Abd al-Rahman al-Rafai (February 8, 1889 – December 3, 1966) () was an Egyptian

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the stu ...

. He dedicated his life to the study of the roles of the national movement in the history of modern

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...

. His most prominent work was 15 volumes in which he documented the state of Egypt from the late 18th century to the mid-19th century. He was born in

Cairo Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East: The Greater Cairo metro ...

even though his family was from the Levant countries. He graduated from the Khadawia school of law in 1908. He spent most of his life in Cairo but moved to

Alexandria Alexandria ( or ; ar, ٱلْإِسْكَنْدَرِيَّةُ ; grc-gre, Αλεξάνδρεια, Alexándria) is the second largest city in Egypt, and the largest city on the Mediterranean coast. Founded in by Alexander the Great, Alexandria ...

for high school.immediately after his graduation he practiced law for less than a month until Mohammad Farid (a prominent lawyer and historian) asked him to become the editor of the Major General Al-San newspaper and this proved to be the first step in his life as a

and a

politician A politician is a person active in party politics, or a person holding or seeking an elected office in government. Politicians propose, support, reject and create laws that govern the land and by an extension of its people. Broadly speaking, a ...

Politics

In 1907 he became a part of

ian

national National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, ce ...

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that was led by Mostafa Kamel Pasha who was also a journalist and a political figure. At that point al-Rafai started to become concerned with the relationship of national history in terms of national awareness, and the emergence and development of the modern nation-state.http://www2.sis.gov.eg/Ar/Calender/default1.asp?id=2000000000000000000050&calid=0208

Contributions

Al-Rafai started writing at an early age. His first book was written in 1912 by the name of ''The People's

Rights Rights are legal, social, or ethical principles of freedom or entitlement; that is, rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people according to some legal system, social convention, or ethical the ...

'' . In this book he showed his political views by writing about issues such as constitutional rule and

nation A nation is a community of people formed on the basis of a combination of shared features such as language, history, ethnicity, culture and/or society. A nation is thus the collective identity of a group of people understood as defined by those ...

independence Independence is a condition of a person, nation, country, or state in which residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over its territory. The opposite of independence is the statu ...

rule of law The rule of law is the political philosophy that all citizens and institutions within a country, state, or community are accountable to the same laws, including lawmakers and leaders. The rule of law is defined in the ''Encyclopedia Britannica ...

and

human rights Human rights are Morality, moral principles or Social norm, normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for ce ...

from different aspects of

Islam Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic Monotheism#Islam, monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God in Islam, God (or ...

. He also discussed in his book ideas about the

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

Enlightenment Enlightenment or enlighten may refer to: Age of Enlightenment * Age of Enlightenment, period in Western intellectual history from the late 17th to late 18th century, centered in France but also encompassing (alphabetically by country or culture): ...

Era An era is a span of time defined for the purposes of chronology or historiography, as in the regnal eras in the history of a given monarchy, a calendar era used for a given calendar, or the geological eras defined for the history of Earth. Compa ...

. His second book ''Unions of Agricultural Cooperation'' was published in 1914. الرافعي .. كاتب التاريخ الأمين In this book he drew the nation's attention to the importance of development of rural areas is different aspects such as physical, socially and humanly. He also focused on education in this book. Al-Rafai emphasized that education should be guaranteed by the state and should have the priority of improvement over many smaller issues. Al-Rafai wrote his third book in 1922 titled ''National Societies'' where he spoke about the relationship between the social and political cohesion and economic growth. His most famous achievement is a 16 volume book that he had started to compose in the 18th century and didn't finish it until his fifties. Numerous historians have agreed that Al-Rafai researched and collected the most data concerning these topic that could have been known during that period in time and in his circumstances which makes is why his work became a strong basis to the history of systematic in Egypt and the Arab world as a whole.

Footnotes

Literature

* Masr Al Mogahida Fi Al Asr Al Hadith - Dar AL Hilal - 1989

External links

Profile on scc.gov.eg
* https://web.archive.org/web/20110722114336/http://arts.eldoc.ub.rug.nl/FILES/publications/general/Historical/2002/debaets_censor/egypt.pdf * https://web.archive.org/web/20131104233418/http://moheet.com/show_news.aspx?nid=61858 {{DEFAULTSORT:Rafai, Abd al-Rahman al- 1889 births 1966 deaths 20th-century Egyptian historians Historians of Africa category:Supply and internal trade ministers of Egypt