Ali Al Wardi

Ali Al-Wardi was an Iraqi sociologist, professor and historian, known for his adoption of modern social theories at his time, to analyze the Iraqi social reality. He was born in Baghdad in 1913 to a religious and very traditional family. He defied his father's wishes and pursued his education, becoming the number one student in the Kingdom of Iraq. He won a scholarship to the American University of Beirut, where he received his bachelor's degree in 1943. He then traveled to the United States to attain his master's and PhD degrees from the University of Texas. He returned to Iraq in 1950 and started his career as a lecturer, writer and researcher. He was influenced by the philosophical ideas of Ibn Khaldun, Sigmund Freud and Karl Mannheim, and applied them to the Iraqi context. He criticized the assumption that the human mind is fixed and rational, and argued that it is egocentric, determined, biased and untrustworthy. He also challenged the Aristotelian logic and the notion of absolute truth. He published many books and articles on the nature of Iraqi society, the personality of the Iraqi individual, the psychology of the masses, the history of Iraq and the Middle East, and the role of religion and culture in shaping human behavior. He died on 13 July 1995 in Baghdad, at the age of 81. He is considered one of the most prominent Iraqi intellectuals and one of the pioneers of social science in the Arab world.