Sayyid Qutb Biography

Sayyid Qutb Ibrahim Husayn al-Shadhili was an Egyptian Islamic thinker, literary critic, and Qur'anic exegete whose Fi Zilal al-Qur'an ('In the Shade of the Qur'an') is one of the most widely read modern Sunni Qur'anic commentaries. Born in 1906 in the village of Musha in the Asyut governorate of Upper Egypt, he memorized the Qur'an by age ten and pursued a literary education at the Dar al-'Ulum teachers' college in Cairo, graduating in 1933. He spent his early career as a literary critic, journalist, and inspector for the Egyptian Ministry of Education, publishing works of literary theory and Arabic poetry alongside his expanding religious writing.

Qutb's intellectual trajectory shifted decisively after his two years studying education in the United States from 1948 to 1950, and on his return to Egypt he formally joined the Muslim Brotherhood. From the early 1950s he produced his most influential Islamic works in rapid succession: al-'Adala al-Ijtima'iyya fi al-Islam ('Social Justice in Islam', 1949) on Islamic political and economic ethics; al-Tasawwur al-Islami wa Muqawwimatuhu ('The Islamic Conception and Its Foundations'); and his magnum opus Fi Zilal al-Qur'an, a thematic Qur'anic commentary distinguished by its literary register, its sustained engagement with the moral psychology of the believer, and its emphasis on the Qur'an as a transformative living text. He completed and revised much of the Zilal during his years of imprisonment.

Qutb spent the final decade of his life imprisoned by the Nasser regime, including a brief release in 1964 followed by re-arrest. He was executed by hanging in Cairo on 29 August 1966 / 13 Jumada al-Akhirah 1386 at the age of fifty-nine. His Fi Zilal al-Qur'an and Ma'alim fi al-Tariq ('Milestones'), the latter completed near the end of his life, have been translated into nearly every major Muslim language, and his Qur'anic commentary in particular remains a continuously reprinted reference across the Sunni world.