Abdul Khaleq

Invented early Arabic text-to-speech systems for the blind

Abdul Khaleq (1930-1992) was a Palestinian engineer who developed the first Arabic language text-to-speech technology in the 1960s. Working in Cairo's Ain Shams University, he created the Al-Habib Synthesizer that converted written Arabic into speech - a groundbreaking achievement given the language's complex diacritics and Quranic pronunciation rules.

His 1968 invention allowed visually impaired users to access religious texts and educational materials independently. The device used vacuum tube technology and could store up to 20 minutes of recordings. Khaleq's work predated modern speech synthesis by two decades and inspired IBM's later Arabic language projects. His memoir <《Engineering Light in Darkness》 details his struggles against technical limitations and cultural skepticism. The system is now preserved at the Dubai Museum of Technology.