Mahmoud Messadi


Mahmoud Messadi was a Tunisian author and intellectual.
Mahmoud Messadi is considered the founder of a special literary school in the Arab world. He "is one of the few modern authors of the 20th century who has succeeded in artistically exposing the Oriental Arab soul, its size and its contradictions".
Messadi graduated from the Sadiki College in Tunis and studied Arabic language and literature at the Sorbonne in Paris. After Tunisia's independence, he was Minister of Education, then Minister of Culture.
He was responsible for the modernization of the Tunisian education system and the establishment of the Tunisian university.

Life

He was born in Tazarka, Nabeul Governorate, Tunisia. His education began in the village writers, where he completed memorizing the Noble Qur’an before he started primary school in Qirba. He then completed high school in the Sadiqi Institute in 1933. In the same year, he enrolled in the Faculty of Arts at the Sorbonne to study Arabic language and literature. He graduated from it in 1936, and he began preparing his first message "Abu Nawas Poetry School", and his second message on "The Rhythm in the Arab Shuja", but the Second World War prevented their completion. The second was later published in Arabic and French. Al-Massadi taught university in Tunisia and France.
In addition to university teaching, Al-Masadi was involved in politics, where he assumed responsibility for education affairs in the National Independence Movement, which he joined as a fighter against French colonialism, and also played a leadership role in the teachers ’union work.
After independence in 1956, Al-Masadi took over the Ministry of National Education, where he founded the Tunisian University. Before that, he had been able to establish free education for every Tunisian child. In 1976, Al-Masadi took over the Ministry of Cultural Affairs. Before ending his political career as Speaker of the House of Representatives and in addition to these responsibilities, the writer had a wealth of activity in the UNESCO and Alexo organizations and the Arabic Language Academy in Jordan. He also supervised the “Al-Mabahith” magazine in 1944, and then the “Cultural Life” magazine in 1975.
Al-Masadi wrote his important works between 1939 and 1947. These works reveal the Qur'anic influence on its intellectual and belief formation and its style. His works also reveal his knowledge of the work of Muslim thinkers in various eras, and of ancient Arab literature that began his interest in him since his secondary education, in addition to his extensive and profound knowledge of French literature in particular and Western in general.

Works