6:00PM BST 05 Jul 2013
Princess Fawzia Fuad of Egypt, who has died in Alexandria aged 91, was the first wife of the late Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi; the marriage was a dynastic arrangement, not a love match.
Fawzia in 1942 with her first husband, Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, and their daughter Princess Shahnaz Photo: AP
As a daughter of King Fuad of Egypt and the youngest sister of King Farouk, Fawzia had the royal blood that the ruler Reza Shah sought for his son; a match with an old royal family would add lustre to Iran’s shallow-rooted monarchy. Fawzia endured the arrangement for six years before bolting home to Egypt, never returning to Iran.
Princess Fawzia bint Fuad was born on November 5 1921 at Ras al-Tin Palace in Alexandria, the eldest daughter of King Fuad and his second wife, Nazli Sabri, and grew up in royal palaces and gardens, shielded from the outside world by an English governess.
A shy, pretty girl with blue eyes and black hair, she was described by the Egyptian writer and courtier Adel Sabit as a “supremely naive, over-protected, cellophane-wrapped, gift-packaged little girl” who lived “in bucolic surroundings, mobbed by adoring servants, aunts and ladies-in-waiting”.
She was 17 when the match with the young Iranian crown prince was first discussed. By this time she had been educated in Switzerland, and she enjoyed socialising, European fashion, and had never worn the veil. But once back in Egypt, her status as royal princess allowed her little freedom. “Fawzia was in those days virtually a prisoner in her mother’s houseboat on the Nile,” Adel Sabit wrote. “She rarely went out, and when she did she was surrounded by ladies-in-waiting and retainers. At a time when all other young girls were enjoying a relative freedom, Fawzia, by virtue of her position, was closely hemmed in.”
Marriage to a foreign prince seemed like a way out — or at least something different.
Having conceived the idea of a match with an Egyptian princess, Reza Shah sent an ambassador to Cairo to canvass the royal family’s opinion. Although the Egyptian prime minister had earlier called the marriage of a Sunni Arab to a Shi’ite Persian “a recipe for disaster”, the engagement was agreed. A delegation was sent from Tehran to Cairo bearing a letter from the Shah and a collection of jewellery. All the while, the crown prince remained unaware of the negotiations; he had not even seen a picture of her by the time, in May 1938, that the engagement was announced.
The wedding rites were conducted twice: in Cairo, on 15 March 1939, according to Sunni custom; a Shi’ite ceremony took place later in Tehran. An album of photographs of the Cairo wedding shows a succession of ceremonial dinners and entertainments of stifling formality. The young crown prince, only 19, can be seen sitting glumly among the bejewelled Egyptian royals wearing a boxy military uniform.
The royal couple flew to Tehran the next day, along with Fawzia’s personal effects in 200 trunks and suitcases. They were received at the airport by Reza Shah. In the presence of a crowd, Reza Shah kissed Fawzia on the forehead and presented her to the multitude, saying: “Well, my daughter, this is your country and here is your people.”
The Persian ceremony included seven days of feasting. Prisoners were released from jail, and food and money were given to the poor in celebration. Because Iranian law required that only an Iranian could become queen, a hasty bill was passed bestowing on Fawzia “the quality of Persianness”.
Life in Tehran for Fawzia was very different, but no less restrictive than the existence she had left behind. A 19th-century Qajar palace had been renovated for the royal couple, but by Egyptian standards it was meagre. Still, the couple were happy at first, and their only child — a daughter, Shahnaz — was born on October 27 1940.
In the eyes of the world, Fawzia was the epitome of glamour, her style a mixture of European fashion and oriental mystique. Her portrait, taken by Cecil Beaton, appeared on the cover of Life magazine in 1942. “She had sad and mournful eyes,” Beaton wrote, “pitch-black hair, a perfectly sculpted face and soft, graceful hands bereft of the wrinkles of labour.”
But Fawzia found it difficult to adjust to life in the Persian court. Relations with her mother-in-law and the crown prince’s sisters were tense. Gossip began to circulate about the crown prince’s philandering. The shadow of war loomed, despite Reza Shah’s ultimately unsuccessful attempts to keep Iran neutral.
In 1941 Reza Shah was forced to abdicate in favour of his son. The young crown prince was now Shah of Iran, and Fawzia became Empress.
But as the 1940s proceeded, life in Tehran became increasingly hard to bear. Her retinue of Egyptian servants was dismissed. To fend off boredom, Fawzia began to spend much of her time in bed and playing cards. She spoke to her husband and members of the court in French, having made a half-hearted attempt to learn Persian which she gave up after a few months. Throughout the day she would repeatedly exclaim: “Je m’ennuie!”
She refused to attend meetings of the charitable organisations and foundations of which she was nominal head as an Iranian royal, and made increasingly plain her contempt for Iran and anything Iranian. She even began to show little interest in her daughter.
By this time she had ceased to share a room with her husband, as reports of his mistresses continued to circulate. When the Shah would seek to apologise, knocking on her locked door, her answer was always the same: “Pour l’amour de Dieu, partez!”
Reports began to reach Cairo that the Empress was in poor health. Since her arrival in Tehran, she had suffered regular bouts of malaria and other ailments. Adel Sabit reports accompanying his father, the Egyptian ambassador to Tehran, to visit Fawzia in her palace to encourage her to return to Egypt for medical treatment and convalescence. After seeing her, Sabit described “a bony, cadaverous apparition... Fawzia’s shoulder blades jutted out like the fins of some undernourished fish”.
Such was Fawzia’s apathy and lack of any zest for life that she had to be persuaded to leave Tehran and return to Egypt. At this point the ambassador advised that divorce would be a prudent step.
Fawzia’s period of convalescence in Egypt extended from months to years. She resumed social life in Cairo, mainly in the company of her sister, Faiza, and refused to answer letters, cables and private messages sent by the Shah.
A notice in The Times in 1948 announced: “The Empress Fawzia... returned to Egypt to recuperate after a severe attack of malaria. It is announced that her doctors have forbidden her to return to the climate and elevation of Tehran, and so in full accord with the Shah and with good will on both sides, the marriage has been ended.”
Five months after the divorce, Fawzia married Col Ismail Shirin, an Egyptian aristocrat who held diplomatic and military posts under King Farouk. They lived together in Alexandria until his death in 1994, and had a son and a daughter.
Princess Fawzia Fuad of Egypt, born November 5 1921, died July 2 2013
