King Fouad selectively edited family archives to polish Mehmed Ali’s legacy
Evidence
It should be noted that most of these translations were done at the explicit order of King Fouad (r. 1923–36), Mehmed Ali’s great-grandson. Having recently won the title of King, Fouad was keen not only in portraying the history of his family in a positive light, but also in highlighting the fact that his was an independent royal family right from his great-grandfather’s time. He thus invited a number of historians to come and work on a highly selected group of his family’s papers, which became the nucleus of the Royal Archives of Egypt that was housed in ‘Abdīn Palace, the precursor of the present Egyptian National Archives. Not only was this a selected group of documents, they were also slightly edited on being translated from the original Ottoman Turkish to Arabic. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 171
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- XREF: A concrete archival-skewing example relevant to the reader’s skepticism of nationalist narratives of Egypt’s army and Ottoman pashas.