Ahmad Hasanein Pasha

Designed by the world-famous architect Hasan Fathi

The extant structure is in good structural condition, although it shows signs of inadequate maintenance: peeling paint, soiled wall surfaces, the floor and cenotaphs covered with birds’ droppings, haphazardly blocked openings.
The existing mausoleum is only a part of an originally larger layout. Physical evidence on site shows that at least parts or the original design were was not only originally planned, but actually constructed and then partly destroyed. The original complex was laid out on a lot measuring 62 metres from north to south and with the eastern border slanting, so the lot tapered from 32.6 meters on the north to 16 metres on the south. The mausoleum located in the northern part of the lot was accessed from an elevated terrace with arcades of five arches on each side. The openings in the eastern and western sides of the mausoleum and its northern annexe led to L-shaped rooms wrapping around small square courtyards attached to the mausoleum, with arcades on three columns to two sides. The entrance to the complex was through a neo-Mamluk portal in the southern side of the western wall of the enclosure. It led to a vestibule covered with two domes that was located in a building occupying the southern side of the lot. The building also included a sabil in the form of a loggia with two openings in the southern façade, a guard’s room and sanitary service facilities. The space between the entrance building and the mausoleum was taken up by a garden with water features including a narrow long channel at its axis and a reflecting pool in front of the mausoleum.
The existing mausoleum is just a part of the original layout. The whole western side of the lot, about 8 metres wide, was obliterated when the Salah Salem road was built. Only scant traces of the arcade once adjacent to the western wall of the mausoleum remain. The entrance building has been demolished, and the garden built up with nondescript structures, as was the eastern side of the front courtyard in front of the mausoleum. The arcaded courtyard east of the mausoleum has been covered with a roof; it is unknown how much of its colonnaded arcades are preserved (the unit was not accessible at the time of recording.)
The original design drawings by Hasan Fathy are preserved in the American University in Cairo Rare Books and Special Collections Digital library (see point 17, 4), a reproduction is attached to this record with the photographic record.

Ahmad Muhammad Makhlouf Hasanein al-Bulaqi, known as Ahmad Hasanein Bey, was born on 31 October 1889 in Bulaq, the commercial Nile port of Cairo. His father was a professor at al-Azhar; his grandfather Ahmad Pasha Mazhar Hasanein was the last Admiral of the Egyptian fleet. Hasanein Bey was educated in Cairo and graduated in 1914 from Balliol College at the University of Oxford. During the First World War he served as the Arab Secretary to General Maxwell, British Commanding Officer in Cairo in 1914. He was appointed a Member of the British Empire (MBE) and received the 1915 star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal. (2)
Hassanein Bey was a renowned explorer and published The Lost Oases (1925), which describes his 1923 journey of 2,200 miles by camel from the Egyptian port of Sollum on the shores of the Mediterranean to Al Obeid Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. He led the seven-month expedition which discovered the oases of Jebel Arkenu and Jebel Ouenat and he was awarded the Founder’s Medal by the Royal Geographical Society in 1924. (2)
In 1924 he was appointed First Secretary of the Egyptian Legation in Washington, D.C. From 1925 to 1936 he was adviser to King Fuad and tutor of Crown Prince Faruk during his studies in London. He also served as Chamberlain to Queen Nazli between 1936 and 1946. He came to be considered one of the most influential men in Egypt (2).
Hassanein Bey was an accomplished fencer and represented Egypt in the Olympic Games in Brussels 1920 and Paris 1924. (2) He was also a pilot (3).
In 1926 he married Lutfia Hanim (born 1905), daughter of Seyfullah Yousri Pasha, first Egyptian Ambassador to Washington D.C., and Princess Shavikar Hanim Effendi, ex-wife of King Fuad. They later divorced. (3)
Hassanein Bey died on 19 February 1946, killed in a car accident involving a British military vehicle. (2) The accident happened on the Qasr al-Nil Bridge in Cairo in rainy weather (3).
Ahmad Hasanein was a brother-in-law to Hasan Fathi, the designer of the mausoleum. (1)
The mausoleum was built with funding from the Egyptian government, then headed by the prime minister Mahmud Fahmy al-Nuqrashi [who is buried in a mausoleum nearby – record No 04], in recognition of Ahmad Hasanein’s lifelong contributions to Egypt (1, 3, 5).

• (1) Serageldin, Ismail, ed. Hasan Fathy Bibliotheca Alexandrina 2007, p. 66-7
• (2) Website of the De Laszlo Archive Trust: https://www.delaszlocatalogueraisonne.com/catalogue/the-catalogue/hassanein-al-bulaki-bey-ahmed-mohamed-makhlouf-111042 retrieved 12 October 2023
• (3) ‘Amara al-ard: blog of Ashraf ‘Abd al-Rahman Muhammad: 651 – darih ahmad hasanein basha bi al-qahira masr, posted 1 March 2015 (in Arabic): https://earth-arch.blogspot.com/2015/03/651.html retrieved 12 October 2023
• (4) The American University in Cairo Rare Books and Special Collections Digital library, Object Identifier: HF 46.01: original plan and elevation design drawing by Hasan Fathy, 1946 https://digitalcollections.aucegypt.edu/digital/collection/p15795coll13/id/19/rec/4 retrieved 12 October 2023
• (5) Steele, James An Architecture for People: The Complete Works of Hassan Fathy The American University in Cairo Press 1997, p. 191