Riwaq Prize for Science and Culture 2026: Three books reopen questions in Arab and Islamic intellectual history

Berlin: Der Divan – The Arabic Cultural House and the German Orient Institute Beirut presented the inaugural Riwaq Prize for Science and Culture on 16 October 2026, as part of the fourth Arab Book Fair in Berlin.

The prize recognises outstanding scholarly monographs on Arab cultures and societies, particularly research that advances its field through original scholarship, innovative approaches and critical perspectives. The ceremony also featured remarks by Clemens Hach, Deputy Head of the Middle East and North Africa Division at Germany’s Federal Foreign Office.

The prize carries a total award of €3,000, divided equally among three language categories: Arabic, German and English. Its first edition was dedicated to the humanities and honoured three books that approach major questions in Arab and Islamic intellectual and cultural history from distinct scholarly perspectives: the historical interpretation of Ibn Taymiyya’s thought; the modern Arab intellectual history traced through the Beirut journal Mawaqif; and early Qur’anic interpretation, asceticism and piety in the formative period of Islam.

Despite their different subjects and methods, the winning works share a commitment to contextual research. They show that knowledge requires more than recovering texts or describing phenomena: it also means questioning the contexts in which they emerged, understanding the historical conditions that shaped them and tracing how their meanings and uses changed over time.

Arabic category: Dr Raed Al-Samhouri

The Arabic-language award went to Dr Raed Al-Samhouri for Ibn Taymiyya al-Tarikhi wa-l-Mustaʿad (Ibn Taymiyya: The Historical and the Rediscovered), published in 2024 by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies.

The book examines the relationship between a historical figure and the image of that figure in contemporary consciousness. Through the example of Ibn Taymiyya’s thought, Al-Samhouri analyses how the past is invoked and deployed in present-day debates. By placing Ibn Taymiyya’s work within its historical, social and political contexts, the study challenges reductive readings that confine it to questions of violence and takfir—the practice of declaring another Muslim an unbeliever—or extract passages to justify positions and conflicts that arose under circumstances fundamentally different from those in which the texts were written.

The jury praised the subject’s relevance to contemporary Arab contexts, the work’s adherence to scholarly standards, its linguistic care and the quality of its presentation. It particularly recognised the book’s contribution to a more nuanced understanding of inherited thought and its challenge to interpretations that detach texts from their historical setting and strip them of complexity.

The study’s central question is captured in the author’s call for research that might “free Ibn Taymiyya from our time—or perhaps free our time from him”—by returning him to his own era and context. The aim is twofold: to release the past from projections of the present, while freeing contemporary debate from readings that reduce the past to a single image.

German category: Prof. Dr Yvonne Albers

The German-language award was presented to Prof. Dr Yvonne Albers for Beirut und die Zeitschrift Mawaqif. Eine arabische Intellektuellengeschichte 1968–1994, published by Brill Fink in 2023.

Albers uses the Beirut-based journal Mawaqif to examine a formative period in modern Arab intellectual history. Rather than treating the journal simply as a publication or a reflection of literary trends, she approaches it as a cultural and intellectual institution in which ideas were produced, concepts debated and literary, political and philosophical currents brought into relation.

By tracing the journal’s intellectual life from 1968 to 1994, the study reconstructs the history of ideas through one of the institutions that shaped them. It shows how ideas develop through publishing and debate, and through complex relationships among intellectuals, institutions and political and social change.

The jury described the book as an intellectually and linguistically outstanding study of a decisive period in modern Arab intellectual and political history. It praised the originality of treating the journal as an institution where literary currents, political ideas and theoretical debates were formed and circulated, as well as the author’s ability to make complex questions accessible to a broad academic readership.

English category: Nora K. Schmid

The English-language award went to Nora K. Schmid for The Ascetic Qur’an and its Kharijite Readers. The book offers a new perspective on early Qur’anic interpretation, bringing close textual analysis into conversation with the historical and cultural circumstances in which early readers understood the Qur’an. Its focus on asceticism and Kharijite readers opens a window onto religious worlds in the early Islamic period and reconsiders them within broader historical contexts.

The jury highlighted the author’s exceptional sensitivity to language and her ability to make the voices of the early period accessible through translation and analysis. The work contributes to a more differentiated understanding of early Islamic piety and interpretation by placing the evidence in its wider historical and cultural setting.

Nine scholars across three language juries

For the inaugural edition, the prize appointed three specialist academic juries, each comprising three members. The Arabic jury was chaired by Prof. Dr Amal Mohammed Al-Malki of Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Qatar, with Dr Abd al-Rahman al-Ibrahim and Dr Rachid Boutayeb, both of the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Qatar.

The German jury comprised Prof. Dr Gudrun Krämer of Freie Universität Berlin; Prof. Dr Stefan Gosepath, emeritus professor at the University of Oslo; and Prof. Dr Birgit Krawietz of Freie Universität Berlin, who chaired the jury.

The English jury was chaired by Prof. Dr Marilyn Booth, emerita professor at the University of Oxford, and included Prof. Dr Fred Donner, emeritus professor at the University of Chicago, and Prof. Dr Islam Dayeh of Ghent University. The composition of the juries reflected a range of academic expertise and institutional affiliations. The winning works were recognised for the originality of their questions, methodological rigour and contribution to knowledge beyond the restatement of existing research.

Research as a bridge between cultures

Commenting on the launch of the prize, Dr Lorans Al Hennawi, Director of Der Divan – The Arabic Cultural House, said: “We understand the Riwaq Prize as far more than an award for outstanding scholarly work. It expresses our conviction that rigorous knowledge is essential to understanding ourselves, our history and the world. Research realises its full value when it has the methodological courage to question assumptions, restore historical contexts and open up questions obscured by hasty or reductive interpretations.”

He added that the winning books share respect for the complexity of historical and human experience and a refusal to settle for premature judgements. Together, they demonstrate how scholarship can illuminate inherited traditions in context, examine the institutions that shaped modern Arab intellectual life, and investigate religious practice and interpretation in the early Islamic period.

Prof. Dr Jens Hanssen, Director of the German Orient Institute Beirut, said the prize highlights the importance of research that approaches Arab cultures and societies as subjects of critical inquiry rather than fixed images or closed narratives. He emphasised that the winning books combine disciplinary precision with openness to wider questions of society, politics, language and interpretation, and that the prize’s multilingual structure creates opportunities to extend academic dialogue across research traditions and audiences.

The partnership between Der Divan and the German Orient Institute Beirut brings academic expertise and cultural initiative together, giving important research greater visibility beyond the boundaries of individual disciplines. The organisers aim to encourage independent scholarship and strengthen long-term academic and cultural relationships between researchers and institutions in the Arab world and Germany.

A space for encounter and diverse knowledge

The name “Riwaq” evokes a space of passage and encounter, where different paths can run alongside one another without losing their distinctiveness. The prize draws on this image to promote a scholarly environment in which languages and disciplines meet, methods enter into dialogue and new questions can emerge through rigorous engagement with evidence.

The Riwaq Prize will be awarded every two years, alternating between the humanities and the social sciences. Following the humanities-focused inaugural edition in 2026, the next edition will turn to the social sciences. Through this alternating focus, the prize seeks to support original and methodologically rigorous studies that deepen understanding of Arab cultures and societies and the transformations they undergo.