Ahmed Orabi - Early Life

Early Life

He was born in 1841 in the village of Hreyya Razna near Zagazig in the Sharqia Governorate, approximately 80 kilometres to the north of Cairo. Orabi was the son of a village leader and one of the wealthier members of the community, which allowed him to receive a decent education. After completing elementary education in his home village, he enrolled at Al-Azhar University to complete his schooling in 1849. He entered the army and moved up quickly through the ranks, reaching Lieutenant Colonel by age 20. The modern education and military service of Orabi, from a fellah, or peasant background, would not be possible without the modernizing reforms of Khedive Ismail, who had done much to eliminate the barriers between the bulk of the Egyptian populace and the ruling elite, who were drawn largely from the military castes that had ruled Egypt for centuries. Ismail abolished the exclusive access to the Egyptian and Sudanese military ranks held by Egyptians of Balkan, Circassian, and Turkish origin - although Orabi himself was of Balkan, Circassian and Turkish origin, but distant- was a conscripted soldiers, and recruited students throughout Egypt and Sudan regardless of class and ethnic backgrounds in order to form a "modern" and "national" Egyptian military and bureaucratic elite class. Without these reforms, Orabi's rise through the ranks of the military would likely have been far more restricted.