Mustafa Khaznader

1817 - 1878

State treasurer (1837 - 1861) and prime minister (1861 - 1873) of Tunisia.

Mustafa Khaznader was born Georges Kalkias Stravelakis, on the island of Chios. In 1821, during the Greek rebellion against the Turks, he was seized, taken to Constantinople, and sold into slavery. In 1827 he was sent to Tunis, where he was sold again. He converted to Islam and took the name Mustafa.

Mustafa became a close friend of Ahmad ibn Mustafa, future bey of Tunis. When Ahmad became bey in 1837, he named Mustafa khaznader (state treasurer). (His long tenure in this office led to the use of Khaznader as his surname.) The centralization of governmental authority under Ahmad Bey and the combination of an increasingly complex tax structure and a rudimentary tax collection apparatus obliged the government to farm out the various taxes in iltizam.

Mahmud ibn Ayad, the top tax farmer, conspired with Khaznader to fleece the government of millions of dinars by transferring funds to France and acquiring French citizenship. In 1852, having transferred the equivalent of 50 million francs, he fled to France and acquired French citizenship; he was unable to secure citizenship for Khaznader. The latter's involvement in the affair apparently did not lessen the bey's ultimate faith in his finance minister.

Khaznader built up a powerful patronage network through his own marriage into the bey's family and marriage of his children into prominent political and business families. He encouraged Ahmad Bey in his reforms because these enabled him to profit from new tax farms and other financial ventures. Under Muhammad Bey (1855 - 1859) and Muhammad al-Sadiq Bey (1859 - 1882), Khaznader supported the reforms of the Fundamental Pact (1857) and the constitution of 1861 because these sought to restrict the power of the bey and increase the power of his ministers.

Between 1859 and 1869, Khaznader and his associates virtually ran and ruined the Tunisian state. The Grand Council, established as a kind of Parliament to implement the 1861 Constitution, was staffed with his cronies. Beginning in 1863, Khaznader floated a series of foreign loans that bankrupted the government by 1868. To pay for these loans, he authorized the doubling of the personal income tax, the majba. When this went into effect in 1864, there arose a widespread tribal revolt. It was severely repressed, the constitution was suspended, and Khaznader ran the state even more firmly. But in the long term, his financial policies destroyed the state's financial viability. Bad harvests, famines, and epidemics compounded Tunisia's financial plight and led to the International Finance Commission of 1869, set up by foreign creditors to ensure that Tunisia paid its debts.

Khaznader's son-in-law Khayr al-Din used his position on this commission to discredit Khaznader and to force the bey to dismiss him. In 1873, Muhammad al-Sadiq Bey reluctantly agreed to retire Khaznader and confiscate some of his wealth. In his place, the bey appointed Khayr al-Din prime minister. During the latter's tenure of office (1873 - 1877) Khaznader continually attacked him and sought his removal. Finally, in 1877, the bey discharged him. Khaznader's triumph was short-lived, however; he died the following year.

Bibliography

Brown, L. Carl. The Tunisia of Ahmad Bey, 1837 - 1855. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974.

— LARRY A. BARRIE