Mohamed Morsi

Mohamed Morsi Isa al-Ayyat was an Egyptian engineer and politician who served as the country's fifth president from June 2012 to July 2013, the first elected head of state in Egypt's history and the first Islamist to hold the office. Born on August 8, 1951, in the Nile Delta village of El Adwah, he was raised in a farming family of modest means.

Morsi studied engineering at Cairo University and earned a doctorate at the University of Southern California in 1982. He taught at California State University, Northridge, before returning to Egypt in 1985 to chair the engineering department at Zagazig University. He joined the Muslim Brotherhood and won a parliamentary seat as an independent in 2000.

After the 2011 Tahrir Square uprising toppled Hosni Mubarak, the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party nominated Morsi as its presidential candidate. He defeated Mubarak's last prime minister, Ahmed Shafik, in a runoff with roughly 51.7 percent of the vote. His year in office was turbulent: a November 2012 constitutional declaration granting him sweeping powers triggered mass protests, and a hastily approved Islamist-tinted constitution polarized the country.

On July 3, 2013, after days of huge anti-Morsi demonstrations, the military under General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi removed and detained him. He was charged with espionage, incitement to murder, and other crimes, and held in solitary confinement for nearly six years. He collapsed and died in a Cairo courtroom on June 17, 2019, during a trial session.

The name Mohamed is the most widely given name in the world, an Arabic name meaning praiseworthy, borne by the Prophet of Islam. He answered to the masculine form his entire life.