Mahmoud Seddik - Cairo

In the late royal era, Egypt was known - particularly in the early decades of the twentieth century - the emergence of important legal, intellectual and political elites, which formed important national movements in a period of great cultural prosperity.

Among the most prominent men of this stage are the group of senior jurists: Abd al-Razzaq al-Sanhouri Pasha, Ali Maher Pasha and Suleiman Bey Hafiz, the three of them practiced politics and assumed high positions, but they were mainly legal men and had a great intellectual contribution to establishing the constitutional and legal life before the officers ’movement in July July 1952 with which they collided in various ways.

Two of them - Al-Sanhoury and Hafez - participated in the 1919 revolution, all of whom established the legal and constitutional beginnings of the July 23 state. They helped establish the feet of young officers in the rule of Egypt, then quickly disagreed with the military regime and encountered different fates between being forced to resign, and beating with shoes, And arrest.

Suleiman Hafez
The father of a merchant from a Nubian family living in Alexandria, Suleiman Hafez was born in 1896, and he obtained a Bachelor of Laws from the School of Law at the Egyptian University, to work as a lawyer for a period of time and then moved to the judiciary until he reached in 1949 to the position of deputy head of the opinion and legislation departments of the State Council that he heads Its great legal time, Abdul-Razzaq Al-Sanhouri

In July 1952, the Free Officers' Movement presented Suleiman Hafez the opportunity to participate strongly in the making of events. Ali Maher Pasha - the first prime minister after the July movement which he later called a revolution - summoned him as an opinion adviser to the military ruler, asking him to participate the Minister of Justice in amending Some legislation to legalize new situations.

He then participated - along with Al-Sanhouri - on a tripartite committee to draft a document that King Farouk abdicated from the throne of Egypt, but was assigned to go to the king to ask for the signing of this document, "and the task he rigged," as he said in his memoirs.

Law Fence
Hafez, driven by his hatred of the Wafd Party, issued a statement known as the temporary guardianship of the throne, avoiding the call of the National Assembly (parliament), which is controlled by a majority delegation, to break the trusteeship envelope, and in return granted the cabinet this right, which contributed to the stability of the July system.

Hafez became the codifier of the officers ’demands, and he expressed this himself in his memoirs, saying," I and other colleagues have worked hard to surround the actions of the revolution in its first months with a fence of legitimacy. What some people deny of me without bothering to understand my purpose of it, and exaggerated me for it. They even said that I have a gland that never calm down until the laws are sorted out by the laws. "

Hafez was appointed Minister of the Interior in the second ministry of the July Movement, which was assumed by Major General Mohamed Naguib, the first president of the Arab Republic of Egypt. Constitution so as not to object to the work of the purification committees.

He also issued several legislations authorizing the separation of the employee from non-disciplinary methods, and participated in the preparation of the draft labor law that prohibited the strike and permitted the dismissal of workers, as well as depriving the isolated judicial men of obtaining a pension.

Arrest of laws gland
Until the distinguished moment between Hafez and the officers came during the famous crisis of March 1954 and its resolution in favor of Jamal Abdel Nasser, and the arrest of Muhammad Naguib, Hafez opposed this, and he was arrested by officers who contributed to confirming their judgment with his legal opinions, which were described as "and led to any outlet for democracy."

Sanhouri
The birth of Abdel-Razzaq Al-Sanhouri was preceded by the birth of Suleiman Hafez a year in the same city, Alexandria, but he was born into a poor family, and he lived an orphan after his father died at the age of five.

Al-Sanhouri joined a simple job in the Ministry of Finance, and succeeded in obtaining a bachelor’s degree in English from the Khedive Law School in Cairo, and he was the first to pay him, to be appointed to the judiciary within the Public Prosecution in Mansoura, north of Cairo.

Culture and revolution
Al-Sanhouri was fond of reading, and he adopted the idea of ​​the Islamic University, which was advocated by the leader Mustafa Kamel, the founder of the National Party and Al-Liwa newspaper, which influenced him greatly, and participated during his work in the Public Prosecution in the 1919 revolution. The British colonial authorities punished him by transferring to the city of Assiut in Upper Egypt.

His deportation lasted only one year, after which he moved to teach law in one of the institutions that contributed to the renewal of Islamic thought, which is the school of Sharia Judiciary, and one of his most famous students was Sheikh Muhammad Abu Zahra, one of the leading scholars of Islamic law and law in the twentieth century.

His belief in Islamic ideas took shape after his travel to the French University of Lyon on a mission to study law in 1921, and he attacked those who fascinated Western civilization, and accused Sheikh Ali Abdel-Razek - the author of "Islam and the Origins of Rule" who denied the hypothesis of the existence of the Islamic caliphate system - by being influenced by Western secular curricula.

Think about the caliphate
His enthusiasm for the idea of ​​succession reached that he completed another doctoral thesis at the University of Lyon on "the jurisprudence of the caliphate and its development into an organization of oriental nations", then returned to Egypt as a teacher of civil law at the Faculty of Law in 1921, and participated in his views in the intellectual and political battles that were flourishing in that period of Omar Al-Mahrousa .

Egyptian Youth Association
Al-Sanhoury did not join any organization or party, but in 1934 he founded the Egyptian Youth Association, which was designed to prepare young people to serve the country away from parties, by cultivating virtuous morals, training in the arts of sports, and raising minds by educating it on a national culture and knowing Egypt's history, present, and potential.

The government separated him for fear of the spread of his ideas, so he traveled to Iraq to establish a law school there, issues a magazine for the judiciary, and succeeded in drafting a civil law for the state, to return two years later to Cairo, dean of the Faculty of Law, and assigns to him the new civil law in Egypt to complete it, refusing to receive any reward .

In 1945, Al-Sanhouri assumed the Ministry of Public Knowledge, for a period of four years during which he founded Farouk University, whose name changed to Alexandria, and Muhammad Ali University (now Assiut University), and later he left the Ministry to be appointed as the head of the Egyptian State Council.

Hit the shoe
After he participated in establishing the feet of the July officers' system, he clashed with them, after mass demonstrations chanting the officers and the revolution and calling for the constitution to be overthrown, the demonstrations stormed the State Council and assaulted Al-Sanhouri, and hit with shoes.

Al-Sanhouri Jamal Abdel Nasser accused his time formally of inciting the demonstrators, and after his dismissal he entered into compulsory isolation until 1970 (a year before his death), during which he accomplished a number of works, and set up constitutional and legal introductions to countries such as Libya, Sudan, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.

Ali Maher Pasha
The origins of the third of them differ, as Ali Maher Pasha was born in 1881 to a family of Circassian notables, and his father was the governor of Cairo, and he obtained a Bachelor of Laws in 1903, to work as a lawyer for a period before he joined the judiciary and was appointed Minister of Finance in 1929.

Maher - after assuming the position of chief of King Fouad's office - held the position of prime minister four times, started in 1936 and ended with the first ministry after the July 1952 movement, which lasted only six months, and was called a crisis man in a clear indication of his skill and political skills.

He was arrested during the Second World War after he was accused during the era of the government of Mustafa Al-Nahhas Pasha Al-Fidiya on charges of contacting the Axis powers in World War II.

The secret to choosing Maher
After they launched the July 1952 revolution, the "free officers" agreed to choose Ali Maher as prime minister, given his close relationship with King Farouk and the ease of dealing with him, in addition to that he is not associated with a party which may implicate the revolution in its first relations, according to Major General Mohamed Naguib, the first president of Egypt in his memoirs. .

But Sami Gohar narrated in his book “The Silent People Speaking” of the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Saleh Abu Raqiq, that Maher’s choice was made at the behest of the Muslim Brotherhood, which was close to the free officers at the time, and officers belonging to it participated in the July movement.

It was soon that Maher was forced to resign for opposing the idea of ​​Egyptian agrarian reform in 1953, and he retreated until he died in 1960.