Tawfiq al-Hakim
1898 - 1987
Egyptian dramatist, novelist, and man of letters.
Tawfiq al-Hakim was born in Alexandria, and his early life was shaped by his father's frequent moves from job to job and by his ambition that his son should become a lawyer. Al-Hakim's real interests, however, lay elsewhere; while still a student at the School of Law in Cairo, he wrote some plays (published under a pseudonym) for the Ukasha troupe. When he failed in his legal studies, his father sent him to France to study for a doctorate. Al-Hakim traveled to Paris in 1925, an event that was to be a turning point in his life. Instead of studying law, he immersed himself in European culture, particularly drama, and was strongly influenced by the works of Shaw, Pirandello, Ibsen, and Maeterlinck. Upon returning to Egypt in 1928, he prepared for publication a number of literary projects begun in Paris but also worked for a time as a deputy public prosecutor (naʾib) in the Nile delta area and, later, as an official in the ministry of social affairs. In 1943 he resigned his position as a civil servant to devote himself to his writing. Later in life, and particularly during the presidency of Anwar al-Sadat, he became somewhat controversial, partly because of his book Awdat al-Waʿy (1974; published in 1985 in English as The Return of Consciousness), in which the course of the Egyptian revolution and the status of Egypt's former president Gamal Abdel Nasser was critically reexamined. Only a short time before his death in 1987, he published a series of articles under the title "Hiwar maʿ Allah" (Conversation with God), which aroused the ire of the religious establishment.
The inspiration that al-Hakim had found in France bore fruit when two of his works were published in 1933 to immediate critical acclaim: the play Ahl al-Kahf (People of the cave) and the novel Awdat al-Ruh (Return of the spirit). The latter was to be the first of a series of partially autobiographical contributions to fiction to be published in the 1930s. While it deals with the life of an Egyptian family during the turbulent years surrounding the revolution of 1919, Yawmiyyat Naʾib fi al-Aryaf (Diary of a provincial public prosecutor, 1937; published in English as The Maze of Justice, 1989) is a most successful portrait of the dilemma faced by Egyptian rural society in its confrontation with the laws and imported values of Europe, and Usfur min al-Sharq (1938; published in English as A Bird from the East, 1966) takes Muhsin, the main character in Awdat al-Ruh, to Paris.
Ahl al-Kahf was to mark the official beginning of the most notable career in Arabic drama to date. Along with several other plays written in the 1930s and 1940s (such as Shahrazad [1934; in English, 1981], Pygmalion [1942], and Al-Malik Udib [1949; in English, King Oedipus, 1981]), it dealt with historical and philosophical themes culled from a wide variety of sources and thus was seen as providing the dramatic genre with a cultural status that it had not enjoyed previously. Al-Hakim's dramatic output is vast and extends over five decades. It includes other plays with philosophical themes, two collections of shorter plays addressing social issues, and a number of works that experiment with dramatic technique (such as Ya Tali al-Shajara [Oh, tree climber, 1962; in English, The Tree Climber, 1966] and varying levels of language (such as Al-Safqa [The deal, 1956]).
Tawfiq al-Hakim is the major pioneer figure in the development of a dramatic tradition in modern Arabic literature, and he has attained the status of one of the greatest Arab litterateurs of the twentieth century.
Bibliography
Long, Richard. Tawfiq al-Hakim: Playwright of Egypt. London: Ithaca, 1979.
Starkey, Paul. From the Ivory Tower: A Critical Study of Tawfiq alHakim. London: Ithaca for the Middle East Centre, St. Antony's College, Oxford, 1987.
— ROGER ALLEN
