History of the Republic of Egypt
On 22–26 July 1952, the Free Officers, a group of disaffected officers in the Egyptian army founded by Gamal Abdel Nasser, and headed by General Muhammad Naguib, initiated the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 with the overthrowing King Farouk, whom the military blamed for Egypt's poor performance in the 1948 war with Israel and lack of progress in fighting poverty, disease, and illiteracy in Egypt. In the following two years, the Free Officers consolidated power, and, following a brief experiment with civilian rule, abrogated the 1953 constitution, and declared Egypt a republic on 18 June 1953, Muhammad Naguib as Egypt's first President.
List of monarchs of the Muhammad Ali dynasty
Rulers of the Muhammad Ali Dynasty governed Egypt and Sudan as absolute monarchs until constitutional rule was established in August 1878. Following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the Egyptian and Sudanese monarchy emerged as the most important in the Middle East and the wider Arab world. Largely powerless during the British occupation, Egypt and Sudan's monarchs saw their powers increased following the recognition of independence, and the subsequent adoption of the 1923 Constitution, the most liberal in the country's history. Although King Fuad I often ruled as an autocrat, partly because he repeatedly overrode some provisions of the Constitution, Egypt and Sudan had the freest parliament in the region. During Fuad's reign and that of his son, Farouk, the country witnessed six free parliamentary elections and enjoyed a free press as well as an independent judiciary. According to Philip Mansel, "the Egyptian monarchy appeared so splendid, powerful and popular that King Farouk's ignominious end seems inexplicable." The Muhammad Ali Dynasty's downfall is often regarded as having begun with the Abdeen Palace Incident of 1942, which greatly discredited the King. It accelerated with the growing discontent of Egypt's armed forces following the country's defeat in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Disgruntled members of the military formed the Free Officers Movement, which led a coup d'état on 23 July 1952, thereby marking the beginning of the Egyptian Revolution of 1952. The toppling of the monarchy, and the resultant establishment of a revolutionary republican government, was the first of its kind in the modern Arab world, and was a crucial event in the region's history; it accelerated dramatically the rise of Pan-Arabism, and had a domino effect leading to similar military overthrows of the monarchies of Iraq (1958), North Yemen (1962), and Libya (1969). Egypt has had a republican form of government since the end of monarchical rule. Although the establishment of genuine democratic rule was one of the six core principles of the Revolution, political parties were banned in 1953 and the country was turned into a military dictatorship. The thriving pluralism that characterized political life during the latter period of the Muhammad Ali Dynasty's rule was thus brought to an end. Even though a multi-party system was officially restored in Egypt in 1976, the country has never recovered the level of political freedom it had enjoyed during the monarchy. In common with most deposed royal families, the Muhammad Ali Dynasty was initially vilified by the new revolutionary regime. Nonetheless, it has undergone re-evaluation in recent years; nostalgia for the former monarchy has been growing among some in Egypt, largely fuelled by the airing in 2007 of a hugely successful serial about the life of King Farouk I.