Doha, August 30 (QNA) - The Arab Book Award said it had received 835 nominations across the award's two categories for its fourth edition in 2026, demonstrating the broadening scope of participation and the diversity of advanced Arab scholarly and intellectual output submitted for the award.

Launched by the State of Qatar in March 2023, the award is dedicated to books authored in Arabic and honors researchers, publishing houses, and institutions that contribute to and advance the Arab book industry.

Statistics for this year's awards cycle show that the single-book category accounted for the largest share of all nominations, with 682, while the achievement category received 153. The latter included 94 individuals and 59 institutions, reflecting the breadth and diversity of participants in the category.

Linguistic, literary, and critical studies led all fields of study, accounting for 33 percent of total nominations, followed by historical studies at 27 percent and Islamic studies and Sharia sciences at 19 percent. Social and philosophical studies accounted for 15 percent, while dictionaries, encyclopedias, and textual scholarship ranked last at 6 percent.

These fields and specializations were designated by the award for its fourth edition. Linguistic and critical studies cover grammatical and morphological studies, as well as critical studies in narrative and theater. Social and philosophical studies, meanwhile, focus on Arab-Islamic philosophy and psychology, while historical studies address research related to the history of the Arab and Islamic world from the 12th century AH to the present.

Executive Director of the Arab Book Award Dr. Naji Al Sharif said the outcomes of the fourth edition offer consequential indicators of the nature of Arab knowledge production and research interests, reflecting a growing presence of authors and researchers.

He affirmed that the registration of 835 nominations underscores the mushrooming scope of engagement with the award and its growing presence as a platform that pays tribute to the Arabic book, as well as the scientific and intellectual efforts associated with it.

He underscored the award's growing reach across countries worldwide, noting that it received submissions from 44 countries this year, up from last year. Egypt led by far with 145 submissions, followed by Morocco with 92, Saudi Arabia with 76, Qatar with 50, Algeria with 37, and Jordan with 32.

Al Sharif further explained that the single-book category's dominance reflects the continued role of authored books as the primary output presented by researchers and scholars to the award, while the diversity of the achievement category reveals the range of entities and stakeholders contributing to the production of Arab knowledge and advancing the Arab book.

Professor Dr. Hanan Al Fayyad, Media Advisor for the Arab Book Award, said the significance of this year's submissions lies not merely in their volume, but in their ability to provide a picture of trends in authorship and research across the Arab world.

She explained that the award's growing body of submissions is an outgrowth of its successive editions and helps track transformations in Arab knowledge production, while identifying works and scholarly efforts that could have a lasting impact on the advancement of Arab culture and scientific research.

Al Fayyad said the figures recorded in the current edition reflect the award's expanding reach and the diversity of Arab scholarly output submitted for competition, noting that the breadth of submissions across different fields of knowledge underscores the richness of Arab scientific production and the range of its research interests.

She said the award doesn't merely seek to honor winning works but strives to enrich the Arab cultural and intellectual landscape with leading works that demonstrate their scholarly value after undergoing objective, rigorous, and comprehensive evaluation.

This gives them an added distinction alongside their academic value and helps consolidate their presence in the cultural and intellectual sphere, she highlighted.

Al Fayyad affirmed that the award also seeks to enable scientific and academic institutions to capitalize on the body of nominated works and draw on the expertise of thinkers and scholars in the humanities and other fields of knowledge for cross-border Arab scientific and research projects that reflect the spirit and intellectual heritage of the Arab nation. (QNA)