Second Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Defense and Aviation and Inspector-General Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz presented five scholars with awards from the King Faisal International Prize at a special ceremony last night at the Al-Faisaliah Center in Riyadh. The winners of the 1424 (2004) prizes, awarded each year for outstanding work in the fields of science, medicine, Islamic studies, Arabic literature and service to Islam, were announced on January 27 by Governor of Asir Province Prince Khalid Al-Faisal, in his capacity as Director-General of the King Faisal Foundation. Full details are available at the KFF website, http://www.kff.com.

The prize for Islamic Studies went jointly to Dr. Yacoub Abd Al-Wahab Al-Bahussein from Saudi Arabia and Dr. Ali Ahmad Ghulam Muhammad Nadvi from India, on the topic ‘Basis of Islamic Jurisprudence’. Dr. Al-Nadvi, who is chief adviser on Shariah [Islamic Law] at the Al-Rajhi Financial Company, commented that one of the most distinctive features of Islamic Law is its stress on humanitarianism and justice. For Arabic literature, the winner was an Egyptian, Dr. Hussein Muhammad Nasser, on the topic ‘Preservation of Classical Arabic to the end of the 5th Century AH’. Dr. Nasser is professor of Arabic language at Cairo University. In the category of medicine, on the topic of invasive cardiology, the award went to Swiss national Professor Ulrich Sigwart, a professor of cardiology at Geneva University. In the category of the sciences, on biology, the award went to U.K. national Professor Samir Zaki, who is Professor of Neurobiology at University College in London, for his seminal work on the organization of the visual brain.

Return