Deposition of Abbas II Hilmi

On 19 December 1914, the day after the proclamation of the British protectorate over Egypt, the British Foreign Secretary made known a further decision. Since Abbas II Hilmi, “the former Khedive of Egypt”, had adhered to the King’s enemies, His Majesty’s Government had decided to remove him from the throne. The dignity of ruler, with the new title of Sultan of Egypt, was offered to Prince Hussein Kamel, the eldest living member of the Muhammad Ali dynasty, and he accepted it.

A khedive in exile

Abbas II Hilmi came to the throne in 1892 as a youth not yet eighteen. From the start his relations with the British, who had occupied Egypt since 1882, were poor. He supported the Egyptian nationalists and sought backing in Constantinople, which aroused distrust in London. In the summer of 1914 he was in the Ottoman capital. On 25 July he was wounded there in an attempt on his life, and he was still recovering when the war broke out.

The British did not want to allow him to return to a country through which the Empire’s troop transports passed. Abbas remained in Constantinople and openly sided with the Turks. He was accused of trying to stir up the Egyptians and Sudanese against the British. When Turkey entered the war and martial law was declared in Egypt, his fate was in practice sealed.

The first sultan in four centuries

Hussein Kamel, son of the former viceroy Isma’il Pasha and Abbas’s uncle, was then 61. He was regarded as a moderate man, willing to cooperate with the British. The title of sultan had great symbolic importance. The khedive was a viceroy subordinate to the ruler in Constantinople, whereas a sultan formally stood on an equal footing with him. The last sultan to rule in Cairo had been the Mamluk ruler defeated by the Turks in 1517.

The new ruler received a note from the British setting out the limits of his authority. Relations with foreign states were henceforth to pass through the British representative in Cairo. London also acknowledged that the system of capitulations, that is the legal privileges of foreigners, no longer met the country’s needs, but postponed its revision until the end of the war. On 20 December the American representative in Cairo reported to Washington that Prince Hussein had been proclaimed Sultan of Egypt.

Later fortunes

Hussein Kamel’s reign was not easy. In 1915 there were two attempts on his life: in April an assailant attacked his carriage in Cairo, and in July, according to some sources in Alexandria, a bomb was thrown at his carriage as the sultan was on his way to Friday prayers. Hussein Kamel died on 9 October 1917. His son renounced his rights to the throne, and the British had already decided that the dead man’s brother, Fuad I, would become sultan.

Abbas II Hilmi never returned to Egypt. The authorities of the sultanate barred him from entering the country and confiscated his property. Only in 1931 did he formally accept the loss of his throne. He died in Geneva on 19 December 1944, exactly thirty years after his deposition.