Egyptian Public Works

Coste worked on some small projects first, then came his biggest when he was appointed by Muhammad Ali as the Chief Engineer for Lower Egypt.

This was the highest engineering post in Egypt at the time since most of Muhammad Ali's work to improve irrigation was concentrated in this region of the Nile Delta.

Around 1818, Muhammad Ali conceived the idea of digging a canal that would allow the barges bringing cargoes from Upper, Middle and Lower Egypt to reach Alexandria without passing Rosetta and the mouth of the river, a point where many ships sank due to the turbulence of the waters.

Shakir Effendi seems to have bungled his assignment, and was replaced by the French engineer Pascal Coste (1787–1879) who completed the canal in a record time of few months in 1820.

Corvée of more than 300,000 men were drafted from every part of Egypt to dig the Mahmoudiya canal, which was of very little importance to cultivation, and which was especially designed for the benefit of the city of Alexandria.

With the great expansion of commercial cotton and sugarcane cultivation, river banks were initially raised and strengthened to protect summer crops from flood water.

But this was an enormous undertaking, and since the canals were badly laid out and graded they became full of mud during flood season and required to be continually re-excavated.

Muhammad Ali Pasha was then advised to raise the water surface by erecting a dam (or, as the French called it, a barrage) across the apex of the Nile Delta, twelve miles (19 km) north of Cairo.

In 1843 the foundations were laid for the two great barrages across the Rosetta and Damietta branches of the Nile at the point where they divide north of Cairo.

[3] By the time the barrages were finally completed in 1862, during the early reign of Viceroy Ismail Pasha (not yet khedive of Egypt), 3 million Egyptian pounds had been spent already.

[4] A more technical and specific description, some years later says: "When the work was subjected to a small head in 1863 and 1867, unmistakable signs of failure appeared in the form of cracks and displacements, and the barrage was forthwith put upon the sick list.

Worried by the impatience and impetuosity of the Viceroy, Mougel Bey's workmen laid the foundation concrete in running water, which carried away the mortar and left loose stone, without any binding material, through which the springs of the river bed had free passage.

From 1867 to 1883 the barrage attracted attention by reason only of its imposing superstructure, but it failed to produce any impression by its performances, for it was weakest where strength was most needed.

"[2] Following the British occupation, engineers decided if any good could be done, they must either repair the old barrage, or build a new one; it was absolutely necessary to get control of the Nile water and thus improve irrigation and exports.

In 1884, with initial safety testing, immediate repairs, and controlled filling, the existing structure held a pool about seven feet above the natural level.

The cost to this work, totaled £26,000; the increased water provided to canals produced 30,000 tons more cotton than the previous year, which was worth over £1 million.

This was so encouraging that, the following year, Lord Cromer, despite the state of finances, provided £1 million to improve Egypt's irrigation works.

[5] Between 1885 and 1890, Sir Colin Scott-Moncrieff successfully completed repairs of the barrages at a cost of $2.5 million; it provided a maintainable and desired depth of eight feet of water on downstream parts of the Nile.

As the volume of public works increased, Muhammad Ali Pasha decided to establish one entity to handle all the projects.

He was succeeded by his grandson Abbas Hilmi I, (1848–1854) whose known contempt towards his grandfather caused him to halt or entirely abandon most of Muhammad Ali Pasha's massive projects, including the Delta Barrages.

Sensing his master's lack of enthusiasm for the project, Mazhar Bey, a Turkish engineer, did not do much to finish the work which would only be completed later during the time of Egypt's next Wali from Muhammad Ali Dynasty, Sa'id Pasha.

After leaving its inlet, the canal follows the edge of the desert until it reaches the little Wadi Tumilat, which it crosses and follows the north side, trending direct to the east as far as the town of Ismailia, where it discharges into Lake Timsah.

Although Ismail was the greatest modernizer of Egypt since Muhammad Ali Pasha, his wars of expansion into Africa and the many infrastructure projects he carried, including the costly Suez Canal, put the country heavily in debt.

It was built in 1873 by Bahgat Pasha, minister of public works, who designed it primarily to provide perennial irrigation to the Khedivial sugar estates in Middle Egypt.

Public Works was subsequently reconstituted as a department and with combined with Education into a single administration under Ali Mubarak, yet by 1869 it seems to have resumed an independent existence under its own director Linant Bey.

He championed the prelude to the new Aswan High Dam project which was built using his calculations of the required long-term storage capacity.