Saad al-Sowayan

Saad Bin Abdullah al-Sowayan (born 1944 ) is a Saudi writer, researcher, and academic specializing in sociology, "anthropology." He is known for his interest in oral history and Nabati poetry in the Arabian Peninsula. In 2024, He was crowned with the Cultural Personality of the Year award in the fourth session of the National Cultural Awards Initiative.

Saad al-Sowayan obtained his bachelor's degree in sociology from Northern Illinois University in 1971. He received his master's degree in anthropology from the same university in 1974. In 1982, he earned his doctorate's degree in anthropology, folklore, and Oriental studies from the University of California, Berkeley, with a dissertation titled "Nabati Poetry: The Oral Poetry of Arabia," which was published by the University of California Press under the same title in 1985.

In 1982, Saad al-Sowayan was appointed as an assistant professor at King Saud University. He supervised the Folklore Museum in the College of Arts between 1982 and 1984 and served as the head of the Department of Social Studies from 1984 to 1988. He was promoted to associate professor in 1987. In 1989, he received a scholarship from the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg in Germany to conduct research and meet with specialists in Oriental studies. He was seconded to Dar al-Daira for Publishing and Documentation from 1991 to 2002. He then returned to work at King Saud University and was promoted to full professor in 2003.

From 1991 to 2001, he was the president and general manager of the Documentary Project of King Abdulaziz Al Saud: His Biography and Reign in Foreign Documents, which was published in twenty volumes. He was also the scientific supervisor and editor-in-chief of the Documentary Project of Traditional Culture in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, published in twelve volumes of approximately five hundred pages each. Each volume covers an aspect of traditional culture, including folk medicine, spices, folk games, traditional architecture, agriculture, and handicrafts.

Saad al-Sowayan is considered one of the Saudi figures specializing in research and scientific projects. Between 1983 and 1990, he was involved in a project to collect Nabati poetry from its oral sources, funded by the Research Center at the College of Arts at King Saud University. The project included recording oral interviews with elderly Bedouin narrators and collecting all that relates to Bedouin life, including poems, stories, genealogies, tribal marks, dwellings, resources, ethnographic information, and oral history.

Saad al-Sowayan has authored numerous works in Arabic and foreign languages on folk literature. Among his Arabic publications are: "Collection of Oral Heritage", 1985, published by the Folklore Center of the Arab Gulf States, Doha, "Horse Chanting", 1988, "Nabati Poetry: The People's Taste and the Authority of the Text", 2000, and "Index of Nabati Poetry", 2001.