Muhammad Mustafa Badawi

Mohammed Mustafa Badawi (Arabic: محمد مصطفى بدوي,^[1] ALA-LC: Muḥammad Muṣṭafá Badawī; 10 June 1925 – 19 April 2012) was a scholar of English and Arabic literature. He was a Research Fellow of St. Antony's College at the University of Oxford from 1967 to 1969, and was then elected to the College's Governing Body. Upon retirement in 1992, he became an Emeritus Fellow.^[2]

Badawi was born in Egypt in 1925. He received as PhD at the University of London in 1954, with a thesis on Coleridge's criticism of Shakespeare, later published in 1973 by Cambridge University Press as Coleridge: Critic of Shakespeare which was re-printed in 2010; according to WorldCat, the book is held in 554 libraries.^[3] He then became Assistant Professor of English at the University of Cairo and moved to Oxford University in 1964, where he lectured at Brasenose College until retirement in 1992. He became a fellow of St. Antony's College (1967-2012), where he was the first lecturer in Modern Arabic at the new Middle East Centre of the college.^[4]

Badawi's notable students include: Emeritus Professor Sasson Somekh of Tel Aviv University and Dr. Roger Allen of the University of Pennsylvania^[5]

Over his academic career he published over thirty-six books, studies of English literature, of modern Arabic literature, and translations of Arabic literature into English. Upon his retirement he was awarded the King Faisal International Prize in Arabic Literature.^[6]

He left an endowment at Oxford University for the payment of the "Mustafa Badawi Prize in Modern Arabic Literature" which is awarded for "the best English essay on some aspect of modern Arabic literature of up to 15,000 words." which demonstrated, "sensitivity to modern Arabic literary texts as well as some originality and skill in critical analysis."^[7]

Upon his retirement, a festschrift in his honour was published as a special issue of Journal of Arabic literature ^[8]