Ahmed Abboud Pasha

Born on 2 May 1889 to a middle-class family in Cairo and largely brought up by his mother, Labiba, Abboud Pasha excelled at school, eventually winning an Ottoman Scholarship and electing to study Engineering and Shipbuilding at the University of Glasgow in 1905. As part of the terms of his scholarship, he worked on the expansion of the network of the Hejaz Railway in Iraq and Palestine, as well as various irrigation projects on the Euphrates.

Whilst studying in Glasgow he met his future wife Jemima, the daughter of a Scottish Presbyterian family. In the face of her family's opposition to their marriage, they subsequently eloped to Constantinople, where Abboud Pasha was stationed under the terms of his scholarship from 1912. In 1923 the couple celebrated the birth of their only child, Mona, in Alexandria.

By the end of WW1, Ahmed Abboud was sufficiently well-established to set himself up independently and return to Egypt. He created a construction and dredging company in 1924, which originally focused on contract work on government-financed projects such as the heightening and enlarging of the Aswan Dam as well as the Fouadeya Irrigation Canal.[3][4][5] He then proceeded to establish the Egyptian General Omnibus Company with its terminus in Shubra, Cairo.[6][7]

In 1926 he entered politics as a nationalist Congressman of the Wafd Party for 'Markaz Atfih' South of Cairo.[5] He advocated for a Liberal Constitution with a demand for the return of Egyptian industry to Egyptian hands – as much had been seized by European powers in preceding years in lieu of debts incurred by Khedive Ismail.[8] In the same year he founded the daily newspaper, Al Kashaf, to propound these views more widely. The paper's first editor was Abdul Rahman Pasha Azzam, who later founded the Arab League in the mid-1940s.

In 1931, Ahmed Abboud was awarded the title of Pasha by King Fouad and was appointed to the higher house of parliament.[9] By 1934, Abboud Pasha had acquired 6000 feddans (acres) of sugarcane fields from Belgium interests in Armant, south of Luxor, as well as two sugar refineries based in Naga Hamadi and Kom Ombo – such that by WW2 he was one of the largest sugar manufacturers and exporters in the world.[10]

Abboud Pasha also acquired considerable shipping interests, notably the Khedival Mail Line, which he bought in 1930. The company was originally founded in the mid-1850s in Egypt but then later acquired by Lord Inchcape of P&O Shipping, and in 1936 Abboud Pasha renamed it the Pharaonic Line, thereby successfully returning the company under the Egyptian flag.[11] Abboud Pasha is credited with greatly expanding its fleet of ocean liners from six aging vessels to 40 modern ships, including Mohammed Aly Kabeer and Malek Fouad.

By the 1940s he had conceived the need for, and built, the ground-breaking Immobilia Building in downtown Cairo. The building is considered Egypt's first skyscraper, and was the tallest building in the Middle East at the time. Abboud had also by this time become the largest shareholder of, and was appointed Member of the Board to, Misr Bank, and was a major shareholder and Chairman of the Borad of Upper Egyptian Hotels, which comprised the Shepheard's Hotel in Cairo, the Winter Palace in Luxor and the Cataract in Aswan.

In 1947 he had been the first Egyptian to be appointed to the Board of the Suez Canal Company, and by 1950 he had set up the Suez Fertilizer Co with the support of a US Exim Bank Loan in excess of USD 5.5 million. By then, he was reportedly worth more than USD 100 million.[12]

By the mid-1950s, Abboud Pasha's business empire was entering a fresh phase. He assembled a consortium of 4 major US oil companies – Cities Service, Continental Oil, Richfield Oil and Ohio Petroleum. Serving as their Egyptian partner, Abboud Pasha headed the consortium to negotiate an agreement with the Egyptian government for a 30-year lease on exploration and production rights in a number of blocks in the western desert. In return, the consortium was require to invest USD 30-40 million in the country, and a royalty would be payable on any oil produced. Initial results from the prospecting indicated the presence of significant reserves.[13]

Ahmed Abboud Pasha died in London in 1963, and was reported to be among the ten richest men in the world at the time of his death.

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General

• Beinin, Joel (1998). "Chapter 13 – Egypt: society and economy, 1923–1952". In M. W. Daly (ed.). The Cambridge History of Egypt. Vol. Two: Modern Egypt from 1517 to the End of the Twentieth Century. Cambridge University Press. pp. 327–328. ISBN 978-0-521-47211-1. Retrieved 10 April 2009.
• "Biography of Abbud Pasha". Memory of Modern Egypt Digital Archive (in Arabic). Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Retrieved 17 April 2009.

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