Saad Zaghloul

Saad Zaghloul (died 23 August 1927) was the Egyptian national leader known as Za'im al-Umma, "Leader of the Nation": judge, minister of education and of justice, leader of the delegation whose demand for independence set off the revolution of 1919, exile in Malta and the Seychelles, and in 1924 the first prime minister of the Wafd Party he founded. His birth year is disputed in the sources — 1859 is followed here, with 1857, 1858 and 1860 also recorded — and the dispute is set out below rather than hidden. ^{1 2}

He was born in the village of Ibyana in the Nile Delta — then in the Gharbia directorate, now in Kafr el-Sheikh — the son of the village headman, who died when Saad was five, leaving him an orphan alongside his younger brother Ahmad Fathy Zaghlul, later a judge and translator. He studied at al-Azhar and at the Egyptian School of Law, the article also mentioning a French law school in Cairo, and practised as a lawyer before his appointment as a judge at the Court of Appeal in 1892. His marriage to Safiya, daughter of the prime minister Mustafa Fahmi Pasha, joined him to the governing class he would later defy. In 1906 he became minister of education, and in 1910 minister of justice, resigning in 1912 after a disagreement with the Khedive Abbas II; in 1913 he became vice-president of the Legislative Assembly and used the post to criticise the government. ^{1 2}

On 13 November 1918, two days after the armistice, Zaghloul and two colleagues asked the British high commissioner for the abolition of the protectorate and for Egypt to be represented at the peace negotiations — the delegation, wafd in Arabic, that gave his party its name. The British demanded he end his agitation; he refused, and they exiled him to Malta and then to the Seychelles. His arrest and exile set off the Egyptian revolution of 1919. Moved to Gibraltar for his health, he was released in 1923, returned to win the elections of 12 January 1924 overwhelmingly, and formed the first Wafdist government on 26 January 1924. After the assassination of Sir Lee Stack, the Sirdar, on 19 November 1924, the British presented demands he judged unacceptable, and he resigned on 24 November 1924. He never held the premiership again, but from 10 June 1926 he presided over the Chamber of Deputies, and he remained the country's dominant political figure until his death at Cairo on 23 August 1927. He is buried with his wife in their mausoleum, Bayt al-Umma — the House of the Nation — in Cairo. ^{1 2}

His birth is a genuinely unsettled record. The English article's infobox gives 1 July 1859, and Wikidata's day value is the same, referenced to the French national library's authority file; but the English article's own timeline gives July 1857, the Arabic article dates him from 1858 in its lead and says in its text that reports conflict — July 1857 in some, July 1858 in others, and June 1860 by the records of the law certificate he obtained. The museum follows 1859 and marks the date debated, with all readings on the record. His faith presents the opposite kind of problem: apparent attestation that dissolves on inspection. The English article's text never states his religion; its categories file him under "Egyptian Muslims", and a category is a filing, not a source. Wikidata carries two values, Islam and Sunni Islam, but both were imported from one and the same Wikimedia project — one source family wearing two hats. His al-Azhar education and his formation in the reform circle of Muhammad Abduh are documented facts of his biography, but education and association do not name a school for the man himself. Under the museum's rule — two independent sources naming the school, or the value stays unknown — his faith is recorded unknown. ^{1 2 3}

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