Jacques de Menou de Boussay was a Napoleonic general who converted to Islam. He served Napoleon during the Egyptian campaign and it was there that he converted to Islam and married his wife, an Egyptian Muslim woman.
Jacques François de Menou, who called himself Abdallah Menou after his conversion to Islam, was born in Boussay into the Menou family. When he left for Egypt, Menou, who had long since abandoned his titles and the particle "de," was forty-eight years old. He was large, bald, jovial, pleasure-seeking, and thus had nothing of the revolutionary warrior about him. He left Paris with debts amounting to several thousand francs.
The Egyptian Sojourn
Then, he became governor of Rosetta in Egypt and behaved like a Pasha with his taste for luxury. To win over the sheiks, he led a life similar to theirs and did not hesitate to go to mosques to prove his respect for their beliefs.
In the presence of muftis, he solemnly abjured the Christian religion in the following terms: "I confess that there is no God but Allah and that Mohammed is his prophet. Knowing what this formula means, convinced and imbued with the spirit of this profession of faith, abandoning the Christian religion and every other false religion."
This was only a step, a prerequisite. Menou believed he would only have truly adopted the customs of the country if he married an Egyptian woman. And on the 25th of the month of Ramadan in the year 1213 of the Hijra, he married Zobeidah, daughter of Mohammed Ali Bawab, a woman divorced from Salim Agha Ni'mat Allah, who received a dowry of 2,000 riyals and one hundred gold dinars.
Also Read | The Story of the Legendary Prester John
His wife, the unfortunate Zobeidah, whom Menou had been obliged to bring back in his luggage after the Egyptian campaign, had now become a burden to him. Settled sumptuously in Turin where he lived a grand life, he was more often seen in the company of dancers and actresses, giving balls that lasted three days and three nights and where the Egyptian woman would have cut a poor figure. She inspired little sympathy, and it was recounted that at the time of Pope Pius VII's passage through Turin on his way to Paris for Napoleon's coronation, after presenting his wife, the officers of his staff, and the high officials of his administration to the Holy Father, Menou requested a private audience, which was immediately granted to him.
— Holy Father, said Menou, throwing himself at the Pope's knees, you
know of my apostasy in Egypt. Grant me your pardon.
— General, replied the Pope, I forgive you with all my heart, for you
will not do it again.
The Return to Paris
The Emperor, after paying his debts, ordered him to return to Paris, an order that was not carried out, for a few days later, Menou died of a violent fever. Subsequently, Zobeidah obtained an exceptional pension of 6,000 francs, which she enjoyed until June 16, 1816, the date of her death.
Source: didier ferrand