Hadi Alwai

Hadi Alwai (1932 - 27 September 1998) (Arabic: هادي العلوي) is an Iraqi Marxist intellectual, Islamic historian, and Arab linguist. He was born in Baghdad and grew up in a poor family of Hashemite descent. He studied at Baghdad University and graduated from the college of Economics in 1956. He left Iraq and travelled to China and then Syria. He lived in exile until he died in Damascus and he was buried there. He is interested in topics of Islam and Chinese philosophy. He has researches and books on Islam, Chinese history, and language.

Al- Alwai died in Al-Shami Hospital in Damascus on 26 or 27 September 1998 and he was buried there.

He participated in the Iraqi national movement since the fifties of the twentieth century. Then he changed to the Marxist approach. He established close relationship with the communist movement, and in 1976 he was forced to leave Iraq. He moved between China, Britain, Lebanon and Syria.

The first research about him was published in 1960 in “Al-Muthaqaf magazine”. In his writings, Alwai was interested in the modern Arab and Islamic scientific renaissance. He considered that the first Arab renaissance began with Sadr al-Din al-Shirazi and not with the French campaign against Egypt.

Hadi Alwai was born in Baghdad in 1932 or 1933 and he grew up there in a poor family who lived in Karada Maryam, which is a rural suburb in Baghdad. His father was uneducated, he was a worker. His grandfather Salman was a religious scholar but he died when Hadi was five years old. When Hadi was fourteen, he began reading. He found what was left in his grandfather's library, which had been neglected by the illiterate. He was first educated from his grandfather's library, Mr. Salman. He memorized the Qur’an and Nahj al-Balagha, in addition to a lot of Arabic poetry. He finished high school in 1950 and graduated from the College of Commerce and Economics in 1956.