Sa'id Pasha

Muhammad Sa'id Pasha was the youngest son of Muhammad Ali Pasha and hereditary viceroy of Egypt from 1854 to 1863, theoretically under Ottoman suzerainty. The Encyclopaedia of Islam says he was styled Pasha, but in informal and unofficial use he was already called Khedive, a title formally adopted only after his death. ¹ This record follows that article, with two details from the articles on Suez and on Egypt.

He was born in 1822. According to the article, his father thought highly of his abilities and sent him, at only nineteen, to Istanbul to negotiate the tribute that Egypt owed the Porte. ¹ His uncle and predecessor, 'Abbas Hilmi I, had tried to change the succession rule of the Ottoman firman of 1841, which gave the succession to the eldest living descendant of Muhammad Ali's line, in favour of his own son Ilhami Pasha. The death of 'Abbas was briefly concealed, but Sa'id nevertheless succeeded without difficulty in July 1854. ¹

The article contrasts the two men. 'Abbas Hilmi had been zealous in guarding his rights against the Ottoman sultan and suspicious of European pressure, whereas Sa'id, who had had several European tutors, was less mistrustful of the West and its new techniques and had a special fondness for French culture. It describes him as a mild and benevolent ruler, more popular than his secretive and traditionalist predecessor, but also somewhat weak and open to the advice of interested parties. ¹

The article says that Sa'id, perhaps under the influence of outside advisers, revived many of his father's economic, social and legal policies while relaxing the extreme centralisation of Muhammad Ali's time. He issued the first comprehensive law in Egypt on private landed and immovable property, granting the right to dispose of it freely, and in 1858 he abolished the state monopoly over agricultural products. The article compares these measures with the contemporary Tanzimat reforms in Turkey. ¹

He took an interest in railways and other communications. The railway between Cairo and Alexandria was finished in his reign, a concession was granted to the Eastern Telegraph Company, the first River Navigation and Transport Company in Egypt was founded in 1854, and in 1857 a commercial navigation company was set up to help foreign trade. ¹ The Bank of Egypt was founded in 1854, and the article dates to his reign the process by which European financial and commercial influence became pervasive. His spending on military ventures and public works led him to seek a loan of three million pounds from a London banking house, which the article calls a harbinger of the disastrous financial policies that would drag down his successor Isma'il. ²

The article names the Suez Canal as the matter above all others. It says Sa'id succumbed to the charm of Ferdinand de Lesseps, and that de Lesseps received his first concession in 1854, confirmed by the Pasha in 1856. ^{1 2} The article on Egypt gives the date of the grant as 30 November 1854. ³ The article on Suez says that Sa'id signed the concession on 5 January 1856, hoping that the canal would make Egypt more independent of the Ottoman Empire. ⁴ The two dates appear to refer to the first grant and to its signed confirmation; the sources do not say so in as many words.

France at the outset and Britain tried by diplomacy to hinder the project, according to the Sa'id Pasha article, but work began in 1859, carried out by peasants on corvee labour, and continued for ten years. The seaport at the northern end of the canal was named Port Said after the Pasha. ² The Suez article adds that Sa'id had originally taken 21 per cent of the shares of the Suez Canal Company and had to sell some of them already in 1860. ⁴ For the canal itself, see the Suez Canal and Ferdinand de Lesseps.

Sa'id did not favour an expansionist policy in the Sudan and left its governorship to Prince Halim. On a visit to Khartoum in 1857 he made the first attempts to abolish the trade there in black slaves. He kept the Egyptian contingent of 8,000 men that 'Abbas Hilmi had sent to the Ottoman side when the Crimean War broke out, and he also sent a regiment to help Napoleon III keep the Archduke Maximilian on his throne in Mexico. ²

Sa'id died in Alexandria on 17 January 1863 and was buried there. His nephew Isma'il, son of Ibrahim Pasha, who had been prominent in his reign on diplomatic missions, including one to Paris in 1855, and had served as regent in Egypt and as commander-in-chief of the army in 1861, succeeded him without difficulty. ²

The article does not give his birthplace or the day of his birth. The sources used here are three articles of the Encyclopaedia of Islam; the museum has not yet compared them with other histories of the period.