1895 - ?
Jewish Egyptian journalist, publisher, and banker.
Elie Politi was born in Cairo to a family of modest income. Though he obtained a rudimentary French education, he was largely self-educated. Politi turned to journalism during the 1920s. He founded and directed the daily L'informateur financier commercial in the late 1920s and published a number of economic directories while helping to establish al-Misri in Cairo, which became one of the most influential daily newspapers in the Middle East during the 1940s and early 1950s.
From 1914, Politi was also one of the leading businessmen and land developers in Egypt. He directed and managed the Commercial Bank of Egypt, transforming it into a major and respected financial institution, and helped to develop the new city of Muqattam on the eastern hills overlooking Cairo, as well as the beach and urban area of Maʾamura, east of Alexandria. Al-Misri was closed when Gamal Abdel Nasser took power in 1954, in spite of its nationalist stance during clashes with Britain the previous year, and the banks were nationalized at the end of the decade. Like most of the Egyptian Jewish economic elite, Politi was a committed Egyptian patriot. In 1965 he published his memoirs, L'Egypte de 1914 à Suez, in Paris.
Bibliography
Beinin, Joel. The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
Laskier, Michael M. The Jews of Egypt 1920 - 1970. New York: New York University Press, 1992.
Mizrahi, Maurice. "The Role of the Jews in Economic Development." In The Jews of Egypt: A Mediterranean Society in Modern Times, edited by Shimon Shamir. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987.
— MICHAEL M. LASKIER
UPDATED BY GEORGE R. WILKES
