Persian Realm

Princess Fawzia of Egypt and Sudan married Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980), the Crown Prince of Iran, in Cairo, on 16 March 1939; after their honeymoon, the wedding ceremonies were repeated in Tehran. Two years later, the crown prince succeeded his exiled father and was to become the Shah of Iran. Soon after her husband’s ascent to the throne, Queen Fawzia appeared on the cover of the 21 September 1942, issue of Life magazine, photographed by Cecil Beaton, who described her as an “Asian Venus” with “a perfect heart-shaped face and strangely pale but piercing blue eyes.”

The marriage was not a success. After the birth of the couple’s only child, Princess Shahnaz Pahlavi, Queen Fawzia—the title of empress was not yet used in Iran at that time—obtained an Egyptian divorce in 1945, whereupon she moved to Cairo. This divorce was not recognized by Iran, however, and eventually an official divorce was obtained, in Iran, on 17 November 1948, with Queen Fawzia reclaiming her previous distinction of Princess of Egypt and Sudan. A major condition of the divorce was that her daughter be left behind to be raised in Iran. Curiously, Queen Fawzia’s brother, King Farouk, divorced his first wife, Queen Farida, the same week.

In the official announcement of the divorce, it was stated that “the Persian climate had endangered the health of Empress [sic] Fawzia, and that thus it was agreed that the Egyptian King’s sister be divorced.” In another official statement, the Shah said that the dissolution of the marriage “cannot affect by any means the existing friendly relations between Egypt and Iran.”

On 28 March 1949, in Cairo, Princess Fawzia married Colonel Ismail Hussain Shirin Bey, (1919–1994), a distant cousin and one-time Egyptian Minister of War and the Navy. The couple had two children: Nadia (born 1950-2009) and Hussain (born 1955).