Sherif, who was a born in 1887 in
kavala city in the
Ottoman Empire (now in
Greece), They were the maternal grandparents of
Queen consort Nazli of Egypt and
Regent Sherif Sabri Pasha.{{cite book |title= Egypt's Belle Epoque: Cairo and the Age of the Hedonists |last= Mostyn |first= Trevor |year= 2006 |publisher= Tauris Parke Paperbacks |isbn=9781845112400 |quote=
Sulaiman Pasha made an eccentric figure ... Born in Lyon in 1788, he lived to the age of seventy-two with his favourite
Greek mistress, dying in Cairo on 12 March 1860. His daughter, Nazli Hanem, married
Muhammad Sherif Pasha, who was to become an important prime minister under Ismail. Their granddaughter, the beautiful, domineering
Nazli Sabri, was to marry
King Fouad and give birth to the last of the dynasty,
King Farouk. As minister of foreign affairs he was useful to Ismail, who used Sherif's easy going attitude to veil many of his proposals. Sherif's favorite argument against any reform was to appeal to the
Pyramids as an immutable proof of the solidity of Egypt financially and politically. His optimism rendered him largely responsible for the collapse of Egyptian credit which brought about the fall of Ismail. Upon the military insurrection of September 1881 under
Urabi Pasha, Sherif was summoned by the khedive
Tawfiq to form a new ministry. The impossibility of reconciling the financial requirements of the national party with the demands of the British and French controllers of the public debt, compelled him to resign in the following February. After the suppression of the
Urabi Revolt he was again installed in office (August 1882) by Tawfiq, but in January 1884 he resigned rather than sanction the evacuation of the Sudanese regions of the
Khedivate of Egypt. As to the strength of the
Mahdist movement he had then no conception. When urged by Sir
Evelyn Baring (Lord Cromer) early in 1883 to abandon some of the more distant parts of the Sudan, he replied with characteristic light-heartedness: "''Nous en causerons plus tard; d'abord nous allons donner une bonne raclée à ce monsieur''" (We'll talk about that later, first we're going to give this gentleman (i.e. the self declared Mahdi,
Muhammad Ahmad) a good thrashing).
Hicks Pasha's expedition was at the time preparing to march on
El Obeid. Sherif died in
Graz,
Austria-Hungary, on 20 April 1887. == References ==