Remembering Mustafa Kamil Pasha on His Death Anniversary

Every year on 10 February, Egypt commemorates the death anniversary of Mustafa Kamil, also called Mustafa Kamil Pasha, who is considered as one of the most greatest and popular national leaders in the history of Egypt.

One of the great figures of the 20th century, Kamel galvanized his people and the french media against invading British forces who sought to impose the western will upon the Egyptian citizens and try to repulse aggression by the British army in Deneshway village in Menoufia.

The late iconic leader, who was also a remarkable journalist and lawyer, adopted non-violent ways to fight the British army, inspired many nationalist and civil rights movements across the Arab world and worked for national unity.

Born in 1874 to an Egyptian army officer, Kamil was trained as a lawyer at the French law school in Cairo and the Law Faculty at the University of Toulouse in France.

In January 1893,  Kamil became a popular young leader when he led a group of students who destroyed the offices of the newspaper Al-Muqattam which supported the British occupation of Egypt, according to domestic newspapers archives.

Since he was a great influential young journalist, he always supported Egypt's khepe, Abbas Hilmi II, who strongly opposed the British occupation. A protegee of Abbas Hilmi, whom he first met in 1892, it was the khepe who paid for Kamil to be educated in France.

Despite his young age, Kamil was widely tipped to be a potential successor to the great national leader Ahmed Orabi, who was well-known for his significant and great contribution towards the freedom of the country.

In June 1906, Kamil's national work was strengthened by the Denshawai incident in which four peasants were hastily tried and hanged for having assaulted British Army officers who were hunting pigeons in their village.

According to historians, the Denshawai incident galvanized also the Egyptian nationalist movement, and Kamil used the case of an Egyptian farmer being killed by British troops after he attempted to help a British officer who died of sunstroke together with the hanging of four Egyptian farmers for supposedly instigating the alleged murder of the officer to rouse nationalist anger, becoming the spokesman of the Egyptian nationalist movement.

After years of struggling, the brave national leader passed away on February 10, 1980, and his funeral was the occasion for a massive demonstration of popular grief, being attended by hundreds of thousands who saw him as their champion.