King Farouk was 17 (see above) when he met Safinaz Zulficar -her name in Turkish means the beautiful woman- on a trip to London. She was part of the royal entourage for Queen Nazli’s voyage. Her mother Kareema was the queen’s lady in waiting, and also one of the daughters of Mohammed Said Pasha, an Egyptian prime minister of Turkish origin & sister of Mahmoud Said, an Egyptian painter and judge, who encouraged his niece in art.
They were married on January 20, 1938 at the Saraya el-Kubba Palace. Her wedding gown was a stunning affair designed by the House of Worth, see our header picture. Pictures of the wedding are also available on the Royal Couturier’s site.
After the marriage she changed her name to Farida as a fortune teller had told Farouk that “F’s” would bring him luck. She was Farouk’s first wife and bore him three girls that he found insulting to his manhood. After the third, Farouk divorced Farida on 19 November 1948 though he had already an “official mistress” that he nightclubbed with (it was improper for a Muslim wife to carry about around town).
Her two youngest daughters, Fawzial and Fadia have since died. Only her eldest Ferial b. 1938 is still alive. It was his second wife, Narriman, who gave him his only son, Ahmad Fouad on January 16, 1952. Shortly afterward, he was deposed. Farouk’s sister (see the lower photo of the trio below) Fawzia, married the Shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi of Persia (1919-1980) on March 15, 1939. That did not last either.
Marc Jones has her birthday at 9-5-1921 at 5 pm based on her recollection, but does not cite a birth place. The Egypt Independent newspaper says that the Queen was born in Alexandria. Her hobby thanks to Uncle Mohammed was painting but unlike his realistic portraits, hers tended towards abstracts. She died of leukemia on 17 October 1988 in Cairo. Her husband, King Farouk I died March 18 1965 in exile on the island of Capri, Italy. You can read more about Farouk on the Dutch MadMonarch’s site (there are two).
So first up is the Jones chart as specified in the Sabian Symbols book, without a place but with a 5 pm time. We put that to Alexandria. This gives her a 16.44 Aquarius ascendant, with the symbol of a “watch dog standing guard.” It also makes her temperament type a bucket with an Uranian handle, with Uranus as the focal determinator (as singleton) on the east side of the chart demonstrating her resourcefulness.
Then there is our rectification below. We still have has a bucket with a Uranian handle, but this time Uranus is in Pisces 07.27 and gets the symbol of “a girl blowing a bugle” that highlights her participation in life’s events and success in handling them. We feel that works better as she was a beloved queen, and in the twelfth house, shows how she seemed to manage things behind the scenes for her husband. To what extent? We cannot say, but we do know that about 5 years after the divorce, Farouk was dethroned.
We also threw in some asteroids on our lilac chart. First is Child at 26 Libra, semisextile Pandora at 26 Scorpio suggesting the Pandora’s box of troubles she unwittingly unleashed by having daughters. Then another semisextile away, now a square from Asteroid Child, is the asteroid Hygeia that shows her marriage to a germaphobe.
We threw in some location asteroids too. First is Alexandrinus for her birth place in Alexandria and highlighting her Egyptian Circassian heritage. Circassians are natives of the northern Caucasus that were exiled from their homeland by the Russian Tsar’s in the 19th century and fled to the welcoming middle east. While originally Eastern Orthodox some converted to Islam.
The second Asteroid is Europa, for the continent of Europe, at 24 Aries and basically a semisextile away from Alexandrinus, but in her first house, showing how she returned to her ancestral home when she was divorced.
If you make a yod from Pandora in Scorpio to Jupiter in Virgo and then the apex at the ascendant 01 Aries, we see that the head of her yod ends up at Hygeia in the seventh, and that being the source of all her woes, Farouk. As that asteroid is quicunx her Uranus, it puts a lot of stress on her being innovative to handle him and protect her interests. In the end though, she could go do so much, particularly when Uranus was opposite her Sun and transforming Pluto in Cancer into a catalyst for both herself and Egypt.
