The Mohamed Ali Foundation Fellowship Programme Public Lectures

The Mohamed Ali Foundation Fellowship Programme Public Lectures will take place on Tuesday 13 June 2023 at 14.00 to 17.00 in Cosin's Hall on Palace Green in the centre of Durham City. The lectures will also be live-streamed on Zoom: if you wish to attend online please register here. Details of past fellows and their lectures are provided below. Details of past fellows are below.  

DR KARIM MALAK   
The Last Khedive but the First to Decolonize?: Abbas Hilmi II's odyssey for sovereignty.

Dr Karim Malak will explore the nature of Egyptian Sovereignty at the turn of the 19th century. Challenging the narrative that sees the Egyptian state emerge after 1919, Malak traces its birth to increasingly assertive policies and reforms that began under Mehmet Ali and Ibrahim Pasha, which were stunted by the British but later picked up by Khedive Abbas Hilmi II. Asking what were the limits and opportunities for governance afforded within competing visions of Ottoman and British sovereignty, Malak will concentrate particularly on accounting and financial reform, military bureaucracy, and that of the awqāf; the key battlegrounds for Egyptian sovereignty between the 1870s and 1914 when an earlier undertheorized epoch of decolonization began.

DR SAMI MOUBAYED

Failed attempts at making Abbas Hilmi II king of Syria (1930-1933)

Dr Sami Moubayed will analyse the brief proposal of Abbas Hilmi II as a king of Syria in 1932, and to place this incident in context with the legacy and ambitions of his ancestor Mohammad Ali Pasha, who intervened in Syria in the early 19th century, and with the short reign of Faisal I after the First World War. He will reflect on how this nomination was received by different groups in contemporary Syria and by Abbas Hilmi II himself, and consider what policies might have been adopted by such a ruler.

DR TAQADUM AL-KHATIB

The last khedive of Egypt and Germany: transnational networks, empire, and independence, 1914-1919

Dr Taqadum Al-Khatib will explore why after his deposition and during much of the First World War Abbas Hilmi II remained the object of substantial attention lavished on him by the Great Powers. He will review Germany’s relations with Egypt both before and after the British occupation in 1882 and the pan-Islamic anti-colonial policies that Germany adopted after 1914, tracing its increased engagement with and patronage of Egyptian nationalists in Europe and Egypt. Drawing upon extensive use of German archival sources, as well as Abbas Hilmi II’s own archive, he will examine the wartime inter-relations between Egyptian nationalists, Abbas Hilmi II, the Ottoman state and Germany. Germany and Turkey professed support for combined military operations to liberate Egypt, but Egyptian nationalists remained sceptical. The talk will ultimately offer a new understanding of the roots of the idea of the Third World.

For details about the annual Mohamed Ali Foundation Fellowship Programme and past fellows please see here.