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Taha Hussein Museum
Taha Hussein is one of the most important names of Modern Arabic Literature. However, he’s also a leading social and political reform who struggled for the provision of education to the poor and emancipation for women.
Born in Upper Egypt in 1889, young Taha went blind at the age of three. He went on to receive the first PhD ever granted from an Egyptian University in 1914 and followed it up with one from the Sorbonne four years later.
It was Hussein who finally pushed through free education and the primary and secondary levels as Minister of Education, he translated the works of Greek philosophers, produced a revolutionary and highly controversial work on Pre-Islamic poetry and somewhere along the way found the time to produce some of modern Arabic Literature’s finest examples.
After his death in 1973, his home was turned into a museum in called The Ramatan (two oasis where travelers could stop to rest.) Hussein built the house so that he and his son could both have separate and private residences and entrances while remaining close.
The museum or "Ramatan" is made up of two stories. The ground floor houses Dr. Taha Hussein's study and a part of his 7,000 book library, a great reception hall where he received writers, politicians and artists every Sunday evening. In one of the corners of this hall stand a huge piano, a gramophone and records of rare musical works by Schubert, Verdi, Bach, Mozart, Schumann and others.
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