1968

Ibrahim Abatcha (1938 – February 11, 1968) was a Muslim Chadian politician reputed of Marxist leanings and associations. His political activity started during the decolonization process of Chad from France, but after the country's independence he was forced to go into exile due to the increasing authoritarinism of the country's first President Francois Tombalbaye. To overthrow Tombalbaye he founded in Sudan in 1966 the FROLINAT, of which he was the first leader and field commander. Two years later he was killed in a clash with the Chadian Army. 

Originally from Borno (a province of the British colony of Nigeria), Abatcha was born into a family with a Muslim background in the French colony of Chad at Fort-Lamy (today N'Djamena) in 1938, and learned to speak French, English and Chadian Arabic, but not to write Classical Arabic, as he did not study in a Qur'anic school. He found work as a clerk in the colonial administration and became a militant trade unionist. 

Abatcha entered politics in 1958, becoming a prominent figure in the new radical Chadian National Union (UNT), mainly a split from the African Socialist Movement (MSA) by promoters of the No-vote in the referendum on Chad's entry into the French Community. The party's followers were all Muslims, and advocated Pan-Africanism and socialism. Towards the end of the colonial rule, Abatcha was jailed for a year either for his political activities or for mismanagement in the performance of his duties.

After independence in 1960, Abatcha and his party staunchly opposed the rule of President Francois Tombalbaye, and the UNT was banned with all other opposition parties on January 19, 1962. After that Abatcha was briefly imprisoned by the new Chadian government.

After his release, the UNT cadres decided that if the political situation in Chad became too unbearable to allow the party to survive, it would be wise to send out of the country some party members so that the organization would in any case maintain its existence. Thus Abatcha, who held the position of second adjutant secretary-general of the UNT, was sent in 1963 to Accra, Ghana, where he was later joined by UNT members Aboubakar Djalabo and Mahamat Ali Taher. By going into exile, the UNT members meant also to ensure their personal safety and organize abroad an armed revolt in Chad. As part of the means to preserve the unity of the movement, Abatcha wrote for the UNT a policy statement; this draft was to be the core of the official program of the FROLINAT.

Abatcha led the typical life of the Third World dissident in search of support in foreign capitals, first residing in Accra, Ghana, where he received his first military training and made friends among members of the Union of the Peoples of Cameroon that had found asylum there. The Cameroonians helped him attend conferences organized by international Communist groups.

After leaving Accra in 1965, Abatcha started traveling to other African capitals always seeking support for his project of beginning an insurgency against Tombalbaye. The first capital he reached in 1965 was Algiers, where the UNT had already a representative, probably Djalabo. His attempts were unsuccessful, as were those made from there to persuade the Chadian students in France to join him in his fight. From Algiers, he traveled to Cairo, where a small secret committee of anti-government Chadian students of the Al-Azhar University had formed. The students in Cairo had developed a strong political sensitivity because they had come to resent that the degrees obtained by them in Arab countries were of no use in Chad, as French was the only official language.  Among these students, Abatcha recruited his first supporters, and with the help of the UPC Cameroonian exiles contacted the North Korean embassy in Egypt, which offered him a military stage. Seven Cairo students volunteered, leaving Egypt in June 1965 and returning in October; these were to be with Abatcha the first military cadres of the rebels. Abatcha with his "Koreans" went then to Sudan in October 1965.

Once in Sudan, Abatcha found fertile ground for further recruitment, as many Chadian refugees lived there. Abatcha was also able to enroll in his movement former Sudanese soldiers, including a few officers, of whom the most distinguished was to become Hadjaro Senoussi. He also contacted Mohamed Baghlani, who was in communication with the first Chadian insurgents already active in Chad, and with the insurgent group Liberation Front of Chad (FLT).

A merger was negotiated during the congress at Nyala between June 19 and June 22, 1966 in which the UNT and another rebel force, the Liberation Front of Chad (FLT) combined, giving birth to the FROLINAT, whose first secretary-general was agreed to be Abatcha. The two groups were ideologically ill-fitted, as they combined the radicalism of the UNT and the Muslim beliefs of the FLT. FLT's president, Ahmed Hassan Musa, missed the conference because he was imprisoned in Khartoum; Musa suspected with some reason that Abatcha had deliberately chosen the moment of his incarceration to organize the conference due to his fear of FLT's numerical superiority over the UNT. As a result, once freed Musa broke with the FROLINAT, the first of many splits that were to plague the history of the organization. Thus Abatcha had to face from the beginning a level of considerable internal strife, with the opposition guided by the anti-communist Mohamed Baghlani.

The unity was stronger on the field, with Abatcha and his so-called Koreans passing to Eastern Chad in mid-1966 to fight the government, and El Hadj Issaka assuming the role of his chief-of-staff. While his maquis were badly trained and equipped, they were able to commit some hit-and-run attacks against the Chadian army, mainly in Ouaddai, but also in Guera and Salamat. The rebels also toured the villages, indoctrinating the people on the future revolution and exhorting youths to join the FROLINAT forces.

The following year Abatcha expanded his range and number of operations, officially claiming in his dispatches 32 actions, involving prefectures previously untouched by the rebellion, that is Moyen-Chari and Kanem. Mainly due to Abatcha's qualities as both secretary-general and field-commander, what had started in 1965 as a peasant uprising was becoming a revolutionary movement.

On January 20, 1968 Abatcha's men killed on the Goz Beida-Abéché road a Spanish veterinarian and a French doctor, while they took hostage a French nurse. Abatcha disavowed this action and ordered his men to free the nurse.  However, due to these actions, on February 11, Abatcha was tracked down by the Chadian army and killed in a clash.

Abatcha's death was the end of an important phase in the history of the FROLINAT and more generally of the rebellion. Abatcha had been the one generally acceptable leader of the insurrection.  After him, the FROLINAT was more and more divided by inner rivalries, making it more difficult to provide the insurgents with a coherent organization.

1998

‘Abd al-Rahman, ‘A’ishah (1913 - December 1, 1998) was an Egyptian writer and professor of Arabic language and literature and Qur’anic studies. Under the pseudonym Bint al-Shati’ ("Daughter of the Riverbank" or "Daughter of the Shore"), ‘Abd al-Rahman was the author of more than sixty books on Arabic literature, Qur’anic interpretation, the lives of women of the early Muslim community (especially members of the Prophet’s family), contemporary social issues, and fiction.

Raised in the Delta port city of Dumyat (Damietta), she was taught the Qur’an and classical Arabic literature by her father, an al-Azhar educated teacher at a mosque-based religious institute. Although he educated her in the traditional style at home, mosque, and Qur’anic school (kuttab), he objected to her attendance at public schools. With the assistance of her mother and maternal great-grandfather, she managed to get a secular education (at El Mansurah) despite her father’s objections.

‘Abd al-Rahman began her literary career by writing poems and essays for Al-nahdah, a women’s magazine, and became a literary critic for the semi-official newspaper Al-ahram in 1936, the same year she entered the Faculty of Letters at Fu’ad I University. At this time, she assumed the pen-name Bint al-Shati’ (“Daughter of the Shore”) in order to conceal her identity from her father. Her first articles for Al-ahram focused on conditions in the Egyptian countryside, but she is best known for her later works on religious and literary topics. She received her doctorate in 1950 for a thesis on the poet Abu al-‘Ala’ al-Ma‘arri (d. 1058).

In 1951, ‘Abd al-Rahman became professor of Arabic language and literature at ‘Ayn Shams University in Cairo. Throughout the 1960s, she participated in international literary conferences, served on several government sponsored committees on literature and education, and was a visiting professor at the Islamic University in Ummdurman (Sudan), the University of Khartoum, and the University of Algiers. After retiring from her position at ‘Ayn Shams University, she became professor of higher Qur’anic studies at al-Qarawiyin University in Fez, Morocco. Her regular articles for Al-ahram, her biographies of the women of the Prophet’s household, and especially her exegesis of the Qur’an brought her recognition and distinction in Egypt and throughout the Arab world.

‘Abd al-Rahman’s pursuit of public education offered her little challenge after her early education at the hands of her father, until she met Professor Amin al-Khuli when she was a student at Fu’ad I University (later Cairo University). He introduced her to the literary analysis of the Qur’an that became her trademark. In 'Ala al-jisr, ‘Abd al-Rahman decribes her entire life as a path to this encounter with Amin al-Khuli, whom she married in 1945. Her work is seen as the best exemplification of his method, and she has been much more prolific than her teacher, who died in 1966.

‘Abd al-Rahman’s rhetorical exegesis of the Qur’an makes a plea for removing the Qur’an from the exclusive domain of traditional exegesis (commentary) and placing it within literary studies. Whereas some earlier exegetes allowed for a multiplicity of interpretations of any single Qur’anic verse, seeing in this multiplicity a demonstration of the richness of the Qur’an, ‘Abd al-Rahman argues that every word of the Qur’an allows for only a single interpretation, which should be elicited from the context of the Qur’an as a whole. She rejects extraneous sources, particularly information derived from the Bible or Jewish sources (Isra'iliyat), the inclusion of which in traditional Qur’anic exegesis she sees as part of a continuing Jewish conspiracy to subvert Islam and dominate the world. She also argues that no word is a true synonym for any other in the Qur’an, so no word can be replaced by another. Whereas many scholars believe certain phrases in the Qur’an were inserted to provide the text with its characteristic rhythm and assonance, ‘Abd al-Rahman insisted that every word of the Qur’an is there solely for the meaning it gives.

‘Abd al-Rahman was both deeply religious and very conservative, despite her active public life. On the subject of women’s liberation, she affirmed the principle of male guardianship over women but firmly rejected male responsibility for the behavior of women. She insisted that a proper understanding of women’s liberation does not abandon traditional Islamic values. She was consistently supported and honored by successive Egyptian regimes.

'A'ishah 'Abd al-Rahman died of a heart attack following a stroke in Cairo on December 1, 1998.

'A'ishah 'Abd al-Rahman was born in Damietta in the governate of Domyat. Her father taught at the Domyat Religious Institute. When she was ten, her mother, though illiterate, enrolled 'A'ishah in school while her father was traveling. Though her father objected, her mother later sent 'A'ishah to El Mansurah for further education. Later, 'A'ishah studied Arabic at Cairo University earning her undergraduate degree in 1939, and an M.A. degree in 1941.

In 1942, 'A'ishah began work as an Inspector for teaching of Arabic literature for the Egyptian Ministry of Education. She earned her Ph.D. with distinction in 1950 and was appointed Professor of Arabic Literature at the University College for Women of the Ains Shams University.  

'Abd al-Rahman wrote fiction and biographies of early Muslim women, including the mother, wives and daughters of the Prophet Muhammad, as well as literary criticism.  She was the second modern woman to undertake Qur'anic exegesis, and though she did not consider herself to be a feminist, her works reflect feminist themes. She began producing her popular books in 1959, the same year that Naguib Mahfouz published his allegorical and feminist version of the life of the Prophet Muhammad.

'Abd al-Rahman was married to Sheik Amin el-Khouli, her teacher at Cairo University during her undergraduate years. She died of a heart attack on December 1, 1998,  following a stroke in Cairo. She donated all her library to research purposes, and in 1985 a statue was built in her honor in Cairo.

A selective bibliography of the works of 'A'ishah 'Abd al-Rahman reads as follows:

• The Egyptian Countryside (1936)
• The Problem of the Peasant (1938)
• Secret of the Beach and Master of the Estate: The Story of a Sinful Woman (1942)
• New Values in Arabic Literature (1961)
• Contemporary Arab Women Poets (1963)

Alternative names include:

'Abd al-Rahman, 'A'isha
'Abd al-Rahman, 'A'ishah
'A'isha 'Abd al-Rahman
'A'ishah 'Abd al-Rahman
Bint al-Shati’
Daughter of the Riverbank
Daughter of the Shore

Bibliography

Appendices

Note to the Reader

Introduction

Preface