Arab Scholarship Reopens Histories at Berlin Prize

A prize for historical context

Three books on Arab and Islamic intellectual history received the inaugural Riwaq Prize for Science and Culture in Berlin on Oct. 16, during Der Divan’s fourth Arab Book Fair. Der Divan – The Arabic Cultural House and the German Orient Institute Beirut created the prize to recognise scholarly monographs on Arab cultures and societies. It gives weight to original research, innovative approaches and critical perspectives. The prize totals €3,000, split equally among Arabic, German and English categories.

The first edition focused on the humanities. Its winning books explore historical readings of Ibn Taymiyya’s thought, modern Arab intellectual history through the Beirut journal Mawaqif, and early Qur’anic interpretation, asceticism and piety in Islam’s formative period. Together, they examine the circumstances in which ideas and texts emerged, as well as how their meanings and uses shifted over time.

Dr Raed Al-Samhouri received the Arabic-language award for “Ibn Taymiyya al-Tarikhi wa-l-Mustaʿad (Ibn Taymiyya: The Historical and the Rediscovered),” published in 2024 by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies. The book examines how contemporary consciousness portrays Ibn Taymiyya and how people invoke him in current debates. It sets his work within historical, social and political contexts, challenging readings that reduce it to violence and takfir or cite passages to justify positions and conflicts born of different circumstances. The author’s central question is to “free Ibn Taymiyya from our time—or perhaps free our time from him.”

Prof. Dr Yvonne Albers received the German-language award for “Beirut und die Zeitschrift Mawaqif. Eine arabische Intellektuellengeschichte 1968–1994,” published by Brill Fink in 2023. Her book follows the Beirut-based journal as a cultural and intellectual institution: a place where people produced ideas, debated concepts and brought literary, political and philosophical currents together. It traces the journal’s development through its publishing, relationships among intellectuals and institutions, and the political and social changes around it.

Nora K. Schmid won the English-language award for “The Ascetic Qur’an and its Kharijite Readers.” The book pairs close textual analysis with the historical and cultural conditions that shaped how early readers understood the Qur’an, focusing on asceticism and Kharijite readers. The jury praised its attention to language and its contribution to a more differentiated understanding of early Islamic piety and interpretation.

Research across languages

The prize set up three specialist juries, each with three members. Prof. Dr Amal Mohammed Al-Malki of Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Qatar, chaired the Arabic jury; its other members were Dr Abd al-Rahman al-Ibrahim and Dr Rachid Boutayeb, both of the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Qatar. The German jury included Prof. Dr Gudrun Krämer of Freie Universität Berlin, Prof. Dr Stefan Gosepath, emeritus professor at the University of Oslo, and its chair, Prof. Dr Birgit Krawietz of Freie Universität Berlin. Prof. Dr Marilyn Booth, emerita professor at the University of Oxford, chaired the English jury, alongside Prof. Dr Fred Donner, emeritus professor at the University of Chicago, and Prof. Dr Islam Dayeh of Ghent University.

Dr Lorans Al Hennawi, Director of Der Divan – The Arabic Cultural House, said rigorous knowledge is essential to understanding “ourselves, our history and the world.” Prof. Dr Jens Hanssen, Director of the German Orient Institute Beirut, said the prize highlights research that treats Arab cultures and societies as subjects for critical inquiry, not fixed images or closed narratives. The partnership aims to give research wider visibility and strengthen academic and cultural relationships between researchers and institutions in the Arab world and Germany. The prize will return every two years, alternating between humanities and social sciences; its next edition will focus on social sciences.

Artists present work internationally

Saudi visual artist Ayman Zedani is showing “In the Bellies of the Rocks” at Paris International, an art fair held alongside Art Basel Paris. Commissioned as part of AlUla’s Cultural Season in Paris, the installation pairs a two-channel video work with sculptural interventions and draws on his residency in AlUla. The fair runs Oct. 20-24 at 187–189 Quai de Valmy in Paris.

Saudi artist Sarah Brahim’s “Let us Love the Distance” is set to run at Forof in Rome from Oct. 26, 2026 to July 27, 2027. The installation takes visitors into an underground space containing the remains of the Basilica Ulpia, part of Trajan’s Forum. It features a well made using documents from her father’s archive. Visitors can throw a stone into it, setting off a luminous and sonic response.

Saudi multidisciplinary artist Mohammed Alfaraj is presenting “The Heart is a Bird’s Nest, the Brain is a Spider Web” at London’s Delfina Foundation until Nov. 22, 2026. The exhibition brings together installation, film, sculpture, photography and drawing, drawing on folklore, social rituals and his upbringing in Saudi Arabia’s Al-Ahsa oasis. Artists worldwide can enter the fourth Global Digital Art Competition at Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week by Nov. 16. Its theme is “Securing Systems. Sustaining Growth.”