Ali Pasha Mubarak
Ali Pasha Mubarak was an Egyptian public works and education minister during the second half of the nineteenth century. He is often considered one of the most influential and talented of Egypt's 19th century reformers. Ali Mubarak is known for his contribution in the reconstruction of Cairo's landscape and for founding Egypt's modern educational system.
His most famous work is titled al-Khitat al-Tawfiqiyya al-Jadida, which provides a detailed, street-by-street description of Egypt's major cities and villages.
He also contributed to the start of the Egyptian National Library and Archives around 1870 which is one of the largest and oldest government libraries.
Early life
Ali Mubarak was born in Brembel Al Gadidah village in the Dakahlia Governorate in 1823. Ali Mubarak did not come from a wealthy family, however, he was a part of the Mashayikh family that was known to produce the local Qadi, Imam, and Khatib. The situation of his family would indicate that Ali Mubarak would pursue a career as a religious figure for his rural community. During his youth, Ali Mubarak studied at many different schools and worked for different government clerics. He attended a government prep school before being admitted to the Cairo School of Engineering. During his studies in Cairo he was the top student and as a result was chosen to be a member of a student mission sent by Muhammad Ali to France in 1844. He studied in Paris for two years and directly after that in Metz at the . He returned to his homeland in 1849 and was given an instructors position in the artillery school. After this in 1850, he became the first native Egyptian Muslim to be appointed the director of the entire system of government schools. This marked the beginning of his "rich career of public service that spanned nearly four decades and included appointments as head of the ministries of education, public works, and railways."Early Education and Apprenticeships
After studying under the instruction of his father during his early childhood, Ali Mubarak spent two years studying with a Faqih. This schooling experience stayed with him for most of his life. In his later years, Ali Mubarak wrote about his fear of beatings by his teacher. He never attended school without a small gift that he could give to his teacher to avoid beatings. After two years of instruction under the Faqih, Ali Mubarak refused to return to the school because he did not wish to become a Faqih. He left the school in the hopes of working under the local Katibs.Ali Mubarak had two apprenticeships under two different Khatibs. Both apprenticeships ended poorly. He quit his first apprenticeship because he was maltreated and he was dismissed from the second apprenticeship because he spoke out against his master's reception of gifts. He then returned home to study under his father for a year before he began a third apprenticeship under a local government clerk. After working under the clerk for three months, Ali Mubarak still had not received his promised salary. After taking his owed salary from funds collected by the local official, Ali Mubarak was imprisoned for theft.
During his imprisonment, a prison guard caught Ali writing. The guard was so impressed with Ali's amazing handwriting that he offered him a job and eventually set him free. It was during this short imprisonment where Ali Mubarak first voiced his dissatisfaction with the lack of Egyptians in the Egyptian government. Egypt was still very much a part of the Ottoman Empire at this point in time. Although Egypt was a fairly autonomous region under Muhammad Ali, the majority of officials in the Egyptian government continued to be Ottoman Turks until the mid-1800s. Ali Mubarak was determined to change the system and then aspired to attend a new modern school in Cairo where students were taught Turkish, arithmetic, and writing.
In 1836, Ali Mubarak finally achieved his goal and enrolled in the Qasr al-Ayni School where he dreamed about the fine dress of the students and the schools fine academic reputation. He soon realized, however, that the school did not measure up to the standards he had set for it. Ali Mubarak believed the school to be poorly organized with insufficient accommodations for the student body. After attending Qasr al-Ayni for a year, Ali Mubarak and his school mates were moved to Abu Zabal while their former school was transformed into a medical school. At the new school, Ali Mubarak was able to focus more of his attention on his studies as opposed to the military drills taught at Qasr al-Ayni. Ali Mubarak was still not pleased with the teaching style. He was very critical of the school's emphasis on memorization of material.
French Education
In 1844 Ali Mubarak was chosen to accompany the royal princes as they polished their education in France. Ali Mubarak spent two years studying in Paris, then two years studying at the military academy in Metz, and then spent a year studying with the French Army. Ali Mubarak was summoned back to Egypt in 1848 and was awarded the military title of Pasha because of his education with the French military. He was asked to teach at the Tura Artillery School.Government Work
Ali Mubarak is highly regarded because he was one of the first native born, Arabic-speaking, Muslim Egyptians to hold a prestigious government position. Mubarak's career with the Egyptian government began upon his return to Egypt in 1849. The formation of the Egyptian bureaucracy in the 1800s was largely a result of the work of Muhammad Ali. Under his reign, he established many new government departments, a centralized system of government employed by civil servants. Muhammad Ali of Egypt established six departments as part of the executive branch during his rule; Department of Marine, Department of War, Department of Finance, Department of Industry, Department of Education, and Department of Foreign Affairs. After his death in 1849, four new departments were created: the Department of Interior, Department of Public Works, Department of Justice, and Department of Agriculture.In his government career, Ali Mubarak served as the minister heading the Egyptian government school system, the Egyptian railroads, and design and implementation of ambitious urban construction programs in Cairo, and the design and establishment of major irrigation projects.
Department of Education
When Ali Mubarak returned to Egypt from his schooling in France in 1849, he was given the task to reorganize the public school system under Khedive Abbas I.Ali Mubarak was awarded the position of director of the government education system. He remained in that position for four years and was responsible for introducing many education reforms. Under Abbas, Ali Mubarak and his two friends and colleagues, Hammad Abd al-Ati and Ali Ibrahim were assigned to assess the competence of the engineers in the Irrigation Department and the teachers in the government schools because Abbas believed them to be unqualified to hold such positions. After their review of the teachers and engineers, Abbas commissioned the three men to create an economic plan for the government education system. Ali Mubarak formulated a budget for the Department of Education that significantly cut spending. His proposal was approved in 1850 by Abbas and he was promoted to the position of colonel.
In addition to improving efficiency in the Egyptian education system, Ali Mubarak wanted to create an environment where students were inspired to be a part of the Egyptian nation and to encourage students to pursue education in modern technology. He used his past experience as a student to identify situations that needed to be addressed. One of Ali Mubarak's major projects was increasing the availability of textbooks to Egyptian students. He helped establish a movable type printing press and started a campaign to translate European textbooks into Arabic and print and distribute the textbooks to Egyptian students. Ali Mubarak also set out to improve the welfare of students by improving their food, clothing, and instruction environment. In his opinion, teachers should have a fatherly role in the eyes of their students in order for education to be the most effective.
When Ismail ascended to rule Egypt in 1863, Ali Mubarak was one of the first men called to help reorganize the government systems. Ali Mubarak worked for a period of time supervising the construction of building, bridges, and dams before returning to the Department of Education. Under Ismail, the government passed the “Organic Law” for Egyptian education which led Egypt down the road of nationalizing the education system. As a result of this law, enrolment in modern Egyptian schools increased from 1,399 to 4,445 students between 1867 and 1878.
With a supportive executive branch of government, Ali Mubarak was able to enact a number of education reforms. One of his successful projects was the development of schools for students and military officers to learn European theories and histories of warfare. The new Egyptian school system was an influential system for teaching students new ideas about modernization.
Department of Public Works
Ali Mubarak's emphasis on modernizing Egypt went beyond education. During the late 1800s, Ali Mubarak played a major role in creating the outlines for the modern city layout of Cairo. The city of Cairo underwent a major modernization process during the 1800s. In 1847, Egypt was still considered to be a member of the Ottoman Empire. Even though Egypt was fairly autonomous, the elite Turkish minority, ruled the region. By the end of the nineteenth century Egypt was still considered to be a part of the Ottoman Empire, however, it was more directly ruled and influenced by the British. Egypt's relationship with Europe,, was a catalyst for modernization. The Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1867 was a major influence on the development of the city of Cairo. The Paris Exposition Universelle laid the foundation for the idea of what constituted a modern city. Ismail was greatly affected by the Exposition. Shortly after he arrived back in Egypt, Ismail gave Ali Mubarak the head position in the Ministry of Public Works. As head of the ministry, Ali Mubarak was responsible for modernizing Cairo in a European style.Mubarak and his team quickly worked together to create a blueprint for modern Cairo. They quickly identified what they believed to be the main hindrance of the city of Cairo, traffic. The use of carriages was quickly expanding in Cairo and the streets were not wide enough to accommodate so many carriages traveling in opposite directions. Mubarak and his team estimated that there were over nine hundred carriages in Cairo in 1875 and more than eighteen hundred transport cars clogging the streets of the city. In order to address the increasing traffic in the city, Mubarak planned to widen roads in Cairo by demolishing buildings on the sides of the roads. In one case, about four hundred large houses, three hundred small homes, as well as shops and mosques were demolished to make room for a two-kilometer highway. Inspired by the streets of Europe, the highway was finished with sidewalks, gaslights, and shrubbery.
By the year 1900, Cairo had undergone a vast modernization project, however, some areas of the city were untouched by the modernization attempts. Cairo became divided into an old and a new city. The modern region of the city lay to the west and north and was radically different socially and economically from the old city. While many of the elites in Egypt desired to create a European image of their country, Europeans desired to see the exotic when they traveled through Egypt.
Although Ali Mubarak spent a lot of his time working with the Ministry of Public Works, he continued to work with the Ministry of Education. Outside of his work with the Egyptian government, Ali Mubarak also found time to write extensively on military engineering, educational theory, as well as writing an encyclopedia called, al-Khitat al-Tawfiqiyah.