Abstract:

Ahmad Amin was one of the scholars and thinkers who lived in Egypt in the last century. He was born in Cairo on 1 October 1886 and died on 30 May 1954. Having studied in al-Azhar for a while, Ahmad Amin pursued his education in the Law School Madrasah al-Qada’ al-Shar‘iyyah . After the graduation, he taught in the same school for a period of fifteen years. Quitting his position there, he worked as a judge for 4 years. During his judgeship in the court of Ozbakiyya, he was appointed as a professor in the Faculty of Letters upon the suggestion of Taha Husayn. He also held the deanship of the faculty for a while. Ahmad Amin was selected as the director of Administration of Culture of Arab Union in 1947 and has remained in this post until his death. He also kept membership in Damascus Institution of Science, Baghdad Institution of Science and Cairo Linguistic Institution. He was awarded honorary doctorate by the Council of the Faculty of Letters and the Council of the University of King Fuad I in 1948. Among many published books and articles, the most important works of Ahmad Amin are Fajr al-Islam, Duha’ al-Islam and Zuhr al-Islam that all are about the history of Islamic thought. In Fajr al-Islam, the author deals with the history of thought, culture and civilisation from the Jahiliyya period to the end of the Umayyad time. The latter two are the continuation of the first book in which he examines the same subjects during the Abbasid period. Due to his ideas concerning Islamic jurisprudence, prophetic tradition, Qur’anic commentary, Islamic faith, Arab literature and Sufism, he has been criticized, and several works to challenge him have been composed

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