Muhsin Mahdi

Muhsin S. Mahdi (1926-2007) rahimahullah was the James R. Jewett Professor Emeritus of Arabic in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization at Harvard University. One of the foremost scholars of Islamic political philosophy in the twentieth century, he devoted much of his career to the recovery and critical edition of the works of Abu Nasr al-Farabi, the medieval Islamic philosopher whose thought profoundly shaped the tradition of Islamic political philosophy. In addition to publishing critical Arabic editions of many of Alfarabi's works, Mahdi produced the definitive scholarly edition of the Thousand and One Nights and authored a pathbreaking study of Ibn Khaldun's philosophy of history, as well as Alfarabi and the Foundation of Islamic Political Philosophy.