Abd El-Razzak El-Sanhuri

Abd El-Razzak El-Sanhuri was an Egyptian jurist, born on August 11, 1895, and died on July 21, 1971, who became the principal architect of modern Arab civil law. After studying law in Cairo, he earned his doctorate from the University of Lyon in France under the jurist Edouard Lambert, and he went on to serve as Dean of Cairo's Law Faculty from 1936 to 1937, Egypt's Minister of Education across two terms in the 1940s, and President of Egypt's Council of State from 1949 to 1954. His central achievement was serving as the principal author of the revised Egyptian Civil Code of 1948, and his multivolume commentary on that code, Al-Wasit fi sharh al-qanun al-madani al-jadid, remains in print and is still highly regarded across legal and academic circles throughout the Arab world. El-Sanhuri's influence extended well beyond Egypt: he presided over the drafting committees for the Iraqi and Syrian civil codes and contributed to legislative reform projects in Kuwait, Sudan, Libya and Bahrain, spreading a shared civil-law framework across much of the modern Arab world. He closed his career directing the Arab League's Institute of Arab Research and Studies from 1959 until his death in 1971, cementing his standing as the twentieth century's most influential codifier of Arab civil law.