Nahj al-Balāghah: The Wisdom and Eloquence of ʿAlī

Location: Pink Parlor, East Duke 112

Tahera Qutbuddin was Professor of Arabic Literature in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago for twenty-one years, after which she took up the post of AlBabtain Laudian Professor of Arabic in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oxford, where she currently teaches.

She was also a member of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the Committee on South Asian Studies, as well as an associate faculty member of the Divinity School, and ten-year chair of the undergraduate major Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities.

Professor Qutbuddin's research in classical Arabic literature and Islamic studies focuses on intersections of the literary, the religious, and the political in poetry and prose. Her interests include classical Arabic poetry, orations, epistles, aphorisms, narrative, poetics, and philology; orations and sayings of Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib; ethical hadith and orations of the Prophet Muhammad; Fatimid and Tayyibi Bohra poetry, history, theology, and law; literary features and symbolic exegesis of the Quran; classical Arabic women's literature, including orations and poetry; and the history, functions, and literary genres of Arabic in India.

Professor Qutbuddin obtained her PhD from Harvard University, Tamhidi Magister and BA from Ain Shams University, Cairo, and high school diploma from Sophia College, Mumbai.