Mohamed Talbi (1921-2017) *95

is a Tunisian historian and professor. He was the author of many books about Islam. Professor Emeritus at University of Tunis, Mohamed Talbi is a Tunisian historian, Islamologist and scholar who has authored a number of books and articles on the history of Islam and the Maghreb. Born in Tunis in 1921 and educated there and later in Paris, Talbi has had an illustrious career, both as a historian of medieval North Africa and as a major theoretical thinker on Islam's nature and mission in the modern world.

Among Talbi's modern interests have been religion and politics, Islam and democracy, Islam and human rights, women in Islam and Islam and religious pluralism, in the wider context of his general thinking on Qur'anic exegesis, historical analysis and religious epistemology. In his discussions of these subjects, Talbi makes clear his dependence on the Quran and other traditional religious sources, while evincing also an easy incorporation of certain modern Western Ideas. Indeed, Talbi's own description of his upbringing and education in Tunisia, and in particular his doctoral studies in post-War Paris, reflects a relaxed attitude towards synthesising Islamic and modern Western thought, in both of which he possesses the requisite learning to effect such an integration. Talbi died on 1 May 2017.

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