Isma'il Pasha - Khedive of Egypt

Robert Solé

Isma'il Pasha – some considered him a catastrophe that befell Egypt, while others saw him as a great reformer. In the end, he was the only one to be called "the Great." This is a book about the biography of Isma'il Pasha, the first Khedive, grandson of Muhammad Ali, known for his love of extravagance, but also for his many achievements and the modernization that occupied him throughout his reign. Isma'il Pasha was born in 1830 and ruled Egypt from 1863 to 1879. Unlike his grandfather, who had Turkish-Macedonian origins and seized power by force of arms, Isma'il inherited a prosperous Egypt with a strategic location on the route to India. With him, the journey of modernization began in a country that began to emulate major European powers: the Suez Canal. Curricula borrowed from the West to modernize the education sector. Judicial system reform. Development in infrastructure and transportation routes. All of this, in addition to the immense sums of money Isma'il Pasha spent to obtain the title of "Khedive" from the Sublime Porte. In the end, after reluctantly abdicating the throne in 1879, Egypt's rulers inherited his achievements and title, but also a country on the brink of disaster. "His three roles, as a journalist, essayist, and novelist, feed off each other and give his texts an added pleasure for readers." — Robert Solé – Robert Solé was born in Cairo and worked as a journalist for a long time and as a writer for the weekly newspaper Le 1, dedicating many of his articles to Egypt, his native country. He has written numerous books, some of which have been translated into Arabic by Nawfal: "Sadat" (2015), "Faces of Modern Egypt" (2020), and the novel "Hotel Festival" (2017).