Background
Mohammed Hassan El-Zayyat was born February 14, 1915, son of a prosperous farmer and renowned cheese manufacturer at Damietta on the Mediterranean at the mouth of the Nile.
Mohammed Hassan El-Zayyat was born February 14, 1915, son of a prosperous farmer and renowned cheese manufacturer at Damietta on the Mediterranean at the mouth of the Nile.
Educated at Damietta Primary School, then sent to Cairo for secondary schooling.
He entered Cairo University in 1935, graduated with a BA in 1939, and took his MA in 1942. He learned his Persian during a diploma course on oriental studies. In 1944 he went to England to continue his studies at Oriel College, Oxford University, where he obtained his PhD in 1947 for a thesis on the influence of the Sassasian rulers of the Persian Empire upon political philosophy in the sixth century. Returning to Cairo, he became a lecturer in Middle East studies.
He started his diplomatic career in 1950 as a cultural attache in Washington but without an abrupt break from academic life since he managed the time to be a visiting associate professor at Columbia University in 1953-1954. From 1955 to 1957 he was a counsellor at Teheran and from 1957 to 1960 he served in Somalia as Egyptian delegate to the UN advisory council. In Cairo from 1960 to 1962 he was head of the Arab Affairs Department at the Foreign Ministry and a delegate to the Arab League.
His next posting took him to the UN as deputy permanent representative from 1962 to 1964, when he was appointed Ambassador to India. From 1965 to 1967 he was Under-Secretary at the Foreign Ministry, handling Arab affairs, the Palestine question and OAU matters. In 1967 he was appointed Deputy Minister of Information and for two years was chief government spokesman in Cairo. He returned to the UN as Ambassador and head of delegation from 1969 to 1972.
Two attempts to go on vacation in 1972 were overtaken by cabinet promotion. He entered the cabinet for the first time on January 17, 1972, as Minister of State for Information. In September 1972 he was about to take a holiday again when he was appointed Foreign Minister. Almost immediately he began talks in London as part of an intensive campaign for western influence to be exerted to find a solution to the Middle East crisis. In his first six months he travelled to many countries in East and West seeking support for Egypt’s struggle. He expanded diplomatic representation in African states, establishing an embassy in Dahomey, raising the mission in Sierra Leone to an embassy, and setting up a consulate- general in Zanzibar.
A jovial, heavily-built man whose eyes beam good humour through thick- rimmed spectacles. With a flair for oratory and a command of five languages, he is never at a loss to get his points across fluently in Arabic, English, French, Persian or Urdu.
Twice chief spokesman for the government in Cairo, he was hold in high regard by international journalists for his clarity in briefing on complex situations. A gifted scholar, he is an authority on oriental studies and writes short stories in his spare time.