The Mamur Zapt is the protagonist of an award-winning series of historical fiction police procedurals, written by Sudanese-born British novelist Michael Pearce.
Egypt was ruled notionally by a khedive but the British administered the country at the time.
Rather than being a specific person, "Mamur Zapt" was the official title of the head of the Cairo secret police.
[1][2] Pearce filled this role with Gareth Cadwallader Owen, a Welsh army captain.
[3] The first in the series, The Mamur Zapt and the Return of the Carpet, was published in 1988.