Background
He was born and raised in the Shiite pilgrimage city of Kerbala, Iraq.
(This is a paperback reprint in two volumes of Muhsin Mahd...)
This is a paperback reprint in two volumes of Muhsin Mahdi s classic edition of the oldest preserved manuscript of The Thousand and One Nights kept in the Bibliotheque Nationale de France in Paris, which was originally published in three volumes (1984-1994). The reprint includes the original survey (in Arabic) of both the print and manuscript traditions of The Thousand and One Nights, with extensive notes and four appendices. Volume 1. Introduction by Aboubakr Chraibi; Preface by Muhsin Mahdi; Arabic Text Volume 2. Critical Apparatus; Description of Manuscripts; Indexes, Errata by Ibrahim Akel"
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/9004256490/?tag=2022091-20
He was born and raised in the Shiite pilgrimage city of Kerbala, Iraq.
After finishing high school in Baghdad, he was awarded a government scholarship to study at the American University of Beirut, where he earned both a Bachelor of Business Administration and a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy. And Doctor of Philosophy(1954) at the University of Chicago. Here he studied at the Oriental Institute under Nabia Abbott and began his lifelong exploration of political philosophy under the guidance of Leo Strauss.
He was a leading authority on Arabian history, philology, and philosophy. His best-known work was the first critical edition of the One Thousand and One Nights. He taught for a year at the University of Baghdad before coming to the United States in 1948, where he earned an Master of Arts His wrote his dissertation on Ibn Khaldun.
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 (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 Professor Ralph Lerner at Chicago and Professor 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.
Muhsin Mahdi, Muhsin South. Mahdi, Muḥsin Mahdī.
(This is a paperback reprint in two volumes of Muhsin Mahd...)
Mahdi has made a very distinguished contribution to the study of Islamic philosophy, and especially to Muslim political philosophy, significantly affecting the direction of the subject in the second half of this century. He has a thorough grounding in both German philosophy and the social sciences, and this helped him to produce a study of the thought of ibn Khaldun which broke new ground by widening the notion of Islamic studies itself. Ibn Khaldun’s science of culture is shown to rest on the Islamic philosophical tradition, and not primarily on jurisprudence. In his pioneering wrork on the philosophy of alFarabi, as an editor, translator and commentator, he described the importance of Farabi’s thought as a philosopher and not just as a historical figure in Islamic culture. Mahdi’s writings are characterized by exceptional clarity and profundity. Through the example of his writings and through his influence upon his many students, he has made an important impact upon the nature of contemporary Islamic philosophy.