Faruq

This article is about the Egyptian King Faruq. For the Arabic first name Faruq see Farooq , for other meanings see Farook .

Portrait of King Faruq, 1946

Royal monogram

Faruq (I.) ( Arabic فاروق الأول, DMG Fārūq al-auwal , Turkish I. Faruk , often transcribed as Faruk ; * February 11, 1920 in Cairo ; †  March 18, 1965 in Rome ) from the dynasty of Muhammad Ali was the tenth ruler of Egypt and Sudan from this dynasty from 1936 to 1952 .

In 1936 he ascended after the death of his father Fu'ad I. the throne of the Kingdom of Egypt . In 1937 he was crowned the second king of Egypt and Sudan . The beginning of his rule marked a brief phase of relaxation in domestic and foreign policy. With his luxurious and extravagant lifestyle, the king soon showed too little understanding for the requirements of a modern constitutional monarchy and thus gambled away the sympathy of his people. Conflicts such as the Second World War or the Cold War strained his rule from outside. Because of the defeat of his country in the Palestinian War against Israel and the economic crisis that had lasted since 1946 , Faruq finally fell over the economic and domestic political problems of Egypt and Sudan. On July 23, 1952, he was ousted by a bloodless military coup and had to cede the throne to his underage son Fu'ad II on July 26 .

Earlier years

Faruq as Crown Prince in scout uniform, April 26, 1933

Faruq was born as the eldest child of the then Sultan Fu'ad I and his second wife Nazli Sabri on February 11, 1920 in the Abdeen Palace in Cairo. In addition to Egyptian, he had Circassian , Turkish , French and Albanian ancestors. The prince received a strict upbringing from his nannies and his father. In addition to his sisters Fausia , Faisa , Faika and Fathia , he had a half-sister from his father's first marriage to Princess Shivakiar Khanum Effendi .

As Crown Prince, Faruq was a member of the Egyptian Federation for Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts and was entitled "First Boy Scouts of Egypt". In October 1935 he was sent to the Woolwich Military Academy in London for officer training.

Marriage and children

Faruq was married twice. His first wife was Safinaz Zulficar, who later bore the title Farida of Egypt. She was the daughter of the judge and aristocrat Youssef Zulficar Pasha . The couple married on January 20, 1938 in the Qubba Palace in Cairo and had three daughters together. The couple divorced on November 17, 1948. The reason was the lack of a male offspring.

Faruq and his family, 1938/39

Faruq's second wife was the civil Nariman Sadiq . Her family was firmly connected with the Egyptian elite. He married her on May 6, 1951. On January 16, 1952, she bore him, future Fu'ad II, an heir to the throne. In February 1954 she separated from Faruq in exile and went back to Egypt.

1. Farida of Egypt (1921–1988)

   children

   • Farial (1938-2009)
   • Fausia Faruq (1940-2005)
   • Fadia (1943-2002)

2. Nariman Sadiq (1933-2005)

   children

   • Fu'ad II. (1952-)

Domination

King Faruq in the Egyptian Parliament, 1937

Faruq in uniform, 1938

Faruq at a banquet in the Abdeen Palace on the occasion of his wedding to Queen Farida of Egypt

Faruq with his sister Fausia and the Iranian Crown Prince and later Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi , 1939

Faruq (center) with ministers during the war

After the death of his father on April 28, 1936, Faruq became the new king of Egypt and ruler of Sudan according to the legal succession to the throne . He returned to Egypt on May 6th from his studies in Great Britain. First, a Regency Council , consisting of Muhammad Ali Tewfik , Adli Yakan Pasha , Tawfiq Nasim Pasha , Aziz Ezzat Pasha and Sherif Sabri Pasha , took over the guardianship of the young king. On July 29, 1937, the council was dissolved and Faruq declared fit to govern. The coronation followed in parliament on the same day. After this, the 16-year-old monarch made a public radio address to the nation. It was the first time a ruler of Egypt spoke directly to his people during his enthronement.

Faruq's style of government was initially much more liberal than that of his father. Because of his secular and secular attitudes, the conflict with the Islamic clergy reached its climax, which led to a strengthening of the Muslim Brotherhood . At the beginning the king enjoyed enormous popularity among the Egyptian and Sudanese people because of his charisma . The country's aristocracy and nobility also celebrated the new ruler.

Shortly after taking power, Faruq tried to normalize political life, which had been battered by the dictatorship of Prime Minister Ismail Sedki Pasha . In May 1936 he allowed new elections and convened the parliament, which had been suspended since July 1930. On May 6, 1936 he appointed the Wafd party leader Mustafa an-Nahhas Pascha as Prime Minister, with whom he began the implementation of a comprehensive reform program. The administration was reformed, new ministries were created and the structure of the army tightened. Economic successes were also achieved with the overcoming of the global economic crisis , which hit Egypt in 1929/1930. So that was industrialization revived and unemployment slashed. Foreign policy talks were resumed with the British and a treaty was successfully negotiated that settled the dispute between the two nations that had been going on since 1924 and made them allies. Through the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of August 26, 1936, Great Britain waived certain reserved rights in Egypt and gradually withdrew its troops to the Suez Canal zone, but secured the right to access the Egyptian transport and communication system in the event of war. In addition, the Egyptian army was completely placed under the supreme command of the king and the previous office of sirdar was abolished.

Strengthened in foreign and domestic politics, Egypt under Faruq once again experienced an enormous economic boom. This was due to the increasing Jewish immigration from Nazi Germany since 1935 , with which new European specialists came to Egypt, and the marriage of Faruq's sister Fausia to the Iranian crown prince and later Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi on March 16, 1939, creating a strategic alliance for Egypt originated with Iran and Turkey . Iran supplied oil to Egypt, while its officials helped build the then underdeveloped Iranian infrastructure.

With the beginning of the Second World War in September 1939, Faruq proclaimed the general mobilization of the Egyptian army. He and his Prime Minister Ali Maher Pasha wanted to preserve Egypt's armed neutrality . After entry into the war of fascist Kingdom of Italy on 10 June 1940, the side of the German Reich whose troops began East Africa from, to advance on Sudanese territory and attack the Egyptian-British military post. On June 28, 1940, the king dismissed Ali Maher Pascha because of the tense situation and appointed Hassan Sabry Pascha as the new head of government. Shortly thereafter, Great Britain invoked the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty, which allowed the occupation of the country if the Suez Canal were threatened. The Egyptian army had nothing to counter this. Faruq protested against the occupation, but was sidelined by the British. In September 1940 Italy opened a second front from Libya against the beleaguered Egyptians and British. During the war, Faruq discredited himself in the eyes of the British government and the local population for his dissolute and costly lifestyle, while the standard of living of most of the Egyptian and Sudanese population deteriorated massively. Under the impression of the German Africa Corps , which had been operating successfully in North Africa since 1941 , Faruq and the Egyptian elite made - ultimately unsuccessful - contacts with the Axis powers . However, due to the increasing internal tensions in the population, the king tried to maintain the neutrality of his country towards the outside world.

In February 1942 rocked a government crisis Egypt severely, which ended with the intervention of the British government and the king almost to the abdication would have forced. This episode highlighted Faruq's alleged powerlessness vis-à-vis the British for the Egyptian military and the local population and severely damaged his reputation. Added to this was the slow rise of Arab nationalism .

On February 24, 1945 declared Faruq under heavy pressure from the British the two remaining Axis powers Germany and Japan to war .

After the end of the war, British troops withdrew from Egypt in 1946. The hasty withdrawal triggered a severe economic crisis , which further impoverished the population. The crisis was exacerbated by labor unrest and strikes . Terrorist attacks by the Muslim Brotherhood from 1947 onwards against Jews and European foreigners, which destabilized the state order, led to a rapid increase in the security and military costs to secure them and to the ruthless suppression of the left-wing liberal, communist and Islamist opposition.

In 1948, when the State of Israel was founded, Faruq initially took a more conciliatory stance towards the new state. The pressure of the street forced him to send Egyptian troops to Palestine and take part in the Palestine war against Israel. After some initial successes by the experienced Egyptian troops, the war ended with the defeat of Egypt in 1949. Only the Gaza Strip could be maintained and fell under Egyptian rule. Faruq's offer to make peace with Israel in exchange for the Negev desert (see South District (Israel) ) failed due to popular resistance.

The reputation of the king suffered under the military disasters of the war and the economic crisis. The monarch first tried to use the rampant nationalism in Egypt and Sudan against the British and the West, which emerged from the war, for himself and tried to eliminate British influence in Sudan , which was still administered jointly. In order to gain more influence, he gave the Khartoum population the new building of the Faruq Mosque in 1947 . On October 17, 1951, high-ranking Sudanese dignitaries and the Egyptian parliament offered him the Sudanese royal crown. On the same day he accepted and was proclaimed King of Egypt and Sudan, which until then had only been the unofficial title of the Egyptian monarchs. With his approval, Prime Minister Mustafa an-Nahhas Pascha announced the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty, which could not be renegotiated despite long negotiations. As a result, the British forces around the Suez Canal Zone were declared occupiers and Faruq were declared liberators. However, his title of king was not recognized by all major powers and triggered strong political unrest in Sudan. Egypt continued to isolate itself in the looming Cold War . In this, the kingdom operated a strictly anti-communist policy aimed at containing communism in the Arab and Islamic world. From 1946 to 1949 the king, along with Great Britain and the United States , successfully intervened indirectly on the side of the right-wing monarchists in the Greek Civil War . Faruq's offers for military and development cooperation with the United States were turned down. The king again rejected an Egyptian- Soviet alliance. Instead, a non-aggression pact was concluded with this in 1951 .

When Egypt's western neighbor Libya gained independence on December 24, 1951 , Faruq provided development aid. This costly leverage campaign ultimately proved unsuccessful.

Fall

→ Main articles : State crisis in Egypt in 1952  and military coup in Egypt in 1952

Faruq walks past Egyptian troops into exile, July 26, 1952

With the proclamation of the king, Faruq succeeded in initially calming Egypt and pushing back the strong nationalism. As a result, there were again slight economic improvements and political reforms. From the end of 1951 and in the spring of 1952, however, there were minor skirmishes between militant Egyptian rioters and British troops in the Suez Canal zone. When 50 Egyptian auxiliary police officers were killed by British troops in Ismailia on January 24, 1952 , violent protests followed in Cairo, known as the Cairo fires . The monarch's crisis policy , which was perceived as ineffective, and the subsequent state crisis led to a military coup on July 23, 1952 , which was led by the two bourgeois officers Muhammad Nagib and Gamal Abdel Nasser . Faruq was placed under house arrest in Alexandria and had to abdicate three days after the coup in favor of his six-month-old son Ahmad Fu'ad, who was crowned the new king as Fu'ad II , and went into exile in Italy . The abdication was intended to appease revolutionaries and anti-monarchist circles and preserve the throne of the dynasty.

The Libyan Lake of July 23rd today commemorates the fall of Faruq. He also owned a giant tortoise , which he bequeathed to the Cairo Zoo before going into exile.

In exile

Faruq and the Italian singer Irma Capece Minutolo in Naples , 1959

From Italy, Faruq went to Monaco and later back to Italy. When, on June 18, 1953, the revolutionary government under Prime Minister Nagib declared the monarchy to be abolished and Egypt and Sudan became republics , they nationalized all of the king's assets and auctioned off his large collections of jewelry and treasures. But there were legal disputes that lasted for decades about the repayment of the royal debts by the new republic and about the royal assets frozen in foreign accounts.

Faruq's Egyptian citizenship was revoked on April 29, 1958 by the United Arab Republic , the merger of Egypt and Syria under the presidency of Nasser. A year later, however, was given to him by Prince Rainier III. the Monegasque citizenship granted. In 1960 Faruq moved to Rome .

death

Grave in the ar-Rifa'i mosque

The monarch, who was very overweight in the last years of his life (approx. 135 kg), collapsed on March 18, 1965 in the Roman restaurant Ile de France after eating. The thesis that Faruq was poisoned by the Egyptian secret service is controversial. An autopsy of the body was not carried out. Faruq was first buried in Rome, and later, after the Saudi King Faisal ibn Abd al-Aziz had agreed to transfer him to Saudi Arabia , he was secretly buried in the ar-Rifa'i mosque in Cairo on March 31, 1965 to bury.

ancestry

16. Muhammad Ali Pasha

8. Ibrahim Pasha

17. Amines

4. Ismail Pasha

9. Hoshyar

2. Fu'ad I , King of Egypt

5th holiday

1. Faruq I, King of Egypt

6. Abdel Rahim Sabri Pasha

3. Nazli Sabri

28. Muhammad Said

14. Muhammad Sharif Pasha, Prime Minister of Egypt

7. Tewfika Hanim

30. Soliman Pasha

15. Nazli Hanim

31. Mariam Hanim

literature

• The Nation Associates : The record of collaboration of King Farouk of Egypt with the Nazis and their allies, the Mufti : the official Nazi records of the King's alliance and of the Mufti's plans for bombing Jerusalem and Tel Aviv . NY 1948
• King Farouk is worried . In: Die Zeit , No. 4/1949

Web links

Commons : Faruq  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Newspaper article about Faruq in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ^ John E. Jessup: An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Conflict and Conflict Resolution, 1945-1996. Greenwood Publishing Group. 1998. ISBN 978-0-313-28112-9 ., P. 205.
2. ↑ Yunan Labib Rizk: Crowning moment. Ahram Weekly, Aug 3, 2005, p. 753
3. ^ Vernon A. O'Rourke: The British Position in Egypt. In: Foreign Affairs. P. 698 , accessed on February 27, 2011 (English). 
4. Jump up ↑ Gerhard Höpp: The Koran as a "Secret Reichssache". Fragments of German Islamic politics between 1938 and 1945. In: Holger Preißler / Hubert Seiwert (eds.), Gnosis research and the history of religion. Marburg, 1991, pp. 435–446, excerpt available online as pdf , last accessed on September 3, 2012
5. ^ Piers Brendon: The Decline and Fall of the British Empire 1781-1997 , London, 2007, p. 482 f.
6. ^ Egypt: A Tale of Two Autocrats . In: Time , March 26, 1965.
7. ^ The French Ancestry of King Farouk of Egypt . In: Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd (Ed.): Burke's Royal Families of the World , Volume Volume 2: Africa & the Middle East. Burke's Peerage, London 1980, ISBN 978-0-85011-029-6 , p. 287, OCLC 18496936 .
8. ↑ in the holdings of the National Library of Australia : catalogue.nla.gov.au

predecessor	Office	successor
Fu'ad I.	King of Egypt and Sudan 1936–1952	Fu'ad II.