixed Tribunals of 1875 further eroded his authority. ³ A Consultative Assembly of Deputies was set up in 1866 and a weak cabinet government tried in 1878-9. ³ The sultan deposed him, at the insistence of the European powers, on 25 June 1879, and Ismail left Egypt for Europe the next day; he died in Istanbul. ³

The article holds that the social and economic changes of his reign became foundations for later development, but that his Europeanisation was politically superficial and left problems that led to British occupation. ³ It concludes that, by ambition and financial recklessness, he stimulated the emergence of modern Egypt and should not be seen only as the disastrous khedive but as one of the country's creative rulers. ³

The scan of the article available to the museum breaks off before the date of his death, so no death date is given here.