Ahmad Amin

Ahmad Amin, an Egyptian historian of intellectual life in Islam, author of the series "Fajr al-Islam", "Duha al-Islam" and "Zuhr al-Islam". ¹

He wrote "Duha al-Islam", which deals with social life, cultures, the scientific movement, creeds and religious schools in the early Abbasid age. ¹

The Encyclopaedia of Islam (2nd ed.) gives Ahmad Amin as an Egyptian scholar and writer, born in Cairo on 2 Muharram 1304/1 October 1886 and died on 30 Ramadan 1373/30 May 1954. He studied at al-Azhar and the School of Shari'a law, served as a magistrate in the native courts, and in 1926 joined the staff of the Egyptian University, where he was professor of Arabic literature from 1936 to 1946. In 1947 he became director of the cultural section of the Arab League. He was one of the founders and most active members of the Committee for Authorship, Translation and Publication (Lajnat al-Ta'lif wa'l-Tarjama wa'l-Nashr), for which he edited classical texts. ²

His most important scholarly work is a history of Islamic civilisation to the end of the fourth/tenth century in three parts: Fajr al-Islam (1928), Duha al-Islam (1933–36) and Zuhr al-Islam (1945–53). It is notable as the first comprehensive attempt to bring critical method into modern Arabic historiography. He contributed to the literary weekly al-Risala and from 1939 edited al-Thaqafa; his essays were collected as Fayd al-Khatir in eight volumes. His dictionary of Egyptian folklore appeared in 1953, and his autobiography, Hayati, was published in Cairo. ²