Heritage
Kurd 'Ali cherished the Academy more than anything and looked at it as the one gift of his whole life and the fruit of all his strife so much so that he would not absent himself from any of the Academy's meetings. Mohammad Kurd 'Ali was a pioneer in journalism, and an authority on investigative journalism; he made a name for himself in writing and authorship and was one of the leading scholars in the Arab world. He is accredited as the first to establish high-quality newspaper and magazine in Damascus, and the first to establish an Arab Science Assembly in the Arab world.
The style of his writing has been described as ‘easy but impossible’. It is characterised with bland expression and verbal eloquence; and it uses words loaded with semantic power, and sentences varying in length. His style is said to move away from affectation and aims to focus on the meaning, avoiding undue emphasis on the structure. In much of what he had written, Kurd 'Ali is sometimes argued to follow the same course of the writing as that of Ibn Khaldoun in his Introduction.
Muhammad Kurd 'Ali assumed several jobs and positions in the press, in the university, in the Ministry, in the Arab Science Assembly in Damascus, and in the language Council in Egypt. He assumed the Ministry of Education twice in the era of the French occupation. He fills a prestigious literary and scientific place among his peers of other influential Arab scholars. His writings reached the number of twenty-two authorships including:
Khotat al sham (Sham's Maps) six volumes, one of his most important works.
Al Islam wa al hadara al arabiya (Islam and Arab civilization) two volumes.
Tareekh al hadara (History of civilization) are two parts, translated from French.
Ghara'eb al gharb (Oddities of the West) two volumes.
Akwalana wa af'alana (Our words and deeds) two volumes.
Dimashq, madinat al sihr wa al shi'r (Damascus, a city of charm and poetry).
Ghaber al andalus wa hadoroha (The Past of Andalusia and its Present).
Omara 'o al biaan (Princes of Eloquency) are two parts.
Al kadeem wa al hadeeth (The Old and the New), which is a selection of his articles.
Konoz al ajdad (Ancestors' Treasures).
Al idara al islamiya fi iz al arab (The Islamic Management under Arabs).
Ghotat Dimashq (Damascus Greenery)
Almozakart (The Diaries) four parts.
Muhammad Kurd 'Ali died On Thursday of April 2, 1953 in Damascus, and was buried beside the tomb of Muawiya bin Abi Sufyan in Damascus.
Read more about this topic: Muhammad Kurd Ali
Famous quotes containing the word heritage:
“It seems to me that upbringings have themes. The parents set the theme, either explicitly or implicitly, and the children pick it up, sometimes accurately and sometimes not so accurately.... The theme may be “Our family has a distinguished heritage that you must live up to” or “No matter what happens, we are fortunate to be together in this lovely corner of the earth” or “We have worked hard so that you can have the opportunities we didn’t have.””
—Calvin Trillin (20th century)
“There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things and because it takes a man’s life to know them the little new that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)