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Tawfiq al-Hakim or Tawfik el-Hakim (, ; October 9, 1898 – July 26, 1987) was an Egyptian
writer A writer is a person who uses written words in different writing styles, genres and techniques to communicate ideas, to inspire feelings and emotions, or to entertain. Writers may develop different forms of writing such as novels, short sto ...
. He is one of the pioneers of the Arabic novel and drama. The triumphs and failures that are represented by the reception of his enormous output of plays are emblematic of the issues that have confronted the Egyptian drama genre as it has endeavored to adapt its complex modes of communication to Egyptian society.


Early life

Tawfiq Ismail al-Hakim was born on October 9, 1898, in Ramleh city in
Alexandria Alexandria ( ; ) is the List of cities and towns in Egypt#Largest cities, second largest city in Egypt and the List of coastal settlements of the Mediterranean Sea, largest city on the Mediterranean coast. It lies at the western edge of the Nile ...
, Egypt, to an Egyptian father and a Turkish mother. His father, a wealthy and illustrious Egyptian civil officer, worked as a judge in the judiciary in the Egyptian village of al-Delnegat, in central Beheira province. His mother was the daughter of a retired Turkish officer. Tawfiq al-Hakim enrolled at the Damanhour primary school at the age of seven. He left primary school in 1915 and his father put him in a public school in the Beheira province, where Tawfiq al-Hakim finished secondary school. However, due to the lack of proper secondary schooling in the province, Tawfiq al-Hakim moved to Cairo with his uncles to continue his studies at Muhammad Ali secondary school. After studying in Cairo, he moved to Paris, where he graduated in law and began preparing a PhD thesis at the Sorbonne. However, his attention turned increasingly to the Paris theatres and the Opera and, after three years in Paris, he abandoned his studies and returned to Egypt in 1928, full of ideas for transforming Egyptian theatre.


Egyptian drama before Tawfiq al-Hakim

The cause of "serious" drama, at least in its textual form, was in the process of being given a boost by one of the Egypt's greatest littérateurs, Ahmed Shawqi, "Prince of Poets," who during his latter years penned a number of verse dramas with themes culled from Egyptian and Islamic history; these included ''Masraa' Kliyubatra'' (The Death of Cleopatra, 1929), ''Majnun Layla'' ( Driven mad by Layla, 1931), ''Amirat el-Andalus'' (The Andalusian Princess, 1932), and ''Ali Bey al-Kebir'' (an 18th-century ruler of Egypt), a play originally written in 1893 and later revised.


War-time political writings

During
WWII World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, al-Hakim published many articles against fascism. The articles portrayed Hitler as a demon whose victory would herald the end of human civilization, bringing instead a "return to barbarism ... tribalism, and beastliness". In the same period al-Hakim was one of the contributors of '' Al Katib Al Misri'', a literary magazine started in Cairo in October 1945.


Plays

The publication and performance of his play, ''Ahl al-Kahf'' (The People of the Cave, 1933), was a significant event in Egyptian drama. The story of 'the people of the cave' is found in the eighteenth surah of the
Qur'an The Quran, also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation directly from God ('' Allāh''). It is organized in 114 chapters (, ) which consist of individual verses ('). Besides ...
as well as in other sources. It concerns the tale of the seven sleepers of Ephesus who, in order to escape the Roman persecution of Christians, take refuge in a cave. They sleep for three hundred years, and wake up in a completely different era - without realizing it, of course. In its use of overarching themes - rebirth into a new world and a predilection for returning to the past - al-Hakim's play obviously touches upon some of the broad cultural topics that were of major concern to intellectuals at the time, and, because of the play's obvious seriousness of purpose, most critics have chosen to emphasise such features. Within a year, al-Hakim produced another major and highly revered work, ''Shahrazad'' (Scheherazade, 1934). While the title character is, of course, the famous narrator of the
One Thousand and One Nights ''One Thousand and One Nights'' (, ), is a collection of Middle Eastern folktales compiled in the Arabic language during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as ''The Arabian Nights'', from the first English-language edition ( ...
collection, the scenario for this play is set after all the tales have been told. Now cured of his vicious anger against the female sex by the story-telling virtuosity of the woman who is now his wife, King Shahriyar abandons his previous ways and embarks on a journey in quest of knowledge, only to discover himself caught in a dilemma whose focus is Shahrazad herself; through a linkage to the ancient goddess,
Isis Isis was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. Isis was first mentioned in the Old Kingdom () as one of the main characters of the Osiris myth, in which she resurrects her sla ...
, Shahrazad emerges as the ultimate mystery, the source of life and knowledge. Even though the play is now considered one of his finest works, Taha Hussein, a prominent Arab writer and one of the leading intellectuals of the then Egypt criticized some of its aspects, mainly that it was not suitable for a theatrical performance. Later, the two writers wrote together a novel called ''The Enchanted Castle'' (Al-Qasr al-Mashur, 1936) in which both authors revisited some of the themes from al-Hakim's play. When the National Theatre Troupe was formed in Egypt in 1935, the first production that it mounted was ''The People of the Cave''. The performances were not a success; for one thing, audiences seemed unimpressed by a performance in which the action on stage was so limited in comparison with the more popular types of
drama Drama is the specific Mode (literature), mode of fiction Mimesis, represented in performance: a Play (theatre), play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on Radio drama, radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a g ...
. It was such problems in the realm of both production and reception that seem to have led al-Hakim to use some of his play-prefaces in order to develop the notion of his plays as 'théâtre des idées', works for reading rather than performance. However, in spite of such critical controversies, he continued to write plays with philosophical themes culled from a variety of cultural sources: Pygmalion (1942), an interesting blend of the legends of Pygmalion and Narcissus. Some of al-Hakim's frustrations with the performance aspect were diverted by an invitation in 1945 to write a series of short plays for publication in newspaper article form. These works were gathered together into two collections, ''Masrah al-Mugtama'' (Theatre of Society, 1950) and ''al-Masrah al-Munawwa'' (Theatre Miscellany, 1956). The most memorable of these plays is ''Ughniyyat al-Mawt'' (Death Song), the play formed the basis of an Egyptian short film under the same name starring
Faten Hamama Faten Ahmed Hamama (,  ; 27 May 1931 – 17 January 2015) was an Egyptian film and television actress and film producer. She made her screen debut in 1939, when she was only seven years old. Her earliest roles were minor, but her activity an ...
, a one-act play that with masterly economy depicts the fraught atmosphere in
Upper Egypt Upper Egypt ( ', shortened to , , locally: ) is the southern portion of Egypt and is composed of the Nile River valley south of the delta and the 30th parallel North. It thus consists of the entire Nile River valley from Cairo south to Lake N ...
as a family awaits the return of the eldest son, a student in Cairo, for him to carry out a murder in response to the expectations of a blood feud. Another plays include ''Sahira'' (Witch), which formed a popular Egyptian short film by the same name, starring
Salah Zulfikar Salah El-Din Ahmed Mourad Zulfikar (, ; 18 January 1926 – 22 December 1993) was an Egyptian actor and film producer. He started his career as a Egyptian National Police, police officer, before becoming an actor in 1956. He is regarded as one o ...
and
Faten Hamama Faten Ahmed Hamama (,  ; 27 May 1931 – 17 January 2015) was an Egyptian film and television actress and film producer. She made her screen debut in 1939, when she was only seven years old. Her earliest roles were minor, but her activity an ...
. Al-Hakim's response to the social transformations brought about by the
1952 revolution The Egyptian revolution of 1952, also known as the 1952 coup d'état () and the 23 July Revolution (), was a period of profound political, economic, and societal change in Egypt. On 23 July 1952, the revolution began with the toppling of King ...
, which he later criticized, was the play, ''Al Aydi Al Na'imah'' (Soft Hands, 1954). The 'soft hands' of the title refer to those of a prince of the former royal family who finds himself without a meaningful role in the new society, a position in which he is joined by a young academic who has just finished writing a doctoral thesis on the uses of the Arabic preposition hatta. The play explores in an amusing, yet rather obviously didactic fashion, the ways in which these two apparently useless individuals set about identifying roles for themselves in the new socialist context. While this play may be somewhat lacking in subtlety, it clearly illustrates in the context of al-Hakim's development as a playwright the way in which he had developed his technique in order to broach topics of contemporary interest, not least through a closer linkage between the pacing of dialogue and actions on stage. His play formed the basis of a popular Egyptian film by the same name, starring
Salah Zulfikar Salah El-Din Ahmed Mourad Zulfikar (, ; 18 January 1926 – 22 December 1993) was an Egyptian actor and film producer. He started his career as a Egyptian National Police, police officer, before becoming an actor in 1956. He is regarded as one o ...
and Ahmed Mazhar. In 1960, al-Hakim was to provide further illustration of this development in technique with another play set in an earlier period of Egyptian history, ''Al Sultan Al-Ha'ir'' (The Perplexed Sultan). The play explores in a most effective manner the issue of the legitimation of power. A
Mamluk Mamluk or Mamaluk (; (singular), , ''mamālīk'' (plural); translated as "one who is owned", meaning "slave") were non-Arab, ethnically diverse (mostly Turkic, Caucasian, Eastern and Southeastern European) enslaved mercenaries, slave-so ...
sultan at the height of his power is suddenly faced with the fact that he has never been manumitted and that he is thus ineligible to be ruler. By 1960 when this play was published, some of the initial euphoria and hope engendered by the
Nasserist Nasserism ( ) is an Arab nationalist and Arab socialist political ideology based on the thinking of Gamal Abdel Nasser, one of the two principal leaders of the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, and Egypt's second President. Spanning the domestic a ...
regime itself, given expression in Al Aydi Al Na'imah, had begun to fade. The Egyptian people found themselves confronting some unsavoury realities: the use of the secret police to squelch the public expression of opinion, for example, and the personality cult surrounding the figure of
Gamal Abdel Nasser Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein (15 January 1918 – 28 September 1970) was an Egyptian military officer and revolutionary who served as the second president of Egypt from 1954 until his death in 1970. Nasser led the Egyptian revolution of 1952 a ...
. In such a historical context, al-Hakim's play can be seen as a somewhat courageous statement of the need for even the mightiest to adhere to the laws of the land and specifically a plea to the ruling
military regime A military dictatorship, or a military regime, is a type of dictatorship in which power is held by one or more military officers. Military dictatorships are led by either a single military dictator, known as a strongman, or by a council of mi ...
to eschew the use of violence and instead seek legitimacy through application of the law. ''Rosasa Fel Qalb'' (A Bullet in the Heart) was released in Cairo theatres by the same name, starring
Salah Zulfikar Salah El-Din Ahmed Mourad Zulfikar (, ; 18 January 1926 – 22 December 1993) was an Egyptian actor and film producer. He started his career as a Egyptian National Police, police officer, before becoming an actor in 1956. He is regarded as one o ...
. The events revolve around Naguib, who has a dire financial situation, who falls in love with the girl Fifi at first sight and does not know who she is, so he tells his friend, Dr. Sami, the story and she's originally his friend's fiancé. This play is one of the three plays of Al-Hakim, in which the conclusion was open and unconvincing in that way. A two volume English translation of collected plays is in the
UNESCO Collection of Representative Works The UNESCO Collection of Representative Works (or UNESCO Catalogue of Representative Works) was a UNESCO translation project that was active for about 57 years, from 1948 to about 2005. The project's purpose was to translate masterpieces of world ...
.


Style and themes

The theatrical art of al-Hakim consists of three types: 1- Biographical Theatre: The group of plays he wrote in his early life in which he expressed his personal experience and attitudes towards life were more than 400 plays among which were "al-Arees", (The Groom) and "Amama Shibbak al-Tazaker", (Before the Ticket Office). These plays were more artistic because they were based on Al Hakim's personal opinion in criticizing social life. 2- Intellectual Theatre: This dramatic style produced plays to be read not acted. Thus, he refused to call them plays and published them in separate books. 3- Objective Theatre: Its aim is to contribute to the Egyptian society by fixing some values of the society, exposing the realities of Egyptian life. Al-Hakim was able to understand nature and depict it in a style which combines symbolism, reality and imagination. He mastered narration, dialogue and selecting settings. While al-Hakim's earlier plays were all composed in the literary language, he was to conduct a number of experiments with different levels of dramatic language. In the play, ''Al-Safqah'' (The Deal, 1956), for example - with its themes of land ownership and the exploitation of poor peasant farmers - he couched the dialogue in something he termed 'a third language', one that could be read as a text in the standard written language of literature, but that could also be performed on stage in a way which, while not exactly the idiom of
Egyptian Arabic Egyptian Arabic, locally known as Colloquial Egyptian, or simply as Masri, is the most widely spoken vernacular Arabic variety in Egypt. It is part of the Afro-Asiatic language family, and originated in the Nile Delta in Lower Egypt. The esti ...
, was certainly comprehensible to a larger population than the literate elite of the city. There is perhaps an irony in the fact that another of al-Hakim's plays of the 1960s, ''Ya tali al-Shajarah'' (1962; The Tree Climber, 1966), was one of his most successful works from this point of view, precisely because its use of the literary language in the dialogue was a major contributor to the non-reality of the atmosphere in this Theatre of the Absurd style involving extensive passages of non-communication between husband and wife. Al-Hakim continued to write plays during the 1960s, among the most popular of which were ''Masir Sorsar'' (The Fate of a Cockroach, 1966) and ''Bank al-Qalaq'' (Anxiety Bank, 1967).


Influence and impact on Arabic literature

Tawfiq al-Hakim is one of the major pioneer figures in modern
Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...
literature. In the particular realm of theatre, he fulfills an overarching role as the sole founder of an entire literary tradition, as
Taha Hussein Taha Hussein (, ; November 15, 1889 – October 28, 1973) was among the most influential 20th-century Egyptian writers and intellectuals, and a leading figure of the Arab Renaissance and the modernist movement in the Arab world. His sobriquet ...
had earlier made clear. His struggles on behalf of
Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...
drama as a literary genre, its techniques, and its language, are coterminous with the achievement of a central role in contemporary Egyptian political and social life. Hakim's 1956 play ''Death Song'' was the basis of the
libretto A libretto (From the Italian word , ) is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or Musical theatre, musical. The term ''libretto'' is also sometimes used to refer to th ...
to Mohammed Fairouz's 2008 opera '' Sumeida's Song''. Rase, Sherri (April 8, 2011)
Conversations—with Mohammed Fairouz
, '' nStage'', retrieved 2011-04-19


Personal life and death

Hakim was viewed as something of a
misogynist Misogyny () is hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against women or girls. It is a form of sexism that can keep women at a lower social status than men, thus maintaining the social roles of patriarchy. Misogyny has been widely practised ...
in his younger years, having written a few misogynistic articles and remaining a
bachelor A bachelor is a man who is not and never has been married.Bachelors are, in Pitt & al.'s phrasing, "men who live independently, outside of their parents' home and other institutional settings, who are neither married nor cohabitating". (). Etymo ...
for an unusually long period of time; he was given the
laqab Arabic names have historically been based on a long naming system. Many people from Arabic-speaking and also non-Arab Muslim countries have not had given name, given, middle name, middle, and family names but rather a chain of names. This system ...
(i.e.
epithet An epithet (, ), also a byname, is a descriptive term (word or phrase) commonly accompanying or occurring in place of the name of a real or fictitious person, place, or thing. It is usually literally descriptive, as in Alfred the Great, Suleima ...
) of عدو المرأة ('''Aduww al Mar'a''), meaning "Enemy of woman." However, he eventually married and had two children, a son and a daughter. His wife died in 1977; his son died in 1978 in a
car accident A traffic collision, also known as a motor vehicle collision, or car crash, occurs when a vehicle collides with another vehicle, pedestrian, animal, road debris, or other moving or stationary obstruction, such as a tree, pole or building. T ...
. He died on July 23, 1987.''
Asharq Al-Awsat ''Asharq Al-Awsat'' (, meaning "The Middle East") is an Arabic international newspaper headquartered in London. A pioneer of the "off-shore" model in the Arabic press, the paper is often noted for its distinctive green-tinted pages. Although pu ...
'', ''This Day in History-July 23: The Death of Tawfiq al-Hakim'', July 23, 1992


List of works

*''A Bullet in the Heart'', 1926 (plays) *''Leaving Paradise'', 1926 (plays) *''The People of the Cave'', 1933 (play) * '' The Return of the Spirit'', 1933 (novel) *''Shahrazad'', 1934 (play) *''Muhammad the Prophet'', 1936 (biography) *''Diary of a Country Prosecutor'', 1937 (novel) (translations include into Spanish, German and Swedish, and into English by Abba Eban as ''Maze of Justice'' (1947), and into Hebrew by Menahem Kapeliuk). English edition published in 2023 by Saqi Books (London), ISBN 9780863569814. *''A Man without a Soul'', 1937 (play) * '' A Sparrow from the East'', 1938 (novel) *''Ash'ab'', 1938 (novel) *''The Devil's Era'', 1938 (philosophical stories) *''My Donkey Told Me'', 1938 (philosophical essays) *''Praxa/The Problem of Ruling'', 1939 (play) *''The Dancer of the Temple'', 1939 (short stories) *''Pygmalion'', 1942 *''Solomon the Wise'', 1943 *''Boss Kudrez's Building'', 1948 *''King Oedipus'', 1949 *''Soft Hands'', 1954 *''Equilibrium'', 1955 *''Isis'', 1955 *''The Deal'', 1956 *''The Sultan's Dilemma'', 1960 *''The Tree Climber'', 1966 *''The Fate of a Cockroach'', 1966 *''Anxiety Bank'', 1967 *''The Return of Consciousness'', 1974


Novel and play adaptations

* 1944: A Bullet in the Heart (film) * 1960: The Holy Bond (film) * 1963: Soft Hands (film) * 1964: A Bullet in the Heart (play) * 1964: Food for the Millions (Radio miniseries) * 1967: Leaving Paradise (film) * 1973: Death Song (Short film) * 1973:
Witch Witchcraft is the use of magic by a person called a witch. Traditionally, "witchcraft" means the use of magic to inflict supernatural harm or misfortune on others, and this remains the most common and widespread meaning. According to ''Enc ...
(Short film) * 1976: The Quiet Nest (film) * 1977: The Return of the Spirit (TV miniseries) * 1986: A Sparrow from the East (film)


Honours


Egyptian national honours

* Grand Cordon of the
Order of the Nile The Order of the Nile (''Kiladat El Nil'') was established in 1915 and was one of the Kingdom of Egypt's principal orders until the monarchy was abolished in 1953. It was then reconstituted as the Republic of Egypt's highest state honor. Sulta ...
* Grand Cross of the
Order of Merit (Egypt) The Order of Merit is an Egyptians, Egyptian order of merit. History The Order of Merit was founded by the Regent on behalf of Fuad II of Egypt, King Ahmad Fuad in 1953 as a general award for meritorious service. Classes The order is composed ...


Foreign honors

* Grand cordon of Order of Civil Merit of the Syrian Arab Republic (
Syria Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in West Asia located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to Syria–Turkey border, the north, Iraq to Iraq–Syria border, t ...
) * Grand Cordon of the National Order of Merit of Tunisia (
Tunisia Tunisia, officially the Republic of Tunisia, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered by Algeria to the west and southwest, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Tunisia also shares m ...
)


External links


Egyptian figures


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hakim, Tawfiq 1898 births 1987 deaths Writers from Alexandria Egyptian Muslims 20th-century Egyptian writers Egyptian speculative fiction writers Egyptian dramatists and playwrights Egyptian people of Turkish descent 20th-century Egyptian novelists 20th-century Egyptian dramatists and playwrights 20th-century Egyptian journalists Muslim anti-fascists