Ahwal Al-Ma'rifa – Special

Critic and Professor Dr. Abdullah bin Mohammed Al-Ghadhami has won the Kuwait Prize for the Advancement of Sciences in the field of Humanities, Arts, and Literature.

The prize report stated:

“The Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (KFAS) announces the names of the winners of the Kuwait Prize in its 44th edition for 2025. The Foundation awards the prize annually to Kuwaiti and Arab scientists who have achieved outstanding accomplishments and made distinguished scientific and intellectual contributions throughout their research careers at the global level.

The prize in the field of Humanities, Arts, and Literature, under the theme of Literature and Art in the Arab World, was awarded to Professor Dr. Abdullah Mohammed Abdullah Al-Ghadhami from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a retired university professor.”

Dr. Abdullah Al-Ghadhami is considered one of the most prominent critics in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Arab world during the final two decades of the twentieth century and the beginning of the third millennium. His literary, critical, and cultural publications have continued throughout his career, exceeding 30 books across various branches of the humanities.

Dr. Al-Ghadhami’s writings have raised numerous questions and introduced significant ideas within the Saudi and Arab intellectual and academic scene since the publication of his book Sin and Atonement (Al-Khati'ah wa al-Takfir). The book sparked critical debate in the Saudi cultural scene between supporters of modern structuralist and deconstructive criticism and advocates of traditional criticism. His books addressing the culture of questions, women, language, writing against writing, and cultural criticism, of which he is considered one of the pioneers in the Arab world, generated extensive dialogue and discussion. They also contributed significantly to literary and cultural transformations in the Kingdom and the wider Arab world.

Dr. Abdullah Al-Ghadhami was born in Unaizah, Al-Qassim Region, in 1946. He is an academic and literary and cultural critic, and served as a Professor of Criticism and Theory in the Department of Arabic Language at the College of Arts, King Saud University in Riyadh. In 2022, he was awarded the Cultural Personality of the Year Award by the Sheikh Zayed Book Award, in recognition of his distinguished contributions to cultural criticism, women’s studies, poetry, and critical thought. His work, which began in the mid-1980s, brought about a significant transformation in Arab critical discourse.

Dr. Abdullah Al-Ghadhami has authored numerous works, among the most prominent of which are: Anatomy of the Text, The Poem and the Counter-Text, The Position on Modernity, The Story of Modernity, A Journey to the Republic of Theory, Similarity and Difference, Problems of Cultural Criticism, and The Dressed and the Possessed.