Blackwell Reference Online

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The Urabi Arabi movement, also known as the Arabi Revolt, was led by Colonel Ahmed Arabi (1841–1911) (Urabi or Orabi) in Egypt in 1881. A protest movement against foreign intervention in Egypt, its slogan was “Egypt for the Egyptians.” It ended with the death or exile of many of its leaders in 1882. The origin of the Arabi movement lay years earlier in the imperial ambitions of the Khedive Ismail (r. 1863–79). Western-educated and fluent in French, he was a promising ruler who failed financially. Like his grandfather Mohammed Ali Pasha, he had continued to spend money seeking to profit from trade in the Sudan. He financed numerous public works as well as the military with the tax returns from the 1863 cotton boom Egypt enjoyed when the war in the American South had immensely contracted the world's cotton supply. Nominally, Egypt was a possession of the Ottoman empire. In reality it was quite autonomous. However, by 1877 Khedive Ismail was bankrupt due to bad investments, expeditions to the Sudan, and lavish spending on a number of projects. He met the financial crisis by allowing France and Great Britain to set up a dual financial control over Egypt's state revenues. On June 25, 1879, the Ottomans replaced Khedive Ismail with his much more compliant son Khedive Tawfiq. The latter was faced with a growing sense of nationalism, especially among the increasing numbers of educated Egyptians. ... log in or subscribe to read full text