Saib Shawkat

Saib Shawkat was an Iraqi doctor, professor and politician, who was an Arab nationalist leader in Iraq. He was born in 1898 in Baghdad, to a patriotic family of Georgian origin. He studied at a medical school in Istanbul from 1913 to 1918, and completed post-graduate studies in general surgery in Germany. He was the first Iraqi doctor to teach anatomy at the Iraqi Royal College of Medicine, where he became the dean in the 1940s. He also worked as a journalist and editor for several newspapers and magazines, such as Al-Muqtataf, Al-Muqtabas, Al-Hilal and Sabil al-Rashad. He was influenced by the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 and the Arab nationalist movement. He wrote several books on Arabic literature, such as An Introduction to Arabic Poetry, An Introduction to Arabic Grammar and An Introduction to Arabic Rhetoric. He also published a poetry collection in 1970, titled Priorities of Sadness and Joy. He left Iraq in 1977 and moved to Libya, where he taught at Al-Fateh University and the Libyan Academy for Postgraduate Studies. He returned to Iraq in 2011 and worked as the head of the journalism department at Ahl al-Bayt University in Karbala. He died in 1984 in Baghdad, at the age of 86.