Born in 1949 in Tarshish, Mount Lebanon, Prof. Dr. Al-Sayyid completed his higher education at the College of Usuluddin (Fundamentals of Religion), at Al-Azhar University in 1970, and subsequently earned his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Tübingen, Germany, in 1977. He has held visiting professorships at Harvard University, the University of Chicago, the University of Salzburg, and the University of Bamberg. A distinguished writer and thinker, he was awarded the King Faisal Prize for Islamic Studies in 2017 and the Nile Award for Arab Innovators from Egypt in 2021. He currently serves as the Dean of the College of Graduate Studies and Scientific Research at Mohamed Bin Zayed University for Humanities in Abu Dhabi.