[1] Shawqi was born in Cairo on October 17, 1868, to a wealthy family of mixed Egyptian, Circassian, Turkish, Kurdish, and Greek roots.

At the age of four, he joined a kuttab in the Sayyida Zeinab neighborhood, memorising there parts of the Holy Qur'an and learning the principles of reading and writing.

[5] He was assigned to represent the Egyptian government at the Orientalist Conference held in Geneva, until World War I broke out and the British deposed of the Khedive.

In 1927 he was crowned by his peers Amir al-Sho’araa’ (literally, "the Prince of Poets") in recognition of his considerable contributions to the literary field.

After returning to Egypt he built a new house at Giza which he named the new Karmet Ibn Hani, today the Ahmad Shawqi Museum.

During this period, his feeling of nostalgia and sense of alienation directed his poetic talent to patriotic poems on Egypt as well as the Arab world and panarabism.

[8] Shawqi's work was a part of some of the Nahda's main literary and cultural debates, in which tradition, authenticity, and formality were positioned against experimentation, vulgarity, and Westernization.

[11] The art featured a quote from Shawqi's poetry in place of the "oo" in the Google logo, which in English translates to: My homeland is always in my mind even if I were in paradise.