External links
- Resume of Dr. Orfali at the American University of Beirut's official site.
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Bilal Orfali is a Lebanese scholar of Arabic language and literature. He currently serves as Sheikh Zayed Chair of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the American University of Beirut. [1] [2] He is considered an expert on Arabic prose and poetry, especially during the 10th century. [3]
Orfali earned a Bachelor of Science, Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts from the American University of Beirut in 2000, 2001 and 2003 respectively. He then went on to earn a Master of Philosophy in 2006 and a Doctor of Philosophy in 2009, both from Yale University. [4] [5] Orfali is currently a professor of Arabic studies at AUB, while also having served as a visiting scholar at the prestigious Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey from 2011 to 2012. [3] [5] He also serves as the director of the AUB's intensive CAMES summer program for Arabic language education. [6]
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Ḥammād al-Rāwiya, Iranian scholar born in Kufa. He was of Daylamite origin. The date of his birth is given by some as 694 AD, by others as 714. He is considered the first person to have systematically collected Arabic poetry.
Ibn Qudāmah al-Maqdisī Muwaffaq ad-Dīn Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh ibn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad , better known as Ibn Qudāmah, was an Arab Sunni Muslim scholar, jurist, theologian, traditionist, and ascetic from the Palestine region. Having authored many important treatises on Islamic jurisprudence and religious doctrine, including one of the standard works of Hanbali law, the revered al-Mughni, Ibn Qudamah is highly regarded in Sunni Islam for being one of the most notable and influential thinkers of the Hanbali school of orthodox Sunni jurisprudence. Within that school, he is one of the few thinkers to be given the honorific epithet of Shaykh of Islam, which is a prestigious title bestowed by Sunnis on some of the most important thinkers of their tradition. A proponent of the classical Sunni position of the "differences between the scholars being a mercy," Ibn Qudamah is famous for saying, "The consensus of the leaders of jurisprudence is an overwhelming proof, and their disagreement is a vast mercy."
Abū Manṣūr ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl al-Thaʿālibī (961–1038), was a writer famous for his anthologies and collections of epigrams. As a writer of prose and verse in his own right, distinction between his and the work of others is sometimes lacking, as was the practice of writers of the time.
Abu ‘Abd ar-Raḥmān al-Khalīl ibn Aḥmad ibn ‘Amr ibn Tammām al-Farāhīdī al-Azdī al-Yaḥmadī, known as al-Farāhīdī, or al-Khalīl, was an Arab philologist, lexicographer and leading grammarian of Basra in Iraq. He made the first dictionary of the Arabic language – and the oldest extant dictionary – Kitab al-'Ayn – introduced the now standard harakat system, and was instrumental in the early development of ʿArūḍ, musicology and poetic metre. His linguistic theories influenced the development of Persian, Turkish, Kurdish and Urdu prosody. The "Shining Star" of the Basran school of Arabic grammar, a polymath and scholar, he was a man of genuinely original thought.
Abu Talib Muhammad ibn Ali al-Makki, was a hadith scholar, Shafi'i jurist, and Sufi mystic.
Abū Ḥayyān Athīr ad-Dīn al-Gharnāṭī, whose full name is Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf bin ‘Alī ibn Yūsuf ibn Hayyān, also called Abū Ḥayyān al-Andalusī, was a celebrated commentator on the Quran and foremost Arabic grammarian of his era. His magnum opus Tafsir al-Bahr al-Muhit is the most important reference on Qur'anic expressions and the issues of grammar, vocabulary, etymology and the transcriber-copyists of the Qur'an. Quite exceptionally for a linguist of Arabic of his day was his strong interest in non-Arabic languages. He wrote several works of comparative linguistics for Arabic speakers, and gives extensive comparative grammatical analysis and explanation.
Abū Manṣūr ʿAbd al-Qāhir ibn Ṭāhir bin Muḥammad bin ʿAbd Allāh al-Tamīmī al-Shāfiʿī al-Baghdādī, more commonly known as Abd al-Qāhir al-Baghdādī or simply Abū Manṣūr al-Baghdādī was an Arab Sunni scholar from Baghdad. He was considered a leading Ash'arite theologian and Shafi'i jurist. He was an accomplished legal theoretician, man of letters, poet, prosodist, grammarian, heresiologist and mathematician.
Abu al-Abbas Ahmad bin Abd al-Rahman bin Muhammad bin Sa'id bin Harith bin Asim al-Lakhmi al-Qurtubi, better known as Ibn Maḍāʾ was an Andalusian Muslim polymath from Córdoba in Islamic Spain. Ibn Mada was notable for having challenged the traditional formation of Arabic grammar and of the common understanding of linguistic governance among Arab grammarians, performing an overhaul first suggested by Al-Jahiz 200 years prior. He is considered the first linguist in history to address the subject of dependency in the grammatical sense in which it is understood today, and was instrumental during the Almohad reforms as chief judge of the Almohad Caliphate.
Sami Makarem was a Druze Lebanese scholar, writer, poet and artist; he was born in the village of Aitat in Aley district and is best known for his academic contributions in the fields of Islamic studies, Sufism, and Islamic history.
Lina Choueiri is a Lebanese Associate Professor in Linguistics at the American University of Beirut (AUB). She was the Chairperson of the department of English from 2006 to 2009. Choueiri has been serving as AUB's first deputy provost since July 2021 and threatened severe sanctions against AUB's Secular Club for exercising free speech rights critical of AUB.
Tarif Khalidi is a Palestinian historian who now holds the Shaykh Zayid Chair in Islamic and Arabic Studies at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon.
Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Dawud al-Zahiri, Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Dāwūd al-Iṣbahānī, also known as Avendeath, was a medieval theologian and scholar of the Arabic language and Islamic law. He was one of the early propagators of his father Dawud al-Zahiri's method in jurisprudence, Zahirism.
Abu Muhammad Ruwaym bin Ahmad was an early Muslim jurist, ascetic, saint and reciter of the Qur'an. He was one of the second generation of practitioners of Sufism (tasawwuf).
Devin J. Stewart is a scholar of Islamic studies and Arabic language and literature. He is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Middle eastern and South Asian studies at Emory University. His research interests include Islamic law, the Qur'an, Islamic schools and branches and varieties of Arabic.
Ihsan Abbas was a Palestinian professor at the American University of Beirut, and was considered a premier figure of Arabic and Islamic studies in the East and West during the 20th century. The "author of over one hundred books", during his career, Abbas was renowned as one of the foremost scholars of Arabic language and literature and was a respected literary critic. Upon his death, Abbas was eulogized by University College London historian Lawrence Conrad as a custodian of Arabic heritage and culture, and a figure whose scholarship had dominated the Middle East's intellectual and cultural life for decades.
Abu Abdullah Harun ibn Musa al-'Ataki al-A'war was an early convert from Judaism to Islam and a scholar of the Arabic language and Islamic studies. He converted while living among the Azd tribe, and was later attributed to the tribe. He was affiliated with the Basran school of Arabic grammar. A specialist in lexicography, al-A'war contributed significantly to the study of Qira'at, or variant readings of the Qur'an, and is the first formal compiler of the different recitation styles. His most active period, during which his work was marked by new developments in lexicographical studies concerning the Qur'an, was from 752 until his death.
Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Abi Sara Ali Al-Ru'asi was an early convert from Judaism to Islam and a scholar of the Arabic language. He is considered to be the founder of the Kufan school of Arabic grammar, as well as the first person to write about Arabic morphology and phonology. He was a student of Abu 'Amr ibn al-'Ala' and an associate of Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi.
Professor Gerhard Böwering is a German academic, currently Professor of Islamic Studies within the Department of Religious Studies, Yale University. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1994. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005 following his "formative influence of al-Sulami's commentary on the Qur'an."
Jamharat Ash'ar al-Arab is a pre-Islamic Arabic poetry anthology by Abu Zayd al-Qurashi. The date of publication is unknown, and al-Qurashi is supposed by various scholars to have lived in the 8th, 9th or 10th centuries. It contains seven sections, each containing seven qasidas.
Ibn Bāṭīsh was a Muslim scholar and jurist belonging to the Shāfiʿī maddhab. He was the muftī of Aleppo from 1230 until his death.
