Hossein Ziai

Education

Doctor of Philosophy, Islamic Philosophy, Harvard University 1976.

Bachelor of Surgery, Intensive Mathematics and Physics, Yale University 1967.

Career

Prior to his position at University of California, Los Angeles, Hossein Ziai taught at Tehran University, Sharif University, Harvard University, Brown University, and Oberlin College. As Director of Iranian Studies at University of California, Los Angeles, where he taught since 1988, Hossein Ziai established an undergraduate major in Iranian Studies in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures--the first such degree in North America--and developed the strongest and most rigorous Iranian Studies program in the United States. In December 2010, Professor Hossein Ziai was elected President of Société Internationale d"Histoire des Sciences et de la Philosophie Arabes et Islamiques (SIHSPAI), an international academic society for the study of Persian and Arabic Islamic philosophical and scientific heritages. Development of Illuminationist philosophy in the 13th and 14th centuries and its continuity in Iranian intellectual traditions.

Advanced Persian grammar with emphasis on stylistics and its typology in Persian.

Achievements

• Beginning with his Doctor of Philosophy dissertation under the direction of Professor Muhsin Mahdi (d 2007) in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at Harvard, he focused his research and publications on elucidating the rationalist principle in Iranian Illuminationist philosophy and its founder, Shihab al-Din Yahya Suhravardi (1154-1191,) otherwise known as Sheikh al-Ishraq (Master of Illumination).

Views

Ziai published eleven books on Islamic philosophy, numerous articles and encyclopedia entries, and as founding editor of Bibliotheca Iranica: Intellectual Traditions Series, published fourteen titles on a variety of subjects related to Iranian thought, literature and civilization. Doctor of Philosophy, Islamic Philosophy, Harvard University 1976.