Fred Donner

University of Chicago Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern History

Fred M. Donner attended public schools in Basking Ridge, NJ, and then Princeton University (BA Oriental Studies, 1968; PhD Near Eastern Studies, 1975), with additional study at the Middle East Centre for Arab Studies in Shimlan, Lebanon (1966-67, for Arabic language), and the Friedrich-Alexander Universität in Erlangen, Germany (1970-71; Orientalische Philologie). He did military service from 1968-1970, during which he was assigned for duty in Germany with the US Army Security Agency. He taught Islamic and modern Middle Eastern history at Yale University (1975-1982) and, since 1982, has been at the University of Chicago (NELC and The Oriental Institute—now the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures), where he taught courses on early and medieval Islamic history, Islamic law, Arabic palaeography and epigraphy, and occasionally, the modern Middle East. He retired from active teaching in 2020, at age 75.

Donner’s early research focused on social history, especially the relations between pastoral nomads and settled society in the Near East; over the years his interest shifted to Islamic historiography, Qur’anic studies, Arabic papyrology, and the origins of Islam. His major publications include The Early Islamic Conquests (Princeton University Press, 1981); Narratives of Islamic Origins: the beginnings of Islamic historical writing (Darwin Press, 1997); and Muhammad and the Believers: at the origins of Islam (Harvard University Press, 2010). He edited and wrote introductions for two volumes of articles by diverse scholars on The Expansion of the Islamic State (Ashgate/Variorum, 2008) and The Articulation of Early Islamic State Structures (Routledge, 2016). He translated one volume of the History of al-Tabari (vol. 9, The Conquest of Arabia; SUNY Press, 1993). He has also authored dozens of scholarly articles on early and medieval Islamic history, Qur’anic studies, etc. (see c.v. for complete list). He co-edited, with Antoine Borrut, a volume entitled Christians and Others in the Umayyad State (The Oriental Institute, 2016) and co-edited with Rebecca Hasselbach-Andee Scripts and Scriptures: Writing and Religion in Arabia, ca. 500-700 C.E (The Oriental Institute, 2022).

Donner has held fellowships from Yale University’s Whitney Griswold Faculty Research Fund (1978-79), the National Endowment for the Humanities (1987-1988), the American Center for Oriental Research in Amman, Jordan (Spring, 2001), the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2007-2008), the Stanford Humanities Center (Marta Sutton Weeks Fellow, 2014-2015), the American Council of Learned Societies (2018-2019) and the “Berlin Prize” at the American Academy in Berlin (Nina Marie Gorrison Fellow, Spring 2019). He was President of Middle East Medievalists (1990-1992), served two three-year terms on the Board of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA), and was elected President of MESA (2012). He has served on the Board of the International Qur'anic Studies Association (IQSA), and was IQSA’s President (2022-2024). In 2012, he was inducted as a life member of the Scientific Committee of the Tunisian Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters "Beit el-Hikma."