Zifta

History

In the 12th century, Zefta was an important regional trading center, especially for textiles; silk, flax, indigo, sesame, and sugar were among the commodities bought and sold here. Some of these products were consumed locally, while others were sent to other towns, including Cairo. In the 1670s, Abbas Agha, the Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman Empire, made a large waqf endowment consisting of diverse Egyptian properties. Zefta was home to the single largest number of properties he endowed, leading Jane Hathaway to describe it as his "pet charity". Zefta is well known in the modern Egyptian history during the 1919 uprising, also known as the Egyptian Revolution of 1919, when the British occupation expelled Saad Zaghloul Pasha out of Egypt along with other leaders of the Wafd Party and were exiled to Malta, the people of Zefta, led by Mohamed El Kafrawy Pasha and Youssef El Guindi, gathered and declared their independence from the crown and named it Zefta Republic. The town of Zefta has also seen the birth of Mostafa Younis, who works in the field of aviation, Fouad Younis, who works as an accountant and the engineer Moghad Younis. Zefta, is the location of one of Nile barrages built during 1881–1952 to control the Nile flow.