Minufiya lies in the fertile Nile Delta, its irrigated fields producing rich crops of flax and cotton. In those lush surroundings young Anwar's early years passed happily. He wrote later that he had especially relished the sunrise hour ''when I went out with scores of boys and men, young and old, taking our cattle and beasts of burden to the fields.''

His first schooling was at the hands of a kindly Islamic cleric, Sheik Abdul-Hamid, who instilled in him a deep and lasting faith in Islam; as an adult Mr. Sadat bore a dark mark on his forehead, the result of repeatedly touching his head to the floor in prayer.

In 1925 the father was transferred to Cairo, and the family moved into a small house on the outskirts of the capital, not far from Kubba Palace, one of the residences of Egyptian kings. Anwar gave early evidence of the audacity he repeatedly showed in later life, stealing apricots from the royal orchard.

Though the elder Mr. Sadat rose to be a senior clerk, the family was poor, so poor that it could not afford to buy bakery bread. In his memoirs President Sadat said that his early experience of village life, with its ''fraternity, cooperation and love,'' gave him the self-confidence to make his way in the big city, ''It deepened my feeling of inner superiority, a feeling which has never left me and which, I came to realize, is an inner power independent of all material resources.''

In time the proud schoolboy, like other idealistic Egyptians of his generation, came to have a burning political desire: he wanted his country freed of the control of Britain, which had maintained troops there and exercised sway in other ways since the decline of Ottoman Turkish power late in the 19th century.

Wanting to play a role in Egypt's future, Mr. Sadat decided to become an officer. Despite his family's lack of influence, he managed to gain admission to the Royal Military Academy, which was once a preserve of the aristocracy but had begun taking cadets from the middle and lower classes. Graduating in 1938, he was assigned to a signal corps installation near the capital. From that central location, as he later told it, he became active in the formation of an organization of officers who wanted to mount an armed revolt against the British presence.

What made Mr. Sadat into such a catalytic force in Middle Eastern history was a display of courage and flexibility that transformed what had seemed to be an average Arab officer-turned-potentate.

Unlike so many of his brother Arab leaders, he was willing to ignore past Arab-Israeli hatreds. Unlike them all, he was daring enough to do what had been unthinkable in the anguished world of Arab politics - to extend the hand of peace to the Israeli foe. Reversing Egypt's longstanding policy, he proclaimed his willingness to accept Israel's existence as a sovereign state.

Then, where so many Middle East negotiators had failed, he succeeded, along with Presidents Carter and Reagan and Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel, in keeping the improbable rapprochement alive.

In the process he earned himself, in addition to the Nobel Peace Prize, the admiration of Americans, Israelis and other supporters of a Middle East settlement. But he also drew outpourings of hatred from Palestinians and other Arabs who felt he was a traitor to their struggles against Israel. And he was unable to quash dissidence in his impoverished, seething homeland.

He often said he wanted to bequeath democratic institutions to his people, but in recent weeks he staged a dictatorial crackdown on militant Moslems and Coptic Christians as well as secular political opponents. And he claimed imperially - but hollowly, as it turned out - to have put an end to ''lack of discipline in any way or form.''