Lebanese author Dagher awarded the 2025 Great Arab Minds Award for Literature and Arts

Charbel Dagher, author and professor of Arabic literature from Batroun, Lebanon, has been awarded the 2025 Great Arab Minds Award for Literature and Arts, with the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, announcing the achievement in a post on X on Friday.

Dagher, who received the award in recognition of his contributions to poetry, writing, literary criticism and the study of Arabic arts is currently a professor at the University of Balamand, Koura.

Dagher graduated from the New Sorbonne University – Paris III, and is a holder of two PhDs, one in Modern Arabic Letters (1982) and the second in Aesthetics of Arts (1996).

The Great Arab Minds Award was launched in January 2022 by Emirati Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum and backed by $27.2 million in funds to support and celebrate Arab pioneers.

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The award honors scientists, academics and innovators across a wide range of disciplines, including economics, medicine, natural sciences, engineering, architecture and the arts.

'Charbel has published more than 70 books'

Bin Rashid said on X that Dagher has “presented decades-long intellectual contributions in various fields of literature, from poetry, writing and the novel, to criticism, and has also worked on studying Arabic arts in their history and depth, and all the changes that have occurred to them. [Dagher] has published more than 70 books, through which he has enriched the fields of literature and arts in our world, and his works are considered references for studying Arabic literature and art throughout history."

“We congratulate all the winners of the Great Arab Minds Award, and we say to all Arabs; those who created the greatest civilization in history are capable today of building a greater future … if they believe in themselves, in their capabilities and in their role in resuming the civilization," he concluded.

In December 2024, Lebanese economist and academic Badi Hani Baltagi was named the 2025 Great Arab Minds Award winner in economics, in recognition of “his pioneering work in econometrics and economic data analysis, particularly in the field of panel data."