Heikal, Muhammad Hassanein

▪ Egyptian journalist

born 1923, Cairo

      leading Egyptian journalist who gained fame as the editor in chief of Al-Ahram, (Ahram, Al-) the semiofficial Egyptian newspaper. During his tenure (1957–74) Al-Ahram was called the New York Times of the Arab world, partly because of the editor's weekly analytical pieces, some of them covering a full page.

      Educated at Cairo University, Heikal became a reporter for the Egyptian Gazette in 1943. The following year he joined the staff of Rosal Yussef, a weekly, and from 1953 to 1956 he served as editor of Akher Saa, an illustrated Arabic-language weekly. In 1956 and 1957 he served as editor of Al-Akhbar, a daily.

      Heikal was a longtime friend of Gamal Abdel Nasser (Nasser, Gamal Abdel), and when Nasser came to power he installed Heikal as editor of Al-Ahram. Heikal at once began improving the paper's accuracy and objectivity and subdued the high emotional and sensational tone that had characterized it. He also insisted on high production quality. Under his tenure Al-Ahram became a newspaper of record for the Arab world. He hired and trained university graduates as investigative reporters and set up an Al-Ahram Strategic Studies Centre. While holding the post of editor of Al-Ahram, he served as chairman of the Al-Ahram Establishment Board (1959–74). He was a member of the Central Committee of the Arab Social Union from 1968 to 1974 and a minister of national guidance from April to October of 1970.

      After Nasser's death in 1970 Heikal remained editor of Al-Ahram until 1974, when the paper's criticisms of Anwar el-Sādāt led to his removal, and he became a freelance journalist. He was the author of several books, including Nasser: The Cairo Documents (1972), The Road to Ramadan (1975), Sphinx and Commissar (1978), and Autumn of Fury (1983), the last a criticism of Sādāt.

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