Suleiman Mousa

Suleiman Mousa (11 June 1919 – 9 June 2008) was a Jordanian author and historian who grew up in Al-Rafeed, a small village north of Irbid. He wrote up to fifty books, the most notable of which are Biography of Sharif Hussein Bin Ali, Jordan in the 1948 War, Great Arab Revolt, History of Jordan in the twentieth century, and he was the first and only Arab author to write about Lawrence of Arabia from an Arab perspective.

Suleiman Mousa was born in 1919 to a Christian family in the village of Al Rafeed, which overlooks the Yarmouk River and is located 20 kilometers north of Irbid. Mousa, his mother, and his sister were all shocked when his father, a poor man with a passion for reading and writing, died when he was just six years old. His mother took on the duty of providing the family's requirements, leaving them with little more than a cane basket carrying some books. They lived a simple and spontaneous life as part of a village that was primarily dependent on agriculture for survival.

Mousa attended a modest school known as Al Ta'ifa for three years after completing his primary education from religious scholars. He was subsequently moved to a governmental school in Al Husn, where he stayed with relatives until May 1934, when he was unable to continue in high school due to the family's inadequate resources. A few months later, at the age of sixteen, he began teaching at the School of Irbid.

Suleiman Mousa died on June 9, 2008, two days before his 89th birthday, in Amman, Jordan. He died as a result of congestive heart failure. Cultural officials attended the funeral and wake, as did representatives from Jordan's King Abdullah II, the Ministry of Culture, the media, and many others who honored his accomplishments in numerous artistic disciplines. It is a fact that Suleiman Mousa received numerous medals and distinctions during his lifetime, many projects have been created posthumously in commemoration of his contributions to Jordanian, Middle Eastern, and global history. Among the most visible of these endeavors is the building of the Suleiman Mousa Library at the (GAM) and the republishing of his whole works in stages, with the goal of imparting history to the next generation. Following his death in 2008, Mousa was also given The Arab Author Medal.