Muhsin Mahdi Dies; Edited and Translated Two Books with Cornell
As reported in the September/October issue of Philosophy Now, Muhsin Mahdi, the world’s foremost expert on medieval Arabic and Islamic political philosophy, died in August at the age of 81. Born in Iraq, he spent his academic career at the University of Baghdad (1947–1957), the University of Chicago (1957–1969), and Harvard University (1969–1996), where he held the James Richard Jewett Professorship in Arabic. Among his many books were two works he published with Cornell University Press—Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook, which he coedited with Ralph Lerner, and an acclaimed translation of Alfarabi’s Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, originally published in 1969 and reissued in 2002 with a new foreword by Charles E. Butterworth and Thomas L. Pangle. Both books reflect the remarkable archival and philological work for which Mahdi was universally admired.
