This paper will consider the linkages between the literary oeuvre and the anticolonial political activities of the Syrian-Saudi poet and encyclopedist Khayr al-Dīn al-Ziriklī (1893-1976). While his magisterial biographical dictionary is frequently cited as a reference work, it is not often studied in its own right as a work of modernist literary prose. The dictionary, which was first published in its entirety in 1957, is entitled Al-Aʿlām: Qāmūs Tarājim li-Ashhar al-Rijāl wa-l-Nisāʾ min al-ʿArab wa-l-Mustaʿribīn wa-l-Mustashriqīn [Luminaries: A Biographical Dictionary of the Most Notable Men and Women from among the Arabs, those who live among the Arabs, and the Orientalists]. It contains nearly 14,500 entries, placing medieval, early modern, and late modern names next to each other in a unified, standardized catalogue for the first time. Al-Ziriklī eschewed the subjective, authorial style of the medieval scholars, opting for a clinical, pseudo-scientific prose in the omniscient third person. Why did he choose to reinvent this classical literary form in the twentieth century? Furthermore, why did he see the reproduction of this imagined tradition as central to interwar statemaking efforts? In his words, he lamented, “There is an empty space in the Arab [cultural] treasury, and in the soul of its reader there is a need. [Filling it] is an obligation of our era.” In this paper, I will first peruse the introduction of the Aʿlām for additional clues as to al-Ziriklī’s political and literary motivations. I will then look up the entries for Al-Ziriklī’s known friends and associates, including anticolonial fighters and activists in the Istiqlali network, such as Muḥammad Kāmal al-Qaṣṣāb, Muḥibb al-Dīn al-Khatīb, and Riyāḍ al-Ṣolḥ, but also Nahḍa littérateurs such as Aḥmad Shawqī, Amīn al-Rīḥānī, and Amīn Saʿīd. Finally, I will revisit his personal reflections from his travel diary from when he fled Syria as a refugee in 1920, having been sentenced to death in absentia by the French authorities, and made his way to the Hijaz, where his modernist literary project was born. Notably, I will make use of the state archives in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which hold two major collections of al-Ziriklī papers. The Musawwadāt Al-Ziriklī collection housed on the campus of King Saud University (KSU) contains his handwritten notes and literary drafts, while the al-Ziriklī collection at King Abdul-Aziz Public Library (KAPL) contains personal papers related to his political activities, including telegrams, policy memos, and diplomatic cables.