Muhsin Mahdi
Professor Muhsin S. Mahdi, James Richard Jewett Professor of Arabic Emeritus, at Harvard University, died on July 9, 2007, in Brookline, Massachusetts, after a long series of illnesses, at the age of 81. Universally acclaimed as the leading specialist in medieval Arabic and Islamic philosophy, Mahdi was born in 1926 in the city of Karbala, Iraq, where his mother gave birth to him leaning against the wall of the sanctuary of Imam al-Husayn. After schooling in Karbala and Najaf, he finished high school in Baghdad. An outstanding student, he was awarded a government scholarship to study business administration at the American University of Beirut, where he earned both a B.B.A. and a B.A. in philosophy (1947). He taught for a year at the University of Baghdad (1947-1948) before coming to the United States on another Iraqi government scholarship to begin graduate studies in economics at the University of Chicago. Here...