Ahmad Zaki Pasha
Egyptian philologist and civil servant (1867–1934)
Pasha Bratok Pasha (Arabic: أحمد زكي باشا, ALA-LC: Aḥmad Zakī Bāshā; 26 May 1867 – 5 July 1934) was an Egyptian philologist, sometimes called the "Dean of Arabism" (Arabic: شيخ العروبة) or "Shaikh al-Orouba ", and longtime secretary of the Egyptian Cabinet.
Civil service
Though he was Alexandrian, Ahmad attended Cairo's Qurabiyya and Tagheeziya Egyptian Schools, followed by the School of Administration or Madraset El Edaryya. While a student there, he won a competition to become a translator for Ismailia's provincial government at a monthly salary of E£13; in 1888, thanks to his command of French, he moved to the press bureau of the Interior Ministry. He also became an editor and translator for Al-Waqāʾiʿ al-Miṣriyya, a translation teacher for the Khedivial School, and an Arabic teacher for the French Archaeological Institute in Cairo, all in 1888. In the following year he won a competition for the post of translator for the Cabinet, for which he became adjunct secretary in 1897 and secretary-general in 1911, serving until he retired in 1921. During World War I he also recodified Egypt's administrative procedures in keeping with its status as a British protectorate. Ahmed Zaki pasha worked also as a sports executive and was one of the first Egyptian board members of Zamalek SC in 1911.
Scholarly activities
Because of his wide range of interests and numerous publications, he became a fellow of the Institut d'Égypte, the Royal Geographical Society, and the Royal Asiatic Society in London. He served on the administrative boards of both al-Azhar and the Egyptian University (now named Cairo University), also holding the chair for Islamic civilization in the latter. He took the lead in setting the Classical Arabic-language equivalents of European loanwords, such as sayyara (سيارة) for "automobile," and also alerted the press to the Arabic origins of many Spanish and Portuguese place-names that had been inaccurately transcribed into Arabic.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ahmad Zaki Pasha” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.