Saad Zaghloul

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.

Education, activism and exile

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 in Cairo. In the 1880s, he became politically active, for which he was arrested.

Rise in the bureaucracy

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 and 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); in 1913 he became vice president of the Legislative Assembly.