Abbas el-Akkad

Abbas el-Akkad (Abbas Mahmoud al-Aqqad, 1889-1964) was an Egyptian journalist, poet and literary critic, and a member of the Academy of the Arabic Language in Cairo. His writing ranged across poetry, criticism, Islamic studies, history, philosophy, politics, biography and science, which is why he is often described as a polymath of the early twentieth-century Arab world.

He was born in Aswan, in Upper Egypt, in 1889. His father was a money-changer from the city of Damietta, and his mother had Kurdish roots. He completed only elementary school, but made up for his limited formal education by buying books with his entire weekly allowance, something his schoolmates did not do. He read widely on religion, geography and history, and he was known for his fluent English and French and his deep familiarity with German literature.

He was also an outspoken political thinker. He was jailed for a time between 1930 and 1931 for criticising the government, and later sat in parliament as a member of the Wafd Party and then in the Chamber of Deputies. When Hitler's forces advanced on Egypt in 1942, he fled to Sudan, fearing reprisals for his criticism. Shortly before, in June 1940, he had written Hitler in the Balance, a harsh attack on Nazism, which he saw as the gravest threat to freedom and modern life, and a broader rejection of both fascism and communism.

He wrote more than a hundred books on philosophy, religion and poetry, along with a philosophical study of the Qur'an and biographies of major Muslim leaders. With Ibrahim al-Mazni and Abdel Rahman Shokry he founded the Diwan school of poetry, which sought to renew Arabic verse. His seven-volume Abqariyyat series, on great companions of the Prophet such as Abu Bakr and Ali, is probably his best-known work.

His legacy lives on in the study of modern Arabic literature and in debates about tradition and modernity. President Gamal Abdel Nasser awarded him the State Appreciation Award in Literature in 1958, and a street in Nasr City, in Cairo, bears his name.