Princess Ferial of Egypt (1938-2009) was the eldest daughter of King Farouk I and Queen Farida, born on November 17, 1938, in Cairo. Her life was marked by the grandeur of Egyptian royalty and the subsequent challenges of exile following the 1952 revolution.
Princess Ferial with King Farouk and Queen Farida
Early Life and Royal Celebrations
Ferial was born on 17 November 1938. At the time of her birth, King Farouk was eighteen years of age and his wife, Farida of Egypt, was seventeen. Her birth was marked by nationwide celebratory events which included the distribution of clothes and free breakfasts to thousands of the poor. In addition, each of the 1,700 families of infants born on the same day were given E£1, a generous gift at the time. Princess Ferial was later joined by two more sisters, Princesses Fawzia and Fadia.
Raised in the luxurious palaces of Egypt, Ferial witnessed both the height of royal life and the struggles that would ultimately lead to her family’s exile. In search of an heir, King Farouk divorced Queen Farida in 1949 and married Narriman Sadek. That marriage produced Fouad II, Ferial's half-brother and last King of Egypt.
The Revolution and Life in Exile
In 1952, the Revolution by the Free Officers sent the royal family into exile in Italy. Ferial left Egypt at the age of 13 on the royal yacht Mahroussa. The family's time in exile was spent in Naples, Capri and Rome.
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At the will of their father Farouk, Ferial and her sisters were educated privately, and then at Grand Verger Finishing School, a boarding school in Lutry, Switzerland. Ferial’s father Farouk was a very strict parent during their exile, requiring the sisters to get permission for even trivial things such as haircuts and wearing nail polish.
Ferial lived the majority of her life before her marriage outside of Montreux, where she taught typing and French literature.
Ferial was unable to return to Egypt while Nasser remained in power. Not until 1973, three years into Sadat's regime was she allowed access to the country and permitted an Egyptian passport. The first visit was hard for her because she went and looked for all the old servants or nannies who used to work in the palace. In so many ways, the country and the world had changed.
Marriage and Family
In 1966, Ferial married the Swiss Jean-Pierre Perreten, at Westminster, London. Perreten was the son of a Swiss hotelier and converted to Islam to make the marriage possible. He took on the name Samir Cheriff as part of his conversion. They had one daughter, Yasmine Perreten-Sha'arawi, in 1967. Ferial and Perreten divorced shortly after their daughter's birth. Ferial did not remarry.
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Later Life and Legacy
In adulthood, Princess Ferial maintained a relatively private life, focusing on personal pursuits and remaining close to her family. She later became a language teacher in Switzerland. Despite her life abroad, she remained connected to her Egyptian heritage, occasionally visiting and expressing a deep love for her homeland.
After Ferial’s mother Queen Farida died in 1988, she and her two sisters were prompted to file a lawsuit against the Egyptian government over their ownership of a royal palace in the Nile Delta. The sisters believed that the land and property belonged to their mother and that with her death, they were the rightful owners of the property.
Ferial spent the rest of her life out of the public eye taking care of her siblings. Her sister Fawzia suffered from multiple sclerosis and died in 2005. Her brother Fuad went through a great depression after his divorce from his wife Dominique-France Picard.
Princess Ferial passed away in 2009 after a battle with stomach cancer. Ferial was buried alongside her family in the Khedival mausoleum of Cairo's Rifa'i Mosque.
Al-Rifa'i Mosque in Cairo, where Princess Ferial was buried
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Queen Farida: A Brief Overview
Queen Farida (born Safinaz Zulficar on 5 September 1921 - died 16 October 1988) was the queen of Egypt for nearly eleven years as the first wife of King Farouk. She was the first queen of Egypt since Cleopatra to have left seclusion and played a public representational role, attending public functions and acting as honorary protector of charities, in accordance with the modern image the monarchy wished to represent at the time.
Queen Farida was born in a culture in which motherhood was the only priority of a woman. The birth of an heir to the throne was especially important. Also the rest of the women of the Royal family were freed from the seclusion of the harem of the Muhammad Ali dynasty after Farouk's succession to the throne.
Queen Farida accepted the chair of the Red Crescent Society and was also honorary president of the Egyptian Feminist Union and the New Woman Alliance. During the last years of queenship, Farida progressively retired from public life during a time when her marriage deteriorated.
Farida stayed in Egypt until 1964, living in Zamalek, a suburb on an island in the Nile. Later she settled in Lebanon where she saw her children after nearly ten years. In March 1965, when King Farouk died in Rome, she and her three daughters visited his body at the morgue. Then, she lived in Paris from 1968 to 1974 until she returned to Egypt in 1974, during the presidency of Anwar Sadat. She remained unmarried after the divorce.
During the late 1960s, she began painting. An artist, she had personal exhibitions in Europe and the United States. Farida was hospitalized in September 1988 due to several health problems, including leukemia, pneumonia and hepatitis. On 2 October, she was put in intensive care, then lapsed into a coma.
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