Taha Husayn (sometimes spelled Hussein) (1889-1973) is considered one of Egypt's leading men of letters. Blind from early childhood, he devoted his life to intellectual freedom for the writer, critic, and scholar and to the introduction of Western learning into his country.

Taha Husayn was born on Nov. 4, 1889, in Maghagha, a mill town in Minya Province, Egypt. One of 11 children, he became blind at the age of three from a combination of eye disease and folk medicine. After completing studies at the village mosque school, Taha was sent to Cairo (1902) to attend al-Azhar, the mosque university that served as a theological seminary to much of the Moslem world. Because of his outspoken opposition to the school's teaching system at al-Azhar, Husayn was failed in his final examinations. He enrolled in the new, secular Egyptian University, where he studied with some of the leading scholars of the time, Egyptian...