Abd El-Razzak El-Sanhuri
Abd el-Razzak el-Sanhuri or ‘Abd al-Razzāq al-Sanhūrī was an Egyptian, legal scholar and professor who drafted the revised Egyptian Civil Code of 1948. He wrote the draft of the Iraqi Civil Code with the help of many Iraqi jurists guided by him.
el-Sanhuri was born to a poor family and, he was orphaned. His father was an employee in Municipal Council.
el-Sanhuri obtained his secondary school certificate in 1913 and then joined the faculty of Law, Cairo University where he obtained his BA in 1917 and he was influenced by the revolution of 1919. He was the Attorney General in 1920 and then traveled to France to obtain his doctorate and return in 1926 to work as a teacher of civil law.
He initially backed the 1952 Egyptian coup by providing legal counsel to the Free Officers Movement and their governing body, the Revolutionary Command Council.
He was forced into retirement by Gamal Abdel Nasser and physically attacked by a mob for attempting to restore constitutional government in 1954. Nevertheless, the RCC banned him along with 37 others from public office.
Sanhuri left Egypt and helped draft the civil codes of the pre-Baath Syria of Husni al-Za'im, Jordan, and Libya and the commercial code of Kuwait, and the guidance when needed of a natural law obviously just to all, to guarantee justice above religion, ideology, and personal opinion in general, when all else fails to solve the problem. One commentator argued that Sanhuri's code reflected a "hodgepodge of socialist doctrine and sociological jurisprudence." Regardless of such interpretations, his place in the legal history of the modern Middle East is secure; his twelve-volume Al-Wasīṭ fī sharḥ al-qānūn al-madanī al-jadīd "adorns the bookshelves of many an Arab law firm, even in countries where the Egyptian Civil Code is not law".
Sanhuri died on 21 July 1971 and was buried in Heliopolis, Cairo.
