11 Facts About Shawqi Daif

Ahmad Shawqi Daif was an Egyptian Arabic literary critic and historian.

Shawqi Daif is considered one of the most influential Arab intellectuals in the 20th century.

Shawqi Daif earned his BA and PhD from Fuad al-Awal University, which would later be known as Cairo University.

Shawqi Daif was later a professor of Arabic literature at his alma mater for several decades.

Shawqi Daif was a member of the Egyptian Academy of Sciences and was president of the Academy of the Arabic Language in Cairo for a few years.

Shawqi Daif replied that the dearth of properly published Egyptian works from the period made such a judgement tenuous and suggested that he and Amin republish the Egyptian sections in anthologies of poetry from the period.

Amin readily agreed, and they embarked on the long term project during which Shawqi Daif wrote the preface and Amin wrote the introduction.

Shawqi Daif's great work was his 100-volume History of Arabic Literature, a project that took 30 years to complete, and was an overview of all poetry, literary criticism and rhetorical studies from Pre-Islamic Arabia up to the post-Abbasid era.

Shawqi Daif agreed with the central theme of the Refutation: linguistic governance and analogy had rendered Arabic language education needlessly difficult and convoluted, and both took the theme as a rallying point for his calls to modernize language arts education in the Middle East.

Shawqi Daif was widely respected throughout the Arab world, having earned the King Faisal International Prize for literature in 1983 as well as the Egyptian Presidential Prize for Literature in 2003.

Shawqi Daif left a small family of scholars at Cairo University as well.