1874 - 1908
Egyptian nationalist leader, orator, and editor.
Mustafa Kamil, the son of an army officer from an ethnic Egyptian family, was educated in government schools, the French School of Law in Cairo, and the University of Toulouse, France, where he received his law degree in 1895. A strong opponent of the British occupation of Egypt, he soon became closely associated with Khedive Abbas Hilmi II and with Ottoman Sultan Abdülhamit II, both of whom supported him materially as well as morally in his campaigns to persuade European governments and peoples to demand the evacuation promised by successive British governments. He also worked closely with Muhammad Farid and other Egyptians to form a secret society, initially under the aegis of the khe-dive, to inculcate resistance to the British among the people of Egypt. This society, known from its inception as al-Hizb al-Watani (the National Party), became a public political party, open to all Egyptians, in December 1907. He also founded a popular daily newspaper, al-Liwa (The banner), in 1900, which became the official party organ, and a boys' school that bore his name. He wrote many articles for the French press, for al-Muʾayyad under Shaykh Ali Yusuf, and for al-Liwa, as well as a book on the Eastern Question called al-Masʾala al-Sharqiyya, in which he strongly supported the Ottoman Empire. He delivered many stirring speeches in French and in Arabic, of which the best remembered was translated into English as "What the National Party Wants." He died of tuberculosis (but some think he was poisoned) in the thirty-fourth year of his life, and his funeral was the occasion for a massive demonstration of popular grief. Remembered as a fervent patriot and occasional supporter of pan-Islam, he called for the British evacuation of Egypt and a constitutional government but showed little interest in economic or social issues.
Bibliography
Goldschmidt, Arthur. "The Egyptian Nationalist Party, 1892 - 1919." In Political and Social Change in Modern Egypt: Historical Studies from the Ottoman Conquest to the United Arab Republic, edited by P. M. Holt. London: Oxford University Press, 1968.
Sayyid-Marsot, Afaf Lutfi. Egypt and Cromer: A Study inAnglo - Egyptian Relations. London: Murray, 1968.
— ARTHUR GOLDSCHMIDT
