Youssef Ziedan

His primary scholarly interests are in cataloguing, editing, and publishing Arabic and Islamic manuscripts. He has worked as a consultant in the field of Arabic heritage preservation and conservation in a number of international institutions, including UNESCO, ESCWA, and the Arab League, and has also directed a number of projects aimed at the identification and preservation of Arabic manuscript heritage.

• Name — Youssef Ziedan • Born — 30 June 1958 • Birthplace — Sohag, Egypt • Occupation — Novelist • Language — Arabic • Education — PhD degree in philosophy • Alma Mater — Alexandria University • Period — 1976-1980 • Notable Works — Azazeel • Children — Alaa, Aya, Mai • Awards — Medical Knowledge and Heritage Authentication Award from the Islamic Organization of Medicine/Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences; the ‘Abdul-Hamīd Shūmān Prize in the field of social studies (Jordan); and the International Prize for Arabic Fiction for his best selling novel Azazeel

Ziedan was born in Sohag, Egypt in 1958. He moved with his grandfather to Alexandria when he was still a child and was raised and educated there. He joined the philosophy department at the University of Alexandria and graduated summa cum laude. His postgraduate studies focused on Sufism and its philosophical underpinnings. He obtained his PhD degree in 1989 for his dissertation on The Qadiri Sufi Order, with a study and edition of the poetical works of Abdul Qadir al-Jilani. Ziedan lives in Alexandria with his family.

Ziedan's work on Sufism underscores not just the mystic introspective lineaments of Islamic Sufism, but, more importantly, its philosophical underpinnings. He has placed consistent emphasis on the study of Ibn Arabi and Abdul Karim al-Jili, regarded as two of the most important figures of philosophical Sufism in the history of Islam. His work on Abdul Karim al-Jili is seen by commentators as the most authoritative work in the field.

Another dimension to Ziedan's work is his study of the history of Islamic medicine, which draws him into the scientific realms of medicine, mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, and related topics. His scholarly career has included extensive explorations of the scientific heritage of Arab peoples throughout history, with special focus on medicine. He has studied the Arabic translations, commentaries and annotations on Hippocrates and Galen especially. Furthermore, his studies on Ibn al-Nafis and his critical edition of his grand medical encyclopedia (30 volumes) al-Shamil fil Sina’a al-Tibbiyya catapulted Ziedan into being considered an Ibn al-Nafis expert.

Ziedan sees cataloguing as an ars maior that has not received the attention it deserves. According to him, cataloguing is the key to a panoramic view of a particular manuscript heritage. With this in mind, Ziedan produced some 20 manuscript catalogues using detailed descriptive cataloguing techniques rather than short, uninformative bibliographic records. His catalogues are mostly thematic, i.e. they are not general catalogues, but handle each theme of knowledge separately.

In addition to his scholarship, Ziedan is also a published author of award-winning Arabic fiction. His 2006 novel Zil al-Af’a ("Shadow of the Serpent") is critically-acclaimed. The novel treats the notion of the sacred female through a contemporary setting with humdrum personae in the first part; in the second part, letter fragments from a female anthropologist to her daughter, the heroine of the first part, explain how the role of the female has been misshapen, abused and diabolically transformed throughout history. The novel has been criticized for its abnormal structure and superfluous intellectualism. Ziedan's second novel is the historico-theological work Azazeel (عزازيل), which won the 2009 International Prize for Arabic Fiction. The book is written as if a translation of scrolls that had been discovered in the ruins of a monastery northwest of Aleppo, Syria. An Egyptian monk called “Hypa” wrote the original manuscript as an autobiography in the Aramaic language in the first half of the fifth century AD. This was a time of great internal turmoil in Eastern Christianity. Ziedan's other novels include The Nabatean (النبطي) in 2012, Places (محال) in 2013 and its sequel, Guantanamo (جونتنامو) in 2013. His novels have been translated into English, French, Italian and Russian, among other languages. His most recent novel, Fardeqan – the Detention of the Great Sheikh, published by Egypt's Dar el-Shorouk, was short-listed for the 2020 International Prize for Arabic Fiction.