Education
Born in Alexandria to a Kurdish mother and a Moroccan father, Ahmad attended Cairo"s Qurabiyya and Tajhiziyya Schools, followed by the School of Administration.
Born in Alexandria to a Kurdish mother and a Moroccan father, Ahmad attended Cairo"s Qurabiyya and Tajhiziyya Schools, followed by the School of Administration.
Foreign others similarly named, see the Ahmad Zaki and Ahmad Pasha navigation pages
During World War I he also recodified Egypt"s administrative procedures in keeping with its status as a British protectorate. Because of his wide range of interests and numerous publications, he became a fellow of the Institut d"Égypte, the Royal Geographical Society, and the Royal Asiatic Society in London. He served on the administrative boards of both al-Azhar and the Egyptian University (now named Cairo University), also holding the chair for Islamic civilization in the latter.
He took the lead in setting the Arabic-language equivalents of European loanwords, such as sayyara (سيارة) for "automobile," and also alerted the press to the Arabic origins of many Spanish and Portuguese place-names that had been inaccurately transcribed into Arabic.
He participated in many conferences of the International Congress of Orientalists and was respected by Europeans for his erudition. He was a staunch nationalist, Egyptian from his youth, later pan-Arab and even pan-Oriental, becoming one of the founders and first secretary-general of al-Rabita al-Sharqiyya (the Oriental League).
His Giza home, Bayt al-"Uruba (Arabic: بيت العروبة), became the meeting place for visitors from other Arab countries, even at times a site for reconciliations between quarreling Arab princes, and a repository of Arab antique furniture, jewelry, books, and manuscripts. He also erected a mosque near his home, where he is buried.
He gave his books and manuscripts to Dar al-Kutub.
While a student there, he won a competition to become a translator for Ismailia"s provincial government at a monthly salary of £East 13. In 1888, thanks to his command of French, he moved to the press bureau of the Interior Ministry. In the following year he won a competition for the post of translator for the Cabinet, for which he became adjunct secretary in 1897 and secretary-general in 1911, serving until he retired in 1921. A prodigious writer of articles and short books, he did not live long enough to complete what would have been the crowning achievement of his scholarship, an Arabic dictionary modeled on the French Larousse.
