Egypt's walker, candid and farsighted

Sa'ad Zaghlul (1859-1927) was one of those rare individuals who spoke truth to authority.

He rejected miserable conditions imposed by the British occupying forces in Egypt and awakened a sleeping giant.

In the words of Afaf Lutfi Al Saeed Marsot, whose magisterial A History of Egypt: From the Arab Conquest to the Present recounts how even as “the three C's — the curbaj (lash), the corvée (forced labour) and corruption'' worsened conditions for the majority, dramatic changes in European intellectual circles gradually sailed towards the Eastern shores of the Mediterranean, where Zaghlul and several other politicians mobilised.

Remarkably, Britain failed to understand the extent to which national aspirations for independence marshalled Egyptians and contemplated its formal annexation in 1914 before unilaterally declaring it a British protectorate.

London believed that most of its “subjects'' would denounce local movements to better ascertain their loyalties towards the Crown.

Such optimistic sentiments notwithstanding, Egyptian politicians led by Zaghlul, Abdul Aziz Fahmi and Ali Sharawi were increasingly attuned to major anti-colonial winds blowing across the seas.

They relied on the 1918 Armistice plans to jump on the First World War Peace Conference bandwagon and Zaghlul, who zwould not take “no'' for an answer, informed British resident Sir Reginald Wingate that he wished to be present at Versailles to seek full self-determination rights — and eventual independence — as formulated by American president Woodrow Wilson.

Consequently, Zaghlul, along with key allies, formed a delegation — wafd in Arabic, a name eventually adopted by the party — only to be promptly turned down.

On January 14, 1919, “several hundred supporters of the Wafd met in the palace of Hamad Al Bassel'', where Zaghlul delivered “a fiery speech, which moreover contained a skilful analysis of Egypt's relations with her foreign guests''.

As brilliantly reported by the renowned Algerian-born Arabist Jacques Berque in his 1972 landmark study Egypt, Imperialism and Revolution (first published in 1967 as L'Egypte: Impérialisme et Révolution), it was “natural that among the various aspects of liberation, a dependent people should opt first of all for political independence, which directly or indirectly implies all the rest''.

“This,'' Berque concluded, “was the Egyptian people's choice.''

Not surprisingly, British authorities reacted negatively to any contemplation for participation, negotiations or independence.

Relying on well-placed spies, they became privy to Zaghlul's plans. Mistakenly, they applied their legendary “little rough handling'' methods, which they assumed — speciously as it turned out — would cause Egyptian “effendis'' to revert to their passive and privileged lifestyles.

Zaghlul was warned by Wingate to stop agitating against the protectorate.

He did not and was arrested under martial law regulations that were always kept in abeyance, and deported to Malta.

Three close allies accompanied him: Al Bassel, Esmail Seddiqi and Mohammad Mahmoud.

Political awakening

Though conditions for carefully planned opposition measures ripened only after 1918, Zaghlul had risen to fame a few years earlier, when he initiated meaningful debates in the British-controlled Egyptian parliament.

As widely acknowledged, Zaghlul earned his stripes during these debates and was regularly shouted down by pro-government supporters who cherished every opportunity to interrupt him.

However, Zaghlul's admirers were not idle. In 1913, Awad Al Guindi entered the hall of the legislative assembly and applauded him, which led to his prompt arrest.

Comically, Al Guindi was accused of putting up revolutionary pamphlets on the fence of the parliament building while his younger brother Yousuf was expelled from law school a year later, allegedly for encouraging student strikes to protest the British protectorate declaration. They were the tip of a pro-Zaghlul iceberg.

When London rejected the Wafd's demands for independence, the Egyptian nationalists adopted methods of systematic agitation which were, ironically, supported by the government of the day and the sultan.

As a vassal of the Ottoman Empire, Sultan Fouad, the youngest of the deposed Khedive Esmail's sons, saw in Zaghlul a potential leader with undeniable capabilities.

Zaghlul, who was a friend of the British high commissioner, Lord Evelynn Cromer, and a former cabinet minister who served in a Cromer government, would no longer let friendship get in the way of the tasks at hand.

His unique role in raising Egyptian consciousness, which many historians interpreted as veiled in anti-British sentiments, earned him rare popular accolades.

Throughout 1919, hundreds of thousands were mobilised, which led to his March 9, 1919, arrest and deportation.

Nationalist leaders were shocked by these incredulous actions as a significant portion of the population organised in a more of less systematic manner.

Indeed, the reaction was swift, as student-demonstrators took to the streets, where several hundred were roughed-up and arrested.

When the British authorities could no longer disperse them, they called in military assistance to back their constabulary troops that, not surprisingly, meant certain clashes.

The March 1919 revolt

Religious students from Al Azhar joined the melee as all-out rioting paralysed the city.

Shots were fired and casualties mounted. On March 11, fresh riots started a vicious cycle: Arrests were followed by demonstrations that were, in turn, followed by mounting casualties.

Throughout these ordeals, British officers believed the rioters would eventually calm down, which did not occur. On the contrary, as the number of dead increased, “rebels'' blew up key government offices.

Soon opposition to British rule spread to the provinces, with riots in several cities and towns. Gradually, as calls for “independence'' increased everywhere, communications between the provinces and the authorities in Cairo broke down.

In Fayum, for example, an estimated 7,000 demonstrators attacked police, seized their arms, gained control over railway lines and roughed up British passengers.

By March 15, communication lines were severely damaged, drawing British ire. Two days later, 10,000 demonstrated in the capital and killings continued throughout the country. By March 20, the wheels of revolution were in full motion.

Though British censors reported that students and riff-raff were spreading havoc, the streets were actually flooded with veiled women, religious students, workers of railway depots and ordinary people, all clamouring for Zaghlul's release and for independence.

Peasants left their fields and uprooted railway lines throughout the provinces, joining in what was a surprising response.

British authorities resorted to aerial bombardment and battleship attacks to subdue Assiut and other distant towns, to no avail.

Zaghlul and his fellow prisoners were eventually released and allowed to proceed to Paris for the peace conference and while some progress was recorded, the British government was not in a hurry to make meaningful concessions.

Egyptians took to the streets once again and Zaghlul was deported from his native land for the second time.

Calm was only restored after London appointed General Edmund Allenby, the high commissioner who gradually relaxed harsh measures in place and abolished the protectorate in 1922.

Allenby removed martial law, abolished a series of crude colonial practices and prepared Egypt for independence.

Among these was the return of nationalists such as Zaghlul from exile.

Legacy and impact on Egypt

Although Allenby's independence preparations were ambitious, they were fraught with impossible stipulations, including full British control over defence rights, the Suez Canal and the standard colonial canard of defending the rights of minority populations.

Still, Zaghlul and his allies were released from exile in the Seychelles and campaigned for the elections, though Allenby encouraged former Wafdists to form a competing party, the Ahrar Al Dusturiyyun (Liberal Constitutionalists).

In the event, all the machinations that Allenby and his acolytes could muster proved futile and, in the words of Marsot: “The only political party which had any grassroots backing was the Wafd Party led by Zaghlul, who had tremendous charisma and could charm his audience into believing that they were Zaghlul, the epitome of the man in the street.''

For all his charm, however, Zaghlul was not a compromiser and identified with the fallah (peasant) against landowning Wafdists.

In January 1924, the Wafd won 151 seats to 7 for the Ahrar and Zaghlul became prime minister — “the first fallah Egyptian to occupy that position''.

Zaghlul, “dubbed ‘the king of hearts' — as opposed to the real king sitting in the palace at Abdin and the uncrowned king, the British high commissioner, sitting in his palace at Qasr Al Doubara — had to [tread] a fine line in that tripartite power setting''.

Unlike the Ottoman vassal, Zaghlul was popular and wished to rule according to the constitution, single-mindedly aiming to negotiate a new Anglo-Egyptian treaty.

In the end, that was not to be, as tragedy struck after an intra-Wafd dispute led to the November 19, 1924, assassination of Lee Stack, the commander-in-chief of the army.

The death of this close friend of Allenby created a dilemma as the latter set out to teach Zaghlul a lesson he would not forget.

The English general demanded indemnification and the withdrawal of Egyptian troops from Sudan. A dejected Zaghlul signed the indemnity cheque — 500,000 Egyptian pounds — but resigned before applying any of the other clauses of this imposed settlement.

Though technically the head of the Wafd Party, Zaghlul was politically compromised and died in 1927 at the age of 70.

A stickler for parliamentary life, Zaghlul introduced patronage in the body politic, played a balancing act between the two crowns that competed for authority and built a genuinely popular mandate by maintaining his distance from both.

He excelled in dissent but failed to protect himself from palace machinations, which strangulated his nationalist objectives. He tried very hard but almost always struggled to keep the country's constitutional fires burning.

While some of the ills that befell Egypt throughout the 1950s and 1960s were traced to the Wafd Party's shortcomings, Zaghlul single-handedly encouraged the populace to fight for freedom, persuaded that liberty was seldom granted without paying a significant price.

Dr Joseph A. Kechichian is an author, most recently of Power and Succession in Arab Monarchies, Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2008.

This article is the 11th in a series, which will appear on the second Friday of each month, on Arab leaders who greatly influenced political affairs in the Middle East.

A fire stoked

Sa'ad Zaghlul was born in Ibyanah, a small village in the Gharbiyyah governorate in the Delta (near Alexandria), in 1859.

A champion of independence from British rule, Zaghlul led nationalist forces within the Wafd Party and was arrested on several occasions as London targeted those that rejected its domination.

A series of protests, civil disobedience and riots eventually led to Zaghlul's appointment as prime minister of Egypt from January 26, 1924, to November 24, 1924, which sealed his position within Egyptian political circles.

Zaghlul's contribution to Egyptian nationalism was cathartic, as he united Copts and Muslims from Alexandria to Aswan to shake the mighty British Empire.

His persecution continued as he was rearrested and deported to Aden and the Seychelles in 1921, although his popularity meant the national movement was now unstoppable, which effectively translated in the end of the protectorate by 1922.

As historian P.J. Vatikiotis wrote in his opus, “The History of Modern Egypt'': “… the masses considered Zaghlul their national leader, the ‘Za'im Al Ummah', the uncompromising national hero''.

Zaghlul achieved this feat by winning the 1924 parliamentary elections.

Vatikiotis concluded that Zaghlul's “opponents were equally discredited as compromisers in the eyes of the masses'', and that the future premier “finally [came] to power partly because he had compromised with the palace group and implicitly accepted the conditions governing the safeguarding of British interests in Egypt''.

Zaghlul resigned the premiership and played no further role in government after he was compromised in 1924.

Zaghlul hailed from a modest family and his father died when he was barely 5. This less-than-privileged background notwithstanding, he enrolled in the Al Azhar University in 1873 to earn a law degree and excelled in academics.

Upon graduation, he accepted the post of a civil servant and in time became a magistrate before Lord Cromer appointed him minister of education in 1906 and minister of justice in 1910.

As a Cabinet officer, he encouraged the use of Arab as a teaching and administrative language.

His funeral was a gigantic public send-off — worthy of a great pharaoh — and on the ninth anniversary of his death in 1936, Zaghlul's mortal remains were exhumed from the family vault and placed in a coffin atop a gun-drawn carriage for reburial at a mausoleum on Falaki Street, opposite his old home Bait Al Ummah.

He married Mustafa Fahmi Pasha's daughter Safiyyah, who became a revolutionary in her own right. The Ottoman-born Safiyyah became Umm Al Masriyiin (Mother of the Egyptians) and though she and Zaghlul had no offspring, they considered “all Egyptians are sons and daughters''.

Permanent honours

Mahmoud Mukhtar (1891-1934), one of Egypt's leading sculptors, was commissioned by prime minister Mustafa Al Nahas in March 1930 to create two large statues of Sa'ad Zaghlul.

The Paris-based sculptor was promised 8,000 Egyptian pounds (a significant sum at the time). He designed two giant statues before a change in government halted work.

When Mukhtar was refused payment, he initiated litigation but died before the outcome of the lawsuit could be known.

Both statues were simultaneously unveiled on August 27, 1938, in Cairo and Alexandria, facing the Gezirah via the Qasr Al Nil bridge and the Mediterranean at the second city's historic harbour.

These locations were no accidents because the statue in Cairo stood on an island still considered a virtual British enclave, facing the notorious headquarters across from the Nile, where Zaghlul was imprisoned for a period of time.

The Alexandria statue was unveiled in the presence of the monarch and the entire government at the time. It was a fitting tribute to the man who awakened Egypt's independence movement.

But one absence stood out: Safiyyah Hanem Zaghlul, as she was known, who listened to a live broadcast of the event at home because conservative religious clergymen objected to her reserved seat next to King Farouq.

Rather than concede her position, she opted to forgo the privilege, as the apologetic ruler called on her later, pleading ignorance and disgust.

Ironically, a large crowd attended the Cairo ceremony, many of whom recalled the 1919 general strike that brought the entire country to a grinding stop.

It was a moment in history but one worthy of a great nation that still remembered.