BACKGROUND: The Short-form McGill Pain Questionnaire (SF-MPQ) is a widely used tool for assessing musculoskeletal pain, both in research and clinical practice. However, a culturally appropriate Arabic version for the Libyan context has not been available. This study aims to translate the SF-MPQ, and to examine its reliability and validity for assessing musculoskeletal pain in Libya. METHODS: The SF-MPQ was cross-culturally adapted into Arabic using a forward-backward method. A total of 151 patients (Mean age ± SD = 40.66 ± 14) with musculoskeletal pain completed the SF-MPQ and other measures. Of these, 148 patients completed the second round of questionnaire completion two days after the first visit. The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was used to examine relative test-retest reliability and Bland-Altman plots was performed to examine absolute agreement between the two assessments. Spearman's correlation was applied to assess construct validity. RESULTS: The Arabic translation of the SF-MPQ was linguistically equivalent, without significant discrepancies. All but two of the Arabic descriptors were used by more than 33% of the participants, indicating good item measurement equivalency. The results showed a satisfactory Cronbach's α (0.74 for the total score), which indicates good internal consistency. The ICC for the total score revealed a high correlation for the test-retest (0.91), suggesting excellent relative reliability. Bland-Altman analyses showed no significant systematic bias between the repeated measurements. There were positive statistically significant correlations among the SF-MPQ, the Visual Analog Scale, and the Fatigue Severity Scale ( < 0.001), demonstrating good construct validity. CONCLUSION: These results suggest that the Arabic SF-MPQ is reliable, valid, and cross-culturally equivalent to the original SF-MPQ for evaluating musculoskeletal pain among Arabic-speaking patients in Libya. Clinicians and researchers may therefore consider using this scale, as it is easy to use and understand by different age groups. Further research is needed to confirm our findings and to test the developed Arabic version of the SF-MPQ on different patient populations.