Ahmad Hasan al-Zayyat


Ahmad Hasan al-Zayyat was an influential Egyptian political writer and intellectual who established the Egyptian literary magazine :ar:مجلة الرسالة|al-Risala, described as "the most important intellectual weekly in 1930s Egypt and the Arab world." Born in the village of Kafr Demira, Talkha into what was then a peasant family, al-Zayyat studied at Al-Azhar University before taking up legal studies in Cairo and Paris; he taught Arabic literature at American University in Cairo, and for three years in Baghdad, before founding al-Risala in 1933. He edited ar-Risala, a literary magazine published in Cairo.
He sharply criticized Nazism and the ideology's racist views.