Muhammad Kurd Ali

Muhammad Kurd Ali was born in Damascus to a Kurdish father and Circassian mother. Working as a crusading journalist in Damascus and Cairo, he founded the influential weekly Al-Muqtabas in 1908, championing freedom of expression, educational reform, and the preservation of Arab cultural identity against Ottoman Turkification.

In 1919, under King Faisal I, Kurd Ali founded the Arab Scientific Academy of Damascus (Majma' al-Lughah al-Arabiyyah), serving as its president until his death. His academy standardized modern Arabic terminology and preserved ancient manuscripts. His six-volume monumental historical and geographical work, Khitat al-Sham, is the definitive modern reference on the civilization of Syria.