Farouk of Egypt

==Ascension==
[[File:King_Farouk_I_of_Egypt.jpg|alt=King Farouk I of Egypt|thumb|267x267px|Farouk I, c. 1937]]
Upon his coronation, the 16-year-old King Farouk made a public radio address to the nation, the first time a sovereign of Egypt had ever spoken directly to his people in such a way:{{cquote|And if it is God's will to lay on my shoulders at such an early age the responsibility of kingship, I on my part appreciate the duties that will be mine, and I am prepared for all sacrifices in the cause of my duty.&nbsp;... My noble people, I am proud of you and your loyalty and am confident in the future as I am in God. Let us work together. We shall succeed and be happy. Long live the Motherland!}}

As Farouk was extremely popular with the Egyptian people, it was decided by the Prime Minister, [[Aly Maher Pasha|Aly Maher]], that Farouk should not return to Britain as that would be unpopular, though one of the regents, Prince Mohammad Ali, had wanted Farouk to keep trying to be admitted on a full-time basis to the Royal Military Academy as a means of getting him out of the country.{{sfn|Morsy|1984|p=195}} Since under Egyptian law women could not inherit the throne, Farouk's cousin Prince Mohammad Ali was next in line to the throne. Prince Mohammad Ali was to spend the next 16 years scheming to depose Farouk so he could become king.{{sfn|Morsy|1984|p=195}}  Egypt was in the process of negotiating a treaty that would reduce some of the British privileges in Egypt and make the country more independent in exchange for keeping Egypt in the British sphere of influence.{{sfn|Morsy|1984|p=194}} The ambitions of [[Benito Mussolini]] to dominate the Mediterranean led the [[Wafd Party|Wafd]]—traditionally the anti-British party—to want to keep the British presence in Egypt, at least as long as Mussolini kept calling the Mediterranean ''Mare Nostrum''.{{sfn|Morsy|1984|p=193}} For both the Wafd and the British, it was convenient to keep Farouk in Egypt so that when he signed the new Anglo-Egyptian treaty, it would not be seen as under duress as it would be if Farouk was living in Britain.{{sfn|Morsy|1984|p=195}} Sir [[Miles Lampson]] believed he together with assorted other British officials like the king's tutor, [[Edward Ford (courtier)|Edward Ford]], could mould Farouk into an Anglophile.{{sfn|Morsy|1984|p=196}} Lampson's plans were derailed when it emerged that Farouk was more interested in duck-hunting than Ford's lectures and that the king had "bragged" he would "have the hell" with the British, saying they had humiliated him for long enough.{{sfn|Morsy|1984|p=196}}

The fact that Farouk had dismissed all of the British servants employed by his father, while keeping the Italian servants, suggested he had inherited Fuad's Italophilia.{{sfn|Morsy|1984|p=197}} Farouk especially resented Lampson's attempts to set himself up as a surrogate father, finding him impossibly patronising and rude, complaining that at one moment Lampson would address him as a king and the next moment would call him to his face a "naughty boy".{{sfn|Morsy|1984|p=198}} Lampson was 55 when Farouk acceded to the throne and he never learned how to treat the teenage Farouk as an equal.{{sfn|Morsy|1984|p=198}} The official was charmed by Egypt, which he regarded as a wondrous exotic land, but as his Arabic was not particularly good, his contacts with ordinary Egyptians were only on a superficial level.{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|p=148}} Lampson was fluent in French and his social contracts were almost entirely with the Egyptian elite. Lampson wrote in his diary about the death of King Fuad: "Slippery customer though he was, he was an immense factor in the situation here and... we could always in the last resort get him to act in any particular line that we wished".{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|p=151}} About Farouk, Lampson wrote he did not expect to have "a young immature King on our hands. I frankly don't know quite how that problem is going to be handled".{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|p=151}}

Farouk was enamored of the glamorous royal lifestyle. Although he already had thousands of acres of land, dozens of palaces and hundreds of cars, the youthful king often traveled to Europe for grand shopping sprees, earning the ire of many of his subjects. It is said that he ate 600 oysters a week.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,961002,00.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071121140741/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,961002,00.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=21 November 2007|title=Essay: The Shoes of Imelda Marcos|magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]] |first=Lance|last=Morrow|date=31 March 1986}}</ref> His personal vehicle was a red 1947 [[Bentley Mark VI]], with coachwork by [[Figoni et Falaschi]]; he dictated that, other than the military jeeps which made up the rest of his entourage, no other cars were to be painted red.<ref>[http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1991-07-18/topic/9107160560_1_hibernia-auto-restorations-cars-and-owners "Restoring Rusty Relics"], "[https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1298&dat=19910425&id=yuJNAAAAIBAJ&sjid=WosDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5409,4635521 "Cars of old purr like new"]; Marjorie Keyishian, ''[[The New York Times]]'', 18 July 1991</ref> In 1951, he bought the pear-shaped 94-carat [[Star of the East (diamond)|Star of the East diamond]] and a fancy-coloured oval-cut diamond from jeweller [[Harry Winston]].

He was most popular in his early years, and the [[nobility]] largely celebrated him. For example, during the [[Accession Day|accession]] of the young King Farouk, "the [[Abaza family]] had solicited palace authorities to permit the royal train to stop briefly in their village so that the king could partake of refreshments offered in a large, magnificently ornamented tent the family had erected in the train station."<ref>{{cite news|url=http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/762/chrncls.htm |title=The making of a king |work=Al-Ahram Weekly |date=5 October 2005 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080814035001/http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/762/chrncls.htm |archive-date=14 August 2008 }}</ref> The Chief Accountant to Farouk was [[Yadidya Israel]], who was secretly working with the [[Free Officers Movement (Egypt)|Free Officers movement]] that removed the King in 1952, as was the [[Abaza family]]'s own Wagih Abaza, who later became governor of six [[governorates]] in post-Farouk Egypt.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/Archive/2009/936/ee2.htm|title=Al-Ahram Weekly - Entertainment - Lawsuits, love and heartbreak|first=Mohamed|last=Baraka|access-date=16 June 2016|archive-date=19 September 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160919121030/http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/Archive/2009/936/ee2.htm|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.acig.info/CMS/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=184&Itemid=47|title=Egypt's Forgotten Lysanders|last=Peeters|first=Sander}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://egyptianchronicles.blogspot.co.nz/2007/10/eaf-diamond-anniversary.html|title=The EAF 's Diamond Anniversary|date=27 October 2007}}</ref>
[[File:ModernEgypt,_Farouk_I_in_Military_Uniform,_DHP13655-10-21_01.jpg|alt=Farouk I in military uniform|thumb|279x279px|Farouk saluting Egyptian citizens assembled in Abdeen Square in Cairo, c. 1937]]
Farouk's accession initially was encouraging for the populace and nobility, due to his youth and Egyptian roots through his mother [[Nazli Sabri]]. Standing 6'0 tall and extremely handsome in his teenage years, Farouk was viewed as a sex symbol in his early years, making the cover of ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine as a leader to watch while ''[[Life (magazine)|Life]]'' magazine in article on him called the Abdeen Palace "possibly the most magnificent royal place in the world" and Farouk "the very model of a young Muslim gentleman".{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|pp=28–29}} However, the situation was not the same with some Egyptian politicians and elected government officials, with whom Farouk quarreled frequently, despite their loyalty in principle to his throne. There was also the issue of the British influence in the Egyptian government, which Farouk viewed with disdain. Farouk's accession had changed the dynamic of Egyptian politics from being a struggle of an unpopular king vs. the popular Wafd party as it was under his father to that of a popular Wafd vs. an even more popular king.{{sfn|Morsy|1984|pp=198–199}} The Wafd Party, led by [[Mostafa El-Nahas|Nahas Pasha]], had been the most popular party in Egypt since it had been founded in 1919, and the Wafd leaders felt threatened by Farouk's popularity with ordinary Egyptians.{{sfn|Morsy|1984|pp=198–199}} Right from the start of Farouk's reign, the Wafd—who claimed to speak alone for Egypt's masses—saw Farouk as a threat and Nahas Pasha worked constantly to clip the king's power, confirming the prejudices that Farouk had inherited from his father against the Wafd.{{sfn|Morsy|1984|p=199}} When Nahas and the other Wafd leaders traveled to London to sign the Anglo-Egyptian treaty in August 1936, they stopped over in Switzerland to hold discussions with former Khedive [[Abbas II of Egypt|Abbas II]] about how best to depose Farouk and put Abbas back on the throne. {{sfn|Morsy|1984|p=195}}

The dominant figure in the Wafd was [[Makram Ebeid]], the man widely considered to be the most intelligent Egyptian politician of the interwar era.{{sfn|Morsy|1984|p=200}} Ebeid was a Coptic Christian, which made it unacceptable for him to be prime minister of Muslim majority Egypt, and so he exercised power via his protege Nahas, who was the official party leader.{{sfn|Morsy|1984|p=200}} Leaders in the Wafd like Ali Maher, opposed to Ebeid and Nahas, looked to Farouk as a rival source of patronage and power.{{sfn|Morsy|1984|p=200}} Both Ebeid and Nahas disliked Maher, regarding him as an intriguer and an opportunist, and found a further reason to dislike him even more when Maher became Farouk's favorite political adviser.{{sfn|Morsy|1984|p=201}} The nationalistic Wafd Party was the most powerful political machine in Egypt, and when the Wafd was in power, it tended to be very corrupt and nepotistic.{{sfn|Morsy|1984|p=202}} Those excluded from opportunities for corruption, like [[Maher Pasha]], made much of the corruption, in particular the baleful influence of Nahas Pasha's dominating wife{{who|date=January 2022}} (who insisted on giving high government jobs to members of her family, no matter how unqualified they were).{{sfn|Morsy|1984|p=202}} Though the Wafd Party had been founded in 1919 as the anti-British party, the fact that Nahas Pasha championed the 1936 treaty as the best way of keeping Mussolini from conquering Egypt as he had done Ethiopia, paradoxically led Lampson to favor Nahas and the Wafd as the most pro-British party, in turn leading opponents of the Wafd to attack them for "selling out" by signing a treaty which allowed the British to keep their garrisons in Egypt.{{sfn|Morsy|1984|p=203}} As Farouk could not stand the overbearing Lampson, and saw the Wafd as his enemies, the king naturally aligned himself with the anti-Wafd factions and those who saw the treaty as a "sell out".{{sfn|Morsy|1984|pp=204–205}} Lampson personally favored deposing Farouk and putting his cousin Prince Mohammad Ali on the throne in order to keep the Wafd in power, but feared that a coup would destroy the popular legitimacy of Nahas.{{sfn|Morsy|1984|p=205}}

Despite the regency council, Farouk was determined to exercise his royal prerogatives. When Farouk asked for a new railroad station to be built outside of the Montazah palace, the council refused under the grounds that station was only used twice a year by the royal family, when they arrived at the Montazah palace to escape the summer heat in Cairo and when they returned to Cairo in the fall.{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|pp=132–133}} Unwilling to take no for an answer, Farouk called out his servants and led them to demolish the station, forcing the regency council to approve building a new station.{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|p=133}} To counterbalance the Wafd, Farouk from the time he arrived back in Egypt started to use Islam as a political weapon, always attending the Friday prayers at the local mosques, donating to Islamic charities, and courting the [[Muslim Brotherhood]], the only group capable of rivaling the Wafd in terms of the ability to mobilize the masses.{{sfn|Morsy|1984|p=198}} Farouk was known in his early years as the "pious king" as unlike his predecessors he went out of his way to be seen as a devout Muslim.{{sfn|Morsy|1984|p=198}} The Egyptian historian [[Laila Morsy]] wrote that Nahas never really tried to reach an understanding with the Palace, and treated Farouk as an enemy from the start, seeing him as a threat to the Wafd.{{sfn|Morsy|1984|p=199}} The Wafd ran a powerful patronage machine in rural Egypt and the enthusiastic response of the ''fellaheen'' to the king as he threw gold coins at them during his tours of the countryside was viewed by Nahas as a major threat.{{sfn|Morsy|1984|p=200}} Nahas sought to prevent the king from "parading" himself before the masses, claiming that the king's royal tours cost the government too much money, and as the Wafd was a secularist party, charged that Farouk's overt religiosity violated the constitution.{{sfn|Morsy|1984|p=199}} However, the attacks by the secularist Wafd on Farouk for being too pious a Muslim estranged conservative Muslim opinion who rallied in defense of the "pious king".{{sfn|Morsy|1984|pp=199–200}} As the Coptic Christian minority tended to vote as a bloc for the Wafd and many prominent Wafd leaders like Ebeid were Copts, the Wafd was widely seen as the "Coptic party".{{sfn|Morsy|1984|p=200}} The aggressive defense by Nahas of secularism as a core principle of Egyptian life and his attacks against the king as a danger for being a devout Muslim led to a backlash and the charge that secularism was merely a device for allowing the Coptic Christian minority to dominate Egypt at the expense of the Muslim Arab majority.{{sfn|Morsy|1984|p=200}}

Sir [[Edward Ford (courtier)|Edward Ford]], who served as the king's tutor, described him as a relaxed, gregarious and easy-going teenager whose first act upon meeting him in Alexandria was to take him swimming in the Mediterranean.{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|p=131}} However, Ford also described Farouk as incapable of learning and "totally incapable of concentration".{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|pp=131–132}} Whenever Ford began a lesson, Farouk would immediately find a way to end it by insisting that he take Ford out for a drive to see the Egyptian countryside.{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|p=132}} In an interview in 1990, Ford described Farouk as: "He was half a private schoolboy of nine or ten and half a sophisticated young man of twenty-three, able to sit next to a great man like Lord Rutherford and impress him a great deal, usually by bluffing. He did have a very good eye, a royal eye. In England, he was able to spot the most valuable rare book in the Trinity College library in Cambridge. It may have been pure luck. But it impressed everyone. And he spoke wonderful English and Arabic".{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|p=132}} In turn, Farouk explained to Ford why upper-class Egyptian men were still using the titles left over from the Ottoman Empire such as pasha, bey and effendi, which Ford learned that a pasha was equivalent to being an aristocrat, a bey was equivalent to a title of knighthood and an effendi to being an esquire.{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|p=133}} Ford wrote in his notebook: "A pasha may perhaps be defined as a person who looks important, a bey thinks himself important, an effendi hopes to be important".{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|p=133}} When Farouk went on his tour of Upper Egypt in January 1937, going down the Nile on the royal yacht ''Kassed el Kheir'', Ford complained that Farouk never asked for a single lesson, as he was more interested in watching the latest films from Hollywood.{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|pp=133 & 135}} Despite the fact that Upper Egypt was the poorest region in Egypt, various ''mudirs'' (governors) and sheikhs held camel races, gymnastic events, stick boxing matches, banquets and concerts in honor of the king, which led Ford to write of a "record of unrivaled stardom, of which Greta Garbo might well be envious".{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|p=136}}
[[File:PM_King_F_Coin.jpg|alt=King Farouk coin|thumb|Coin issuance after Farouk's coronation, 1937]]
On 29 June 1937, Farouk turned 17 under the Islamic lunar calendar, and since in the Islamic world a baby is considered to be one year old at the time of birth, by Muslim standards he was celebrating his 18th birthday.{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|p=155}} As he was considered 18, he thus attained his majority, and the Regency Council, which had irked Farouk so much, was dissolved.{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|p=155}} Farouk's coronation, held in Cairo, on 20 July 1937, outdid the coronation of George VI, which had just taken place that May, as Farouk held larger parades and fireworks displays than had taken place in London.{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|pp=155–156}} For his coronation, Farouk reduced the fares on the Nile steamers and at least two million ''fellaheen'' (Egyptian peasants) took advantage of the price cut to attend his coronation in Cairo.{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|p=155}} Farouk's coronation speech implicitly criticized the land-owning Turco-Circassian elite that he himself was a part of, as Farouk declared: "The poor are not responsible for their poverty but rather the wealthy. Give to the poor what they merit without their asking. A king is a good king when the poor of the land have the right to live, when the sick have the right to be healed, when the timid have the right to be tranquil and when the ignorant have the right to learn".{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|p=157}} Farouk's coronation speech, which was unexpectedly poetic, was written by his tutor, the poet [[Ahmed Hassanein]], who felt that the king should present himself as the friend of the ''fellaheen'' to undercut the populist Wafd Party.{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|p=157}} Further cementing Farouk's popularity was the announcement made on 24 August 1937, that he was engaged to Safinaz Zulficar, the daughter of an Alexandria judge.{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|p=158}} Farouk's decision to marry a commoner instead of a member of the Turco-Circassian aristocracy increased his popularity with the Egyptian people.{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|p=158}}

The marriage of the king and a commoner was presented to the world as matter of romantic love, but in fact the marriage had been arranged by Queen Nazli, who herself was a commoner and did not want her son to marry a princess from the Turco-Circassian elite who would outrank her.{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|p=158}} Queen Nazli had chosen Zulficar as her daughter-in-law because she was 15 years old and thus presumably could be molded, and came from an upper-middle-class family like herself (Zulficar's mother was a lady-in-waiting to Queen Nazli) and was fluent in French, the language of Egypt's elite.{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|p=158}} Zulficar's father refused to give permission for the marriage under the grounds that his daughter was 15 and too young to be married, and decided to take a vacation in Beirut.{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|p=159}} Unwilling to take no for an answer, Farouk phoned the police chief of Alexandria, who arrested Judge Zulficar as he was boarding the ship for Beirut, and the judge was taken to the Montaza Palace.{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|p=159}} At the Montaza palace, Farouk was waiting and bribed Judge Zulficar into granting permission for the marriage by making him into a pasha.{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|p=159}} At Salfinaz Zulficar's 16th birthday party, Farouk arrived in his Alfa Romeo automobile to propose marriage, and at the same time renamed her Farida because he believed names that started with F were lucky.{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|p=159}} (Safinaz is Persian for "pure rose" while Farida is Arabic for "the only one"; Farouk's decision to give his bride an Arabic name appealed to the masses).{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|p=159}} Farouk gave Farida a cheque for a sum in Egyptian pounds equivalent to $50,000 US dollars as a wedding dowry and a diamond ring worth just as much for the engagement.{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|p=159}} Outside of the [[Ras El Tin Palace]], when the wedding was announced, 22 people were crushed to death and 140 badly injured when the crowd rushed forward to hear the news.{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|p=159}}

In the fall of 1937, Farouk dismissed the Wafd government headed by Prime Minister [[Mostafa El-Nahas]] and replaced him as Prime Minister with [[Mohamed Mahmoud Pasha]].{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|p=160}} The immediate issue were Nahas's attempts to dismiss Farouk's ''chef de cabinet'' Ali Maher together with Farouk's Italian servants, but the more general issue was who would rule Egypt: the Crown or Parliament?{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|p=160}} As a number of ministers in the new government were pro-Italian at the same time that Mussolini was increasing the number of Italian troops in Libya, Farouk's move was seen as pro-Italian and anti-British. Lampson delivered what he called a "little lecture" to Farouk, reporting to London: "It will be fatal if the boy [Farouk] comes to think he is invincible and can play any trick he likes. Personally I have always liked him and he certainly has a most remarkable intelligence and courage—one begins to fear almost too much of the latter".{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|p=160}} At a meeting at the Abdeen Palace in December 1937, where Lampson declared that London was opposed to the Mahmoud government, Lampson reported: "I found him rather baffling to deal with—in extraordinary good humour and apparently taking the whole thing rather flippantly whist at times relapsing into a very 'kingly' attitude".{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|p=161}} Farouk told Lampson that he didn't care if the Wafd had a majority in Parliament, as he was the king and he wanted a prime minister who would obey him, not Parliament.{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|p=161}} Lampson ended the meeting by saying ''[[Whom the gods would destroy|Quos deus vult perdere prius dementat]]'' ("Those God wishes to destroy, he first makes mad").{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|p=161}}

[[File:ModernEgypt, Farouk & Farida Marriage, DHP13655-20-9 01.jpg|thumb|left|A banquet organised on the occasion of the royal wedding of Farouk to Farida. The persons appearing in the photograph are (from left to right): Princess Nimet Mouhtar; Farouk's paternal aunt, Farouk, [[w:Farida of Egypt|Queen Farida]],  [[w:Melek Tourhan|Sultana Melek]] (1869–1956), widow of [[w:Hussein Kamel of Egypt|Hussein Kamel]], Farouk's paternal uncle; Prince Muhammad Ali Ibrahim, Farouk's 2nd cousin once removed.]]On 20 January 1938, Farouk married Farida in a sumptuous public event with Cairo lit up by floodlights and colored lights on the public buildings while boats on the Nile had likewise had colored lights, making the river seem a ribbon of light at night.{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|pp=161–162}} Farida wore a wedding dress that Farouk had bought her, which was handmade in Paris and cost about $30,000 US dollars.{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|p=163}} The royal wedding made Farouk even more popular with the Egyptian people, and he dissolved parliament for elections in April 1938 with the full prestige and wealth of the Crown being used to support parties opposed to the Wafd.{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|p=161}} The prime minister, Nahas Pasha, used the familiar Wafd slogan "The king reigns; he does not rule", but the Wafd suffered a massive defeat in the election.{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|p=161}} In 1938, Farouk was approached by the Iranian ambassador with a message from Reza Khan, the Shah of Iran, asking that his sister be married to Mohammad Reza, the Crown Prince of Iran.{{sfn|Milani|2011|p=62}} When a group of Iranian emissaries arrived in Cairo bearing gifts from Reza Khan such as a "diamond necklace, diamond brooch, diamond earrings", Farouk was not impressed, taking the Iranian delegation on a tour of his five palaces to show them proper royal splendor and asked if there was anything comparable in Iran.{{sfn|Milani|2011|p=63}} Nonetheless, Farouk agreed in a joint press communique issued with Reza Khan on 26 May 1938, that Princess Fawzia would marry Crown Prince Mohammad Reza, who first learned that he was now engaged to Fawzia when he read the press release.{{sfn|Milani|2011|p=63}}

Farouk broke with Muslim tradition by taking Queen Farida everywhere with him, and letting her go unveiled.{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|p=165}} On 17 November 1938, Farouk became a father when Farida gave birth to Princess Farial, a considerable disappointment as Farouk wanted a son, all the more because he knew his cousin, Prince Mohammad Ali, was scheming to take the throne.{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|p=173}} In March 1939, Farouk sent the royal yacht ''Mahroussa'' to Iran to pick up the Crown Prince.{{sfn|Milani|2011|p=63}} On 15 March 1939, Mohammad Reza married Fawzia in Cairo and afterwards Farouk took his brother-in-law on a tour of Egypt, showing him his five palaces, the Pyramids, Al-Azhar University and other sites in Egypt.{{sfn|Milani|2011|p=63}} In April 1939, the German propaganda minister, Dr. [[Josef Goebbels]], visited Cairo and received a warm welcome from the king.{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|p=177}} The [[Danzig crisis]] which led to [[World War II]] later that year had already begun when Farouk met Goebbels, and the meeting caused Lampson much alarm, as he suspected the king was an [[Axis powers|Axis]] sympathizer.{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|p=177}} In August 1939, Farouk appointed his favorite politician, Maher Pasha, prime minister.{{sfn|Stadiem|1991|p=178}}