Anniversary of Muhammad Farid Abu Hadeed A Pioneer of Enlightenment
Egypt, People, 5/19/2000

Muhammad Farid Abu Hadeed is a prominent intellectual and man of letters who emerged in Egypt in one of its most important periods, between the 19th and the 20th centuries. In this period, the Egyptian personality prevailed over different aspects of life.

In about 5 decades (1918-1965), Abu Hadeed was a major participant in promoting different kinds of literature: historical novels, short stories, children literature, verse plays and essays. He responded, positively and effectively, to the great events that occurred in Egypt.

Career: Muhammad Farid Abu Hadeed was born on July,1,1893. His grandfather descended from a Hegazi tribe that emigrated to Egypt in early 19th century during the reign of Muhammad Ali.

* In 1924 he was graduated from the Teachers' College( Al Mu'allemeen). Meanwhile he obtained his BA from the Faculty of law in 1924.

* He worked as a teacher in different schools till 1937, then moved to the Press Censorship, with his friend Youssef El-Gendi. In 1942, he became the Press Censorship Director. Yet, he resigned after a few days as the British Censorship Secretary had more authority than his authority over him.

His Career in Education

Being a first-class teacher, he preferred working in the educational field, and though graduated in law in 1924 he preferred teaching to law. He adopted the teacher-friend relationship with his pupils. He used to reform the warped behaviors of his pupils through sound educational means and practical examples. He never believed in the dull subjects being inculcated into the pupils' minds rendering them to mere parrots repeating unassimilated statements. He sought to provide recreation for their minds in a simple scientific manner.

When he was the Dean of Education Institute, he wrote several educational essays where he tackled popular culture in Egypt, and free education. He called for the wide-spreading of the religious culture and promotion of literary thought , artistic sense, attention to libraries and elimination of illiteracy, as being the foundation of progress and development. He was the first to call for establishing Teachers Syndicate, in al-Soufour magazine.

His role in national struggle

Although he did not belong to a particular political party and worked as a press supervisor in Al-Wafd Ministry in 1937, he played a significant role in the 1919 Revolution events. He used to declare his opinion in the Revolution policy and directing the Egyptians leadership.

Literary Production - Translation

He held the banner of writing and translation when he established, with his friends, a group for writing, translation and publishing. They published books in different sciences and arts that are quite fit for educated people.

This group, set up in 1915 participated effectively in the cultural revival. Abu Hadeed translated, for this group, "Arab Conquest of Egypt" by Alfred Butler. He wrote a book on "Salah Eddin Al Ayoubi". He also translated Shakespeare's "Macbeth". This translation was made in Arabic blank verse.

Farid Abu Hadeed's literary character was derived from several cultural sources. In his beginnings, he had a special access to classical Arabic books he was influenced by Al-Tabari, Al-Gabarti, Eesa Ibn Hesham and Imre'ul Qais. He acquainted himself with the English literature in its flourishing period from the 17th to the 19th centuries, such as Shakespeare's plays and sonnets, Walter Scott's historical novels, Dickens's works and Thackeray's.

Besides, he was impressed by the French literature where he was interested in Henri de Réné and Jean Paul Sartre.

In his play "The Devil's Slave", he was influenced by Goethe's Faust.

Major Works

The year 1939 was the beginning of his literary artistic maturity.

Abu Hadeed's novels covered several aspects and objectives. He wrote the historical novels, such as "Memeluke's Daughter" (1925) and "al Muhalhal Sayed Rabi'a" (1939),"Devious King" (1940),"Abu al Fawares An tara" (1945). The historical novel was at the top of Abu Hadeed's concerns. He made clear-cut differentiation between history and historical novels drawn from it. He believed that history was but a post-card,while a historical novel is a photo taken by a tourist. Through historical novels, he symbolized problems of the age.

The Critical Social Novel

1- In this field, he mixed present reality with history in order to express his social criticism of the deviant social condition by moving from imagination to reality. This is clear in his novel "Goha's Pains".

2 - In his social criticism, he expressed his personal experience such as his novel "Thorns".

3 - In his novel "We the People", the hero represents the patience and dream of an oppressed people who burst out like a hurricane in a rumbling sound "We the People"

4 - He also wrote short stories and collected most of them in his book "With Time" where he presented glimpse of human nature in its long experience throughout centuries generation after generation.

5 - Writing for Children: Writing for children requires practical skills and experience with the world of children and profound studies on child psychology and the phases of their growth. This is true of "Abu- Hadeed" who coexisted with children in primary schools and adolescents in secondary schools as a teacher and a supervisor in the Institute of Education. On the other hand he was influenced by folk stories narrated to him by his mother and grand mother in his childhood.

All these factors helped Abu Hadeed to be a distinguished children novelist. In addition,. he supervised a group of children stories entitled "Our Children" (1947) when he was a director of the General Department of Culture at the Ministry of Education. He wrote two novels "Maroon Shah" and "Dr. Karen Eddin Al-Boughdady" and contributed to the translation of two others.

Theory in the Art of Fiction

Abu Hadeed believed that a novel is distinguished from all other literary genres in that it expresses human behavior and values through characters' work, relations and feelings. The novelist has to choose a certain life situation that attracts his attention and portray it in a manner that would appeal to the readers through a lively and meaningful world.

He has to pay attention to style. The theme of the novel has to be of interest to man being related to life, so that readers would respond to the novelist's sensation, perception and influence.

Abu-Hadeed in the Arabic Language:

Abu Hadeed was appointed to the Arabic Language Academy in December 1947, where the contributed to important researches conducted by the Academy

He was interested in Arabic language classical poetry and colloquial Arabic. He used colloquial expression and terms of a classical origin in order to avoid further linguistic gaps between the discourse of the elite and the intellectuals, on one hand, and that of the masses on the other. Furthermore, he simplified some grammatical rules.

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