1868 - 1936
Sultan of Egypt, 1917 - 1922; king, 1922 - 1936.
Fuʾad was born in Giza, Egypt, on 26 March 1868, the youngest child of Khedive Ismaʿil Pasha, who ruled Egypt from 1863 until 1879. Fuʾad left Egypt for Constantinople (now Istanbul) in 1879 at the time of his father's exile. Subsequently, he studied at Geneva, Turin, and the Italian Military Academy, returning to Egypt in 1892. His eligibility for the Egyptian throne was enhanced when the British deposed Abbas Hilmi II as khedive of Egypt in 1914 at the beginning of World War I. At the time of Abbas's removal, Britain severed the juridical ties that bound Egypt to the Ottoman Empire, proclaimed a protectorate over the country, and named Fuʾad's elder brother, Husayn Kamil, as the first sultan of Egypt. When Husayn Kamil died on 9 October 1917, Fuʾad succeeded him to the throne.
Fuʾad reigned in Egypt from 1917 until his death in 1936. He aspired to be a powerful ruler and did much to enlarge the powers of the monarchy. Following the conclusion of the war, Egypt's elite, including Sultan Fuʾad, pressed the British to end the protectorate and to increase the political autonomy of their country. Britain's failure to respond to these overtures set off a powerful protest movement, led by Saʿd Zaghlul and his new political party, the Wafd. The political turmoil led to Britain's unilateral proclamation of Egypt's independence on 28 February 1922, subject to the exclusion of a wide range of powers reserved to the British. In the wake of the altered political status of the country, Fuʾad became king of Egypt on 15 March 1922. In 1923 an appointed committee drafted a new constitution for the country. Through the intervention of Fuʾad and the British, the constitution gave far-reaching authority to the monarch. Under its provisions, the crown had the power to designate the prime minister, dissolve the parliament, and postpone sessions of parliament. Additionally, the king controlled charitable and educational institutions and decided upon diplomatic appointments and military commissions.
Armed with its formal, albeit restricted, political independence and a new, sophisticated constitution, Egypt embarked upon an experiment in liberal democracy. Unfortunately, civilian parliamentary government, which lasted until the military ousted the politicians from office in 1952, tended to degenerate into a three-cornered struggle among Egypt's most popular party, the Wafd, the palace, and the British. During these years, the Wafd invariably won any fair electoral contest, but was kept from office through the political manipulations of the palace and the British. Monarchical power reached its apex between 1930 and 1935, after Fuʾad removed the Wafd from office and appointed Ismaʿil Sidqi as prime minister. Immediately upon assuming power, Sidqi replaced the 1923 constitution with a new one and enacted a new, more restrictive electoral law. Both changes enhanced royal authority. Jealous of the power that Sidqi wielded, Fuʾad removed him from office in 1933 and ruled Egypt through a set of palace appointees. In 1935, under pressure from the British and responding to fears of an impending world war, Fuʾad agreed to restore the 1923 constitution and to hold new elections. Predictably, the Wafd won the 1936 elections. Fuʾad died on 28 April 1936, just months before the signing of the Anglo - Egyptian Treaty, which gave greater political autonomy to Egypt.
Although he was an autocrat and did much to impede the development of parliamentary democracy, Fuʾad was a noteworthy patron of Egyptian education. He played a role in reviving the Egyptian University, which had been founded in 1908 but languished until Fuʾad and others gave it their support. It was named Fuʾad I University in 1940 and became today's Cairo University in 1954.
Bibliography
Sayyid-Marsot, Afaf Lutfi al-. Egypt's Liberal Experiment, 1922 - 1936. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977.
Vatikiotis, P. J. The History of Modern Egypt: From Muhammad Ali to Mubarak, 4th edition. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991.
— ROBERT L. TIGNOR
