The year 2022 witnessed the departure of many prominent personalities in various political, artistic, sports and other fields.
In the following, we review Arab and international personalities who passed away this year and left an important impact behind them.
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Elizabeth succeeded her father, George VI, to the throne
At the age of 96, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II passed away from our world at Balmoral Castle, Scotland, on September 8, after seventy years in power, to be the longest-serving monarch of the United Kingdom on the throne.
The Queen ascended the throne in 1952, and her era witnessed tremendous social changes. The name of Queen Elizabeth II topped the headlines of Arab and Western newspapers, and most countries of the world called her because of her strong influence and presence at the global level.
The United Kingdom bid farewell to its beloved, late Queen Elizabeth II, in a solemn funeral, amid an unprecedented public attendance that was keen to follow the funeral from its launch from Westminster Hall to Windsor Castle.
Tens of thousands of people, including kings, heads of state, prime ministers and members of royal families, participated in the official funeral of the late Queen, who all came to bid farewell to the Queen and offer condolences.
Queen Elizabeth II was buried next to her husband in the King George VI Memorial Chapel in St George’s Chapel in Windsor.
She was succeeded on the throne by her son, King Charles III.
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Pele is the youngest player to win the World Cup, and the only one to win three World Cups
A few days away from the end of the year, football legend, Brazilian Pele, passed away on December 29, at the age of 82, after suffering from health problems related to the kidneys and prostate.
Pele, who was chosen by FIFA as the best player of the twentieth century, won three World Cup titles with his country in 1958, 1962 and 1970.
He also set a record for the number of goals, as he scored 1281 goals in 1363 games in which he participated during his football career.
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Many Russians blame Gorbachev for the demise and disintegration of the Soviet Union, while in the West he is seen as the architect of reform that created the conditions for the end of the Cold War.
On August 30, the last president of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, died at the age of 91, after a struggle with illness.
Gorbachev, who came to power in 1985, is the spiritual father of the principles of “perestroika”, meaning restructuring, and “glasnost”, meaning openness and transparency, through which he tried to generalize the reform process of the Soviet Union, but it ended with its dissolution in 1991.
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Muzaffar al-Nawab was born in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, in 1934. He is a descendant of the “Nawab” family that ruled one of the northern Indian states before the British occupation of India.
One of the most prominent Iraqi and Arab poets, Muzaffar al-Nawab, died at the age of 88, on May 20, in the Emirates.
The deputies emerged in the fifties and sixties of the last century, and he was famous for his political poems inside and outside Iraq, but his emotional and flirtatious poetry, especially in the Iraqi colloquial dialect, is no less beautiful, elegant and charming.
The deputies sided with the issues of the poor, the simple, justice, and opposition to exploitation, colonialism, and the prevailing systems of government, so he was imprisoned and prosecuted for a long time inside his homeland, and later he was forced to live in exile in his exile, which lasted nearly half a century.
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The body of Khalifa bin Zayed was buried in Al Bateen Cemetery in Abu Dhabi
At the age of 73, the President of the UAE, Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, has passed away.
Khalifa assumed the rule of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi on November 2, 2004, and the presidency of the UAE on the second day, succeeding his father, Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan.
Khalifa bin Zayed’s personal wealth is estimated at about $18 billion, and he was the fourth richest ruler in the world.
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Al-Qaradawi was one of the most prominent religious figures in the Arab world
The man whose controversial stances were divided, especially during the Arab Spring and related to the use of violence, the Islamic preacher Yusuf al-Qaradawi, passed away on September 26, at the age of 96.
Al-Qaradawi, the founder and former president of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, was imprisoned in Egypt more than once on charges of belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood, which Egypt classified as a banned group at several stages.
Al-Qaradawi obtained Qatari citizenship and is considered one of the most prominent spiritual leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, which was banned in Egypt in 2013.
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Shireen Abu Aqleh was born in January 1971 in Jerusalem
The Palestinian journalist for Al-Jazeera satellite channel, Sherine Abu Aqleh, was killed after a bullet pierced her head while she was covering the Israeli forces’ storming of the Jenin camp in the occupied West Bank, on the morning of May 11.
Eyewitnesses said at the time that the Israeli forces shot her, while the Israeli authorities denied targeting her. She says that she was killed during random shooting by Palestinian gunmen.
The case of Sherine’s murder is still active today at the legal level. Al-Jazeera Network announced this month that it had filed a lawsuit against the Israeli army forces in the International Criminal Court on charges of assassinating Abu Aqelah.
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Five days after he fell into a well, Moroccan ambulance teams pulled out the dead child, Rayan, after they had to dig a tunnel.
The attempt to rescue Ryan received widespread sympathy on social media, and ended in disappointment when his death was announced on February 5.
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The Jordanian political opponent, Laith Shubailat, died on December 18, due to a health problem, at the age of 80.
Shubailat was a deputy, and was imprisoned in the late eighties. Shbeilat was known for his hostility to Israel.
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Bab Al-Hara gained high popularity, but it was criticized for its content as well as its large number of parts
The director of Bab Al-Hara, one of the most prominent series that embodied the Levantine environment during the French occupation of Syria, Bassam Al-Mulla, died on January 22 at the age of 66.
Al-Mulla belongs to an artistic family. His father, actor Adham Al-Mulla, and his brothers, directors Moamen and Bashar Al-Mulla, and actor Moayad Al-Mulla, and his two sons, Adham and Shams Al-Mulla, participated as actors in the series “Bab Al-Hara.”
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Antoinette Naguib is famous for her role in the Syrian drama, Mother and Grandmother
On the morning of August 17, the Syrian actress, Antoinette Najib, passed away at the age of 92, after an artistic career that began in the sixties of the twentieth century.
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Godard began his artistic career as a film critic before directing the new film “Breathless” in his style and exciting at the same time.
This year, the film director, Jean-Luc Godard, the godfather of the new wave of cinema in France, passed away at the age of 91, on September 13.
Godard ended his life voluntarily, after suffering from multiple illnesses.
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The United States Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has apologized to Little Feather for being booed while standing on stage at the Academy Awards nearly 50 years ago.
After suffering from breast cancer, the Native American activist and actress, Tsachen Littlefeather, died on October 2 at the age of 75.
Little Feather appeared on live television in 1973 declining an Academy Award on behalf of Marlon Brando, who won Best Actor for The Godfather.
Brando declined the award on the grounds that Indigenous peoples are not properly represented in the American film industry.
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Lata Mangeshkar, one of the cultural icons and national treasures of India, passed away at the age of 92.
She rose to fame in Bollywood, although she only appeared on screen a few times.
For decades, the “Nightingale of Bollywood” has been the most popular singer that all movie stars want to sing. At the same time, she was selling tens of thousands of albums, and the number of her songs reached 30,000, covering many artistic colors and a number of languages reaching 36 languages.
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Cohen was the first player from the ’66 team to retire from international football
A week before the end of the year, English footballer George Cohen died at the age of 83.
Cohen’s name will remain engraved in memory, and he was the one in the England team that won the World Cup in 1966. This is the only time that England won the World Cup.
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Former Chinese President Jiang Zemin died on November 30, at the age of 96, after suffering from leukemia.
Under the leadership of Zemin, between 1993 and 2003, China witnessed a huge economic boom, as the Communists tightened their grip on power, and China occupied a prominent position among the largest international powers.
During his reign, Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997.
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Maria Jana Korbelova was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1937
Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright died at the age of 84, after a struggle with cancer, on March 23.
Albright, an immigrant from Czechoslovakia, became the first American woman to hold the post of Secretary of State in 1997.