Tawfik al-Hakim’s seminal Egyptian texts, Diary of a Country Prosecutor and The Sultan’s Dilemma, set against colonial and medieval Egyptian experiences, interrogate the moral and institutional foundations of legal authority in North Africa. This study investigates how the inadequacies and misapplication of the colonial legal system become sources of conflict to the indigenous people in the novel Diary of a Country Prosecutor, and examines the philosophical exploration of justice in pre-modern Egypt in the play The Sultan’s Dilemma. The paper employs a descriptive-qualitative approach for the evaluation of characters’ roles, author’s style, and themes relating to process and administration of law. The engagement of this discussion is founded on literary theories of postcolonialism and decoloniality. The study is balanced through a juxtaposition of the Napoleonic code and the indigenous code presented in these texts. The study is thereby situated at the intersection of literary, cultural and legal studies. In the critique of external authority and indigenous law respectively, this study explores the administration of justice in both texts and reveals that law must be contextualised in order to achieve equity and authenticity. The study also shows that al-Hakim’s texts are invaluable for decolonising understandings of law and governance in North African societies in their portrayal of contradictions and moral authority that have continued to shape postcolonial societies.
Wadinga et al. (2026) studied this question.