a teacher of civil law at his alma mater. Cairo and Baghdad in the 1930s After spending eight years as a teacher of civil law at the Faculty of Law in Cairo, al-Sanhūrī moved to Baghdad in 1935, where he became dean of the Baghdad School of Law. In February 1936, Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, then the Minister of Interior, put together a committee of jurists for the drafting of an Iraqi Civil Code, which he tasked al-Sanhūrī with presiding over. Interruptions brought about by the 1936 Iraqi coup d'état and strong opposition from Islamists brought the project to a halt. In 1937, al-Sanhūrī returned to Cairo. Around this time, he interacted with secessionists of the Wafd Party and joined the Saadist Institutional Party. The Egyptian Civil Code In late 1938, after two drafting committees were abandoned, the Egyptian Minister of Justice Aḥmad al-Khashaba determined that drafting of a civil code would be "best accomplished by two individuals", and proceeded to select al-Sanhūrī and his old mentor, Lambert, for the task. The first draft of the Egyptian Civil Code was completed in 1942. Various administrative hold-ups and legislative procedures resulted in the Code being promulgated on 15 October 1949. The Iraqi and Syrian civil codes In 1943, al-Sanhūrī left Egypt to help draft the civil code of Iraq anew. This time, the attempt at drafting a code was more favourable; an Iraqi Civil Code which combined the Majalla and the Egyptian Civil Code as its sources was promulgated in 1951 (but only came into force in 1953). Al-Sanhūrī also visited Syria, at which time he contributed to the drafting of a civil code. His contribution, however, was cut short by his return to Cairo in 1948. Moreover, the articles which he drafted were eventually dropped in favour of the draft which, at the instructions of Husni al-Za'im, more or less mirrored the Egyptian Civil Code. President of the Council of State In March 1949, al-Sanhūrī accepted the position of presidency at the Egyptian Council of State. His tenure coincided with the Egyptian revolution of 1952. Power struggles between Mohamed Naguib and Gamal Abdel Nasser eventually brought the Council of State to the attention of the military. During March 1954, when the Egyptian Bar Association made demands for a return to civil government, al-Sanhūrī, whose opposition to military rule had by that time become clear, was forcibly dismissed. Widespread demonstrations ensued. The