Arabi's Account of his Life and of the Events of 1881-1882, as told to me, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, in Arabic yesterday, March 16th, 1903, at Sheykh Obeyd
I was born in the year 1840 at Horiyeh, near Zagazig, in the Sherkieh.
My father was Sheykh 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 (wahash) when I bought it and now is in good cultivation. But none of it was given me by Saïd 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 Saïd Pasha wanted to have as many as possible of the sons of the village Sheykhs, 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 boulok-amin, clerk, instead of serving