Talk:Ahmed Urabi

1911 Britannica
The following text, from 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica was excised from the article, dismissed (correctly no doubt) as "biased":
 * Arabi was born in Lower Egypt in 1839 or 1840 of a fellah family. Having entered the army as a conscript he was made an officer by Said Pasha in 1862, and was employed in the transport department in the Abyssinian campaign of 1875 under Ismail Pasha. A charge of peculation, unproved, was made against him in connexion with this expedition and he was placed on half-pay. During this time he joined a secret society formed by Ali Rubi with the object of getting rid of Turkish officers from the Egyptian army. Arabi also attended lectures at the mosque El Azhar and acquired a reputation as an orator. In 1878 he was employed by Ismail in fomenting a disturbance against the ministry of Nubar, Rivers Wilson and de Blignières, and received in payment a wife from Ismail's harem and the command of a regiment. This increased his influence with the secret society, which, under the feeble government of Tewfik Pasha and the Dual Control, began to agitate against Europeans. In all that followed Arabi was put forward as the leader of the discontented Egyptians; he was in reality little more than the mouthpiece and puppet of abler men such as Ali Rubi and Mahmud Sami. On the 1st of February 1881 Arabi and two other Egyptian colonels, summoned before a court-martial for acts of disobedience, were rescued by their soldiers, and the khedive was forced to dismiss his then minister of war in favour of Mahmud Sami. A military demonstration on the 8th of September 1881, led by Arabi, forced the khedive to increase the numbers and pay of the army, to substitute Sherif Pasha for Riaz Pasha as prime minister, and to convene an assembly of notables. Arabi became under-secretary for war at the beginning of 1882, but continued his intrigues. The assembly of notables claimed the right of voting the budget, and thus came into conflict with the foreign controllers who had been appointed to guard the interests of the bondholders in the management of the Egyptian finances. Sherif fell in February, Mahmud Sami became prime minister, and Arabi (created a pasha) minister of war. Arabi, after a brief fall from office, acquired a dictatorial power that alarmed the British government. British and French warships went to Alexandria at the beginning of June; on the 11th of that month rioting in that city led to the sacrifice of many European lives. Order could only be restored through the intervention of Arabi, who now adopted a more distinctly anti-European attitude. His arming of the forts at Alexandria was held to constitute a menace to the British fleet. On the refusal of France to co-operate, the British fleet bombarded the forts (11th July), and a British force, under Sir Garnet Wolseley, defeated Arabi on the 13th of September at Tel-el-Kebir. Arabi fled to Cairo where he surrendered, and was tried (3rd of December) for rebellion. In accordance with an understanding made with the British representative, Lord Dufferin, Arabi pleaded guilty, and sentence of death was immediately commuted to one of banishment for life to Ceylon. The same sentence was passed on Mahmud Sami and others. After Arabi's exile had lasted for nearly twenty years, however, the khedive Abbas II. exercised his prerogative of mercy, and in May 1901 Arabi was permitted to return to Egypt. Arabi, as has been said, was rather the figurehead than the inspirer of the movement of 1881-1882; and was probably more honest, as he was certainly less intelligent, than those whose tool, in a large measure, he was. The movement which he represented in the eye of Europe, whatever the motives of its leaders, "was in its essence a genuine revolt against misgovernment," (Lord Cromer in Egypt, No. 1, 1905, p. 2.) and it was a dim recognition of this fact which led Arabi to style himself "the Egyptian."

Can anyonne re-edit the information contained here in an acceptable fashion and return it to the article ? --Wetman 21:47, 12 November 2005 (UTC)
 * ...I am disappointed with the cavalier dismissal of the Encyc. Brit. material in toto. I would have preferred to have someone identify the exact passages that are supposed to be in error or biased, so an attempt could be made to sort this out item by item.  If that was done or attempted, I'm sorry--I missed it.  The bottom line is that all I get from the Encyc. Brit. article on Xhmed Xrabi is that he was a normal human being who may have been fallible but who worked for a praiseworthy goal, i.e. the independence of his country.  I haven't studied history for 40 years to fill it with plaster saints.  If we must have such figures in our imaginations, I think we miss the reality of history. My heroes are heroes BECAUSE they struggle with themselves at times. Terry J. Carter (talk) 21:02, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Same person?
I think Ahmed Pasha Arabi may be the same person. If so, these two articles should be merged. ··· 日本穣 ? · Talk to Nihonjo e  18:17, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
 * It was merged. District Attorney 14:56, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Arabi or Urabi or Orabi
Wikipedia has articles referring to this man either as Orabi or Urabi. Is there any evidence that his name was ever spelled in either of these ways at the time?

All the contemporary sources I have seen spell his name Arabi. That suggests to me that Wikipedia ought to standardise on Arabi.--Toddy1 19:02, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree, and have so suggested at WP:RM. The transliteration of Egyptian Arabic is not so well defined as to override English usage. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 05:35, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I'd also support the uniform usage (any uniform usage; I have no qualified opinion on the merits). BusterD (talk) 14:26, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
 * In Arabic, the 'a' vowel (fatḥah) often tends towards 'o' after the ayin consonant (ع), and the quoted pronunciation may well represent Arabic عَرَابِى . Anthony Appleyard (talk) 22:58, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Even though Anthony Appleyard's comment is old, I don't want any contributor to be mislead by that misinformation. The Arabi spelling is clearly a mistake by westerners. The rules Anthony suggested are untrue. There are thousands of names and words starting with in all Arabic dialects, none of them tends to change to any other vowel. His stress marks were also totally wrong. Arabic dialects have no secondary stress and that word's stress is penultimate in all Arabic dialects which have a stress. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 14:20, 6 July 2013 (UTC)
 * The horizontal line above the 'ī' means length, not stress. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 15:19, 6 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I referred to that: ; it has two stresses, an initial primary and a final secondary. Anyway, no problem. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 18:44, 7 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Even though 's comment is old, I don't want any contributor to be misled by that information. It doesn't matter whether it was a mistake or not: Wikipedia clearly uses common English names as the title space and clarifies any mistakes or ambiguities in the running text. [Not a linguist, but I'd wager it's not a mistake at all: it was probably a convention to, e.g., use some variant of Standard Arabic or even Turkish (where he's apparently still known as Arabi).] — Llywelyn II   12:01, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
 * That said, Toddy1 was wrong that the period spelling predominates: it's actually most commonly Urabi is current sources, which is what we use. — Llywelyn II   12:01, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

On the other hand, Arabi wrote in English - and spelt his own name "Arabi". This case seems rather like Chiang Kaishek (not Jiang Jieshi) and Sun Yatsen (not Sun Zhongshan) in that the modern transliteration should not be preferred since it was not the name by which they were widely known. The Google Ngrams result is not conclusive, since they show common use for all three versions. There is also the problem as time goes by of other people with the same name (but the modern tansliteration) resulting in false positives. FOARP (talk) 14:07, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Requested move
When the spelling was adjusted, it was pointed out that he is often called Arabi Pasha, which is quite true. I have no opinion on this, which runs into the problem: what titles do we include for Muslim grandees? For example, we use Köprülü Mehmet Pasha but Köprülü Fazıl Ahmed for his son. Discuss? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:48, 16 January 2008 (UTC)


 * If the general rule isn't that such titles should never be used unless the simplest disambiguation available, it should be. In this case, there should not be redlinks at any of these: Köprülü Mehmet and Mehmet Köprülü and Koprulu Mehmet and Mehmet Koprulu.  There should be as either a disambiguation page at one with a redirect from the others, or a redirect from all to either the above Köprülü Mehmed Pasha or Mehmet Fuat Köprülü, with either disambiguation hatlines to each other or to the disambiguation page at both of those articles.  Gene Nygaard (talk) 16:47, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
 * nor redlinks at Köprülü Mehmed and Mehmed Köprülü and Koprulu Mehmed and Mehmed Koprulu, after I see that your link actually went through a redirect. The only one of the eight which does exist now redirects to the pasha. Gene Nygaard (talk) 16:51, 29 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Oppose move, keep at Ahmed Arabi. I support use of given name (Ahmed) over title (Pasha).  The given name should appear in all cases except those in which it is almost never used; the titles should not appear in article names unless further disambiguation is necessary after the given name is applied, and other options including parenthetical disambiguations should be considered then.  No strong opinion on the spelling of "Arabi", which is what I would go with absent any further relevant evidence of different usage in English.  Gene Nygaard (talk) 17:02, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm closing this move request. There is no consensus here and the article has been moved anyway. —Wknight94 (talk) 15:54, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Name
I just received what seems like a pretty angry message from User:Pmanderson over what I thought was going to be a smooth and uncontroversial correction to this article, so let me clarify. First, my sincerest apologies for not checking the talk page to see the discussion that had apparently taken place regarding moving the page to another name. When I saw the history of the page, I thought the move was made unilaterally so I immediately moved to work. Ahmed Urabi might as well be the 19th-century historical figure of Egypt, as such it is critical, at least to me, to keep basic information on him accurate.

Now with regard to the spelling "Ahmed Arabi", it is a mis-transliteration of his name based on archaic British imperialist sources dating to the 1900's and earlier -- it is hardly used by anyone today unless to quote those sources (e.g., Lord Cromer). As you can see from a google books name search, Urabi and Orabi  are the most commonly used, but Urabi corresponds to international Arabic transliteration standards, so this is why I think it should be used. I am obviously not the only person who thinks so,. That said, I won't quibble about Urabi vs. Orabi since both are basically accurate, and Orabi is the frequently used transliteration in Egypt itself (because it corresponds more accurately to Egyptian Arabic pronunciation) but I'm afraid that "Arabi" is out of the question as not only is it severely outdated, it is simply inaccurate. Please also note that the original name of the page was Ahmed Urabi, so I was merely changing it back to the original, which is what the name should be pending any ongoing discussion. Sorry again if I seemed like I had ignored any concerns previously raised, it was not my intention. — Zerida 22:25, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the apology.


 * Mistransliteration, however, is a piece of dogmatism; the present convention for transliterating Arabic was not standard usage in 1882; nothing more can or should be said.


 * It is not true that Arabi is only used in quoting Cromer et. al. Indeed Zeriba's google search shows that it is still most common, by 1600 to 600; it is used in such books as David Fromkin's Peace to End all Peace, (1984) which is neither British nor imperialist.


 * If Egyptian pronunciation is closer to Orabi, it would be helpful to say so; more so, to many readers, than IPA. But we are optimized for general readers, not for specialists.  Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:55, 3 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Saying it was mistransliterated is really just explaining the reality, but there is no harm in stating that that "Arabi" was just another spelling variation at the time. A regular Google search will no doubt come up with that transliteration, but these are based on the same contemporaneous sources. Our most reliable sources today certainly use Urabi/Orabi much more frequently. I do think that adding that Orabi corresponds more closely to native pronunciation is a good idea. — Zerida 23:18, 3 February 2008 (UTC)


 * In Arabic, the 'a' vowel (fatḥah) often tends towards 'o' after the ayin consonant (ع), and the quoted pronunciation may well represent Arabic عَرَابِى . Anthony Appleyard Anthony Appleyard (talk) 23:08, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I should mention that the vowel [o] does not exist in Arabic in general -- it is an Egyptian Arabic vowel. It can undergo vowel reduction in rapid speech, but the name would then be, never or . — Zerida 23:18, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
 * There are two sorts of o-type vowel in Arabic, that I know of:
 * Egyptian Arabic pronunciation of the diphthong "au".
 * The [a] (fatḥah) vowel which has become somewhat backed after the ayin sound.
 * Anthony Appleyard (talk) 09:41, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Yup, Classical Arabic diphthong [aw] developed into long [o:] in Egyptian Arabic. Not sure about the second sound. Vowels following ayin aren't necessarily rounded. The range of possibilities occurs in EA after ayin-- [i], [e], [o], [u], etc. — Zerida 10:03, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Precisely. Arabic phonemes do not divide up vowel space the same way English ones do; Orabi, Urabi, and  'Urabi are all defensibly "correct" transliterations; so would Erabi be, if I understand Zerida's phonetics. In this situation, it is hopeless to attempt uniformity with any of them; we should stick with what surprises English speakers least: what he has always been called. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:49, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
 * What I meant was that the sound ayin can occur before any vowel in Egyptian Arabic without changing the quality of the vowel significantly. It does however change the *meaning* of a word. For example, `id and `ud are minimal pairs--both start with ayin, both have different vowels (one is front and unrounded and the other is back and rounded) and totally different meanings ('festival' and 'reed'). Another minimal pair is `Ola and `ela--the first is a proper noun like `Orabi and the second means family. So, yes, our choice of vowel makes a significant difference. The reason Orabi's name was misspelled by the 19th-century British imperialists had more to do with the fact that they didn't know what to do with a "guttural" sound like ayin in a name that sometimes sounded like it didn't have a vowel when it was reduced in colloquial speech to `rabi. Of course they were mistaken, but for our purposes the article doesn't need to be the victim of an old colonial mistake :-) Most of today's reliable sources aren't either. — Zerida 01:13, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Many English names result from old colonial mistakes. It doesn't matter; if Canada actually means "What? that town over there?", we should still use Canada. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:43, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
 * First, Orabi is not an English name, and second, we've already established that most contemporary English-language sources use either Urabi or Orabi as the proper transliteration. Furthermore, it's not really appropriate to say "it doesn't matter" that the misspelling is a British colonial remnant. India, which was similarly under British occupation, went as far as changing the English-language transliteration of one of its principle cities from Bombay to Mumbai. And that situation is not even entirely analogous as while many English-speaking Indians would have had no problem saying Bombay until recently, "Arabi" never gained common currency beyond the 19th century, and certainly never in Egypt at all. It does matter. — Zerida 05:09, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Nope. Check out WP:NPOV again. It isn't our axe to grind until the specialists in the field have already honed that baby. That said, I'm rather convinced you're right that Urabi is now the standard English transliteration. — Llywelyn II   12:06, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Thought
With regard to the question of which transliteration system to use, let me say this. Anyone who has studied Russian, Chinese, Japanese or Mideast history for very long has seen "ruling" transliteration systems come and go. A case can be made for using the English letter which comes nearest the foreign letter in the alphabet, as when we say "Romanov" or possibly "Arabi." A case can also be made for using the English letter closest to the sound of the foreign letter, as when we write "Romanoff" or Urabi/Orabi. I think there is also a tension, in which neither side can be blamed, between those who want somehow to preserve the eccentricities (meant non-pejoratively) of the other language and those who realize that John Q. Public's willingness to strive for accurate reproduction of an entirely different "sound palate" is probably limited. I don't see anything in any of these positions that is nefarious or imperialistic or racist.

I spent some short period of time in Egypt, trying to converse in Arabic. I can say that the first vowel in Xrabi is truly neither an O nor a U, but something in between, and to that extent, the heated argument over how to transliterate it is after all rather off the target. Oh, and I didn't think the hotel clerks were terrorists because they asked to see my "Bassbort." Every language has built-in limitations in its ability to faithfully mimic another, so can we please all calm down about the imperialist agenda of saying "Arabi?"

In closing, may I say that the furor over this article surprises me in the light of the one on Aga Khan III, which IMO contains more whitewash than ink. I hope we're not headed toward an Xhmed Xrabi article in the same vein. Terry J. Carter (talk) 21:02, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Pronunciation
His name's pronunciation is specifically pronounced in Egyptian Arabic as. Literary Arabic's pronunciation, not Standard Arabic, because there is no single standard phonology for the literary variety of Arabic. Each region has its own pronunciation, they are loosely similar, by not the same. For example, a Levantine speaker would pronounce his name as, the open vowels' value is the same in both words and it's fully open, half-way between the front and the center; the rounded vowel may or may not be near-close. In the metropolitan Egyptian pronunciation there are two distinct vowels, a near-open front and an open back vowel. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 14:01, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Name
First, remember not to clutter the lead of the article. I think we're good to go with the four standards: A. Urabi, Orabi, and Arabi and Arabi Pasha. If you really feel there needs to be more variants than that, begin a subsection. Unhelpful laundry listing of variants like Ahmed Urabi Pasha, Ahmed 'Urabi Pasha, Ahmed &lsquo;Urabi Pasha, Ahmed Urabi Paša... don't belong in the running text at all but (if you feel like being thorough and helping the article's SEO) in a PERSONDATA entry above the category listings.

Second, Wikipedia makes no stand for or against transliterations: we just go by the common name in contemporary and reliable English-language sources. It looks like that is now "Urabi": both personally and (by far) in reference to his actions. That is where the article should be located, pending a shift in the scholarly consensus, but all common variants should be mentioned.

Third, the lead starts out by calling him a colonel. By definition, then, he was *not* a general officer as claimed here and at the Orabi dab. (Conversely, if he was promoted to general, we should probably accord him that rank unless he is&mdash;for whatever reason&mdash;traditionally remembered as a colonel; such a reason should be explained.) — Llywelyn II   12:17, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Mistakes
There are many mistakes in this article:

1- Orabi did not spend the rest of his life in Ceylon, he returned back to Egypt in 1903 , and died in Cairo in 1911.

2- Egypt was officially made a British protectorate in 1914, not in 1882, or any date before 1914, and stayed British protectorate until 1922.

3- There is no any mention for battle of kafer El-Dawar, what Orabi beated the English army in it.
 * I can find nothing to back up the claim: If possible, could you provide a source? Currently this article appears to contradict Battle of Kafr El Dawwar. Zeklandia (talk) 03:00, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

4- Also there are many other important missing facts and details, like his career in Egyptian government.

5- Most of the article is unsourced.

6- No mention of the cuases of the revolution and the situation in Egypt, specially before 1882.

7- The article represents only western view, specially British colonial one.

--Amaihmaa69 (talk) 19:42, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
 * It's wiki, please help improve the article. — Zerida 20:27, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

8. the first quote belongs to AMir al Mu'mineen 'Umar ibn al khattab  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.244.196.22 (talk) 11:39, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

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When was he born?
The Encyclopaedia Britannica gives his date of birth as 1839. The 1911 ed. (quoted above) gives it as 1839 or 1840. Wilfrid Blunt gives it as 1840. William Wright's Tidy Little War: The British Invasion of Egypt 1882 (Spellmount, 2009), p.26 gives it as 1841. The Kandy Times article quoted gives it as 1842! I, consequently, am confused. It would be good to have a reliable source for this! The Grand Lunar (talk) 14:18, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
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Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:ʻUrabi revolt which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 18:17, 11 February 2023 (UTC)