Isma'il Sidqi

Isma'il Sidqi as Prime Minister in 1932

Isma'il Sidqi (Arabic: إسماعيل صدقي‎) (15 June 1875 – 9 July 1950) was an Egyptian politician who served as Prime Minister of Egypt from 1930 to 1933 and again in 1946.

Life and career

He was born in Alexandria and was originally named Isma'il Saddiq but his name was changed after his namesake fell out of favor.^[1]

Sidqi graduated from Collège des Frères in Cairo and the Khedival Law School, then joined the public prosecutor's office. In 1899 he became administrative secretary of the Alexandria municipal commission, serving until 1914, when he was appointed minister of agriculture and later Minister of Waqfs (Islamic endowments).

In 1915, Sidqi joined the nationalist Wafd Party and was eventually deported to Malta with party founder Saad Zaghloul and other loyalists in 1919. Following World War I Sidqi left the Wafd Party. He served as Minister of Finance in 1921 and 1922 and as Minister of the Interior in 1922 and from 1924 to 1925. He then retired from politics.

He returned to politics in the 1930s to serve as Prime Minister from June 1930 to September 1933, running as a candidate for the People's Party. He was known as a strong leader and fought the influence of his former Wafd Party. He joined an all-party delegation to negotiate the Anglo-Egyptian treaty of 1936, which established Egypt as a technically sovereign state, although still under British control.

In 1938 Sidqi retired from politics again. He returned to politics one last time in February 1946 as Prime Minister, seeking to revise the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty. After failing to unite Egypt and the Sudan under Egyptian sovereignty, Sidqi resigned as Prime Minister on December 8, 1946. He was succeeded by Mahmoud an-Nukrashi Pasha.

Cultural references

In Naguib Mahfouz's 1947 novel Midaq Alley, Alley businessman Salim Alwan is warned by his son, an attorney, against entering politics: "If you choose any party other than the Wafd your business reputation will suffer, and if you choose the Wafd, a Prime Minister like Sidgy [sic] Pasha will destroy your business and scatter it to the winds" (page 65, English translation by Trevor Le Gassick, AUC Press 1975 edition).

References

1. Badrawi, Malak (1996). Isma'il Sidqi, 1875-1950: Pragmatism and Vision in Twentieth Century Egypt. RoutledgeCurzon, ISBN 978-0-7007-0408-8

External links

• The Sidqi years via Al-Ahram