Ahmad Meshari Al-Adwani

Who is Ahmad Meshari Al-Adwani?

Ahmad Meshari Al-Adwani was a Kuwaiti poet, teacher, and cultural pioneer best known as the author of the lyrics to Al-Nasheed Al-Watani, the National Anthem of Kuwait. Born in 1923, he graduated from Al-Mubarakiyah Secondary School in Kuwait before traveling to Cairo in 1939 to study Arabic language at Al-Azhar University, graduating in 1949. Returning home steeped in the wider Arabic literary tradition, he became a driving force behind Kuwait's twentieth-century cultural awakening: in 1950 he co-founded the monthly magazine Al-Be'thah in Cairo, and in 1952 he helped establish Al-Ra'ed magazine through the Kuwait Teachers Club. He played a central role in founding the Kuwaiti Writers Association and Al-Bayan magazine, and he helped launch major cultural publishing series and the Higher Institute of Musical Arts, shaping Kuwait's literary and artistic institutions for decades. His national anthem lyrics, set to music by Ibrahim Al-Soula, were first broadcast in 1978 and remain the words sung by Kuwaitis at every official occasion. Al-Adwani died on 17 June 1990, remembered as one of the most influential literary and educational figures in modern Kuwaiti history.

Sources: Wikipedia, "Ahmad Meshari Al-Adwani" · Wikipedia, "National Anthem of Kuwait" · Times Kuwait, "Kuwait remembers poet Ahmed Meshari Al-Adwani"