Georges Henein

Marc Kober (Université Paris XIII)
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Georges Henein was born in Cairo in November 1914 and died in Paris in July 1973. He was the son of Sadik Henein Pasha, a well-known figure in Egyptian society, and of Maria Zanelli who was Italian. Sadik Henein Pasha ran several large companies, repeatedly helping his son even as he deplored the latter’s scandalous social and political attitudes: Georges was a militant revolutionary atheist in wealthy Coptic society. He was an anarchist, but fell in love, in 1939, with Iqbal Al-Alaili, the daughter of the Vice-President of the National Assembly of Egypt and the granddaughter of Ahmad Shawqi, the leading poet of the Arab world during the early twentieth century. The anecdote is that Georges converted to Islam in order to marry Iqbal, giving Bajazet as his Muslim name.

Ever the polemicist

2163 words

Citation: Kober, Marc. "Georges Henein". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 02 September 2013 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=13128, accessed 19 March 2024.]

13128 Georges Henein 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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