Mostafa El-Nahas Pasha

Mostafa El-Nahas Pasha (1879–1965) was an Egyptian statesman who served as Prime Minister of Egypt on five separate occasions between 1928 and 1952. A judge from Samanoud who was exiled with Saad Zaghloul to the Seychelles during the 1919 Revolution, Nahas succeeded Zaghloul as president of the nationalist Wafd Party in 1927, leading the parliamentary struggle against both British domination and royal despotism.

As Prime Minister, Nahas negotiated the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty, which formally ended British occupation outside the Suez Canal Zone and secured Egypt's entry into the League of Nations. In 1944, he presided over the Alexandria Protocol, which established the Arab League. In October 1951, responding to British intransigence, Nahas electrified the Arab world by unilaterally abrogating the 1936 treaty, boldly declaring in Parliament: 'For Egypt's sake I signed the 1936 treaty, and for Egypt's sake I ask you today to repeal it'.