Ahmed Hassanein

Ahmed Hassanein Pasha, KCVO, MBE (Arabic: أحمد حسنين باشا‎‎) (31 October 1889 – 19 February 1946) or Aḥmad Moḥammad Makhlūf Ḥasanēn al-Būlākī (Arabic: أحمد محمد مخلوف حسنين البولاقى‎‎) was an Oxford-educated Egyptian courtier, diplomat, Olympic athlete in fencing, photographer, writer, politician, legendary geographic explorer, tutor then chamberlain to King Farouk.

Ahmed Hassanein was one of the most influential figures in Egyptian politics as the Chief of the Diwan and Chamberlain to Farouk, the king of Egypt from 1936 to 1952.

Son of an Al Azhar professor, he was a grandson of the last Admiral of the Egyptian fleet before it was dismantled under British occupation in 1882.

King Fuad I, father of Farouk, chose Ahmed to tutor the Crown Prince during the Prince's studies as a teenager in London. While Fuad spoke Turkish as his mother-tongue and was not therefore able to eloquently address his own nation, Farouk, under the supervision of Ahmed Pasha Hassanein, learned to speak Arabic well and developed a strong sense of nationalism.

During an expedition through the Libyan Desert in 1923, Ahmed Hassanein (then only Effendi in title) crossed a region defended by the fierce and puritanical Senussis.

Hassanein's first journey was to the Kufra, the Senussi's oasis capital. The journey nearly came to grief due to companion Rosita Forbes making an error reading the compass. Forbes claims in her book The Secret of the Sahara: Kufara (1921) that she had been the inspiration and leader of the exhibition, though this claim has been challenged.

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