Māhir, Aḥmad

▪ prime minister of Egypt

born 1888

died February 24, 1945, Cairo, Egypt

      Egyptian jurist and politician who was premier of Egypt from 1944 to 1945.

      Māhir was educated at the Khedivial Law school and the University of Montpellier in France. A younger brother of ʿAlī Māhir, who had on three previous occasions been premier of Egypt, Aḥmad occupied a number of important government positions from the early 1920s. Early in his career, Māhir was strongly nationalistic but subsequently tempered his politics. His advocacy of moderation angered the Wafd, the major political party in Egypt at the time, and he was expelled from the organization in 1938. After his expulsion, he became a leader of the Saʿdists, a new political group composed of dissident Wafdists, and was minister of finance in the Egyptian government (1938–40). At the outbreak of World War II (1939–45), Māhir advocated Egypt's entry into the war on Britain's side, a course of action violently opposed by the Wafd. On October 4, 1944, Māhir became premier, succeeding Muṣṭafā al-Naḥḥās Pasha, and initiated a program calling for the restoration of free elections, furtherance of plans for an Arab union, and collaboration with Great Britain. On February 24, 1945, a few minutes after he had read to the chamber of deputies a royal decree declaring war on Germany and Japan, Māhir was shot and killed by a young Egyptian extremist.

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