BOOK REVIEW: MY LIFE/ حياتي

MY LIFE BY AHMED AMINE

I have been delighted to read this autobiography in every possible way!!!

 My first encounter with this well-educated academic and reformist thinker dates back to my final year of high school when we often dealt with his articles, and I honestly think that reading his                      autobiography couldn't happen at any better time. One of the reasons is that it includes certain                perspectives that are highly interesting about everything and anything.                                                    This is an interesting succinct life account of the prominent Egyptian historian Ahmed Amine. The writer provides a chronology of his personal life, famous achievements, enticing travels, literary contributions; as well as a description of 19th century Egypt. He presents his description and commentary on its societal composition and the social changes that were mainly consequences of the different political alterations. His descriptions preceded his comparison between his native environment and other foreign ones like France, England, Italy, and Turkey. He also recounts his experience with traveling from his first voyage at the age of 16 to teach for the first time in a remote city until his travels at his most accomplished states.                                                                                                                   

   Born into a conservative family, his strict religious father insisted that he attends the Islamic school Al Azhar instead of a modern school. Albeit his short and unfulfilling stay at Alazhar, he joins it back later to become a judge and he continued to lead a simple conservative life as a teacher in different schools in Egypt. His academic curiosity was not limited to one field only, which encouraged him to learn French and English to keep pace with recent scholarly books and studies. His literary contributions varied from memorable books like Fajr al-Islam, Duha l-Islam, Zuhr al-Islam to notable articles on Islam, ethics, and several other topics, which he compiled later under the title Fayd al-khatir. Ahmed Amine was assigned the head of The Committee of Authorship, Translation, and Publishing, which was one of his distinguished positions. Besides, he was also assigned as an Arabic literature teacher and later as the dean of Arts' faculty.                                                                                I found his writing style eloquent, fluent, and appealing, hence he plainly advised writers to write similarly for it is the most efficient to reach out to common readers' intellect. the narrator rarely allowed the reader to find his life account dull or unremarkable. I certainly found him modest despite the existence of some fanciful passages. During the later part of his life, Ahmed Amine started suffering some vision problems that necessitated eye surgery. After the surgical procedure, his medical state was subject to extreme care and he had to keep his eyes closed for a specific period. Eventually, this short period revealed his inner-self that was regretful, yearning, careworn, powerless as he dwelt on the past and even considered atheism at times, yet his religious beliefs remained unaltered.

 If anything, I wish it were longer because it kept me hooked until the very end.