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.

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