Government schools enabled an ex-slave to rise to high office, launching Mubärak’s career

Evidence

Absorbed by this mystery and still at an educational crossroads himself, Alï researched the source of Anbar Effendi’s power and found out that he was indeed a manumitted slave, and that his last owner had enrolled him in the recently established Qasr al-Aynï School, now identified as "the road to wealth and power." Alï Mubärak decided, finally, that if this school, established by the government, could enable a former slave to achieve so much, then it was the path for him too, and so at the age of twelve he enrolled in Qasr al-Aynï. He continued in the new schools of the government, and was sent on an educational delegation (similar to the kind for which al-Tahtawï served as imam) to the L'École Militaire Égyptienne in Paris. Thirteen years after meeting Anbar Effendi, `Alï Mubärak returned to Egypt to embark on a brilliant career as civil engineer, historian, professor, government minister, and founder of the national library, which in his own telling was launched by the miracle of seeing a black man in power. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 266

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader pattern of al-Tahtawï and Egyptian educational missions to Europe, likely developed in earlier chapters of this book.