Fred Donner

Fred Donner is the Peter B. Ritzma Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern History at the University of Chicago, affiliated with the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, the Oriental Institute, and the Committee on Social Thought in the Division of the Humanities. He joined the University of Chicago in 1982 after teaching Islamic and modern Middle Eastern history as Assistant and Associate Professor at Yale University from 1975 to 1982. Donner earned his BA in Oriental Studies in 1968 and PhD in Near Eastern Studies in 1975 from Princeton University, with additional studies in Arabic at the Middle East Centre for Arab Studies in Shimlan, Lebanon (1966-1967), and in Orientalische Philologie at Friedrich-Alexander Universität in Erlangen, Germany (1970-1971). His research began with relations between pastoral nomads and settled society in the Near East, evolving to focus on Islamic historiography, Qur’anic studies, Arabic papyrology, and the origins of Islam. He teaches courses on early and medieval Islamic history, Islamic law, and Arabic palaeography and epigraphy.

Donner’s seminal publications include The Early Islamic Conquests (Princeton University Press, 1981), Narratives of Islamic Origins: The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing (Darwin Press, 1998), and Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam (Harvard University Press, 2010). He has edited volumes such as The Expansion of the Early Islamic State (Ashgate/Variorum, 2008), The Articulation of Early Islamic State Structures (Ashgate/Variorum, 2012), and Christians and Others in the Umayyad State (with Antoine Borrut, Oriental Institute, 2016). His honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities (1978-1988), John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2007-2008), Stanford Humanities Center Marta Sutton Weeks Fellowship (2014-2015), American Council of Learned Societies (2018-2019), and American Academy in Berlin (Spring 2019). He received the Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (1992), Jere L. Bacharach Service Award (2008), and lifetime achievement recognition from Middle East Medievalists (2016). Donner served as President of Middle East Medievalists (1990-1992) and Middle East Studies Association of North America (2012), and sits on the Board of the International Qur’anic Studies Association. He is a life member of the Tunisian Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters "Beit el-Hikma" (2012).

Professional Email: f-donner@uchicago.edu