Adly Yakan Pasha

عدلي يكن

–

Cairo

Egyptian politician of the Muhammad Ali family — he was a sister's son of the dynasty's founder, whence his name 'Yakan', Turkish for a sister's son — prime minister three times between 1921 and 1930, minister of foreign affairs, education and the interior, founder and first president of the Liberal Constitutional Party, and negotiator with Lord Curzon in 1921.

Depth

At a glance

Roles
Politician
Region
Egypt & Nile
Identifiers
Wikidata
Review
Completeness 2/5 · Help complete it

Life in time

1840185018601870188018901900191019201930194019501960
The Colonial Era · The Modern Era Contemporaries: Abdurreshid Ibrahim · Ahmet Cevdet Oran · Alimardan bey Topchubashov · Alladiya Khan · Ashraf Ali Thanwi

In space

Cairo

Map: Natural Earth, public domain · places and route from the graph

Place in the story

    Unknown (unknown)

    Roles are dated and sourced; the museum describes the act and attributes the judgement.

    Summary

    Adly Yakan Pasha (January 1864 – 22 October 1933) was an Egyptian politician of the Muhammad Ali family who was prime minister three times — 1921–1922, 1926–1927 and 1929–1930 — and held the foreign, education and interior portfolios and the speakership of the Senate. He led the official negotiations with Lord Curzon in 1921 and founded the Liberal Constitutional Party. His birth day is given as 18 January by the English article and Wikidata and as 24 January by the Arabic article; the first reading is followed and the date marked debated. 1 2

    The sultan's nephew's line

    The Arabic article explains his name: he was the son of Khalil Ibrahim Pasha, a nephew of Muhammad Ali Pasha, and "Yakan" — also spelled Yeghen — is the Turkish word for a sister's son. Sent to Istanbul at the age of eight, he studied there for three years and in France, then at German, Frères, Jesuit and Marcel schools in Egypt, mastering French. His career began in translation offices: translator at the interior ministry from 1880, clerk and then secretary at foreign affairs, secretary to the council of ministers under Nubar Pasha, then deputy governor and governor of a succession of provinces — Menoufia, Minya, the Canal, Faiyum, Sharqia, Dakahlia, Gharbia — governor of Cairo in 1903, and director of awqaf from 1906 to 1909. In 1913 he entered the Legislative Assembly and became its deputy speaker. 2

    Minister and prime minister

    In April 1914 he became foreign minister in Hussein Roshdi's first cabinet, the last of the old "nizara" governments before the war and the protectorate. As education minister in Roshdi's second and third cabinets he made Arabic the basic language of primary and secondary teaching, took the first steps toward a state university, and founded the first state kindergartens in 1918; in April 1919 he was briefly interior minister. On 16 March 1921 he formed his first cabinet and led the official delegation to London, where his negotiations with the foreign secretary, Lord Curzon, failed over the terms of Egyptian independence; he resigned, and Sarwat succeeded him. On 29 October 1922 he founded the Liberal Constitutional Party and became its first president, holding the post until January 1924. He formed a second cabinet on 7 June 1926, keeping the interior ministry, and a third on 4 October 1929; he also served as Speaker of the Egyptian Senate. He was made an honorary KCMG in the 1918 New Year Honours. He died at Paris on 22 October 1933. 1 2

    The question of his faith

    No source consulted says anything at all about Adly Yakan's religion. The English article has no religion field and its text is silent; the Arabic article's infobox carries a religion field and leaves it empty; Wikidata has no religion value. What the sources do record — descent from Muhammad Ali's family, Turkish-Albanian origin, a career at the summit of a Muslim-majority state — is family background and office, and neither has ever counted as attestation in this museum: a man's faith is recorded only when two independent sources name it for him personally. His is therefore recorded unknown, a case of complete absence rather than of conflicting evidence. 1 2 3

    Sources

    • The defined source entities cited above, recorded in data/source/.
    • Revisions of this article must be dated, and must name the source that changed each fact.

    Connections

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    Born in
    Cairo

    People and things also explored

    Al-Azhar Mosque· The Dar al-Hikma of Cairo· Baybars takes the sultanate, 658 AH· Capture of Cairo· death of Asad al-Dīn Shīrkūh — Saladin chosen vizier in his place· The great earthquake of Egypt, 608 AH· Egypt's famine and epidemic, 695· Four madhhab qadis appointed in Egypt, 663

    Sources

    1. Adly Yakan Pasha — English Wikipedia
    2. Adly Yakan Pasha — Arabic Wikipedia
    3. Adly Yakan Pasha — Wikidata Q358528
    Cite this page

    islam.museum contributors. “Adly Yakan Pasha”. islam.museum, https://islam.museum/en/person/adly-yakan-pasha/. CC BY-SA 4.0. Last updated 2026-10-26.

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    Al-Azhar Mosque

    Al-Azhar at Cairo: founded by the Fatimids as the mosque of their da'wa, then turned by the vizier Ya'qub ibn Killis in 378 into a university teaching the sciences and letters — from a pulpit reserved for the Fatimid call into one of Egypt's foremost centres of learning beside the mosques of Amr, Ibn Tulun and al-Hakim.