The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (1449 page)

 
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(b. 1911).
Egyptian author of novels, short stories, and film-scripts. His early works were set in Pharaonic Egypt; then followed novels of social realism, set in Cairo, culminating in the
Cairo Trilogy
. In 1959, after a long silence, his religious allegory,
Awlad Haratina
(tr. as
Children of Gebelaawi
), was serialized in the newspaper
Al-Ahram
. It caused offence to many readers by its familiar treatment of figures representing
Adam
,
Moses
, Jesus, and
Mu
ammad
, and by allowing the death of the old man thought by many to stand for God. Publication in book form has never been permitted in Egypt, but the author has always claimed it to be a deeply religious work. Controversy was revived by the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988 and, in the wake of the
fatw
against Salman Rushdie (see
SATANIC VERSES
), a hostile opinion was expressed in a Kuwaiti newspaper by Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman. Some interpreted this as a fatw
against the author, although the Sheikh himself has vigorously denied it. Mahfouz survived an attempted assassination in Oct. 1994.

 
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Mahinda Festival
.

Buddhist (
ri Lankan) festival, better known as Poson, which celebrates the mission of the monk Mahinda who brought Buddhism to
ri Lank
.

 
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