Dr. Ali Ahmad Nadvi receives his prize from Prince Sultan in Riyadh on Sunday as Prince Khaled Al-Faisal, director-general of the King Faisal Foundation, looks on. (AN photo by Fahd Shadeed)

RIYADH, 22 March 2004 — Five scholars from the Middle East, Asia and Europe were honored at a sumptuous ceremony yesterday for winning King Faisal international awards.

The SR750,000 prizes are awarded each year for outstanding work in the fields of science, medicine, Islamic studies, Arabic literature and service to Islam. The winners were announced on Jan. 27.

Prince Sultan, second deputy premier and minister of defense and aviation, presided over the ceremony at Al-Faisaliah Center. It was opened by Asir Governor Prince Khaled Al-Faisal, who is director-general of the King Faisal Foundation.

This year’s science prize went to Briton Semir Zeki, a professor of neurobiology at University College London, for his seminal work on the organization of the visual brain. A statement by the King Faisal Foundation said Zeki was “the first to show that the visual brain consists of many different areas that are functionally specialized to process and perceive different attributes of the visual scene.”

“Professor Zeki’s contributions have had a tremendous impact on the biology of vision,” said the statement.

In his acceptance speech, Professor Zeki said knowledge, despite its proliferation across many fields, was infinite in scope and dimensions. He quoted Isaac Newton who once observed: “I do not know what future generations will make of me, but I feel like a schoolboy on a beach, throwing mere pebbles into the vast unknown ocean beyond.”

Swiss Professor Ulrich Sigwart, a professor of cardiology and chief of the cardiology center at Geneva University, won the prize for medicine.

The prize for Arabic language and literature went to Hussain Muhammad Nassar of Egypt, a professor of Arabic language at Cairo University. In addition to writing books and articles on Arabic, Professor Nassar has also edited several anthologies of the pre-Islamic and Islamic eras, the statement said.

Indian Dr. Ali Ahmad Nadvi and Saudi Dr. Yacoub Al-Bahussain shared the prize for Islamic Studies. In a book on Islamic jurisprudence in financial matters, Dr. Al-Nadvi has attempted to adapt some of the concepts of earlier Islamic scholars to modern circumstances, according to the citation.

Dr. Al-Nadvi, who is the head of Shariah advisers at Al-Rajhi Financial Company, said one of the most distinctive features of Islamic Shariah is its stress on humanism and justice. He quoted from the Holy Qur’an: “Let not the hatred of others make you swerve to wrong and depart from justice. Be just; that is next to piety.”

Dr. Al-Bahussain has made original studies of the fundamental rules of Islamic jurisprudence.

The awards were established in 1979. The prize is considered the Arab Nobel Prize, and several winners of the King Faisal prize have also won the Nobel.

The citations were read out by Dr. Abdullah Al-Othaimeen, secretary-general of King Faisal International Prize.