About

Abbas Helmy II ( Arabic: عباس حلمي باشا) (14 July 1874 – 19 December 1944) was the last Khedive  (Ottoman viceroy) of Egypt and the Sudan, ruling from 8 January 1892 to 19 December 1914. In 1914, after the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers in World War I, the nationalist Khedive was removed by the British, then ruling Egypt, in favour of his more pro-British uncle, Hussein Kamel, marking the de jure end of Egypt’s four century era as a province of the Ottoman Empire, which had begun in 1517.

Early life

Abbas II (full name: Abbas Hilmy), the great-great-grandson of Muhammad Ali, was born in Alexandria, Egypt on 14 July 1874. The festivities lasted for three weeks and had great pomp. As a boy he visited the United Kingdom. And he had a number of British tutors in Cairo including a governess who taught him English. In a profile of Abbas II, the boys’ annual, Chums, gave a lengthy account of his education. His father established a small school near the Abdin Palace in Cairo where European, Arab and Ottoman masters taught Abbas and his brother Mohammed Ali Tewfik. An American officer in theEgyptian army took charge of his military training.

Reign

Abbas II succeeded his father, Tewfik Pasha, as Khedive of Egypt and Sudan on 8 January 1892. He was still in college in Vienna when he assumed the throne of the Khedivate of Egypt upon the sudden death of his father. He was barely of age according to Egyptian law; normally eighteen in cases of succession to the throne. For some time he did not willingly cooperate with the British, whose army had occupied Egypt in 1882. As he was young and eager to exercise his new power. He resented the interference of the British Agent and Consul General in Cairo, Sir Evelyn Baring, later made Lord Cromer.