Former Egyptian first lady Jehan Sadat dies
Jehan Sadat, the widow of Egypt’s late president Anwar Sadat, has died after a two-year battle with cancer. She was 87.
Sadat’s family said she died on Friday at the Cairo hospital where she was admitted this summer after more than a year of treatment in the US.
She was the second wife of the late Egyptian leader, who was gunned down during a military parade in Cairo in 1981 by Islamist extremists opposed to his 1979 peace treaty with Israel.
She disappeared from the public eye for a year after his death before reappearing to focus on her studies and later on lecturing in the US on peace and international relations.
Sadat was buried on Friday after a military funeral – an honour rarely bestowed on women in Egypt – led by President Abdel Fattah El Sisi. Her coffin was wrapped in the black, red and white of the Egyptian flag.
The funeral procession led by Mr El Sisi, top government officials and members of her family, ended at the Unknown Soldier Memorial in eastern Cairo.
She was laid to rest in a grave close to her husband’s tomb.
“She supported her husband in difficult and delicate circumstances until he led the country to achieve a historic victory in the glorious October War, which was a milestone in Egypt’s modern history that restored Egypt’s dignity and pride”, Mr El Sisi said.
He was alluding to the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, in which Egyptian troops crossed the Suez Canal to wrest back control of the Sinai Peninsula.
Mr El Sisi also posthumously awarded her the Medal of Perfection and renamed a thoroughfare in eastern Cairo in her honour.
Born Jehan Safwat Raouf in Cairo in August 1933 to an Egyptian father and a British mother, Sadat met her future husband at a relative’s house in 1948, when she was only 15.
The couple married the following year despite the opposition of her mother and father, a British-trained doctor.
Sadat emerged as a public figure after her husband was named vice president in 1969. A year later, he became Egypt’s third president after Gamal Abdel Nasser died suddenly.
She led several high-profile charities, including the Red Crescent Society, accompanied her husband on foreign trips, and ruffled the feathers of conservative Egyptians with her campaigns to win more rights for women.
She studied Arabic literature at Cairo University, graduating in 1978. She received a master’s degree in literary criticism two years later and a doctorate in comparative literature in 1987, also from Cairo University.
She wrote two books, of which the better known is the semi-autobiographical A Lady from Egypt.
In recognition of her contribution to women’s rights and her campaigns for peace, she was accorded honorary doctorates from scores of universities.
She is survived by three daughters, Lobna, Noha and Jehan, and a son, Gamal.