Fouad al Mohandes 1924 2006

The third of four siblings, Fouad al-Mohandes was born to a father who was a linguist, a professor at Dar al-Ollum, (the Arabic Language College) and a member of the Arabic Language Academy. As a child, al-Mohandes was influenced most by his father, from whom he inherited his wit and humor.
Al-Mohandes studied at the Faculty of Commerce, Cairo University where he joined the drama group. His life was turned upside down, however, after he watched the great Naguib al-Rihani performing on stage. Later, he became one of the man's followers. This caused him to graduate in six years rather than in four when he should have.
In 1953, after al-Rihani's death, opportunity came knocking at his door. The program saa le-albak (An Hour for the Heart) was launched grouping many of Egypt's comedians of the time, including al-Mohandes.
Having lived close to the Zul-Foqqars, the two brothers Mahmoud and Ezz signed up him for several supporting roles in movies they directed including the Neighbor's daughter, the Good Land and the River of Love, among others
In the early 1960s, Egyptian television began its broadcast. It was then that he became famous in his role in the program waraa al-setar (Behind the Curtains) facing actress Sanaa Gamil. Al-Mohandes later joined television theaters. His major breakthrough was when he took the lead role in a new version of al-Rihani's play al-Secretair al fanni (The Technical Secretary) starring another entrant to the world of entertainment and show business Showikar Toub Saqqal, who later became his wife.
In all his plays and movies, al-Mohandes' motto was "entertainment for the sake of entertainment". His version of "My Fair Lady" earned him a great deal of acclaim. His play ana wa howa wa heya (He, She and I) prophesied the now-pressing housing problem.
He, She and I marked the end of an era in which most performances showed pre-Revolution persecution of farmers and workers and the beginning of another where situation and social comedies were the order of the day in government-run theaters.
In the 1950s, as the nation faced numerous economic and political challenges, private sector theaters were interested only in providing entertainment to the public. This is where al-Mohandes excelled the most.
At the time, movie-makers found al-Mohandes to be their golden-egg-hatching hen. He presented a number of successful movies; e.g. His Excellency the Ambassador, Love in August, a Husband's Confessions, among others. Those were entertaining films.
Al-Mohandes also presented a number of critically acclaimed plays such as ard al-nefaq (Land of Hypocrisy) directed by Fatin Abdul-Wahab (1968) and kan wa kan wa kan (Once upon a Time) directed by Abbas Kamel (1977). In both those two movies, he reached the peak of maturity.
Al-Mohandes died at age 82

Zaki Naguib Mahmoud

Zaki Naguib Mahmoud
Zaki Naguib Mahmoud is one of the pioneers of enlightenment along half a century. He is "the philosopher of authors and author of philosophers," as Abbas Mahmoud Al-Aqqad put it.
Zaki Naguib Mahmoud was born on February 2,1905 in Damietta governorate. He attended Gordon College in Sudan where his father was working at that time, returned to Cairo and joined the department of philosophy at the Faculty of Arts, Cairo University. He graduated in 1930. Then, he worked as a teacher of philosophy in the secondary stage. In 1974, he was given a scholarship to England to do a doctoral thesis on self-determinateness. There, he knew closely the philosopher of the 20th century Ph.D. Bertrand Russell and the great logician John Eyre.
When he came back, he was appointed lecturer, then, assistant professor and finally professor of philosophy at the Faculty of Arts, Cairo University. Among the distinguished positions Zaki Naguib Mahmoud held are: professor of philosophy in the University of Kuwait, writer in Al-Ahram Newspaper, member in the Supreme Council of Culture, the National Council of Culture and the National Council of Education and Scientific Research.
Zaki Naguib Mahmoud’s encyclopedic reference books on philosophy and literature, not to mention his translations of the masterpieces of philosophy, all contributed to enrich Arabic literature. His intellectual life is divided into two main stages:
• In the first stage, Zaki Naguib Mahmoud laid the foundations of his intellectual production from which and sometimes from the corrective or polemical treatment of which the second stage emerged. He held that disciplined and systematic verification of knowledge is the ultimate object of philosophy and that logical analysis of language is the prime tool to that end. He concluded that knowledge is of two kinds: mental and sentimental.
At that stage, Zaki Naguib Mahmoud wrote:
Symbolic Logic (1951), The Philosophy of Science (1952), The Mythology of Metaphysics (1953) reprinted in 1983 under the title An Attitude Towards Metaphysics, Intellectual Life in the Modern World (1956), The Theory of Knowledge (1956) and Towards a Scientific Philosophy for which he was given the State Incentive Award.
• The second stage began with the publication of The Artist East in 1956 where Zaki Naguib Mahmoud revealed the historical dimension of knowledge and the civilized, structural and comprehensive significance of such a dimension rather than its limited social perspective. It is in that book that he began to discover the main cultural peculiarities of eastern cultures against a background of those characterizing western cultures through dichotomies between the sky and earth, sentiment and reason, good and evil, originality and modernity and so on. He generally attributed the first item of each pair to the East, the second to the West. The two items were not, however, dealt with as being completely separate.
In his later works such as The Poetry of Al-Ghazali and The Attitude of Ibn Khaldun Towards Philosophy, the question of the historical reality of the Arab culture occupied his mind and he became much more interested in the Arab cultural heritage.
His book The Revival of Arab Intellect written in 1970 marks the peak of the second stage. It drew a distinction between the genius of the Arab culture and borrowings from other cultures. The two criteria he established were the nature of creativity and the way borrowing occurs.
In the books mentioned below, Zaki Naguib Mahmoud attempted to shape an integrated philosophical attitude, engage in, criticize and foresee the future of the cultural and intellectual Egyptian and Arab life. These are:
• The Reasonable and the Absurd in our Intellectual Heritage (1975). • Our Culture Facing the Challenges of the Age (1976). • Our Intellectual Life (1979). • This Age and its Culture (1980). • On the Philosophy of Criticism (1983). • An Islamic Vision (1987). • On the Modernization of the Arab Culture (1988). • Seeds and Roots (1990).
Zaki Naguib Mahmoud was given the State Incentive Award in 1960, State Merit Award in 1970, Arab Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Award in 1984 and The American University in Cairo Honorary Doctorate in 1985.
In September 1997, the London-based Association named for Zaki Naguib Mahmoud was established.