Mohamed Talbi

Professor Emeritus at University of Tunis, Mohamed Talbi was a Tunisian historian, Islamologist and scholar who 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 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.[3]

Among Talbi's modern interests were 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 made 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, reflected a relaxed attitude towards synthesising Islamic and modern Western thought, in both of which he possessed the requisite learning to effect such an integration. Talbi died on 1 May 2017.[4]

Mohamed Talbi devoted the best part of his career to teaching and researching medieval Maghreb and Mediterranean history. His profile was that of an atypical intellectual. After a long career teaching in primary and secondary schools, Talbi took and passed the Arab Studies competitive examination. On the eve of Tunisia's independence, he joined the Institute of Higher Education of Tunis. In 1955, he became the first Dean of the School of Letter and Human Sciences of Tunis. He also chaired the school's history departement before devoting his full energies as director of the scientific journal Les Cahiers de Tunisie.[5]

In 1968, Talbi defended his Ph.D. thesis at the Sorbonne. Entitled The Aghlabid Emirate, a political History, it discusses Tunisia's first Muslim dynasty. Written with clarity and a forcefulness of expression, and supported by solid Arab and Latin sources, Talbi's thesis contributed greatly to a renewed understanding of a key period in the history of Ifriqiya and eastern Maghreb and the region's relationships with southern Italy. It also earned Talbi a place as one of the founders of the new school of Tunisian and Maghreb history.[6]

Prolix and incisive, Talbi wrote a considerable number of articles and essays. He was one of a rare few to have addressed the history of slavery, and the key role played by slaves, in agriculture and economy.

Near the end of the 1990s, Talbi turned his reflections toward a deep and systematic meditation. His small book called Universality of the Quran is a lucid essay of synthesis and analysis. It is primarily in Talbi's latest writing that the historian adopted the style of a polemicist. Talbi was appointed president of the Tunisian Academy of Sciences, Letters, and Arts between 2011 and 2012.[7]

Portrait of Mohamed Talbi.

Talbi rejected the direct association between Shura and democracy.[8] He argues that, while desirable in itself, shura is from a time and place which had no conception of democracy as we know it. Indeed, says Talbi, neither Islam nor Western civilisation had this democratic conception before the modern period, when democracy, as political idea and practice was born- at least not democracy in our modern meaning of the term.[9] For Talbi, democracy meant the voice of the people determining who rules and how they rule, with the associated notions of universal human rights, freedom of expression, religious pluralism and equality before the law. True democracy was for Talbi the proper political form for our age, as it embodies those values which for him constitute part of the original true Islam.[10]

During thirty years, Talbi has participated in a number of official and personal dialogues with Christians in North Africa and Europe. In an article on Islam and the West, published in 1987, he complains about the current poverty of Muslim initiatives or even responses to Euro-Arab or Islamo-Christian dialogue.[11] In a prochure on the subject, he explicitly declared Islam to be open to dialogue with other faiths and cultures. For Talbi, the Muslim-Christian dialogue is not just a social event but a significant religious matter, and he has done everything possible to promote such dialogue in Tunisia and elsewhere.[12]

• Member of the Real Academia de la Historia (1970)
• Member of the editorial team of the Encyclopaedia of Islam (1978)
• Member of the Universal academy of cultures (1994)
• President of the Tunisian Academy of Sciences, Letters, and Arts (2011-2012)

• Premio letterario internazionale del Mediterraneo in Italy (1979)
• The Léopold Lucas Prize in Germany (1985)
• The Cultural National Prize in Tunisia (1987)
• The Literature National Prize in Tunisia (1991)
• Hiroshima Prize for Peace and Cultural in Sweden (1994)
• The Senator Giovanni Agnelli International Prize in Italy (1997)
• Ibn Khaldun Award in Humanities (2017).