Abdur Raheem Kidwai

Abdur Raheem Kidwai (b. 1956 CE) is an Indian academic and writer, Professor of English at Aligarh Muslim University, where he also serves as honorary director of the K. A. Nizami Centre for Quranic Studies. He earned two doctorates in English, one from Aligarh Muslim University and one from the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, and has taught at Aligarh for decades. His scholarly interests bridge English literary studies and Islamic studies, with attention to literary orientalism, the long history of English translations of the Qurʾan, Urdu-English translation, Islam in the West, and interfaith dialogue. He is a notably prolific writer, credited with more than forty authored and edited books and some 250 articles and reviews, and he has himself rendered the Qurʾan into accessible English in a work first issued in 2013 and revised in later editions. For a wider readership, his books include the Daily Wisdom series, gathering selections from the Holy Qurʾan and the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, alongside practical companions to Islamic prayers and supplications and surveys of the blessed names and attributes of God and of the Prophet. His writing aims to make the Qurʾan and the Islamic tradition approachable for English-speaking readers while remaining grounded in careful scholarship.