| Mideast & N. Africa Encyclopedia: Ahmad Mahir |
c. 1886 - 1945
Egyptian politician; prime minister, 1944 - 1945.
Ahmad Mahir was one of the most important figures in the early history of the Wafd party in Egypt, which under the leadership of Saʿd Zaghlul came to prominence in Egyptian politics after World War I and the Egyptian Revolution of 1919. Son of Muhammad Mahir, Egypt's under-secretary of state for war, and brother of Ali Pasha Mahir, he attended Cairo University for a doctoral degree in law and economics.
Implicated in the November 1924 assassination of Sir Lee Stack, the British governor-general of the Sudan, but acquitted of all charges, Mahir occupied several ministerial positions in Wafd governments before being expelled from the party in January 1938, along with Mahmud Fahmi al-Nuqrashi, as a result of an internal party dispute. The two then founded the Saʿdist party (named for Saʿd Zaghlul). Mahir served as prime minister of Egypt from October 1944 to February 1945. During the preliminaries to the San Francisco conference at which the United Nations was to be founded, Mahir, believing that Egypt's future interests lay in participation, advocated a declaration of war against the Axis. On 24 February 1945 he was assassinated while presenting this proposal to the Egyptian parliament.
Bibliography
Deeb, Marius. Party Politics in Egypt: The Wafd and Its Rivals1919 - 1939. London: Ithaca Press, 1979.
— ROGER ALLEN


