He was born as "His Sultanic Highness" Farouk bin Fuad, Hereditary Prince of Egypt and Sudan, on 11 February 1920 (Guimadea I, 1338 in Muslim years) at Abdeen Palace, Cairo, the eldest child of Sultan Fuad I (later King Fuad I) and his second wife, Nazli Sabri. He was of 10/16 Circassian (bilineal), 3/16 Turkish (bilineal), 2/16 French (matrilineal) and 1/16 Albanian (patrilineal) descent. Farouk was always proud of his Albanian heritage and as king, he was protected by 30 Albanian bodyguards, as he regarded Albanians as the only people he could trust with his life. Despite the Albanian origin of his house, Farouk in common with the other members of Egypt's Ottoman elite had more Circassian blood in him as Mohammad Ali the Great and his successors were fond of their Circassian slave girls, which were one of the most prized possessions of an Ottoman official. As a child, Farouk met his grandmother, a woman with one arm. Farouk's first languages were Turkish and French (the languages of the Egyptian elite), and he always thought of himself as an Egyptian rather than as an Arab, having no interest in Arab nationalism except as a way of increasing Egypt's power in the Middle East. Until the 1952 revolution, Egypt was dominated by an elite made up of interrelated families of Turkish, Circassian and Albanian origin known to historians as the Turco-Circassian elite who owned most of the land, upon which the "fellaheen" (Egyptian peasants) toiled upon as tenant farmers. The Turco-Circassian aristocracy made up less than 1% of the population, but owned 3/4 of all the farmland in Egypt. Egypt under the rule of the Mohammad Ali dynasty was characterized by some of the starkest income disparities in the world as the rich in Egypt tended to be extremely rich while the poor tended to be extremely poor.