Professor sultan Poly Hassan, the director of the centre along with Arabic scholars drawn from Nigerian universities converged to highlight the scholarly works of Mahfouz, who dedicated all his life in serving the cause of Arabic literature. Mahfouz is the first Arabic writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. But Many in the Arab world opined that the prize was somewhat ironic, not least because the work for which Mahfouz received the prize had been published at least three decades earlier. In spite of millions of readers in the Arab world, the author’s books are still unavailable in many Middle Eastern countries on account of his support for President Sadat’s Camp David peace treaty with Israel in 1978. Mahfouz wrote some 40 novels and short story collections, 30 screenplays, and many plays.

To Malam Muntasir Umar, from Kano State Ministry of Education, Naguib Mahfouz is a world literary icon as he is known as Adib Aalamiya. This scholar always places Mahfouz in the higher echelon of world writers whose aim is to uplift their cultural norms and values to the standard of modern times. According to him, Mahfouz wrote “the story of the pharaoh, Egyptian families, how they live with one another, the society as a whole in both ancient and modern times. And he started writings when he was 25 years old.”

Even though Egypt is blessed with a number geniuses in different fields of human endeavour, Naguib Mahfouz remains unrivalled in literature. His 1988 Nobel put him head and shoulders above others. But this singular honour has earned him some bad blood as well. Critics say if not for his sympathy for the Jewish cause, he would not have been so honoured.

Malam Muntasir debunks this claims, saying they are baseless. He quoted extensively from the works of Mahfouz and their dates of publication, solely to give the participant a vivid picture of the author’s citation.  “Naguib Mahfouz had never written a book or short story in support of the Camp David Accord or any jewish activity. This is my literary stand,” he said. He enumerated the number of scholars who have reviewed Mahfouz’s works and some publications in which this reviews have appeared. Some of these include: Nadine Gordimer, John Fowles, Denys Johnson-Davies, London Review of Books, Vanity Fair, Newsweek, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and the Economist.

The paper presented by Professor Sabary Ibrahim Aly Salamy, Head of Arabic Language Department, Umaru Musa ’Yar’adua University, Katsina was an expose on the life of Mahfouz. Even though the paper was not intended to be a historical biography of this erudite literary man, the scholar was able to pinpoint important events in the life of Mahfouz, as he stated that “Naguib Mahfouz was named after a great medical doctor, Al-Bary Abu Auf Najib Pasha Mahfouz, who looked after the health of his mother up to the time he was born “And he traced the origin of his family from a city located at the centre of Egypt, which is adjacent to the sea.

Birth and bearing

Naguib Mahfouz was born in Cairo on 11th December, 1911. He attended Cairo University, where he obtained a degree in Philosophy. He worked as a Secretary to the religious parliament between 1938 and 1945. When he retired, he became a columnist with Al-Ahram. He married in 1954 and gave birth to two daughters, Umu-Kulthum and Fatima.

Most of Mahfouz’s early works were set in al-Jamaliyyah. Abath Al-Aqdar (1939), Radubis (1943), and Kifah Tibah (1944), were historical novels written as part of a larger unfulfilled project of 30 novels. He planned to write the history of Egypt in a series of books. However, following the third volume, Mahfouz shifted his interest to the present, the psychological impact of the social change on ordinary people.

The centrepiece of Mahfouz’s literary works in the 1950s was The Cairo Trilogy, a monumental work of 1,500 pages, which the author completed before the July Revolution. The novels were titled with the street names Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, and Sugar Street. Mahfouz set the story in the parts of Cairo where he grew up. They depict the life of the patriarch al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad and his family over three generations in Cairo from the first world war to the 1950s.

When King Farouk I was overthrown, Mahfouz stopped writing when he completed the trilogy of Cairo. Disappointed in the Nasser régime, which had overthrown the monarchy in 1952, he started publishing again in 1959, now prolifically pouring out novels, short stories, journalism, memoirs, essays, and screenplays.

In a nutshell, all the scholars who converged to honour Naguib Mahfouz agreed that he is unrivalled by most of his contemporaries. Even his adversaries see him as a genius even though they disagreed with his stand on religious principles. Maybe the misunderstanding occurred “as many people, even among scholars failed to get a clear line of distinction between religious works and literary writings,” as stated by Professor Sultan Poly Hassan, who chaired the celebration.

During the concluding part of the programme, Arabic students asked a number of questions on the personality of Mahfouz and the quality of his works. The director of the centre along with Dr. Mustapha Husayn Isma’il and Malam Muntasir provided the answers according to the level of their audiences sense of perception.

Malam Adamu AbdulMumin gave the vote of thanks on behalf of the participants, in which he expressed profoubd gratitude to Almighty Allah for guiding the centre in all its endeavour. He also commended the director of the Egyptian cultural Centre, in the person of Professor sultan Poly Hassan, “without whose effort the centre would not have achieved its present status, as it established the largest Arabic library in West Africa.