Anwar Sadat

Anwar Sadat was born in 1918 at Mit Abul-Kum, a village in the Nile Delta. His parents were poor peasants of black Sudanese descent, which placed him near the bottom of the socioeconomic order of Egypt. His original family name was Sadati, but he later dropped the last letter.

Growing up in Mit Abul-Kum, Sadat learned the fundamental values of Egyptian village society. Chief among these were loyalty to family and clan, respect for elders,and identification with community (Israeli, 1985, p. 4). As a boy, Sadat was taught to respect the village elders, and to revere tradition, the local political hierarchy, and religious leaders. This was the mind-set of the fellahin or peasantry, which shaped the young Sadat's character.

He really believed that his boyhood in an agricultural village of the Nile Delta left an indelible mark on his social and cultural development and on his political ideas. He believed it gave him a rapport with the fellahin that only one who had shared their experiences could have. (Lippman, 1989, p. 190)

Another aspect of Sadat's youthful experience was the poverty of his village. Illiteracy, disease, and infant mortality were common, and the lack of social services provided by the government was often cited as a source of people's suffering. This would become a theme in Sadat's later political life: the necessity for government to provide basic social services ran through many of his of his political speeches.

Islam played a vital role in shapin

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at there were only two places in the world where a man could not escape from himself: the battlefield and the prison cell. Sadat considered prison as a rebirth, stating that "The world of self-abnegation enabled my soul to merge into all other beings, and to expand and establish communion with the Lord of all beings" (Sadat, 1977, p.66). This sense of identification with all beings, especially with the people of Egypt, would form an important part of his psychological approach to leadership during his presidential years. Following his release from prison, Sadat joined Gamal Abdel Nasser's Free Officers organization and participated in their armed coup against the Egyptian monarchy in 1952. He was on of Nasser's chief supporters in 1956 when Nasser was elected as president of Egypt. By 1964, Nasser had appointed Sadat as vice-president, despite Nasser's reservations about Sadat's character. Nasser once said of Sadat that he was only interested in a big American car and gas bought by the state. But Nasser appears to have been deceived by Sadat's public show of ostentation, having missed the deeper currents in the man. Nasser's death in 1970 was a turning point in Arab politics. Nasser had become a legendary figure, an embodi

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