In 1908, Ṭāhā Ḥusayn was one of the first students to enrol in the Egyptian University. After completing his doctoral thesis on Abū al-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī, Ḥusayn left for Paris to study history at the Sorbonne and write his dissertation on Ibn Khaldūn under the supervision of Emile Durkheim, founder of the modern discipline of sociology. He returned to Egypt in time for the 1919 Revolution and soon became its most polemical literary figure. On 10 November 1921, Ḥusayn published an article in al-Istiqlāl (Independence) newspaper– ‘Waylun lī-l-ḥurrīya min Saʿd [Zaghlūl]’ (No Freedom under Saʿd), attacking Saʿd Zaghlūl, prime minister and head of the Wafd majority party, for restricting intellectual freedom. Both Ḥusayn and Muḥammad Ḥusayn Haykal attacked the Wafdist government openly in al-Siyāsa. The newspaper issues were banned, Haykal, then editor-in-chief, was indicted, and Ḥusayn put on trial even though his most aggressive articles remained unsigned. On 17 June 1924, Ḥusayn was summoned to court: when he denied penmanship of the articles, he was dismissed but ordered to refrain from writing political criticism. In 1925, ʿAlī ʿAbd al-Rāziq published his controversial book al-Islām wa-uṣūl al-ḥukm (Islam and the Foundations of Governance), advocating for the separation of religion and politics in Islam. The Azhar ʿulamāʾ revoked his title of ʿalīm.