Wadad Afifi Kadi (born November 23, 1943) is a Lebanese scholar of Arabic and Islamic civilizations and the Avalon Foundation Distinguished Service Professor Emerita of Islamic Studies in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. [1]
Wadad Kadi was born in Lebanon on November 23, 1943. [2] She earned her BA and MA in Arabic Literature at the American University of Beirut, then went on to pursue doctoral studies at the University of Tübingen in Germany, before finishing her Ph.D. at the American University of Beirut. She has taught at Yale, AUB, and the University of Chicago, as well as Harvard, Columbia, Stockholm University, and Oxford. [1]
Middle Eastern studies is a name given to a number of academic programs associated with the study of the history, culture, politics, economies, and geography of the Middle East, an area that is generally interpreted to cover a range of nations including Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, and Yemen. It is considered a form of area studies, taking an overtly interdisciplinary approach to the study of a region. In this sense Middle Eastern studies is a far broader and less traditional field than classical Islamic studies.
Philip Khuri Hitti, was a Lebanese-American professor and scholar at Princeton and Harvard University, and authority on Arab and Middle Eastern history, Islam, and Semitic languages. He almost single-handedly created the discipline of Arabic studies in the United States. His grandniece was the now deceased NASA astronaut and schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe.
Fred McGraw Donner is a scholar of Islam and Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Near Eastern History at the University of Chicago. He has published several books about early Islamic history.
George Saliba is a Lebanese-American Professor of Arabic and Islamic Science at the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies, Columbia University, New York, USA, where he has been since 1979. Saliba is currently the founding director of the Farouk Jabre Center for Arabic & Islamic Science & Philosophy and the Jabre-Khwarizmi Chair in the History Department.
Louis Cheikho, Arabic: لويس شيخو, born Rizqallâh Cheikho (1859–1927) was a Jesuit Chaldean Catholic priest, Orientalist and Theologian. He pioneered Eastern Christian and Assyrian Chaldean literary research and made major contributions to the publication of manuscript texts.
Layla bint Abullah ibn Shaddad ibn Ka’b al-Akhyaliyyah, or simply Layla al-Akhyaliyyah was a famous Umayyad Arab poet who was renowned for her poetry, eloquence, strong personality, and beauty. Nearly fifty of her short poems survive. They include elegies for her lover Tawba ibn Humayyir and ‘Uthman ibn ‘Affan; 'lewd satires' exchanged with the poet al-Nabigha al-Ja‘di; and panegyrics for leading Umayyad officials and caliphs: Al-Ḥajjāj ibn Yūsuf, Caliph Marwan I, and Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan.
Muḥsin Sayyid Mahdī al-Mashhadani was an Iraqi-American Islamologist and Arabist. He was a leading authority on Arabian history, philology, and philosophy. His best-known work was the first critical edition of the One Thousand and One Nights.
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.
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.
Fawwaz Tuqan is a Jordanian-Palestinian poet, novelist and professor. He was born on 6 September 1940 to a notable Palestinian family in Jordan. His father is Ahmad Abdul Fattah Tuqan, a former Prime Minister of Jordan.
Nancy N. Roberts is a translator of Arabic literature. She won the University of Arkansas Translation Award for her translation of Ghada Samman's Beirut '75. She also received a commendation from the judges of the 2008 Banipal Prize for her translation of Salwa Bakr's The Man from Bashmour.
Wolfhart P. Heinrichs was a German-born scholar of Arabic. He was James Richard Jewett Professor of Arabic at Harvard University, and a co-editor of the second edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam. He taught Classical Arabic language and literature, particularly Arabic literary theory and criticism.
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. He is considered an expert on Arabic prose and poetry, especially during the 10th century.
Seta Dadoyan is an Armenian scholar who specializes in medieval Armenian political and intellectual history in their interactive aspects with the Near Eastern world. She was a professor of Cultural Studies, Philosophy and Art at the American University of Beirut (AUB) between 1986 and 2005. She has also taught at other universities including the Haigazian University (1981-1986), Columbia University, St. Nerses Seminary (2007-2010), the University of Chicago (2010) She has written over fifty articles and ten books, and is believed to be the first Armenian woman to have received a Doctor of Sciences in Philosophy focusing on the history of Armenian philosophy. Her scholarly work focuses on medieval Armenian history with a special emphases on the relationship between the Armenians and Muslims; she is considered a leading scholar in this field.
Mohammad Mohammadi-Malayeri was an Iranian historian, linguist, and literary scholar. He authored numerous books and articles on comparative Persian and Arabic languages and literature as well as Iranian history specifically the period of transition between the Sassanid Empire and the Islamic era. He taught at the American University of Beirut, the Lebanese University, as well as the University of Tehran, where he was the Dean of the Faculty of Theological Sciences. He is best known for his 5-volume work titled “Iranian Culture and History during the Period of Transition between the Sassanid and Islamic Eras”
Mariam C. Said is a major force behind the newly established Barenboim-Said Academy (BSA) and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra (WEDO) that was co-founded in 1999 by her late husband Edward W. Said and Daniel Barenboim. Mrs. Said also serves as the Vice President of the Barenboim-Said Foundation USA.
Janet Lee Stevens was an American journalist, human rights advocate, translator, and scholar of popular Arabic theater. She lived in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War and chronicled the experiences of Palestinian refugees before and after the Sabra and Shatila Massacre of September 16–18, 1982.
Rose Ghorayeb was a Lebanese writer, author, literary critic, and feminist. She was a professor of Arabic literature at the Lebanese American University and was frequently referred to as the "first female critic in Arabic literature". Regarded as a pioneer in aesthetic criticism, her literary career spanned more than 70 years and included many children stories, articles, biographies and plays.
Tahera Qutbuddin is a professor of Arabic literature at the University of Chicago. A Guggenheim Fellow (2020) and a winner of the Sheikh Zayed Book Award in 2021, she is best known for her works on Arabic oratory and the usage of Arabic in India, especially in the Dawoodi Bohra tradition.
Salwa Mahmasani Moumina (1908-1957) was a Lebanese women's rights activist, university vice president and professor, and writer of short stories. She was born and raised in Beirut. She studied in Al-Makassed Philanthropic Islamic Association, a primary school for girls. She studied Arabic literature under Julia Ta’ma and Salma Sayegh, and she studied the Arabic Language under Mostafa Al-Ghailani. She then studied French at St. Joseph School. Later, she taught Arabic for 13 years. She published her literary articles in Arabic newspapers such as the Egyptian Almar’ah Aljadeedah “The New Woman”. She was the vice president of “Lebanese Women Association”. She was a pioneer in the Lebanese women’s movement. She wrote Ma’ Alhayah “With Life”; a collection that includes 15 short stories that discuss social and family issues.