Professor Muhsin Jassim al-Musawi (Columbia University), a King Faisal Prize Laureate, will give the Centre's 2nd King Faisal Lecture, supported by the King Faisal Foundation. In this lecture Professor al-Musawi will draw on themes from his book, The Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters: Arabic Knowledge Construction (2015).

All Welcome. No registration is required.

Professor Muhsin al-Musawi joined Columbia University as Professor of Arabic and Comparative Studies in 2002. His teaching experience, in the Middle East, Tunisia, and Yemen, and his publications in Arabic and English present him, as one of the foremost authorities in the field.  A renowned scholar and literary critic, his teaching and research interests span several periods and genres. Professor al-Musawi is the editor of the Journal of Arabic Literature, the foremost academic journal in the field of Arabic literature. He has also served as an academic consultant for numerous academic institutions in the US and abroad. He was behind the largest translation and  cultural program in Iraq throughout 1983-1990. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honours, including the highly prestigious 2002 Owais Award in Literary Criticism, and in 2018, the Kuwait Prize in Arabic Language and Literature and in 2022 King Faisal International Prize for Arabic Literature in English. Quite recently, his book, The Arabian Nights in Contemporary World Culture: Global Commodification, Translation, and the Culture Industry, won Sheikh Zayed Book Award. His forthcoming book from Cambridge University Press is : Economies of Poetic Desire in Arabic. He has to his credit 12 academic books in English and more than twenty in Arabic, alongside  more than 70 scholarly articles.