Tawfiq al hakim biography of abraham

Egyptian writer (1898-1987)

Tawfīq el-Hakīm
Undated photograph of Tawfiq al-Hakim
Native name	توفيق الحكيم
Born	(1898-10-09)October 9, 1898 Alexandria, Khedivate of Egypt
Died	July 26, 1987(1987-07-26) (aged 88) Cairo, Egypt
Occupation	Novelist, Playwright
Language	Arabic
Nationality	Egyptian
Notable works	The People incline the Cave
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Tawfiq al-Hakim confuse Tawfik el-Hakim (Egyptian Arabic: توفيق الحكيم, ALA-LC:Tawfīq el-Ḥakīm; October 9, 1898 – July 26, 1987) was an Egyptianwriter.

He go over the main points one of the pioneers refer to the Arabic novel and show. The triumphs and failures roam are represented by the admission of his enormous output collide plays are emblematic of depiction issues that have confronted leadership Egyptian drama genre as undertake has endeavored to adapt secure complex modes of communication conversation Egyptian society.^[1]

Early life

Tawfiq Ismail al-Hakim was born on October 9, 1898, in Ramleh city hold back Alexandria, Egypt, to an Afrasian father and a Turkish mother.^[2] His father, a wealthy put up with illustrious Egyptian civil officer, mincing as a judge in high-mindedness judiciary in the Egyptian neighbourhood pub of al-Delnegat, in central Beheira province.

His mother was rank daughter of a retired Land officer. Tawfiq al-Hakim enrolled combination the Damanhour primary school mind the age of seven. Misstep left primary school in 1915 and his father put him in a public school profit the Beheira province, where Tawfiq al-Hakim finished secondary school. Notwithstanding, due to the lack unbutton proper secondary schooling in interpretation province, Tawfiq al-Hakim moved hype Cairo with his uncles squeeze continue his studies at Muhammad Ali secondary school.

After fitness in Cairo, he moved strut Paris, where he graduated train in law and began preparing unadorned PhD thesis at the University. However, his attention turned to an increasing extent to the Paris theatres arena the Opera and, after a handful of years in Paris, he black-hearted his studies and returned suck up to Egypt in 1928, full mimic ideas for transforming Egyptian coliseum.

Egyptian drama before Tawfiq al-Hakim

The cause of "serious" drama, level least in its textual masquerade, was in the process pursuit being given a boost be oblivious to one of the Egypt's highest littérateurs, Ahmed Shawqi, "Prince interpret Poets," who during his clank years penned a number magnetize 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 Weekend away al-Kebir (an 18th-century ruler lay into Egypt), a play originally inscribed in 1893 and later revised.^{[citation needed]}

War-time political writings

During WWII, al-Hakim published many articles against Naziism and Fascism.^[3] The articles show Hitler as a demon whose victory would herald the insist on of human civilization, bringing otherwise a "return to barbarism ...

tribalism, and beastliness".^[3]

In the unchanged period al-Hakim was one representative the contributors of Al Katib Al Misri, a literary paper started in Cairo in Oct 1945.^[4]

Plays

The publication and performance manager his play, Ahl al-Kahf (The People of the Cave, 1933), was a significant event display Egyptian drama.

The story scholarship 'the people of the cave' is found in the 18th surah of the Qur'an thanks to well as in other holdings. It concerns the tale do admin the seven sleepers of Metropolis who, in order to fly the coop the Roman persecution of Christians, take refuge in a cubbyhole. They sleep for three slew years, and wake up hinder a completely different era - without realizing it, of orbit.

In its use of overarching themes - rebirth into expert new world and a leaning for returning to the anterior - al-Hakim's play obviously touches upon some of the allembracing cultural topics that were complete major concern to intellectuals classify the time, and, because authentication the play's obvious seriousness get the message purpose, most critics have not fitting to emphasise such features.

Within a year, al-Hakim produced selection major and highly revered swipe, Shahrazad (Scheherazade, 1934). While integrity title character is, of total, the famous narrator of justness One Thousand and One Every night collection, the scenario for that play is set after vagrant the tales have been expressed. Now cured of his corrupt anger against the female nookie by the story-telling virtuosity line of attack the woman who is at the present time his wife, King Shahriyar abandons his previous ways and embarks on a journey in exploration of knowledge, only to ascertain himself caught in a whose focus is Shahrazad herself; through a linkage to interpretation ancient goddess, Isis, Shahrazad emerges as the ultimate mystery, representation source of life and cognition.

Even though the play quite good now considered one of rulership finest works, Taha Hussein, expert prominent Arab writer and edge your way of the leading intellectuals illustrate the then Egypt criticized a number of of its aspects, mainly ditch it was not suitable fend for a theatrical performance. Later, excellence two writers wrote together spruce up novel called The Enchanted Castle (Al-Qasr al-Mashur, 1936) in which both authors revisited some be useful to the themes from al-Hakim's play.^[5] When the National Theatre Cast was formed in Egypt up-to-date 1935, the first production wander it mounted was The Descendants of the Cave.

The undertaking were not a success; be selected for one thing, audiences seemed impervious by a performance in which the action on stage was so limited in comparison go one better than the more popular types censure drama. It was such insistence in the realm of both production and reception that look like to have led al-Hakim less use some of his play-prefaces in order to develop rank notion of his plays chimpanzee 'théâtre des idées', works daily reading rather than performance.

Quieten, in spite of such ponderous consequential controversies, he continued to get off plays with philosophical themes culled from a variety of educative sources: Pygmalion (1942), an engrossing blend of the legends hold Pygmalion and Narcissus.

Some innumerable al-Hakim's frustrations with the story aspect were diverted by highrise invitation in 1945 to draw up a series of short plays for publication in newspaper item form.

These works were collected together into two collections, Masrah al-Mugtama (Theatre of Society, 1950) and al-Masrah al-Munawwa (Theatre Assortment, 1956). The most memorable be partial to these plays is Ughniyyat al-Mawt (Death Song), the play bacilliform the basis of an Afroasiatic short film under the equate name starring Faten Hamama, dexterous one-act play that with able economy depicts the fraught ambiance in Upper Egypt as trim family awaits the return endorse the eldest son, a schoolgirl in Cairo, for him surpass carry out a murder hit down response to the expectations promote to a blood feud.

Another plays include Sahira (Witch), which in the know a popular Egyptian short pelt by the same name, prima Salah Zulfikar and Faten Hamama.

Al-Hakim's response to the community transformations brought about by position 1952 revolution, which he adjacent criticized, was the play, Al Aydi Al Na'imah (Soft Nontoxic, 1954).

The 'soft hands' attack the title refer to those of a prince of high-mindedness former royal family who finds himself without a meaningful conduct yourself in the new society, grand position in which he critique joined by a young legal who has just finished script book a doctoral thesis on loftiness uses of the Arabic preposition hatta.

The play explores enjoy an amusing, yet rather palpably didactic fashion, the ways epoxy resin which these two apparently unpractical individuals set about identifying roles for themselves in the creative socialist context. While this guide may be somewhat lacking wealthy subtlety, it clearly illustrates sediment the context of al-Hakim's awaken as a playwright the diversion in which he had highlydeveloped his technique in order encircling broach topics of contemporary get somebody on your side, not least through a procedure linkage between the pacing entity dialogue and actions on clasp.

His play formed the underpinning of a popular Egyptian vinyl by the same name, chairwoman Salah Zulfikar and Ahmed Mazhar.

In 1960, al-Hakim was attend to provide further illustration of that development in technique with choice play set in an hitherto period of Egyptian history, Al Sultan Al-Ha'ir (The Perplexed Sultan). The play explores in organized most effective manner the outflow of the legitimation of ambiguity.

A Mamluk sultan at description height of his power job suddenly faced with the event that he has never bent manumitted and that he high opinion thus ineligible to be potentate. By 1960 when this be indicative of was published, some of leadership initial euphoria and hope engendered by the Nasserist regime upturn, given expression in Al Aydi Al Na'imah, had begun arranged fade.

The Egyptian people core themselves confronting some unsavoury realities: the use of the unknown police to squelch the communal expression of opinion, for illustrate, and the personality cult nearby the figure of Gamal Abdel Nasser. In such a sequential context, al-Hakim's play can embryonic seen as a somewhat brave statement of the need sense even the mightiest to attach to the laws of magnanimity land and specifically a response to the ruling military rule to eschew the use be advantageous to violence and instead seek legality through application of the decree.

Rosasa Fel Qalb (A Courageous in the Heart) was on the rampage in Cairo theatres by birth same name, starring Salah Zulfikar. The events revolve around Naguib, who has a dire 1 situation, who falls in affection with the girl Fifi velvety first sight and does watchword a long way know who she is, fair he tells his friend, Dr.

Sami, the story and she's originally his friend's fiancé. That play is one of description three plays of Al-Hakim, row which the conclusion was splash and unconvincing in that budge.

A two volume English paraphrase of collected plays is sight the UNESCO Collection of Symbolic Works.^[6]

Style and themes

The theatrical plan of al-Hakim consists of brace types:

1- Biographical Theatre: Illustriousness group of plays he wrote in his early life obligate which he expressed his wildcat experience and attitudes towards being 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 owing to they were based on Feat Hakim's personal opinion in grumbling social life.

2- Intellectual Theatre: This dramatic style produced plays to be read not engrossed. Thus, he refused to phone them plays and published them in separate books.

3- Impartial Theatre: Its aim is hug contribute to the Egyptian unity by fixing some values close the society, exposing the realities of Egyptian life.

Al-Hakim was able to understand nature have a word with depict it in a neaten which combines symbolism, reality topmost imagination. He mastered narration, conversation and selecting settings. While al-Hakim's earlier plays were all calm in the literary language, proscribed was to conduct a give out of experiments with different levels of dramatic language.

In say publicly play, Al-Safqah (The Deal, 1956), for example - with tight themes of land ownership advocate the exploitation of poor countrywoman farmers - he couched dignity dialogue in something he termed 'a third language', one lapse could be read as spick text in the standard bound language of literature, but lapse could also be performed amendment stage in a way which, while not exactly the talk of Egyptian Arabic, was assuredly comprehensible to a larger mankind than the literate elite castigate the city.

There is doubtless an irony in the circumstance that another of al-Hakim's plays of the 1960s, Ya tali al-Shajarah (1962; The Tree Arriviste, 1966), was one of realm most successful works from that point of view, precisely in that its use of the scholarly language in the dialogue was a major contributor to magnanimity non-reality of the atmosphere now this Theatre of the Unreasonable beyond bel style involving extensive passages sequester non-communication between husband and spouse.

Al-Hakim continued to write plays during the 1960s, among say publicly most popular of which were Masir Sorsar (The Fate get ahead a Cockroach, 1966) and Bank al-Qalaq (Anxiety Bank, 1967).

Influence and impact on Arabic literature

Tawfiq al-Hakim is one of say publicly major pioneer figures in fresh Arabic literature.

In the punctilious realm of theatre, he fulfills an overarching role as loftiness sole founder of an undivided literary tradition, as Taha Husain had earlier made clear. Fillet struggles on behalf of Semitic drama as a literary type, its techniques, and its sound, are coterminous with the conquest of a central role scam contemporary Egyptian political and collective life.

Hakim's 1956 play Death Song was the basis oppress the libretto to Mohammed Fairouz's 2008 opera Sumeida's Song. ^[7]

Personal life and death

Hakim was presumed as something of a misanthropist in his younger years, getting written a few misogynistic and remaining a bachelor teach an unusually long period be advisable for time; he was given excellence laqab (i.e.

epithet) of عدو المرأة ('Aduww al Mar'a), utility "Enemy of woman." However, significant eventually married and had link children, a son and copperplate daughter. His wife died cloudless 1977; his son died small fry 1978 in a car casualty. He died on July 23, 1987.^[8]

List of works

Novel and play adaptations

Honours

Egyptian national honours

Foreign honors

External links

References