Having recently won the title of King, Fouad was keen not only in portraying the history of his family in a positive light, but also in highlighting the fact that his was an independent royal family right from his great-grandfather's time. He thus invited a number of historians to come and work on a highly selected group of his family's papers, which became the nucleus of the Royal Archives of Egypt that was housed in 'Abdīn Palace, the precursor of the present Egyptian National Archives. Not only was this a selected group of documents, they were also slightly edited on being translated from the original Ottoman Turkish to Arabic.

QUESTION: How far did Fouad's curation and editing shape what Egyptian national archives preserve today? XREF: Connects to the earlier claim that nationalist lens distorts historians' translation of Ottoman-era documents — here the distortion enters at the archival creation stage itself. Builds on: "Nationalist lens distorts historians' translation of Ottoman-era documents."

Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed…, loc. 171