Reading Egyptian schoolbooks, the image one forms of Said Pasha (1822-1863), ruler of Egypt in the mid-19th century, is not a flattering one. Fourth son of Mohamed Ali, Said was a corpulent child, at least from his father's point of view. He was also shy, which made his father force him to call on European consuls every day in order to overcome his natural timidity. On these rounds, Said made friends with the son of the French vice-consul, a boy close to his age named Ferdinand de Lesseps. Banned from eating pasta at home, the young Said had unlimited access to this dish at his friend's home, which may explain why he granted the Frenchman the franchise to build the Suez Canal years later. This story, cited in the schoolbooks, may or may not be true. But it is the only one many Egyptians remember of a man whose modernisation tendencies and determination to Europeanise Egypt's government and economy presaged the actions of his nephew and successor, Ismail Pasha. During the nine years (1854-1863) when he was wali, or viceroy, of Egypt and Sudan, Said Pasha cancelled collective taxes for villages, ended the payment of taxes in kind, built modern schools to supply civil servants for the modern bureaucracy, abolished slavery (or tried unsuccessfully to do so) and generally put Egypt on the path towards a liberal economy. The pasta-eating story suggests gluttony on the side of the young Said, but what it really indicates is the over-vigilance of his father, Mohamed Ali. Here is a letter that Mohamed Ali wrote to Said, when the latter was still studying in Alexandria: I have received news that you're not paying attention to your lessons and that you spend too much time relaxing and hanging around with people who know nothing about culture. I told you before that you must pay attention to your teachers and walk and move around lot in order to lose weight. You must also mix with people with good manners, so you learn from them. And you must respect your elders and act with modesty. I will be visiting you in Alexandria soon and will have your teachers test you in front of me. When Said was young, his father managed to bully Egypt's nominal master, the Ottoman Sultan Abdulmedic I, to grant him hereditary rule of Egypt, with the eldest of Mohamed Ali's male descendants assuming the vice-royalty of the country. When Mohamed Ali died in 1849, his eldest son having passed away a year earlier, Abbas I, his grandson, took over. Abbas was assassinated in 1854 in his palace in Banha in mysterious circumstances. According to one story, one of the palace jesters killed him. Said Pasha, the commander of the navy, took over and, without delay, started a modernisation programme. One of his first actions was to create Egypt's first bank, the Bank of Egypt. Another was to build Egypt's first standard-gauge railway line, linking Kafr Al-Zayyat and Alexandria. Tragically, Said's heir apparent, Ahmad Rifaat, drowned when his train carriage fell into the Nile at Kafr Al-Zayyat, which brought Ismail, Said's nephew, into line for the succession. When Said died in 1863, Ismail took over and applied himself with even greater zeal to Egypt's modernisation programme. Despite his father's attempt to make him more sociable, Said Pasha remained a relatively reclusive character throughout his career. And yet he proved himself to be a capable ruler, one who was willing to shake things up when needed. “I love Egypt more than the Egyptians themselves do,” the French-educated viceroy once said. His agricultural reforms paved the way for capitalist farming and perhaps even for the socialist programmes of post-monarchical times. He reduced taxes on agricultural land and granted full property rights to any farmer who paid taxes on his land for five consecutive years. He also cleared the Mahmoudiya Canal to facilitate river transport to Alexandria, boosting Egypt's earnings from the cotton trade that boomed due to the interruption of US cotton exports during the American Civil War (1861-1865). Between 1854 and 1857, Said formed two companies for sea and river shipping. As part of his reforms, he reduced mandatory military service to one year, thus freeing up more labour for agriculture. In his administrative reforms, Said started the tradition of paying pensions to retired civil servants. He also reformed the judiciary and banned the transport of ancient monuments, ordering them to be collected in one building in Boulaq in Cairo, an endeavour that later led to the creation of the Egyptian Museum. He also restored the Al-Sayyed Al-Badawi Mosque in Tanta. During his rule, he twice sent the army into battle. In the first incident, this was to help the Ottomans against the Russians in the Crimean War (1853-1856). In the second, it was to send a contingent of 1,200 Sudanese soldiers, led by Khayrallah Mohamed Al-Sudani and Mohamed Effendi Al-Masri, to Mexico in 1863. Their role was to help bolster the beleaguered Second Mexican Empire, an ally of France, against US-backed rebels. The conflict ended in victory for the rebels, led by Benito Juarez, and the summary execution of Emperor Maximillian I of Mexico in 1867. In his memoirs, Kashf Al-Sitar an Sirr Al-Asrar (Unmasking the Great Secret), the leader of the 1882 Revolution, Ahmed Orabi, cited a speech that Said Pasha delivered at a banquet at the Qasr Al-Nil Palace decades before. “I looked at the condition of the Egyptian people in history, and I found that this nation had been treated the most unfairly and had been the most enslaved of all other nations on earth. I consider myself to be Egyptian, and therefore I have to give this nation the grooming it needs to stand on its own two feet and be able to rely on itself and not on foreigners,” remarked Said (as quoted by Orabi). During his reign, Said Pasha encouraged European explorers searching for the source of the Nile. One of the men he met was Samuel Baker, who went on to discover Lake Albert, named after Queen Victoria's consort. In his memoirs, Nubar Pasha, Egypt's first prime minister, recounts how one day he saw Said Pasha weeping over the debts the country had accumulated because of its involvement in the Suez Canal project. “Egypt is ruined, completely ruined,” the Pasha said, who was heading the next day to a meeting in Paris to try to resolve the financial entanglements over the canal. From that moment on, the Pasha became obsessed with how history would remember him. Once, while was bathing with the help of his servant, Antari, he asked, “Antari, do you ever worry about how history will remember you? Aren't you afraid history will say that you were close to a powerful prince and yet you did not offer him any timely advice?” According to Nubar, the Pasha also posed questions to his barber, Hagg Ali. “What will history say about Irfan?” the Pasha asked, referring to the palace chief of staff. Hagg Ali told him that history would remember that Irfan used to eat and drink and sleep, and not much more. Unfortunately for Hagg Ali, Irfan was eavesdropping at the door at the time, and he didn't much like what he had heard. He ordered the barber to receive 15 lashes for his indiscretion.
