Abd El-Razzak El-Sanhuri

Abd El-Razzak El-Sanhuri was an Egyptian jurist and politician who helped draft Egypt’s 1948 Civil Code and shaped civil-law scholarship and legislation across the Arab world.

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Egyptian Civil Code: Egypt’s 1948 civil code, a major codification of private law that drew on continental European and Arab legal traditions. El-Sanhuri was the principal architect of this code.
Iraqi Civil Code: Iraq’s civil code, enacted in 1951, governing private-law relations. El-Sanhuri helped prepare the code, adapting legal ideas to Iraqi conditions.
Mustafa El-Maraghy: An Egyptian Islamic scholar who served as rector of Al-Azhar and Grand Imam. El-Sanhuri studied at Al-Azhar during El-Maraghy’s reformist intellectual era.
Al-Azhar University: A Cairo institution of Islamic learning founded in the tenth century and now a university. El-Sanhuri studied Islamic law there before pursuing modern legal education.
Arab legal modernism: The effort to adapt law and legal institutions to modern conditions across Arab societies. El-Sanhuri’s codification sought to combine inherited legal traditions with modern state law.
Comparative law: The study of similarities and differences among the legal systems of different countries. Comparative analysis supplied methods for his civil-code drafting.
Syrian Civil Code: Syria’s civil code, enacted in 1949, governing private-law relations. Its drafting drew on the Egyptian codification project associated with El-Sanhuri.
Taha Hussein: An Egyptian writer and intellectual who became a leading figure in modern Arabic literature. Both men represented influential strands of Egypt’s modern intellectual establishment.
Lyon 3 University: A French public university established in Lyon in 1973. El-Sanhuri earned his doctorate in law in Lyon decades before the university took its current institutional form.
Legal transplantation: The transfer and adaptation of legal rules or institutions from one society to another. His codes show how imported legal forms were reshaped for Arab jurisdictions.