Muhammad's father was an army officer who was killed in battle when the boy was only four months old.
He was a brilliant student who caught the eye of his uncle, Muhammad Ali Pasha,[1] the future Governor-General of Egypt, who was also a native of Kavala.
Muhammad Ali adopted El Sayed Muhammad Sherif, and when the latter was 12 years old Muhammad Ali took him to Egypt and had him educated with his own sons in an elite boarding school known as the Princes' School, which was located at El-Khanka, a city 12 miles northeast of Cairo.
[5] On his death, Muhammad left a large fortune to his sons Khalil, Ali, and Osman.
However, he is not to be confused with Muhammad Sharif Pasha (1826-1887), also a native of Kavala, who served 3 times as Prime Minister of Egypt in the 1870s and 1880s.