Abbas II of Egypt

Abbas II Hilmi
Khedive of Egypt and Sudan
Reign	8 January 1892 – 19 December 1914
Born	14 July 1874 (1874-07-14)
Birthplace	Alexandria or Cairo
Died	19 December 1944(1944-12-19) (aged 70)
Place of death	Geneva
Predecessor	Tewfik Pasha
Successor	Hussein Kamel
Dynasty	Muhammad Ali Dynasty

HH Abbas II Hilmi Bey (also known as Abbas Hilmi Pasha) (Arabic: عباس حلمي باشا‎) (14 July 1874 – 19 December 1944) was the last Khedive of Egypt and Sudan (8 January 1892 – 19 December 1914).^[1]

Early life

Abbas II was the great-great-grandson of Muhammad Ali. He succeeded his father, Tewfik Pasha, as Khedive of Egypt and Sudan. As a boy he visited the United Kingdom, and he had a British tutor for some time in Cairo. He then went to school in Lausanne, and from there passed on to the Theresianum in Vienna. In addition to Arabic and Turkish, he had good conversational knowledge of English, French and German.

Reign

He was still in college in Vienna when he assumed the throne of the Khedivate of Egypt upon the sudden death of his father. He was barely of age according to Egyptian law; eighteen in cases of succession to the throne. For some time he did not cooperate very cordially with the United Kingdom, whose army had occupied Egypt in 1882. As he was young and eager to exercise his new power, he resented the interference of the British Agent and Consul General in Cairo, Sir Evelyn Baring, later made Lord Cromer. At the outset of his reign, Khedive Abbas surrounded himself with a coterie of European advisers who opposed the British occupation of Egypt and Sudan and encouraged the young Khedive to challenge Cromer by replacing his ailing prime minister with a nationalist. At Cromer's behest, Lord Roseberry, the British foreign secretary, sent him a letter stating that the Khedive was obliged to consult the British consul on such issues as cabinet appointments. In January 1894 Abbas, while on an inspection tour of Egyptian army installations near the southern border, the Mahdists being at the time still in control of Sudan, made public remarks disparaging the Egyptian army units commanded by British officers. The British commander of the Egyptian army, Sir Herbert Kitchener, immediately offered to resign. Cromer strongly supported Kitchener and pressed the Khedive and prime minister to retract the Khedive's criticisms of the British officers. From that time on, Abbas no longer publicly opposed the British, but secretly created, supported, and sustained the nationalist movement, which came to be led by Mustafa Kamil. As Kamil's thrust was increasingly aimed at winning popular support for a National Party, Khedive Abbas publicly distanced himself from the Nationalists.^{[citation needed]} However in general he had no real political power. When the Egyptian Army was sent to fight the Madhi he only found out about it because the Austro-Hungarian Archduke Francis Ferdinand was in Egypt and told him after being informed by a British Army officer about it. ^[2]

In time he came to accept British counsels. In 1899 British diplomat Alfred Mitchell-Innes was appointed Under-Secretary of State for Finance in Egypt, and in 1900 Abbas paid a second visit to Britain, during which he said he thought the British had done good work in Egypt, and declared himself ready to cooperate with the British officials administering Egypt and Sudan. The establishment of a sound system of native justice, the great remission of taxation, the reconquest of Sudan, the inauguration of the substantial irrigation works at Aswan, and the increase of cheap, sound education, each received his formal approval. He displayed more interest in agriculture than in statecraft. His farm of cattle and horses at Qubbah, near Cairo, was a model for scientific agriculture in Egypt, and he created a similar establishment at Muntazah, near Alexandria. He married the Princess Ikbal Hanem and had several children. Muhammad Abdul Mun'im, the heir-apparent, was born on 20 February 1899.

His relations with Cromer's successor, Sir Eldon Gorst, were excellent, and they co-operated in appointing the cabinets headed by Butrus Ghali in 1908 and Muhammad Sa'id in 1910 and in checking the power of the Nationalist Party. The appointment of Kitchener to succeed Gorst in 1911 displeased Abbas, and relations between him and the British deteriorated. Kitchener often complained about "that wicked little Khedive" and wanted to depose him.

When the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers in World War I, the United Kingdom declared Egypt an independent Sultanate under British protectorate on 18 December 1914 and deposed Abbas. Abbas supported the Ottomans in the war, including leading an attack on the Suez Canal. His uncles Hussein Kamel and then Fuad I, the British choices for their Protectorate, issued a series of restrictive orders to strip Abbas of property in Egypt and Sudan and forbade contributions to him. These also barred Abbas from entering Egyptian territory and stripped him of the right to sue in Egyptian courts. Abbas finally accepted the new order of things on 12 May 1931 and abdicated. He retired to Switzerland where he died at Geneva 19 December 1944.

Marriages and issue

He married firstly in Cairo on 19 February 1895 Crimean Ikbal Hanim (Crimea, 22 October 1876 - Jerusalem, 10 February 1941) and had six children:

• HH Princess Emine Hilmi Khanum Efendi (Montaza Palace, Alexandria, 12 February 1895 - 1954), unmarried and without issue
• HH Princess Atiye Hilmi Khanum Efendi (Cairo, 9 June 1896 - 1971), unmarried and without issue
• HH Princess Fethiye Hilmi Khanum Efendi (27 November 1897 - 30 November 1923), unmarried and without issue
• HH Prince/HRH Prince Muhammad Abdel Moneim Bey Efendi, Heir Apparent and Regent of Egypt and Sudan
• HH Princess Lütfiye Şevket Hilmi (Cairo, 29 September 1900 - ?), married in Istanbul on 5 May 1923 to Omar Muhtar Katırcıoğlu (1902 - Çamlıca, near Üsküdar, Bosphorus, 15 July 1935), and had issue:
  • Emine Neşedil Katırcıoğlu (b. 1927), unmarried and without issue
  • Zehra Kadriye Katırcıoğlu (b. 1929), married Ahmet Cevat Tugay have 4 sons and a daughter
• HH Prince Muhammed Abdel Kader (4 February 1902 - Montreux, 21 April 1919)

He married secondly at Çubuklu, Bosphorus, on 1 March 1910 and divorced in 1913 Hungarian Noblewoman Marianne Török de Szendrö, who took the name Zübeyde Cavidan Hanım (Philadelphia, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, 8 January 1874 - aft. 1951), without issue.

Honours

• Grand Cross of the Order of the Polar Star of Sweden-1890
• Grand Cross of the Order of Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary-1891
• Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George (GCMG)-1891
• Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (GCB)-1892
• Grand Cross of the Legion d'Honneur of France-1892
• Grand Cross of the Order of the Dannebrog of Denmark-1892
• Grand Cross of the Order of the Netherlands Lion-1892
• Order of the House of Osman of Ottoman Empire-1895
• Order of Honour of Ottoman Empire-1895
• Grand Cross of the Order of Leopold of Austria-1897
• Grand Cross of the Order of Chula Chom Klao, special class of Siam-1897
• Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order (GCVO)-1900
• Royal Victorian Chain (RVC)-1905
• Grand Cross of the Order of Charles III of Spain-1905
• Grand Cross of the Order of Duke Peter Friedrich Ludwig of Oldenburg-1905
• Grand Cross of the Ducal Saxe-Ernestine House Order-1905
• Grand Cross of the Order of Albert of Saxony-1905
• Grand Cross of the Order of the Redeemer of Greece-1905
• Grand Cross of the Order of Prince Danilo I of Montenegro-1905
• Grand Cross of the Order of Carol I of Romania-1905
• Grand Cross of the Order of Pius IX of the Vatican-1905
• Grand Cross of the Order of Saint Stephen of Austria-Hungary-1905
• Knight of the Order of St. Alexander Nevsky of Russia-1908
• Knight of the Order of Saint Stanislaus (Imperial House of Romanov) of Russia-1908
• Knight of the Order of the Royal House of Chakri of Siam-1908
• Grand Cross of the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus of Italy-1911
• Grand Cross of the Order of Ludwig of Hesse-1911
• Grand Cordon of the Order of Leopold of Belgium-1911
• Grand Cross of the Order of the Star of Ethiopia-1911
• Grand Cordon of the Sharifan Order of Ouissam Alaouite of Morocco-1913
• Grand Cross of the Order of the Black Eagle of Albania-1914
• Grand Cross w/Collar of the Order of the Red Eagle of Prussia-1914
• Grand Cordon special class of the Order of the Exalted of Zanzibar-1914

Bibliography

• Cromer, Sir Evelyn Baring, Earl of. Abbas II. London: Macmillan, 1915. Available to read online [1]
• Goldschmidt, Arthur, Biographical Dictionary of Modern Egypt. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2000, pp. 2–3.
• Pollock, John. Kitchener: Architect of Victory, Artisan of Peace. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2001.
• al-Sayyid, Afaf Lutfi. Egypt and Cromer: A Study in Anglo-Egyptian Relations. London: John Murray, 1968.
• Sonbol, Amira, trans. & ed., The Last Khedive of Egypt: Memoirs of Abbas Hilmi II. Reading, UK: Ithaca Press, 1998.

References

1. ^ Chambers Biographical Dictionary, ISBN 0-550-18022-2, page 1
2. ^ Pax Britannica: The Climax of an Empire Morris, James Harcourt Inc. 1968 page 207

• Al-Ahram on Abbas in exile: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2000/480/chrncls.htm and http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2000/480/chrncls.htm
• Mehmet Ali genealogy: http://www.4dw.net/royalark/Egypt/egypt11.htm
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). "Abbas II". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

External links

•  James Wood (1907). "Abbas Pasha". The Nuttall Encyclopædia. 
•  "Abbas Pasha Hilmi". Collier's New Encyclopedia. 1921. 

Abbas II of Egypt Muhammad Ali Dynasty Born: 14 July 1874 Died: 19 December 1944
Regnal titles
Preceded by Tewfik Pasha	Khedive of Egypt and Sudan 7 January 1892 – 19 December 1914	Deposed British intervention during World War I
		Succeeded by Hussein Kamel as Sultan of Egypt and Sudan
Titles in pretence
Loss of title Deposed by United Kingdom	— TITULAR — Khedive of Egypt and Sudan 19 December 1914 – 19 December 1944	Succeeded by Muhammad Abdul Moneim