The Honourable Saad Zaghloul سعد زغلول |
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Prime Minister of Egypt | |
In office 26 January 1924 – 24 November 1924 |
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Monarch | Fuad I |
Preceded by | Abdel Fattah Yahya Ibrahim Pasha |
Succeeded by | Ahmad Ziwar Pasha |
Minister of Education | |
In office 28 October 1906 – 23 February 1910 |
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Monarch | Abbas II |
Minister of Justice | |
In office 1910–1912 |
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Monarch | Abbas II |
Personal details | |
Born | 1859 Ibyana, Kafr el-Sheikh Governorate, Eyalet of Egypt |
Died | 23 August 1927 Cairo, Kingdom of Egypt |
(aged 68)
Political party | Wafd Party |
Religion | Sunni Islam |
Saad Zaghloul (Arabic: سعد زغلول; also: Saad Zaghlûl, Sa'd Zaghloul Pasha ibn Ibrahim) (1859 – 23 August 1927) was an Egyptian revolutionary, and statesman. Zaghloul was the leader of Egypt's nationalist Wafd Party. He served as Prime Minister of Egypt from 26 January 1924 to 24 November 1924.
Zaghloul was born in Ibyana village in the Kafr el-Sheikh Governorate of Egypt's Nile Delta. For his post-secondary education, he attended Al-Azhar University, a French law school in Cairo. By working as a Europeanized lawyer, Zaghloul gained both wealth and status in a traditional framework of upward mobility. Despite this, Zaghloul success can equally be attributed to his familiarity with the Egyptian countryside and its many idioms. In 1918, he became politically active, as the founding leader of the Wafd Party, for which he was later arrested.
Upon his release from prison, he practiced law and distinguished himself; amassed some independent means, which enabled him to participate in Egyptian politics, then dominated by the struggle-moderate and extreme—against British occupation; and effected useful, permanent links with different factions of Egyptian nationalists. He became close to Princess Nazli Fazl, and his contacts with the Egyptian upper class led to his marriage to the daughter of the Egyptian prime minister Mustafa Fahmi Pasha, whose friendship with Evelyn Baring, 1st Earl of Cromer, then the effective British ruler of Egypt, accounts in part for the eventual acceptability of Zaghloul to the British occupation. In succession Zaghloul was appointed judge, minister of education (1906–1908), minister of justice (1910–1912); and in 1913 he became vice-president of the Legislative Assembly.
In all his ministerial positions Zaghloul undertook certain measures of reform that were acceptable to both Egyptian nationalists and the British occupation. Throughout this period, he kept himself outside extreme Egyptian nationalist factions, and although acceptable to the British occupation, he was not thereby compromised in the eyes of his Egyptian compatriots. The relationship between Britain and Egypt continued to deteriorate during and after the Great War.