Gamal Hamdan

Hamdan was born in the Qalyubia Governorate on February 4, 1928.[3] His father, a teacher of the Arabic language, had been discharged from Al Azhar University on charges of participating in demonstrations in the Egyptian Revolution of 1919.[1]

He became enrolled in primary school at the age of eight. He then moved to the prestigious Tawfiqiyya secondary school, a school reputed for its high standards in education and sports facilities nationally. It was there he discovered his love and innate talent for geography.[1]

Having completed his secondary education in 1944 with distinction, ranking sixth on the list of graduates nationwide, he joined the Department of Geography at the Cairo University.

At the age of twenty, he obtained his Baccalaureate of Arts with Distinction.

He was soon appointed as a staff member at the Faculty of Arts, where he was granted a scholarship at the University of Reading, UK, to obtain his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees. There, he became a student of the eminent English geographer, professor Austen Miller[4]

Hamdan’s intellectual and geographical achievements constituted the most important accomplishment of the Egyptian geographical school,[5] that stresses Egypt’s uniqueness and singularity in terms of time and place, of geography and history. In his works, he adopted a multi-disciplinary approach, encompassing geography, history, sociology, politics, and culture.

Hamdan’s writings manifest a unique wealth of knowledge, an immense power of meditation and observation, and a distinct, devoted love of Egypt. His was the connoisseur’s love of the components of a unique gem. According to the English language publication Egypt Today, Hamdan could delineate and interpret the Egyptian personality as influenced by location and geographical considerations, by utilizing exceptional resources.[4]

Hamdan wrote in both Arabic and English, including seventeen books in Arabic and eight in English, in addition to several articles in Arabic, published in newspapers, magazines and other publications. The outlook of his writings are futuristic in nature, encompassing predictions on several major events considered by Hamdan to be either compatible or incompatible with geographical facts. One of these predictions was the disintegration of the Soviet Union.[4][3]

Hamdan's encyclopedic work The Personality of Egypt, took ten years to complete using 245 Arabic language and 691 foreign language reference books. The book expounds the constituent factors making up the Egyptian personality since the early days of the Pharaohs. Hamden considers Egypt to be the central chapter of the geography book, which turned into the opening chapter of the history book, maintaining a coherent civilization across history. Egypt, to Hamdan, was a unique unrepetitive geographical anomaly. Apart from the “Description of Egypt”, which appeared in print during the French Expedition to Egypt, The Personality of Egypt is considered an unprecedented scientific masterpiece on Egypt.

Dr. Gamal Hamdan was awarded several scientific prizes and merit awards including:[4]

• State Incentive Prize for Arts and Letters, 1959.
• State Merit Prize for Social Science, 1986.
• Scientific Criticism Award, by the State of Kuwait, 1986.
• Order of Merit of the First Class for Science and Arts, 1988.

In line with his dedication to science and his ascetic attitude to formalities, he refused to break up with his self-imposed solitude. Apart from the first prize awarded to him in 1959, he refused to receive any of the other prizes.

Hamdan died on April 17, 1993. His works had a far-reaching impact on the entire field of social sciences that was almost tantamount to a revolution in geography.[5] His unique literary style turned the science of geography into a universal, encyclopedic social science. Taking geography as an access road to other branches, he used this multi-disciplinary approach to study Egypt’s location, history, culture, and future.

• Mohamed Riad