Great claims have been made for Tawfīq al-Ḥakīm (b. 1898). Gibb regarded him as the founder of drama in Arabic. Similarly, Luwīs ʿAwaḍ described him as ‘the true founder of Egyptian drama in every serious sense’ and Ghālī Shukrī called him ‘the first pioneer of the dramatic art in Arabic’. His drama was claimed by the poet ʿAbd al-Ṣabūr to have been ‘born in a vacuum’, and the author of an English translation of some of his plays gave his introduction the descriptive title ‘A One-Man Egyptian Theater Tradition’. Richard Long concluded his study Tawfiq al-Hakim, Playwright of Egypt (1979) with the statement that Tawfiq al-Hakim ‘had virtually nothing that was indigenous onto which to graft his own historic achievements’. Despite al-Hakim's achievements, and they are many, it is difficult to accept such judgements of his work knowing the valuable contribution made to Egyptian and Arabic drama by such writers as Ibrāhīm Ramzī, Muḥammad Taymūr and Anṭūn Yazbak.

It must be admitted, however, that this exaggerated view of al-Hakim was to some extent encouraged by the author himself, at least in some of his pronouncements. For instance, in the introduction to his collection of plays entitled al-Masraḥ al-Munawwaʿ (Plays on Diverse Themes, Cairo, 1956) he writes of the difficulty faced by a modern Arab dramatist as a result of the absence of drama from classical Arabic literature.