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
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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 23 November 2024.]
