Widow of slain Egyptian president
CAIRO
Jehan Sadat, widow of former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, the first Arab leader to make peace with Israel, died in Egypt on Friday. She was 87.
In recent weeks, the Egyptian press reported that Sadat had been hospitalized and was battling cancer. Last year, she received medical treatment in the United States but shortly after she returned home as her condition had deteriorated, her family told local papers. No further details about her illness were made available.
On Friday, President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi’s office said she had been a role model for Egyptian women, and granted her a national award posthumously. They also announced the naming of a key highway in Cairo after her. She was buried after a military funeral on Friday.
In August 1933, Jehan Safwat Raouf was born in Cairo to an Egyptian middle-class father and a British mother. In 1949, at age 15, she married Anwar Sadat, a military officer at the time who later served as Egypt’s president from 1970 until his assassination by Islamic extremists in 1981. It was said that initially, her parents had opposed her marrying a man 15 years her senior. The couple had four children: daughters Noha, Gihan, Lobna and a son, Gamal.
She consistently defended her husband’s decision to sign a peace agreement with Israel in 1979 after nearly three decades of war, a move that was controversial domestically and regionally.
After his assassination, she largely withdrew from public life. But in recent years, she emerged as a supporter of former military general el-Sissi and his government, after the country’s 2011 popular uprising forced her husband’s successor, Hosni Mubarak, to resign.
During her husband’s tenure, Sadat established herself as a staunch advocate of women’s rights by pushing for a set of laws that granted women the right to alimony and custody of children in the case of divorce. She also made headlines with her volunteer work and charitable activities.
She also presided over several national relief agencies including the Egyptian Red Crescent, the country’s blood bank and the Egyptian Society for Cancer Patients.
In 1977, Sadat graduated with an BA in Arabic literature from Cairo University. In 1986, she completed her PhD in comparative literature at the same university.
She authored two books: her autobiography “A Woman of Egypt” and
“My Hope for Peace,” about the Arab-Israeli conflict and the rise of Islamic extremism. She also served as a visiting instructor at several American universities including the University of South Carolina, Radford University and the University of Maryland.