Abdul Karim Al-Ghazali

Developed the first Arabic-language computer programming language in 1968

Computer scientist Abdul Karim Al-Ghazali (1930-2005) pioneered computational linguistics in the Arab world by creating the first Arabic programming language, Al-Adabi, in 1968. Working at Kuwait University's fledgling computer center, he addressed the lack of Arabic-language software tools by designing a compiler that allowed programmers to write code in Arabic script. This breakthrough enabled the first Arabic word processors and database systems, crucial for preserving Arabic textual heritage in the digital age.

Al-Ghazali's innovations were rooted in his earlier work on machine translation systems between Arabic and English, which he developed while studying at MIT (1956-1958). His 1969 paper Arabic Script Processing in Digital Systems became foundational for Unicode's Arabic encoding. The Kuwaiti government used his language to create the first Arabic census database in 1972, revolutionizing public administration.

Despite his technical achievements, Al-Ghazali remained committed to education, establishing the first computer science department in the Gulf region at Qatar University (1975). His open-source compiler code, published in Algorithms in Arabic Script, influenced later developers of Arabic-supporting operating systems like ArabicLinux. Modern AI language models like Google's Multilingual Arabic still reference his work on diacritic placement algorithms.