Egyptian administrator, politician, and prime minister, was a scion of Egypt’s Ottoman-Egyptian aristocracy. His father, Khalil ibn Ibrahim Yakan, was a grandson of the sister of Muhammad ʿAli. From a large landowning family from which he inherited great personal wealth, ʿAdli was raised in affluence; his cosmopolitan education was acquired in German and Jesuit schools in Egypt as well as in Ottoman and French institutions. More Franco-Ottoman than Egyptian in personal manners and comportment, some sources maintain his knowledge of and fluency in Arabic were weak.
ʿAdli had an extensive and distinguished administrative career in the three decades before World War I. Appointed to a post in the Ministry of the Interior in 1880, he became private secretary to Nubar Pasha in 1885 Thereafter he served as deputy governor of Minufiyya and al Minya provinces and as governor of al Minya Fayyum Sharqiyya Daqahliyya and Gharbiyya provinces as ...
