Egypt Today, Egypt
May 5 2005
Taken Care Of
An accomplice of the notorious Khedive Ismail, Ismail bey Sadyk
El-Muffatich disappeared under dubious circumstances
By Fayza Hassan
Khedive Ismail (r.1863-1879), the ambitious and unscrupulous prince
who succeeded viceroy Said on the throne of Egypt, managed in 16
short years to bring about his country’s bankruptcy as well as his
own downfall. In doing so, he was assisted by a number of compliant
courtesans, unaware that by following their master’s bidding they
were sealing their own disastrous fate.
Even though the Armenian Prime-Minister Boghos Nubar always comes
to mind when mentioning the khedive’s catastrophic policies, a
lesser-known figure, Ismail bey Sadyk El-Muffatish (the inspector)
played an equally sinister role in the financial debacle that brought
Egypt under foreign domination. He was, however, cruelly punished for
having tried to satisfy his sovereign’s insatiable appetite for riches.
He wasthen hustled on board of one of the vice regal steamers,
which was lying along the palace ready to sail. Sadyk put up a
strong resistance but was overpowered, bundled up and locked up.
Ismail Sadyk was born in Algeria, but is believed to have come to
Egypt at an early age. The first mention of Sadyk is by Wilfred Scawen
Blunt, the famous British traveler and author of Secret History of
the English Occupation of Egypt (1895), who noted Sadyk rose quickly
(thanks to his natural abilities) to vice regal service. Sadyk was
first hired as a superintendent of Abbas I’s stud farm. Under Said
and Ismail he had served in various official capacities, but he
was aiming higher and managed to attract the attention of Ismail,
who recognized his special gifts. El-Muffatish became the khedive’s
main agent in the management of his estates and the arm that reached
deep into the pockets of the fellahin peasants to extract the last
few piasters that they may have been hiding to feed their families.
Khedive Ismail had been a landowner of great acumen, managing his
own properties in Upper Egypt in accordance with the most enlightened
modern methods. European travelers marveled at the new machinery he
had imported and the wealth invested in the land to increase its yield
manifolds. The grandson of Muhammad Ali, he had obviously inherited
some of the commercial aptitude that distinguished the family.
Yet, Ismail’s succession to the viceroyalty had been unexpected:
until a few months before the death of Viceroy Said, the successor
should have been Ismail’s older brother Ahmed, who died in a mysterious
train accident, thus paving the way for Ismail.
The new viceroy seems to have been somewhat confused as to his duties,
acting as if the country was his personal inheritance to do with as
he pleased, rather than keeping it in trust for its people. Since he
was also inordinately vain, he surrounded himself with sycophants,
who promised time and again to make of him not only the richest
financier in the world, but also the greatest of Oriental sovereigns.
Following their advice, his first act in that direction was to raise
the land tax progressively to four times its initial value. The
peasantry in the time of Said, his predecessor, had been living
comfortably off since cotton was selling well. They could afford
the tax increase by curtailing non-essential expenses. When this
initiative worked, Ismail was emboldened to go further. Courtesans
reminded him, and El-Muffatish may have been one of them, that in the
days of his grandfather the whole land was considered the viceroy’s
personal property and that Muhammad Ali had exercised a monopoly on
all foreign trade for a long time. This was the kind of argument
Ismail’s dreams were made of, but being careful to project the
image of an enlightened sovereign in the face of European opinion
he had to devise covert strategies to gain his ends. Intimidation
and administrative pressure unnoticed by foreign powers could become
powerful instruments of dispossession, forcing harassed landowners
to get rid of their land at nominal prices.
By these methods the khedive managed to avail himself of an
enormous domain which, he believed, would provide him with unlimited
resources. He was wrong however: while he had been very successful in
the exploitation of a relatively small land property, his gigantic
territory proved impossible to control. On such a scale, whatever
he attempted seemed destined to collapse. Huge investment in new
machinery, increase of forced labor, establishment of factories
directed by European technicians on his estates every new initiative
was followed by resounding failure. His agents robbed him in a
thousand ways, and their chief in this disastrous history was Ismail
El-Muffatish who, under the cover of serving his master well, amassed
an enormous personal fortune.
Whether Khedive Ismail was aware of El-Muffatish’s treachery and
bided his time or had genuinely trusted him will never be known, but
the Khedive kept El-Muffatish near him during all his tribulations
to extract himself from the claws of his European creditors. At the
time of his untimely death El-Muffatish was finance minister and
very much a party to the game the Khedive played with the European
commissioners checking on his debt payments. With the help of Sadyk
the Khedive used to present false statements of his debts, concealing
the truth of his extreme extravagances.
Finally a new commission was formed, tipped off this time by one of the
Khedive’s ministers. They put severe pressure on him to disclose the
extent of his spending. The Khedive panicked: what if the stress became
too much for his aging finance minister and he told the commission
the facts? It was imperative to silence El-Mufattish before the
commission got to him and Ismail took the matters in his own hands:
It was the habit of Khedive Ismail to drop in at the Finance Office
and take his finance minister (with whom he had a strong friendship)
for a long drive to Shubra or to one of his numerous palaces. On
that particular afternoon they drove to the Gezira Palace and the
khedive invited El-Mufattish in. As soon as they were inside, the
Khedive excused himself, and his two young sons, Hussein and Hassan,
entered the room accompanied by the khedive’s aide-de-camp Mustafa
Bey Fahmi. The princes threw themselves on the unarmed minister,
insulting him and aggressing him bodily. He was then hustled on board
of one of the vice regal steamers, which was lying along the palace
ready to sail. Sadyk put up a strong resistance but was overpowered,
bundled up and locked up.
What happened to him from this point on is a matter of speculation.
Was he thrown in the Nile like so many of Ismail’s enemies? Was he
strangled before by the Khedive’s henchmen and then disposed of on
their arrival at Wadi Halfa where the steamer was officially headed?
All we know is that he was never seen alive again. A few weeks later,
it was officially announced that El-Mufattish had been holidaying in
Upper Egypt where he took to drink and died from an overdose.
El-Mufattish, cruel as he may have been in secret to the fellahin,
was well liked by Cairo’s society and esteemed for the lavish parties
with which he honored his guests. By all accounts he was never stingy
with his ill-acquired wealth and was therefore a popular figure
among the elite. That is possibly why his friends immediately gave
credence to the tale of Mustafa Bey Fahmi, who fell ill and in his
delirium recounted in detail the events of that terrible night. An
Algerian himself like Sadyk, he had been so horrified by the role he
had been ordered to play that upon his return from the Gezira Palace,
he was struck by a severe fever that nearly killed him. et
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress