Muḥsin Sayyid Mahdī (; cited Muhsin S. Mahdi; June 21, 1926 – July 9, 2007) was an Iraqi-American Islamologist and

Arabist An Arabist is someone, often but not always from outside the Arab world, who specialises in the study of the Arabic language and Arab culture, culture (usually including Arabic literature). Origins Arabists began in Al Andalus, medieval Muslim ...

. He was a leading authority on Arabian history,

philology Philology () is the study of language in Oral tradition, oral and writing, written historical sources. It is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics with strong ties to etymology. Philology is also de ...

, and

philosophy Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

. His best-known work was the first critical edition of the ''

One Thousand and One Nights ''One Thousand and One Nights'' (, ), is a collection of Middle Eastern folktales compiled in the Arabic language during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as ''The Arabian Nights'', from the first English-language edition ( ...

''.

Life

He was born and raised in the Shiite pilgrimage town Kerbala, Iraq. After finishing high school in

Baghdad Baghdad ( or ; , ) is the capital and List of largest cities of Iraq, largest city of Iraq, located along the Tigris in the central part of the country. With a population exceeding 7 million, it ranks among the List of largest cities in the A ...

, he was awarded a government scholarship to study at the

American University of Beirut The American University of Beirut (AUB; ) is a private, non-sectarian, and independent university chartered in New York with its main campus in Beirut, Lebanon. AUB is governed by a private, autonomous board of trustees and offers programs le ...

, where he earned both a B.B.A. and a B.A. in philosophy. He taught for a year at the

University of Baghdad The University of Baghdad (UOB) (, also known as Baghdad University) is a public university, public research university in Baghdad, Iraq. It is the largest university in Iraq and the tenth largest in the Arab world. History The College of Isl ...

before coming to the United States in 1948, where he earned an M.A. and Ph.D.(1954) at 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 ...

. Here he studied at the Oriental Institute under Nabia Abbott and began his lifelong exploration of political philosophy under the guidance of

Leo Strauss Leo Strauss (September 20, 1899 – October 18, 1973) was an American scholar of political philosophy. He spent much of his career as a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, where he taught several generations of students an ...

. He wrote his dissertation on

Ibn Khaldun Ibn Khaldun (27 May 1332 – 17 March 1406, 732–808 Hijri year, AH) was an Arabs, Arab Islamic scholar, historian, philosopher and sociologist. He is widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest social scientists of the Middle Ages, and cons ...

. After two more years in Baghdad, Mahdi returned to Chicago, where he taught in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from 1958-1969. At

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

(from 1969 until his retirement in 1996), as James Richard Jewett Professor of Arabic, he served as director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and also as Chairman of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. Mahdī was versed in medieval Arabic, ancient Greek, medieval Jewish and Christian philosophy but also modern Western political philosophy. Grounded in the methods of critical editions of manuscripts developed by European scholars for the ancient and medieval texts, he tried to establish the same standards in the fields of Arabic philology and philosophy. He devoted much of his career to searching for manuscripts wherever his travels took him. He is especially known for the recovery, edition, translation and interpretation of many of the works of Alfarabi. With Ralph Lerner at Chicago and Ernest Fortin at Boston College, he co-edited Medieval Political Philosophy, a path-breaking sourcebook that includes selections in translation from Arabic, Hebrew and Latin texts.

Bibliography

English

*''Ibn Khaldun's Philosophy of History: A Study in the Philosophical Foundation of the Science of Culture''. His doctoral dissertation of 1954, published 1957. *''The Thousand and One Nights (Alf layla wa-layla), from the Earliest Known Sources'', ed. by Muhsin Mahdi, 3 vols (Leiden: Brill, 1984-1994). . * NB The Arabian Nights: based on the text of the fourteenth-century manuscript ed. by Muhsin Mahdi. Translated by Husain Haddawy. Everyman's Library, 1992. *''Alfarabi and the Foundation of Islamic Political Philosophy''. 2001. Michael R.T. Dumper; Bruce E. Stanley, eds. (2008), "Baghdad", Cities of the Middle East and North Africa, Santa Barbara, USA: ABC-CLIO

French

* "La fondation de la philosophie politique en islam. La cité vertueuse d'Alfarabi." Champs. Flammarion. Paris. 2000.

References

External links

* Steven J. Lenzner
''An Unsurpassed Scholar''
*
A further list of works
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mahdi, Muhsin 1926 births 2007 deaths American Arabists Translators of One Thousand and One Nights American people of Iraqi descent 20th-century translators