Biographies: Abdel Rahman Manief - Writer

Biographies

[1 Content]

A Saudi author who was born on May 29, 1933 in Amman to a father from Najd and an Iraqi mother. He spent the first stages with the family traveling between Damascus, Amman, and some Saudi cities. He finished his secondary studies in the Jordanian capital and started his political activity and became affiliated with the newly formed Baath Party. He joined the Faculty of Law in Baghdad in 1952. After signing the Baghdad Pact in 1955, he was expelled to the Republic of Egypt with a large number of students. He continued his studies at Cairo University and obtained a BA in Law. In 1958, he completed his postgraduate studies at the University of Belgrade, Yugoslavia, where he obtained a doctorate in economic sciences, specializing in oil economics in 1961. He returned to Beirut, where he was elected as a member of the national leadership for a few months. In 1962, he ended his political and organizational relationship with the Baath Party after the Homs conference. In 1963, his Saudi passport was withdrawn by the Saudi embassy in Damascus, citing his political affiliations, and it was not returned to him until his death in 2004. In 1964, he returned to Damascus to work in the Syrian Oil Company, "Fuel Distribution Company". At a later stage, he worked as a marketing manager of Syrian crude oil. In 1973, he settled in Beirut, where he worked in "Al Balagh Magazine" for a few years. He left Beirut in 1975 to settle in Baghdad, where he worked as an economist and then took over the publication of a magazine concerned with oil economics, entitled "Oil and Development" until 1981, when the Iran-Iraq war broke out. He moved to Paris, where he devoted himself entirely to writing fiction. Cities of Salt was one of his most important productions. He left in early 1987, returning to Syria. In 1987, he settled in the city of Damascus to continue writing, moving between Damascus and Beirut until he died on January 24, 2004.

27 October 2021
Christina Aziz