Anwar al-Sadat Born in 1918 into a family of 13 children, Anwar al-Sadat grew up among the average Egyptian inhabitants of the town of Mit Abul Kom, 40 miles north of Cairo . After completing primary school, Sadat's father worked as a clerk in the local military hospital. By the time of his birth, Anwar's Egypt had become a British colony. The crippling debt had forced the Egyptian government to sell to the British government its interests in the French-planned Suez Canal, which linked the Mediterranean Sea with the Indian Ocean. The English and French had used these resources to establish sufficient political control over Egyptian affairs to call Egypt a British colony. Four figures influenced Sadat's early life. The first, a man named Zahran, came from a small village like Sadat's. In a famous incident of colonial rule, the British hanged Zahran for participating in a riot that resulted in the death of a British officer. Sadata admired the courage shown by Zahran on the way to the gallows. The second, Kemel Ataturk, created the modern state of Türkiye, causing the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Not only had Ataturk freed himself from the shackles of colonialism, but he had initiated a series of civil service reforms, which Sadat admired. The third man was Mohandas Gandhi. On a tour of Egypt in 1932, Gandhi had preached the power of nonviolence in the fight against injustice. Finally, the young Sadata admired Adolf Hitler who the anti-colonialist Sadat saw as a potential rival to British control. In 1936, as part of an agreement between the Bri...... The Israeli Knesset began a new impetus for peace that would eventually culminate in the Camp David Accords of 1978 and a final peace treaty with Israel in 1979. For his efforts, Sadat won the Nobel Peace Prize. At home, Sadat's new relationship with the West and his peace treaty generated considerable domestic opposition, especially among fundamentalist Muslim groups. In 1980 and 1981 Sadat made desperate gambles to respond to these new internal problems. He negotiated a series of loans to support improvements in daily living. And at the same time he promulgated laws prohibiting protest and declared that Shari'a would be the basis of all new Egyptian law. Sadat died at the hands of fundamentalist assassins on 6 October 1981, during the military review celebrating the Suez crossing. 1973.