ABD AL-RAZZAQ AL-SANHURI

ABD AL-RAZZAQ AL-SANHURI
(1895–1971)

Abd al-Razzaq al-Sanhuri was one of the most distinguished
jurists and principal architects of modern Arab civil laws. Al-
Sanhuri, a native of Alexandria, Egypt, obtained his law
degree from what was then known as the Khedival School of
Law of Cairo in 1917. He held different public posts including
that of assistant prosecutor at the Mixed Courts of
Mansura and as a lecturer at the Shari
a School for Judges. In
1921, he was awarded a scholarship to study law at the
University of Lyon in France. In France, he wrote two
doctoral dissertations, one on English law and the other on
the subject of the caliphate in the modern age. In 1926, al-
Sanhuri returned to Egypt where he became a law professor
at the National University (now the Cairo University), and
eventually became the dean of the law faculty. Because of his
involvement in politics, and defense of the Egyptian Constitution,
he was fired from his post in 1936, and left Egypt to
become the dean of the Law College in Baghdad.
After one year, he returned to Egypt where he held several
high-level cabinet posts before becoming the president of the
Council of State in 1949. Initially, al-Sanhuri supported the
movement of the Free Officers who overthrew the Egyptian
monarch in 1952, but because of al-Sanhuri’s insistence on a
return to civilian democratic rule and his defense of civil
rights, he was ousted from his position and persecuted. After
1954, al-Sanhuri withdrew from politics and focused his
efforts on scholarship and modernizing the civil codes of
several Arab countries. Al-Sanhuri heavily influenced the
drafting of the civil codes of Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and
Kuwait. One year before his death in Egypt, al-Sanhuri
completed a huge multivolume commentary on civil law,
called al-Wasit fi sharh al-qanun al-madani, which is still
considered authoritative in many parts of the Arab world. He
also wrote several highly influential works on Islamic contractual
law, the most famous of which are Masadir al-haqq fi
al-fiqh al-Islami and Nazariyyat al-aqd fi al-fiqh al-Islami. One
of al-Sanhuri’s most notable accomplishments was that he
integrated and reconciled the civil law codes, which were
French based, with classical Islamic legal doctrines. For
instance, he is credited with making Egyptian civil law more
consistent with Islamic law.

See also Law; Modernization, Political: Constitutionalism.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hill, Enid. Al-Sanhuri and Islamic Law. Cairo: American
University of Cairo Press, 1987.
Khaled Abou El-Fadl