1841 - 1911
Egyptian nationalist leader and army officer.
Ahmad Urabi, the son of a village shaykh of Iraqi Arab origin, studied for two years at al-Azhar in Cairo and then entered the Cairo military academy at the behest of Saʿid Pasha in 1854/55 and soon earned his commission. After the deposition of Khedive Ismaʿil in 1879, he is said to have supported the emerging National Party of Egypt, but his first proven act was to represent a group of discontented ethnic Egyptian officers who were protesting against the favoritism shown to Turkish and Circassian officers by War Minister Uthman Rifqi. Khedive Tawfiq and Prime Minister Riyadh intended to dismiss Urabi and his group for insubordination, but other Egyptian officers seized control of the war office and rescued Urabi in February 1881. Subsequently, the khedive agreed to replace Rifqi with Mahmud Sami al-Barudi as war minister. On 9 September fearing a khedival counterplot, the Egyptian officers surrounded Abdin Palace, confronted Tawfiq, and obliged him to set up a constitutionalist government with Muhammad Sharif as prime minister and to increase the size of the Egyptian army.
As Britain and especially France - concerned about the safety of the Suez Canal, their investments, and their citizens in Egypt - became increasingly hostile to the Urabist movement, the Nationalists replaced Premier Sharif with Mahmud Sami alBarudi in February 1882, and Urabi became war minister. The Nationalists continued to fear a khedival counterplot and took steps to weaken the Turks and Circassians within the officer corps, also stirring up popular feeling against the European powers. Riots broke out in Alexandria in June 1882, and many European residents fled. Britain and France threatened military intervention to support the khedive (whose relationship with the Nationalists seems to have been ambivalent) and to protect their citizens. They demanded that the Egyptian army remove all fortifications from Alexandria, and, when Urabi did not comply quickly enough, British ships began bombarding them, leading to the outbreak of fires in Alexandria. British troops (unaided by France, which had withdrawn because of a ministerial crisis) landed at Alexandria and later at Isma'ilia to restore order. Urabi and the Egyptian army continued to resist the British, even after the khedive had gone over to their side, until their crushing defeat at al-Tall al-Kabir on 13 September 1882. Once the British entered Cairo, Urabi surrendered, was put on trial for treason against the khedive, but was not executed. He was exiled to Ceylon - until he was allowed by Khedive Abbas Hilmi II to return in 1901. He played no part in the later National party of Mustafa Kamil, died in obscurity, and was generally scorned by educated Egyptians until the 1952 revolution. Since then he has been rehabilitated by Gamal Abdel Nasser and his fellow officers - whose occupational and class backgrounds paralleled his own. Now he is generally considered a patriot who resisted the British, the khedive, and the aristocracy in favor of constitutional government and the welfare of Egypt's common people.
His writings include Kashf al-Sitar an Sirr al-Asrar, published in two volumes (Cairo, 1925).
Bibliography
Baring, Evelyn, Earl of Cromer. Modern Egypt. London: Macmillan, 1908; reprint, London and New York: Routledge, 2000.
Blunt, Wilfrid S. Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt. London: Unwin, 1907.
Mayer, Thomas. The Changing Past: Egyptian Historiography of the Urabi Revolt, 1882 - 1983. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1988.
Schölch, Alexander. Egypt for the Egyptians! The Socio-PoliticalCrisis in Egypt, 1878 - 1882. London: Ithaca Press, 1981.
— ARTHUR GOLDSCHMIDT
