The Cosmopolitan Alexandrian

This chapter describes Alexandria and Mustafa Badawi's early life in the city. Badawi was born in Alexandria in 1925 and spent most of the first half of his life there. He was one of the first cohort of students in the new University of Alexandria (then known as Faruq I University), which became an independent university in 1942. After providing a background on Alexandria, the chapter considers some of the authors who contributed to the rise of modern Arabic literature, including Adib Ishaq, Georges Zananiri, Michel de Zogheb, and Constantine Cavafy. It then turns to one of the most influential Alexandrian personalities on the young Badawi, Ahmad Zaki Abu Shadi, best known for his contribution to Arabic poetry in the Romantic period. It also looks at two Alexandrian painters, Mahmud Saʻid and Muhammad Nagi, whose works depict social life in the city between the two world wars.