Dean of contemporary Arabic literature and a pioneer of enlightenment, Taha Hussein was born in AI-Minya province, Upper Egypt, on November 14th, 1889 and grew up, the seventh of thirteen children, in a lower middle-class family. At a very early age, he contracted a simple eye infection and, due to faulty treatment by an unskilled local practitioner, was blinded, at the age of three.
He was placed in a kuttab (a school where children learn Quran and reading and writing) and was later sent to Al-Azhar University, where he acquired a thorough knowledge of religion and Arabic literature in the traditional manner. He felt deep dis******* with the narrow thinking and conservatism of his tutors.
In 1908, he learned of the founding of a new, secular university as part of a national effort to promote education in Egypt under British occupation, and was very keen to enter it. He was blind and poor, but overcoming many obstacles, he was accepted in that university. He later stated, in Al-Ayyam (The Days) that the doors of knowledge were from that day opened wide for him.
In 1914, he was the first graduate of this university to receive a Ph.D with his thesis on the skeptic poet and philosopher Abu-Alalaa’ AI-Ma'arri.
Again with much trouble, he was sent to study in France on the university's educational mission. His blindness caused him continuing pains, aggravated by a careless brother, presumably sent to take care of him. It was in France that he met his ‘sweet voice’, Suzanne, who came to read to him since not all the references needed were available in braille. She later became his wife, his mentor, advisor, assistant, mother to his children, great love and best friend. He states that since he first heard that 'sweet voice', anguish never entered his heart."
After his death, Suzanne wrote Ma'ak (With You), published in Arabic; a touching remembrance of their life together.
His doctoral dissertation, written in 1917, was on lbn Khaldun, the fourteenth century Arab historian, the founder of sociology.
In 1918 he obtained his second PhD in Social Philosophy from the Sorbonne, Paris.
In 1919 he received a diploma in post-graduate studies in the Roman Civil Code from the same university.
He was granted honorary doctorates from the universities of Oxford, Madrid, and Rome.
In 1919 he was appointed a professor of history at the Egyptian University. He did not confine himself to political and constituational history but transferred to his students his knowledge of Greek drama such as Sophocles and Aeschylus.
When he assumed office as Minister of Education in 1950, he managed to put his motto, "Education is like water we drink and the air we breath," into practice.
He succeeded in making all elementary and secondary education.
Millions of Egyptians owe their literacy to Taha Hussein
Taha Hussein
العرض الشجري
