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 shaping Sadat's character. He could quote extensively from the Koran, and he observed the Muslim rites scrupulously all his life. "Sadat often referred to the Holy Book as an incontestable divine history from which could be extrapolated practical directives for the conduct of contemporary politics" (Lippman, p. 10).
Sadat's devotion to Islam was one of the mainsprings of his character. While, as a young man, he absolutely believed that Islam was the ...