Ahmad Rida

Sheikh Ahmad Rida (also transliterated as Ahmad Reda) (1872–1953) (Arabic: الشيخ أحمد رضا) was a Lebanese linguist, writer and politician. A key figure of the Arab Renaissance (known as al-Nahda), he compiled the modern monolingual Arabic dictionary, Matn al-Lugha, commissioned by the Arab Academy of Damascus in 1930, and is widely considered to be among the foremost scholars of Arab literature and linguistics. Rida was also heavily involved in Arab nationalist politics and has been variously described as "one of the leading reformers in Syria" and among the "key players in the turn-of-the-century stirrings of Arabism, local patriotism, and even defenses of Shi'i particularism". He argued for pan-Arab unity, and was among the first scholars in Jabal Amel to seek to integrate his Shi'ite co-religionists into the greater Arab and Muslim nations while retaining their identity as a religious community.