John Victor Tolan (; born 1959) is a

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human species; as well as the ...

of religious and cultural relations between the Arab and Latin-speaking civilizations of the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...

Biography

He was born in

Milwaukee Milwaukee is the List of cities in Wisconsin, most populous city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. Located on the western shore of Lake Michigan, it is the List of United States cities by population, 31st-most populous city in the United States ...

and received a BA in Classics from

Yale Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and one of the nine colonial colleges ch ...

(1981), an MA (1986) and a PhD (1990) in History from the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

, and an ''Habilitation à diriger des recherches'' from the ''

Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales The School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (, EHESS) is a graduate ''grande école'' and '' grand établissement'' in Paris focused on academic research in the social sciences. The school awards Master and PhD degrees alone and conjoi ...

'' in Paris (2001). He has taught and lectured in universities in

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South Ameri ...

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...

and the

Middle East The Middle East (term originally coined in English language) is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. The term came into widespread usage by the United Kingdom and western Eur ...

and is Professor Emeritus of History at the

University of Nantes Nantes University () is a public university located in the city of Nantes, France. In addition to the several campuses scattered in the city of Nantes, there are two satellite campuses located in Saint-Nazaire and La Roche-sur-Yon. The university ...

, where he directed a major European research program, "RELMIN: The legal status of religious minorities in the Euro-Mediterranean world (5th-15th centuries)". Member of several learned societies, director of the Maison des Sciences Homme Ange Guépin of Nantes and coordinator of the Institute of Religious Pluralism and Atheism, he is an elected member of the

Academia Europaea The Academia Europaea is a pan-European Academy of humanities, letters, law, and sciences. The Academia was founded in 1988 as a functioning Europe-wide Academy that encompasses all fields of scholarly inquiry. It acts as co-ordinator of Europe ...

since 2013. He works on the history of the rich web of relations in the medieval Mediterranean world, between Jews, Christians and Muslims.

Distinctions

* 2008 : Diane Potier-Boès Award of the

Académie Française An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of tertiary education. The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 386 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the go ...

* 1995 : American Endowment for the Humanities

Published works

Books

*''Petrus Alfonsi and his Medieval Readers'' (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993) *''Les Relations entre les pays d'Islam et le monde latin du milieu du Xème siècle au milieu du XIIIème siècle'' (Paris: Bréal, 2000) *''Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination'' (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002) *''Sons of Ishmael: Muslims through European Eyes in the Middle Ages'' (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2008) *''Saint Francis and the Sultan: The Curious History of a Christian-Muslim Encounter'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009; French edition published in Paris: Seuil, 2007). * ''L’Europe latine et le monde arabe au Moyen Âge : Cultures en conflit et en convergence'' (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2009) * ''Europe and the Islamic world: A history'' (Oxford: Oxford Princeton University Press, 2013). * ''Faces of Muhammad: Western Perceptions of the Prophet of Islam from the Middle Ages to Today'' (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019) * ''Nouvelle histoire de l'islam : VIIe - XXIe siècle'' (Paris: Tallandier, 2022) * ''England's Jews. Finance, Violence, and the Crown in the Thirteenth Century'' (Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023) * ''Islam: A New History from Muhammad to the Present'' (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2025)

Collective works

* ''Christian Perceptions of Islam: A Book of Essays'' (New York: Garland Press, 1996) * ''Espaces d'échanges en Méditerranée: Antiquité et Moyen Âge'' (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2006) * ''Culture arabe et culture européenne: l'inconnu au turban dans l'album de famille'' (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2006) * ''L'Echange: actes des journées le lien social'' (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2009) * ''Minorités et régulations sociales en Méditerranée médiévale'' (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2010) * ''Enjeux Identitaires en Mutation: Europe et Bassin Méditerranéen'' (Bern: Peter Lang, 2013) * ''The Legal Status of Ḏimmī-s in the Islamic West: second/eighth-ninth/fifteenth centuries'' (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013) * ''Religious cohabitation in European towns: 10th-15th centuries'' (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014) * ''Jews in Early Christian Law Byzantium and the Latin West: 6th-11th centuries'' (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014) * ''Jews and Christians in Medieval Europe: The historiographical legacy of Bernhard Blumenkranz'' (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015) * ''Expulsion and Diaspora Formation: Religious and Ethnic Identities in Flux from Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century'' (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015) * ''Law and Religious Minorities in Medieval Societies: Between Theory and Praxis'' (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016) * ''Religious Minorities, Integration and the State'' (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016) * ''Religious Minorities in Christian, Jewish and Muslim Law: 5th-15th Centuries'' (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017) * ''Faits religieux et manuels d'histoire'' (Paris: Arbre bleu, 2018) * ''Geneses: A Comparative Study of the Historiographies of the Rise of Christianity, Rabbinic Judaism, and Islam'' (London / New York: Routledge, 2019) * ''The Latin Qur’an, 1143–1500 : Translation, Transition, Interpretation'' (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2022)

References

External links

*His Amazon author's page {{DEFAULTSORT:Tolan, John 20th-century American historians 21st-century American historians American medievalists Living people School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences alumni University of Chicago alumni Academic staff of Nantes University Yale University alumni 1959 births