Suez Canal Company

The Suez Canal Company was the enterprise that built, owned and operated the Suez Canal. The Encyclopaedia of Islam has no article on it; it describes the company inside its articles on Suez and on Port Said, and this record uses those passages only. The article on Suez gives the company's French name as Compagnie Universelle du Canal Maritime de Suez, in the form printed there. ¹

After the concession of 1856 to Ferdinand de Lesseps, three years passed in fund-raising and political quarrels that included the question of Ottoman sovereignty. The company was then founded in Paris in 1858 with the support of Napoleon III. French entrepreneurs in time bought more than half of the shares. Sa'id Pasha, who had originally acquired 21 per cent, had to sell some of his shares already in 1860. ¹

Digging began on 22 April 1859 in the Suez article; the article on Egypt says 25 April. The Egyptian government recruited 25,000 peasants to work in the canal region, and at the same time a fresh-water canal was dug from Cairo towards the Isma'iliyya region, which took five years. The article says that after 1863, with the introduction of machines, the infrastructure and working conditions were considerably improved. ^{1 3}

At Port Said, according to its article, wooden houses on piles were first built for the pioneers, dredgers began to deepen the harbour a year later, and from 1865 artificial stone blocks of about 22 tons each were made by Messrs. Dussaud for the two breakwaters, which were finished in 1868. ²

When the canal opened on 16 November 1869, construction had cost about 19 million pounds sterling, one third of it paid by the Egyptian government. The canal was now owned by the company, which also controlled further property along it. ¹ The Port Said article lists the company's headquarters among the public buildings of that town by the early twentieth century and notes that the company and the Egyptian government issued annual returns. ²

Severe financial problems forced the Egyptian ruler Isma'il to sell his shares to the British government. The Convention of Constantinople of 29 October 1888 guaranteed the freedom of shipping through the canal even in time of war, and Egypt recognised it again on 24 April 1952. ¹

The Suez article says that after the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1954 the British were to demilitarise the Canal Zone, and that on 26 July 1956 the Egyptian government nationalised the canal. ¹ The Port Said article attributes the act to President Gamal Abd al-Nasser and says that the war of Britain, France and Israel against Egypt followed in late October and early November 1956. ² What happened to the company afterwards is not described in these articles.

The articles give no list of directors and no legal details of the company's charter or its dissolution. The record is a short stub to be enriched from other sources.