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Face 1

Face 1
What do we know about this image from our research so far? The portrait sits beside what used to be the national flag of Egypt, originally thepersonal standard of Muhammad Ali, who led Egypt in the nineteenth century. We also know that the flag was officially in use there as a national flag from 1914until 1923. Let's begin our search by finding out who was who in Egypt during that period and the surrounding years and see about locating any images of thosefigures there might be available. Considering the lack of specific reference material on Egypt during our period, let's cast a broader net and find Egypt inthe context of the Modern Islamic World, our first regional encyclopedia.

Regional encyclopedia

A regional encyclopedia contains a variety of statistical and historical information about a specific region of the world. Itis usually categorized by subject or section of the region and is comprised of entries listed alphabetically within related subject sections. These books differ in theirlevel of detail. For example, The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World offers general information about Egypt, but lacks a listing of the country's leaders in the early twentieth century. Rather, the book focuses more broadly on many regions within theIslamic world over some 1500 years. For our purposes, this listing is lacking; there is no listing of Egypt's leadership during our period. This is probably because the Islamic Worldconsists of many regions over some fifteen hundred years.

Let's get more specific. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Middle East and North Africa is an encyclopedia limited to the region of theIslamic World known as the Middle East.The table of contents reveals the diversity of the entries in the work from cultural subjectsto countries.

Let's locate Egypt.
Entry on Egypt in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Middle East and North Africa
The entry provides some historical information related to our project:
"The French invasion of Egypt under Napoleon Bonaparte and the short occupation (1798-1801) which followed exposed Egypt to Western ideas and technology (seeModern History). French withdrawal was followed by the foundation of a new dynasty under Muhammad 'Ali, an officer from Kavala in Macedonia who led Albanian soldiers to Egypt in thenominal service of the Ottomans. Muhammad 'Ali held power from 1805 until his death in 1849, establishing virtual independence from Istanbul and initiating a process of modernizationwhich reached its peak during the period of rule of his grandson, Khedive Isma'il. A negative legacy of Muhammad 'Ali's successors, Sa'id and Isma'il, was to saddle Egypt with anunmanageable foreign debt. The debt led to assumption by Britain and France during the last quarter of the nineteenth century of a large degree of control over the economy. Isma'il wasforced to abdicate in 1879; in 1882 British forces invaded Egypt to suppress a movement of opposition to the Khedive's rule and the growth of foreign control, led by an army officers,Ahmad 'Urabi. In one form or another British control continued until 1936, when an Anglo-Egyptian Treaty gave Egypt a limited independence. Full independence was only securedafter the last of the dynasty founded by Muhammad 'Ali, King Faruq, was overthrown by the nationalist 'Free Officers' Movement.'"
We have a few names that may be our man, Ahmad ‘Urabi and King Faruq. The others seem before our period. Let's try another encyclopedia.

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Source:  OpenStax, Understanding material culture: deciphering the imagery of the "souvenir of egypt". OpenStax CNX. Oct 08, 2006 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col10301/1.7
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