Princeton professor L. Carl Brown has been named the winner of the 2005 Arkansas Arabic Translation Award by the University of Arkansas Press and the university's King Fahd Center of Middle East and Islamic Studies.
Brown, the Garrett Professor in Foreign Affairs Emeritus at Princeton, was honored for his translation of "Consult Them in the Matter: A 19th-Century Islamic Argument for Constitutional Government" by the Tunisian historian Ahmad ibn Abi Diyaf. The work is considered a pioneering text in modern Arab and Islamic political philosophy.
The prize, established to support and to publish fine translations of important Arabic writing, awards $5,000 to the translator and $5,000 to the original author or estate. The University of Arkansas Press publishes the award-winning translation.
Brown is the author of numerous books and articles, among them, "The Surest Path: The Political Treatise of a 19th-Century Muslim Statesman" (1967), "The Tunisia of Ahmad Bey" (1975), "International Politics in the Middle East: Old Rules, Dangerous Game" (1984) and "Religion and State: The Muslim Approach to Politics" (2000). A longtime chair of Princeton's Department of Near Eastern Studies, he has trained many leading scholars in Middle East studies.
