News

Dear Friends,

We are saddened to share the news of the passing of our dear friend, colleague, and mentor, Professor Roy Parviz Mottahedeh on the thirtieth of last month. He was, is, a towering figure in the field of Middle Eastern and Islamic studies, and also a friend to the Program in Islamic Law as a member emeritus of our advisory and editorial boards. Professor Mottahedeh was an inspiring educator and a dedicated mentor to countless students over the course of his lifetime. He was not just an academic par excellence but also a person of immense integrity, kindness, and compassion. 

At Harvard, it was my honor to call him colleague at the Department of History, to which he returned in 1986 (after having completed his undergraduate and doctoral studies here – with a second BA from Cambridge University in between, and after a stint teaching at Princeton University). And it was an enriching pleasure to co-teach a History course with him the Fall after my arrival to Harvard, called Islamic Law and Society: Historians, Biographers, Judges, 750-1258 (Fall 2014). And it was our collective honor—the many colleagues and friends who learned from him and came together to pay tribute to him at a 2016 conference—to see the publication of the edited festschrift volume Justice and Leadership in Early Islamic Courts (2017). As his longtime friend Professor Hossein Modarressi (at Princeton), his longtime student Professor Abigail Balbale (at NYU), and I commented in the introduction to that book:

[He constantly met] scores of students, colleagues, and casual readers from everywhere with insights that are clear and eloquent, critical and colorful. He has  always approached the study of Islamic social and administrative-legal history with a method that vividly brings the source, and those who produced them, to life. … [He] has transformed the ”field through the generations of scholars he has trained, the hundreds of students he has exposed to Islamic history, and the myriad scholarly networks he has constructed. In the forty-six years that he taught at Princeton and later at Harvard before retiring in 2016, he mentored dozens of doctoral students who would go on to establish Islamic social, cultural, and intellectual history at universities around the country and world. … To all, he brought and cultivate the same infectious curiosity and critical insight that permeates his own work.

Before Harvard, it was with appreciation for his deep insights and lilting prose that I and many others saw him as a lodestar for excellence in research and narrative of Islamic history, when I was a graduate student at Princeton University (which had been his first academic post after the Harvard Society of Fellows). We avidly read his Loyalty and Leadership in an Early Islamic Society (1980)—which deftly brought the latest methods and theories of social history to bear on Islamic historical sources, his Mantle of the Prophet (1985)—which began with a trip to Hamadan in 1977, and which has been heralded subsequently and repeatedly as a “favorite book” by academics and general readers alike (including one Pulitzer-prize winning NY Times writer who knew about good writing), and his Lessons in Islamic Jurisprudence (2003)—an instructive translation of a leading treatise on Islamic legal philosophy and interpretation that I recommend to students and colleagues keen on understanding ways to treat and find the language for Islamic law as law.

And over the years, it was with anticipation and relish that I and many others read every other article he published, which he recently collected into the book of essays In the Shadow of the Prophet (2023).

As we reflect on Professor Mottahedeh’s legacy and numerous accomplishments, we recall and celebrate his passion for advancing the understanding of Islamic history, culture, and law. We invite you to join us in celebrating Professor Mottahedeh’s life and legacy by reading about his journey and works, as well as the academic contributions and words of congratulations that many friends and intellectual interlocutors contributed to the festschrift, in his honor.

Please join us in expressing our sincere condolences to his family, friends, and all who know him. A memorial will likely be held at Harvard University later in the fall. More details will be forthcoming when available.

Warm best,

Intisar Rabb
Professor of Law & History, Harvard University
Faculty Director, Program in Islamic Law