I was born in the year 1840 at Hurriyah near Zagaziyg, in the Sharqiyah province. My father was Shaykh of the village, and owned eight and a half feddans of land, which I inherited from him and gradually increased by savings out of my pay, which at one time was as much as £250 a month, till it amounted to 570 feddans, and that was the amount confiscated at the time of my trial. I bought the land cheaply in those days for a few pounds a feddan which is worth, a great deal now, especially as it was in a poor state ('ard buwr) when I bought it and now is in good cultivation. But none of it was given to me by Sa`iyd Pasha or any one, and the acreage I inherited was only eight and a half. I invested all the money I could save in land, and had no other invested money or movable property except a little furniture and some horses and such like, which may have been worth £1,000
 
 

     As a boy I studied for two years at the Azhar, but was taken for a soldier when I was only fourteen, as I was a tall well grown lad and Sa`iyd Pasha wanted to have as many as possible of the sons of the village Shaykhs, and train them to! be officers. I was made to go through an examination, and what I had learned at the Azhar served me well, and I was made a Buwluk-Amiyn, clerk, instead of serving in the ranks, at sixty piasters a month. I did not, however, like this, as I thought I should never rise to any high position, and I wished to be a personage like the Mudiyr of our province, so I petitioned Ibrahiym Bey, who was my superior, to be put back into the ranks. Ibrahiym Bey showed me that I should lose by this as my pay would then be only fifty piasters, but I insisted and so served. I was put soon after to another examination, out of which I came first, and they made me shawiysh, and then to a third and they made me lieutenant (Mulazim than) when I was only seventeen. Sulayman Pasha al-Fransawiyy was so pleased with me that he insisted with Sa`iyd Pasha on giving me promotion, and I became Captain (Yuzbashiy) at eighteen, Major (Sagh) at nineteen, and Lieutenant-Colonel, (Qa'im Maqam) at twenty. Then Sa`iyd Pasha took me with him as A. D. C. when he went to Madiynah, about a year before he died. That was in A. H. 1279 (1862).

(To be continued)