1888 - 1956
Egyptian author, political leader, and lawyer.
Born to a landowning family in Daqahliyya, Muhammad Husayn Haykal was educated at the Cairo School of Law and at the University of Paris, where he wrote his doctoral thesis on the Egyptian public debt (1912). Homesick for his native village, he also wrote a bucolic fiction, called Zaynab (Cairo, 1914), which is usually described as the first modern Arabic novel.
Upon returning to Egypt, he practiced law, wrote for al-Jarida of Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid (with whom he remained close throughout his life), published a magazine called al-Sufur during World War I, and taught at the School of Law. Egypt had become a British protectorate in 1914, and when the nationwide revolution for independence broke out in 1919, he backed the Wafd and Saʿd Zaghlul, one of its leaders, but broke with them in 1921 over negotiations with Britain. At this time, Prime Minister Adli Yakan, Haykal, and other educated Egyptians formed the Constitutional Liberal Party (Hizb alAhrar al-Dusturiyyin), calling for parliamentary democracy. In 1922, Haykal became editor of its newspaper, al-Siyasa, and he later founded an influential weekly edition, al-Siyasa al-Usbuʿiyya. He continued his literary production with the books Fi awqat al-faragh (Cairo, 1925), Tarajim misriyya wa gharbiyya (Cairo, 1929), and a touching eulogy of his son who died in childhood, called Waladi (Cairo, 1931).
In 1934, when the Constitutional Liberals were competing for popular favor with the Wafd, the palace, and rising Muslim groups, he published Hayat Muhammad (Cairo, 1934), an attempt to apply modern scholarship to the biography of the prophet Muhammad and to reconcile the principles of personal freedom with the teachings of Islam. Increasingly pious, he made the pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj) in 1936, and published Fi manzal al-wahy (Cairo, 1937), relating his experience as a pilgrim. He served as Egypt's minister in seven cabinets in the late 1930s and the 1940s and as president of the Senate from 1945 to 1950. He published his last novel Hakadha khuliqat (Cairo, 1955) and also his memoirs, Mudhakkirat fi al-siyasa al-misriyya (Cairo, 1951 - 1978, 3 vols.), of which two volumes appeared in his lifetime and the third posthumously. An ambitious man with many talents, he often felt a conflict between secularism and Islam and between the democratic principles of his party and his belief that Egypt should be governed by its most educated citizens.
Bibliography
Smith, Charles D. Islam and the Search for Social Order in Modern Egypt: A Biography of Muhammad Husayn Haykal. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983.
Wessels, Antonie. A Modern Arabic Biography of Muhammad. Leiden, Netherlands: E.J. Brill, 1972.
— ARTHUR GOLDSCHMIDT
