Fārūq ʻUmar

Farouk Omar Hussein Fawzi al-Anzi is an Iraqi historian, thinker, and Diplomat. He specializes in Islamic studies and Middle Eastern studies. he has contributed articles to major reference works including the Encyclopedia Britannica and the Encyclopedia of Islam. Farouk Omar, whose doctoral thesis on the Abbasid Caliphate was examined by Bernard Lewis and Montgomery Watt, who acknowledged that his research overturned many old Orientalist concepts about the early Abbasid period. He has been recognized in the International Biographical Dictionary (B.I.D) for Distinguished Service to the Community.

Biography Farouk Omar Hussein Fawzi (1938, Mosul - ) is an Iraqi historian and intellectual. He was born in Mosul, where he completed his primary and secondary education before moving to Baghdad to study at the University of Baghdad, where he obtained his BA with honors in History in 1961. This academic distinction qualified him for an official scholarship to pursue doctoral studies in Islamic History at the University of London in Britain, where he completed his PhD in 1967.Upon his return, he became a lecturer at the College of Arts, History Department at the University of Baghdad, and received the rank of Professor in 1979. He served as head of the History Department from 1978 to 1980 and as an ambassador at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1976. Over the years, he held various academic and administrative positions and lectured at Arab and international universities. He worked at Al al-Bayt University in Jordan for several years, where he became head of the History Department and director of the Ottoman Studies Unit. He currently works at Sultan Qaboos University in the Sultanate of Oman.He emigrated from Iraq in 1999 and is a member of the Royal Asiatic Society in London. He has contributed to several major reference works including the Encyclopedia of Islam, Encyclopedia Britannica, UNESCO's "History of Humanity," the "History of the Arab Nation" for the Arab Organization for Education, Culture and Sciences, and the Palestinian Encyclopedia published in Damascus under the supervision of the Palestine Liberation Organization.