Muhammad Kurd Ali

Muhammad Kurd Ali (1876–1953) was a Syrian scholar, historian, literary critic and journalist, founder of the Academy of the Arabic Language in Damascus and its president from 1919 until his death, and Syria's first minister of education. He published the journal al-Muqtabas in Cairo and Damascus, and his twenty-two books include the six-volume Khitat al-Sham, al-Islam wa-l-hadara al-arabiyya and his four-volume memoirs. ^{1 2}

He was born in Damascus in 1876 — the Arabic article pairs the year with 1293 AH. His grandfather was a Kurd from Sulaymaniyah who had come to Damascus in the early nineteenth century, and his mother was Circassian. He learnt to read and write in a kuttab, where he also studied the Qur'an, then attended al-Rushdiyya preparatory school and the Azariyya secondary school. Although illiterate himself, his father encouraged him to acquire books and helped him possess them. He kept close company with well-known Damascus scholars of the time — Saleem Bukhari, Muhammad al-Mubarak and Tahir al-Jazairi — drawing on their knowledge and literature, and by the age of sixteen he was writing paid news articles. ^{1 2}

In 1897 he was entrusted with editing the government weekly al-Sham for three years, then corresponded with Egypt's al-Muqtataf for five years, which spread his fame into Egypt. He spent ten months in Cairo editing al-Ra'ed al-Masri, returned to Damascus, and after a slander led to a search of his house and his exoneration, he emigrated to Egypt in 1906 and founded the monthly al-Muqtabas, besides editing two daily newspapers. Back in Damascus after the Ottoman constitution of 1908, he relaunched al-Muqtabas as both journal and daily and founded its press, but censorship and harassment continued; during the First World War he was nearly hanged in Djemal Pasha's campaign against the free Arabs, and was spared thanks to a document found in the French consulate showing that he had resisted French inducements. After Syrian independence he realised his long-held dream: the Academy of the Arabic Language in Damascus was established on 8 June 1919 with Kurd Ali as its president, an office he held until his death, cherishing the Academy above everything and never absenting himself from its meetings. He served twice as minister of education under the French occupation, and remained a staunch advocate of the unity and independence of Greater Syria. He died in Damascus on Thursday 2 April 1953 — the Arabic article pairs his life with 1293–1372 AH — and was buried beside the tomb of Muawiya ibn Abi Sufyan. ^{1 2}

No source names a school or affiliation for Muhammad Kurd Ali personally. The English article, citing Rainer Brünner, notes that he was known for writing anti-Shia polemics — a stance toward another community, which does not name his own school — and Wikidata carries no religion value. His faith is therefore recorded as unknown in his data record. ^{1 3}