Javād Ali and His Work's Arabic Excerpts

Javād Ali has been the most influential person in shaping the School of Historiology in Iraq, and also influenced Egypt and other Arabic schools. Apparently, he is the first non-Jewish person who in addition to English, German, Greek, and Latin learned ancient Babylonian languages as well as many other languages known as Sami. For more than half a century, he has carefully been studying about the history of Iraq, the Levant, and the Arabic Peninsula in pre-Islamic and early Islamic era. He is also perhaps the first person who defended a thesis with a Shiite and Twelver subject in a western university. Three excerpts from his books and the articles about him have recently been published in Arabic. On the pretext of this issue, the author of the present paper intends to write about him. Regarding this, he firstly presents a report of Javād Ali’s personal and scientific life, along with his social and political activities. Following this, he is going to examine the content of the three works which have been published on Javād Ali and his works. These works are as follow:Abhāth fi al-Tārikh by Nasīr al-Ka’bi
Al-Āthār al-Arabia, printed in Alexandria and with an introduction by Bashār al-Awād, 1914
Fi al-Hizāra wa al-Tārikh, by Hāmid al-Zālimi, 1