Anwar Sadat and his hobby of stamps and coins
Anwar Sadat: President or Amateur?
Anwar Sadat, the third president of the Arab Republic of Egypt and the leader in the 1973 war, how did he develop a hobby of collecting stamps and coins? When someone mentions stamp and coin collecting among Egypt's rulers, the names of His Majesty King Farouk or King Fuad's mother immediately come to mind. However, there was another hobbyist about whom little is mentioned: the late President Mohamed Anwar Sadat!
The story, as told by him himself to an American magazine, is as follows:
“After the assassination attempt on Amin Osman, I was dismissed from the army and lived in abject poverty. My colleagues abandoned me, fearing persecution from the Egyptian regime, specifically the political police, and none of them tried to help me at all. During that time, my daughter became seriously ill, and since I didn't have the money for her treatment, I finally decided to sell my cherished stamp and coin collections. Unfortunately, fate intervened, and when I returned home with the medicine, my beloved daughter had already passed away.“
After this incident, the court acquitted Anwar Sadat of the assassination attempt. However, during his detention, he met Gamal Abdel Nasser, the junior officer who had plotted to overthrow the Egyptian regime. During those days, he also met Albert Mizrahi, an Egyptian Jew who published a semi-weekly revolutionary magazine attacking the king. Sadat was very impressed with the magazine, and his relationship with Mizrahi strengthened. However, after the events of July 23 and the Tripartite Aggression against Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser's regime arrested Albert Mizrahi five times, shut down his magazine, and expelled him and his wife, Sully, from the Journalists Syndicate. In 1960, the Egyptian authorities finally issued a one-way travel document for Albert, his wife, and his daughter, Maurice, and did not allow them to leave with more than 48 Egyptian piasters.
Albert lived for a year as a political refugee in France, then immigrated to the United States, settling in Kansas. He worked as a photographer for two years until he was finally able to own a photography studio, half of which he dedicated as a coin shop. Albert was one of the amateur collectors who won several valuable lots of coins and stamps. Qubba Palace Auction The renowned figure dreamed of holding a world-class Egyptian stamp and coin exhibition, but his expulsion from Egypt prevented him from doing so. While in America, he tried to purchase recent issues of Egyptian stamps and coins and acquire his collection in Egypt, but postal censorship confiscated all his letters, leading him to despair. However, he managed to contact Sadat, who was Speaker of the National Assembly at the time, seeking his assistance, which Sadat provided to his old friend.
Before Anwar Sadat’s visit to the United States in 1979, he had ordered the staff of the Egyptian embassy in Washington to arrange a meeting with Albert Mizrahi while the Egyptian president was a guest of the American president at Blair House. When the meeting finally took place, Sadat greeted his friend with hugs and kisses and ordered that a picture be taken of them together in appreciation of Albert’s love for his country despite the intransigence of President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s regime towards him. Albert presented gifts of American currency to Sadat, who in turn presented two sets of Egyptian banknotes stamped with his signature. They agreed to return the visit, and indeed Albert returned to Egypt the following year, 1980, and convinced Sadat to organize an international exhibition of Egyptian currency under the auspices of the presidency within two years. However, this exhibition was never held due to the events of October 1981.
The article was previously published in the group The Five Adventurers of Stamp Collectors 2015
Sources:
Numismatist 1979 March
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