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Ahmed Lutfi el-Sayed (15 January 1872-1963) was an Egyptian intellectual, anti-colonial activist, and a former rector of Cairo University. He was fondly known as the Professor of the Generation (tr. ostaz el-gil). Lutif el-Sayed was a major advocate of Egyptian secularism and liberalism.
Lutfi was born to a family of farmers in the village of Berqin, near Al Senbellawein in the Dakahlia Governorate on 15 January 1872. He was educated at Al-Azhar University where he attended lectures by Muhammad Abduh. Abduh came to have a profound influence on Lutfi's reformist thinking in later years. Ahmed Lutfi el-Sayed subsequently attended the School of Law from which he graduated in 1894.
In 1907, Ahmed Lutfi el-Sayed founded Egypt's first political party, el-Umma (the Nation), which came as a reaction to the 1906 Dinshaway Incident and the rise of Egyptian nationalist sentiment. He also founded the Umma Party newspaper, el-Garida, whose statement of purpose read: "El-Garida is a purely Egyptian party which aims to defend Egyptian interests of all kinds."[1]
He was a member of the Egyptian delegation to the Paris Peace Conference held in Versailles in 1919, where he pleaded for the independence of Egypt from Britain.
Ahmed Lutfi el-Sayed was also the first director of the Egyptian University, inaugurated on Monday 11 May 1925. He was a close friend of Taha Hussein, and resigned his post as university director as a protest against the Egyptian government's decision to transfer Hussein from his university position in 1932.[2] He resigned again in 1937 when the Egyptian police broke into the court of the Egyptian University. During his presidency of the Egyptian University, the first promotion of females graduated with a university degree.
In addition, Ahmed Lutfi el-Sayed held various positions such as the minister of education, the minister of interior, the director of the Arabic language assembly, and the director of House of Books. He died in 1963.
References
- ^ Vatikiotis, P.J. The History of Modern Egypt. 4th edition. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1992, p. 227
- ^ http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/773/chrncls.htm Chronicles of Ahram Weekly
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