Isma'il Pasha

Isma'il Pasha

(born Dec. 31, 1830, Cairo, Egypt—died March 2, 1895, Constantinople, Ottoman Empire) Viceroy of Egypt (1863–79) under the Ottoman Empire. After an education in Paris and diplomatic missions in other parts of Europe, he was appointed viceroy and became involved with work on the Suez Canal (1859–69). His plan to unify the Nile valley by creating a new southern Egyptian province in the Sudan failed. The sultan dismissed him because of his fiscal mismanagement; the enormous debt he brought on the country led the British to occupy Egypt in 1882.