Mostafa El-Abbadi is celebrated in today’s Google Doodle
(Picture: Google Doodle)Google is celebrating Mostafa El-Abbadi with a Google Doodle on what would have been the Egyptian historian’s 94th birthday.
The historian and professor was an expert on the ancient Library of Alexandria in Egypt, and is credited with opening a modern version of the building.
Today’s Google Doodle features an illustration of the late professor reading a book alongside an image of the ancient library.
But who was the Egyptian historian and why is he being celebrated today?
Who is Mostafa El-Abbadi?
El-Abbadi was born on October 10, 1928, in Cairo, Egypt. His father, as the founder of the College of Letters and Arts at the University of Alexandria, sparked his interest in academia at an early age.
He graduated from the University of Alexandria at 22, earning a scholarship from the Egyptian government to attend the University of Cambridge, where he studied under distinguished historians.
El-Abbadi earned a doctorate in ancient history before returning to the University of Alexandria as a professor of Greco-Roman studies.
He became a leading authority on the Library of Alexandria, which was the first universal library built in ancient Egypt, and held around half-a-million books from countries around the world.
His academic work on the library included the study Life and Fate of the Ancient Library of Alexandria in 1990, as well as an Encyclopædia Britannica entry on the Library of Alexandria.
The historian later convinced the Egyptian government and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) to establish a modern recreation of the ancient library and, after 15 years of construction, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina opened in 2002.
The library houses more than eight million books across seven floors, and features four museums plus a planetarium.
“With the founding of the new Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the ancient experiment has come full circle,” wrote the professor in 2004.
El-Abbadi was also the president of the Archaeological Society of Alexandria and received the Order of the Nile, Egypt’s highest state of honor.
The historian was married to Azza Kararah, a professor of English literature at the University of Alexandria, who had earned her doctorate at Cambridge in 1955.
He died in 2017 at the age of 88, following his wife’s death in 2015.
They are survived by two children: a daughter, Dr Mohga El-Abbadi, and a son, Amr El-Abaddi, a professor at the University of California.
