Anwar al-Sadat

Soldier / Political Leader / President of Egypt

Anwar al-Sadat met Gamal Abdel Nasser while in a British military school in colonial Egypt in the late 1930s. He joined Nasser for the revolution that fought colonialism and overthrew the monarchy in 1952, eventually succeeding Nasser as president in 1970. In an effort to regain control of losses from the 1967 Six Day War, in 1973 Sadat ordered an attack on Israeli forces and was successful enough to make both sides think about peace. Plagued by domestic economic problems, Sadat made overt gestures of peace to Israel and wooed U.S. president Jimmy Carter into assisting with negotiations. The resulting peace agreement, the Camp David Accords, earned Sadat the 1978 Nobel Prize for Peace (he shared it with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin). He was assassinated in 1981 by Islamic fundamentalists who opposed the peace treaty with Israel, and succeeded by Hosni Mubarak.