Fawzia Fuad of Egypt

He was most anxious to have the House of Pahlavi married to the House of Ali, which had reigned over Egypt since 1805.

The Egyptians were not impressed with the gifts sent by Reza Shah to King Farouk to persuade him to Marry his sister to the prince Mohammad Reza.

When an Iranian delegation arrived in Cairo to arrange the marriage, the Egyptians took the Iranians on a tour of the palaces built by Isma'il Pasha, known as "Isma'il the Magnificent", to show them proper royal splendor.

King Farouk was not initially interested in marrying off his sister to the Crown Prince of Iran, but Aly Maher Pasha, the king's favorite political adviser, persuaded him that a marriage alliance with Iran would improve Egypt's position within the Islamic world and against Britain.

At the same time, Maher Pasha was working on plans to Marry off Farouk's other sisters to King Faisal II of Iraq and to the son of Emir Abdullah of Jordan, planning on forging an Egyptian-dominated bloc in the Middle East.

To prepare for life in Iran, Fawzia was assigned a tutor to teach her Persian.

Fawzia of Egypt (فوزية; ; 5 November 1921 – 2 July 2013), also known as Fawzia Pahlavi or Fawzia Chirine, was an Egyptian princess who became Queen of Iran as the first wife of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran.

Fawzia was the daughter of Fuad I, seventh son of Ismail the Magnificent.

Princess Fawzia was born Her Sultanic Highness Princess Fawzia bint Fuad at Ras el-Tin Palace, Alexandria, the eldest daughter of Sultan Fuad I of Egypt and Sudan (later King Fuad I), and his second wife, Nazli Sabri on 5 November 1921.

Princess Fawzia was of Albanian and Circassian descent from her father's side, and French,Turkish and Egyptian descent from her mother.

Her mother's maternal grandfather was Major General Mohamed Sherif Pasha, prime minister and minister of foreign affairs, who was of Turkish-Circassian origin.

She was the Great Great Grandaughter of Muhammad Ali of Egypt as well as the great-granddaughter of the French-born officer Suleiman Pasha.

Suleiman Pasha served under Napoleon, converted to Islam, and oversaw an overhaul of the Egyptian army under her great-great-grandfather Muhammad Ali Pasha the Great.

In addition to her sisters, Faiza, Faika and Fathia, and her brother, Farouk, she had two half-siblings from her father's previous marriage to Princess Shwikar Khanum Effendi.

Princess Fawzia was educated in Switzerland and was fluent in English and French in addition to her native Arabic.

Her beauty was often compared to that of film stars Hedy Lamarr and Vivien Leigh.

The marriage of Princess Fawzia to Iran's Crown Prince Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was planned by the latter's father, Rezā Shāh.

The Pahlavis were a parvenu house as Reza Khan, the son of a peasant who entered the Iranian Army as a private, rising up to become a general, had seized power in a 1921 coup.

Fawzia and Pahlavi were engaged in May 1938.

However, they saw each other only once before their wedding.

Her marriage to the Iranian Crown Prince in 1939 was a political deal: it consolidated Egyptian power and influence in the Middle East, while bringing respectability to the new Iranian regime by association with the much more prestigious Egyptian royal house.

They married at the Abdeen Palace in Cairo on 15 March 1939.

King Farouk took the couple on a tour of Egypt, showing them the pyramids, Al-Azhar University, and other famous sites in Egypt.

The contrast between the Crown Prince Mohammad Reza, dressed in a simple uniform of an Iranian officer vs. the lavish opulence of the Egyptian court, with the famously free-spending Farouk who wore expensive suits was much remarked upon at the time.

After the wedding, King Farouk had a twenty course meal to celebrate the wedding at the Abdeen Palace.

At the time Prince Mohammad Reza lived in awe of his overbearing father, Reza Shah, and was dominated by Farouk, who was considerably more self-confident.

Afterwards, Fawzia departed for Iran together with her mother, Queen Nazli, on a train trip that saw the electricity break down several times, causing the two women to feel like they were going on a camping trip.

When they returned to Iran the wedding ceremony was repeated at Marble Palace, Tehran, which was also their future residence.

As Mohammad Reza spoke no Turkish (one of the languages of the Egyptian elite, the other being French) and Fawzia was described as being only "competent" in Persian, the two talked to each other in French, in which both were fluent.

Upon arriving in Tehran, Reza Shah had the main streets of Tehran decorated with banners and arches, and had a celebration at the Amjadiye stadium attended by 25,000 of the Iranian elite with synchronized acrobatics by students being followed by bastani (Iranian calisthenics), fencing, and football.

The wedding dinner was a French-style dinner with "caviar from the Caspian Sea", "Consommé Royal", fish, fowl and lamb.

Fawzia disliked Reza Khan, whom she described as a violent and thuggish man prone to attacking people with either his whip or riding crop.

In contrast to the French food she had grown up with in Egypt, Fawzia found the food at the Iranian court sub-par.

In the same way, Fawzia found that the palaces of Iran could not be compared to the palaces that she had grown up in Egypt.

Following the marriage, the Princess was granted Iranian nationality.

Two years later the crown prince succeeded his exiled father and was to become the Shah of Iran.

It was never a love-match, and Fawzia obtained an Egyptian divorce in 1945 (not recognised in Iran until 1948), under which their one daughter Princess Shahnaz would be brought up in Iran.

In 1949, Fawzia married Colonel Ismail Chirine, an Egyptian diplomat, with whom she had a son and a daughter.

A declassified CIA report in May 1972 described the union as a political move.

The marriage was also significant in that it united a Sunni royal, the princess, and a Shia royal, the crown prince.