Safa Khulusi

Safa Khulusi was an Iraqi writer, linguist, translator, lexicographer and historian. He was born in Baghdad in 1917 to a Baghdadi Jewish family. He studied at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago and received his PhD in Arabic literature from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University. He taught at various universities in Iraq and Britain and was a leading authority on modern Iraqi literature. He also wrote extensively on the Shakespeare authorship question, arguing that Shakespeare was either an Arab or influenced by Arabic literature. He published more than 20 books and hundreds of articles on topics such as comparative literature, literary criticism, Islamic history, philosophy and psychology. He died in London in 1995. He is considered one of the most eminent Iraqi intellectuals and one of the pioneers of Arabic-English cultural dialogue.